The Ending Human Trafficking podcast is moving forward. Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak reflect on 12 years of the Ending Human Trafficking podcast and what lays ahead for the future of the podcast.

Dave  00:00

You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is Episode 292, The Path Forward for the Ending Human Trafficking podcast.

Dave  00:23

Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandra Morgan  00:28

And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave  00:31

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, it is just you and I today. Normally we have a guest, but here we are. So many years in, 12 years in on the show almost and what fun it has been during this entire time.

Sandra Morgan  00:53

Dave, I am looking back at our first episodes and when we started, you’d just joined the Global Center for Women and Justice board. And you wanted us to start a podcast, and I trusted you. And we did in 2011. And now it’s 2023. And we have just developed an awesome resource. Someone emailed me just the other day and said that the Ending Human Trafficking podcast is their go to to stay up to date on the issues around human trafficking. And that’s such a rewarding feedback for what we’ve been doing. But do you remember when you made that suggestion that we start the podcast? What was in your mind, your heart? How did you perceive this?

Dave  01:57

I remember it vaguely. As I recall, we were in a board meeting. And I’m trying to remember even where the genesis of the idea for me came from. Certainly, I was already thinking about podcasting because I had purchased podcasting equipment because I was planning to start a show on leadership, which became Coaching for Leaders. And then right about that time, I came on the board for the Global Center for Women and Justice. My wife, Bonnie, had been on the board for a number of years, and you did a big transition of no longer having faculty and staff on the board. And so there was a big transition of a number of folks. And you were very kind to invite me on the board. And then I don’t remember if you and I talked about it beforehand, or we talked about it at that board meeting in front of everyone. But I thought, wow, we have all of this expertise from you and from the work and the research the board and the Global Center had been doing, what if we had a way to share it in a medium that was really accessible to folks? And of course, back then podcasting was very much in its infancy still. But I thought, this would be potentially a really great way to get the word out and to talk about your work and to support people around the world. And that was my entire thought process, I think.

Sandra Morgan  03:24

It was so wonderful. And I remember actually asking because the manager, part of me says, so how much is this going to cost? And you said, Well, your time, but this is my give back to the community. I’ve already started learning podcasting for the Coaching for Leaders podcast, and this is my give back. And we started. And the rest is, as they say, history.

Dave  03:53

Yeah, indeed. And it has been such an incredible, it’s been an incredible 12 years. And the reason we are airing this episode today is we are having a transition that is coming into a new era for the podcast. And the transition involves both of us, but me specifically, in that I am going to be stepping away as co-host of the Ending Human Trafficking podcast, which is a big transition for the show now after 12 years of this time. And I suppose the immediate question that will come up in people’s minds who’ve been listening to the show for a while is: why are you stepping aside after 12 years? And there’s two big reasons. One of them is a very practical reason. And then one of them is more of a big picture reason and I think both are actually really good reasons, as you and I have talked about Sandie. So the first one is, you know, maybe I’ll start with the big picture one. When we started this back in 2011 our vision for the show was that you as the person who has dedicated your life to support ending human trafficking around the world and has done so much incredible work and has all of this expertise, that the dynamic of the show could be really helpful to people if you showed up as the expert, as you are, and I showed up as a co-host, who was very much kind of the person on the street, someone who was very interested and had a heart for this issue and wanted to do something about it, but was very much, and I feel like still am in a lot of ways, the every person I know a little bit about this, but I don’t know the depth that you do. But that if I could show up as a person who was curious, and ask the questions that the average person would ask if they ran into you at a event or at a conference, or just walking down the street or sitting next to you on an airplane, but would be the questions I’d ask. And for those who’ve been longtime listeners, our first year or two probably was almost exclusively that dynamic of we’d put together an episode, I would ask questions that were from the perspective of the every day person and you were so gracious to share your expertise and your wisdom.

Sandra Morgan  06:22

And that was so powerful, because it created a nice, even playing field for listeners. And I really trusted your leadership when we launched this. And I felt really comfortable answering questions and not being responsible for any of the tech side of things. You took care of everything. But this idea of asking questions and your curiosity, you ask questions that I didn’t even think if I was trying to put together something I’m going to teach parents about this. It would have been very didactic, and perhaps a little pedantic and boring. But you gave it a lot of life and reflected people from across the country. And I think when I look back and I remember our fourth podcast, so we’d only been in this a couple of months, because we started and have continued to do two podcasts a month. And I talked about brain development and why we can’t blame young people, children for decisions that are made before their brains are fully developed. And within weeks, I had an email from Holly Smith, asking for permission to use that podcast in her survivor congressional testimony. Dave, the power of impact, answering one question, telling one story. And a survivor found that helpful and included it then when she went before Congress. And after that, she wrote a book called Walking Prey by Holly Austin Smith. And in the opening chapter, she describes how she discovered this aspect because she was listening to the conversation between Dave and Sandie.

Dave  08:34

Yeah, it’s really amazing, isn’t it? And so what’s really been wonderful to watch, and this has happened gradually over the years is we’ve transitioned away from that model a bit, and I don’t know if we even ever, I’m trying to recall us ever having an apparent conversation about that. We just kind of evolved as time went on. But your expertise grew in interviewing and, of course, your network has continued to grow over the years. And what happened is I actually while we have still done episodes like this, where it’s been you and me, we’ve had so many more episodes, in fact, more of our standard format now as folks know is to have another guest expert joining us and to feature so many of the incredible partnerships that you have grown and that have grown through the Global Center for Women and Justice over the years, that we’ve been able to feature on the show. And that has been so fun to see and my role has been a little bit more of a backseat role, as listeners will know in recent years, where I often will introduce an episode and close it and I’ll jump in here and there, but it’s been so fun to see you really stepping into full leadership of the podcast and so that’s one big reason from a big picture is that the show has evolved and you have evolved and grown to where my role has changed. And it’s been so fun to see that and in a way, we’ve replaced me, which I think is, in some ways, the best thing I could have ever hoped for. That now, the show and your expertise lives in a way where while I’m thrilled to be involved and love being involved, I no longer need to be involved because we have the ecosystem and the frameworks and the staff now, to support the show in ways that we never had, we never dreamed of 12 years ago. Not only didn’t dream of, didn’t even ever cross our minds we’d be doing this 12 years later.

Sandra Morgan  10:42

This is a good place to give a shout out to the people behind the scenes. We have to start with Andrew, of course, because Andrew makes it sound like I never say uh. Andrew, you have to leave that ‘uh’ in so this sentence will make sense. But, Andrew is just amazing. He answers tech questions, he makes sure our audio edits are beautiful, and that our guests sound good too. And he’s been a mentor for me in this process, much as you have Dave. And I think trusting your leadership in all of this discipled me, mentored me, coached me along the way. And as I listened to the Coaching for Leaders podcast, and realized how you were able to make expert voices assessable for those of us who don’t have the time to go and do the deep dive, to read the whole book, to listen to 17 podcasts, just listen to one. And so that same process began to show up in my strategic planning, as I saw the Ending Human Trafficking podcast as a force multiplier. Amplifying voices of expert guests, subject matter experts, leaders in government, like Ambassador John Cotton Richmond, and members of the United Nations, as well as local law enforcement and our own founder of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, Derek Marsh, who many of you now realize is the Associate Director here at the Center.

Dave  12:33

Yeah, it’s been really incredible. When I think back to the people who have shown up in our studio prior to the pandemic, we’ve done less, we’ve done more virtually since then. But we’ve had here in our studio, police chiefs, judges, Dr. Sami from Iraq. He was here with his team. Yeah, it’s one of the most memorable episodes I can recall of just–

Sandra Morgan  12:53

And you know who else we had in the studio? We had Esther and Camille Ntoto from Congo. Oh, my gosh, that was a memorable moment.

Dave  13:05

Yeah, and it’s been, just on a personal level, it’s been so enriching to me not only to learn, obviously, I know a lot more about human trafficking and the issues around it than I did 12 years ago, I’m still very much the student compared to you, of course. But it’s also been incredibly rewarding to be exposed to so many different kinds of backgrounds and cultures, and the kinds of people who are doing unbelievable work. Just about every time we air an episode, I find myself feeling so humbled, and in awe of the people who, like you, have dedicated their lives to this issue and serve in such selfless ways all around the world, not for their own glory, or for their own notoriety or anything, but who have a passion and a care to support people and humanity around the world. And it is extremely humbling. And so, all of that to say that kind of the big picture of the show having evolved over the years, that’s one big piece. The second piece, as I mentioned there’s two, is a real practical one. We have run into a really good problem, both you and I. We have a good problem in that you have had so many wonderful guests who love appearing on the show and are obviously from all over the world. At the same time, my work with coaching for leaders has grown massively in the last 12 years, as well. It has become a show with a lot of traction. My schedule has gotten so much busier. And we are now in a place where I am actually causing a bit of a disservice to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast because my schedule is such that we are sometimes facilitating months around coordination and schedules and interviews. And occasionally we have not aired an episode every couple of months and when that’s happened, it’s absolutely been me. We are often having to navigate two to three months in advance around scheduling. And I realized in the last year or two that that was not sustainable for either of us. That it was something that we would need to figure out a different system. And I’m very much holding back the opportunity for us to have even more guests, even more interviews on the show. And so for all those reasons, it’s time for a transition. And I am really excited about what’s ahead for you, and for the Center, and for the podcast. And we’re obviously going to talk a little bit more about that in this episode. But that’s what’s coming. So this will be my final voice here.

Sandra Morgan  15:36

Well, not final.

Dave  15:38

At least as co-host.

Sandra Morgan  15:40

Oh, Dave, it is a bit emotional thinking about saying, this is the end of, ‘My name is Dave Stachowiak and my name is Sandie Morgan.’ I can hear that in my sleep at night. And you’re talking about impact around the world. We have listeners, now, in 148 countries. We were one of the first podcasts invited to be part of the Library of Congress. And the impact from your idea, planted and nurtured and watered, has made a difference. And I want to go back and revisit our tagline for ending human trafficking: to study the issues, be a voice and make a difference. And just take a moment, if you’re listening, snap your fingers, if you’re not driving, you can clap your hands. Dave Stachowiak, thank you for being the catalyst to start a podcast that is so widely listened to and used in places that we may never be able to go, but we can connect people. And I like the metaphor of the humble bee with all the cross pollination. And I sometimes run into people that I had no idea that they would even know who I am. But they’ve known somebody who knew somebody who was on the show. And I’ll be on a plane or in a dinner, a conference, and someone will say, Oh, I recognize that voice and they listened to our podcast, Dave. That is something that will be hard to ever measure actual impact, because it’s like trying to follow a bee from flower to flower.

Dave  17:48

Yeah, I often think of your story about the pithari and the analogy you use of the giant pot that was crafted in a way that had all the different handles so that each person could come alongside and grab onto a handle and help lift a thing that would be unmovable by any one person. But that when a group comes together, could be moved much easier. And I’ve always thought about my work with the podcast as very much that. I am certainly not the expert. I don’t have the connections in the space of the work you do, of course. And yet, I did know the technology and the production piece, because I had been doing that for the Coaching for Leaders podcast. And so what a wonderful thing for us to get to come together. And now over these years that it devolved into something even better, and the staff and the support and all that that’s come along. It’s really humbling. It’s really humbling to have seen all that happen. And I’ve always thought along the way, my job is to hold the handle of that piece, the technology, the production, some of the expertise around that. And you know, it’s been really fun to see Andrew take on that handle and some of the staff take on that handle now in recent years and what a joy, what a joyful transition that’s been for me and I think for all of us involved in this.

Sandra Morgan  19:17

Well, and just like at the beginning, I follow your lead. And as you created a mega resource through the Coaching for Leader podcast, in a much smaller way, we have built the Ending Human Trafficking podcast website to create more opportunities for cross pollination with resources. Idalis Moscoso, shout out to her is our web writer. She does a blog for every single podcast and then sends out a resource newsletter with all the links and as we look forward to the future, one of the things that we want to do is increase our reach on the internet through social media. We now have an Ending Human Trafficking podcast social media presence on Facebook and on Instagram. And we are going to begin to use that as a quicker way to identify new resources, and make sure they’re available to you. And I’ve had listeners tell me how important it is for them to know what we’re using, because there’s so much out there, and you do a Google search, and you don’t know exactly who or what. But if they find it on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast website, they know that we have looked at this, and we find it really valuable. And that’s a big time saver for them. One of the new resources recently that I’ve identified is the Office on Trafficking in Persons from Health and Human Services, launched a toolkit for Human Trafficking Prevention month in January. And that toolkit, we’ll have links here, we’ll be making sure that we distribute it in our newsletter as well. But the focus is ‘Partner to Prevent.’ And I feel like that is a great signal of what to look forward to in the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. We want to have stronger partnerships in our community so that we can grow prevention. We’ve talked about the five P’s of partnership, prevention, protection, prosecution and policy. The focus on prevention is growing. And if we really want to end human trafficking, we need to identify ways to prevent it from happening in the first place. So Dave, I think that we will continue to follow your lead, learn from you, and try to emulate the leadership that you’ve demonstrated.

Dave  22:31

Well, and the same is true here. I’ve learned so much from you, of course, and from so many of our listeners and guests. What a privilege it has been. And I’m so excited about what’s going to be ahead. I think about as you coordinate exclusively with guests, and even staff internally and Derek’s partnership, and so many of the things that you’re already planning, it’s going to be so much fun to see how the show continues to evolve from here and what you do. I can’t wait. I’m super grateful. And I think if someone was wanting to say thank you in some way, I think the best way that anyone could thank you or me for the work we’ve been doing is, we’re always so grateful for the kind notes that people send, we’re always so grateful for the reviews that show up online. But I think the very best way that you could not only thank us but way more importantly is continue to support the work that we’re all doing to end human trafficking, is pass along the show, the resource, Sandie’s work from the Global Center for Women and Justice to someone who hasn’t come across it yet. If you’ve been listening to one of our episodes, or maybe been listening for a while, and you found something helpful, pass it along. That’s the very best way that you could thank me, thank us for the work we’re doing. And, like you said, Sandie, this is all about partnership. It always has been, it always will be. This isn’t something any of us do by ourselves or any organization does by itself, or even any country does by itself. You mentioned all the people around the world who’ve listened. It is something we’re all doing together in partnership. And so that is a way that you can really continue to make a difference. In addition to the listening, you’ve allowed us to come into your work and be of influence to you. So, thank you,

Dave  22:46

And we would love your feedback. Some of the ideas that we have as we move forward is to host a quarterly Q&A with a guest expert and we’ll ask you to submit questions. We’ve been asked a few times to podcast from an event and I didn’t think I could do that. I thought I had to get a suitcase for Dave and put him in there and take him with me. Now, I guess I’m going to be ready to do a pop-up podcast if I’m in Dominican Republic or Madrid, Spain, or right here in Orange County at our annual Ensure Justice Conference, which by the way, it is time for you to register, it’s coming up March 3rd and 4th.

Dave  24:21

It is. It’s gonna be so exciting to see what happens with that. And speaking of things that have changed, the technology has changed so much in the last 12 years. It used to be, you had to have a huge setup and fancy microphones and the big mixer board and all that in order to do a podcast of quality. And today, there’s so many wonderful options, as you know now, and I know that it’s incredible, like what’s possible for you to be able to do. To show up in places all over the world and take the show on the road. I just can’t wait to see what happens and to be listening in with you and cheering you on and cheering on the work that continues through the show.

Sandra Morgan  25:45

So stay tuned, people, we are moving to a new path. I love the title of this: The Path Forward. We are not looking back. We’re grateful. And big shout out to Dave, this is going to be an amazing pivot and your give back column must be pretty full, because my gratitude column is off the chart. And I’m excited. I feel prepared. You’ve taught me well. Andrew has picked up on the production side of things. So watch out 2023, the Ending Human Trafficking podcast is going to grow. And we welcome our community to give us your feedback, your ideas, and let us know how we can better serve.

Dave  26:44

And can I say a final thank you to you. You, as I mentioned earlier on, you have dedicated your life to this work. And I am in awe of you. Every time we get together. Every time we have a conversation of the connections that you have. We have had conversations with ambassadors and law enforcement and just about every industry I can imagine around the world. And you are tireless in your travels and in your support and also investing in the next generation of students who are coming through Vanguard University. I can’t even imagine. You tell me about your travel schedule, speaking of us working around schedules, you know, your travel schedule as well, too. And I am just always like, wow, how does she do it all? And with such heart and with such care, and with such dedication and humbleness as well, of wanting to support people in such great ways. You have taught me so much that we could never capture in one episode about working with survivors and partnership. And so many of the things I would never have had any perspective on as a layperson coming into this, and I am constantly inspired by you and your work, and you and Jean, and just your family and everything you all have dedicated to this work over the decades. It’s been such, I feel so privileged and humbled to be in your presence every time we do this. And I thank you as I know everyone listening does every time they hear an episode for the expertise you bring, the dedication, and I will miss tremendously talking to you as much as I do now, we will still talk many times of course, but what a gift you are to all of us, and what a privilege it has been to work with you.

Sandra Morgan  28:41

Thank you, Dave. I really don’t know how to respond. But I think the best thing I can do to show my appreciation for you, is to do a really good job moving forward. I want to invite all of our listeners to join me. Make sure you follow us on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. Come to Ensure Justice. Register now for March 3rd and 4th right here in sunny Costa Mesa, California. And be sure to stay tuned, subscribe to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast newsletter. And if you want to support us, become a patreon supporter. And there’s a link right on the website to join us there. Thank you Dave. I’m not going to close with our usual ‘see you in two weeks.’ But I will say to our listeners that I will be back in two weeks. Have a great week.

Dave  29:50

See you very soon.

Sandie Morgan is joined by Adjunct Professor for the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate and Executive Director of PEHT in Connecticut, Jamie Manirakiza. In this episode, they discuss how coercion is used in human trafficking cases and how direct service providers and front line responders can provide trauma-informed, survivor-centered aftercare.

Jamie Manirakiza, has over 10 years of experience in the field of anti-human trafficking. As the Executive Director of Partnership to End Human Trafficking, she brings her experience working in various roles throughout the Northeast. Prior to joining PEHT, Jamie, held several key roles with The Salvation Army. Her longest position was in Greater Philadelphia as Director of Anti Trafficking for the New Day to Stop Trafficking Program. Most notably, Jamie helped to start a drop-in center for women victimized by the commercial sex industry in 2010, incorporating models of harm reduction, motivational interviewing, and the Sanctuary Model ® for trauma-informed care. Jamie was also part of the founding team to open up a residential program for survivors of sex or labor trafficking in the Greater Philadelphia region. In 2018, Jamie transitioned to work as the Territorial Anti Human Trafficking Program Coordinator for The Salvation Army Eastern Territorial Headquarters in New York. As Territorial Anti Human Trafficking Program Coordinator, she developed, implemented, evaluated, and supported the ongoing growth of direct survivor service programs and coalition building on a regional scale. She has managed numerous Department of Justice Office for Victims of Crimes grants to provide comprehensive victim services in various States across the Northeast. Jamie has consulted for Tahirih Justice Center, and provided training as a consultant for OVC-TTAC.  Jamie continues to serve as an adjunct professor for Vanguard University’s Human Trafficking Certificate Program and has consulted on crime victim services for a number of national organizations on promising practices and trauma-informed care. Jamie is a founding Board of Advisor member for the Villanova University School of Law Institute to Address Commercial Sexual Exploitation. Jamie received her MSW degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is a licensed social worker.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 291 Unpacking the Complexities of Coercion, with Jamie Manirakiza. 

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

Dave [00:00:30] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak. 

Sandie [00:00:35] 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, we have another guest expert with us today, a wonderful partner in our work, one of our instructors with the Ending Human Trafficking Certificate Program and someone who just has a tremendous amount of expertise. I’m so glad to welcome Jamie Manirakiza. She has over ten years of experience in the field of anti-human trafficking as the executive director of Partnership to End Human Trafficking. She brings her experience working in various roles throughout the Northeast. Jamie joined PEHT as the executive director in July 2020 to establish one of Connecticut’s first residential programs for survivors of sex trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation. As executive director, Jamie has helped to establish a 24 month residential program and relaunch a survivor led social enterprise business, providing employment opportunities for women who have experienced human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, or sexual violence. In addition to her past experience with several key roles with the Salvation Army, she also continues to serve as an adjunct professor for Vanguard University’s Human Trafficking Certificate program and has consulted on crime victim services for a number of national organizations. Jamie received her MSW degree from the University of Pennsylvania and is a licensed social worker. Jamie, so glad to have you on the show. 

Jamie [00:02:01] Thank you for having me. 

Sandie [00:02:03] I’m really excited about interviewing you because you are one of our expert practitioners in the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate Program and it is so valuable to have people who are actually practitioners leading the discussions in our online conversations in the virtual classroom. And I had conversations recently with a couple of students who were absolutely so energized by being in a cohort online with practitioners who were not asking hypothetical questions. They were asking, ‘This is what happened? How are you guys figuring this out where you are?’ And that is what our movement needs. We are in a time where we’re establishing best practices, promising practices. We’re trying to work out the best victim-centered approach. We want the best outcomes for victims as they become survivors. So thank you so much for joining us. And let’s dive in and tell us a little bit about your work as a practitioner and more specifically, the model that you base your work on. 

Jamie [00:03:33] Great. Well, thank you, Sandie, for that introduction. And I too have just loved aduncting for the certificate program and engaging with professionals and students all across the country and world. It’s truly a pleasure for me each year when I look at the cohort and get to talk to all of the students coming to the program into the field. So I have, as you mentioned, I’ve worked in the field of anti-trafficking for a little over a decade. Most of my experience prior to joining Partnership to End Human Trafficking, I worked in Philadelphia and I worked on a number of services. But the theme throughout my career in doing this work has really been trying to establish trauma-informed, survivor-centered care services across disciplines, across programing and policies and staffing so that we can minimize any forms of re-traumatization in the service delivery process as survivors enter our systems so that we can truly try to be the change for folks seeking to exit exploitation and harm with doing the least amount of harm on our end as practitioners. So a lot of the work that I do is based on the sanctuary model for trauma-informed care, tenants of motivational interviewing, and harm reduction. 

Sandie [00:04:57] Okay, so when I look at various definitions of trauma-informed care, there is always a sense that I can make a big mistake and cause harm. And so I walk very carefully and I really am encouraged by looking at this through the lens of power and control, because I think that if we as practitioners understand that it’s not just what we say, it is how we say it, where we’re standing. Recognizing that we have the resources that somebody needs and that that actually is a form of power. And this concept of power and control is something we studied extensively in the domestic violence movement. And it’s becoming more and more a part of our conversation as we modify how we engage with victims who are on the journey to restoration. And one of the things that power and control contribute to is the concept of coercion. And when I first started studying the Trafficking Victims Protection Act that was passed back in 2000, coercion was an element and still is in the legal definition of the elements that we have to prove in a prosecution of force, fraud and coercion. And everybody was really clear about force and fairly clear about fraud. Coercion, though, was often not nearly as clear. And it didn’t often get as much of the attention as it may have deserved. In your experience, can you give us a little bit of a breakdown in how often is coercion used compared to the more easy to identify force and fraud? 

Jamie [00:07:14] Yeah. So coercion, in my experience in working with survivors over a decade now, is the primary form of control that’s used in the three elements of force, fraud and coercion. And unfortunately, as you’ve mentioned as well, it’s more complex sometimes to identify, a bit more nuanced to see, especially to law enforcement or service providers, because it is not always physical in nature in terms of how the traffickers leverage coercive methods. So psychological conditioning, manipulation. And maybe we’ll get into unpacking some of that a little bit later. But these elements we’ve seen predominate the sex trafficking and often even labor trafficking cases. 

Sandie [00:08:04] Okay. So coercion, sometimes people just use the synonym threats, but it feels like you’re talking about psychological manipulation. It sounds a little more than just a threat. So can you unpack that for us and maybe give us some examples? 

