Beginning Again

Kanthi Salgadu doesn’t want you to think of her as a victim.

She is a survivor of human trafficking, certainly. But she is also a Certified Nursing Assistant, a U.S. citizen, a playwright, an advocate who has testified before Congress, and someone who has spent more than two decades helping the people coming behind her.

“I became an activist because it is very important to me that people do not see survivors of human trafficking only as victims,” Salgadu says. “We have courage. We have ability. We are not damaged. We can move forward and work with others to help prevent this from happening and to support those who come after us.”

Twenty-six years ago, that future was unimaginable.

Born in Sri Lanka, Salgadu left home at 19 for what she believed was a job as a nanny and housekeeper in Singapore. Instead, she was sold into forced labor. Two years later, her employer brought her to Los Angeles, where she worked every day cleaning the home, washing cars, doing laundry, caring for children, and maintaining the yard. Her documents and family albums were confiscated. She was forbidden to contact her family.

May 12, 2000, the day immigration officials brought her to the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (Cast), is what Salgadu calls her “Freedom Day.”

What happened next illustrates a philosophy that has distinguished Cast since its founding in 1998: getting someone out of trafficking is only the beginning.

Cast provides a continuum of care encompassing emergency response, safe housing, legal services, and case management, but its work is also shaped by the expertise of survivors themselves. Their experiences inform everything from how the shelters operate to where outreach happens to what legislation the organization pursues.

“We believe survivors are the real experts. They know what real harm reduction looks like, what real trauma-informed care looks like,” says Kay Buck, Cast’s CEO since 2003.

That feedback loop has produced tangible change. After research with survivors revealed missed opportunities for intervention in healthcare settings and transit centers, Cast helped push for hotline information to be posted in strategic locations across California. The organization has similarly taken lessons from individual trafficking cases and translated them into training, partnerships, and policy.

Salgadu embodies that evolution. She helped create a survivor leadership group, advocated for immigration and worker protections, and wrote an autobiographical play. She also continues to partner with Cast, mentoring survivors and bringing a familiarity with language, food, and culture that can matter profoundly to someone beginning again.

It is an approach Cast has spent nearly three decades refining: listen to survivors, learn from them, partner with them, change the system, then share what works.

“We all want to put ourselves out of business,” Buck says. “That means empowering people before they’re ever exploited, and empowering survivors long after, as they heal and rebuild their lives.”