Editor’s Note:
This piece is a staff-authored reflection written by Ezekiel Kingsbury, a legal intern at the Ohio Justice & Policy Center. It reflects the author’s observations and experiences working alongside trafficking survivors and is intended to highlight the human impact of post-conviction barriers. The views expressed are offered in the spirit of survivor-centered advocacy and do not constitute legal advice.
Too often, injustice is not borne out of malice, but rather of a systemic failure to recognize each other’s humanity. My decision to go to law school came from a tragic realization of the apathy shown toward our elderly. It is not cruelty that subjects people like my grandmother to such profound suffering, but a lack of sustained attention and care. There is too much suffering caused by the systemic failure to see the person behind the circumstance. Since beginning my internship at the Ohio Justice and Policy Center this past summer, I have realized just how much tragedy stems from this invisibility.
Safe Harbor Expungement is a tool for human trafficking survivors to clear their criminal histories that are a result of their victimization, and the vast majority of the work I have done has directly related to helping people access this form of relief. This work has allowed me to come face to face with all kinds of injustice, and, for the trafficking survivors whose stories I have witnessed, there is no doubt that their victimization played a tremendous role in the injustice they have faced. But this type of injustice, that of survivors’ direct victimization, is usually all that society, and the courts, are concerned with. For instance, in my first week, I was shocked by stories of survivors being required to relive their worst experiences in court simply to access basic relief, their deeply personal trauma put on display, examined, and reduced to evidence.
But there is a more pernicious and dehumanizing injustice, one not as easily consumed through shock or pity, that goes frequently unaddressed. It is injustice without a clean story, without a climax and resolution. It is the one that arises from the slow and steady denial of dignity.
There is no “perfect victim,” who, upon escape, can do so unscathed. Even the idea of “escape” is misleading ; it suggests a singular moment of resolution that rarely exists. Not only are they left with tremendous amounts of trauma, but survivors’ criminal records bear constant reminders of the actions they were forced to take to survive. These records become lasting barriers to employment, housing, family reunification, and stability. In this way, survivors are revictimized daily by systems that see only their charges, not their humanity. Their stories are often unheard, and their lives are ignored.
Justice cannot merely be the cathartic moment when the survivor escapes and the abuser is punished. Instead, it must be rooted in recognition. The base terror of trafficking is the stripping of humanity, the transformation of a person into a means. By viewing survivors as a bundle of mistakes, as a walking record, or even as nothing but their victimization, our justice system risks reproducing that same dehumanization. It treats the survivor as paperwork to be processed rather than a whole, unique person to be recognized.
This is why the work at OJPC is so vital. Our advocacy is grounded in restoring recognition, ensuring that survivors are seen as whole people and not defined purely by the harm done to them or the records that remain afterwards. That work does not require survivors to publicly recount trauma or relive their abuse; instead, it centers their dignity, agency, and right to meaningful relief.