To The Contrary

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The trafficker, he's trying to gain this person's trust so he can begin abuse and trafficking and control.

Just the insight of our survivors has been so insightful.

Those individuals have lived the experience and that makes us look outside the box.

Human trafficking sits at the intersection of every single part of our lives, and therefore every policy area.

Hello, I'm Bonnie Erb, and welcome to this special edition of To The Contrary.

Human trafficking is the exploitation of people for sex, of forced labor, and it thrives in small town just as much as in big cities.

One state, Arkansas, is confronting the problem head on with a multidisciplinary anti-trafficking program that is now being looked to as a model for the nation.

I was trafficke for two and a half years in the early 80s.

Child sex trafficking is often imagined as a stranger kidnaping a child off the street.

In reality, that scenario represents only a fraction of cases because most children are trafficked by someone in their family or by a person they already know and trust.

Usually they're building what the victim thinks is a relationship.

The victim views it as a real relationship, a true relationship.

They're emotionally bought into the relationship.

On the abuser side, the trafficker, he's doing it for his end goal of, he's trying to gain this person's trust so he can, you know, flip the script and begin abuse and trafficking and control.

Kathy Bryan met the man who would traffic her on an ordinary walk to a friend's house.

He seemed like a kind neighbor, always nearby when she needed someone to listen.

And while there was no romance, there was a powerful sense of connection.

I cared about the person who was trafficking me.

He groomed me for right around six and a half months, and I was totally in in the relationship.

At 16 Kathy didn't have a boyfriend, so when he invited her out dancing, it felt exciting and safe.

She agreed to go, believing she was simply spending time with a trusted friend.

He picked me up and on asnot too lon after we left, started driving.

He said oh I forgot something at my house.

But remember, I've got six months with of, you know, relationship here, I trusted him.

She would soon discover how dangerously misplaced that trust was.

The night that began as a simple outing abruptly became the start of a years lon nightmare of abuse and control.

So we go to his house.

We walk inside.

As you go into the house.

We entered the living room.

He stopped in front of the fireplace and that's the first time h literally touched me outside of, I think he held my hand on a drive one day and he just embraced me.

And as he was hugging me and kissing me for the very first time, another man came into the living room already completely disrobed, and the two of them spent the next 2 to 3 hours raping and sodomizing m on the floor of the living room.

Afterward, dazed and in shock, Kathy tried to leave, but he blocked the door.

He ordered her to meet him whenever he called, and sealed his control with chilling threats against her family.

So basically, in moments, I went from having what I thought was this really great friend to some monster I had never met before, who was now threatening the life of my sister.

And that's all it took for me.

I from that point forward, I was where he told me to be when he told me to be there, because I felt lik I was holding my sister's life in my hands.

For Kathy, the threats didn't end that night.

They defined the next two and a half years.

People would come do whatever they wanted to me, and then he would drop me back at my house in the middle of the night, usually like between 3 and 4 a.m., and then I would try to get a little bit of slee and then get up, go to school.

It was eventually it was my senior year, and so then at that year I would go to schoo for half a day, work at a bank half a day because that was my first job, come home and the whole day would start over again.

So it was like that about 4 to 5 days a week for two and a half years.

There is no single definitive count of how many people are trafficked in the United States each year, because cases are scattered across agencies and many victims never come forward.

Even so, in 2024, the National Human Trafficking Hotline reported 12,000 cases involving 22,000 victims, a figure advocates say almost certainl underestimates the true scope.

Since 2007, hotline data indicate hundreds of trafficking cases in Arkansas alone, involving well more than a thousand identified victims.

And then we developed as Arkansas State Police, Attorney General's Offic and the Department of Human Services, being the three leads of the council.

And we have multiple other state agencies and nonprofits that are part of th the Human Trafficking Council.

Arkansas State Police Sergeant Matt Foster leads the state's anti-trafficking effort, created in response to a push from the attorney general and an executive order by Governor Sarah Sanders in 2023.

Our biggest concern was you have so many people, nothing's going to get done.

But what I found and what I've seen throughout the country is you had to have a member from each group.

If not, then it's going to land flat or you're going to make the wrong decision.

You know, for example, we have a victim survivor committee and just the insight of our survivors has been so insightful.

Those individuals have lived the experience.

And that makes us look outside the box.

On the law enforcement front they've seen significant wins, including contact with 178 victims in a year.

In one operation in Fort Smith, state police identified more than 40 victims in a single day.

And in another community, Operation Delta led to additional arrests and more than 30 people identified as trafficking victims.

Lawmakers have also passed six new state laws to bolster the council's work, while advocates have connected survivors with medical care, counseling, housing and other essential support so they can begin to rebuild their lives.

So then we had to g to the community and inform them what are the general indicators of child sex trafficking?

And here's how you report it.

You know, you're multiple steps.

We have three steps.

You know, step one is doing the description, taking photographs if you can, location, dates and times.

You know what room theyre in or the vehicle.

An then the next step is contacting your local non-emergency hotline through law enforcement.

And in step three is contacting your state level human trafficking council so we can respond also and take take those tips in.

