Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak are joined by Dr. Jodi Quas, a Professor of Psychological Science in the Interdisciplinary School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. She is recognized across the globe for her work on children’s eyewitness capabilities, abuse disclosure, and consequences of legal involvement on child victims, witnesses, and defendants. Together they discuss how to talk to children who have been human trafficked.

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Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 217 – What Do We Need to Know When Talking to Child Trafficking Victims?

Production Credits [00:00:11] Produced by Innovative Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:32] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:38] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:40] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. And Sandie, I’m excited today. We have someone with us who’s just really an expert who’s going to help us in, so many ways thinking about communication with kids. Right?

Sandie [00:00:56] Right. I’m excited, too.

Dave [00:00:59] I’m glad to. Welcome to the show today. Dr. Jodi Quas. She is a professor of psychological science in the Interdisciplinary School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine. She is recognized across the globe for her work on children’s eyewitness capabilities, abuse disclosure, and consequences of legal involvement on child victims, witnesses, and defendants. She conducts workshops for law enforcement, legal professionals, educators and social service professionals in the U.S. and abroad. As a Fulbright specialist in 2018, she worked in Asuncion, Paraguay training academic and medical professionals, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and the public on the consequences of maltreatment of children, families, and communities and on improved methods of identifying and protecting victimized children. She was also a very highly rated Ensure Justice speaker. Dr. Quas, we are, so glad to welcome you to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast.

Jodi [00:01:58] Oh, thank you, so much. I’m thrilled to be here and to talk to you all about the work that I do and the impact that I and many others are hoping to have.

Sandie [00:02:06] Well, your work has been on my radar for a very long time, even before you were an Ensure Justice speaker because you’ve worked, so closely with our judges, law enforcement, academically, locally as well as nationally. And it was wonderful for me to learn more about your international impact as well because I think we have to start being more global in our perspectives on how we address children who have been trafficked.

Jodi [00:02:37] Absolutely. It’s also important to kind of get people communicating, you know, as you’re building these public-private partnerships, nobody can do it alone and nobody has all the expertise.

Sandie [00:02:49] That is such a good observation. Collaboration! And sometimes we’re kind of resistant to that. We think we have to know it all. And I just love it that I have friends who know what I don’t know. So, I’m really excited to have this conversation. We recently recorded a podcast with Heidi Olson, who is a pediatric SANE nurse, and she really drew some connections between children who are victims of sexual assault and children who are identified as also being human trafficked. And, so I’d kind of like to know from you, how are most victims identified?

Jodi [00:03:37] So, that’s a really great question. And I think, you know, to kind of step back and we as scientists, as, you know, frontline professionals in social service and law enforcement, we actually have an enormous amount of knowledge and expertise with regard to identifying child sex abuse victims, particularly children who’ve been sexually abused in contexts other than trafficking. We know that these children most often when they tell, they will tell a parent or another adult who can then initiate a report. And once children do, they are most often routed to child forensic interviewing specialists who know how to question them. They know how to work with reluctant children. They also have really wonderful training on best practice interviewing approaches to help children overcome reluctance, to help guide children’s responses in a way that leads to detailed disclosures, not suggestive responses. The challenge when you think about child victims of trafficking is that they really are identified via very different mechanisms or ways. Now, most of the work that I do is focused on child victims within the United States, primarily domestic trafficking victims, youth victims who have been moving from city to city, county to county, or even state to state for the purposes of trafficking. But with these victims, rather than these victims disclosing, what oftentimes happens with these victims is they’re identified indirectly, so they don’t tell someone. Instead, they’re oftentimes identified, either by police because they may be involved in some type of delinquent activity or they’re with individuals who are engaged in criminal or delinquent activity. So, first off, they’re not telling someone to kind of get themselves noticed. Someone else is identifying them only indirectly.

Sandie [00:05:51] So, then one of the things that we understand is a risk factor for this particular population is that they may not have a stable home environment. They may already be involved in some way with the system for child welfare. So, that means that some of the more traditional ways that we identified abuse aren’t actually available to them.

Jodi [00:06:18] No...