How survivors can fix their credit reports
Welcome to VegasConciegeBook.com’s blog, where we’ll be publishing supplemental information about the issues raised in Vegas Concierge as well as offering additional resources to victims, survivors, and others interested in combating sex trafficking in America.
I don’t know how often we’ll be posting here, but when we do, we’re going to try to make sure the material is substantive, or at the very least helpful.
For our first post, we thought we’d address a practical concern that many survivors face after they exit The Life: their credit history.
A survivor’s journey can include many steps including healing from physical wounds or psychological trauma, expunging a criminal record or even just re-learning how to shop for your own clothing. In telling their stories, survivors often talk about these crucial milestones.
What typically doesn’t get discussed at galas or in interviews is the tedious work many survivors have to do in order to clean up their credit histories, which can be severely damaged when pimps open bank accounts or take out loans in their names.
This is no small matter as adverse credit reports can sometimes block survivors from securing permanent housing or landing stable employment.
Angela, the central figure of Vegas Concierge, recently went through the process of repairing her credit history. She relied on a guide published by the Coalition to Abolition Slavery & Trafficking about the Debt Bondage Repair Act, which allows sex trafficking survivors to remove negative information tied to their trafficking ordeals from credit reports.
The guide is quite thorough, offering step-by-step instructions for survivors to fix their credit histories. Any survivor looking to address problems with their credit reports should refer to the guide itself, but we’ll offer a brief summary here of the steps they’ll have to take.
Step 1: Survivors should obtain credit reports on themselves from the three main credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian and TransUnion, to see what information they contain. Survivors can request reports through AnnualCreditReport.com.
Step 2: Once the reports are pulled, survivors should review them for inaccuracies or damaging information that stems from their trafficking experiences.
Step 3: If inaccurate or damaging information is found, survivors can submit a letter to each credit bureau asking that the adverse data be blocked from their credit reports. As the CAST guide indicates, each bureau asks for something a little different, but generally the letters must identify every item that needs to be removed from the reports as well as the survivor’s preferred contact method.
Crucially, survivors also must submit with their letters documentation proving their status as a sex trafficking survivor. This “Victim Determination Documentation” can take many different forms, including a T Visa approval, HHS certification letter, a court order to expunge a criminal record, documentation from a non-governmental agency like Freedom Network USA or a signed statement from the survivor attesting to their circumstances.
This summary may make it sound like the process is simple or even quick, but if you review the CAST guide, it’s actually quite complex and time consuming. Each bureau has its own process for submitting claims through their websites or the mail and the documentation needs can be fairly onerous, especially for someone who has just escaped The Life. In the end, it can amount to quite a lot of tiresome paperwork.
But as Angela will tell you, it’s absolutely worth it for survivors to go to the effort.