sara was 22 when I met her she was bone
thin with bleached blond hair that her
pimp had dyed to appropriately suit his
nickname for her his Barbie girl you see
Sara met her boyfriend through a process
called grooming he recruited her into a
relationship they dated on and off for
about two years during this process he
wined and dined her he bought her
luxurious clothes took her two steak
dinners and as soon as he perceived her
as having enough emotional investment in
him he decided that it was time for her
to start paying him back for all the
nice things he had done for her that
night Sara’s boyfriend put her in a
strip club her boyfriend her now pimp
made sure that she made extra money for
him by visiting the back rooms to go on
dates with the patrons if Sara met her
quota for the evening she was allowed to
go home and go to sleep for the night if
she didn’t make enough money he would
lock her in a dog cage if Sara even
threatened of leaving he told her
intricately how he would kill her
three-year-old daughter this was just
the beginning of Sara’s experience as a
victim of sex trafficking Josef was 27
when he came from Nashville Tennessee to
Houston Texas he responded to a job ad
in his local newspaper that read looking
for young adults to make extra money
Joseph thought this sounded like a
pretty good gig so he took a bus token
from this new employer
it took a 24 hour bus ride to Houston
upon arrival his new employer picked him
up at the bus station and subsequently
took him to his new co-ed dormitory
where he would sleep at night and be
picked up from in the morning to work
Josef’s employer would take a van around
neighborhoods dropping Joseph and his
co-workers off the neighborhoods to do
magazine door-to-door sales at the end
of every day Josas employer would
collect all of their earnings but if
they didn’t meet their quota they were
forced to work more hours the next day
and Justus employer would reward this
behavior of meeting their quota with
field trips to Fiesta Texas and six logs
on the weekends but this was only a
fraction of
experience as a victim of labor
trafficking so you might hear these two
stories and think that they have
severely different context right yeah
both of them encompass every single
element necessary to create a case for
human trafficking today I’m going to
talk to you about what human trafficking
looks like on the local and domestic
level as well as ways you can spot it in
your own community and finally how you
can report and respond to this crime but
before we get into that it’s important
to first define human trafficking as it
obviously serves as a foundational
framework for this talk so even though
trafficking is not a new crime laws
against it are fairly new it wasn’t
until the year 2000 that Congress passed
what’s known as the trafficking Victims
Protection Act this was the very first
piece of legislation to exist which made
human trafficking a federal crime so the
TVPA breaks human trafficking down into
three elements the action the means and
the purpose so human trafficking is the
action of recruiting harboring obtaining
transporting providing even advertising
an individual by the means of force
fraud and coercion for the purpose of
either labor or sexual exploitation now
the only caveat to this definition is if
an individual is under the age of 18 and
is being exploited for a commercial sex
act they do not need to prove force
fraud or coercion because a child can’t
consent to sex there’s no such thing as
a child prostitute only a victim of
trafficking so now that we have a basis
for what trafficking is I think it’s
important to talk about what it’s not
there are plenty of myths that surround
this crime that abound and they Aid and
the misconceptions and misinforming of
society so because these are generally
socially constructed misconceptions
we’re gonna call them fake news so fake
news number one human trafficking is
only an international problem the
reality is that human trafficking is
present in every single state in the
United States and Texas alone it was
estimated by the UT School of Social
Work and a study done in 2016 that there
are three hundred and thirteen thousand
victims in Texas based on calls to the
National Human Trafficking hotline polio
supported that over a thousand of the
calls were from United States citizens
whereas over 800 were non-us citizens so
we can see that it’s not just an
international problem human trafficking
inherently is a human rights violation
problem fake news number two human
trafficking requires movement the
reality is that someone can be
trafficked without ever leaving their
home human smuggling and human
trafficking are two terms that are used
interchangeably all the time but they
are in fact two separate crimes human
smuggling is a crime against a border
whereas human trafficking is a crime
against a person human smuggling can
turn into human trafficking but again
there are two different tract crimes
fake news number three sex trafficking
and the forced prostitution are the only
forms of human trafficking like we saw
in the study from UT Austin there are
over three hundred and thirteen thousand
victims in Texas over two hundred
thousand of those victims in Texas are
victims of forced labor trafficking so
labor trafficking is actually just as
prevalent as sex trafficking in the
United States because commercial sex is
already illegal it’s often easier to
