Community Champion Spotlight: Maria-Isabella Pontoriero and Mary Anne Mushatt

To honor Human Trafficking Awareness Month, each week in January we will be highlighting 2 individuals who have gone above and beyond in the Greater New Orleans community to serve victims and survivors of human trafficking. This highlight is the “Community Champion Spotlight”. Each individual was nominated by Task Force members. Community champions represent a variety of different disciplines and perspectives from the anti-trafficking movement. 

Our fourth and final highlight of 2020 features individuals who are newer to the New Orleans anti-trafficking work, but are making a big impact with their efforts. Thank you MIP and and Mary Anne for all you do for our community! We're so lucky to have you in the Greater New Orleans community. 

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Maria-Isabella Pontoriero (MIP)

Human Trafficking Social Worker

New Orleans Children’s Advocacy Center/Audrey Hepburn CARE Center, programs of Children’s Hospital New Orleans

"It is a rewarding experience to work with so many people who have the common goal of keeping our community, most importantly the children, in a safe and heal”

What is your role in the Greater New Orleans community?
My role at the NOCAC/CARE Center is to assist in the identification and response to child sex and labor trafficking within Orleans Parish at Children’s Hospital New Orleans; I do this through coordination of forensic interviews, forensic medical evaluations, and needed services. I provide extensive case management, crisis counseling, and safety planning (for suicidal ideation, self-harm, emotional safety, and living with in-home perpetrators) to high-risk victims, victims of child pornography, and sex and labor trafficking victims, and their non-offending caregivers. Within my role, I also coordinate a Survivor Services Child Trafficking Multidisciplinary Team called BRAVE (Building Resilience for All Victims of Exploitation), to review cases of high-risk and confirmed trafficking cases, and develop holistic treatment and service plans for child victims and their families. I am also a forensic interviewer.

What has been your most successful or memorable experience working in the anti-trafficking movement?
Collaborating with the Task Force has been one of the highlights so far within my career in the anti-trafficking movement. The Task Force has led the dialogue on labor trafficking and increased my own knowledge and competence in addressing labor trafficking. We definitely have a long way to go, but I look forward to increasing Children’s Hospital’s capacity to identify victims of labor trafficking, with the help of the Task Force.

What has been your favorite aspect of collaborating among task force partners?
Collaborating with the various departments at Children’s Hospital to ensure that all needs of sex and labor trafficking victims are assessed and addressed has been one of my favorite parts of my job! I have enjoyed training Children’s Hospital nurses and staff in identifying and responding to child trafficking, but also on how to engage youth who come through the Emergency Room at Children’s Hospital. The goal is to make our hospital a safe and supportive place where high-risk and trafficking victims know they can come to receive high-quality medical care, regardless of where they are in their disclosure process.

What are Task Force members saying about MIP?

"I can always count on MIP to treat every survivor with respect and value. She puts her whole heart into every case."

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Mary Anne Mushatt

Committee Chair, Private citizen

GNOHTTF Community Awareness Committee

"I now speak up about [trafficking] wherever I am."

What is your role in the Greater New Orleans community?
Helping get the word out to the general public that human trafficking is here in the Greater New Orleans area, and what the generous. Task Force members are doing to help survivors reclaim their lives.  And what the general public can do when trafficking is active in their neighborhood. I am also the Committee Chair for the Community Awareness Committee of the GNOHTTF.

What has been your favorite aspect of collaborating among task force partners?
The Awareness events of last year, hearing the Task Force members present to the City Council, and the gathering to celebrate and create community among providers later that night.

What has been your most memorable experience working in anti-trafficking?
Being inspired by the dedication and diversity of people working in this field.

Anything else you would like to add?
I now speak up about it [trafficking] wherever I am.

What are Task Force members saying about Mary Anne?

"Mary Anne has helped us get creative to reach the broader community."

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