Jamie [00:08:24] Sure. You know, the definition of coercion in the TVPA, as we know, says that its the threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person. It also includes any scheme, plan or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that the failure to perform an act would result in serious harm or physical restraint against any person, as well as, the abuse or threatened abuse of the legal process. So what does all of that mean? Often, examples that I can give that we see are and I’ll kind of back into it: threatened abuse of the legal process. With foreign born individuals, we’ll often see the threat of deportation, the threat of having somebody detained or even jailed. We had a case that I worked on where an individual was asking for back wages and pay from their employer who was trafficking them in a landscaping practice. And the employer said that if you continue to ask, I’m going to call the police and they actually did do that and the employer made false claims to the police about this individual. And it resulted in a lot of complicated criminal matters that this person had to then sort of prove their innocence by. And it ended up being used actually by really great legal attorneys to support that victim in their case of labor trafficking. That the employer, in fact, used the abuse or threatened the abuse of the legal process as a way of controlling and silencing the voice of that person. 

Sandie [00:10:02] They actually called the police and they’re the perpetrators. 

Jamie [00:10:06] Exactly. Yes. And that very essence ended up being used against them later as the case was successfully built. I found an attorney. And we got pulled in as service providers back at the time to support this individual in their court mandated programing to restore the process of which they had to do some courses and prove that they completed some diversion process simply to be able to clean up the record while their attorneys were able to get more facts of the case, more elements of coercion that weren’t seen to the naked eye, like the threats, the serious threats of harm or actual harm. Sometimes you see both. So in a lot of sex trafficking cases, we see traffickers threaten serious harm to their victims. So showing a deadly weapon to the victim, maybe a gun, and saying if you don’t do X, Y, and Z, then you know something’s going to happen to you. They may never shoot that individual in that moment. I mean, or maybe ever. But the serious threat of harm is clear. I had an individual once tell me that exact case, that their trafficker, their pimp, put a gun out and said, this is what you’re going to do. And the survivor explained, Well, what was I supposed to do? If I walked out of the door or out of the hotel that night who would have believed me? Who would I go to? Who would have believed me? They were under-resourced. They were in a marginalized community. And they really felt like they didn’t have anybody they could turn to. And they also had a sense of the victim blaming because of their traffickers use of coercive elements of psychological coercion. So there was there’s a lot tied in there about the person felt that they could not just leave and be believed. 

Sandie [00:11:53] Wow. So let’s unpack that psychological coercion that you just mentioned a little further. 

Jamie [00:12:00] Yeah. So we’ve seen there’s a great chart called Biderman’s Chart of Coercion that actually outlines eight elements of coercive control. And interestingly, almost all of those elements of coercive control are psychological or nonphysical in nature. And they include things like isolation, monopolization of perception, threats–which we’ve talked about, which sort of cultivate anxiety and despair or fear. Occasional indulgences, so maybe trying to positively motivate the individuals, victims, so maybe buying clothing for them, maybe sending money to their family or giving them money to give to siblings who they’re taking care of. We’ve seen that. And giving them a sense that you’re part of this. Or you’re making a choice. And in some regards, you’re part of the culpability of the crime, telling the victim that it’s their fault for the situation that they might be in or really leveraging whatever forms of psychological control that the trafficker identifies is going to be a weak point or a point that they can sort of identify and then exploit. And so degradation, demonstrating omnipotence are really all elements that we may see at various points in the conditioning and building up of coercive control from a trafficker. 

Sandie [00:13:27] So when you’re talking about that, I keep going back to my early days in domestic violence and understanding that the abuser did cultivate that trauma-bond through occasional indulgences, new clothes, special food, those kinds of things, but then went back to abusive. And it seems like this is a similar pattern. 

Jamie [00:13:58] Yes. I mean, absolutely. I think there’s a lot of overlap in the inter-partner violence, domestic violence world when it comes to some of the tactics. And then, of course, there’s some distinctions that I think we see with sex trafficking cases that tend to sort of deviate some of the challenges, especially when it comes to providing service with individuals who experience this crime versus domestic violence. And sometimes there’s overlap, though, right? Sometimes there are domestic violence cases that turn into sex trafficking or domestic servitude cases. Those similar elements are also used: the occasional indulgences with, like you said, food, clothing, sort of finding whatever that area that might make somebody feel worthy or feel loved and exploiting that to make them form a trauma bond, both the fear of maybe harm or even death, but then the gratitude for being allowed to live or being provided for. So that sort of forms that cycle of the trauma bond. And I have seen it a lot in trafficking cases. 

Sandie [00:15:04] Okay. So one of the words that you gave us in the definition was patterns. We just talked about that. But you also use the word schemes and that implies an actual plan to exploit someone. An actual strategy for tactics of what you’ll use. So how does a trafficker figure out that scheme? Identify weak spots? Kind of unpack that for us. 

Jamie [00:15:40] It may look different for different individuals, is often what I’ve seen throughout the years. And I think that that also speaks to why services are so important in terms of how we understand the crime, that when we’re going to serve individuals, knowing the ways that they may uniquely have been exploited in each circumstance. It’s not always the same pattern used, but some patterns that I’ve seen that I could kind of highlight as common would be identifying maybe areas where the individual feels unsafe or either feels unsafe or is actually unsafe. So somebody who may be homeless or vulnerable to being homeless or a runaway. When we think about young people, runaway and homeless youth are very high risk for commercial sexual exploitation, sex trafficking, labor trafficking situations. Individuals who have experience or could be experiencing abuse in their home or from a partner, and they’re fleeing that situation and looking for safety. So the trafficker might pose as somebody who can provide that for them. Also, other vulnerabilities of maybe being bullied, wanting to be loved, wanting to fit in and sort of identifying that area of vulnerability. And through the recruitment process into exploitation, the trafficker, a perpetrator, is identifying those sweet spots and sort of trying to just show the person that they can fulfill that or they can meet that need and then switching it out and saying, well, now you need to do this as part of the deal or the game or this is how we’re going to build our future together, telling them whatever dream is going to keep them under their control. 

Sandie [00:17:28] I absolutely remember hearing from a survivor, and we all need to listen to survivors because they teach us the patterns to watch for, the schemes and they’re varied and they’re very individualized. So when I sat and talked to a survivor who told me when she first met her trafficker, how kind they were, gave her food, sat and just asked questions and listened and nobody else was listening to her. And as a young person, she found that very endearing and it created a bond. But she then said, and this is what I wrote down, that everything she told him he used against her, he used to manipulate and found things in her past, concerns about a parent or a sibling and brought those up in the conversation when she wasn’t behaving the way that the perpetrator expected. And I think victims often don’t even realize that they’re being controlled by their own words. And the way that the traffickers have learned to use what looks like, I really care because what do they teach you in marriage counseling? Listening is the best thing to do. Well, it’s also a way to find out someone’s weaknesses. So do you feel like you’ve seen survivors who didn’t really realize that they were being controlled and didn’t know how to didn’t even want to seem to walk away to escape? 

Jamie [00:19:32] Absolutely. And I think that’s sort of the crux of the challenge, too, in terms of identifying individuals as a victim of this crime and thats been a discussion, I think we’ve all had nationally and internationally for decades is recognizing that there’s a huge challenge of trafficking, but individuals almost never self-identify. And oftentimes that is because of the element of coercion and coercive control, which has built up as as we’ve talked about, the trauma bonding, rapport and relationship. Often there’s an element of loyalty, and that’s often been cultivated by this sense of either a boyfriend relationship, a husband or fiance relationship. It could also be intra-familial trafficking, as we’ve seen. Sometimes somebody’s first trafficker might have been a parent, a step-parent, an aunt or an uncle, somebody known to the individual. And that creates a really confusing psychological situation for a victim of this crime, especially if the first introduction of their abuse is by somebody who they should have trusted and almost should have been the person that they would have reported this form of victimization to. So that cultivates this situation whereby the people don’t self-identify and it may take a very long time for them to understand the elements of control or manipulation that were wrong and caused serious harm to them. 

Sandie [00:21:10] So I think what you’re describing with a trusted original trafficker, there are lots of instances of serial trafficking. They leave one because their trust was broken. And so then they become victims really of betrayal trauma. And so they’re looking for someone to trust. And I think we are sometimes oblivious to that betrayal trust element. And when we arrive on the scene and we want to fix everything, how should we actually be having that conversation? Because when we overpromise and under-deliver, it reinforces that betrayal. 

Jamie [00:22:02] Yeah. So right before I answer that, you made me think of a situation where years ago I was working with a survivor who was part of a federal prosecution. She had been victimized since she was a minor. At the time in which the prosecution was happening, she was a young adult. And I remember distinctly one conversation where the individual was wrestling between lots of threats in the community. Because the trafficker might be, if we’re lucky, locked up or pending trial or being charged for some elements of the crime. But there’s still often many bad actors that are still out in the community and perpetrators that are connected to the trafficking of that individual. And they may be still cultivating threats or carrying out any forms of serious threats to victims to keep them quiet or back in the life or to bring them back. And this individual said to me she was wrestling with who to trust because the trafficker was saying, oh, they’re just going to drop you once the trials over, or they don’t really care about you, we’re your family. We’re going to take care of you. Don’t talk to them, don’t collaborate. And I don’t say any of this to say that victims service providers or advocates should ever push a victim to participate. So, the lane that I was in as a social worker and clinician was to really just support this individual in whatever their self-determined choice was, as well as to support their livelihood, their basic needs, getting them access to resources, to housing, to food, to shelter, and really trying to help support this individual, to realize that these are the areas in which we can and very feasibly can support youth to be safe and to get access. But these are the areas where we can’t necessarily promise the world. So the individual was wrestling with how are we going to make sure that nobody can ever find me? And although there’s lots of great ways to support individuals and we should maximize those for their safety and safety plan, I like how you said that, Sandie, just that we don’t ever want to overcommit and under-deliver because that does sort of fulfill that self-fulfilling prophecy that the perpetrators are often using to keep their individuals coming back to them or avoiding getting out and trusting providers to help them. 

Sandie [00:24:33] So if you could lay out a plan for a social worker or law enforcement who has identified someone who needs to leave and maybe has even tried before, and now we recognize that our little fantasy of escape, we just get them in the car and take them away is not necessarily going to be a real rescue. It’s going to take time. So where do we start with that? 

Jamie [00:25:08] There’s so much that we can unpack, but I think if I was to really focus on areas that we’ve learned just as an ally in the field working alongside survivors for for so long and working alongside survivor-led leadership and what survivors have shared that would help them or help them when they were trying to leave. And our programing is identifying ways to maximize choice for individuals as they are coming into any form of services to the extent that you can. And that’s going to look different for law enforcement settings versus maybe social service settings, but maximizing choice, maximizing opportunities for folks who have autonomy and their self-determination and individualized goals, recognizing that not all goal plans at the time in which they might first step, second steps, third step may not play out the same for everybody and giving them that space to identify their change process. And maximizing opportunities for folks to, within the boundaries of safety, to kind of go through the process of relapse and cycles. In the program that I oversee now in Connecticut, we are a 24 month housing program. We provide opportunities for in-house employment and job training. And we also do community based intensive services for folks who we cannot house. And in all of those programs, we sort of integrate those values of trauma-informed care, choice, autonomy and sort of self-determination in the change process and allowing for relapse to be part of that process, whether it’s substances or unsafe patterns. But to allow that to be part of the dialogue is important so that folks can work through and identify real and authentic change for themselves and authentic healing for themselves. 

Sandie [00:26:59] Okay. So now then our time is almost up and you’ve just opened another can of worms. And I am intrigued to figure out how you actually program room for relapse. And so we’re going to have to promise our listeners that we’re going to unpack that next time we talk. 

Jamie [00:27:23] Great. Absolutely. It’s so important. 

Sandie [00:27:27] And the idea of maximizing choice and that personal dignity that it can start in really simple ways. When I was the task force administrator, our victim service provider lead often would take brand new survivors to a shop so that they could pick out the clothes, the toiletries that they wanted instead of just being given a backpack with whatever people happened to have given, but actually providing choice. And you don’t just have to take what we give you, you get to choose. And that’s kind of a beginning step sometimes for realizing that there is a process to move towards autonomy and personal safety that results in a restoration and reintegration into our community. 

Jamie [00:28:30] Absolutely. And I mean, just to tie it back to our theme of coercion and coercive control, I mean, that’s if that’s the nature of the element of the crime. One of the elements that forced somebody to endure their victimization for whatever period of time, then it sort of only makes sense that on the behavioral health, the service system side, the continuum that we find a way to not sort of create those parallel process dynamics where we’re mirroring those same power and control dynamics that were happening in the life, but that we find a way to say what could be power and control dynamics that we hold as the system that we can change. So we don’t mirror that same dynamic for this person in their healing process so that it can look different and they can see that there’s a different way to engage and interact with the world in themselves and their identity. 

Sandie [00:29:29] Wow. That is unpacking and reversing coercion choice. We have to maximize choice. What a great note to end on. Thank you so much, Jamie. And I am so grateful that you’re on our Vanguard team teaching in the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate Program. 

Jamie [00:29:49] Thank you. I love to be a part of it. 

Dave [00:29:52] Thank you both for this conversation today. If today’s dialogue has brought up some questions for you, I’d invite you to send us a message [email protected]. That’s a great place to reach us with comments or questions about this conversation or of course, any of the episodes we’ve had. We’d also invite you to take a moment to go onto our website at endinghumantrafficking.org. That is a great place to start to download a copy of Sandie’s guide The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll walk you through the five critical things that Sandie has discovered in her work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it by visiting endinghumantrafficking.org. And while you’re online, take a few minutes to learn about the next Ensure Justice conference coming up March 3rd and 4th, 2023. Details are at the site there or you can go directly to GCWJ.org/ensurejustice. I hope you’ll join us for our conversation here in March live in Southern California. Tons of resources, speakers, events and of course, most importantly, relationships. We talk about the importance of partnerships so often in our conversations, our partnership with Jamie and so many others who are just doing incredible work on this issue. So hope you’ll join us for the conference again. GCWJ.org/ensurejustice for details about this year’s conference and we’ll be back in two weeks for our next conversation. Thanks as always, Sandie. 

Sandie [00:31:27] Thanks, Dave. 

Dave [00:31:28] Take care everyone. 

Sandie Morgan is joined by Derek Marsh, Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. They discuss Derek’s BJA Fellowship on human trafficking and how law enforcement and task forces can be more proactive in investigating and assisting labor trafficking.

Derek Marsh retired from the Westminster PD, CA, after more than 26 years of service. In 2004, Marsh helped start the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force (OCHTTF). He served as the co-chair of the OCHFFT from 2004-12. During that time, he developed and taught courses in human trafficking across the state of California, provided oversight to human trafficking investigations, assisted in creating HT DVDs, wrote multiple grants, and provided Congressional testimony twice as a HT expert witness. He has presented anti-HT trainings across California and the United States, Saipan, Italy, and Argentina. He taught HT as an undergraduate course at Vanguard University, CA, from 2009 to present. He develops and teaches criminal justice and human trafficking courses. He has served with the United Nations to train Rwandan immigration officials, law enforcement, prosecutors, and NGOs over four intensive seminars in 2017. He has an MA in Human Behavior, an MPA in Police Management & Leadership, and graduated from FBINA Class #224. Currently, D.C. Marsh works as the Assistant Director at the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is researching how human trafficking task forces identify, investigate, and prosecute labor trafficking cases throughout the United States through on-site visits and review of historical task force and federal performance documents. He is helping to develop and provide training and technical assistance through the BIA, TTAC, and OVC-TTAC agencies. His expertise in Criminal Justice will contribute to the research, education, and advocacy mission of the Global Center for Women and Justice.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode 290, BJA Fellowship Review, with Derek Marsh.

Production Credits [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:35] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:37] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Today we have back a frequent guest of ours, Sandie, our associate director here at the Global Center for Women and Justice, Derek Marsh. Derek, so glad to have you back with us.

Derek [00:00:55] Glad to be back. Thanks for having me.

Sandie [00:00:57] So, Derek, you were adjunct here before you retired from Westminster Police Department, where you started the first iteration of the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force. Before you came, though, to work here as the associate director at the Global Center you did a BJA fellowship. So I thought it would be really fun for us to talk about what that look like. BJA means Bureau of Justice Assistance. So let’s talk about that. What was your purpose and why did you take on an absolute gargantuan task?

Derek [00:01:43] Well, it was a task of pleasure. I got to tell you, I really enjoyed my time with BJA as a fellow in human trafficking. I had just retired in 2013. They put out a notice, much like a solicitation for a grant and I for a change I wrote a grant for me as opposed to other people. And I was lucky enough to be selected to participate. So I went from 2015 to 2018 as a visiting fellow in human trafficking with the Bureau of Justice Assistance. And my major focus was labor trafficking. Understanding promising practices about how people were pursuing it, how they were investigating it, how they discovered it, even somehow how they prosecuted it. My hope was to reinforce some studies that had gone on before, and that was my initial start in working with the BJA.

Sandie [00:02:29] I’ve talked about this with some of my students and they did not get the idea of what a fellow is and why it isn’t gender specific. Can you explain what that actually entails?

Derek [00:02:42] Sure. The BJA and OVC and other programs as well, they will bring people out from the field, if you will, who are actively practicing the field or have recently practiced in the field on different topics. There was a person there when I was there dealing with prisons and incarceration issues. There was people there dealing with victim service agencies, non-government organizations. It really depends on what their need is. And so what they do is they bring folks in who have expertise in these different fields and they basically have them work on a project related to their expertise, which would then be contributed to the OVC, BJA, or whatever DOJ group is sponsoring them, so that they have a little bit more expertise when putting together solicitations and other issues regarding the particular topic. Again, for me being human trafficking.

Sandie [00:03:29] Okay, thank you for clarifying that. So your primary focus was labor trafficking, but also you were looking at the collaborative process, right?

Derek [00:03:41] Correct. Obviously no one does this as an island. So there was and I wanted to understand how labor trafficking was pursued, but I understood that with labor trafficking there is a distinctive collaborative element. And my curiosity was, is a collaboration focused on labor trafficking equivalent to a generic human trafficking collaboration for a task force. Or does it have a little difference from sex trafficking, the labor trafficking?

Sandie [00:04:09] Okay. So what was your original intention?

Derek [00:04:13] Well, my original intention was to investigate how people were pursuing labor trafficking. And so I was trying to figure out, like better practices, promising practices with regards to investigations, case development, prosecution strategies. But what I found was that still, after the task forces have been around since 2003, as far as solicitations go, most taskforces were not pursuing labor trafficking actively. They would take the case if it fell on their lap, but they wouldn’t proactively pursue it. And so I switched my view from ‘What are you doing and how are you doing it’ to ‘How do we get more people or how do we get more taskforces to be established and developed to focus more on labor trafficking?’

Sandie [00:05:02] So, I love the fact that you use the word proactive investigations, because just yesterday I was having a conversation here in Orange County, and when I mentioned labor trafficking, they interrupted and said, ‘Oh, we have a much bigger problem with sex trafficking.’ And I smiled and said, that’s because that’s what we’re looking for. It is harder to look for labor trafficking. So if you have a really good track record of convictions on sex trafficking, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no labor trafficking.

Derek [00:05:44] Well, we do what we were we’re comfortable doing. It’s kind of low laying fruit. And I’m not minimizing the pursuit of sex trafficking. I think it’s critical to the human trafficking movement. And honestly, without sex trafficking, whether it’s foreign and more emphasized on domestic here in the United States, human trafficking wouldn’t be as relevant and consistently pursued as it is today. However, when you look at NGO, non-government organizations, and their work with victim-survivors of human trafficking, many of them have higher numbers of victim-survivors who are labor trafficking victims than they do sex trafficking. And that tells me that we are missing cases across the board. And it’s not just in California, it’s just not in New York. It’s not just in Florida. It’s everywhere, everywhere across the board. Wherever you go, there are always at least some labor trafficking, a significant sum of labor trafficking victims that are being addressed, at least on the NGO social services side. Even if the law enforcement side of the task force isn’t pursuing those investigations.

Sandie [00:06:47] So this really turned into an action research project. And so you had to figure out how to gather the data to fulfill your fellowship. So how did you connect with task forces? How did you get them to cooperate?

Derek [00:07:07] I was, again, OVC, Office of Victims of Crime, and BJA, where I was stationed at–are actually in the same building by the way in different floors. But they were super supportive. And without their help and their advice and their mentorship, I wouldn’t be able to figure out myself. What it came down to is we were pursuing regional training through eight year old OVC-BJA which allowed me to meet task forces, both that were federally funded and non-federally funded. I also was able to connect with various task force folks telephonically. This is before Zoom was an active issues and then obviously I was also very fortunate to be allowed to actually travel to at least say 20, if not more sites, to actually visually observe and, not necessarily participate, but to kind of walk along, if you will, to see how people were pursuing or not pursuing labor trafficking cases.

Sandie [00:07:59] Okay. So you’ve already identified that most of the labor trafficking cases kind of fell into their hands, but were rarely actively pursued. There wasn’t an intentional outreach, intentional proactive investigation strategies. So what were the challenges that made task forces ill equipped? Is that too much to say, to really understand how to develop a proactive strategy?

Derek [00:08:37] Well, I would say they’re equipped. I would say that the emphasis they were pursuing was more sex trafficking focused. And if we look for a context, I would say around 2009, the enhanced collaborative model solicitation came out where both the NGO and the law enforcement task forces were expected to write a mutual request, a solicitation to show that they were interacting with each other and they were mutually supporting each other. And at that same time, the emphasis shifted from foreign national human trafficking to domestic. And that was a shift that needed to happen. I’m not minimizing that. But because of that, the emphasis before, because a lot of labor trafficking, a majority we’ve run into has been foreign national based. Once that shift went to domestic, and specifically domestic minor sex trafficking, the world shifted because now you were dealing with a topic which law enforcement had an extensive experience with because vice investigations are part and parcel of what you’re doing in law enforcement all the time. At least one group or one person or one detective has that responsible. Just about every PD that has more than 125 personnel. And so they immediately begin to go for, again, the low laying fruit, their experience with these vice type of investigations. And it became an almost immediate shift. If you look at the numbers as reported in the TIP reports, you can see that in 2009, I believe, there was actually more labor trafficking than sex trafficking. It’s the only time in the 22 years of the TVPA that’s been documented is such lists from the federal level. And then immediately you see the graph like separate and sex trafficking investigations skyrocket and labor trafficking dives. And this last TIP Report, Trafficking in Persons Report, shows if you look at the percentages, not the numbers, 97% of the cases federally reported were sex trafficking, whereas 3% were labor trafficking. And I know that they’re trying harder to focus on labor trafficking. I’m not trying to minimize those efforts or the results of those efforts, but it’s a huge disparity and it doesn’t represent the victim survivor pool that we have throughout the U.S.

Sandie [00:10:48] Okay. So what’s the answer to that?

Derek [00:10:52] Well, I don’t know if there’s one answer. I recommended a number of things in my final paper with the BJA, and they were very open. And I’ve seen some changes along the way. And just because I recommended it didn’t mean it had to be done. I mean, there’s realities as far as being able to support and finance things. So I don’t mean to say that only my answers are right. However, I think that really to change how you successfully pursue labor trafficking had to do with understanding what success was. Because, in the past, success and again, BJA and OVC have been changing this dramatically before by and into my initial fellowship, it was a numbers game. It’s like how many arrests can you make? How many contacts can you make? How can you document to show that you’re busy, if that makes sense. But then as you begin to look at more qualitative issues, then you want to start saying, well, how many of these are sex versus labor trafficking? Why is there a disparity that way? Why is your NGO showing half of their victim-survivors are labor trafficking, but your investigations only show one or two labor trafficking investigations per year. So, it’s that disparity that you have to look at. And then a lot of it came as a result of the way we define success. Labor trafficking cases usually take much longer to pursue. They’re frequently, he said-she said. We’re going to have one or two people that can confirm there’s no actual evidence later you could do. They are hugely victim-survivor based, which makes it problematic and really a cornerstone of many cases is on the victim-survivor. If they choose not to cooperate, the prosecution is without help. However, when I’m talking about definition of success, I think it’s also important to think that even if you may not criminally be able to prove something, then instead we could look at things like administrative sanctions, civil remedies to sue the suspects or the suspect groups, if it’s a business or an organization, to provide financial compensation for how these people were treated, exploited or labor trafficked. I think that’s important to pursue. Also, I want to focus on the fact that even getting someone or pursuing a T-visa or any kind of status here in the U.S. would be considered a win, if you will, towards labor trafficking. So, I would say that was one major component. Looking at these, just redefining what success and measuring success entails for labor trafficking.