identify and because labor trafficking
is more difficult to spot it often goes
overlooked and underreported because
someone who’s a victim of labor
trafficking can be a nanny made a waiter
a waitress it can look like someone in
our everyday activities and fake news
number four human trafficking only
affects women and it only affects
children this is kind of part of the
glamorization of the crime we think that
it only affects a specific demographic
but actually the International Labor
Organization estimated that it’s a
pretty even split between men and women
where fifty five percent of women are
victims of trafficking and forty five
percent are men and similarly the
majority of victims that we see are
actually adult so seventy four percent
of adults and twenty-six percent of
children so I do want to say it’s
difficult to substantiate accurate data
when it comes to victims of trafficking
so we go off of what we know based on
cost to the human trafficking hotline or
survivors that are seen by direct
service providers and this leads us to
fake news number five
victims of trafficking only come from
situations of poverty there is no such
thing as a as a perfect victim right
human trafficking doesn’t discriminate
against the people that it exploits so
someone can become a victim because they
have a weakness we all have weaknesses
we all have vulnerabilities so someone
becomes a victim when a trafficker has
access to those vulnerabilities and then
exploits them now there are individuals
who are more at risk or inherently
vulnerable to trafficking at-risk youth
like runaways so it’s estimated that one
in three runaway youth will be
approached by a trafficker within 48
hours people who are experiencing
homelessness immigrant and refugee
populations and anyone with past
physical or sexual trauma can also be
more susceptible to exploitation and
finally fake news number six traffickers
are strangers who kidnap their victims
the reality is that like trafficking
doesn’t discriminate against victims it
does not discriminate against who the
traffickers are as well traffickers can
be family members peers boyfriends
organized criminals third party
recruiters we’ve seen trafficking occur
in churches and homes and Airlines and
in schools
a study by Covenant House which is a
safe house in New York
did a study with their own survivors and
found that about 36% of their survivors
were trafficked by an immediate family
member so a mother a father a brother a
sister the next highest percentage was
twenty seven percent were trafficked by
a boyfriend so now that we have
hopefully deconstructed what you’ve
previously known from Liam Neeson and
watching the movie movie taken let’s
talk about some red flags of how you can
spot trafficking and your own family or
in your own community sorry often times
we think that trafficking only occurs in
really seedy places right we’re not
going to strip clubs we’re not going to
brothels but the reality is that
trafficking happens everywhere it
happens in Abilene Texas so not every
single case is the same but there are
some commonalities that you can look for
when identifying this crime so truancy
perpetual running away luxury items
without an explainable source of income
a lot of times for minors especially if
they have an older boyfriend or an older
friend who is providing these things
that’s something to look out for tattoos
are brain
remember that pimps especially don’t
view their victims as human beings they
want to brand their items because that’s
an that’s an object to them so
oftentimes they’ll bring them with an
image that will depict some kind of
royalty so maybe it’s the pimps initials
with a crown on it or the word daddy or
Prince more often than not multiple
phones or social media accounts
unfortunately with the internet comes
trafficking so the internet is one of
those prominent ways that traffickers
are exploiting their individuals now
Backpage is one of the most popular
places for individuals to be sold so
sometimes you might find social media
accounts with sexually provocative
pictures on those accounts unexplained
injuries their party control of schedule
and interactions traffickers also want
to isolate their victims right they
don’t want them to be in communication
or around the people that they are used
to depending on because the trafficker
wants that person to be completely
dependent on themselves so during the
exploitation time and throughout the
trafficking period the pimp will
continue and continue to isolate for red
flags of labor trafficking like I
mentioned earlier labor trafficking is
very difficult to detect because it can
look like an everyday job
so unless you witness the physical abuse
firsthand or you get to know the
individual who is being trafficked it
might be more difficult for you to
identify these red flags but this list
can kind of help you with your education
of continuing to learn what to look for
so again third-party control of schedule
much like Joseph’s story that I shared
he wasn’t in control of where he went or
where he ate or where he slept so he
worked on or lived near the premises of
his job evidence of violence and an
ability to speak English oftentimes for
foreign national victims their
traffickers will withhold their
documents they’ll take their visas take
their IDs and then whenever they say
that you know hey if you want to call
the police because you don’t like it
here and we’ll they’ll deport you
