Our Story

Dorothy’s House was once a rundown house and a beautiful goal to help survivors of human trafficking in Iowa. Led by our founder, the community helped transform the house into a safe, supportive space for survivors. We opened our doors to residents in January 2016.

Now, we offer a safe place for survivors to live, have their basic needs met and get help removing barriers to their individual healing journeys. Our programming options have evolved to enable us to also help survivors who can’t live in our home because of gender, age and other circumstances.

Reclaiming Lives

We focus on the unique needs and personal goals of each person who passes through our doors. We find most of our participants are at risk or vulnerable, and likely to continue negative patterns without intervention.

Our assessment tools help identify each participant’s support needs. Then they begin our curriculum, Practice Makes Purpose; Turning Your Wounds Into Wisdom, which incorporates foundational lessons around self-care, emotion regulation, beliefs, values, relationships, identity and more.

A Note About Faith

While we believe that faith and a faith community are important to healing and ongoing support, we do not require participation in any religious activities or prayer. Survivors have had everything in life taken from them, and we do not believe it’s our job to define their faith journey for them. It’s our job to support them in finding their own.

¹In no way do we define victims of trafficking as prostitutes, but we use this terminology to reach as many of them as possible. Many do not self-identify as victims due to the manipulation involved in this crime, but we know that a very small percentage of sex workers actively choose this profession.