Sandie [00:13:16] So, when when I’ve had conversations with particularly law enforcement officers, they’re very frustrated by the lack of prosecution quickly and they make an arrest. They think this should go down in their in their stats and then it like almost evaporates. And that’s very disheartening. And so it sounds from your perspective that we actually need to have a new way of looking at this. And it reminded me of a previous episode where we interviewed the civil attorneys Ahn and Rena, and we’ll put the the link in the show notes. But they were able, through a civil case, to establish a labor trafficking case in a way that was much more difficult in a criminal case. And when I try to explain that, I’m not good at that because I’m not the law enforcement person. So I want you to explain why that makes a difference in prosecuting a case.

Derek [00:14:36] Well, again, when you look at a civil case versus a criminal case. In a civil case, you’re looking at preponderance of the evidence. You’re looking at 50.1% is sufficient to find a suspect or organization, if we’re looking at practices within the organization as being held responsible for promoting or allowing labor trafficking to occur under their watch or under their agencies or under the umbrella of that organization. Whereas, if you go to a criminal trial, it’s proof beyond a reasonable doubt, which is like 99.9%. So there’s a significant difference in what you have to prove and how much you have to prove. So civil remedies can be much more successful. I think the Human Trafficking Institute repeatedly during their yearly reports, has shown that a lot of labor trafficking cases have gone the civil route because it is a he said-she said. And it is important for us if we’re to get from a victim centered, trauma informed approach, that we do provide them as much potential for closure as we can. So, yeah, maybe you cannot prosecute because you don’t have that proof beyond a reasonable doubt. And I respect that. I’m definitely not criticizing prosecutors for being responsible and not wasting our time, in a sense, wasting the time of the court with cases that can’t move forward. But I still think there are other remedies that can be had that not only promote our victim’s accusations as being legitimate, but also provide some kind of monetary reimbursement so that they can move forward because they’re here legitimately. Most of them come here legally anyway, according to reports. Over 70% come here legitimately and they all come out of status once they try to get out of those conditions. So, I don’t think that we’re really talking about people who are coming across the border out of status to begin with. As a whole, there may be some, I’m not saying there aren’t, but I think on the whole, these people have tried legitimately to go through and still been taken advantage of, still been trafficked. And just by leaving because of the way our H-2 visas work and things, I know we’re working on changing that, but currently that if you leave the person who sponsors you, you leave the organization that sponsors you, suddenly you’re out of status. And I understand the need for that in the past, but that allows traffickers to have much more control over their victims than they should. So it’s just a horrible, hard way to come to a final conclusion. So forget the prosecution if you have to from a criminal perspective. If you can do it from a civil perspective, sure, it’s going to take more time. But we’re used to labor trafficking taking years more than some sex trafficking cases. But at least the victims receive some kind of closure on the case, some validation for what’s occurred to them and some monetary recompense.

Sandie [00:17:19] And that restitution is part of the restorative justice that we’ve talked about here in the past. And it seems like it’s more realistic to punish the business, the company that’s actually exploiting someone’s labor and controlling their movements and just however they use them, whether it’s in a cleaning company, a hotel, or out in the fields. So that punishment to the business perhaps has more of a deterrent effect than finding one person and prosecuting them and putting them in prison because the company has lots of other people. That’s how I see it.

Derek [00:18:09] And I agree. I think that, again, the idea here is not so much to create an impossible standard for people to try to prosecute cases that really aren’t prosecutable in the normal sense of the term, but to find some kind of closure for our victims if we can. And how do you arrest a corporation, how do you arrest an organization that is trafficking? I mean, you could pick individuals who are the primary, and I think that’s legitimate. However, if it’s a 50-50 chance, if you can prosecute someone versus a 90% chance you could civilly hold the organization accountable, what makes more sense? I think it makes more sense to pursue that organization as long as it can be proved that they had some culpability in it. And I’m not trying to give money away, either. I don’t to make it seem like I’m just a money tree or Santa Claus. I mean, even criminal cases require restitution in these cases that be assessed against the people trafficked folks, whether it’s sex or labor trafficking. So we’re not asking for anything that they wouldn’t get if there was a criminal prosecution as well.

Sandie [00:19:06] Okay. So what else can we do to be more successful in our anti-labor trafficking efforts?

Derek [00:19:15] Well, I think another aspect of this is the task force and coalition members that we choose. When we’re looking at a generic task force, they are great. They’re very focused. They have multiple issues we’re focusing on. We have our NGOs, we have our psychological support, we have shelters, food, all these different people who are contributing. Businesses, faith based community, as well as our state, local, federal law enforcement partners. So all of those are great. However, I think with labor trafficking, you have to focus more on those institutions that have labor in their title or labor in their expertise. Remember, again, that from a local law enforcement perspective, labor isn’t something we pursue. I remember going to cases where you have everything from people being upset about their wage to people being upset of how their car was repaired and all we would say, go to civil court, go to civil court, go to civil court. And that was the answer because we don’t adjudicate civil issues. Whereas with labor trafficking, the initial impression may be, well, that sounds like a civil problem. Whether they got the wage you were promised or whether they got enough breaks. I mean, that’s not on me. And you’re right, exploitation itself isn’t on law enforcement. However, labor trafficking investigations involve criminal activity. Threats against people. Threatening people with keeping their documents of abuse, of substandard housing, of not feeding people, making them exposed to hazardous conditions and things like that. All of those are criminal activities that aren’t just labor thinks. But again, as law enforcement, we don’t often deal with that. So we have to team up with organizations that have that labor expertise and we’re talking about that. If you’re talking about your documents, State Department is a great crew to do it. If you’re looking at the labor itself, the Department of Labor Wage and Hour is critical. They also have an OIG Department that can actually prosecute and pursue things on a criminal level, too, whereas the wage and hour is more administrative; it’s civilly focused. EEOC can be a part of things, as well. You can team up with your local consulates to understand what the different populations at the communities are going through, because they would have insight into that as well. Your faith based communities are huge because a lot of them go to church and the one thing they are allowed to do is go to church and participate in worship. It may be that through those insights and understanding those people, you can get some insights on what’s going on. So you want to compose your task force a little bit differently and a focus on those types of NGOs, non-government organizations, that have expertise with contacting people in whatever field that they may be being exploited or trafficked in. And also you want to make sure that they’re ethnically aware, culturally, you know, balance perspectives and understand the language they’re speaking so they can communicate better, understand exactly what’s happening, and feel a degree of trust.

Sandie [00:22:04] And I love that you mentioned that they often are, the victims are often allowed to attend a church. And we did a training for pastors years ago, and within two weeks they identified three labor trafficking victims because of the trust that they had already built. And I think we have a tendency to expect law enforcement to be able to instantly identify and gain the trust for a victim to actually disclose. So, because we’re running out of time, I do want to go back to the task force model and what can we do from the law enforcement perspective to promote the anti-labor trafficking efforts that the enhanced collaborative model grants require as deliverables?

Derek [00:23:03] Well, I think, number one, when it comes to task forces, your different agencies have agency heads, whoever they may be, male or female, doesn’t matter to me. They need to lead from the front. They need to imbue or enhance or just talk to their folks that are representing these task forces. Let them know that labor trafficking is as much a priority as sex trafficking is. I’m not saying you ignore a sex trafficking case if it comes, but you need to be able to make that happen. You also need to dedicate, if you have the resources, because we’re in a world where resources are scarce. But if you have resources, I mean by resource people this time, to specifically pursue labor trafficking cases. Over and over again, I went to task forces that had split and said, well, they’re half sex trafficking and half labor trafficking. And guess what? It just doesn’t work. Because every time a sex trafficking case comes around, and there are plenty of them, unfortunately the person would be obligated, and rightfully so, to pursue that sex trafficking case. If you can isolate one person, say all you do is labor trafficking, you have a much better chance of getting labor trafficking prosecution, or at least the case generated. And finally, with that dedicated person, you need to go out in to those areas where most law enforcement are not used to going into and interact on community groups, to ethnic communities and make those connections with those agencies that are already built rapport in those areas and try to establish that rapport. Because unfortunately, when it comes to foreign national victims, a lot of them don’t trust law enforcement inherently, and especially we don’t speak the language and you don’t look like them they have a tendency not to believe that you can support them or help them. And so it goes a long way to having that person who’s dedicated actually going out to the community and developing relationships with these different organizations because it’s important and it is kind of a PR job. I know most police are like, Wow, I want to go out there and arrest people and, trust me, I sympathize with that 110%. But with labor trafficking is as much about building bridges and establishing rapport as it is about pursuing cases, because most of your cases aren’t going to be found, in fact, almost all of them are not going to be found by your officer driving down the street. They’re going to be found by these organizations who are out there interacting with field laborers or people in different industries. That’s how you’re going to get your reports and find your potential labor trafficking cases. That’s the way you be proactive in labor trafficking.

Sandie [00:25:30] Wow. So your fellowship gave you an opportunity to get a much broader perspective from all the way from New York to California.

Derek [00:25:40] Right. And I can’t thank them enough for that opportunity. I’ll tell you what, the fellowship was initially going to be 18 months. And they were very generous in extending it to be almost three years. And as law enforcement used to be behind the curtain and understanding who that in the Wizard of Oz, that guy behind the curtain. So it’s always fun to be behind the curtain again even after you retire and feel like you’re in the know. And having that fellowship gave me a perspective I never would have had before. Understanding how the grant administrators and the policy advisors who are all very enlightened, smart, dedicated people, work behind the scenes to try to make these task forces help our victim survivors become independent and not forget, but work through the issues they have as best they can with being victimized. They are truly humanitarian people. And it was a pleasure to be with them. And I just thank God every day that I had that opportunity to be with them at that time.

Sandie [00:26:35] Well, and we here at the Global Center are also very grateful because you brought all of that expertise to our anti-human trafficking certificate program that we launched. And now we have a labor trafficking case. And so if you are listening, you have a law enforcement or victim service credential and you have that kind of knowledge and you want to layer it with the specifics of the expertise around labor trafficking and policies and grants deliverables, please take a look at our anti-human trafficking certificate program. Derek’s been really vital in making sure it’s cutting edge and in developing a dual pathway. Tell us about our professional development process.

Derek [00:27:32] Oh, so after several years of begging and pleading and stomping, and with your support, we were able to establish now two different tracks. We have an academic track where you’re actually getting college credits, if you need them that’s great. It is a more expensive track because it’s per unit. There are three units per course, four courses for the certificate. These are paying for 12 units overall. However, there’s a professional track. For those people who don’t need those units, if you want to learn the issues, that cost is $399 a course, which is significantly less than a normal course. You still do all the coursework minus the big paper, so you’re welcome. But you still need it and you still need to take the four courses. That doesn’t minimize the requirement. But between the academic and the professional, we know there are so many people out there that just can’t afford it. Being a private institution, our prices are what they are. But I think that now you can get a certificate for under $1600 dollars, whereas before that was barely one course or just under one course. So I think we really have an opportunity here, especially if we could get people cohorts to come through, and then we could probably tailor the program more to a group of 7 to 10 people and you could knock it out in a couple semesters and we’d be happy to help provide any kind of assistance in that way.

Sandie [00:28:46] Thank you, Derek.

Derek [00:28:47] Thank you for having me. It’s really exciting to be part of this process and of course, hear the podcast. I mean, good grief, Ending Human Trafficking has been around for over a decade now, so it’s always a pleasure to be a part of it.

Dave [00:28:56] Thank you both for this conversation. We’re inviting you to take the next step to go over to Endinghumantrafficking.org. That’s where you can find a ton of the resources we’ve mentioned in this conversation, including information on the certificate program that Sandie and Derek and some many here at the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University have worked tirelessly over recent years to put together and with the options that we’ve now mentioned. So we’re inviting you to do that. And if you haven’t visited that site before, that’s also a great first step for you. If you go online there, you’re going to find an opportunity to download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll help you identify the five critical things that we have been researching in our work that you should know before you join the fight against human trafficking. You can get access to it just by going over to Endinghumantrafficking.org. And a reminder that our next conference is upcoming very soon, March 3rd and 4th, 2023. Details for the Ensure Justice conference are at GCWJ.org/ensurejustice. You can join us here in Southern California for our annual event and an opportunity to learn so much more. And perhaps just as importantly, if not more so, to build the relationships and connections in person with so many others who have a heart to support the work that we’re doing to end human trafficking. Hope you’ll go over to Endinghumantrafficking.org for all the details there. And of course, we will be back in two weeks for our next conversation.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by survivor, author, and advocate, Keeya Vawar. Together they discuss partnership between allies and survivors, survivors redesigning their life, and much more!

Keeya Vawar advocates for victims of sex trafficking globally. She is a lived experience survivor expert, mentor, speaker and author of “One Thousand Elsewhere: A True Survivor Story.” A powerful voice of hope in a growing ecosystem of despair, her motivation and passion for youth and women of all ages is inextricably linked to her own story of hardship and survival against insurmountable odds.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 289 Survivor Led Advocacy, with Keeya Vawar.

Production Credits [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:34] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:37] 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, of course, one of the most important voices we always have as part of these conversations is the voice and the experience of survivors. I’m so glad to welcome today Keeya Vawar. She is an advocate for victims of sex trafficking globally. She has the lived experience as a survivor expert, mentor, and speaker and author of One Thousand Elsewhere: A True Survivor Story. Keeya, we’re so glad to have you with us today.

Keeya [00:01:13] It’s my honor to be here.

Sandie [00:01:14] I’m really excited to meet you because Antipas Harris, Dr. Antipas Harris is the one who introduced us. So big shout out. And he was on Episode 275 Reflections on Human Trafficking from a Community Leader. And he told me that you are a powerful advocacy leader, your voice, your story, and you’re just a beacon of light. So let’s dig in and tell me a little bit, first of all, about your lifetime goals.

Keeya [00:01:56] I’ve ten goals. You know, pretty simple. I want to make impact in the space against human trafficking. Simply put, I use my story to do that right now. But really, to continue on this journey of training and directly being involved in the lives of survivors. And so that’s it’s simply put, I could do this for the rest of my life.

Sandie [00:02:24] And you told your story in a book called One Thousand Elsewhere: A True Survivor Story. How did you choose the title One Thousand Elsewhere?

Keeya [00:02:39] Well, I chose the title based on my faith. And there was a scripture in Psalm 84:10 that said, “Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere.” I’d rather be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord then dwell in the tents of the wicked. And I think about the years that I discussed in my book as being the journey to elsewhere. It was everything else in between doing right things. It was my story of struggle. It was my story of victimization. But also my story of escape.

Sandie [00:03:15] Well, let’s start right there with your story of escape and what you see as the first steps when a survivor literally escapes that being elsewhere.

Keeya [00:03:29] Right. And, you know, it’s complicated. For me, I can say that I didn’t go or experience a rescue that was formal. I simply reached out to my brother, who I finally, after years of hiding the truth of what I was doing as a teenage runaway. I reached out to him from a psych ward and I told him that I needed a place to stay. And I shared with him what I had been through. And he drove from Dallas, Texas to Elizabeth, New Jersey to get me off the 13th floor of the Elizabeth Emergency Care Unit. And I started my life over again at his house. And so back then, in 1997, there was no program to rescue someone out of human trafficking. They didn’t even call it that then. There was no terminology other than juvenile delinquent and prostitute. And so it’s only in recent years that we’ve developed language around sex trafficking. And so to give that definition for your listeners who are not aware. Of course, sex trafficking is the act or practice of illegally transporting people from one country or area to another for the purpose of sexual exploitation. But this could also happen on the Internet, of course. In my case, that was not what happened. I was a runaway and it happened physically.

Sandie [00:05:02] And you didn’t even have to leave the country to be exploited.

Keeya [00:05:06] No, I didn’t. I didn’t. But I did cross state lines. I left from Dallas, Texas to Atlanta, Georgia. And that’s when my journey of being trafficked began.

Sandie [00:05:20] So let’s focus on what your process was once your brother picked you up. It wasn’t like, okay, now I’m fine. But you described a life time process. Can you give us a little more information?

Keeya [00:05:40] Absolutely. It actually started off because my exit from sex trafficking happened by accident. I wasn’t trying to escape. I had become comfortable over a six year period of that lifestyle, money that it brought, et cetera, et cetera. And I had a nervous breakdown. And that nervous breakdown caused me to pause everything just to find out who I was. And so through that and having a new moniker of bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress along with ADHD, I began a journey that was on and off again with mental health providers, and it was a rocky road. I felt as though initially something was wrong with me, and so I really did not like taking my medication and going and talking to a counselor about every bad thing that happened to me. I felt that it meant if I accepted that, that something really was wrong with me. And so over the years, and it took over ten years for me to come to grips with the fact that I did, as a result of those battle scars, have a mental illness that I needed to deal with. And when I took that seriously and I educated myself and I realized that, oh, I’m not the only person who has these type of issues. That’s when my healing journey truly began. The time in between, I was just trying to go under the radar unnoticed. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had experienced. I was young enough to where I could hide it, quote unquote. So I thought. And so I just tried to assimilate back into regular, normal society and keep that part of my life a closed door and a topic that was not to be brought up. But, yes, once I came to grips with the fact that the mental health professionals were there to help me and actually provide solutions–like I said, it took me about ten years to come to that agreement–then the little changes began to happen.

Sandie [00:08:01] So we here use the terminology of survivor informed practitioners, professionals, volunteers. And your insight on this process is especially helpful for newcomers who are often expecting a 90 day turnaround. How would you advise volunteers who want to get involved in working 1-to-1 to serve newly identified victims who are on their journey to survivor?

Keeya [00:08:43] Well, Dr. Sandie, that’s a wonderful question. I would, first of all, encourage them to set realistic expectations. It is going to take more than 90 days to have that turnaround. I’m grateful for the optimism of people who believe that that’s all that it takes. But that’s not all that it takes. It’s a lifelong journey. Survivors, victims of sex trafficking need a lifelong line of assistance. Or community, excuse me, of assistance. And it many times takes years for them to actually get their footing and understand what it takes to live in this outback lifestyle. And unfortunately, there is a high number of people coming out of that lifestyle who return because they don’t maybe have adequate mental health care or maybe they don’t have a program or maybe they have a program, but unrealistic expectations on what it really takes to unlearn the behaviors of being abused. And so what does that mean? Let me break it down. There are people coming out who have children, got mothers, even fathers, because this doesn’t just happen to women. This also happens to men. Okay. And that’s very important. Even though the vast majority of cases that we know of involve women, there are still many men who are affected and many boys who are affected. And so there are so many different things. I’ll just give you an example. My life. So for me, it took I was 25 years of age before I got my GED. And the reason why I waited so long, even though that I knew that it was important and education was important, is I did not feel smart. I felt if I was smart, I would not be in the situations that I was in that would cause me to lose so much self-esteem and human dignity. And so therefore, to even try to get me to understand that I was smart enough and that all I needed was training to be able to get that GED, it took quite some time of convincing. And I had a mother and I had a brother who loved me and who tried to gently convince me that I was, first of all, smart enough. So there are so many layers that are built into the life of someone who is trying to survive, not turn back. So there’s the basic needs. I didn’t have a work history. I needed a job. And so I did not have basic skills that were necessary above a cashier. And so the first job that I got was at Wendy’s. But when you are 23 years of age and most of your peers are in college, it is a struggle. And so I needed a lot of encouragement. And so survivors who were once victims, they need a lot of encouragement. They need structured assistance in how to build routines. And, you know, they come from different walks of life. Everyone does not come from being a run away like I did. There are very educated women who I met along my path who are in college, who obtained degrees, yet still had pimps because that’s how they paid their way through college. All right. So there are so many different scenarios. But to support a survivor who was once a victim, it’s going to take longer than 90 days.

Sandie [00:12:28] Absolutely.

Keeya [00:12:28] And it’s also going to take understanding that there may be mental illness to deal with, self-esteem issues and things of that nature. And it takes time. I believe I heard a neuroscientist, I believe her name is Dr. Caroline Leaf said it takes 21 days to break a habit and three cycles of that for one habit. So that’s about 63 days for one habit. So not to mention trauma, which is much more involved.

Sandie [00:12:57] So you’re you’re giving some really wise advice that anyone who works with survivors of exploitation, violence. Your description of not feeling smart and how when people tried to encourage you, you reframed that in the context of feeling more responsible for what you experienced. And it kind of reminds me of working with a domestic violence survivor who once told me when people say how awful my abuser was, they think they’re making me feel better. But instead they’re making me feel not very smart for getting involved. And this idea of well intentioned volunteers, social workers, law enforcement teachers and family members listening to the survivor and understanding and following their lead on where they are and how they’re responding to their situation at the moment. And when we do that, we become and I loved the way you framed this when we had another conversation. They really become allies. And I think we could talk a little bit about how important allies are to the survivor experience.

Keeya [00:14:42] That’s huge. That’s huge. And you know, just another point before that, with domestic violence, it is well known that it takes approximately 11 attempts to escape in order for that escape to be final. And that’s just another thought for the volunteer to understand that this is more complex.

Sandie [00:15:05] And we can stay there for a minute, Keeya, because that is one of the biggest discouragements that especially law enforcement and direct victim service providers. We were doing so well and she left. But understanding that parallel. We learned this before and she’s going to be back. We’re going to get her back.

Keeya [00:15:29] It’s unfortunate truth, but yeah, it can be very disappointing to see that process. But I would say stay the course, stay. Help those who you can, because there are those who do get away or turn back. And I’m a living witness of that. But it is harrowing.

Sandie [00:15:50] So then lived experience survivor led survivor voices encompasses a really broad set of practices and different expressions of what that looks like. And you explain to me how important having allies in your survivor journey has been. And what role do those allies play?

Keeya [00:16:23] So the necessity of allies and survivors is that you have survivors who are reaching out to victims to help them make that leap to survivor hood. And to help them to abandon their pasts and start their new path. Healing and normalcy, if at all possible. However, they have gone through things that require a lot of sensitivity, a lot of therapy, and new learned behaviors have to be established, et cetera, et cetera. So it’s quite a task and each situation is not going to be the same. There’s a lot of complexities. And so you need to have the teamwork of survivors and allies because the survivor can identify one, I would say an emotional level and a lived experience level. But then you have the ally who brings another set of skills. You would need to be able to have someone to come in who does not have the emotional attachment to be able to guide through the process. I can say just for me, I can only speak for myself as a survivor in the space helping other victims cross that threshold, working directly with that population. It’s very important to them to know that I do have a clue about what they might have experienced. I have a point of reference to understand what the level of hopelessness they have experienced in their lives and the level of pain and anger and all of these different mixed emotions. I have an understanding of that. And so there is a need for the skill of lived experience, but there’s also a need for the ally who comes in, who may not necessarily have those experiences, they may have just observed or just have a desire to help in this space. What’s necessary to have someone to have a viewpoint that’s not colored with the trauma because they’re able to give something different to the solution space. And so that’s as sensitive as I can explain it, but they both play a role and really need to work together. And it shouldn’t be like, I’m sorry, I might date myself. Move over bacon here. Something leaner.

Sandie [00:18:42] Oh, my gosh. I haven’t heard that in years.

Keeya [00:18:44] I’m dating myself. But, you know, it shouldn’t be that. It should be. Okay, we need everything on the plate.

Sandie [00:18:50] Oh, that’s so good. And and a phrase I’ve heard you use is redesigning life. So when you describe this partnership between allies and survivors, it makes me think of the design and building process. Lots of times people use terms like rehabilitation, which I do not like, but this idea of redesigning. You need construction workers, you need an architect, and there is a time element in a redesign that is not going to happen as we started in our conversation at the beginning in a 90 day program. So what do you see for your life moving forward and your goals?

