In order to overcome our own Adversity, we must be willing to reach out and support others. This week on Acta Non Verba, Nanette Ward shares the impact that human trafficking is having on our culture and how we can identify the signs that it’s happening around us, as well as what to do about it. During this conversation we will discuss how individuals become victims of human trafficking, how social media has a positive and negative impact on human trafficking, and what to do if you see indicators of abuse when you’re out in public.
Nanette Ward is a 2008 founding member of the Stop Human Trafficking Coalition of Central Missouri. She has been an active volunteer for the past 12 years, involved in various aspects of the Coalition’s work, including community education and direct support to survivors. Currently, she serves as board co-chair. She also serves on the Missouri Attorney General’s anti-trafficking task force since her appointment in 2007.
You can connect with Nanette via Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMSHTC
Episode Transcript:
01:29
strategies these leaders use to turn adversity into victory, live an extraordinary life based on actions, not words. Now, here’s your host, Marcus Aurelius Anderson. Acta Non Verba is a Latin phrase that means actions and not words. If you want to know when somebody truly believes, don’t listen to their words instead, observe their actions. I’m Marcus Aurelius Anderson, and my guest today truly embodies that phrase.
01:58
Nanette Ward is a 2008 founding member of the Stop Human Trafficking Coalition at Central Missouri. She has been an active volunteer for the past 12 years, involved in all various aspects of the coalition’s work, including community education and direct support to survivors. Currently, she serves as board co-chair. She also serves on the Missouri attorney general’s anti-trafficking task force since her appointment in 2007. Now I first met Nanette.
02:28
In 2017, when we shared the stage together at a TEDx in Columbia, Missouri, the TEDx 2017 Como, as they call it, it was entitled Citizens. And her speech there was truly groundbreaking for me. She shared some statistics that were staggering. 43 million people are slaves of human trafficking worldwide today as we speak. As she mentioned, human trafficking is the second largest industry in the world. It is the fastest growing criminal industry.
02:58
and human trafficking is happening right now in our community, in your community. And today in this conversation, we’re gonna learn more about it, how you can stop it, how you can recognize it, and why this is something that is probably much further dispersed than you can even imagine. Nanette, thank you for being here. It is an honor to have you on your show and thank you for taking the time. Thank you, Marcus. The honor to be with you. It’s an honor to have you. We met back then. I got to see you in action a little bit.
03:28
because you drop everything to help survivors, to help anyone that’s in this environment. And one of the things that you talked about was in your TEDx talk, what was the name of your TEDx talk again? You can stop human trafficking, is that right? Only you can stop human trafficking, like the Smokey the Bear. Smokey the Bear, exactly. And you were talking so much about that that really blew my mind. You were talking about how just social media use alone can be something that really
03:58
this is how people are able to find more victims and how people unknowingly put themselves out there and become prey to this sort of behavior. What does that look like and how can we stop that from happening? So it goes back a ways. They remember MySpace, many other types of Facebook apps and social media apps that we can hardly keep up with them. You know, what we are familiar with and what are.
04:27
teenagers or middle schoolers are aware of would be very different and also in different regions. But the point being the more access to these apps, it’s bringing strangers into their life and as one law enforcement person said when you walk into your home with that phone, you’re walking in all those strangers into your home. It’s an open book.
04:54
Nowadays, there’s a couple aspects to this. One is how much is shared on social media, where you live, where you spend your time, what you like, if you’re depressed, if you feel like running away, if you wish you had a boyfriend, you wish you had a job, all those things. Traffickers, predators are able to research just based on what you have on there. And they’re smart enough to get on different forms of social media and present themselves as someone else. And you don’t know what they can pop a picture in there of it.
05:24
cute 16 year old and they might be some 15 year old somebody in another state. But the other side of this is with COVID, there’s more and more time spent on social media. And so that just exacerbates the problem, greater exposure, more boredom, more exploration, more engagement. And the more engagement they have on social media, the more exposed they are to predators. And another piece of this is that
05:53
society for our kids, even for adults, we strive for the number of likes, the number of followers that’s held in really high regard. And for our younger folks who are still developing that sense of self-esteem and confidence, that’s what they look to. You know, they’re struggling anyway. There’s a lot of peer pressure already.
06:19
So they’re willing to put themselves out there to do those things that they know will gain attention, which oftentimes is risky behavior, comments, pictures, all of that. And so all of those factors play into it. And it has definitely resulted in more cases related to exploitation and trafficking of our young people through social media and gaming, where
06:48
you’re in real time playing a game with someone in who knows what country or what state and you’re developing a relationship, a friendship, a connection. And again, they have entered into your home. Never mind that you might lock the door at night there in your home and sharing all kinds of information. And you know, this, if I cite a case, this is just one that we can happen to read in the paper, but there’s many, many, many.
07:18
many more that we will never know about. But there were two teenage boys, independent of each other, gaming, and to go out of their home, leave their home, and whatever kind of opportunity was offered to them, they left. The safety of their home for what seemingly sounded better, 16-year-old boys. I don’t know exactly, but I’m sure they could have offered a lot of different things to make it seem appealing.