because I have your all your documents
lack of knowledge about the community
severe malnutrition or dehydration
untreated disease and crime and dental
visual problems as well as the security
that’s designed to keep workers inside
instead of out so four premises that are
labor trafficking their victims a lot of
times they’ll have barbed wire that’s
facing inward instead of
so now that we have reached just a
fraction of the plethora of information
that exists on human trafficking you’re
probably wondering what you can do to
help this is a huge crime that has been
historically existent and it’s not
necessarily going away I’m not gonna
stand up here and tell you that all we
can do is pray this injustice away
though I’m not gonna deter you from
doing so
I’m also not going to tell you that the
only thing for you to do is give all of
your money to an anti-trafficking
nonprofit but if you want to we can talk
later what I will tell you is that it’s
difficult to convince one of the most
complex and intricate crimes into
roughly 15 minutes so the first place
for action is for you to continue
educating yourself without continued
education there is no awareness and thus
we know without awareness there is no
action so continue educating yourself
and empowering your community members to
know more about this deconstruct myths
that maybe your friends have as well the
National Human Trafficking hotline is
your go-to resource for anything
trafficking related if you get that gut
wrenching feeling where you think that
you see something that’s off or you hear
if something that might feel a little
bit weird even if you don’t know for
sure this is the number for you to call
if you want to put it in your cell phone
I employer-employee to do so because
this is your number to call it will go
to direct service providers and law
enforcement in your area it’s written as
a palindrome so it’s easier for you to
remember it’s eight eight eight thirty
seven thirty seven eight eight eight as
soon as you see something you want to
call this number as soon as possible so
you can provide actionable information
you’re gonna provide as many details as
you can it also has a texting capability
so if you don’t feel comfortable calling
and giving out some information you can
text them as well so oftentimes we live
under this is an assumption that
whenever something unjust is happening
that it’s it’s not necessarily our
responsibility right there’s people out
there that can take care of it
we can kind of hang back and just learn
more but the reality is that if you know
about it if you see it if you hear it
listen just injustice is you’re better’n
to where as well thank you
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
thin with bleached blond hair that her
pimp had dyed to appropriately suit his
nickname for her his Barbie girl you see
Sara met her boyfriend through a process
called grooming he recruited her into a
relationship they dated on and off for
about two years during this process he
wined and dined her he bought her
luxurious clothes took her two steak
dinners and as soon as he perceived her
as having enough emotional investment in
him he decided that it was time for her
to start paying him back for all the
nice things he had done for her that
night Sara’s boyfriend put her in a
strip club her boyfriend her now pimp
made sure that she made extra money for
him by visiting the back rooms to go on
dates with the patrons if Sara met her
quota for the evening she was allowed to
go home and go to sleep for the night if
she didn’t make enough money he would
lock her in a dog cage if Sara even
threatened of leaving he told her
intricately how he would kill her
three-year-old daughter this was just
the beginning of Sara’s experience as a
victim of sex trafficking Josef was 27
when he came from Nashville Tennessee to
Houston Texas he responded to a job ad
in his local newspaper that read looking
for young adults to make extra money
Joseph thought this sounded like a
pretty good gig so he took a bus token
from this new employer
it took a 24 hour bus ride to Houston
upon arrival his new employer picked him
up at the bus station and subsequently
took him to his new co-ed dormitory
where he would sleep at night and be
picked up from in the morning to work
Josef’s employer would take a van around
neighborhoods dropping Joseph and his
co-workers off the neighborhoods to do
magazine door-to-door sales at the end
of every day Josas employer would
collect all of their earnings but if
they didn’t meet their quota they were
forced to work more hours the next day
and Justus employer would reward this
behavior of meeting their quota with
field trips to Fiesta Texas and six logs
on the weekends but this was only a
fraction of
experience as a victim of labor
trafficking so you might hear these two
stories and think that they have
severely different context right yeah
both of them encompass every single
element necessary to create a case for
human trafficking today I’m going to
talk to you about what human trafficking
looks like on the local and domestic
level as well as ways you can spot it in
your own community and finally how you
can report and respond to this crime but
before we get into that it’s important
to first define human trafficking as it
obviously serves as a foundational
framework for this talk so even though
trafficking is not a new crime laws
against it are fairly new it wasn’t
until the year 2000 that Congress passed