Keeya [00:19:42] Absolutely. Well, in my redesign, it really has to do with my interpretation of healing. It has to do with my interpretation of helping. And so there are a lot of, I would say, radical acceptances along the way that I had to realize that I still have triggers. I work with the population that I consider my tribe, people who I’m only years ahead of them in the process. But we’ve been in the same trenches, with different experiences. And so redesign for me looks like, okay, therapy is going to be a part of my life just as much as my nail tech is. So let’s just get that settled. But it also looks like developing partnerships with other organizations and allies and survivors and communities who would like to see the same goal. They would like to see the ending of human trafficking and sex trafficking. And so it really takes partnership at this point. And so my redesign looks like a lot of partnership. Standing shoulder to shoulder, linked elbow to elbow, and across the globe. Looking for, searching for, researching, advocating for solutions.

Sandie [00:21:08] You are a part of that solution. And I want to be too. What are you doing right now in your own community?

Keeya [00:21:19] Yes. I’m glad that you asked. In my own community, I’m proud to work for an organization. Bochys.org. And they have so many things that they’re doing, but they have a safe house. And I get to work with my tribe. I get to work with victims and survivors and I get to lock arms with allies who have the same mindset. But in addition to that, because I do a lot more, I do facilitate workshops with organizations. At this point, it just became global when I got my invitation to go to Kenya. And in addition to that, I work with organizations formulating workshops, helping to sensitize allies to the plight of the survivor, and also doing trainings in schools and in various places. Anywhere that I have a platform at this point to point us towards solutions. We can bellyache over the problems. It’s overwhelming, but that’s not going to solve anything. And so, yes, it looks like that right now. And even this invitation to be here with your listeners, every opportunity I get, I want to be able to unify and advocate for and speak for the cause.

Sandie [00:22:42] Well, this conversation has been really helpful in sensitizing allies to the point of view of survivors. So you’re definitely accomplishing your goal. I’m also really interested in learning more from you. And so how would I find more information about Keeya Vawar?

Keeya [00:23:06] Well, it’s pretty easy. I’m in the social media streets. Okay. So, I’m on LinkedIn and Instagram primarily. I’m on Facebook as well. Twitter, I’m trying y’all. It’s a lot. I’m 47 years old, let’s just say that. And so, you know, it gets overwhelming. I just have to stick with one platform and then I can send that message to the rest. And that’s Instagram. But I’m @keeyasays, that’s on Instagram where I live. And then also I have a website which is www.keeyavawar.com that’s Keeya Vawar .com. That is where you can find me.

Sandie [00:23:53] All right, so she has [email protected] to reach out to her. You can find her book on the website, and I’m going to go follow you on Instagram. I have so thoroughly enjoyed having this conversation and honestly, I feel like you have encouraged me and inspired me to do a better job of helping other allies join this cause in a way that is mutually respectful and with humility and as a true partner. I loved how you framed that as a marriage and we all need each other. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Keeya [00:24:49] Thank you, Dr. Sandie. It’s been an honor. I love what Global Center for Women and Justice is doing. And I’m a follower, fan and partner.

Sandie [00:24:59] All right.

Dave [00:25:00] Keeya, thank you so much for your time and sharing your story with us. We’re inviting you to take the first step along with us. Take a moment to hop online over at endinghumantrafficking.org. It will provide all the links, the resources we’ve mentioned in this episode, including all the links to Keeya’s ways to reach out. I hope you will take a moment to do that. Also on Endinghumantrafficking.org, you’ll see a opportunity to get a copy of Sandie’s guide, “The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking.” The guide will teach you the five critical things Sandie’s identified in her work that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it again by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org, plus lots of other resources on the website. If you are taking a moment to go over there, you’ll see an opportunity to find out more about the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate program. The next Ensure Justice conference coming up, March 3rd and 4th, 2023. And of course, an opportunity to get more connected with everything that’s going on here at the Global Center for Women in Justice. Take a moment to join us over there and send us a message if we can help. If today’s conversation has brought up questions for you, [email protected] is the very best way to reach us. Or again, just the endinghumantrafficking.org website. We will be back in two weeks with our next conversation. Sandie, always a pleasure. Take care.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 288, Practical Strategies to Go Beyond Awareness.

Production Credits [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:35] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:37] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. You hear us say that at the beginning of every episode, and we do invite you every time to start by studying the issues, and we often have that invitation at the end of our conversations. For those who haven’t already, go to endinghumantrafficking.org to download Sandie’s guide as a starting point. And yet there is so much that you can do, regardless of how much you have listened to us or what your level of expertise is, or perhaps you’re just picking this up for the very first time. The mission of the Global Center for Women and Justice is to take action and to move beyond just awareness and to actually take action in order to have some wonderful things begin to move forward. And you can, regardless if you’ve been thinking and contributing for a decade, or perhaps you’ve just downloaded this episode for the first time today. There are many things you can do that go beyond awareness and that you can take action on right now. Today we’re going to look at six. We’re often asked, Sandie and I, what can I do to move forward? In addition to listening to the show, in addition to going on the website, what can I do to move forward? And we’ve got six key things for you. Things that are very timely in the next couple of months that will help you to move forward and to take action to go beyond awareness. Sandie, I’m so glad we get to have this conversation because there’s a lot happening, isn’t there?

Sandie [00:02:13] Oh, my goodness. There really is. And when I think back to 2011, when you invited me to start this podcast, I had no idea we would still be doing it 11 years later at my desk. But the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was passed in October 2000 and shortly after the United Nations passed the Palermo Protocol. And now we’re going to be in 2023, and we are positioned to move way beyond just knowing about it, beyond just being aware. I keep telling people, don’t invite me to speak at an awareness event. I won’t do it because we are way beyond awareness. We need our whole community, teachers and preachers and business leaders, social workers, attorneys and judges. Every single part of society has a place at the table: government and technology, education and religion, business and nonprofits. And I’m using like generalized place at the table. But Dave, I still love the image of the pithari. That great big jug with handles baked into it all over so everybody can find a place to do something.

Dave [00:03:41] Indeed. And as we’re looking at these six areas today, we’d invite you to be thinking not all of them, but one of them. What’s your handle? What’s the one of these six that you might say, Hey, I’m ready to do that, to go beyond just awareness and to take on that handle and to lean in a bit. So, let’s look at our six resources and strategies that we can utilize to move forward, Sandie. Let’s start with the first one here.

Sandie [00:04:08] Well, the first one is to begin to alert your community now that January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Now that’s here in the United States. But internationally, many countries have a focus day or a week or even a month. And if your country doesn’t, because I love it that we have listeners in 148 countries, Dave. So, if you don’t have one, you can join us in July for the United Nations World Day Against Trafficking in Persons. Start there because it gives you an opening point, a response point, right in your community that is timely and leverages the visibility from press releases from task forces and the White House, federal organizations, state, local. We can all begin to increase our volume all at the same time.

Dave [00:05:17] And we’ll have one of our later items on the strategies, on the sixes, some specific things you may jump in on. But, you know, Sandie is just starting with the awareness first of making the invitation to others to know that this is happening and wherever you are locally, to begin to raise your awareness on what’s happening within your local community, organization, or country.

Sandie [00:05:40] So step one is plan now to be part of the national focus on prevention. And another good strategy is to use our Ending Human Trafficking podcast survivor tool kit. There is a lot of conversation and appreciation for survivor-informed and survivor led. So I want to challenge you to go to the survivor tool kit. If you’re an over achiever like me, you’re going to listen to all 11 or 12 survivor voices in that tool kit, episodes we’ve done with survivors. Or you may want to dial it back a little bit and choose a survivor voice to listen to each week. But either way, begin to intentionally listen to survivors. Do this on your commute or when you’re doing your walk around the block or your run around the track.

Dave [00:06:47] Indeed, this is our second strategy to choose a survivor voice a week or two. Grab that survivor toolkit. We’ve had many voices over the years from survivors here on the podcast. We have one coming up again in our next episode. Sandie, for those who would like to grab that survivor toolkit, what’s the best way to get access to it?

Sandie [00:07:10] You need to come to endinghumantrafficking.org and look under resources where you’ll see the survivor toolkit and you can download the whole thing or you can just do one at a time.

Dave [00:07:26] Perfect. So we’ll have that on the website, as always. A great starting point for you on utilizing the resources we already have here on the website and of course within the podcast. Speaking of practical strategies, number three is one of my favorite because it’s so useful and so practical in so many ways for something we’re all doing: shopping.

Sandie [00:07:46] That’s right. And it’s a way to involve your kids. You don’t want to give your kids the survivor stories to listen to, Dave.

Dave [00:07:53] Yeah, exactly. But the Sweat and Toil app is a wonderful starting point for age appropriate conversations. We’ve talked about it on the show before, but for those who haven’t heard it, Sandie, what is it and what’s the value in thinking about it from a standpoint of trafficking?

Sandie [00:08:10] It’s an app you on your phone or any kind of device that uses Android or Apple apps where you can actually look at the products that you’re purchasing that seem just normal products, but find the hidden human trafficking, labor trafficking that might be evident in that product. And it’s based on more than a thousand pages of research. It gets updated regularly and we’re able to determine if the chocolate that you’re eating is tainted by child labor. And I was recently in a training where former Ambassador John Cotton Richmond cited evidence that 80% of the chocolate we eat has child labor in it. I don’t want that chocolate. And Sweat and Toil app will help me identify when the supply chains have been carefully vetted. And I can share this with the kids in my life and begin to start teaching them and encouraging their empathy for those in other spaces, other countries, other continents that are vulnerable to being exploited in human trafficking.

Dave [00:09:40] I always use the app when I’m in the produce section and I’ve learned to check buying blueberries because there’s, I can’t remember exactly where, there’s one or two places that if the blueberries came from this country of origin, that there’s a concern. And I always make sure to check it, because you can tell right on the label where did the produce come from? And I make a choice based on that app. And as we’ve talked about before, there’s maybe not as a starting point, but there’s also an opportunity to potentially if you see the kind of products in the store that you frequent and the people who are running that store, that organization, there’s also opportunities for conversations to start prompting some of the what are you carrying? What made you think differently as far as your supply chain, just based on what you’re seeing on store shelves? That’s a more of an advanced thing, but it’s an opportunity to really go beyond just awareness and make a difference in a way that is accessible for so many of us.

Sandie [00:10:34] You’re being a voice, Dave. The next thing on our list is the most exciting for me.

Dave [00:10:41] Indeed. Number four. Yeah.

Sandie [00:10:43] So you all know that my friends Shayne Moore and Kim Yim and I released a book called Ending Human Trafficking: Strategies for the Church Today. We did that in April. We are back with the Ending Human Trafficking book challenge. And there are three ways to participate in the challenge. And we want your feedback. We want you to tell us how it goes. We want to know how many people you recruited to join you. And then when we hear back from you on feedback at endinghumantrafficking.org, we’ll report back in in February. So here’s the three challenges. First of all, the first one is read the book in 31 days. So we’re linking this to January, National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. You’ve got 31 days to read the book. The second challenge is send the book to three people. And actually, that’s going to be a great Christmas gift. And I this morning talked to our publishers at InterVarsity Press and they have given us a discount link effective from December 12th, 2022 to January 31st, 2023. And that code is EHTlearn. So when you go to IVPress.com, you’ll get 30% off plus free shipping on the paperback book. That’s a great gift idea.

Dave [00:12:33] And it’s such a great starting point from beginning to end, although there’s never truly an end of course, Sandie. So many of the things that are in the book, of course we have talked about on the podcast over the years, but we’ve talked about them in different times, in a different order on the podcast. The book is a very great starting point for beginning to end. What are the key things I need to know? And particularly as you invited us, Sandie, if you’re getting together others who also share the heart you have for this and want to learn more. What a great starting point for a group or with a partner to begin to go through the process of learning together and then deciding what’s our piece, what’s our handle to take on more. And that is a wonderful starting point for again, going beyond awareness of starting to study the issues, be a voice, and ultimately helping us to end human trafficking.

Sandie [00:13:28] And that is the third way you can participate in the book challenge. We want you to put together a group, read together, discuss. We’re putting out a leaders guide. It’s not lengthy, it’ll be short. And you can arrange to do it once a week. Or you can do pattern where a couple of people have already started this, where they do a chapter a week and there are eight chapters. You can do it online or in person. We just want to know how that goes. And there is so much power in doing things together, collaboration. And so we will want to follow what happens with your group as you join together to read Ending Human Trafficking.

Dave [00:14:22] So all of that is under number four, the Ending Human Trafficking book challenge. So we’ll have all this linked up, of course, in the episode notes, and that leads us to the fifth of the sixth, Sandie. And this comes back to what we talked about earlier of the prevention month events that are upcoming. And as you mentioned, we do have listeners all over the world and I know that we have many listeners here on the West Coast of the States. And so there are a bunch of events that if you happen to be here or if you happen to be traveling in this area in the next month or two, that are coming up locally that the Global Center for Women and Justice is involved with.

Sandie [00:15:02] And this can kind of be a springboard for you to think about what you can do locally if you aren’t nearby. We’re going to start January with a Saturday morning, January 7th, train the trainer with the facilitators guide and everything for Ending Human Trafficking for the book. And it’ll be here at Vanguard from 9 AM to noon on January 7th. Then on January 11th, which is a single awareness day recognized nationally. And so we’re going to be screening a new documentary produced with Homeland Security Case Study and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called “Sextortion.” We’ll be screening that here in Orange County at Vanguard. At the same time, it’s being screened at the Pentagon January 11th. You can find the information in our show notes. On January 18th, you know we’re big proponents of collaboration. We don’t have to do all of it right here at Vanguard. We’re joining our Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force at Cal State Fullerton. And with that, our Live2Free students will be on hand working with youth from middle school to high school, and that’s January 18th. And then we’re not just staying home, we’re going up. My coauthor, Kim Yim and I, to the Bay Area in partnership with BAATC, Bay Area Anti-Trafficking Coalition. And we’re going to be leading two very unique events that are being piloted in January. One is with a group of generous and hungry faith-based donors who want to learn and want to financially support and help strengthen local and global anti-trafficking efforts with a more savvy framework. They want to understand where great work is being done, and they want to be able to call out smoke and mirrors. The idea that there are sometimes organizations that raise a lot of money and have a great website, but you can’t really figure out what is being done that is lasting, accountable. How do we evaluate? And that’s going to be part of that project up in the Bay Area, San Francisco, still the West Coast. And then finally, January 28, the last Saturday of the month, we are hosting at Vanguard Smart Families, Safe Kids, 11 to 2 PM. The link will be in the show notes. Our goal is to equip families, moms, dads, grandparents, uncles on how they can make sure the kids in their community are safe. Much of the resources at that particular event are being uploaded to our Web site, so you’ll be able to see versions of the content for the parents as well.

Dave [00:18:36] I love your invitation too. If you’re not local, not going to be on the West Coast of the states, that this may be a inspiration, a starting point for you if thinking about what would be the kinds of things you’d be doing during awareness month, the activities, wherever you are locally. And you may start with something like a screening of a documentary, a movie or a starting point, or getting the book and having an event around that. Any one of these could be a starting point if there are not currently events happening around you. And of course, we’re going to have these all on the website, endinghumantrafficking.org. And speaking of the website, that’s actually a great starting point as well for the sixth resource, which is the Podcast Challenge Toolkit. This is exciting, Sandie.

Sandie [00:19:22] So, Dave, you’re going to love the 31 day challenge tool kit. Many of our listeners have already read the book. They are avid followers of the podcast. And now here’s an opportunity to invite your friends to join you in a podcast challenge. 31 days of podcasts. There is a toolkit called 31 Day Podcast Challenge in our show notes and in our resources so that you will be able to introduce your friends to 31 days of podcasts that will help them be equipped right now to move beyond awareness to action.

Dave [00:20:14] All of this you can find at endinghumantrafficking.org and our invitation to, as always, is just to start. Don’t try to do all six of these. Choose one. What’s the handle that feels right to you right now? Maybe it is downloading the Sweat and Toil app. What a great place to start. Take it on your next shopping trip with you. Use it with your kids or other people that you’re shopping with as a learning tool for awareness about what’s happening. Maybe it’s grabbing the book and reading it yourself or maybe connecting with others. Maybe it’s joining us at one of the events live or downloading the toolkit. But pick one that’s right for you. And if you do that, it gets you moving on beyond just awareness, of course, but actually really taking action for yourself, for your community, and helping support the good work that we’re all trying to do to end human trafficking through the Global Center for Women and Justice.

Sandie [00:21:10] I’m especially encouraging people not to do this alone. We say this all the time in fighting human trafficking. Don’t go it alone. Find somebody else. Invite somebody else into your space to join you in this challenge. Every time I start a January New Year’s resolution, Dave, I need to be accountable to somebody else. Or I’m going to say, well, I don’t think I really meant that. So find somebody else. The benefit of that is you’ll bring new talent, new energy, new passion for ending human trafficking in our lifetime.

Dave [00:21:54] And so much of this is about partnership as we talk about so often on the show, right, Sandie. The partnership starts with each one of us of finding the partners, our friends, our family, the people who care about this, our organizations, our faith based communities. There’s partnership opportunities everywhere. It doesn’t need to be two large organizations coming together. It begins with just a single conversation, a single relationship, two people reading a book together. That’s our invitation for you to start. And if you do that, what a wonderful starting point going into the new year that supports all of us in ending human trafficking. Sandie this is normally the part of the show where I have resources for everyone, but boy, we’ve covered a lot of resources already. So I’ll just simply say the starting point for you is to go over to endinghumantrafficking.org, find the episode notes for this episode, episode 288, and you’ll see everything detailed there. And we’d love to hear what you decide to do. If you take a moment to drop us a line and share with us what you are doing, where you began. We’d love to know. Feedback at endinghumantrafficking.org is the very best way to get that message to us. And Sandie and I are wishing you well as you get started on taking action here in these next few weeks.

Sandie [00:23:06] We can’t wait to hear from you.

Dave [00:23:09] And Sandie, we, of course, will be back again in two weeks for many more conversations. Survivor voice coming up in our next episode again and we’ll be into 2023 with new episodes. Have a great day, everyone, and we’ll see you back in two weeks. Take care.

Sandie and Samantha Miller, a child safety and restorative justice consultant, discuss how parents and organizations that work with children can empower children with tools to protect themselves and create a safe space for children to disclose harm. The outline five preventative safety rules and seven elements for an effective child safety protocol.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 287, What Can We Learn About Child Safety from a Child Abuse Investigator, with Samantha Miller.

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

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

Sandie [00:00:37] 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. Sandie, I’m so glad for us to be able to welcome today an expert that will help us to look at the challenges of child safety and really help us to frame what’s next and how we can learn from her experience. I’m so glad to welcome Samantha Miller to the show. She’s the founder of Voices Heard LLC and serves as a consultant on child safety and restorative justice. She conducts training and inquiries into allegations of current and historic child abuse, particularly within the Christian ministry context. She’s trained as a child forensic interviewer and spent years as a federal investigator in the United States. She has a master’s degree in Intercultural Studies from Wheaton College in Illinois, where she focused her thesis on restorative justice in human trafficking. She currently volunteers as a facilitator for her city’s restorative justice program and previously volunteered as a member of Circles of Support and Accountability in Denver, where she joined a circle of other volunteers to provide pro-social support and accountability to persons convicted of sex offenses after they were released from prison. Samantha is passionate about keeping the demand side of the human trafficking issue at the forefront of the discussion about how to best pursue justice and restoration. Samantha, so glad to have you with us.

Samantha [00:02:03] Thank you for having me.

Sandie [00:02:05] I’m so excited to have you here because I met you during the pandemic when one of our colleagues started a book club to talk about the literature in anti-human trafficking circles. And it was so fun. Once a month, sometimes a couple of times, we all got together on Zoom. And now Zoom is one of our best friends, right?

Samantha [00:02:31] That’s right.

Sandie [00:02:32] Yes. So, there’s so much we could talk about because I do want to talk about restorative justice, but today, what I really want to focus on is your expertise on child safety. There’s been a flurry of news and social media posts that my friends with young children, when they see them, the first thing they ask me is, what do I do to protect my child? And you not only have studied the issues around protecting children, but unfortunately, you’ve become an expert in investigating child abuse. So, let’s start with a little bit of your background on how you begin an investigation like this.

Samantha [00:03:26] Yeah, I’m happy to talk about that. My background was law enforcement, but I no longer am in the law enforcement field. Right now I use those skills and other skills to help organizations, primarily faith-based organizations who have workers all over the world. And because of the Catholic Church sex assault scandal and others that I know we’ve all heard about in the news, plus the MeToo movement, a lot of organizations are receiving allegations of child abuse and they’re trying to figure out how to respond to them. And one of the things that many of them want is for an external or outside person to lead those investigations or to at least consult with them to be sure that they’re responding in an unbiased and thorough way. And so that’s where I come in. I use my background as a child forensic interviewer, and my knowledge about abuse and interviewing people and travel to speak with the people who brought forth the allegations, and people who could potentially have witnessed what happened, and then the people who are accused of misconduct. And then I produce a report for the organization and in that report has some suggestions and some context that I build in so they understand. And then they can take that information and they act on it from an employment perspective. So it’s a human resources inquiry or a civil investigation. It’s not criminal. And so that’s where I come in in my current work. I see all sorts of things from–when we hear child abuse, our minds jump to sex abuse. But there’s other kinds. There are neglect situations, there’s physical or emotional or spiritual abuse that also can come into play. And those are all things that we look at to hopefully improve the organization’s policies and response and make a safer environment for children. And that’s the ultimate goal, is to make it safe for children to be in these organizations, safe for them to come forward if they had something happen and leave an opportunity for them to get some help. And so yeah, Sandie, that’s where I come from right now. The work that I’m doing.

Sandie [00:05:55] I love that. During October Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we did a series of events on our Vanguard campus. And one of the things that we wanted to do was set the tone that it is safe to tell. And I know from talking to you that that is something that you really make a point of emphasizing. And so let’s kind of start with how you go back. You mentioned the MeToo movement. So how do you help someone who has not told but has had this buried injury, moral injury, how do you help them feel safe to tell you?

Samantha [00:06:46] Great question. I would answer that question differently if it’s a child or an adult. A lot of the people that bring allegations forward to these organizations are adults. And we see that in the research, especially when it comes to sexual abuse, that it’s very common and expected for there to be a lapse of time between the time that it happened and the time that somebody comes forward. And so one of the things I do when I speak with people that are adults sometimes, like I said before, I’ll interview the person who brought the allegation, but then I’ll also interview other people who could have witnessed. And when I approach those interviews, I assume that some of those people could also have been harmed. And I see my job as–the way I describe it to people–is opening a door and inviting people to walk in. I would never try to get somebody to disclose something they’re not ready to. A lot of people take years of counseling before they can come forward. A lot of people wait until the person who harmed them is deceased or until their own parents are gone so that they won’t know about what happened. And so I see it as a very personal thing. Some people never tell their whole lives what’s happened to them if they’ve been harmed. And what we can do really is to normalize things for people and try to create a safe space where people feel that they can share. But then, if they do share some things and they’re feeling shame or guilt, then I try to normalize the feelings. I’ve seen and spoken with a lot of people and there are many themes that run across many different people. And so when people say, I never told anyone until now, that would be a time that I could say, ‘That’s very normal. Many people don’t tell for years and years after, and you’re not to blame for doing that.’ And that helps. And I think when we’re talking about children, a way that we can encourage them to disclose if something inappropriate has happened is our attitude when they tell us anything that is concerning. If we have a calm and level response with them, we show that we’re approachable on any topic, then it opens the door for them to come forward. Often with children, what we’ll find is that they will test the waters before they will disclose. So they might say that something happened to their friend at school and then they’ll see how you respond to that. And if you respond in an elevated way, or if you don’t listen to them, then some children will choose not to continue or to tell you what happened to them. And so as a parent myself and for my friends who are parents, I encourage them to listen to their children. And for children, I encourage them that if something happens to them and it’s inappropriate or makes them uncomfortable and they are trying to tell their parent or their guardian or adult they trust and that person doesn’t listen to them, that they need to keep saying it until someone listens, because it’s really important. As we all know, we get really busy and we have all this technology and all these to do’s on our list that it’s easy to not listen. And so that’s part of it. There are many dimensions, but I’m just touching on a few. But yeah, just to keep telling until someone listens to you.

