Cook: Let's build what love looks like

Before we talk resurrection, let's talk tombs.

Somewhere in the city, a woman (or teen, or child) is being raped. She's being held against her will, and even if she could leave, wouldn't. Her pimp is also her supplier. Drug addiction has a perverse way of making someone loyal.

David Cook

Where does she live? God knows. Under a bridge. In some window-blacked home that could be as much suburbia as rural. Trafficked in a car from town to town, motel to hotel, in chains either literal or figurative or both.

Why does it happen? Because a community of brokenness makes it possible. Because men dehumanize and porno-objectify women. (Compared to prostitutes, how many pimps and johns were arrested in Hamilton County in 2014?) Because of backpage.com. Because evil still prowls, as St. Paul said, like a lion. So does poverty.

In every corner of the world, women's bodies act as storehouses for immense cruelty and sexual violence. That woman being abused here? She has sisters all over the globe.

"Go to Rwanda, and you will hear the same stories you hear in Hamilton County," the Rev. Becca Stevens said on Friday morning. "It is the story."

So what's changing?

We are.

"Let's build what love looks like," Stevens said.

If you don't know, you should: Stevens' story is both beautiful and transformative. An Episcopal priest, Stevens started in 1997 what would become one of the most redeeming social enterprises in America.

Nashville's Magdalene House.

At the time, it was a home for several women coming off the streets, offering counseling, medical care, community and job opportunities for two years, at no cost. Love, with drywall.

Now her work is known across the world. Friday, she and two Magdalene women came to Chattanooga to speak at the annual anti-trafficking event -- Unite: Wear White -- sponsored by the Chattanooga Coalition Against Human Trafficking.

Ten years ago, nobody was talking about this. But Friday? The DoubleTree hotel was packed with nearly 200 people.

Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger read an anti-trafficking proclamation.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker's office was there. The FBI, the sheriff and city police. U.S. Attorney Bill Killian wanted to come, but couldn't. Valerie Radu, with the city's Family Justice Center.

"Love heals," Stevens told the room.

Like refugees, women flee to Magdalene House. Stevens said all have been raped. Some have been arrested hundreds of times for prostitution. Many are addicts.

When they arrive, nobody asks what they've done, Stevens said, but rather: "What has happened to you?"

Since the first day Magdalene opened, there has been a waiting list. Stevens said that if you go into prison and talk to women about home, they begin to weep.

Like some female diaspora, women have been shamed and stolen away from home by sexual violence.

Stevens is just calling them back.

"Love each other into wellness," she said.

Not only does Stevens literally rescue women from sexual slavery, she is also restoring the concept of love as a viable and real force for social and economic change.

Taking no federal or state money, Magdalene House is able to house women for less than half of what it would cost to imprison them.

It's estimated that Magdalene brings $750,000 to Nashville, via tourism, taxes and through programs of social uplift. Women stop using drugs. They leave disability. They work.

Most women -- 82 percent, Stevens said -- graduate from the Magdalene program.

From slavery to empowerment and joy.

All because of policies and programs built on love.

"It's good business," she said. "People want to hope with you. We want to feel like we are apart of a healing community."

After opening Magdalene, Stevens created Thistle Farms, which employs women to make and sell candles, body balms, teas (a bath salt once called "Lot's Wife") and other products, some of which are sold in Whole Foods. She then created the Thistle Stop Cafe.

"We would love to have a sister organization here," she said.

Good. Because it may happen.

The Naomi Project has begun work to model a Magdalene House here. Jerry Redman of Second Life Chattanooga told the room on Friday that a home for women could be ready by spring. The Children's Advocacy Center continues its life-saving work. Soon the city's Family Justice Center will announce its new location.

No matter how deep the tomb, there is no place love cannot reach.

Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter at DavidCookTFP.