In June, the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department, Michael Cox, awarded a special commendation to Abigail Judge, PhD and peer advocate, Sandra Andrade, for opening a nighttime drop-in center in the neighborhood of “Mass and Cass” for women experiencing substance use and exploitation in the commercial sex trade.
Boston HEAT (Human Exploitation and Sex Trafficking) is a collaboration between Dr. Abigail Judge and Sandra Andrade of MGH and the Boston Police Department’s Human Trafficking Unit (HTU) dedicated to women at the intersection of substance use and the commercial sex trade. Boston HEAT mobilizes clinical and peer support for women who are trapped in cycles of commercial sexual exploitation and addiction through a continuum of low threshold settings: tailored street and jail outreach, HTU ride-along’s, and a nighttime drop-in center in Boston’s “Mass and Cass” neighborhood. Collaboration with law enforcement helps reimagine police contact as an opportunity for services rather than arrest. Boston HEAT is supported by the Imago Dei Fund.
Dr. Judge is the founder of MGH Connect, a program that takes a victim-centered approach to helping women experiencing exploitation in the commercial sex trade. This project has been an ongoing partnership with the City of Boston and has been extraordinarily helpful to the women of Mass and Cass. While the police focus on identifying the traffickers, Judge’s team focuses on developing connections, one woman at a time, by offering support and addressing basic needs. According to Judge, “Victim-centered means you have to begin where that person is, help them take another step but it has to be driven by them and that’s why we meet women on the street.”
This video from NBC News Boston takes a look at Abigail Judge and Sandra Andrade in the field:
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Judge AM, Andrade S, Sullivan M. (2023). Boston HEAT: Psychology, peer, law enforcement collaboration to engage women at the intersection of sex trafficking and substance use. Invited presentation, Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. San Francisco, CA.
Judge AM. Uncharted Waters: Developing Mental Health Services for Survivors of Domestic Human Sex Trafficking. Harv Rev Psychiatry. 2018 Sep/Oct; 26(5):287-297.