Sandie [00:10:17] Okay. So you have a guide: five body safety rules for your children. Let’s walk through those five rules.

Samantha [00:10:27] Great. Yeah. And these are things that are a combination of best practices from a variety of sources. This information that I’m talking about now, I know will be available to those of you who want to look at it in writing later. But right now, I was just going to talk through them so that you could see what I teach my own children and what I tell friends and community members to talk to their children about. So the first one is that my body is mine and belongs to me; I can say no. This includes who the child wants to hug or kiss. Oftentimes it’s tempting to say, ‘Give Grandma a hug. Tell her goodbye, or give Grandpa a kiss before he leaves. You have to.’ What we’re trying to do here with this rule is show children that they are in control of themselves and that they have the ability and the right to say no when they’re uncomfortable. And that’s building a skill set that helps them later if they’re in a situation with somebody who has bad intentions. So, they can choose how they want to greet people, how they want to say goodbye. What I say to my children is, do you want to give them a high five, a handshake, just wave at them, give them a hug? And I’ll give them several options. I also encourage the use of safe touch versus good touch. Sometimes things can feel good that aren’t actually safe for children. So I use the language safe touches versus bad touches. Bad touch can be actually on any part of the body. And so I encourage and empower my kids to say no if any touch makes them feel uncomfortable in any part of their body. So that can be somebody grabbing your arm to aggressively or pushing you. And when they do stand up and say, I didn’t like when you did that, then we praise them and say, ‘That’s good, thanks for letting me know.’ Your body is yours and you get to choose how people touch it. And then with that first rule is that we encourage children to tell an adult they trust if someone touches them in a way that makes them uncomfortable. So I don’t mean just on a part of the body that some of us would call private parts. I mean, any part of the body that makes them uncomfortable. And this is, like I said before, this is building trust and being an approachable person to connect with. And these are all skills that we’re building to help our children prevent, and if something happens, to be able to disclose. So that first one is my body is mine and belongs to me; I can say no.

Sandie [00:13:05] I just want to say I really like that we’re looking at any part of your body because the hyperfocus can tend to make this feel a little more intense. Just because the energy that mom or dad or an aunt that’s talking with the child brings to the table. And any body part, I know I’ve talked to survivors who said nothing ever happened. This person would just pat me on the leg. And there wasn’t anything to tell. I just knew I didn’t like it. And so I think that kind of speaks to something we’ve talked about with grooming. It doesn’t have to be really intense at the beginning.

Samantha [00:13:56] That’s right. That’s right. And that’ll come in one of these other rules. But this trusting children’s instincts, that’s something that is really important. Often when we look back at these situations where there’s been a serial abuser, a serial sexual abuser, many of the interviews will show that children knew or felt that that person was unsafe before that person ever really spent time alone with the child. And so listen to your children for sure. And at the bottom of the sheet, when you all have a chance to look, there’s a list of books and resources. One of those books is called “God Made All of Me.” It’s a book that helps children protect their bodies. And in that book, it talks about how every body part is good. So there are not certain body parts that are bad that we can’t talk about and other ones that are good. And that feeds into one of the other rules. I’m skipping to number three, but I’ll come back to number two. So the body parts should be taught to children in the correct name, and that enables the child to one de-stigmatizes the part of the body so the child can talk about it and know they can tell you if something happens. But two, it makes it more likely that a child can go and disclose to anyone. Because if you have a, let’s call it a nickname or a pet name for a part of the body because you’re uncomfortable saying the word penis, you teach them–there’s a variety of other names I’ve heard that people come up with a name that other people wouldn’t know. Then people put their children actually at a disadvantage for telling somebody what happened to them. So the body parts that are covered by underwear or bathing suit should be taught to the children with the correct name. And that would be a penis, vagina, breast, nipples, bottom. Your child should know what their body parts are called and that nobody should touch those parts or ask your child to touch their private parts or show them pictures of private parts. Often we forget the mouth. That isn’t necessarily a private part, but it’s a personal part of your body that also it’s important to tell children that others should not be touching the mouth or putting anything in their mouth. Children are very literal, as I’m sure many of you who spend time with kids know. So if you give them a very strict list of things that are okay and not okay, then they get a bit confused in the gray areas. So what we’re trying to do is show them the correct names, but then give them a lot of gray areas to talk through. So only those people taking care of the child and helping them stay clean and healthy can touch those parts. So parents or grandparents who are helping clean them in a bath or the doctor when you’re sick and a mom or dad is in the room. And so this is another way of having a conversation with your child and giving them situations that would be appropriate so that they can think through it ahead of time. Children do a lot better if they’re prepared and given time to practice responses than if they’re surprised with something that they’ve never talked to anyone about. So that would be the private part section of the body safety rules. Another thing that I haven’t spoken about, I have listed as number two. It corresponds to what I was just saying. So this is practicing with your children a safety network of five adults they trust that would believe them. And so this is the kids choice. And this is a conversation where you say, who are five people that you could tell anything to that you know would believe you if anything happened to you and you needed to go to them. And then you actually write those people’s names down and you say to the child, if something happens or somebody touches you in a way that makes you feel uncomfortable, you can go to grandma, and you list all the names of all the people that they came up with, and that protects them because they don’t feel alone. It also prepares them to know who to go to and to be ready. And there are two more. One I touched on. It’s the early warning signs. If the child feels scared, shaky, or unsafe with someone, then we encourage them to tell an adult they trust and those five people that they identified, it’d be good to give them a copy of these body safety rules so it’s not the first time they’ve heard of these. So then if the child comes and says, I feel unsafe around that person, I don’t want to go near them or talk to them, then they won’t be dismissed by those people who are well-intended but didn’t realize that this was one of your body safety rules. Another good thing that I’ve seen people do is come up with a family word. One of the resources down below, it’s called “I Said No: A Kid to Kid Guide for Keeping Privates Private.” And that is a book that was written by a child and his mom after he had a situation at a sleepover where he felt unsafe and he was encouraged to join in to some inappropriate behavior. And so this family word is a word the child can use if they’re at something like a sleepover to alert the parents that something’s wrong. It’s hard for kids to draw attention to themselves. And as you can imagine, for many of us, it’s hard to speak out when you feel that there’s peer pressure. But if there’s a family word that all of you know, they can call home and just use that word, and you as the parent know immediately something’s not right and to go pick them up at the slumber party.

Sandie [00:19:52] I think sometimes we overthink that the use of a family word and it can be something that doesn’t make you feel comfortable. And so I’m going to share my family word when I was growing up and started going and staying at somebody’s house or getting invited places. And if I said to my mom or my dad, pretty please–because I’m not that kind of person–they knew something wasn’t quite making me feel comfortable and they would just say, I think it’s time for you to come home. We’re going to come pick you up or I don’t think you should go to so-and-so’s house, you’ve got homework. They would give me a graceful way out. I love that strategy. It doesn’t have to be some really weird signal. It can be pretty simple.

Samantha [00:20:46] Great point. Yes. And oftentimes with children, they’ll have somatic symptoms. So they’ll have something like a stomach ache when they’re anxious or nervous about something. So if you have a child that’s consistently telling you they have a stomach ache, you should be paying attention to that. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re being sexually abused or touched inappropriately, but it can mean that something is making them very uncomfortable and they don’t have the words to explain it. And so these early warning signs, we should listen to them and pay attention to them. And I tell my kids, I’m on your team. I believe you and I trust you. And so they always know that if they come to me and say something happened, I’m going to be on their side. And that, again, is part of that being approachable and building trust with your kids from a young age.

Sandie [00:21:41] Okay, let’s dive into number five.

Samantha [00:21:44] Yeah, the last one is huge one for me. It’s secrets versus surprises. And so the concept here is that it is okay to keep surprises, but we do not keep secrets. And how this looks in my family is we don’t even use the word secret. We don’t encourage the kids to use the word secret, and we correct the word secret with the word surprise. And so if grandma or grandpa comes over and whispers, I’m going to tell you a secret. This is why these body safety rules are important to give to Grandma and Grandpa. We want them to know we don’t keep secrets in our house. And my kids have said to adults, we don’t do secrets. And then I’ll explain to the adults why and what that means. And so it’s a way of educating people. But surprises are something that are always eventually told, like a Christmas gift that you’re keeping as a surprise for someone. It’s a good thing that’s going to make someone feel good. You’re just waiting to tell them until it’s the right time. A secret is something that is not told and could make you feel bad or uncomfortable. And so sometimes in our English language we’ll just use the word secret, but we actually mean surprise. And that’s why it’s important to clarify the difference for children who could be vulnerable if they’re in a situation where they are taught that secrets are okay. And so my husband and I always say to our kids, we never keep secrets from mom and dad. And the reason this is, is you touched on grooming earlier. Grooming is this process of building trust with children, but also with the adults that are responsible for those children. So somebody who may have nefarious intent or may be looking to prepare a child for sexual touch or inappropriate touch, will go through this grooming process of building trust with the children and the adults in order to gain access or alone time with the child. And part of grooming is setting up a relationship of secrecy. And so this includes things like breaking a rule with the child and then telling the child, if you tell anyone that I touched you, I’m going to tell them you did this. And so any time that even the most minor secret is brought up as normal, we are trying to teach our children to tell us proactively that somebody is asking them to keep a secret. And so grooming is a subtle behavior that initially doesn’t appear inappropriate, but it’s a process that builds a situation where a child can be really vulnerable. And I have an example about this from real life: a situation where a teacher at school, when no one else is around, is giving children piggybacks, for instance, and afterwards says, all the kids love it and they’re laughing. And afterwards the teacher says, ‘Don’t tell anyone that I did this because I could lose my job.’ And the children then, they didn’t use the word secret, but they understood the idea that it’s something we’re not ever supposed to tell anyone else. And if you prepared your child and talk to them about how we don’t do that, then that should initially and immediately let your child know something doesn’t feel safe and they tell you. And so that could just be a teacher who wants to be cool and wants to give a kid a piggyback. Or that could be part of a grooming process of building secrecy and later giving this teacher access to do things that are inappropriate with children. We don’t want to wait and find out. We want to address these things in an early and quick fashion. Both training our staff and our friends and family and also protecting our children about what is safe and what is not.

Sandie [00:25:46] And I think that really then kind of leads into the last point that we’ve got to cover here is if you’re any kind of work that involves children, having a child safety policy is imperative, whether you’re at a school, a church, a community after school program, talk to us about what needs to be in that policy.

Samantha [00:26:11] Yes, it is really important. So the policy needs to include several things. A good policy does, and there are some resources. The Child Safety and Protection Network is one. It’s a network of faith-based organizations and schools that are trying to share best practice standards. And they train organizations on these seven key elements of an effective child safety program and the elements they go over as government. So making sure your organization has the top down support of a child safety program and then definitions, that’s defining things like grooming, like sexual abuse, inappropriate behavior, and making sure all the people who work in the organization know those definitions and know what is allowed and not allowed in our organization. Another huge part is screening, making sure that your organization has the correct screening mechanisms in place to find people who are a risk to children before they’re included in the organization. Training is one of the seven key elements. That’s teaching the staff and volunteers what your child safety policy is, but also teaching children some body safety rules and who they can report to if your organization works with children. And then setting really clear protocols for child care in the organization is another part of those seven keys of a good child safety program and coming up with a response process. That’s what I was talking about earlier. When an allegation comes forward, does your organization have a clear protocol for responding to allegations? And then the last one of those seven is member care. So that’s being sure that your organization has personnel who are providing care for others that are going through a hard time, who have a child safety issue, who need counseling. That member care before something becomes something that needs a response process and who checks in with the people who are going through one of those child safety responses. So, like I said, that’s the Child Safety and Protection Network. They train organizations on effective child safety programs and those seven key elements of an effective program. So that would be the best way to summarize the things that I would encourage all organizations to have. I would encourage you, if you leave your children under the care of anyone else, to ask them what their faculty handbook says or their child safety policy is and to review that. There’s another organization called the Evangelical Council for Abuse Prevention, and this is a group that helps organizations improve their policies. So there are resources out there and there are free resources. But before you leave your children with people or before you oversee children, you should really be sure that there’s a child safety program in place.

Sandie [00:29:26] What stands out to me in this description of a good, clear process and policy is that you never said, ‘Oh, and do a background check.’ That just makes me so frustrated. It’s like the people that may be more inclined to abuse may never have been caught. So a child workers background check is maybe a beginning place, but it is not the end. And so really appreciate your description.

Samantha [00:29:59] I’m glad you said that. I’ve had a lot of people that I’ve asked, before I leave my children with them, ‘What is your child safety policy?’ And many the initial and only thing they will say is exactly what you just said. We do a background check. People need to realize that the majority of people who harm children would never come up on a background check. And it is still important to do those state and federal background checks. But the background check process is bigger than that. It includes calling previous references and asking child safety related questions to those references and then asking those references for other references that the candidate did not tell you about and asking those people child safety related questions about the candidate. So there are other ways to do a good, thorough background check that’s more than just saying if they’ve ever been convicted of a sex offense.

Sandie [00:30:57] Wow. Okay. So we’ve run out of time and we have to have more conversations. We will invite you back. But I want to remind people that we will put the links that Samantha has given us, the resources. There’s one more thing that she said to me in an offline conversation. When you read any of these books on the book list, where do you put them after you read them?

Samantha [00:31:25] Yeah, with my children, I put these books in among their other normal books. These books are written for children and they have pictures in them that kids can look at. So I put them with their normal books because these books are only effective if you are regularly talking about them. The point of these resources is teaching them the basic rules in a non-threatening way, in a way that’s not awkward for the parent, but it also is allowing the children to, it’s inviting them opening that door, like I said, to disclose if anything has happened since the last time you had a conversation. So I put it among their other books, and when they choose books for me to read at night, maybe they’ll choose “God Made All of Me” and I’ll read it. And they may have a question, these books have discussion questions. So they may have a question about something that happened to a kid at school. Always pay attention when it’s hypothetical like that, a kid at school or someone else because they could be talking about themselves and just be available and approachable to your kids. There’s also a good email at the bottom there, Protect Young Minds. It’s also called Defend Young Minds, and it gives a lot of digital self-defense information. That’s what they call it, digital self-defense. So that’s resources. If your child stumbled upon pornography or saw a picture that they shouldn’t have seen in the digital world, and so this helps you protect your children from that or to talk to them about it if they have come across something inappropriate. Can I say one last thing? I just want to say that if your child is harmed and they do disclose to you, the most important thing you can do is stay calm. Tell them they did the right thing by telling you and they are not in trouble and it is not their fault. And then you are making it your continuing to keep that trust up. What we find with research is that if children disclose close to the time that the event happened, then the impact on their long term life is a lot less than if they keep that a secret for most of their lives. The emotional impact is less, so we want children to disclose. These rules are to help prevent and keep our kids safe, but also to make it so they can disclose, so we can get them counseling and help if something happens. So it’s not the end of the world if something happens, we just need to respond right.

Sandie [00:33:51] Wow. Thank you. Dave, close us out.

Dave [00:33:55] Thank you so much for this conversation. What a critical conversation for every parent or anyone who cares about a young person for them to hear. So thank you so much, Samantha. What a privilege for us to hear from you. And we’re inviting you to take the next step. We mentioned there’s going to be a bunch of links available. Go over to endinghumantrafficking.org. That’s where you’ll find all of the links, the notes from this episode. And it’s also a place where you can take the next step as well. You can download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll show you the five things Sandie’s identified in her work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking again. You get access to that at endinghumantrafficking.org. We’re also expanding our community of advocates by inviting you to become a patron of the show. If you’re interested in supporting our work, in helping to end human trafficking through the work we’re doing through the podcast, we invite you to go over to Endinghumantrafficking.org. There’s a Patreon link where you can get access to more content and resources. It’s a simple and affordable membership, and it’s a great opportunity not only to support the show, but also to continue to help us to get the word out about those who want to support ending human trafficking. Again, all the details are over at endinghumantrafficking.org. As always, we’re so thrilled to have you as part of this conversation so we’re all learning together. Sandie. I’ll see you back in two weeks.

Sandie [00:35:27] Thank you, Dave.

Dave [00:35:29] Thanks, everyone. Take care.

Sandie is joined by Jeni Sorensen from Poverty Action to discuss research methods and data gathering approaches to help NGO’s evaluate their programs. They look at the different types of data, how to design your research, and existing tools.

To get more information about HTRI’s program evaluations or their competitive fund and research funds, contact [email protected].

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 286, How Do We Measure Prevention, with Jeni Sorenson.

Production Credits [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:34] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:37] 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 of course, a big part of that difference is prevention, right Sandie? We’ve talked about this.

Sandie [00:00:48] Oh, yes! It’s my favorite topic.

Dave [00:00:49] Again and again as we’ve gone forward. And of course, we’re going to come back to this today. I’m so glad to be able to welcome an expert for us to really dive in on this further. Jeni Sorenson is a human trafficking specialist with 20 years of experience designing, managing and evaluating programs to combat human trafficking in the U.S. and around the world. She currently serves as director of IPAs Human Trafficking Research Initiative, which fosters partnerships between researchers and program implementers to build and carry out rigorous research studies. Previously, she served as director of WIN Rock International’s Human Trafficking and Safe Migration Programs, where she oversaw a $70 million portfolio of counter trafficking programs in Asia and Latin America. She holds a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin and an MPP from Georgetown University. Jeni, what a pleasure to have you on the show.

Jeni [00:01:42] Thank you so much for having me.

Sandie [00:01:43] So I’m really excited. You’re a hero in my ecosystem to use some of the language people are starting to talk about here, and I like to talk about prevention the same way we talk about brushing our teeth. But it’s not very helpful in anti-trafficking because we don’t have an easy way to be able to do every six month checkups with every kid that we give a toothbrush to or that we give something to that we think is going to prevent them from being exploited. I want a vaccine. But prevention in this frame is very challenging to actually measure what we’re doing for real impact. So how would you describe prevention?

Jeni [00:02:41] So I think prevention for human trafficking, I think to really understand and appreciate what’s involved, you need to kind of look at the vulnerabilities of different populations. And so my lens comes more from the international realm because that’s where I focused my efforts. Although Sandie, I know we’ve talked about the U.S. context and the different things that we can do here. But when you’re thinking with any population, really, you want to think about what makes certain groups of people more likely to be vulnerable to human trafficking. So are they more migratory populations? Do they have limited options where they live? In some countries, like in Bangladesh, early marriage is a contributing factor to human trafficking, where women get married off at an early age and they’re less likely to have their health because they’re having children younger, and then they’re also less likely to have different employment options. Another kind of vulnerability could be, we would call it relative deprivation in this field. So are people taking risky paths because they see that their neighbor may have more than them and maybe that neighbor has migrated for work and come back and what they see is someone who has a better house or has a bunch of additional things that they don’t have. And maybe that neighbor hasn’t shared that they had experienced exploitation or trafficking in that journey. So when we’re talking about prevention again, we really want to think about what are the contributing factors, and then how can we address those factors to and propose interventions so that we can make people more secure where they are or if they choose to migrate for opportunities? That’s absolutely a logical decision that many people make. But if they choose to migrate for work, how can we help protect them? What protective factors can we give them? What kind of information can we give them? So some of the things in prevention, we see a lot of different approaches to helping these communities. And some of those are, for example, providing financial stability. So you might be looking at loans or in-kind grants or cash transfers to communities. They might be providing livelihood interventions or trainings, job trainings, and again, information provision. So providing access to resources for people who have migrated may find that they’re in situations of exploitation. But the big picture for the U.S. and for any other country in the world that where people are migrating to or trying to find additional opportunities for themselves is what legal systems and international laws are in place. And then are they set up to protect migrants and provide legal aid, provide support for worker rights? And that’s kind of the major prevention context that we would be looking at for human trafficking.

Sandie [00:05:10] So when I sit at a table with my colleagues and we start talking about those vulnerabilities that increase someone’s risk of being exploited, we always have wonderful ideas, like the microloans, like the skills building, resilience, all of those things. But we often start off with a great idea and then we don’t really know how to measure if we’re actually having any measurable, real impact. So what does that look like in your world?

Jeni [00:05:48] Yeah. So measuring prevention activities is really hard because it’s hard to measure the absolutes of something. So, if you’re preventing human trafficking, you can’t say this thing didn’t happen, or you can, but it is complex. I should take a step back and say you can actually measure that. You can kind of take intermediate steps to look at what you’re doing. And so what I would say is if you’re interested in working on combating this issue and you want to work on the prevention side, then you should look at what is the thing you are trying to change. And so it’s really important to put into place your theory of change. And so you’re saying this is happening, this is happening, and so this is what we’re going to do. And so you’re putting a set of interventions in place, and this is the result that you think you’re going to see. And so then you try to measure that and you need to think about how are you measuring the interventions that you’re proposing and how are you identifying what is success from this? So a lot of interimmediate steps we look at are how many trainings have you implemented or how many people have access to loans or thinking about those kinds of process or programmatic measurements. And those are important just to, again, make sure that if you have a program to prevent trafficking, that the program you have is actually doing the thing you think it’s going to do. So you’ve got donor funds or government funds, and you want to make sure that you’re providing the services that you said that you would do. But then to gauge the impact of that is kind of another step forward from there. And so once you have an idea for an intervention, you think that it works really well, then you need to be putting into place, we would suggest an impact evaluation. And so where I work, it’s called Innovations for Poverty Action and we’re a research focused NGO. And the main thing that we focus on is called randomized controlled trials or impact evaluations. And it’s a specific kind of research model where you randomize populations for your target populations and then you say, okay, this population or these people are going to get this intervention and these people aren’t. And so you have a control group and a treatment group and you can have multiple treatment groups. But what you’re trying to measure is what would have happened in the absence of this intervention. So then you can really say with statistical rigor that the program that you implemented actually did have an impact. And you can show that because you can show that there’s a control group that didn’t get the intervention. There’s a treatment group that got the intervention. And you were able to use really highly specialized measurements to look at the difference between those two populations. And it’s hard, again, if you’re not randomized at the beginning, it’s really hard to say whether what you did had an impact. You can show what happened with the population you worked with, but again, you don’t know what would have happened in the absence of that program. So we really try to promote the use of these impact evaluations for kind of more mature interventions with groups that have been doing this for a while. We’re lucky in the human trafficking realm that there are groups that have been doing this for 20 years, 30 years. And so we really want to help those groups to show what kind of impact they’re having.

Sandie [00:08:45] So this brings up a couple of different questions for me. First of all, you gave an example of doing trainings, and my experience has led me to question some what I see as impact reports, air quotes, that are based on how many trainings we did, how many people attended the training. And so I don’t know that the training that that NGO did is equivalent to the training that this government agency did. And so then just measuring activity may not actually give me any kind of insight on what actually happened.

Jeni [00:09:34] Right? Yeah. I mean, with trainings, what you really want to be thinking about is what are the things that you’re trying to get from the training. So in behavioral science, a lot of economists have these studies that look at behavioral economics. And so are you making measurable changes to knowledge attitudes and practices? And there are ways you can measure that. So if you’re working with police officers, for example, and you’re trying to provide them with training on victim-centered interview processes, you can look at what were their attitudes, what was their knowledge of these practices before the training? And then you can look at the knowledge and attitudes after the training that would be called a pretest and the post-test. So you would at least get an additional layer of information rather than just saying this many people went to these many trainings, but again, you would be getting a little bit more rich information, pretest and post-test. But then if you really wanted to assess the impact of those trainings, you would randomize who got the trainings and who didn’t. And again, take a measurement of the groups before the trainings and then after the trainings. And then you could see really whether the trainings had a short term impact in the practices of the police or did they have a long term impact of the practices? Because, again, changing knowledge and attitudes is kind of an intermediate step. And then what you’re really trying to do with these trainings is to help police be better at their jobs, working with, for example, survivors of trafficking or victims of trafficking going through the criminal justice process.