07:45
And they ended up being sexually exploited in a rundown, horrid place when they were found, basically sold for sex, used as a commodity. And that’s what human trafficking is, is using a human being as a commodity for profit, either in forced labor or in commercial sexual exploitation. So this is modern day slavery is what this is? Yes.
08:15
Here with transatlantic slavery and the slaves that were brought over from Africa. And we have that history. We know what the scenarios were. We’ve had movies even recently that really brought that home starkly to us in very lifelike images. So we are very aware of what slavery was like then. But that same principle of using people as a commodity.
08:43
or someone else’s benefit. And they’re disposable in the same way slaves were then. Their features are considered in the same way slaves were back then. Some of the differences are that there is a lot of mental manipulation, whereas we know there were whippings and chains and all of those things. There still are in some cases, physical restraint and confinement for sure, but more so
09:12
It’s the mind manipulation and the coercion, the fear that keeps people enslaved. Absolutely. And like you’re saying, if you have an internet connection, you are at risk. So this knows no lines, no bounds, nobody and no one is safe or off limits to this. They could easily fall prey to this without even being aware of it. And so it’s important not to have people scared away like, oh gosh, social media is absolutely is a good thing. But you have to.
09:41
do it with an awareness that there are dangers. So whoever’s listening, if you have kids in your care, young adults even who are in college and are thinking nothing bad will ever happen, they’re invincible and even adults to know that we all can fall prey. So if you can enter into social media activity, knowing that you would wanna only be friends or connect with people that you can actually say who they are.
10:08
and know that without a doubt that they have your best interests at heart, okay. And it might bring down the number of connections you have that will certainly keep you safer. So you can use social media for good. Don’t wanna scare people away, but go into it with full awareness of the dangers so that you can avoid those and educate yourselves and the people under your care and within your influence of the dangers as well, because it’s absolutely.
10:36
a hotspot for traffickers and predators of all types, to research, actually, literally research, and then take that time to groom, find out what you like and say, oh, I like that too. And maybe they don’t, but that is their strategy, is to become familiar to you, to gain your trust, and go deeper and deeper, and they can take all the time they need because the payoff is really great. The…
11:05
illegal sale of human beings is high profit, high, high profit. So traffickers are willing to go through time and extreme measures because the payoff is really great. It’s also low risk. So if they manage to lure someone away and get them into sex trafficking, they can be afraid for their life and they can be out in public and you can be threatened and told,
11:35
I’m going to tell people you’re my niece and you better shut up or who knows what’s going to happen to you. And they’ll be walking around in plain view, fearing for their lives. But we will not have any idea. So it’s low risk and high demand. There are people who want to buy children and adults for sexual purposes. And we as an everyday person, we’re always looking for a good deal.
12:05
a good bargain on a product, and we like to find them as cheap as possible. And so just in that general way as consumers, we also drive the demand for labor traffickers to victimize their laborers so they can get the lowest cost and the highest profit to them. And so that, in ways that we’re not even realizing, is fueling that drive for labor traffickers because of our demand for…
12:35
products that achieve. Wow. And we’ll talk a little bit more about how that can be unpacked and how that’s all around us. But I’d like to know a little bit about what got you involved because this is truly your mission. This is your passion. This is what you’re compelling why for what you do. What led you to this and is there a story behind that? So like many of us who are out there in the world trying to do good, our parents had something to do with that. And mine certainly did.
13:05
who live lives of service. So I grew up with that, and I always have to give credit to the way I was raised and specifically getting involved in human trafficking. I was working with the Human Rights Commission. I was a human rights educator and investigator for the city of Columbia. And there was a conference held by the University of Missouri student organization called Stop Traffic.
13:32
It doesn’t exist anymore, but for several years, it was a strong and active group and had strong leadership. In 2008, they had a conference on campus and I was able to attend as an employee of the Human Rights Commission. I was like most, probably most of the people who attended, who had not actually been to a conference on human trafficking before. This was in 2008. There are conferences all around.
14:01
the country now and even in Missouri and ways that we can access professional opportunities to learn, and on the internet too. But at that time, not so much, but we were able to hear firsthand from a survivor of labor trafficking that was trafficked here in the US and foreign-born and a survivor of sex trafficking who was a US-born. She was an adult when she spoke, but she was a teenager when she had been sex trafficked and many other speakers. So we all learned.
14:30
from our different backgrounds and professions, walks of life. They had a diversity of people attending the conference. They had people from other states that had come to the conference. We also learned from people who were doing the work in certain segments of the country that we would have not had any idea about except for coming to that conference and talking about it. So there were us who had no experience and no real understanding.
14:59
or just very little or vague understanding to those who were already doing the work and being able to learn from them. So the leadership of the student group had a great vision. They knew that a student organization would have their membership come and go. And they encouraged those of us at the conference who were from right there in this area of central Missouri to.
15:26
gather during the conference, share names and contact information, and figure out meeting after the conference. And our very first meeting doing that outside of the conference after it ended was to say we have to form a community-based coalition. So the first few years we worked very closely with that student organization and partnership with them, supporting each other’s efforts. We all felt like we knew so little, but we were from different professions, the university
15:54
law enforcement, social service people, and yet this was such a new area for us. So we were all motivated and felt compelled to start with the education. It’s kind of like, well, if we don’t know, there’s probably a whole lot of people who don’t know. So we’re going to start by beginning to spread some education and awareness in our very own community. That’s how we began. And then very soon after, there was a real need to give support.
