Tom's NYC Against Sex Trafficking Journey blog 2.

Sunday 8 November

Drop dead gorgeous autumn day in New York. Going down for breakfast, the sign in the hotel lift promises 60 degrees and we scoff. But as the day develops bright hot sunshine fills the city. I meet up with another Tom – one of my closest friends from London - who has been living here for 2 years now. He has a beautiful apartment on East Broadway and we have the New York brunch I have been dreaming about. One of those wonderful neighbourhood cafes in the Lower East side that makes you want to sell up and move here.

I head up to Washington Square and find JOURNEY on Washington Place between the park and Broadway. It’s a fantastic situation. Sam Roddick and her team are busy pinning up photos showing a very beautiful young man posing provocatively in pouches, G-strings, and even full frontal discreetly pixillated out, like the cards in telephone boxes. The images are accompanied by excerpts of titillating phrases; the gormless language of the sex market. The gang’s all here tonight – from HBF people to Out of the Blue Communications who have put in months of nitty-gritty to put JOURNEY on this street. Everyone is rushing to finish the containers for tomorrow, tweaking details, making curtains of condoms our visitors don’t yet know they will have to walk through. Much speculation as to what Mayor Bloomberg will make of this. As the dark settles around us, the giant letters JOURNEY are illuminated for the first time. It is like an Edward Hopper painting of a circus arriving in town...

We have security guards, three gentle giants from ZarHar Washington Productions. 

Dr Michael (the psychiatrist we work with and shown above pointing) is here showing around friends and family. He is American but this is the first time I have seen him in America. Everyone is so strangely integrated. Why have we all ended up in this place at this time? Or as Leonard Cohen has just whispered in my ear ‘…we are so lightly here…’ The nervous energy that has gone into making this happen is beyond comprehension. We pinch ourselves. Emma T has just arrived from the airport and there is much talk of A-list people coming tomorrow, press to be talked to, and how we are going to get our messages across.

I peel off with Elizabeth – who has just left the Foundation to return to live on the West Coast – to have a drink with Helen Bamber. Helen talks of having a bad fall yesterday on an awkward step in a hotel. She’s a bit bruised but okay. She tells us with hoots of laughter that her father tripped on a banana skin on a station platform and successfully sued British Rail. Although 84, she looks as indestructible as ever, but sneakily pretended to be 85 so she could be driven around in a pope-mobile at Heathrow and JFK. There is talk of Helen going on the Larry King show, but she says the America news demands are different to London. They want to have ‘a trafficked woman’ on there as well. This is not really the HBF style. All the people they work with are long-term clients who are not to be paraded in the media. We have lots to learn from these people - from whom we are separated by a common language. Helen talks about a Chinese woman she is counselling in London who was sold at birth and imprisoned in someone’s home to produce children. She looks despairingly at us and says ‘…people sell their children…’

For more information about Journey and the Helen Bamber Foundation click here