Sandie [00:10:57] Okay. So then my second question is around this concept of randomized groups. So I’m working a lot with children and schools. And so when you mention this idea that we give it to some and not to others, oh, my gosh, it’s like, well, that’s not fair. So tell me what to say.

Jeni [00:11:23] That’s absolutely true. So one thing to think about, though, is when you say it’s not fair, you know, we wouldn’t be testing these interventions if we knew that they were successful. If we know something’s happening and it’s going to help people, then we’re just going to do it. But how do we know at this point whether the things that we’re doing are successful or not? And I think that’s with human trafficking. That’s the stage that we’re still in. We’re still trying to build the evidence base to examine the programs that we’re implementing and to make sure that they are impactful and they’re working in the way that we think they are. So that’s one thing to say. If you’re giving survivor services to some people and not others, or if you’re changing the different kinds of services you’re giving, you don’t know yet whether one is more effective than the other, but you don’t want to withhold services completely. That would be unethical. So that’s not something that we would promote. But you can be providing different kinds of services and testing those and then see what are the impact of those. In the case of schools, that is trickier because you are working with minors, but again, you don’t know whether these programs that are being implemented in the schools. For example, I think there are some programs in the U.S. where they’re working with different school districts. What you could do and what one of our partners under HTI, the Human Trafficking Research Initiative, we are working with the Freedom Fund and they’re starting a program in Brazil where they’re working in Recife with a school district there and they’re randomizing which schools get a counter trafficking and counter sexual exploitation of children training first. So there’s a kind of cohort of schools that are going to get this training first in this school year and then in the next school year, the remaining, what is the control group, will change into the treatment group and they will get that same training. So again, we’re trying not to withhold this information from anyone, but we are delaying the intervention by a year. So some schools will get it the first year and the rest of the schools will get it the second year. And that’s kind of how life works, right? We always have a limited amount of resources, a limited number of places that we can be implementing programs because donor funding is finite and we kind of have to choose our priorities. And so this is one way in which you can still reach the same number of people and you just delay the program and then everyone gets the treatment.

Sandie [00:13:30] So how can people follow that kind of research? They just go to your website.

Jeni [00:13:35] Yeah, it’s called PovertyAction.org and it’s called the Human Trafficking Research Initiative. So we’re on the website and so you can track our research there. And we also work with other partner organizations in promoting this research. IPA’s program, HTI, is kind of one of the first programs that’s gotten major funding for randomized controlled trials. So we’re just starting to set the evidence based. So as the results of our research come out, we’ll be disseminating that more widely. But definitely you can go to PovertyAction.org.

Sandie [00:14:07] Yeah. So I just want people to know that website. We’ll put links in our show notes, too. So let’s kind of go back to how we understand measuring and let’s talk about monitoring and evaluation of programs, because in prevention we do start with we don’t want any exploitation, any kind of bad experience. But if someone has already, we can intermediate somehow and prevent further. So that’s still on the continuum of prevention. I’m not making it really clear, but we try to do programs that are directed at kids, women, men, international, for national victims that would try to intervene. And we make beautiful storyboards of one person’s story. What’s the difference between calling that impact and then actually having a well developed program?

Jeni [00:15:11] So, I think it’s really important to say that there’s value in both. I would call it qualitative and quantitative data. And so the qualitative and the stories are what resonate with us as human beings. And it’s what helps us to understand, to make someone a real person instead of just a figure. And so, I think that there’s definitely value in the stories that are promoted and that kind of anecdotal evidence that people get from these programs. And I think that it’s really important for organizations working in this field to continue to really humanize people who are going through this process and who have been exploited in this way because it’s really terrible. And we do need to get the word out on that.

Sandie [00:15:52] And let me just interject very quickly here that we have addressed ethical storytelling in this podcast, and we really encourage people to go back and listen to some of those because I really agree people are very responsive to that. But we want to go further.

Jeni [00:16:11] Yes. Yeah. Again, and the personal stories, especially if we’re letting survivors kind of lead those stories. I’ve been lucky to learn from some organizations that have given video cameras or recording equipment to survivors and kind of just let them lead their own monetary valuation processes and to share their stories in the way that they choose. And I think it’s really important to make survivors the center of these kinds of programs. I’m sorry to say that to date, there have been a lot of programs that have been designed without really consulting with survivors. And there’s definitely a big shift happening there. You can see the most current U.S. Trafficking in Persons report that was put out by the U.S. State Department earlier this year. There are a lot of stories at the beginning about how to involve survivors and survivor leadership. And so that’s a really important part of the field for us now. But again, to try to get beyond that anecdotal data or  the one off stories about people and their experiences. Again, we kind of need to know for those people and the services that they were offered. If they were offered cognitive behavioral therapy or yoga therapy or access to job services. What were the the things that were key in the success of those programs? And what were the things that maybe weren’t impactful or weren’t effective? And again, kind of testing those out through impact evaluations and rigorous research can help us to identify again what are the most successful strategies and what are the most cost effective strategies? Because some things, especially with service provision, can be quite expensive. And we don’t want to be using up a lot of our resources for things that aren’t working.

Sandie [00:17:43] Okay. So, if someone has been leading a really wonderful nonprofit, maybe a faith based group, and they’ve never had any training in monitoring and evaluation of their programs, where would they start to learn how to begin to implement that?

Jeni [00:18:05] That’s a great question. So selfishly, I would say that Innovations for Poverty Action has some resources for that. We have a book called The Goldilocks Challenge, and it lays out the CART principles which are all focused around what kind of program data do you need to gather, and it’s about collecting accurate information and the right information that’s kind of geared towards the program and the impacts that you want to see–or not, sorry, not impacts–but the outcomes and outputs that you want to see. So what is the responsible use of data and then kind of targeting the right kind of data? So I would argue at a minimum, you want to set up a monitoring and evaluation structure where you have at least a few indicators where, you know, you’re tracking your information, your data from your program, you’re kind of drilling down on what are the things that you’re doing. And again, how do you measure those? And then tracking those over time to see again, are you doing the thing that you think you’re doing? Are you doing maybe something different? What is your program model? And those are kind of the building blocks for beginning to get a handle on what the programs people are implementing and then how to evaluate the impact of those programs.

Sandie [00:19:12] Okay. You caught my attention when you said responsible use of data. So now it’s like I need to know what you call irresponsible use of data.

Jeni [00:19:23] I would say if you have 50 indicators that you’re trying to track, you’re spending probably all of your time running around trying to get those numbers. Do you have time to analyze the numbers? Do you have time to look at those and say, oh, I’m learning this from from the numbers that I’m getting from the program that I’m implementing. It’s hard to have time to evaluate and assess the success of your program if you’re spending all your time getting information that you’re not using, you’re not analyzing, you’re not using to make your program better or to adjust the program in a different direction. I would say that would definitely be an irresponsible use.

Sandie [00:19:57] Okay, that’s good. I bet you have a longer list, but we’ll move on. Okay. We talked before. We talk every chance we get about what this looks like in labor trafficking as well. And you talked to me about micro-workers. Can you give me some examples? Because I am convinced that we have not been spending enough attention on prevention of labor trafficking.

Jeni [00:20:30] Yeah. And I think this is something that we’ve talked about where, especially, again, in the U.S., there’s a lot of a focus on sex trafficking. And maybe it just kind of resonates with people, and it’s kind of more of a shiny issue. But actually the scope of labor trafficking is much larger in the U.S. and abroad. And so I don’t know if your listeners have seen or know about the global estimates on modern slavery, but the International Labor Organization, the ILO, which is a U.N. organization and Walk Free, they put out global estimates every few years and the latest ones just came out a few months ago. So we can say that what they estimated for people in modern slavery in 2021 was 49.6 million people. Of that, they said 27.6 million were in forced labor and 6.3 million were in forced commercial sexual exploitation. So you can see that’s an order of magnitude smaller than forced labor. And in the U.S., again, that’s something that we see a lot of focus here in Orange County, California, where you and I live. The police department, they kind of know how to investigate sex trafficking. They know where to find the johns, the traffickers, and so they’ve got a pretty good system set up for that. But they’re not looking as much at forced labor and labor exploitation. And so it’s really important for us to see that it’s kind of a hidden problem. But it’s really great in scope here and internationally. And some of the things that we need to be doing to make it untenable or unprofitable is to make sure that our systems are set up so that there are enough, for example, labor inspectorates or labor inspectors in workplaces. Again, in the U.S., we know that some of the hotspots for forced labor are in nail salons, restaurants, in the fields. Again, in California, we have a lot of that. And so making sure that there are enough people investigating the crime and flushing out the potential instances of trafficking there.

Sandie [00:22:23] We’ve started having some conversations on the podcast about shifting the burden to business, to corporate leadership. So what have you seen in that kind of responsiveness?

Jeni [00:22:36] Yeah. So, when Iraq International, my previous position, we did some work with the private sector, again focused on labor trafficking. And what I noticed in my time there was that there was more of a shift of the companies focusing on forced labor and labor trafficking as an issue for their corporate social responsibility unit and setting it off as a separate unit in their companies and thinking, Oh, this is something that our warm, fuzzy people will deal with and talk with NGOs and governments about this. And really starting to recognize that forced labor and human trafficking was a central issue in their business operations. And so moving their points of contact and the people working on this, I saw a shift in people starting to move that to the human resources team and the procurement team and getting more of a real buy in from the company and looking at all aspects of their labor chains and their supply chains and realizing that they needed to address mitigation, put into place mitigation, and observation and other systems in all of their corporate dealings, not just, again, with the corporate social responsibility wing of their business.

Sandie [00:23:49] That’s really encouraging. We interviewed Ben Skinner about that last year and Ambassador John Cotton Richmond. We’re really following the impact of the Uyghur Prevention Act. And so I feel like we’re going to have some data that will help us convince more of our corporate partners to focus on this. And that’s exciting because labor trafficking, as you mentioned from that report a few months ago, is actually increasing. I’m not sure that I agree that it’s increasing as much as I agree that we are doing a much better job finding it, identifying it. What do you think?

Jeni [00:24:38] Yeah, I would say that, too. That’s one of the key quandaries of this field is the more that you increase awareness, the more you see the numbers go up. But sometimes it’s because people start to identify themselves as trafficking victims. And so I think it’s logical that we would see a bump in the numbers. I think that they said it was a 10 million increase from the last estimates. But I agree, it could be just that there’s better global awareness of this issue.

Sandie [00:25:02] So I know I’ve got students and alums and partners around the world who are going to really knuckle down and look at more rigorous research in this area. But I also have a lot of people who are not researchers, but they want to participate in prevention and in the research. So can you give us some help in identifying ways to do that?

Jeni [00:25:29] Yeah. I mean, you mentioned former Ambassador Richmond earlier and I was lucky to be at one of the Ensure Justice conference is where he spoke. And what resonated with me was where he said, if you want to be involved, you can become an accountant. You can work in HR. There’s so many ways to be involved. You don’t just have to be a researcher. You don’t just have to be an NGO implementer. You don’t even have to work in a government. I think we all have a role to play in working on prevention of human trafficking, and there are so many ways that you can contribute. So I would say you can work in this field in a million different ways. You can work with foster youth. There’s so many ways to do it. So, yeah, I encourage everyone to just try to think of a way and if I can, Sandie, tell them to reach out to us if they if they want to know how to get involved.

Sandie [00:26:14] Well, and for me, it always comes back to education at every level. And I love how young parents are starting to talk to their kids about the products that come into their home and using some of the resources that have been developed, like the Sweat and Toil app on your phone, so that when you go shopping, you can actually find out and your kids can see this tiny little hand that a child may have been picking those bananas or harvesting those blueberries. And I think building that kind of empathy into the next generation creates a different paradigm that gives me hope. You told me about a project at Monterey Aquarium that I want my listeners to hear about.

Jeni [00:27:08] Yeah. Yeah. And this came up because I have some family visiting and my stepmother is a vegetarian. So my son and I were talking about the difference between pescatarian and vegetarians and then talking about the responsible use of meat and seafood and started to talk about how overwhelming it can be to try to make sure that you’re a conscious consumer. Because another thing you can do, you can work in any field, but you can vote with your dollars and try to buy clothes that are sustainably produced and not using forced labor. And again, with fish, not eating fish that are made under forced labor conditions and not environmentally sustainable. But it’s really challenging to know how to do that. And you can’t turn it into a part time job of trying to figure that out. And so one one resource you mentioned Sweat and Toil app from DOL is great. Another one is the Seafood Watch. You can look at it on your website or there’s an app as well from the Monterey Aquarium. And that’s another way for you to kind of look at which kind of seafood you’re eating and what are the conditions under which it’s probably being raised or farmed and caught from the seas and then making your decisions about how you’re going to eat and what you’re going to eat in that way. And there are some efforts right now to improve labor conditions on boats at sea. So there’s a lot that’s happening right now. And the field is constantly changing. But there are actors like Monterey Aquarium, like DOL, that are trying to be that interface between consumers and the human trafficking world.

Sandie [00:28:32] Wow. I know I have friends in DOL who are really careful about ordering shrimp at a restaurant because where did it come from? That’s one of the things we know a lot about, but there are so many things that we don’t have information on. So I just want to reaffirm what you said from the Ensure Justice conference when Ambassador Richmond was talking about career choices. I really believe that we need a very interdisciplinary approach to careers, but also to the research agenda. And while I’m very focused on the prevention piece, there are lots of other ways that you as a listener, as a part of this community, can get involved in the research. And so we’ve got a minute left. And so, Jeni, you can bring us home with your information and how you see people in everyday life getting involved.

Jeni [00:29:41] Yeah, I think that, like I said, everyone has a role to play. And so whether you’re looking at your role as a consumer, as a professional, as a student, it’s really important to just keep an eye on the things that you’re doing and trying to make sure that you are acting in a responsible way that’s light on the earth, that is beneficial to people. And again, trying to bring it back to the work that Sandie and I do, we’re helping to build an evidence base, we hope, on what can what can people do to combat trafficking and prevent it from happening so that we can live in a world where people aren’t exploited in this way?

Sandie [00:30:16] And how do we reach you?

Jeni [00:30:18] You can reach me if you go to the poverty- action.org website and look under human trafficking. I am there. It’s called the Human Trafficking Research Initiative. And we’ll again, we’ll be building. We have blog posts, we have project summaries, we are sharing information. And we also have a competitive fund where if you are a researcher listening to this or implementing organization and you would like to have your programs evaluated, you can reach out to us through the website or at [email protected]. And I hope we’ll link this in the podcast notes and you can reach us through that and we can share information about our competitive fund and the research funds we have available for this.

Sandie [00:30:59] Thank you so much, Jeni. I am very encouraged that our community is going to grow not only in our awareness, but in how we are more strategic in addressing rigorous research. So thank you for being with us and I’ll see you at Ensure Justice.

Jeni [00:31:16] Lovely. Thank you so much, Sandie and Dave.

Dave [00:31:19] You know, I was thinking about our conversation and Jeni’s invitation to, regardless of what your skill set is, is to find a way to help out. Sandie, I was thinking about we started this podcast over a decade ago. I knew very little about the challenges of human trafficking, but I knew a lot about technology and podcasts and utilize that to help you to get your message out and to support the board. And I think almost all of us have something that we can do to latch on, to grab the handle, as you often say. And so we’d invite you to take that first step, too. Go online. If you’re looking for the place that you think you might be able to help us out and download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll highlight the five critical things Sandie’s identified that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. Also building and expanding our community of advocates. If you’d like to become a patron, you can access exclusive content and join a community of advocates around the world who are also working together to fight human trafficking. You can find details over at endinghumantrafficking.org. Click on the patron link that you’ll find up there and you’ll find a ton of details on how to go further. You can support the show for $5 a month and get access to all of the Patreon benefits. In addition, we mentioned the Ensure Justice conference coming up March 3rd and 4th, 2023. Details are at GCWJ.org/ensurejustice. Of course, you can also get there just by going to endinghumantrafficking.org. And we will be back for our next conversation in two weeks. Thanks, Jeni, and thanks, Sandie, as always.

Sandie and Stacy Deeble-Reynolds discuss FOCUS, a program designed to intervene when youth experience a traumatic event and provide guardrails, support, care, and a safe environment at an early stage when need is most critical. They reflect on similar programs in other states and how someone can bring FOCUS to their community.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 285, Focus on Children Under Stress, with Stacy Deeble-Reynolds.

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

Dave [00:00:30] 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, you were just telling me before we started our conversation today that you have known today’s guests for a long time. I’m so glad to meet her and to welcome her to the show. Stacy Debble-Reynolds is our guest today. Stacy serves as the Director of the Student Achievement and Wellness Unit at the Orange County Department of Education. She has over 20 years experience working with students, parents, educators and community stakeholders in Sacramento, Orange County and throughout the state of California. She currently serves in various leadership capacities among Orange County workgroups, focused on student mental health and wellness, family engagement, prevention and positive youth development. She holds a bachelor’s degree from UC Irvine and a master’s degree from Cal State University of Long Beach. Stacy, what a pleasure to have you with us.

Stacy [00:01:34] Thanks so much, Dave.

Sandie [00:01:36] I’m very excited. We just finished Priceless a few weeks ago and your new program, FOCUS, received one of our Diamond Awards. And the thing to know about our Diamond Awards is they’re not just glitzy. Those awards are models of replicatable programs that people anywhere can learn how to do and make available in their own communities that contribute to healthy communities that are resilient and reduce exploitation and even human trafficking. So we were really honored to present this award to focus at Orange County Department of Education. And I’m not going to tell people what FOCUS is because I want you to do that, Stacy.

Stacy [00:02:32] Oh, thank you, Sandy. And you’re correct, this is definitely something that others can easily replicate. And it’s what we did. Here at the Orange County Department of Education we partner often with Vanguard University’s Ensure Justice conference. Thank you, Sandie, for inviting us to be a partner every year. And at one of the conferences we learned about Handle with Care. It’s a program in West Virginia that we decided to model FOCUS after. And this program I’ll tell you about it in just a second. But what I want to share is that we learned all about it at Ensure Justice. So we’re so grateful to you and to the conference that you provide every year because it’s a really wonderful opportunity for connections to be made and for people to do even more macro work in prevention.

Sandie [00:03:27] And I love the connections and the way ideas are spread. We have listeners in 148 countries. And I want to say to people, when you finish listening to this podcast, if you decide to start this journey, please email us so that we can kind of create a map and see how when ideas spread, it changes our communities for the good. And for those who would like to listen to the interview we did with the folks from West Virginia on Handle with Care, I’ll put that link in the show notes. So let’s go ahead and tell us about what FOCUS looks like.

Stacy [00:04:17] Okay. So FOCUS is essentially a notification system that’s designed to decrease the negative impacts on children after they’ve been exposed to violence and trauma. And how we do that is by improving communication and collaboration between first responders, schools and community resources. And really, Sandie, the goal is to provide children with a more stable alternative in the aftermath of any kind of traumatic event. And so–.

Sandie [00:04:47] Wait, I have to tell a story here.

Stacy [00:04:50] Sure.

Sandie [00:04:51] I went to pick up the Diamond Award, and most of the awards are pretty clear. There’s a person’s name and stuff, but the whole Focus on Children Under Stress. So the person who is checking these out, making sure everything was correct, stopped me and said, ‘What does that mean?’ And when I told her it is based on this idea that a child who was present during some sort of law enforcement presence in their home or in their community, some kind of violence might show up to school the next day in the same clothes without breakfast, doesn’t have their homework with them. And instead of giving them detention for not having their homework, we actually provide more support. And this is when I lost it. She got glassy eyed, teary, and said, That was me. So, I believe it is time for FOCUS right here in Orange County.

Stacy [00:06:00] Well, Sandie, I appreciate that story because when we talk about this, we receive two common reactions. The first is, oh, that’s a no brainer. Why haven’t we been doing this for a long time? And then the second reaction is some sort of personal connection, like what you just shared. And traumatic events can be outside of the family. They can happen within a family. Some examples that I’ll share, you know, a house or an apartment catching fire, burning down, maybe someone witnessing, a child witnessing a car accident or being involved in a car accident within a family. Maybe witnessing an older sibling experiencing a drug overdose. And oftentimes, these kinds of things don’t necessarily warrant Child Protective Services involvement, which, of course, there is communication when social services is involved. But in these situations, there is often a first responder at the scene or involved with taking a report. And so what we have been doing here in Orange County is providing trainings to law enforcement agencies like Anaheim Police Department and also providing a separate training for school staff at Anaheim Union High School District and Anaheim Elementary School District. And so we train officers on how to submit a notification through a Web based app. And I’ll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute. And it basically is just asking for the child’s name and birthdate and without any details, we’re unable to share details of what occurred. But basically, when the officer submits that child information, name, birthday and the school that they go to, we have an app that is preprogrammed so that when the child’s school is selected, it automatically sends an email to the administrator, the school social worker, whoever is been identified at each of these school sites, it notifies them that a child has been involved in a traumatic event and he or she is returning to school tomorrow and please handle with care. And so that is the message they get, the email they receive, and the expectation is that they will pass it on to the child’s teacher or teachers, plural. If it’s a middle or high school student, they have multiple teachers. And that exactly what you just described, there would be some supports in place for that child as immediate interventions such as homework, forgiveness, maybe allowing the child to rest at the nurse’s office, maybe postponing a test or seeing if the child needs something to eat. And these are things that if a school is not at all aware that a child has been involved in a traumatic event, they have no understanding of this major shift, this adverse experience that’s happened in their life. And so for them, when the teacher is able to be involved right away, at least to know this child needs a soft place to land in the coming days, they need a lot of TLC here at our campus. We’re going to provide them with extra supports, even though we don’t necessarily know what’s occurred. Hopefully, the communication between the child’s family, perhaps guardians, if they are not currently residing with their family. And the school is already strong. And this will allow everyone to come around and support the child with whatever’s going on in their life.

Sandie [00:09:53] So what will be the result of that kind of early intervention for that student?

Stacy [00:10:01] That’s a great question. So, if a child, but let’s go to the example I gave earlier of a child maybe witnessing their older sibling having a drug overdose. Obviously, the family’s attention is going to be to the older sibling who might be hospitalized, could have even passed away. That the family’s attention is going to be really focused on that child or arrangements that need to be made. And in the meantime, if no one at the younger sibling’s school has any idea of what’s going on or that anything happened at all, then there’s a good chance that that child’s initial response in school is that they might have emotional outbreaks without explanation. They might have trouble with that sort of self-regulation or pushing teachers away or feeling like things are their fault, maybe even having difficulty with some of the things they normally have no problem with, like packing your backpack at the end of the day and keeping all of their items organized for school, and suddenly they’re struggling with those things. The difference here is that when a staff member knows something has happened, when I talk about a, you know, a soft place to land or this cocoon of support, this child is going to feel permission to feel. They’re going to understand it is okay to feel sad, to feel angry, to feel scared, all of these things. They’re going to understand that their school is a place of support, that the teachers are not going to get angry because the child missed a test or that the child failed a test, that their whole school year is not going to get destroyed, which for a lot of young people, I mean, most young people want to do well in school. They want to do well. And so these life experiences can really trump that. They can really take over where your mind’s focus is for days, weeks, months on end. If a family’s home burned in a fire, there are so many different things that are going to be the priority in that child’s and that family’s life. So getting into the child’s life at that early stage of trauma can make a huge difference in how the child comes out of the situation. Hopefully more resilient, hopefully feeling more supported and able to feel confident that they can get through this experience, feeling assured that adults in their life care about them and are going to take care of them.

Sandie [00:12:49] Okay. So before we had this notification opportunity for first responders, I think it’s important to understand that there are barriers and challenges for that to happen outside of a process like this. First responders are paying attention to what they’re doing. So it’s not like they can leave and go be a social worker for a child who is witnessing this. And then in certain circumstances, there are HIPA laws that prevent disclosure. So this app makes it easy for a first responder to do two or three clicks and be done and know that someone is going to be the person making sure that student gets a soft landing. I like that term. So how do you pull together the team, and how much training does it take, and how much does it cost? And I have like I’m thinking of all the questions of somebody who just found out about this that’s a schoolteacher in another area.