16:23
to a survivor who was right here in our community that had an open federal case of trafficking and law enforcement knew that we existed. And although we were fairly new, maybe one or two years, there were folks within the coalition who had some experience working with different types of people and were comfortable providing that side-by-side support. And really I think that’s what
16:53
made it possible for us to begin. That was just the benefit of those who were in the members in the early time. And we just sort of jumped in as needed and started as simply a survivor who was in the community who needed some new clothes to get a job. So we stepped in to help do that or a bus pass to be able to get to work. And then when her case was coming to a close, we knew that she would no longer have the victim advocate that
17:22
is some support to them while their federal cases is open. And when it closes that would go away. We met with that first survivor and said, you know, we are still gonna be here to walk alongside you in whatever capacity you need. And I wouldn’t have imagined that would mean maybe years of support along their journey, but it’s truly been a life-changing thing for all of us involved in having those relationships with survivors.
17:51
That’s how it started. And you were saying also how, just like you’re saying, this is more than just extracting the person from the immediate threat. All the support that’s there, all that trauma, there’s chaos, they have to learn to adapt. And there’s a lot that has to be done. So just kind of getting them out of that environment is the immediate threat. But all these other things you’re talking about, that’s what really is what takes a lot of time.
18:21
you kind of read about it, but then when you actually meet that person and you see them and you put a face to this, it’s life changing. I shared about the very first survivor I met. She was a victim of a horrific case. She was actually, in her case, there was physical enslavement by a crate that she was kept in, in the basement of somebody’s home. But again, there doesn’t have to be anything like that, and it’s still slavery. But she was often kept in a cage.
18:50
in the basement of the home of the trafficker and they actually were family. She met the son of the husband and wife while she was in school and had a developmental disability. I’m sure they took advantage of that. So she was actually sort of boyfriend girlfriend with a son and was in foster care, which again is a vulnerable life situation for many of our young people, whether they’re
19:20
or at risk of that isolation and lack of support that they end up being easily lured away. And in her case, she was not getting the support she needed and easily lured away to go live with the boyfriend’s family. And they groomed her for a year, gained her trust. The father worked to sort of have her develop more of attraction to him that moved away from the son. And it was all part of the grooming process, probably exposure.
19:48
to normalize sexual activity. And when she turned 18, a year after she’d moved in, they had her sign a sex slave contract, which was really meaningless piece of paper, but they took advantage of the bond that they had sort of created and the control over her that they had developed over that one year and her thinking that that’s what she had to do and kind of owed it after, you know.
20:17
being cared for for a year and they sold her for sexual purposes. They sold her in person and online and had her dance at a strip club and they did some very horrible things that required surgery once she was out of that situation. So and that was in a Missouri town, not St. Louis, not Kansas City.
20:47
is that she went to the hospital. They had actually used a form of torture that required them to take her to the emergency room. And the folks there thankfully saw signs she was a victim of something. And that’s how she was brought out of that situation was the hospital set.
21:14
you were talking about these signs, you were talking about these sort of earmarks, these red flags that if we’re aware of them, we can use that to try to help these people. And you were just mentioning sort of how people go through, they sort of find a victim, they groom them like you were saying, they kind of condition them to this, and then they’re able to put them in these positions. What are some of these signs that we, if I’m out, like you said, in middle America, because I love that you’re pointing out that this doesn’t have to be like in Los Angeles or New York.
21:43
or a huge city somewhere, this can be happening right now. What are some of the signs that we can look for and how should we respond to those? So depending on where you are, where you work, if you have children, if you have friends, but as a person just noticing things around you, the people that you know, if it’s an adult or a young person who seems to be getting more and more isolated, less and less involved in ways that you knew them to be.
22:13
and you’re not quite sure why, that could be them being drawn into that process of grooming where all the attachments of anybody and everyone is moving away from family, friends, and into the control of a predator or trafficker. Social media also I suppose more and more on social media. They could be engaged on social media with that person. And just to clarify what grooming is for some people,
22:42
That’s that short conditioning process. Those are those small shades of gray that get them to see this as something that’s normal, that this is okay, that this is something that I should feel inclined to do, or everybody else is doing it, or something of that nature, is that correct? It’s gaining their trust, and also normalizing things like exposing to pornography that can all be part of grooming, that it starts off gaining that trust. So building a sense of familiarity.
23:09
to actual trusting that person and then it can grow into, well, nobody likes you the way I do, or nobody loves you the way I do, or I’m the only one who understands you. So it gets stronger and stronger into that direction. Like, well, who are you talking to? I need to know who you’re on the phone with and maybe take your phone from you so that you’re calling people that really don’t care about you, because I’m the only one who cares about you, that kind of thing. So it can get…
23:38
more and more coerced, but start off saying, I love you, you’re beautiful. And that’s in regards to sex trafficking. In terms of labor trafficking, door-to-door sales is one of the forms of trafficking. And so a trafficker can say, hey, you’ve got a great personality. That’s really more of a sales pitch, but getting them into your trust and that confidence that you can do this job.