what’s known as the trafficking Victims
Protection Act this was the very first
piece of legislation to exist which made
human trafficking a federal crime so the
TVPA breaks human trafficking down into
three elements the action the means and
the purpose so human trafficking is the
action of recruiting harboring obtaining
transporting providing even advertising
an individual by the means of force
fraud and coercion for the purpose of
either labor or sexual exploitation now
the only caveat to this definition is if
an individual is under the age of 18 and
is being exploited for a commercial sex
act they do not need to prove force
fraud or coercion because a child can’t
consent to sex there’s no such thing as
a child prostitute only a victim of
trafficking so now that we have a basis
for what trafficking is I think it’s
important to talk about what it’s not
there are plenty of myths that surround
this crime that abound and they Aid and
the misconceptions and misinforming of
society so because these are generally
socially constructed misconceptions
we’re gonna call them fake news so fake
news number one human trafficking is
only an international problem the
reality is that human trafficking is
present in every single state in the
United States and Texas alone it was
estimated by the UT School of Social
Work and a study done in 2016 that there
are three hundred and thirteen thousand
victims in Texas based on calls to the
National Human Trafficking hotline polio
supported that over a thousand of the
calls were from United States citizens
whereas over 800 were non-us citizens so
we can see that it’s not just an
international problem human trafficking
inherently is a human rights violation
problem fake news number two human
trafficking requires movement the
reality is that someone can be
trafficked without ever leaving their
home human smuggling and human
trafficking are two terms that are used
interchangeably all the time but they
are in fact two separate crimes human
smuggling is a crime against a border
whereas human trafficking is a crime
against a person human smuggling can
turn into human trafficking but again
there are two different tract crimes
fake news number three sex trafficking
and the forced prostitution are the only
forms of human trafficking like we saw
in the study from UT Austin there are
over three hundred and thirteen thousand
victims in Texas over two hundred
thousand of those victims in Texas are
victims of forced labor trafficking so
labor trafficking is actually just as
prevalent as sex trafficking in the
United States because commercial sex is
already illegal it’s often easier to
identify and because labor trafficking
is more difficult to spot it often goes
overlooked and underreported because
someone who’s a victim of labor
trafficking can be a nanny made a waiter
a waitress it can look like someone in
our everyday activities and fake news
number four human trafficking only
affects women and it only affects
children this is kind of part of the
glamorization of the crime we think that
it only affects a specific demographic
but actually the International Labor
Organization estimated that it’s a
pretty even split between men and women
where fifty five percent of women are
victims of trafficking and forty five
percent are men and similarly the
majority of victims that we see are
actually adult so seventy four percent
of adults and twenty-six percent of
children so I do want to say it’s
difficult to substantiate accurate data
when it comes to victims of trafficking
so we go off of what we know based on
cost to the human trafficking hotline or
survivors that are seen by direct
service providers and this leads us to
fake news number five
victims of trafficking only come from
situations of poverty there is no such
thing as a as a perfect victim right
human trafficking doesn’t discriminate
against the people that it exploits so
someone can become a victim because they
have a weakness we all have weaknesses
we all have vulnerabilities so someone
becomes a victim when a trafficker has
access to those vulnerabilities and then
exploits them now there are individuals
who are more at risk or inherently
vulnerable to trafficking at-risk youth
like runaways so it’s estimated that one
in three runaway youth will be
approached by a trafficker within 48
hours people who are experiencing
homelessness immigrant and refugee
populations and anyone with past
physical or sexual trauma can also be
more susceptible to exploitation and
finally fake news number six traffickers
are strangers who kidnap their victims
the reality is that like trafficking
doesn’t discriminate against victims it
does not discriminate against who the
traffickers are as well traffickers can
be family members peers boyfriends
organized criminals third party
recruiters we’ve seen trafficking occur
in churches and homes and Airlines and
in schools
a study by Covenant House which is a
safe house in New York
did a study with their own survivors and
found that about 36% of their survivors
were trafficked by an immediate family
member so a mother a father a brother a
sister the next highest percentage was
twenty seven percent were trafficked by
a boyfriend so now that we have
hopefully deconstructed what you’ve
previously known from Liam Neeson and
watching the movie movie taken let’s
talk about some red flags of how you can
spot trafficking and your own family or
