377: What Happens to Trafficking Risk When a Hurricane Hits?

377: What Happens to Trafficking Risk When a Hurricane Hits?

Leanne McCallum Desselle joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore what happens when a hurricane knocks out the very systems built to catch trafficking — from a child abuse hotline down for three weeks after Hurricane Ida to the disaster recovery jobs where exploitation quietly takes hold. Chapters * (00:00) - Introduction * (01:39) - An International Lens on a Uniquely American Blind Spot * (04:17) - The Signal International Case After Katrina * (07:36) - From the Ground in Louisiana to a Researcher's Path * (11:13) - Why Research Doesn't Reach the People Who Need It * (14:50) - Who Disasters Make Vulnerable to Trafficking * (20:18) - Responding in the First Days — and How to Prepare Before the Storm * (25:22) - Creative Partnerships That Kept Services Running * (28:27) - Turning Research Into Policy and Practice * (34:32) - Advice for Researchers Entering This Space About Leanne McCallum Desselle Leanne McCallum Desselle is a Research Analyst and Training & Technical Assistance Provider at RTI International, a role she has held since August 2022. She spent nearly a decade in frontline anti-trafficking work in Louisiana, coordinating the Greater New Orleans Human Trafficking Task Force for more than three years and later managing a statewide child and youth trafficking initiative for the Louisiana Alliance of Children's Advocacy Centers. In 2018 she was appointed Chair of the Labor Trafficking Committee for the Louisiana Governor's Human Trafficking Prevention Commission and Advisory Board. At RTI, she leads technical assistance for a U.S. Office for Victims of Crime initiative on child and youth trafficking outcomes and contributes to research on labor trafficking prosecutions and the effects of disasters on trafficking vulnerability. She holds a Master of Arts in International Studies, concentrating in Human Rights and Human Trafficking, from the University of Denver's Josef Korbel School of Global and Public Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Linfield University. Key Points • Hurricane Katrina's Signal International case, in which hundreds of Indian guest workers were defrauded and trafficked into labor repairing Gulf oil rigs, became one of the largest labor trafficking settlements at the time and helped drive Louisiana's first designated federal anti-trafficking funding in 2007-2008. • Housing instability is one of the biggest drivers of post-disaster trafficking risk — when people lose their community, school, and church, they become far more vulnerable to someone who says, "Don't worry, I'll take care of everything. I'll get you a job." • Disasters disproportionately hit communities already made vulnerable by redlining, the historical practice of confining people of color and poor families to lower-lying land that's more exposed to flooding and severe weather. • In interviews with 46 disaster and trafficking responders, foreign national day laborers doing disaster recovery work and isolated children in disrupted households emerged as two of the populations most vulnerable to exploitation after a storm. • After Hurricane Ida, Louisiana's child abuse hotline — the mandated channel for reporting child trafficking — was down for at least three weeks, leaving responders with no way to report what they saw. • Preparation has to happen before a disaster, not during one: without a plan already tested and rehearsed, coordinating a trafficking response becomes nearly impossible once phones, power, and staff are all unreachable at once. • Louisiana responders found creative workarounds under pressure, from standing up a mobile forensic interview unit in a neighboring parish within 24 hours to running child trafficking response operations out of a partner's building after their own offices were destroyed. • Leanne and her RTI colleagues sent their findings directly to the Louisiana Human Trafficking Prevention Commission and Advisory Board, which is now recommending changes to state labor procurement practices to help prevent forced labor. Resources • RTI International [https://www.rti.org] • Human Trafficking in the Wake of Natural Disasters (RTI research project page) [https://www.rti.org/impact/human-trafficking-wake-natural-disasters] • Human Trafficking in the Wake of Natural Disasters: A Case Study of Preparedness and Response in Louisiana (Violence and Victims, 2026) [https://www.rti.org/publication/human-trafficking-in-the-wake-of-natural-disasters-a-case-study-o] • The Intersection of Human Trafficking and Natural Disasters: A Scoping Review (Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 2024) [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/15248380241227985] • Advancing the Field: Human Trafficking and Natural Disasters — Recommendations for the Louisiana Human Trafficking Prevention Commission and Advisory Board [https://www.rti.org/sites/default/files/documents/2023-10/HTPCAB_recommendations_report_final.pdf] • Labor Trafficking in Construction During the Recovery and Reconstruction from a Natural Disaster (OPRE Report, Barrick & Pfeffer) [https://acf.gov/opre/report/labor-trafficking-construction-during-recovery-and-reconstruction-natural-disaster] • Louisiana Human Trafficking Prevention Commission and Advisory Board [https://humantrafficking.la.gov] • David, et al. v. Signal International, LLC, et al. (ACLU case page) [https://www.aclu.org/cases/david-et-al-v-signal-international-llc-et-al]