24:07
Same thing with modeling, you’re a beautiful model and they can think that that’s what they’re going to be doing and that can lead to sex trafficking. But again, that sales pitch sort of, but the door-to-door sales that takes our, for example, young adults who think that that’s a great opportunity to travel and to do door-to-door sales and kind of get out of town, save some money, be kind of cool, hang around with other young people, get on a van and head out.
24:36
But in fact, if they are traffickers, they will be threatened and required to make a quota so they might be dropped off in a neighborhood. And after they’ve already been threatened, then say, you know, be your… They sometimes can even force drugs on them, but saying, you know, you’re stuck with us now, you know, you got to make us some money and you’re going to be dropped off at this neighborhood and you better make…
25:03
X number of sales of magazine subscriptions or whatever, and we’re going to come back around at seven o’clock and you better have this much or don’t show up. And it can be that scary. There’s actually a Missouri male that we actually knew that happened to. And again, it’s just an incident that I was able to hear about, but many, many that we don’t. And he just wanted to go home. He got abandoned. You’re disposable. He didn’t make the quota. And he was dropped off in the middle of nowhere in some state somewhere.
25:32
And we heard about it because people were trying to help him get back to Missouri. And, you know, that’s not a case that we’re going to read about or a number in the statistics because he just wanted to go home. But he was a victim of trafficking through door to door sale. My goodness. And so like you’re saying, even if you’re out in public, there could be a person. I’ve heard of some of the characteristics where if you’re traveling with somebody, maybe like you’re saying an older male with a younger female or Classic older male, younger female. Yeah.
26:02
Very classic. And I know there are stories about, oh, really was my niece and people were offended, but better to have someone be offended by you than miss that opportunity and have somebody slip by. Airlines, folks on planes have been noticed, being able to notice, and it’s that older man, younger woman, an Uber example was a case where it was older man and younger girl and feeling the tension or noticing the dress, noticing that…
26:31
They looked kind of timid and not able to look up or make eye contact. That’s when they’re out in public and having to present a certain way, but really fearing, still an underlying fear. You can also look the other way where they’re just caught up in the life. They think it’s a boyfriend. They’re doing it. They’re under the age of 18, but they think the drugs and the involvement and prostitution is just part of
27:01
that relationship with the boyfriend and they think it’s a profit for them as a couple. They’ll do anything for love. They don’t want to seem like a kid, so they’re going to feel that pressure of doing whatever he asks of me. And so they won’t look the same as someone who might not be able to make eye contact or look kind of disheveled or whatever, but they’re as much a victim as any other working person who is a minor if there is no force fraud or coercion.
27:29
and they’re under the age of 18 and they have chosen to engage that 16 year old is still a victim of trafficking and that 20 year old boyfriend. Does that make sense? I hope that makes sense. It absolutely does. And that’s kind of what I wanted to ask because if we happen to see a scenario like that, like you said, that classic example, what can we do? I mean, do we call the police? Is there a hotline? What sort of protocols would you recommend?
27:54
If there are reportable observations that you can give description of people, you know, trust your gut. If it doesn’t look right or feel right, you know, I had somebody say that there was a younger girl with an older man at a restaurant, and the little grandbaby she was with was waving at the table. And the older man, like, nudged her and said, smile, wave at that baby in a really stern way, which is not what you would expect a father or an uncle or a grandfather to respond like,
28:24
forcing her like you better respond, you know, don’t want to look afraid or anything. And of course that was just stood out just as much as anything else. And that kind of behavior made her worry. And so we talked about description of them, description if they have can see the car or license plate, calling 911 and giving as much information as you can.
28:49
where it’s happened or what time they were there, all those kinds of things, yes. And there is a National Human Trafficking Hotline. So I wanna make sure people know, call 911 anytime that it seems really urgent, but there’s a National Human Trafficking Hotline number and it is 888-373-7888. And oftentimes it’s grouped 888-3737.
29:20
888 to make it really easy for people to remember. And we do have folks in Missouri that that hotline number will reach out to depending on the nature of the call. So encourage people to put that in their phones. Even if you call 911, since you’re not really sure what’s going to happen once you make that report, make that report of suspected human trafficking to that toll free number also kind of cover all the bases.
29:48
So noticing, yeah, some odd looking couple, or if you go into a hotel and you, you see people who are checking in and really don’t have luggage, maybe not dressed for the season because hotels and motels are common locations for victims of trafficking to be taken. Or people in the medical profession, if they’re accompanied by someone and not really being allowed to speak.
30:16
the person they’re with. And it could be a woman. It’s not always the older man. It could be a woman who’s also used in this industry where maybe they were sex trafficked, but then they’re sort of given this opportunity to be what’s referred to as a bottom bitch. And they will be the one who grooms and recruits new victims and they’ll take on that role rather than being used for rape in forced prostitution. So it could be a woman or a female taking
30:46
victim to the emergency department and you know they’re doing all the talking for them. There just seems to be something awkward or tense. We had one survivor in our services who’s actually saved by the emergency department because they could tell that the relationship between someone who had been a boyfriend but turned into a trafficker and the kind of injury she came in with, they knew that they had to make sure she didn’t leave with that man and so they actually admitted her for her injury so that she would be
31:16
from him. But then we’ve also had cases where the man with the female wouldn’t leave the room where the person was admitted. So it can be very difficult, but there’s a high percentage like 80 something percent of victims of sex trafficking will have encountered some medical professional during their time of being trafficked. And that’s the percentage of people not being brought out and identified.
