In 2025, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) received over 20 million reports of online abuse.
Too often, when people — myself included — hear those statistics, they don’t make the impact they should. It’s easy to forget that each of those 20 million reports has a real person on the other side. A victim with a story.
Imagine what would happen if every church in the United States made it a priority to help these abused children. If each of the estimated 400,000 churches from coast to coast mobilized a small team to minister to exploited children, there would certainly be a seismic shift in the number of children that get caught in an endless cycle of abuse.
At the very least, I pray that someone in each church throughout the U.S. will take the time to listen to the stories of the victims. Many of them have long, painful stories. Fortunately, some victims have already found a safe refuge in a local church.
Ofelia Flores was one of these victims. When she was just 6, her parents divorced. In the aftermath, Ofelia and her siblings felt like they were just in the way. They were shuffled from one parent’s home to the next, and in the midst of all the movement, no one took the time to care for them.
Ofelia’s clothes were rarely washed and her hair was crawling with lice. She consistently suffered domestic violence. As a result, Ofelia was regularly fighting in school by the time she was a teenager.
“I thought violence was just what you do,” she recalls. “That's what I saw at home. I was also angry.”
Desperate for a change, she moved in with her older sister. At first, things seemed better, and for the first time in her life she finally felt wanted. But her older sister, who had traumas of her own, began using heroin.
Once again, Ofelia’s home life began to deteriorate. Her sister showed more signs of anger. The anger was accompanied by yelling and screaming, just like the parents who abandoned Ofelia. The situation continued to spiral. As men began coming over to her sister’s house to shoot up, Ofelia got swept up into the drug culture. After her sister gave her heroin, life became all about getting the next fix.
In the grips of addiction, the drugs were never enough. Before long, Ofelia was recruited to start hustling. Starting at 16, at the direction of her older sister, Ofelia engaged in a series of encounters with older men to earn the money that she and her sister would spend on drugs. Soon afterward, she stopped going to school.
Drug use affected her entire family. Ofelia’s dad started using heroin too, and Ofelia felt trapped. She hated her addiction, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t stop using. Something had to give. With nowhere and no one else to turn to, Ofelia started to pray.
Two weeks later, she turned herself in at the sheriff's office and confessed her addiction. She was taken into custody and incarcerated until she was able to overcome her addiction. The day she was released, she walked out of prison and straight into her local church.
Things began to change.
Ofelia enrolled in a faith-based counseling ministry and joined a women’s Bible-study. Surrounded by a loving community that bathed her in prayer, fellowship, and Scripture, Ofelia finally began to overcome her trauma and heal.
Today, Ofelia is a church-going, Bible-studying grandmother and a pillar of her community. She helps law enforcement, works with the Tejon Indian Tribe and the Daughter’s Project, and serves at-risk youth by sharing her story.
Ofelia is a role model, and so is the church that took her in. Ofelia stands as living proof that no matter how traumatic and desperate your circumstances, God never gives up on us.
Looking back on her battle with addiction, Ofelia recalls that “Nobody ever came to check on me. My mom never came. My dad never came…No one came.”
That’s heartbreaking.
And that’s the moment when the church has to step in. There is no single organization better positioned to reach those who are being taken advantage of. There are tens of thousands of kids right here in the United States who are being exploited in the worst imaginable ways. But many churches already have the infrastructure, ministries, and tender hearts ready to start listening and start helping.
We shouldn’t stand by in the face of such evil. As Christians, our faith demands we speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Jesus’ life and ministry were characterized by this kind of care.
Across history, devout Christians have already done a phenomenal job building hospitals, orphanages, and homeless shelters, and have founded countless organizations that help those in their hour of need. I hope that same legacy will expand to make abused children a priority.
Wendell Vinson is the co-founder of CityServe International, a church empowerment network that provides basic essentials and disaster relief to communities in need throughout the United States and around the world.
