Reclaiming the Story
Yevette earned her undergraduate degree at Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science in Religion. She earned her Master of Divinity degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, in 2015. In 2019, Yevette was ordained in the Mountain Sky Conference as an Elder in the United Methodist Church. Today, she is a doctoral candidate at Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, where she is drafting her thesis on the impact of Christianity on the development, or lack thereof, of social ethics around the traumatized bodies of women who have endured commercial sexual exploitation.
She is developing an approach that will engage and support survivors without re-exploiting them to support an anti-sex trafficking movement that does little to challenge systems or provide pathways to socioeconomic change. Yevette's thesis will interrogate the policies, practices, and religious frameworks that many agencies and advocates use to develop restorative communities.
She is developing an approach that will engage and support survivors without re-exploiting them to support an anti-sex trafficking movement that does little to challenge systems or provide pathways to socioeconomic change. Yevette's thesis will interrogate the policies, practices, and religious frameworks that many agencies and advocates use to develop restorative communities.
Transforming Lives
Yevette’s lived experience uniquely qualifies her to participate in this interrogation. Her purpose is to offer support and encouragement for individuals and agencies striving to be advocates and allies for women who have survived commercial sexual exploitation and every variable of vice and violence that accompanies it. She spent years in rehabilitation centers and homes, a client in many social service agencies, and a defendant on several court dockets.
Her mission is to advocate for vulnerable women whose stories are often used to promote the agenda of anti-sex trafficking agencies while being left unseen and unequipped to navigate the complex terrain of reclaiming their own lives successfully. She believes that ethical advocacy and direct care services must center on the survivor and that standard must be pursued and upheld through responsible, survivor informed policies and practices that pivot on love; a love that challenges our biases and creates authentic spaces for trauma-informed care with an emphasis on socio-economic stability and progress.
Her mission is to advocate for vulnerable women whose stories are often used to promote the agenda of anti-sex trafficking agencies while being left unseen and unequipped to navigate the complex terrain of reclaiming their own lives successfully. She believes that ethical advocacy and direct care services must center on the survivor and that standard must be pursued and upheld through responsible, survivor informed policies and practices that pivot on love; a love that challenges our biases and creates authentic spaces for trauma-informed care with an emphasis on socio-economic stability and progress.