Over the past 10 to 20 years, there has been recognition that this is not a problem that individual stakeholders can solve on their own.

Staca Shehan works with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which reviews tens of thousands of reports of missing kids every year.

Roughly 1 in 7 of those cases is flagged as a child sex trafficking situation, meaning thousands of children nationwide are pulled into this crime annually.

We often hear about myths and misunderstandings that it's either a proble that happens in other countries, and it doesn't happen here in the United States.

And if it happens here in the United States, it's children that are brought over the border illegally or maintained her in the United States illegally.

It doesn't give you the full scope of what this crime is.

We are seeing more often than not, these are U.S.

children, U.S.

citizens that are being exploited by U.S.

citizens that are either within their family or outside their family, and they're being bought for sex by U.S.

buyers.

Familial trafficking is probably one of the lesser known forms of trafficking.

There is still most definitely a gap in the field and in public awareness about the fact that children are trafficked by people they know and peopl within their immediate family.

So what that entail is often much younger children who are groomed through sexual exploitation, and then that parent or that aunt or uncle, that grandfather, that grandmother, cousins, someone related to that child i then selling that child for sex, profiting from that exploitation and coordinating it.

We have so much familial trafficking.

We have a lot of kids that are that are in home school situations that are being trafficked.

And no one sees these kids other than someone in the community or a teacher sees them at the school.

And that's why a lot of our numbers, our missing kids numbers go u whenever school starts, reports of trafficking starts going up when kids go back to school because they're disclosing the teachers.

Teachers are seeing things.

There needs to be improved education and training for teachers, for coaches, for people that have direct access to those children.

And specifically, we need to start teaching the public not to talk themselves out of it.

So they may see something that's concerning and they tell themselves, that couldn't happen in my neighborhood, that wouldn't happen in that family.

Or maybe that's not really what I saw.

And instead of talking ourselves out of it and listing all the reasons fo why it's not possibly accurate, we need to start thinking about what if I'm right and taking the chance on making the report because it could make the difference in that child's life.

There is another major barrie to spotting trafficking victims.

The crime often hides in plain sight i both sex and labor trafficking.

Victims are not held in chain or hidden in remote locations, which we often see in medi representations of trafficking.

The reality is that victims often work in the businesses that we engage with daily.

They live in our neighborhoods, their children attend our schools.

Megan Lundstrom is the CEO of Polaris, a domestic anti-trafficking organization that started the National Huma Trafficking Hotline and has run a wide variety of programs during the past 23 years.

Human trafficking can present in many ways because there is often wha I refer to as the perfect storm of vulnerabilities.

So these vulnerabilitie are the result of a combination of systems failures and structural barriers.

So one of the primary indicators, or the strongest predictor of trafficking tha Polaris has found over the last 23 years of data collection is child poverty.

When somebody is experiencing child poverty, that economic stability combined with challenges like debt, forced criminality, social isolation, substance use disorder and mental health needs, being excluded from financial systems that really creates that perfect storm, that creates the environment that is likely for trafficking and exploitation to occur.

Research by Polaris has identified some 25 different types of human trafficking.

One of the hardest to track involves labor.

When you look at labor trafficking, it's so hard to identify because what, it looks like someone working.

But one of the biggest reasons why it's become so difficult to investigate, to navigate in Arkansas is due to the fact that the individuals that are victims of labor trafficking are also seeing themselves as suspects, and that also goes to sex trafficking.

These individuals, they are they believe that they are committing a crime.

So they think that they're a suspec and that if they get assistance or if they tell law enforcement, they themselves will get arrested, they'll be deported.

Lundstrom says public polic is key and generally bipartisan.

But despite federal and state legislation, major challenges remain.

Some of the key polic priorities we're looking at are economic stability and workforce protections that reduce vulnerabilities especially for foreign nationals and temporary workers.

Access to post post-crisis stabilization services for survivors that really focus on addressing those key structural barriers that take a really long time to overcome.

Interoperable data systems.

This is a big piece.

All of our intelligence really exist in silos, and we can't see a full picture of what human trafficking looks like because our data systems don't talk to each other.

And then lastly, corporate due diligence and transparency and supply chains.

So those are some of the really big policy areas.

The ubiquitous nature of human trafficking also poses a challenge.

Human trafficking sits at the intersection of, like I said, every single part of our live and therefore every policy area.

And that can be really difficult for lawmakers to know where to prioritize efforts for maximum impact.

Polaris work with more than 300 jurisdictions with differing protocols on law.

That makes it really complicated for local, state and federal partners to coordinate with one another and different states to coordinate.

And while trafficking doesn' require movement, it often can.

And so when you have traffickers moving their victims or, you know, financial cash flows moving across jurisdictions, it creates so much more, so many more challenges for enforcement.

Lundstrom testified on Capitol Hill about ethical use of AI.

She also testified about technology to combat human trafficking, a tool that is already valuable to anti-trafficking efforts.

Traffickers are opportunists.

They will always adopt new technology faster than systems with compliance obligations.

Our national response must be nimble to keep up, but never at the expens of the people we aim to protect.