31:44
but who’ve reported that in their time of trafficking, they actually encountered a medical professional. So wouldn’t it be great to have that be the number of victims that are identified out of our hospitals and clinics and emergency rooms. Same thing with our children who are in the child welfare system. So, you know, we have lots of kids who are in foster care or in the custody of our state children’s division. And there’s a high percentage of children who have been sex trafficked.
32:14
who were part of the child welfare system. So they are very much at risk. So, you know, whether you’re somebody who goes to church with a kid who’s, you know, in a child welfare system, or, you know, you’re a person who’s in that field, being aware that there’s a high chance that that child could become or has been a victim of trafficking. Teachers, it’s not coming regularly to school, which right now we have COVID. So it’s a really hard.
32:42
identify those victims of both domestic violence or child abuse because they’re not out in the community and being noticed by people. But our children who are again that classic isolation away from friends they hung up hung out with before dressing differently, maybe having jewelry and nice clothes that they didn’t have before. Sometimes when they’re being groomed and and or then become.
33:10
involved in sexual activity that they might be choosing, but really it’s a form of trafficking because they’re under the age of 18, they’ll start talking differently, more sexualized terms. So those are all things that can be noticed of a younger person wherever you might meet them. If they’re in your neighborhood or you go to church with them or if you’re a teacher, those are some different signs kind of across different areas. Man, there’s just so many things that are in plain sight if we are aware of them. And that hotline number again, 888.
33:40
And we’re going to put all this in our show notes, but I just want to put that out there. Again, calling 911 is fine. Calling the hotline is much more specific. It’s much more direct towards the potential subject in hand and being aware of the description, where they are, things like that. That’s something that can literally save a person who is caught up in this. And again, like you’re pointing out with the medical profession, education, anything that has…
34:08
a lot of social contact. If you’re aware of these things, you could see somebody and change their life. Yeah. So I’m imagining that they’re people of all different professions listening in. So if you’re law enforcement, same thing, that training, the state of Missouri is making great strides with their highway patrol. They spent the last two years training troopers with a special training and it has absolutely made a difference.
34:33
in the kinds of numbers of identifying victims and perpetrators in their roadside stops. It will absolutely make the education will make all the difference in the world. Definitely mental health professionals, same thing. We had a counselor who had been seeing a survivor. She was actually trafficked as a child by her parents. That’s familial trafficking. So be aware that family members traffic their family members as well.
35:03
She’d been being this counselor for years and she disclosed different things about the family and the father, but at some point she disclosed things that were different and that counselor talked to a coworker and said, these are some different things that my client is now disclosing. And it was his fellow coworker who said, that sounds like sex trafficking. So he did a Google search and he found the coalition.
35:31
And absolutely, it was not just abuse by the family. It was actual trafficking, sex trafficking of her. And she has been receiving the support, even though she lives in her own apartment, had her own car, didn’t need the extraction or the exit that needed the support, because even as an adult throughout childhood and her adulthood, she was still feeling under the control of her father. Her mother was no longer living,
36:01
being able to stop responding to the control of the father with the support of the coalition. Once we were able to identify that what she was talking about was actually sex trafficking. And you were also showing the connection between human sex trafficking, even like children sex trafficking to pedophilia. This is rampant and poor now and people are making money and everything off of that.
36:31
So we talk about pornography being a gateway to such a thing. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry. The number of sites that are utilized by US citizens is just incredibly high. We probably top the world for the highest number of users to porn websites, sadly. And we have a culture of that sort of acceptance of that. You know, it’s no longer the
37:00
magazine under the bed. Now it’s available so readily and easily available again, the internet, social media. Now it’s accessible on the phone. You know, before you’ve had magazines and you’d had to kind of sneak onto your big computer in your home, but now it’s just available on a small device. And people who use a pornography, consuming pornography, are not understanding they’re victims within the porn industry.
37:28
Just like in prostitution, there’s forced prostitution, forced fraud and coercion in prostitution and in pornography. And we don’t make that connection. You know, we think it’s a victimless kind of… There are no victims within pornography, but there in fact are. We are horrible consumers of child pornography. Yeah, that’s a very sick part of who we are as a culture. We also are known as U.S. men.
37:57
who go overseas for sex tours. There’s sex tours that you can go on to rape children in another country. So, and there are children who are in other countries who are having to be used with just a video camera to please some buyer, some user in the US or some other country. So it’s.
38:24
There’s so many layers and so many forms of how our children and adults are used in the porn industry. And because of the addictive nature of pornography, it does actually lead to actually purchasing a person because with addiction, you know, you have to have something more and more and more to take care of that desire. And that does lead to the need to actually purchase a live person. And so it all is used to groom.