Stacy [00:13:58] Great questions. And I’ll start with our first step, which was to reach out to Handle with Care in West Virginia and find out what is your program, how does it work, how much money does it cost to run this? We learned that they were using faxing to submit the notifications, and when we learned they were using faxing, we asked them, is there a better way you could do this? And they said, absolutely. We know we need to work towards some sort of electronic notification. And then they shared that a county in California, Stanislaus County, their DEA office, actually had been working with their county office of Education, which is the organization I work for here in Orange County. County office of ED. Stanislaus’ had also reached out to Handle with Care. They had heard about the program and they had started the program under the name FOCUS. So we actually my colleagues and I reached out to Stanislaus County Office of Education and learned all about what they were doing, which was very similar to West Virginia, with the exception of they were in the process of building an app and it’s actually a website which can be saved to a cell phone as an app, if you know what I mean, Sandie. It’s kind of like a network. And it allows for anyone to use it without having to constantly update a particular app. So, you know, everyone who cares about kids should care about sharing things that are good for kids, in my opinion. And Stanislaus County said, Hey, we’ll share this code with you. We’ve built it. We’ll share the code with you to build this same website for your county. And they did. And so we’re very grateful to Stanislaus FOCUS program because we were able to work with our own I.T. department to use that same code and build the same submission program. And on our end then it did cost a little bit of money because we had to hire an IT person, not a full time person, but like a consultant, to help us tweak a few things in the app to make it work for us better. And we we wanted to make sure that the trainings were really clear, that we were giving the officers–all the first responders, everybody involved–we were giving them the examples of what they would need to submit. Because you’re right, it had to be just a couple of clicks and they’re not social workers. So we made sure they understood that they could go back to the precinct where they write their report or in their car, in their patrol car, where they type up their report. And as long as they’ve got that child’s first name, last name, birthdate and the child’s district and school, then the notification can be sent directly to the school. So, as far as the costs for this I.T. consultant, I would say, gosh, probably about $20,000 total to make all of the changes that we’ve needed to support that. We did receive a grant. It’s one of the ACEs Aware grant through the state of California, which helped fund a little bit of my time and one of my colleagues time to provide trainings. And now we’re just doing that in-house. And so our organization really values this program and sees that the entire county hopefully will be doing it soon. But we had to start with a pilot. We had to start somewhere. We worked with a couple of initial school districts, including Buena Park School District and their respective police department, Buena Park Police Department. And that’s where we began. And we’ve just been growing ever since and providing trainings to both sides of this partnership, law enforcement and school districts.

Sandie [00:17:58] So I got a bunch of friends in the law enforcement realm, and there are lots of demands on their time. Their first question is going to be, how long is the training?

Stacy [00:18:12] Great question. The training that I was able to provide to Anaheim Police Department officers, I think I got it down to 15 minutes. I was at the 6 a.m. shifts for four days in a week. And we were able to really boil the training down to about 15 to 20 minutes, I’d say, to make sure we have enough time for Q&A. And yeah, it’s really straightforward. It’s introducing them to what the program is, showing them the app, how it works. We follow up afterwards with an email that gives them their username and password to log in. And once they’ve got that downloaded on their phone, that’s it. Or on their computer, they can just go to the website. It takes less than one minute to type in the information required to submit a notification.

Sandie [00:19:09] So to me, that change of shift briefing model is very doable. I used to run an operating room and when people wanted to bring training in I told them, if you can do it in our 15 minute change of shift meeting, come on down. If not, I’m going to have to go through all of the get a training room, reschedule people and then prioritize if I have enough people to reschedule so that everybody gets through the training. So I really like that component. What about the training for the schools?

Stacy [00:19:47] Great question. We have provided two separate trainings for school staff. One training is for school administrators who receive the notification directly. I’m talking about school principals, the lead school social workers, whoever a district has identified at each of the school sites as being the main points of contact. So that’s our first training. The second training is for teachers, all staff at a school site. We want them to understand what this program is and that you might have a school social worker come to your classroom or call you and say, we received a notification for this particular child. Please handle with care. And then we talk about some of the things that they can do. Some of those early interventions. So there are two trainings. The training for administrators takes about 30 minutes, and that’s because we want them to understand all the ins and outs of receiving the notification, what to do after that, and how to mark in the back end of the website that they did, in fact, pass the information along to the child’s teacher. The training for teachers is about the same time we have to spend with law enforcement folks. It’s about 15 minutes. So we can fit ourselves into a staff meeting or we have also recently created an online training because we know that even staff meetings can be quite full. And because we have so many different school sites, it’s really challenging for the one coordinator on my team to get to all these different spots. And so we have created an online training so that they can take that on their own time.

Sandie [00:21:32] Wow. So accessibility is a key ingredient for success with FOCUS. We will also put in the show notes a diagram of the FOCUS notification flow chart. It’s a little difficult to visualize as we try to describe it in our conversation, but I think some of the key components is the first responder, whether that’s at this point mostly police departments, but might eventually be fire departments and other first responders. Then to OCDE through the Web page, and then it is filtered through the district and gets to the school. All that happens, though, by the police officer, the first responder, completing the fill in the blank and click. And the fact that the training is so abbreviated makes this much more doable from an administrative perspective to implement. So my next question is, do you have a guess about how long it will take to have every school in Orange County on board?

Stacy [00:22:52] You know, we are slowly growing in the Anaheim community. We started with Buena Park, then we reached over to Los Alamitos. A lot of this comes from interest from police chiefs, actually, or from a superintendent. Once we were in Buena Park, we grew all around there with Anaheim Elementary, Anaheim Union High School District. I mentioned the Los Alamitos. So this is happening simultaneously. We now have Magnolia and Savannah coming on board. I would like to think that in the next two years we would have all districts on board and all law enforcement officers trained. There are, of course, challenges. We don’t have a lot of staffing available. So I don’t have a dedicated person whose only job this is to support FOCUS who can be on the on the phone a lot of the time with all these different agencies and districts. But we’re very grateful to have people like you and this podcast to help us spread the word, because when we we get interested parties, that helps. That cuts out the step of us having to reach out to get another district on board when they call us. So we have been very appreciative of opportunities to present to the police, to Orange County Police Chiefs and sheriffs organization. They invited us last January to present to them. We also you mentioned that most is law enforcement. But through one of our presentations, CHOC, Children’s Health of Orange County–our local children’s hospital–they inquired and we provided training to them, Sandie, for their social workers who work with terminally ill patients. And they recognize that the siblings of these children who are maybe getting really bad news, that the siblings are going to really struggle with that and that that might be considered a traumatic event for them. And so we’ve trained their social workers as well to be able to submit notifications. And through all of this, we are learning because we learn ways to change the app, to do things a little bit differently and how to do trainings differently. You mentioned accessibility is key. So is flexibility. So we did not initially start with having trainings online that people could watch on their own time. We added that because the school district said there’s no way you can get our 400 teachers trained in-person within this timeline and we want to get moving on this quickly. So that’s why we were flexible and we’ll continue to do that. But I’d like to think that in the next two years, we could have everyone involved and trained.

Sandie [00:25:36] So it feels to me like if you want to make sure this happens in your area and you’re a PTA mom, maybe you would want to get your superintendent or your principal to reach out to your local police chief or sheriff’s deputy and have that partnership in place when you call FOCUS. Am I  guessing right?

Stacy [00:26:06] It would be helpful. But actually, even if just one party, if let’s say a superintendent was excited about this, then we would go to the the police chief. And there’s a really good chance that that superintendent already has a relationship with that police chief and could facilitate a meeting. That’s what Buena Park did. We started with Buena Park. We said we need this, their school district. And then the school district superintendent said, hey, we’ve got a great relationship with Buena Park PD. And so they helped to coordinate a meeting where all three of us were together. And it was the the easiest shake, if you will. And there’s no cost to the district. There’s no cost to law enforcement. And so it’s something that makes sense and it’s good for kids. And that’s what we always try and focus on.

Sandie [00:26:56] Because we want healthy, resilient kids. And this is an important part of alleviating the trauma from some kind of ACEs experience and adverse childhood experience that we know scientifically, experientially impacts a child into adulthood. So if we can alleviate that now, we’re going to have healthier adults as well as healthier children. I’m very excited about this. I want our listeners to know that if you go to the show notes, you can actually watch Stacy talk about this and see the PowerPoint and the diagrams, which are really helpful to visualizing and mapping it strategically for yourself, because I would be thrilled to see this spread way beyond Orange County and Stanislaus County and become a best practice across the state and in lots of other places across the nation. So we’re grateful for what O.C. Department of Education is providing this bridge between law enforcement, first responders and our schools. Because this is part of making sure every single child is getting a great education in a safe environment that is resilient. And I love that we get to partner again this year for Ensure Justice. Stacy, it’s coming up March 3rd and 4th and we have information for registration in our webpage, GCWJ.org/events. And so if you’re interested, check that out. And Stacy, I’ll be making sure that I share the link for this interview with you to spread to schools and local first responders. I’m so grateful for the work that you’ve done because I know it took about two years to roll it out.

Stacy [00:29:15] Well, thank you, Sandie. And it did take a while to roll out. But it is something that I think we are going to see grow across the state more. I have heard of at least two other counties that are trying to pick up FOCUS. I think one might be calling it Handle with Care. It’s all the same thing. It’s all about that communication and helping to get a child early intervention when they have experienced a traumatic event. Imagine how many of us adults could have received some kind of extra support after a traumatic event that back in the day we just didn’t receive. And there are a lot of adults that we speak to who share that experience. Gosh, it would have made a huge difference for me. So I’m so grateful for this opportunity and I invite any of your listeners to reach out to us and see how you can be a part of this, and we’ll help you get your program going as well, if you’d like to do something similar.

Sandie [00:30:15] Thank you, Stacy.

Stacy [00:30:16] Thank you.

Dave [00:30:18] I’ll reiterate that call to action. You know, one of the best places for folks to go if you’re listening for all of the links you’ve just heard, the resources, the video, endinghumantrafficking.org. Our team does a wonderful job every time we put out an episode of cataloguing all the things we’ve mentioned, linking those up. And so I’d invite you to reach out there and to find out more about what Stacy’s doing, what the Department of Education is doing. Sandie, I hear so much partnership in this conversation, not only between us and the Department of Ed, but, of course, across districts around the country and law enforcement. I mean, so many examples of what we all need to be doing in order to end human trafficking, all taking our part and working together. And we’re inviting you to take that first step as well. If you’re just listening for the first time or maybe the first few times, go over to endinghumantrafficking.org and we’d invite you to download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll teach you the five critical things that we’ve identified that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it again by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. That’s also the best place to find out about supporting the Ending Human Trafficking podcast and the Global Center for Women and Justice through Patreon. You’ll see a link on the endinghumantrafficking.org page there. Details there as far as more resources and tools and the ability to support the work that we’re doing here to end human trafficking. All of that again at endinghumantrafficking.org. And as Sandie mentioned, Ensure Justice is coming up in March 2023. Details on the website there as well. You can also go over to GCWJ.org that has information about all the things we’re doing here at the Global Center for Women in Justice, and we will be back again in two weeks for our next conversation. Always a pleasure, Sandie. Thanks.

Sandie [00:32:09] Thank you, Dave. And thank you, Stacy, for being with me today.

Stacy [00:32:13] Thank you.

Dave [00:32:14] Take care, everybody.

Sandie is joined by Steve Kim, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Project Kinship, an organization that provides services, healing, and hope to individuals who have been affected by incarceration, gangs, or violence. Steve Kim discusses what is restorative justice and their work in the Orange County collaborative courts.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 284 Restorative Justice, with Steve Kim and Project Kinship.

Production Credits [00:00:10] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:35] 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. Today, we’re so glad to welcome the executive director and co-founder of Project Kinship, Steve Kim. Steve is the co-founder of Project Kinship, where he serves individuals impacted by gangs and incarceration with the aim to successfully reintegrate them back into the workforce, schools and community. His dedication to breaking cycles of incarceration, gang membership and community violence stems from over 15 years of working with traumatized and abandoned youth throughout Orange County. Steve, welcome to the podcast.

Steve [00:01:17] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Sandie [00:01:19] I saw Steve really recently at our Priceless annual event where he accepted the Outstanding Nonprofit Diamond Award for Project Kinship. And our Diamond Awards are not just about we want to give somebody an award, but we want our community to see people doing this work well. And Project Kinship has done such an excellent job. We’ve been partners with our Live2Free student. They are part of our community. Steve often speaks at Ensure Justice and we’ll put some links in case you want to hear more from him in the show notes. But we especially value the achievements of Project Kinship in our schools and in our community. And I want to start our conversation with a quote from you, Steve. You said about Project Kinship, “the heartbeat of Project Kinship holds compassion and inclusion. It is a place where hope lives and people are reminded they are not a mistake. Something powerful happens as this truth is embraced and people feel their worth.” I’m curious, when you co-founded Project Kinship, did you have such a succinct idea of the vision for Project Kinship?

Steve [00:03:04] I did, Sandie. I think I wasn’t able to articulate it in such words at that time, but I think what I realized is for many years, carrying the heavy weight of shame, being multiple marginalized, and then being with folks in the community who carry similar burdens. And so I think carrying that for so much of my life and then seeing other folks in the community who’ve also carried encounters, the challenges I think I’ve lived with it. And then when Project Kinship started, give an opportunity to birth and to life an opportunity to heal together. And so we looked at Father Greg and Homeboy Industries, and they’re our mentors and our heroes that pioneered this work before us. And the way Father Greg and everybody at Homeboys is to carry the heartbeat of kinship, love and compassion gave us language and gave us a visual on how to do the work. And so I think over the years, we’ve found the language to wrap around our pain and our healing.

Sandie [00:04:11] So not all of our listeners know what Project Kinship does. And it’s probably going to be faster for you to tell us what you do than for me to do that.

Steve [00:04:23] Okay. I’m still working on my elevator pitch, so I’m going to try to do it and try to do it quick. We’re in Orange County and we’re a sister organization to Homeboy Industries, part of the Global Homeboy Network. And we have lots of programing. We’re in, I think 32 schools. Four school districts doing something called restorative practices. And so we work with many of the kids who often fall into the school to prison pipeline, kids who are homeless, who experience significant amounts of trauma. So we do that programing there. We’re in the juvenile hall doing similar work with groups and individual programing support with the adult county jail. We have a team right outside the door, so every person who gets released, we get to meet folks and greet them as they come out and get their first breath of fresh air. We offer services to do a little bit of advocacy work and the Christmas home base in the city of Santa Ana where folks to come and we have an array of services. But I think the services are great. But what we really do is we have created a beacon of hope in Orange County where folks who have experienced significant trauma, violence and incarceration, even generationally, can call home. And so I have a quick story. One of my mentors, Ruben, who I look up to, got a juvenile life at 16-years-old. And I think he spent over 20 years. And at that time, juveniles could go to adult prison. And so you can imagine how traumatic that could be. A 16-year-old in a prison cell with 40-year-olds. And so he’s out now, heavily tattooed from head to toe. And we move into a new building and they wanted me to write a quote on the wall. And so, you know, I was honored and I usually have a lot to say, but I got writer’s cramp and had difficulty writing something on the wall because everybody was going to see it when they walked in. And so probably about 15 hours later came up with something like, ‘In your darkest moment, never give up hope, blah, blah, blah.’ And the day before it goes up, I asked Ruben what he would write on the wall. I told him my quote, and he was like, ‘That’s all right,’ you know? And so I laughed and said, Well, what would you write? And in 15 seconds, he says, “Welcome to kinship where your judgment and pain are left at the door, you are home.” And I thought, holy cow, how did you come up with that in 15 seconds? And he said, Whenever people look at me, it looks like they bit into a sour lemon. And when I come to kinship, I feel like I’m embraced and I’m welcomed and I feel like my life holds value. And so the reason why I share that is really become this place for folks like Ruben and myself and hundreds of others, if not thousands of others, can call home to be able to connect and rehabilitate our lives.

Sandie [00:07:22] And it’s such a powerful story. And I have gone through those doors and I’ve seen that writing on the wall and the concept of knowing that you’re valued when you walk through those doors like it’s your home, people hang out there. They don’t just come in and wait in line to find out, how do I get this kind of service? The services are not the culture. They’re part of how we take care of each other. And so every time I go to Project Kinship, I feel like I belong. And I think when we started out, you use the term multiple marginalizations. There’s so many things that create barriers for people, especially when they are linked to some kind of incarceration, their parents, a family member, or themselves. Those kinds of challenges, can you give us a little bit of an idea of what multiple marginalization might actually look like?

Steve [00:08:41] Sure. I first heard that term from an individual named, actually a mentor as well, Dr. Diego Vigil. I was at UCI when I took his class and it talks about being multiple marginalized. And so it’s not just being marginalized in one area of life, but multiple areas. So, for example, maybe the neighborhood you live in, the type of jobs that are available, school that you go to, community resources. So it becomes very difficult to navigate those barriers. And so when you think about a lot of folks that we work with, there’s poverty, there’s intergenerational violence, generational incarceration, mental illness, lack of resources, criminal records. That impacts somebody. I just learned about two years ago, as we’re doing some advocacy work, that due to a felony conviction, there’s potentially over 46,000 collateral consequences that can impact somebody for reentry or employment. And so I know for myself, many of us, we felt that, but I didn’t realize there was a number attached to it, which now we know is over 46,000 collateral consequences.

Sandie [00:09:55] The first time I heard you say that, I couldn’t conceive of 46,000 of anything. And to know that in my mind I saw a series of endless hurdles that a track runner was trying to jump and would eventually just be exhausted and never get to the end.

Steve [00:10:23] It’s a great visual. I love that Sandie.

Sandie [00:10:26] Feel free to add it to your repertoire because you have great stories.

Steve [00:10:31] That is good.

Sandie [00:10:33] So give us like some of the the lowest barrier hurdles in that 46,000 and some of the largest. Just a few examples.

Steve [00:10:44] I’ve heard things like baber licenses. I’ve even heard things like dog walking licenses now that that’s a thing. But even things like being able to go on field trips at your kid’s school. And there’s employment barriers, financial aid barriers, multiple barriers. I mean a lot of it has to do with employment, housing.

Sandie [00:11:09] So, wow. And then if you have children, family members that are depending on you, you finally get out and then powerless to figure out how to get back in and reintegrated. So let’s talk about what you mean by restorative justice.

Steve [00:11:32] Yeah, restorative justice, we wrap it around healing. And so in our work, when we think about restorative justice and restorative practices we utilize as a theoretical framework on how to address harm. And so I know one approach is to be punitive. I think people have mistaken our our approach as not wanting to keep folks accountable. That’s not it at all. It’s being able to address the harm in a way where it restores a relationship back. And so, you know, I’ve never met somebody who was healed or got better with more pain. And so, you know, whenever there’s a relationship that’s harmed, it’s finding an approach or a way to have both sides be heard. And also coming to a resolution to repair the relationship or at least to address the harm in a more meaningful and positive way. Also, I’m very sensitive to victims as well. I think where I was really challenged with this was when I was doing death penalty work. And, you know, I was working with folks who had caused harm and oftentimes unthinkable harm. And that work was very powerful to see how harm was addressed and folks were kept accountable.

Sandie [00:12:49] So accountability is part of the healing process. And at the same time, the healing process will, in my understanding, prepare someone to become a part of my community, my city, my society, and not have barriers that reduce their ability to be part of, to belong as we all want to belong. So what does that look like on a daily basis at Project Kinship?

Steve [00:13:33] Yeah, it’s pretty crazy at Project Kinship every day in a good way. And so I think at our schools with our kiddos there, our staff are running around busy as heck working with folks who are having challenges going to school, when they’re at school having challenges, and just caring for them, also providing tools and strategies to soothe, regulate themselves, but also being able to just finish the school well while providing basic needs for them. And so school work all day long, our staff is running around working with kids. And our offices folks are coming in all day as well. And so it’s a combination of providing resources and providing the care and love for folks to the community who are carrying more than they can bear when they come into our offices.

Sandie [00:14:28] I’m always concerned about people who care about the kids, but when they turn 18, it’s well, they’re an adult, so they’re dismissed or they seem dismissive in any case. And when in my work with child victims of human trafficking, there is so much compassion for these kids. But then when you bring adults to the conversation, then there’s lots of judgment: “Well, she should have known better. That it was the way she was dressed.” All of those kinds of things. And I constantly tell them when they were lured into this, when they were groomed, all those this was the path they were on, their brains weren’t done. And when they turn 18, we have science that shows their brains still aren’t done. And so you were part of a recent project in adult court to bring healing the cycle of incarceration. That was kind of the title when you and the Honorable Maria Hernandez presented at Ensure Justice in 2021. Can you talk about your role and why that brings so much hope to young adults?

Steve [00:15:58] Yeah, our work has been amazing with Judge Hernandez and also Justice Motoike. It’s been awesome to be a part of because it’s been a true collaborative. And so folks from probation communities or the county district attorney’s office have all come together to communicate and really see the kid. And so a lot of effort has been placed on each unique individual, and we’ve walked with them. And when challenges come up, we’ve gotten together as a team and figured out what can we do more of? And we’ve collectively brought our efforts and our resources to help the individual. And so it felt really good. The outcomes are I feel like a positive and in a way where youth are coming out, they’re successfully reintegrating back and others oftentimes bumps and challenges. But I think what’s been important is also the use of peer navigators. And so Project Kinship, we’ve also included folks with lived experience and trained them and brought them to be a part of the solution. Many of them spent years and decades terrorizing the community, and now they get to heal the community. And it’s been really cool to watch them do it through some of this court work where they could also mentor and provide support within the community. And so every collaborative effort has been good. And I think that for youth it wasn’t just a one time deal where we come in and say, Hey, let us help you? It’s been an ongoing process to say, Hey, even as bumps come up in the road we’re still going to walk with you to ensure your success.

Sandie [00:17:37] And most of the young adults that are in this collaborative court and let me just pause here. Our last episode of Ending Human Trafficking was an interview with the honorable Judge Motoike. And she explained really well what a collaborative court looks like in a juvenile justice context, and it’s fairly similar to an adult court collaborative. Lots of partners. It’s not just someone sitting on the bench deciding what your punishment will be, but it’s about people coming around you, the support that a person needs. And when you think about young adults that are 18, 19, 20, 21, we know their brains aren’t done. We have science that shows that they’re still developing. And it’s much easier to convince the community that there’s an opportunity for another pathway forward. So in that program, what’s the process for a young adult to be admitted to that collaborative court?

Steve [00:19:03] My understanding is their name will come up in the collaborative talks about the youth and then collectively they’ll allow the individual then. And then from there, we hit the ground running. Now, in the course, the individual has to accept. And then we all get together and figure out what the needs are. And really, it’s as simple as that. And then we just start running and provide services and start the journey.

Sandie [00:19:29] And here’s the part that makes me really admire your team. Not every case has a great ending. And the individual’s commitment to this is part of the process. And I want to know how you take care of your team when those situations are– You get really vested in the people that you serve. So how do you care for your team?

Steve [00:20:06] Yeah, we have this thing called serving versus saving. And early in my career, you know, I can’t help but want to save people because they’re going through things that are unthinkable. And what I found out was it’s easier to let God or the Coast Guards do the saving and if we try to do, it, will burn out. I think there’s moments that we do save people, but it’s much better to serve because when we serve, we do the best that we can every day and we start fresh the new day. And service also allows us to be reached back. That’s the important part. It’s not a hand down. It’s a mutual service to each other. And so when you serve folks on the margins and you stand with them there, you get reached back and you stand in awe as Father Greg talks about of watching folks carrying more than they can bear and teaching us about resilience, love, care and compassion for each other. And when it does that, something changes within us as we serve folks. This past month or actually this year, our team has experienced significant loss in the community through gang violence and drug overdoses. And these are folks that we’ve been working with for years. And oftentimes with these funeral that we go to we’re crushed by the weight and pain of such tragedy, of losing lives at such early ages. And then we sit back and we think about all those moments when we saw individuals come to life and experience their worth. And we remind ourselves that our lives are better because of them. And they were also able to experience their true identity and value as we were able to reflect back to them their goodness. And so what I’m learning in my life now, life is so fragile and short and there’s so much trauma, but there’s also so many moments of healing if we’re able to recognize them in the present moment.