Technology should never be used on survivors.

It should be used with and for us.

Through the Report Act, we are receiving more reports from online companies than we ever did in the past, and this is giving us a window into how technology is being misused to both target children, to control children and to advertise them for sex.

One of the key ways of targeting vulnerabilities is to establish trust, to use the information that a child may have shared online, or that a parent may have posted about the child online.

And then as an exploiter, I would use that to target that child.

I would use that to engage them in conversation.

I would fill those areas that the child has identified as gaps or vulnerabilities or wants and needs.

I would become what that child needs so that they rely on me.

And so that is one of the ways that technology is being used to target children.

This year, there is a major focus on trafficking and the FIFA World Cup soccer tournament.

I think World Cup is a really great case that a major sporting events ultimately are a great case study in where are those systems challenges and is there are there pressure points where we're seeing system failure when you have a surge?

A large population or big shifts in out of town visitors or the labor market locally, you're going to see changes i human trafficking as a result.

So historically, a lot of the focus around major sporting event has been around addressing sex trafficking specifically, and so doing undercover operations and lots of outreach and education to tourists and local residents around that event on what sex trafficking can look like and where to go if you need help.

What we know internationally is that labor trafficking also can increase around major sporting events, particularly because there's such a need for temporary workers.

And so you're going to see, you know, in hotels you need additional cleaning crews, food service, vendors, you're going to see all these workers coming into an area.

Anti-trafficking organizations have trained hotel and hospitality workers to recognize warning signs during the tournament.

We have a lot of corporate partners, and some of them are in the hospitality and lodging and tourism industries.

And so we provide a wide variety of resources, including trainings and scenario exercises and consultations that are really customized.

So how somebody may see trafficking in a specific instance also has a lot to do with who they are.

In the example of a hotel, is it a hotel guest?

Well, they may see things that are different from the front desk manager, who may see different things than the house cleaning crew.

So we do really customize trainings for these partners to ensure that they're able to educate both their guest and their staff and third party vendors on what to look for in each of those instances.

Advocates say many trafficking victims in the United States are first exploite between the ages of 12 and 14, when most kids are still in middle school.

And that means middle schoolers basically have a bull's eye on their forehead, and nobody's told them.

I don't want kids walking around terrified.

I want them empowered.

So we need to empowe our children to be safe online.

Stop taking their phone away.

Teach them how to use it wisely.

Stop telling them to stop talking to people.

Teach them how to interact wisely.

Teach them what healthy relationship looks like, and that secrets and threats by somebody, what that really is and that it's not something they need to bow to you that they can ask for help.

Polaris is also analyzing one of the biggest sex trafficking scandals involving underage girls.

The Jeffrey Epstein case.

Polaris has looke at the Epstein case specifically as not just at the systems failure and the need for accountability of people wh have caused harm in that case.

But also we have to remember that we need to protect survivor dignity and their privacy.

So we have to remember that survivors are the ones that are most impacted when sensitive information about what they endured comes public.

And that is somethin that Polaris has worked on for two decades now, is reall making sure that data governance and survivor voice and choice and confidentiality are protected at all times.

There's honestly no place that's inoculated from it.

For instance, it' normal for people in small towns to think it wouldn't happen there.

And when I say small town, I mean like 600 people, a thousand people, 2000 people, 7000, you know, small town America.

But it does.

This issue happen any place that theres people.

It is all about control and power and greed.

It's a very low risk, high reward crime.

And so if you are a criminal, it makes sense to this business model makes sense because at the end of the day, it's a business model.

It's an illegal business model.

But it is and it's very profitable.

Kathy's trafficker eventually released her, she believes, just before an organized network planned to move her to another state.

Today, she's a founding member of the Arkansas Council on Human Trafficking and the founder and CEO of the Genesis Project, which offers long term, relationshi based advocacy and coordinates a wide range of services for minors and adults who have survived sex trafficking and exploitation.

We had one op this yea where we recovered four people, and they exited their trafficking situation that night and they're still out.

That is such a huge win.

But also a win is meeting them with compassion and empathy and resources and valuing them as a human being when they're regularly not treated as such and letting them know that there's hope.

This life experience that they're in is near impossible to leave.

We've had kids go missing five times a year.

We've had we provide services to the victims that are adults that they still call us and we still go help them.

And I would also say this, if you're in law enforcement or youre a victim service provider watching this and listening to me talk isplease do not give up on them because the next time might be the time that it changes their lives forever and they become who they want to become.

Prevention is definitel something we do at the council and the NGOs here in the state do it as well.

Being able to put out information online that helps educate parents and teachers and community members and children themselves is important because everybody and their brother is on social media these days.

Making sure the community has access to awareness of what trafficking looks like, how you can be aware of it like awareness of trafficking tactics, you know, what red flags are, those types of things are, yo know, huge part of prevention.

I always tell kids, you might not think you need to know about this, but what if you knowing helps preven a friend from being trafficked?

If you suspect someone is being trafficked, you should call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at (888)373-7888.

That's it for this edition of To The Contrary.

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