Instead of going home after a long night at a Dec. 10 Fort Worth City Council meeting that gave Mercy Culture Church the green light to build a shelter for human trafficking survivors, lead pastors Landon and Heather Schott went to church.
More specifically, the couple visited the fire pit they anticipate will be part of the altar in the chapel of The Justice Residences. The Justice Reform, a nonprofit and “housed vision” of the church, plans to build 100 beds for survivors on the church’s property northeast of downtown, just off Interstate 35W.
Now, five months later, the Schotts revisited the site alongside hundreds of congregants, county leaders and attendees for the shelter’s May 9 groundbreaking ceremony. The pair serve as public faces of the Fort Worth-based megachurch, which frequently earns headlines for its outspoken political views.
“Today we shift the future,” Heather Schott told attendees. “Today is the beginning of building a house of redemption that reforms the way we restore women out of sex trafficking.”
Over 350 religious, city and county leaders gathered at the north end of Mercy Culture Church’s campus for the groundbreaking of The Justice Residences — a project long anticipated by congregants and opposed by hundreds of neighbors in northeast Fort Worth.
Since 2022, church leadership and Oakhurst residents have been at odds over iterations of the proposed multimillion-dollar building and have voiced longstanding concerns about the safety of the project, increased parking problems and suitability of the location for a high-security restoration home.
The shelter will be two stories tall with a split-level basement. One level is to include the dining hall, exercise room, business offices, a kitchen and storage rooms. Each of the two levels above are planned to have gathering rooms, storage and sleeping spaces for 100 beds. A chapel would be located on the first floor, according to site plan documents.
One hundred beds isn’t enough to fight human trafficking, Heather Schott told the Fort Worth Report.
The Justice Residences construction in Fort Worth serves as the starting point for building more across Texas in cities like San Antonio and Austin, with the nonprofit set on establishing shelters in every state across the U.S.
“We may build them across Texas first and then into the nation or at the same time,” Heather Schott said. “We have a million slaves in just our nation in America, and so we really have to build them everywhere and begin to heal and bring the solution to end human trafficking.”
City, county leaders voice support
Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare told attendees Friday afternoon that he feels “there is a revival, a reform going on not just in America, not just in Texas, but right here in Fort Worth, right here in Tarrant County.”
He shared how hundreds of Christians gathered with him last week for the second annual Tarrant County National Day of Prayer Luncheon, of which The Justice Reform was a beneficiary.
He also nodded to a measure passed by Tarrant County commissioners in April that will allow a donated Ten Commandments monument to be placed on county grounds. The monument is expected to arrive in September, O’Hare told the audience.
There are a lot of landmarks in Tarrant County, and The Justice Residences will become one of them, O’Hare said.
“The Justice Residence is going to make history as the first long-term care center of its kind for human trafficking survivors, and that is something to celebrate,” O’Hare said. “To God be the glory.”
The Tarrant County Human Trafficking Task Force, made up of local, state and federal law enforcement and nongovernmental organizations, is “closing in on 1,000 rescues” since its founding in 2017, said county Sheriff Bill Waybourn. But, “it’s merely a handoff” to faith groups like The Justice Reform, he added.
“I believe it’s the church that is the solution, not the government,” Waybourn said to the audience. “We’ve got to get out of the way. We do not have the resources or the capability to do what you’re going to do here.”
Also in attendance was Fort Worth Mayor Pro Tem Gyna Bivens and Mercy Culture Church apostolic elder Michael Brown. Brown has been at the forefront of dueling reports on sexual misconduct allegations, according to previous Fort Worth Report coverage. Leaders of Mercy Culture recently said they will “stand with” Brown, joining a group of religious leaders publicly rejecting a recent third-party investigation concluding that Brown engaged in “sexually abusive misconduct” in the early 2000s.
Heather Schott to be a ‘spiritual mother’ to survivors, leaders say
Helping survivors of human trafficking is personal for Heather Schott, her husband Landon Schott said.
He took to the stage Friday afternoon to share Heather’s story as a “teenage drug addict, alcoholic (who) overdosed on OxyContin and was left in an abandoned apartment to die” in the suburbs of Seattle.
“I thought, how wild is it when you are left in an apartment to die, you are building a residence for girls to live,” Landon Schott said.
Leaders of Mercy Culture gifted Heather a gold-plated shovel and described her as a “spiritual mother” to congregants and survivors in the soon-to-be shelter.
“Heather, you are a spiritual mother to all the daughters that are going to cross into that room. They are going to see not just a founder, but they are going to see a spiritual mother who has warred for them, who has tried for them, who has fought for them,” said Chuck Reyes, director of The Justice Residences.
Construction for The Justice Residences is set to begin next week, with an estimated 15-18 month build time, Heather Schott told the Report.
She invites Oakhurst residents and others who didn’t attend to “join the fight against any human trafficking.”
“I know how dark it can be when you feel like you can’t get out. I was fortunate enough, blessed enough, that I got pulled out,” Heather Schott told the Report. “It’s a driving fuel in my life that if Jesus set me free, if he brought me out of darkness and bondage, then I can’t live my life not giving it to do the same for others.”
Marissa Greene is a Report for America corps member, covering faith for the Fort Worth Report. You can contact her at [email protected].
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