376: Why Documents Decide Who Traffickers Can Exploit Next

Dr. Xanthe Scharff joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to explore how displacement, missing documents, and unequal citizenship laws quietly raise the risk of trafficking, and why prevention starts long before a child is ever exploited. Chapters * (00:00) - Introduction * (00:55) - Xanthe's Path and the Freedom Fund's Frontline Model * (06:08) - The Women's Refugee Commission: Listening to Women * (10:19) - How Birth Certificates Prevent Trafficking in Bangladesh * (13:17) - Citizenship, Statelessness, and Life in the Shadows * (19:13) - Conflict, Trauma, and Women Rebuilding After Displacement * (23:46) - Girls' Education and the Story of Anesi * (28:14) - Prevention Over Rescue: What the Field Still Misunderstands About Dr. Xanthe Scharff Dr. Xanthe Scharff is President and CEO of the Women's Refugee Commission, which she joined in June 2026 after more than two decades spanning humanitarian action, women's rights, journalism, philanthropy, and nonprofit leadership. She previously served as Managing Director for External Affairs and Editor-at-Large at The Freedom Fund, a global collaborative working to end modern slavery, where she helped elevate the work of hundreds of frontline anti-slavery organizations across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Earlier, she co-founded The Fuller Project, a global newsroom reporting on women, served as Associate Director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution, and founded Advancing Girls' Education in Africa. She has raised more than $200 million for social-impact organizations and reported on Syrian refugees in Turkey, with earlier roles at CARE, Save the Children, the United Nations, and the World Bank. Key Points • The Freedom Fund gets money directly to the front lines, granting to almost 200 frontline organizations, and this past year 47% of them were led by survivors. • Birth certificates are a frontline prevention tool: in Bangladesh, mothers believed they couldn't register children without the father's signature, until Freedom Fund's partners socialized a legal provision and registered over 400 children in about six months. • Twenty-four countries still bar mothers from passing citizenship to their children on equal terms with fathers, and Syria's law can leave a returning mother's child stateless and more vulnerable to exploitation. • When people lack legal status, they have no one to report abuse to, and fear of deportation keeps exploited workers silent even when wages are stolen or they are assaulted. • Immigration and refugee are not synonyms; asylum seekers are specifically people seeking protection, a distinction that gets blurred as legal pathways narrow. • Before larger plans, women's groups like Women of the Sun in Gaza and the West Bank made addressing trauma and supporting one another their first priority. • A scholarship alone did not change Anesi's future; without cultural support structures, she left school for marriage after one year and later regretted it, showing that prevention takes more than money. • Xanthe urges the field to listen to survivors: "Alternative livelihood activities in our community is what's going to protect our children," and "we don't need to wait until the children have been trafficked to do an intervention." Resources • Women's Refugee Commission [https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org] • At What Cost? Women-Led Organizations, Funding Cuts, and the Price of Survival (WRC & Refugees International report) [https://www.womensrefugeecommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/At_What_Cost_joint_RI_WRC_report-1.pdf] • Global Campaign for Equal Nationality Rights [https://www.equalnationalityrights.org] • The Freedom Fund [https://www.freedomfund.org] • Refugees International [https://www.refugeesinternational.org] • The Fuller Project [https://www.fullerproject.org] • AGE Africa (Advancing Girls' Education in Africa) [https://www.ageafrica.org]

375: Is It Ever Ethical to Photograph a Trafficking Survivor?

