Member since March 2025
Heather Wightman, MSW/MPH, is the Executive Director and Founder of RIA, Inc. (formerly RIA House, Inc.) She has more than 25 years of experience managing and designing multifaceted federal, state, and local human service programs related to violence prevention. Having received her MSW in macro social work practice and MPH in social and behavioral sciences from Boston University, Wightman is committed to social justice and the advancement of human rights. She is also trained and practiced as a Massachusetts Sexual Assault Counselor. Wightman is highly active in local women’s and civil rights organization. She served on the boards of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts, YWCA, and Matahari: Eye of the Day, and was appointed to the MetroWest Commission on the Status of Women in 2014. More recently, Wightman was awarded the 2019 Serif & Heljo Protopapa Community Service Award, the first of its kind in memory of two justice fighters. As a former Peace Corps volunteer in Central America, she is proficient in the Spanish language.
I love the outdoors, hiking, biking, walking, kayaking, swimming etc. and spending time with my family and my dog. I too love yoga and traveling.
I have lots of interesting stories to share. One however that may be most of interest is starting a nonprofit service organization from a vision and no money, to supporting more than a thousand survivors over 10 years with a dynamic staff team and Board of Directors and managing a million dollar budget and growing.
I’ll not forget when I first learned that the commercial sex industry is built on the backs of kids.
At the time, I was working with 7th and 8th graders in an afterschool program, the names of my then students swirl through my mind always, young people giggling and gossiping, running from one group of friends to the other, always acting grown while feeling insecure inside at the same time. But it was an article in the NY Times Magazine that broke my heart. Over 28-pages, the horror of thousands of young people the same ages as my students became real for me - LIVING IN PLAIN SIGHT – bought and sold for sex in Anytown across the United States– targeted-groomed by trusted adults with false promises of love and opportunity -- mostly girls, boys too, on average between 14-15 some much younger. What I cannot unlearn is that some of these young people will never make it to 18. And for those who do survive sexual exploitation into adulthood – many describe that as adults they feel ‘way too damaged’ to ever go back home - that they feel like they don’t belong anywhere anymore.
Imagine not belonging anywhere anymore…As a society we rightly care about kids being commercially sexually exploited, but when these same survivors become adults, our hearts shift.
We expect people to know better - we assume that if an adult doesn’t leave commercial sex, that they must like the sex, or this is just what they do, who they are, how they roll. They become invisible or worse, disposable to us.
When I came to realize this, RIA (although it didn’t have a name back then) was born in my heart as a pathway for adult survivors to heal from such unspeakable evil that we humans do to our most vulnerable.
Commercial sex is a global epidemic that represents, conservatively, a $30 billion dollar industry annually with the US being the largest consumer of sex anywhere in the world.
This may be hard to think about and Massachusetts is no exception.
This industry of buying and selling people is fueled by supply and demand. Money and other goods are used as tools to manipulate, force, coerce, position people to have no choice. BUYERs, feed the market with money which motivates TRAFFICKERs to target more PEOPLE to meet the demand. The internet has made it even easier to access people with pornography as the gateway to buying bodies.
At this time, there are few programs like RIA in Massachusetts where survivors and allies come together to provide comprehensive and customized services with adult survivors.
I urge people to donate to RIA, to become a volunteer and to help me spread the word that people are LIVING IN PLAIN SITE…and need your support. Thank you for reading.
I have lots of interesting stories to share. One however that may be most of interest is starting a nonprofit service organization from a vision and no money, to supporting more than a thousand survivors over 10 years with a dynamic staff team and Board of Directors and managing a million dollar budget and growing.
I’ll not forget when I first learned that the commercial sex industry is built on the backs of kids.
At the time, I was working with 7th and 8th graders in an afterschool program, the names of my then students swirl through my mind always, young people giggling and gossiping, running from one group of friends to the other, always acting grown while feeling insecure inside at the same time. But it was an article in the NY Times Magazine that broke my heart. Over 28-pages, the horror of thousands of young people the same ages as my students became real for me - LIVING IN PLAIN SIGHT – bought and sold for sex in Anytown across the United States– targeted-groomed by trusted adults with false promises of love and opportunity -- mostly girls, boys too, on average between 14-15 some much younger. What I cannot unlearn is that some of these young people will never make it to 18. And for those who do survive sexual exploitation into adulthood – many describe that as adults they feel ‘way too damaged’ to ever go back home - that they feel like they don’t belong anywhere anymore.
Imagine not belonging anywhere anymore…As a society we rightly care about kids being commercially sexually exploited, but when these same survivors become adults, our hearts shift.
We expect people to know better - we assume that if an adult doesn’t leave commercial sex, that they must like the sex, or this is just what they do, who they are, how they roll. They become invisible or worse, disposable to us.
When I came to realize this, RIA (although it didn’t have a name back then) was born in my heart as a pathway for adult survivors to heal from such unspeakable evil that we humans do to our most vulnerable.
Commercial sex is a global epidemic that represents, conservatively, a $30 billion dollar industry annually with the US being the largest consumer of sex anywhere in the world.
This may be hard to think about and Massachusetts is no exception.
This industry of buying and selling people is fueled by supply and demand. Money and other goods are used as tools to manipulate, force, coerce, position people to have no choice. BUYERs, feed the market with money which motivates TRAFFICKERs to target more PEOPLE to meet the demand. The internet has made it even easier to access people with pornography as the gateway to buying bodies.
At this time, there are few programs like RIA in Massachusetts where survivors and allies come together to provide comprehensive and customized services with adult survivors.
I urge people to donate to RIA, to become a volunteer and to help me spread the word that people are LIVING IN PLAIN SITE…and need your support. Thank you for reading.
