Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak talk to Dr. Hilary Chester about the work she is doing with the Catholic church to fight human trafficking, including long-term care and working with less visible victims like offshore fisherman.

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Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 171. Dr. Hilary Chester and the USCCB Anti Trafficking Program.

Production Credits: [00:00:12] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave: [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: [00:00:36] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: [00:00:38] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, one of the things I love about talking with you every other week is getting to meet so many wonderful advocates, and trailblazers, and folks that have so much enthusiasm for this as we do. And today we’re going to be connecting everyone else with the relationship you’ve had for a long time.

Sandie: [00:01:06] Yes, I’m really excited to welcome Dr. Hilary Chester to our show.

Dave: [00:01:11] Dr. Chester directs the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops Anti Trafficking Program. The ATP has several initiatives including a national education and awareness raising campaign directed to immigrant communities, a federally funded program to deliver stabilizing and sustaining services to foreign national victims of human trafficking, a federally funded project to build global awareness and the capacity to respond to victims of human trafficking and exploitation in the maritime industries, and a new program to provide specialized employment services to survivors of trafficking in the U.S. as well as the ongoing development and delivery of training curricula to national and international entities. That includes law enforcement advocacy and service providers, evaluations and quality improvement planning for service delivery and outreach programs, and of course research and advocacy. The ETP consults for the U.S. government on child trafficking cases and response to technical assistance requests.

[00:02:12] Dr. Chester has over 12 years of experience working with vulnerable migrants including unaccompanied children, victims of human trafficking and refugees. Program management, social science research, and evaluation. She is a member of the global COATnet, Christians Organization Against Trafficking steering committee, and has been an invited member of the national and international working and advisory groups on human trafficking migrant children and alternatives to migrant detention. She received her doctorate in anthropology from Southern Methodist University. Dr. Chester, we’re so glad to welcome you to Ending Human Trafficking.

Hilary: [00:02:50] Thank you. I’m excited to be here. I’m really excited to have the opportunity to share what we’re doing at the Bishops conference, and to see where there may be other people that are interested in what we’re doing and cross-promoting with what Sandie’s been doing.

Sandie: [00:03:03] I loved our e-mail conversation and I actually captured the quote under your e-mail signature, “creating a world where immigrants, refugees, migrants, and people on the move are treated with dignity, respect, welcome, and belonging.” And I have a sense, Hilary, that that’s kind of a life motto for you in everything you do.

Hilary: [00:03:28] It really is, I think it speaks certainly to my personal faith. And then also, I think it speaks to why I’ve worked in faith-based organizations on the issue of trafficking and serving migrants and refugees. I’ve always been, it seems, drawn to some of the most vulnerable among them- so the unaccompanied children who are migrating, refugees that are forced and displaced from their communities, and then certainly victims of human trafficking.

[00:03:56] And I think that what’s important to me is not just serving people, but also really thinking about how to empower them, how to help them move on so that they don’t continue to be in these vulnerable situations, and even thinking about how we talk about them as our beneficiaries. And how we talk about our programs and making sure that we’re using really empowering language so that the beneficiaries themselves don’t always kind of feel like a charity case. You know people want to feel like they have value, and contribute, and are not just always receiving assistance. So, I think that the issue of belonging and respect are really critical.

Sandie: [00:04:37] Wow, well that really fits our values of dignity and the idea of justice, where we do have equal opportunities. And we actually try to even the playing field for people who come to us with vulnerabilities and risks. So, we use, for our Ensure Justice conference every year, we base it on Proverbs 31:8, that tells us to be a voice for those who have no voice and ensure justice for those being crushed. And as I’ve gotten to know you and followed your website, the opportunity to intervene on the behalf of those being crushed is something that you’re doing amazing work and I appreciate your leadership. So, let’s jump in, and just tell us a little bit about the anti-trafficking program.

Hilary: [00:05:28] Sure. At the Bishops conference, we’ve had an anti-trafficking program since the early 2000s. But even before we had a standalone program, we were looking and advocating at the issue back in the late 1990s. In part because both our own programs for refugees and for migrants here in the U.S. and programs that our Catholic partners our Catholic sister organizations overseas we’re doing with, for example migrant workers for women and other people being displaced out of places like Eastern Europe at the time when the Soviet Union was dissolving, that people in these ministries were seeing people that they were serving in their traditional work with domestic violence, or their traditional work for migrant workers, or for refugees. But seeing situations and people in situations that were just a little bit different, a little bit off, and frankly a little bit more kind of criminal and sinister. And so, it was through that exposure to people in our own programs that we began, like others at the time we weren’t unique, to recognize that there was this sort of new distinct, maybe not new, but you know we thought needed to be highlighted as a separate crime.

[00:06:44] And so in the late 1...