Crowd attends Centennial art exhibit on stopping human trafficking

On a February evening in Centennial, the curious eyes of about 150 people scanned the walls of The Village Workspace to view dozens of unique art pieces, each with a powerful story to tell about human trafficking. 

Human trafficking is the exploitation of a person through force, fraud, or coercion, and it can happen to anyone, according to the Blue Campaign, a national public awareness campaign. Different types of human trafficking include sex trafficking, forced labor and domestic servitude. 

Arapahoe County Sheriff Tyler Brown said his agency partners with the FBI to make sure that officers are available to address the issues. 

“I just spoke with one of our investigators who’s assigned to one of those task forces last night, and over 400 people around the Denver metro area have been intercepted and saved,” Brown said. “The average age of the people that we intercept here in Colorado is young, shockingly young — 13 years old.”

Brown encouraged attendees to raise awareness by talking about human trafficking with neighbors and state legislators. He said it is important that prosecutors, like 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner, have “all the power possible to get these monsters off the street and hold them in cages and imprison them forever.”

Kellner said that several years ago in Arapahoe County, a man was convicted of running a human trafficking ring and received a 472-year prison sentence. 

In August 2023, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation announced that the FBI Denver Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force along with local, state and federal partners recovered 27 victims of sex trafficking during the nationwide campaign called “Operation Cross Country.” Eight of those 27 victims were children. 

“It very much happens in our backyard,” Kellner said. “I really, truly want to thank everybody here for not only joining the fight, but being the voice out in the community that spreads the word about how important this is.” 

One of the featured speakers at the event was Libby Swenson, who spoke about Love Justice International, a faith-based organization that does anti-trafficking work, and the Freedom 58 Project, which supplied the artwork.

Swenson, the regional director of donor engagement at Love Justice International, co-founded the Freedom 58 Project with her husband and former Denver Broncos player, Bob Swenson, with hopes of strengthening anti-trafficking organizations like Love Justice International. 

Love Justice International works in places of transit, such as bus stations, train stations, airports and at international borders, she said. 

“All of our monitors, who are locals of the cities and the villages where we work in 26 countries around the world, are all looking for any type of suspicious activity of potential human trafficking,” she said. “Right now, we are celebrating over 54,000 people that we have intercepted from human traffickers … and we have aided in the arrest of over 1,400 traffickers.”

The Freedom 58 Project has an art exhibit, called “Faces of Freedom,” that consists of more than 230 paintings that highlight survivors’ stories and the anti-trafficking organizations that have supported them, according to the organization’s website. “A significant portion of Freedom 58’s art exhibit tells the story of LJI (Love Justice International) survivors and work,” the website states. 

“The idea is to give dignity to the most vulnerable in the world,” Swenson said. 

More than 120 art pieces were on display at The Village Workspace, including pieces created by artist Jami Nix Rahn, who attended the event.  

“In these paintings, my aim was to offer a voice to those silenced by their circumstances,” she said. “These visual narratives serve as a potent reminder that art possesses the unique ability to give voice to the voiceless, providing a platform for their stories to be seen and heard.”

She added, “Let us remember the power of art in depicting a world as it is and inspiring us to create a world as it should be — a world where freedom is not a privilege, but a right afforded to all.”

The art pieces, with their correlating stories, will remain on display at The Village Workspace, 7173 S. Havana St., for community members to view. 

“Art installations like this ensure that this story never goes away,” Brown said. “It’s amazing to know that this is just down the street. I’m going to be bringing a lot of people by to see these stories and share them.”