Breaking The Chains is a survivor-led, trauma-informed nonprofit in the Central San Joaquin Valley that offers direct rescue, restoration, and long-term care for victims of human trafficking. Their services include emergency shelter, safe houses, comprehensive case management, counseling and therapeutic services, life skills training, legal advocacy, education and job placement, and long-term housing support.
BTC is grounded in lived experience: its co-founder and CEO, Debra Rush, is a trafficking survivor, and she leads with both authority and empathy. Every day, BTC provides wraparound care to survivors and their families, helping them heal, rebuild, and reclaim dignity.
Within Our Valley Cares, Breaking The Chains ensures that exploitation is not a footnote in youth care—it is confronted, healed, and redeemed. Their presence anchors the protective edge of the system, making it possible for all other care to step forward.
BTC is the hands-on organization that steps into the darkest places. In the OVC network, their unique expertise fills the gap between crisis and restoration—identifying victims, providing safe shelter, navigating legal systems, and offering therapeutic and reintegration services.
BTC is expanding its footprint: they will open a third Valley location inside Fresno Mission’s City Center to provide a trauma-informed drop-in center, classes, counseling, and emergency space for victims. This model ensures that survivors can find refuge in the same collaborative campus where other youth services are co-located, reducing duplication and easing access.
In a larger system of care, BTC functions as the critical link from emergency intervention to long-term recovery. Once a youth is rescued, they transition into services offered by other OVC partners (housing, education, food, mentoring), with BTC ensuring continuity and trauma sensitivity.
As a leading anti-trafficking agency, BTC contributes training, advocacy, and protocols to other partners in the network. Their experience informs how all partners can better spot, respond to, and support survivors.
BTC demonstrates that restoration is not short-term. Many survivors stay in support programs for months or years, receiving flexible care. Their model shows that dignity, patience, and grace are essential to healing—and sets the standard for how trauma-informed spaces should operate within OVC.
Your support of Breaking The Chains is a lifeline for survivors in Our Valley, bringing rescue, healing, and hope where exploitation once ruled.