38:54
you know, kind of just having it on. So it kind of normalizes it when you’re in the process of grooming a potential victim. And it’s also used by traffickers who’ve been arrested and prosecuted. They’ve said I use porn to educate my victims about what they’re supposed to do. And we’re talking about even young children. So there are…
39:19
operations done by the federal government every year to rescue child victims of trafficking in particular. And we have learned by these arrests that even small children were exposed to the form of education. So pornography is used in many ways. And by the way, those children, many of them were not even reported as missing. And many of them, as you can imagine, were part of the child welfare system.
39:47
away kids. And so that’s been a sad fact. So when you read like, oh, this many victims, child victims rescue operation in multiple states by the federal government, and you read these many men arrested or women arrested, you know, there’s a dark side to that, that many of those children were not reported as missing, not cared about by anybody. And then they are cycled back into the
40:17
or a group home where they are once again vulnerable. So it’s almost like recidivism in the criminal behavior where this person, once they’re in this, there’s no escape. Either they’re addicted to drugs, they’re dependent upon their abuser, whether it be a pimped out type scenario, they’re sold into pornography and human slavery in that capacity. And when you’re talking about pornography, there are sites like Pornhub where they don’t even try to find.
40:45
documentation for the age of the person. In fact, like you’re saying, there’s a proclivity towards this even younger, which is sickening to me. And this is a niche that is growing even as we speak right now. And there are code words that you and I can’t even dream up that porn users know when looking for advertisements that may be under the guise of something else that just go and then there’s a dark web that again is beyond.
41:14
my access for sure that people who are users and abusers know how to get into places on the internet where they can access purchasing people, where people can be sold. You can advertise people and you know back page was shut down by a federal government because they were knowingly facilitating the sale of children for rape and adults as well.
41:42
We can make an easier case for children before back page. What was another site for buying things before back page? But porn hub has definitely drawn attention because of their, again, not putting the protections in place for our children not to be sold and advertise on these sites. When we were speaking before, I was mentioning to you how to me, this is just.
42:10
I look at Hollywood, I look at all these celebrities that have these platforms, and Mel will stand out and speak out against all these injustices, and they will talk about human rights. Yet, when it comes to this subject, human trafficking in general, and even child trafficking specifically, it’s very quiet. And the reason it’s so quiet is because they are involved in it in some capacity. Is that correct? Yeah. So there’s two sides to that. One is that…
42:35
there’s legislation, there’s bipartisan support because nobody wants to not support legislation. Outwardly, we say no, no, we shouldn’t be trafficking people. But in reality, these same people are buying people, children, adults, you know, thinking people who are in prostitution, not thinking they’re in forced prostitution, which is trafficking, or engaging in pornography, not thinking about the victimization. And we, it’s
43:03
prolific in our culture, especially in the male culture. Here, just let me mention a nine, there was a survey of over 8,000 US men regarding buying sex and it is a crime, but nine out of ten buyers reported never having been arrested. That is a reflection of our whole culture, the attitude of law enforcement.
43:31
victims of forced prostitution or trafficking have said, you know, the buyer will just get a slap on the hand, say, go home to your wife, which is literally then what they can do. And that’s it. There are not very many deterrence for the crimes that they commit. One in five US men of that study had paid for sex in their lifetime. One in five men had paid for sex in their lifetime. That resulted in…
43:59
the legal commercial sex industry worth billions of dollars. And three in 10 men say they might buy sex in the future if circumstances were right. And that’s their term. Well, what does that mean? Does it mean because I’m going to go out of town on a business trip and so no one will know? We can just imagine. And the possibility of arrest, they say, is a major deterrent. But we don’t have much deterrence in place, culturally or legally.
44:28
We have them in place, but they’re not used. So there is a movement to be more aggressive about talking about the demand side. We wanna prosecute the trafficker. We wanna find support and resources for the survivors. Although there’s a difficult side to that we can talk about, but when they’ve been victimized, we want them to sort of be the model person we help, like, oh yes, they’re gonna respond to us. They’ll want our help.
44:58
follow the path to recovery and everything will be peachy, but there’s so much trauma, which is what you talked about already. It doesn’t always look pretty. So that can be difficult, but still, ideally, we all want to help the victim. But we forget about the demand and how that drives the sex industry. And again, I always, I know we’ve talked a lot about the sex trafficking, but same with the labor trafficking. We can certainly, like we’re learning about these different aspects of sex trafficking, what it looks like, certainly we can also educate ourselves about…
45:28
blade-free products and we can make choices that do not have to involve enslavement of people, the exploitation of people in this whole other side of exploitation regarding humans involved in labor. Making choices about products. I have a necklace on that I bought at a secondhand store rather than going into a store and purchasing. So even recycling, reusing, going to secondhand stores, that can certainly…
45:58
sort of bring down our desire to buy new things and to drive that forced labor demand by, you know, buying used things. So anyway, just the little things that we can do. Well, you were mentioning also that there were minority groups in certain parts of certain countries where those are sort of the ones that are continually victimized, tapped, and used into the slave labor, whether it be a sweatshop type environment or a sex.
46:25
slave environment or any of these myriad of things? Dr. Kirsten Krofman Worldwide, I know in the US, just because of our culture of commodification of human beings and the over-sexualization, there’s driving the sex trafficking. But worldwide, labor trafficking, forced labor, is in high numbers, both children and adults, in many countries around many products, sadly, Apple products. And I know there are many of us that have Apple products.