Nina Alvarez joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to unpack a question raised after The New York Times published images from Figueroa Street: was legal consent enough to prevent harm? Together they explore the ethical duty of care journalists owe survivors, the lasting life of images, and why covering trafficking responsibly takes more than good intentions. Chapters * (00:00) - Introduction: welcoming journalist Nina Alvarez * (03:46) - What "ethical duty of care" means for journalists * (06:00) - Consent, trauma, and the limits of a release form * (16:42) - Why "rescue" is the wrong word for trafficking recovery * (22:14) - What editors and organizations should ask before publishing * (28:44) - Power, images, and protecting sources long after publication * (38:03) - Media narratives, public misunderstanding, and what needs to change * (43:14) - Closing thoughts and how to get involved About Nina Alvarez Nina Alvarez is a journalist, documentarian, video photographer, and the CBS Assistant Professor of International Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. She has spent more than twenty-five years reporting breaking news, feature stories, radio reports, broadcast segments, and long-form documentaries around the world. Alvarez began her career at ABC News, working on the documentary series Turning Point before covering the southeast U.S. and Latin America from ABC's Miami Bureau and helping establish the network's Mexico City Bureau in 1997. Her work has aired on World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Good Morning America, Nightline, and 20/20, earning three national Emmy Awards. Since 2001, she has reported and produced for Univision, NBC, CNN, NPR, MTV News, and Al Jazeera, with work spanning the Middle East, Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She produced, directed, and photographed Very Young Girls, a Showtime documentary following New York City girls who had been sexually exploited and trafficked domestically, and was a producer on the Oscar-nominated Which Way Home. Key Points • Nina Alvarez explains that the ethical duty of care means weighing the lasting impact a story will have on the person in it, since a published story is permanent and the subject may not fully grasp what that means when they agree to participate. • Consent is not the same as a signed release form; Alvarez describes consent as an ongoing process that journalists have to revisit before, during, and after a story is published. • Alvarez points out that turning 18 makes someone legally able to consent, but it doesn't erase the effects of years of trauma, so journalists still have to weigh whether a survivor's "yes" is solid. • Morgan and Alvarez agree that "rescue" is the wrong frame for trafficking recovery, since most survivors leave and return to their situations multiple times before they're fully out. • Alvarez explains that rescue-centered narratives draw more funding and legislative attention toward policing, while recovery-centered approaches that give survivors housing and health resources get less support. • Alvarez says editors should be asking why minors' first names and identifying details were included in a story at all, and whether a survivor understood that their words to police would end up published nationally. • Alvarez encourages organizations to set ground rules with journalists, including reviewing the story and images in advance, and warns that survivors who depend on an organization for access may feel pressure to say yes. • Alvarez reflects that Very Young Girls, made in 2007, didn't anticipate how permanently images would circulate online, and the women in that documentary now say they can never fully escape those images. Resources • Figueroa Street and the Ethical Duty of Care (Columbia Journalism Review) [https://www.cjr.org/feature/figueroa-street-ethical-duty-care-sex-trafficking-responsible-reporting-new-york-times-nyt-magazine-emily-baumgaertner-nunn.php] • Very Young Girls (documentary) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Young_Girls] • GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) [https://www.gems-girls.org] • Humanitarian Initiative Bridges [https://www.bridges.org.gr/who-we-are] • Columbia Journalism School [https://journalism.columbia.edu]

374: How Illicit Massage Parlors Really Launder Their Money

Youngbee Dale joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to explain how traffickers run commercial sexual exploitation as a business, hiding it behind storefronts, shell companies, and cash, and why identifying victims often comes down to asking what they're being charged for. Chapters * (00:00) - Trafficking Is a Business, Not Just Exploitation * (01:27) - Financial Crime as an Anti-Trafficking Tool * (04:26) - Why Trafficking Networks Operate by Culture * (08:01) - Following the Cash: KYC and Transaction Patterns * (12:23) - Hidden Ties, Shell Companies, and a Real Case * (15:07) - The Questions That Reveal Exploitation * (20:01) - Updating Training and Building a Collaborative Response * (28:00) - The East Asian Crime Newsletter and How to Connect About Youngbee Dale Youngbee Dale is an anti-trafficking consultant, researcher, trainer, and expert witness whose work focuses on the commercial sex market in the United States, with particular expertise in Asian and Korean sex trafficking, illicit massage businesses, organized crime, money laundering, visa fraud, tax evasion, and financial crime indicators connected to exploitation. As CEO of Dale Consulting, LLC, she trains and consults for law enforcement, prosecutors, financial crime professionals, courts, policymakers, government agencies, and victim service providers. Her clients have included the New York State Human Trafficking Intervention Court Conference, the Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists, the FBI Southern District of New York, the NYPD Human Trafficking Case Unit, and several state trafficking commissions and task forces. Earlier she served as an NGO liaison to the FBI Norfolk Office and worked with Gonggam Public Law Office in Seoul, Korea. Her peer-reviewed research appears in Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence. She holds an M.A. from Regent University. Key Points • Traffickers treat commercial sexual exploitation as a business model where the goal is profit, so disrupting it means following the money back to the person actually running the operation. • Because anti-trafficking work has centered on victims, there is far less research on the financial crime, immigration fraud, and business structures traffickers rely on to operate. • Networks tend to follow their own cultural business patterns, so Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese operations launder money and handle payment differently, such as cash-only Chinese parlors versus credit-and-cash Korean ones. • "Know your customer" (KYC) analysis helps investigators recognize trafficking transaction patterns, which look different for domestic minor sex trafficking than for Asian illicit massage businesses tied to grocery stores, real estate, title agencies, or restaurants. • Following cash often means tracing it from the parlor through couriers to a profiteer who deposits it into business accounts or shell corporations, sometimes linked through shared addresses or property owned by family. • The questions that surface exploitation today focus on deductions, hidden fees, fines, wages, and debt bondage, since traffickers have moved past older controls like passport confiscation and forced on-site living. • A South Korean trafficker told Dale that operators fear the Department of Labor more than vice units, because wage and deduction questions can make a woman realize she is being exploited. • Stronger cases require offender-focused research, updated training, forensic accounting, and collaboration among prosecutors, the US attorney, and local law enforcement, who often lack funding for complex financial investigations. Resources • Dale Consulting [https://www.dale-consulting.com/] – Youngbee Dale's consulting firm and primary website. • Money Laundering in the Commercial Sex Market in the United States [https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol4/iss4/1/] • Visa Fraud in the Commercial Sex Market in the United States: An Overview [https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol6/iss1/1/] • Tax Evasion and Fraud in the United States Sex Market [https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol7/iss1/6/] • Beyond Massage Parlors: Exposing the Korean Commercial Sex Market in the United States [https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/dignity/vol2/iss4/4/]

