Human trafficking isn’t always the elaborate, sophisticated operation many people believe it to be. In reality, it can be exploitation as simple as exchanging money, a safe place to sleep at night or a meal for sexual acts. And in Northwest Florida, that’s the situation in which authorities are finding young victims.

Many of those young women — specifically between the ages of 12 and 17 — previously experienced trauma that distorts their views of normalcy, and recovery presents an expensive and taxing challenge on the state.

Two entities — Liberty Church and the FamiliesFirst Network of Lakeview — are working together to construct a safe house for those victims to receive individualized counseling, targeted services and hopefully a family to go home to on the other side.

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The Secret Place is scheduled to open in the spring on 10 acres in an undisclosed location in the First Judicial Circuit. At first, there will be room to house five girls, but organizers hope to later expand the site.

"They need normalcy, they need a place where they can truly have a safe environment where trust can be built again," said Kristin Lipscomb, Liberty Church pastor. "With everything they’ve gone through, their dignity’s been robbed, their self-esteem’s been robbed, their trust for people has been robbed so then to come in and provide those services is awesome, but not if they don’t have a safe environment for them to be kids, and they deserve to be kids."

Lipscomb said the two partnering agencies have been working together for more than a year to bring the project to life, and the house itself is already built. But after further examining the needs of the children The Secret Place will serve, they took a step back to remodel and realign the facility’s design.

For example, they plan to add a private bathroom to each bedroom so the girls know they have a place to call their own.

"The girls that are going to be served at this home have been exploited in every way possible, and having private space knowing that they could undress, use the restroom, take a shower without someone violating them is huge," said Jenn Petion, administration director for FamiliesFirst Network of Lakeview. "Each youth in the home will have their own bedroom, their own bathroom and very strict parameters on who can enter their room because for them, they need to reclaim that sense of privacy and that sense of boundaries and have some control."

Petion said statewide, there are few safe houses that allow for the kind of intense recovery services The Secret Place will provide, and the ones that do are often in South Florida, which requires sending victims from the Panhandle away from the area they know.

In addition to that, those services are expensive, costing roughly $400 per victim per day in the most extreme cases.

Liberty created a not-for-profit separate from the church to field donations and ensure board oversight for the project. Once the house is up and running, FamiliesFirst will reimburse the organization for services it provides for victims who are receiving care there, according to Petion.

The house will be licensed to take five people, so if The Secret Place expands like it plans, there will be more houses built on the 10-acre land that will make almost a small community.

Lipscomb said she hopes that having one of the few safe houses in the Panhandle will allow for a more frank community discussion on how to address the issues.

"We have to be OK with talking about it, and also be OK with readjusting our language and perception on what (human trafficking) looks like," Lipscomb said. "Everything from talking about what happens with pornography, what happens with the sex industry, how this is affecting our kids, what’s happening with our social media? All of this has to be part of the conversation."

Construction should be complete by spring 2019, Lipscomb said. Anyone who wants to contribute to the project can do so at thesecretplacehome.org.

Emma Kennedy can be reached at ekennedy@pnj.com or 850-435-8680.