46:55
Cotton is often involving slave labor and you can’t really tell the product that you have where that cotton came from. So it’s very hard to know where the supply came from. There’s a specific ethnic group we were talking about before we came on to record that involves forced labor of this particular ethnic group in China and it’s around the cotton production.
47:25
we’re actually passing stronger laws that will prohibit products being made by that particular ethnic group because we know that it’s being made by forced labor. But it doesn’t stop the forced labor from happening. It’s just setting a standard for the US, which is important that we don’t want to bring products that we know are part of slave labor. It’s kind of like
47:54
closing down Backpage, sorry, one thing makes my brain think of another, but when Backpage was shut down, it did worry a lot of people because Backpage was used to help find victims by the advertisements. And I know there was a conflict around that. But also, by shutting down Backpage, we did set a standard that this was not okay. So it’s a very difficult and complicated thing. It did really make it more difficult.
48:24
and we know that it didn’t stop the trafficking just because back page was shut down. On the other hand, as a society setting a standard and saying this is not acceptable, we have to make strides some way around that as well, because there is so much of the acceptance of the commodification of people in both forced labor and sex trafficking. That it’s really a powerful thing to combat that whole attitude, that cultural.
48:50
attitude, that whole mentality that we have. Well, and that’s why I wanted to have you on because, again, because of what’s going on in Hollywood and things that are coming out in the news, names that are being leaked, people that are deeply associated with this. And then again, with COVID, where people are more aware of these things because it’s coming to the forefront, there are a lot of people that are sort of popping up that are experts. But again, you’ve been doing this for so long. I know love and trust you. And I know that what you’re speaking from is from experience,
49:20
something that you read somewhere else. So that’s why what you’re talking about, the stuff that you have experienced, that you’ve seen, the stuff that you see that actually happens, that we know is where these tactics that you’ve given us about being aware of these type of traveling couples and this type of behavior. And then again, even for me in this conversation, because I did a lot of research after I saw your TEDx and even more research before this interview. And again, this stuff is ubiquitous. It is literally everywhere.
49:48
if you are willing to become aware of it and now you’re giving specific steps on voting with your fee voting with your dollar To stop this horrible human trafficking Yes and I feel like you can do something because once people get educated I have found because i’ve had the good fortune of doing 12 years of Education and meeting with a whole variety of groups whether it’s in a sunday school class or a professional conference
50:17
It’s the same impact that people come away with, that they realize there were things they saw, remembered before that were probably indicators of trafficking, but they didn’t know it till just a simple educational session or noticing things in the paper that they didn’t get to before, identifying that as an important news piece where they would have dismissed it before.
50:46
who’s just kind of a one case out of the ordinary. And then also physically noticing different things. Like just, like we said, if you’re in a restaurant and you see something strange, I know that person, it stood out for them because of that awareness they had about trafficking. And I’m sure that’s been the same for the Uber driver and the airline steward or stewardess. And there is a wonderful organization called Truckers Against Trafficking.
51:15
that’s one website to go to. There might be truckers out there or somebody who knows a trucker. You know, we really rely heavily on the trucking industry. So we know that there are many workers in that field, bus drivers, even school bus drivers, you can get some education and being able to identify when you’ve got those kids or adults right in your post proximity and to be able to notice that sign. So there’s training videos, training material through that website.
51:45
a driver in the industry, any industry, school bus, greyhound, truck drivers, but also shared hope international. You can take a look by state, the grade of your state, at how well you’re addressing, it’s kind of based on the legislation that we have in place, how well that combats human trafficking and prosecuting traffickers or helping survivors.
52:14
Polaris, Polaris Project. That is a great website. Lots of resources specific to many different professionals and industries, hotels and motels, teachers, medical folks, nurses, parents. Shared Hope International has a lot of information for parents and they also have a documentary that is targeted to youth.
52:42
to be able to watch and see how you can, as a teen, get lured away. Polaris is tied to that National Human Trafficking Hotline and all of the data of calls and text messages and emails reporting and asking for help. And they identified 25 types of slavery in the US based on those thousands of…
53:09
bits of data from calls and emails and text messages to that number and email. So just quickly so you can hear, get an idea of the 25 types that are dead. These are just forms of slavery here in the US. Outdoor solicitation, residential, so brothels basically, which by the way in Columbia, Missouri, we had a brothel that was busted.
53:36
People were knowingly going in and out because they knew where that’s where they could go purchase people for sex. So it was just right in the neighborhood. People were appalled. Oh my gosh, I know that street. But then the people live nearby. We’re always seeing people come and go. Domestic work, bars, strip clubs and cantinas, pornography, travel sales crews, restaurants and food service. So you can see back and forth between sex trafficking and labor trafficking, peddling and begging.
54:06
agriculture and animal husbandry. So backing up to peddling and begging, you wouldn’t think that was US, but those were, that’s one of the types identified from the calls here in the US. Agriculture and animal husbandry, personal sexual servitude, health and beauty services. We have a lot of illicit massage parlors all across the country. Construction, hotels and hospitality, landscaping, illicit activities, arts and entertainment.