373: What Happens to Survivors After They Reach Safety?

Derek Marsh joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to reflect on what they learned inside refugee communities in Greece — where Sudanese survivors of labor trafficking, and mothers rebuilding after violence, reveal how trust, disclosure, and practical support can change what people are able to name, ask for, and access. Chapters * (00:00) - Welcome and What Made This Year's Greece Trip Different * (04:51) - Inside the Refugee Camp at Kyllini * (08:11) - Why Survivors Hesitate to Disclose — and the Brutality They Described * (10:21) - Man to Man: Opening Up About Exploitation That Hasn't Stopped * (14:46) - How Greece Identifies Victims While Saving Lives * (17:43) - A Day of Respite: The Single-Mothers Camp * (23:13) - Building Resilience and the Power of a Positive Presence * (29:49) - Taking the Lessons Home: Meeting People Where They Are About Derek Marsh Derek Marsh is Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University, where his work centers on education, prevention, and labor trafficking awareness. A longtime collaborator with Dr. Sandie Morgan and a recurring voice on the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, he helps lead the Global Center's annual study-abroad program in Greece, returning to refugee-serving communities there many times over the years. He came to anti-trafficking work through law enforcement, founding the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, and brings that frontline perspective to questions of victim identification and case development. On this trip, his expertise in labor trafficking — and his ability to connect man-to-man with male survivors who are often reluctant to identify themselves as victims — created space for Sudanese refugees to disclose exploitation they had not previously named. Key Points • This year's student group was strikingly independent, and a visit to the Young Diplomat Academy — hosted by Greece's National Human Trafficking Rapporteur — opened the door to a possible future partnership. • For the first time, the team entered a refugee camp in remote Kyllini, where Sudanese men who had been labor trafficked lived three-and-a-half hours from Athens, making access to paperwork and services extremely difficult. • Survivors were hesitant to disclose their trafficking — partly because earlier promises of help had gone unfulfilled — and when they did open up, Derek was struck by how violent and physical their labor trafficking had been. • Having a man speak man-to-man with male survivors lowered their barriers, and they revealed that exploitation was continuing right near the camp, where local actors had quickly learned to target new arrivals. • Greece's EKKA reported 891 identified victims — an admirable number for a nation of under 11 million on the front line of the Mediterranean migration crisis, where authorities must prioritize saving lives before investigating crimes. • At a separate camp for single mothers near Pyrgos, the team hosted a respite event with childcare, art therapy, and resources; the women had walked 45 minutes carrying their children to attend. • A student caring for a three-year-old watched him duck and cover at the sound of a passing plane — a vivid reminder that reaching safety is not enough, and that building resilience is key to a child's recovery. • The closing challenge: you don't need to visit a refugee camp to help — meet displaced people where they are, understand their context, and "look for the handle close to you," whether abroad or in your own community. Resources • Global Center for Women and Justice [https://www.gcwj.org/] • Humanitarian Initiative Bridges [https://www.bridges.org.gr/] • A21 [https://www.a21.org/] • EKKA — National Centre for Social Solidarity (National Referral Mechanism) [https://ekka.org.gr/index.php/en/ethnikos-mixanismos-anaforas-en] • Ending Human Trafficking — Episode 371: Dr. Heracles Moskoff [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/371/]