Sandie [00:22:06] So how would you advise someone to get connected with either Homeboy’s if they’re in L.A., or Global Homeboys, or here in Orange County with Project Kinship?

Steve [00:22:21] I would say just call, call or email. Both have volunteer opportunities. Yeah, I would just say call, call or email and maybe even show up. Yeah.

Sandie [00:22:34] Just show up.

Steve [00:22:35] Just show up.

Sandie [00:22:38] Okay. So last question, actually, kind of a conversation about young people getting involved with young people. One of the most profound experiences we had pre-COVID was partnering our Live2Free college students with Project Kinship in an embedded club on a high school campus in a more compromised community. The impact for the participants from that school was significant, but I think the lives of our students were transformed forever. Can you kind of speak to, I think you did a little bit of that with the reach back, but how would community members begin to learn how to do that more?

Steve [00:23:35] I think it’s finding opportunities and places to be a service. And so I think ideally, one, if somebody has a passion for a certain area of work or service, I’d say just jump in and go for it. Find organizations and areas that will fuel their passion to give. Let’s say if one does not have that, let’s say explore. Find opportunities to connect, to volunteer, and to be of service to the community. I think that when folks do engage, the magic is in the connection and the magic is in the service and also being open back to being served back. And so it’s as simple as looking around, finding what your passion is, calling, connecting and just jumping right in.

Sandie [00:24:23] So the restorative practice trainings that are offered a couple of times a year are open to the community. Can you describe what happens in that?

Steve [00:24:35] Yeah. We got multiple trainings. But I think the exciting one has been our partnerships with the local universities. We’ve done one with UCI, Cal State Fullerton, and most recently in Chapman. And so in these trainings we’ve mixed academia with practitioner based experience and knowledge. And so it’s really cool to see both worlds collide together and make something beautiful of it. And so it’s a lot of strategies, a lot of tools and techniques, a lot of knowledge, a lot of theory mixed in with a lot of interaction and group process with the students.

Sandie [00:25:15] That’s why we loved working with you because I could see the theoretical framework with the practical application of valuing another human being and creating a space where it’s safe to serve together. I do have a quote from Judge Hernandez about you that I want to read. She said, “Steven Kim has an amazing capacity to make a person feel powerful. He’s got to be one of the most understated leaders in Orange County.” And I feel that way, too. And I want to learn more from you, from your team. And as we close this, can you tell us one more story of what happens when a person feels that power?

Steve [00:26:17] Okay, let’s see. First of all, I really thank you, Judge, for that quote. She’s one of my heroes and Sandie you are as well. So I want to put that shout out that I really appreciate the work that you’ve been doing in leading us in Orange County. And so that’s important. I think that’s important to share. I’ll go with the story. So we recently had a graduation at Chapman University and it was our Community Intervention Workers Pacifica Program and oh, it’s the great Ruben again. And after giving our certificates, he went home and he called me and said, ‘Hey, thanks for letting me go to the program.’ I said, ‘Well, it was our pleasure and I’m so proud of you.’ And he said, ‘When I went home, I gave my dad my certificate.’ And he said, ‘I’ve only seen my dad cry three times in his life. And the third time was when I gave him the certificate.’ It said Chapman University on there with Project Kinship. And he says as I as watching my dad cry, I asked him, ‘Why are you crying?’ And he said, ‘Remember, son, when you were in your twenties and kept going in and out. I saw you in prison.’ And he said, ‘Remember when you’re getting all those tattoos all over your face and I told you to stop getting that, and you said, This is my life here and I’m going to be in here for the rest of my life.’ And he goes, ‘I never stopped believing that you were going to be somebody and never stopped believing that your life held a lot of worth.’ And he said, ‘All these years later, you’re out in the community, you’re serving the community and look, you got a certificate from Chapman University.’ And he said son, ‘I knew that I was always right.’ And what I took from that is everybody needs somebody to believe in them no matter what their past mistake is, and everybody needs somebody to walk with them. And for myself, Ruben, dozens of others to come through our doors of Project Kinship who’ve lost knowing their worth, something powerful happens when folks come besides you to walk with you and remind you that your life holds tremendous value. That God did not make a mistake on you when he created you and that that will walk with you. And so that happens every day. And we get to be a part of it. And so it really is an honor and a privilege to also walk with you Sandie and all the other work that you’re doing as we’re trying to heal our community.

Sandie [00:28:43] Wow. Powerful. I feel more powerful. The judge is right. But for our listeners, I want you to know you can continue this conversation with Steve and Project Kinship. We’ll have links to workshops that he’s done. You can get involved, go to ProjectKinship.com. Is that right? Oh, it’s  .org.

Steve [00:29:12] I think so.

Sandie [00:29:14] Okay. Well, we will make sure we get it right in the in the links, but there are wonderful stories that empower us to see the worth in someone that maybe our community has dismissed. And we need all the help we can get to have a thriving community and support our kids, support families and see people heal. The healing part of Project Kinship is a mystery to many of us. But your team is so well connected that every time I visit I want to think about how do I transition someday to where this is my this is my part time job and retirement. I absolutely encourage listeners to learn about Project Kinship, find out how you can get involved and how you can learn the principles. We are serving, not saving, and we value and have a worth for every single person. Thank you so much, Steve, for being with us this morning.

Steve [00:30:30] Thank you, Sandie.

Dave [00:30:33] Steve and Sandie, thank you for this conversation. We’re inviting you now to take the first step, go online and download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking. It’ll give you the five critical things Sandie’s identified in her work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. We’re also building and expanding our community of advocates. You can become a patron over at endinghumantrafficking.org through our membership, through Patreon. Just go to Endinghumantrafficking.org, click on the Patreon link and you’ll get access to additional content and resources. It’s simple and affordable, and it continues to help support the work we’re doing here in the Ending Human Trafficking podcast and of course more broadly through the Global Center for Women and Justice here at Vanguard University. And in addition, if you’re online, you may want to find on the website more information about the Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate program. It’s a comprehensive program that will help support you in your learning, in a more formal capacity to learn about how to best come alongside and support our efforts to end human trafficking. All of that at Endinghumantrafficking.org. And Sandie and I, of course, will be back in two weeks for our next conversation. See you then, Sandie.

Sandie [00:31:59] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:32:00] Take care, everybody.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by the Honorable Judge Joanne Motoike to discuss GRACE Court, a collaborative court designed to provide services to CSEC victims and rehabilitate them to be reintegrated back into the community.

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 283, Why A Special Court for CSEC Victims, with Judge Joanne Motoike.

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 [00:00:37] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] 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, today a wonderful partner with us to really help us to understand more on the legal side of our work. And of course, so much of our work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice is about building partnerships across the legal community, law enforcement, government, so many wonderful experts that we’ve been able to talk with. And today, an expert that will help us to really get even more perspective on what happens inside the courtrooms. I’m so glad to welcome the Honorable Joanne Motoike. She serves as an associate justice of the Fourth District Court of Appeals Division Three. Previously, she was the presiding judge of the Juvenile Court in Orange County, California, where she also oversaw a unique collaborative court for child victims of commercial sexual exploitation called the GRACE Court. She has also served as a senior deputy public defender at the Orange County Public Defender’s Office and as a trial attorney in the office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague. Judge Motoike, welcome to our show today.

Joanne [00:01:56] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Sandie [00:01:59] I’m excited about this conversation. First of all, congratulations on your appointment as an associate judge of the Fourth District Court of Appeal. That’s so impressive. And I just love what I know you’ll be able to accomplish in this new role. But today we’re going to talk about your experience as presiding judge in juvenile court in Orange County and working in GRACE Court. So if you could start by explaining what GRACE Court is, that would be a great start.

Joanne [00:02:37] Thank you, Sandie. And thanks again for the congratulations. I’m really honored to be in this new position. But serving as a juvenile presiding court judge also gave me a lot of opportunities that I will never forget. Grace Court stands for generating resources to abolish child exploitation, and it is a collaborative court that was started in about 2014 by the former juvenile court presiding judge, the Honorable Maria Hernandez, who I know, Dr. Morgan, you’ve had on the show before. The court was started because there were several legislative and basically community changes that were going on surrounding the issues of human trafficking. In particularly, CSEC victims in our county and in our state and actually across the United States. As listeners probably know, back in 2000, there were federal laws to address the trafficking of persons that was passed in 2000. And then moving forward, since that date, California took its own actions, and in 2014 in particular, they had passed additional bills that allowed the dependency petition, meaning a child welfare petition, whereas a petition that involves the family. Normally the children would come into our court system as alleged victims of abuse or neglect by a parent or guardian. And in 2014, the law in California expanded that to include the victims of human trafficking. So petitions could be filed to bring in victims of human trafficking into our child welfare courts to hopefully get the support and services for that family in need. So there were several things going on legislatively in the state. And then in particular in Orange County, we also were tasked with creating a CSEC program which was also legislatively set in 2014. And as well as developing CSEC and inter-agency protocols with our community providers and stakeholders of the juvenile court. So all of those changes prompted Judge Hernandez to look into establishing a collaborative court that is now called GRACE Court and has been up and running since 2014, I have to say quite successfully with dealing in particular with victims of human trafficking.

Sandie [00:05:03] So that’s a lot for our listeners to comprehend. And we’re going to break it down just a little bit. First of all, I think one of the things that shocks me frequently is the lack of understanding of the difference between our juvenile justice system and our criminal justice system. And you and I both know that these kids that often end up in commercially sexually exploited situations have come with a lot of different problems and are often seen by community members as problem kids or kids that need more discipline or more of this or more of that. But we don’t see them as criminals. So maybe give us a primer on the difference between juvenile justice and criminal justice.

Joanne [00:05:59] Yes, there is a lot to take in. So, juvenile justice, formerly called delinquency courts, operates completely differently with a different mindset. The criminal courts are designed to be deterrence. They’re designed to basically give a consequence, a punishment in order to deter future conduct. The juvenile courts were always designed with the idea of rehabilitation, first and foremost, because by achieving rehabilitation, then you can reduce the community impact of the behavior that brought the children before us that are coming into juvenile court. You can reduce the number of recidivism for that particular population. And because we always approach our youth with that mindset of youth are always developing. They’re always continuing to grow. They can learn from their consequences and then move forward and become successful adults. So juvenile court operates with a public safety mindset, but also geared towards rehabilitation, looking at particular services and programs to support the family and the youth. Because as we all know, there are environmental factors that may come into play in bringing youth before the juvenile court system. There are mental health factors. There are all kinds of factors that could play into a youth coming into the juvenile system. And the juvenile system has always been designed to provide services and support for that family and the youth so that there can be successful reintegration into the community and a reduction of the recidivism rate.

Sandie [00:07:38] So that sounds marvelous and in and of itself is exactly what I would want for my CSEC kids. So why do we need a special court? Why do we need GRACE Court?

Joanne [00:07:50] Our Orange County has always operated with what we call specialty collaborative courts. I see juvenile court as a collaborative court overall because as I said, the goal is to provide rehabilitation through services and programs in support of the youth and the family who come into our courtrooms. So we’ve always worked towards having these specialty collaborative courts, meaning these courts that operate to address certain populations of youth who are coming into our court. We have a teen court program that services high risk, high needs youth who are duly involved or singularly involved in the child welfare system. And by dually involved, I mean they’re in the juvenile justice system, as well as the child welfare system. So we have that specialty collaborative court. There’s another collaborative court that we have that is youth development court. And that court is designed to address our– In California, Prop 57 our youth who have serious or violent offenses, and they could possibly be transferred to adult court. But we’ve instead decided to keep them in our juvenile court system because of the level of offense. There is a specialty court called youth development court to hopefully provide community based services in transition to help with the reentry of that youth into their communities. Because typically those youth are serving longer periods of time in our juvenile facilities. And we have, of course, a recovery court program, which addresses youth who have substance use issues. So in 2014, because of all of these legislative changes and recognition of these child victims with respect to human trafficking, Judge Hernandez believed that because our existing specialty collaborative courts were operating so well and were successful, that a collaborative court was needed to address the specific needs of this population, just as we address the specific needs of our teen court population. Youth development court wasn’t in play then, but our recovery court, our substance use population. So she brought together all of the particular players that are in the court and outside in the community to participate in this court to bring together the specific services that were trauma-informed and supportive of CSEC victims.

Sandie [00:10:13] So when I first heard the name GRACE Court, I thought, Oh, that is such a sweet name. And I was excited to go. And I want to describe for our listeners what it felt like to go into a court and there’s no judge up in that high bench area. And instead the judge is sitting at a table and the youth is sitting across from the judge. And then over on one side there’s one or two or three different kinds of attorneys. I didn’t even know what they all were. There’s a bailiff, there’s someone recording. There’s a row full of social workers and child welfare people and probation people, and there’s even a support dog. And I think I counted 14 and I was so impressed to see how many people were supporting one child. And then the name GRACE Court completely changed for me because the “GR” is generating resources. Tell me who the members of the collaborative team are and how that brings about a better outcome.

Joanne [00:11:34] You’re right, Dr. Morgan. I think there’s probably at least a minimum of 14 people in the courtroom. And that does not include our support dog, who is a very vital member of our team. The GRACE Court team is made up of obviously the court, the probation department, the social services agency, the health care agency. We have a CASA, our child advocates support that are here in Orange County. We have, I’m blanking now because it’s been a little bit.

Sandie [00:12:07] Oh, yeah. Our public defender.

Joanne [00:12:08] Public defender. Our district attorney. Thank you, Dr. Morgan. Our Department of Education liaison. We have community partners such as Project Choice. They’re a community-based organization that is specifically geared towards CSEC victims. And we have our victim advocates. And Dr. Morgan, am I missing anybody?

Sandie [00:12:32] No, I think you’ve got it. I think you got it. It’s like having a choir.

Joanne [00:12:38] It is. It is. But it is always and I always stress this to each of the GRACE Court participants. That is their team. That is their individual support team. All of those folks play a vital role in every single component of every thing that youth may need. And if the youth doesn’t need all of that, that’s fine, too. You know, we’re there when they need us.

Sandie [00:13:03] So what is the way that they access all of these resources in a court situation?

Joanne [00:13:11] So when a youth comes into the court and again, it depends on the type of case, but typically it is usually in a child welfare case, it’s where they want to come to court, they’ll come to court and they can access immediately because by way of our team discussion to support that youth, they can access whatever they may need at that given moment. That all of the team is available, and I hate to say this 24/7, but there are some pretty dedicated team members who will pick up that phone at midnight or at three in the morning when that youth is in crisis or in need. And we always have group emails, everybody is on an email thread if something is going on with that particular youth. If that youth needs to come into court earlier, then we try to schedule it so everybody can be available and we can come in. There is just a lot of support inside the court and then outside the court for each participant.

Sandie [00:14:09] I was really impressed observing the team work and it did feel like it was very well orchestrated as people would step up and say, well, we can do this. And I think part of the beauty of GRACE Court is the burden doesn’t all fall on one person. It is a shared responsibility and the complex issues can be overwhelming. And I think having a team approach is in the best interest of the youth.

Joanne [00:14:46] Absolutely. Absolutely correct, Dr. Morgan.

Sandie [00:14:50] So, okay, so we know this is working. And when I travel and I tell people about it, the first thing they ask me is, well, how do we set one up? So if someone wanted just to be pointed in the right direction because I know it’d take us two or 3 hours to lay this out, how would you advise them for starting a collaborative court for CSEC?

Joanne [00:15:14] I think it starts as Dr. Morgan, you know, when Orange County started GRACE Court, I think it starts with law enforcement. You really have to talk to law enforcement, and that may be community providers coming together and engaging with their law enforcement to basically get them on board with respect to what is going to start happening in the courts. And the reason I say that is because Orange County has the task force and that task force supports the court in a way that allows the youth to be recognized. Probation should be immediately identified and notified if a CSEC victim is contacted by law enforcement and in need of services and assistance. So law enforcement really is on the ground and they’re the beginning of what sets the stage for GRACE Court. Because whether it’s law enforcement and a juvenile justice involved youth or whether it’s a social service agency and a child welfare involved, or whether it’s both agencies that are on the ground at the scene contacting the youth in the family and determining that this possibly this youth is at risk or a CSEC victim, than they start the ball rolling. And then what happens is there are several, what I call MDT, multidisciplinary team meetings that come together before the case even comes to GRACE Court. So I would engage the child welfare agency in your county. I would engage law enforcement in your county and then get the courts involved as well as the stakeholders. And that means youth counsel, parents counsel, the district attorney is usually going to be informed with the law enforcement portion, the probation department, and then start gathering the community resources that you’re going to need to also provide support, like you said, Dr. Morgan. It doesn’t fall on one shoulder. It’s involvement of all of the agencies to support that particular youth. So it really is a big undertaking, but it can be done. As you know, there are many counties now in California that have similar courts like GRACE Court. I mean, Los Angeles County, I think was one of the first courts that started with STAR Court and then Orange County. And now we are asked, well, normally I was asked in Orange County to go and speak at other counties to talk about how GRACE Court started and the mechanics of getting it started. So there are a lot of resources here in California that I’m sure would be willing to work or at least share information about how things can get started for a collaborative court such as this.

Sandie [00:18:05] So can you give us an encouraging success story?

Joanne [00:18:09] Yes. There have been a couple where we have actually in GRACE Court had true victims of CSEC and they were able through GRACE Court and the support services to, for lack of a better word, graduate out of the system to transition out of the child welfare system. And one of them was even dually involved in the juvenile justice system and was able to get her complete record cleared on the juvenile justice side. And then on the child welfare side, she was able to transition completely into independent living and full time employment, completely breaking that cycle of the trafficker.

Sandie [00:18:51] And that’s what is the beauty of GRACE Court is seeing that end result. But it is not an overnight experience. It takes a huge team and a lot of work. The last time I visited the court a couple of months ago, one of the participants had just started college and it just emphasizes how important it is to have a community of support around someone recovering from this kind of abuse. And when we think about that in terms of our families, our communities, we often think about a nuclear family. But even in a nuclear family, there’s a neighbor, there’s a school teacher, there’s a sports coach. And this idea of multiple members of a team in a child’s development is a normal part of community growth for our kids and supporting that is critical to their good outcomes. I want to go back to one of the most surprising things about starting a collaborative court. You said the first person or the first people you reach out to are law enforcement and my partner at the Global Center, the associate director Derek Marsh is retired law enforcement and he always calls me a tree hugger. So I always think it’s the tree huggers that start this thing. But it is really critical for those of us who want to do something with that great sounding name like GRACE to understand that this kind of court has legislative connections. There’s lots of legal requirements and reaching out to law enforcement as a partner has to be part of the very foundation. How do you go about, I mean, Orange County we already had a task force, but how would you recommend finding law enforcement partners in other counties where you visited but they don’t have a task force?

Joanne [00:21:09] Well, what has happened, Dr. Morgan, is that, you know, just to be clear, the court can’t necessarily engage with the law enforcement, but I think the community can and the stakeholders can. But in Orange County, as you said, we already had the task force and so GRACE Court coming on board was another part of that bigger puzzle that we needed to put together. And Judge Hernandez did that well. So for other counties, when I have gone to speak about how GRACE Court operates, we have always brought or I’ve actually been asked because law enforcement’s already made that connection with our task force. So our task force is already established the communication and established that the other county is interested in doing something like this because there is training that is ongoing for law enforcement agencies because, as you can probably recall, what, ten, 20 years ago, actually probably more than that, there was a completely different mindset in law enforcement and across the board in the court system as to how we treat victims of human trafficking. And so I think that if law enforcement in your county is somewhat interested, then it would be helpful to kind of reach out to a county that has an established task force to start those conversations and start the training that would be required for the officers on the street to engage with CSEC victims.

Sandie [00:22:37] So as we wind down here, I know that we have success stories. I know that GRACE Court is working, but there are gaps that remain. What else do we need to do for our kids?

Joanne [00:22:53] I love that you asked me that question. There’s so many things more that we could be doing for our kids. Yeah. Do we have enough time, Dr. Morgan?

Sandie [00:23:01] You’ve got 5 minutes. You can probably put your top three in.

Joanne [00:23:05]  I will say for GRACE Court participants in particular, the youth really need placement. They need placement options. Quite often, the placement or immediate return home to a parent or family is not a viable option for numerous reasons. And I’m not saying that it’s not going to happen, but we’re always working towards reunification. But during this process of immediately addressing the youth’s issues, we have found that placement options are very, very limited. And I’m not talking about just in Orange County. It’s a statewide, it’s a national problem that we do not have enough placement options for our youth involved in our child welfare system and even in our juvenile justice system for those who may need placement in that system as well. Additionally, there are, as you said, a lot of our youth coming before us, there are complex issues with respect to their trauma and a variety and multitude of mental health issues and getting the appropriate services and even residential treatment that the youth may need geared towards also the CSEC particular issues that they’re facing, those are gaps because we just do not have a lot of those services and programs for identified CSEC victims with respect to substance abuse issues or high level mental health issues. So I could go on and on. But those are the two main issues that I think I dealt with every day in GRACE Court when I presided over that court.

Sandie [00:24:46] Those sound like mountains, but we are building better and better resources to surround our kids. I know that here in Orange County, our child welfare is expanding resource parent resources. It sounds redundant, but now we’re beginning to change the language from foster to resource parent and creating a culture of making sure that resource parents have everything they need for the unique situation of taking a child into their home with complex trauma. And it has been a wonderful experience working with child welfare to see how some of the resources are really inspiring, like equine therapy and finding that this isn’t going to be all on you to become the only resource as a parent in this particular circumstance. So I’m encouraged by where we’re growing with that. The substance use issue, Judge. I have looked and looked and I don’t see promising practices at this point. And so I’m hopeful that there will be more research and more resources in that respect very, very soon.

Joanne [00:26:23] Yes, hopefully. And I do recognize that Orange County, as you mentioned, Dr. Morgan, I think that they are taking steps, like you said, with respect to the resource families and trying to engage more families and becoming those.

Sandie [00:26:37] So as we wrap this up, I want to thank you for having been one of our regular Ensure Justice speakers. Every March, at Vanguard we host the Ensure Justice conference. And as a direct result of your questions about the needs in this population, last year, our March 2023 conference will be called Finding a Way Home, and our focus will be on resource parents, on placements, kinship models and other opportunities so that we can grow that particular aspect of our support for our kids in GRACE Court here in Orange County and be a model for beyond. So thank you so much for inspiring us.

Joanne [00:27:37] Thank you. I am looking forward to that, Dr. Morgan, and that’s exciting to know.

Dave [00:27:43] Thank you both for this conversation. You know, Sandie, I think back to when we first started this show, we decided on the word ending versus some other term and that it is a process. We’re all continually doing things that will help. And as we’ve heard in this conversation today, so much has been done. Thank you Judge Motoike on your leadership and also so much yet to do. And we’re inviting you to take that next step with us, to help us to be part of the community of advocates. I hope you’ll take that first step if you haven’t already to go online and download a copy of Sandie’s guide, The Five Things You Must Know: A Quick Start Guide to Ending Human Trafficking will teach you the five critical things that Sandie’s identified in her work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice that you should know before you join the fight against trafficking. You can get access to it by going over to endinghumantrafficking.org. And in addition, you may decide if you’ve been listening for a bit to support us by becoming a patron. You can access exclusive content and join a community of advocates. If you’d like to find out more, go to endinghumantrafficking.org. Click on the Patreon link and you’ll get access to new content. Membership is a very simple, straightforward. You can become a patron for only $5 a month. Access to all of our benefits. Of course, you can give more if you’d like, but just go over to endinghumantrafficking.org for more. And if you’re already supporting the show as a patron, thank you so much for your support. You are part of our partnership as we’ve talked about so many times on the show. Sandie, sown the importance of partnership. Thank you for your partnership and continuing to support our work here at the Global Center for Women and Justice here at Vanguard University. We will be back in two weeks with our next conversation. Always a pleasure, Sandie. Thanks.

Sandie [00:29:31] Thanks, Dave.

Dave [00:29:33] Have a great day, everyone. Take care.