54:34
commercial cleaning services, manufacturing and factories, remote interactive sexual acts. And I talked about that sometimes in the kids who are in foreign countries and they’re actually, it’s people here in the US who are viewing carnivals, forestry and logging, healthcare, recreational facilities, illicit massage, health and beauty, escort services.
55:03
So that’s a wide range of industries that I’m not sure what isn’t covered by this, both sex trafficking and labor trafficking. And I also want to say it’s not just the traffickers who are culpable, but anybody who recruits, anybody who harbors, anybody who transports, all of those people are culpable under human trafficking or federal laws. And I would imagine I think every state has anti-trafficking laws in the US.
55:32
but we also have federal laws. Can be pretty overwhelming. This is incredible. Nanette Ward, thank you so much for your time and your expertise. Thank you so much for being a warrior against this in our society. You’ve just shined a huge light on this subject for our listeners. And if somebody listens to this and learns something that can help them, then this will help other people. Send this to somebody else who needs to hear it, because…
56:01
This is something that as you show how far reaching this is from, you know, people that are empowered with, with money, political Hollywood, whatever, it just sort of trickles down throughout everything and it permeates our entire society. And the longer that we tolerate this, the longer that we turn a blind eye, the longer that we just kind of chuckle about it and say, Oh, well, so-and-so got caught, you know, doing X, Y, and Z. We’re doing that because we don’t want to face the fact ourselves. We’re doing that because it makes us uncomfortable. But
56:30
at the risk of us being uncomfortable could be our capacity to save somebody else who is going through much more discomfort than what we are. Absolutely. Anything that seems unusual in anyone you know, we’ve had somebody that was a social media friend, like a pen pal, but through social media, and they were saying, hey, come to the country, be my guest. And like, whoa. So it’s…
56:59
all different ways. You just really want to use great caution, whether it’s whoever your friend is dating or an invitation to go to another country and everything in between the job that just sounds too good to be true. I’m stuck in your street corner that says call this number to make $20 an hour. Try not to bite, be as safe and look out for each other. And if you want to buy an end human trafficking t-shirt or Oh, that’s awesome.
57:25
Our Facebook page and follow us or Twitter or make a donation to an organization that you know has boots on the ground. We work as a coalition with as many as 20 to 25 survivors at a time who are at different levels of support, whether newly exited with nothing but the clothes on their back, the people who are housed but needing to find work or find counseling or find…
57:53
a car, you know, all those different stages in life. But find your local coalition. Coalitions have sprung up all around the country because the communities is where the help is truly accessible. Yes, there’s funding out there. We can read in the news about billions of dollars being allocated. But will you see it right in your community when you’ve got a survivor who got away from the husband who was trafficking them or the boyfriend?
58:22
or we had a victim of labor trafficking in Missouri from Jacksonville, Florida, who got abandoned after he’d done thousands of dollars worth of work and needed to bus ride home, you know, find your local community so they can get that labor trafficking victim on a bus back home or help that sex trafficking survivor get clothes and food and safe lodging. They exist. And what’s the name of the Missouri coalition specifically your mission? Human Trafficking Coalition.
58:53
of Central Missouri. We’d love for you to find us on Facebook. We actually feature posts that are educational throughout the week, and we change the theme up each month. So you’ll find it very educational, as well as hopefully engaging with other kinds of news. And we have a monthly meeting via Zoom still, so that means any of you out there can join us. It’s the first Thursday of the month.
59:22
Truckers Against Trafficking share with us about all their resources and programs, including a man-to-man program. And again, more organizations are confronting the fact that we have to have men engaging in these very real conversations about not engaging in purchasing pornography and prostitutes because they’re our victims. But we had someone talk about trauma. We’ve had a speaker who was with the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force and was an investigator and talked about
59:52
what’s happening on the internet, much like I did. But from law enforcement perspective, we have an attorney general’s anti-trafficking task force that gives us updates. We’re gonna be tackling illicit massage parlors around the state, finding strategies to do that. So we just invite you to join any time to get some education via Zoom. Free, no excuse, not to learn. Yeah. And what was the name of that one more time? It’s our monthly meeting, the first Thursday of every month.
01:00:22
So it will be posted on Facebook and you just have to send an RSVP to get the Zoom link and you’ll be able to join. We have it from 6 to 730 Central Time, first Thursday of the month. And the name of the Facebook group and the coalition again? Human Trafficking Coalition of Central Missouri. Absolutely. And I’m going to put all these numbers, I’m going to put all these links in the show notes, but calling 111, the National Human Trafficking Hotline, 1888.
01:00:51
373-7888, Polaris, Truckers Against Trafficking, all these things are beautiful, powerful resources that we can use. And there’s one more number I’m happy to give out, and it’s our toll-free number, and it’s 866-590-5959. And if your listeners have any specific questions or want to ask in one way or another, please feel free to call.
01:01:21
I answer those calls. The Net War, thank you so much for entering the call. Thank you so much for being a warrior against human trafficking and this injustice, this modern day human slavery that is still around and we have to get rid of this. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your spirit. I’m happy to know that some of your listeners will begin being part of that fight as well.