in your own community sorry often times
we think that trafficking only occurs in
really seedy places right we’re not
going to strip clubs we’re not going to
brothels but the reality is that
trafficking happens everywhere it
happens in Abilene Texas so not every
single case is the same but there are
some commonalities that you can look for
when identifying this crime so truancy
perpetual running away luxury items
without an explainable source of income
a lot of times for minors especially if
they have an older boyfriend or an older
friend who is providing these things
that’s something to look out for tattoos
are brain
remember that pimps especially don’t
view their victims as human beings they
want to brand their items because that’s
an that’s an object to them so
oftentimes they’ll bring them with an
image that will depict some kind of
royalty so maybe it’s the pimps initials
with a crown on it or the word daddy or
Prince more often than not multiple
phones or social media accounts
unfortunately with the internet comes
trafficking so the internet is one of
those prominent ways that traffickers
are exploiting their individuals now
Backpage is one of the most popular
places for individuals to be sold so
sometimes you might find social media
accounts with sexually provocative
pictures on those accounts unexplained
injuries their party control of schedule
and interactions traffickers also want
to isolate their victims right they
don’t want them to be in communication
or around the people that they are used
to depending on because the trafficker
wants that person to be completely
dependent on themselves so during the
exploitation time and throughout the
trafficking period the pimp will
continue and continue to isolate for red
flags of labor trafficking like I
mentioned earlier labor trafficking is
very difficult to detect because it can
look like an everyday job
so unless you witness the physical abuse
firsthand or you get to know the
individual who is being trafficked it
might be more difficult for you to
identify these red flags but this list
can kind of help you with your education
of continuing to learn what to look for
so again third-party control of schedule
much like Joseph’s story that I shared
he wasn’t in control of where he went or
where he ate or where he slept so he
worked on or lived near the premises of
his job evidence of violence and an
ability to speak English oftentimes for
foreign national victims their
traffickers will withhold their
documents they’ll take their visas take
their IDs and then whenever they say
that you know hey if you want to call
the police because you don’t like it
here and we’ll they’ll deport you
because I have your all your documents
lack of knowledge about the community
severe malnutrition or dehydration
untreated disease and crime and dental
visual problems as well as the security
that’s designed to keep workers inside
instead of out so four premises that are
labor trafficking their victims a lot of
times they’ll have barbed wire that’s
facing inward instead of
so now that we have reached just a
fraction of the plethora of information
that exists on human trafficking you’re
probably wondering what you can do to
help this is a huge crime that has been
historically existent and it’s not
necessarily going away I’m not gonna
stand up here and tell you that all we
can do is pray this injustice away
though I’m not gonna deter you from
doing so
I’m also not going to tell you that the
only thing for you to do is give all of
your money to an anti-trafficking
nonprofit but if you want to we can talk
later what I will tell you is that it’s
difficult to convince one of the most
complex and intricate crimes into
roughly 15 minutes so the first place
for action is for you to continue
educating yourself without continued
education there is no awareness and thus
we know without awareness there is no
action so continue educating yourself
and empowering your community members to
know more about this deconstruct myths
that maybe your friends have as well the
National Human Trafficking hotline is
your go-to resource for anything
trafficking related if you get that gut
wrenching feeling where you think that
you see something that’s off or you hear
if something that might feel a little
bit weird even if you don’t know for
sure this is the number for you to call
if you want to put it in your cell phone
I employer-employee to do so because
this is your number to call it will go
to direct service providers and law
enforcement in your area it’s written as
a palindrome so it’s easier for you to
remember it’s eight eight eight thirty
seven thirty seven eight eight eight as
soon as you see something you want to
call this number as soon as possible so
you can provide actionable information
you’re gonna provide as many details as
you can it also has a texting capability
so if you don’t feel comfortable calling
and giving out some information you can
text them as well so oftentimes we live
under this is an assumption that
whenever something unjust is happening
that it’s it’s not necessarily our
responsibility right there’s people out
there that can take care of it
we can kind of hang back and just learn
more but the reality is that if you know
about it if you see it if you hear it
listen just injustice is you’re better’n
to where as well thank you
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
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