Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

Brian Joseph joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they discuss how investigative journalism can reveal the hidden realities of sex trafficking in the United States. BRIAN JOSEPH Brian Joseph is an investigative journalist with more than 20 years of experience uncovering stories of systemic corruption, criminal enterprises, and human exploitation. His latest book, Vegas Concierge, is a riveting expose that shines a light on the darker realities of the entertainment capital of the world. KEY POINTS * Investigative journalism plays a crucial role in exposing human trafficking networks and systemic corruption. * Vegas Concierge tells the story of Angela, a survivor of sex trafficking, providing insight into the lived experiences of victims. * Las Vegas is considered a hub for trafficking activities, often referred to as a “Mecca” within the pimp subculture. * The tipping culture in Las Vegas casinos facilitates trafficking by allowing trafficked women to navigate and avoid detection. * Many traffickers coerce women into the sex trade by exploiting past trauma and manipulating their self-worth. * Women often cycle through multiple traffickers, unable to break free from the system due to a lack of alternatives. * Female traffickers are common, yet often overlooked in discussions around human trafficking. * Institutional complicity and economic incentives within the casino and entertainment industries perpetuate trafficking. * Grooming, though not explicitly illegal, is a critical step in the coercion and exploitation process. * The book emphasizes the importance of understanding the specific details of trafficking cases, rather than generalizing experiences. * Joseph highlights the nonpartisan nature of human trafficking as a human rights issue that should be prioritized politically. * A call to action for readers is to engage deeply with the issue, educate themselves, and push for systemic change. RESOURCES * Buy Book [https://www.amazon.com/Vegas-Concierge-Trafficking-Corruption-America/dp/1538171694/ref=sr_1_1?dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.99LIsq9LETHNL6FT88KWhyFs5nnz33svhtt7T8AYPJiwXWBzUYKxXV5-x5I1WciPlWGen1VJbQZJF5LuSOsG79fRCtb7EecxWLqzwi9l6Eg1V6I27xYuKNvklLyZL0BEdcYJAweO4xVQKAvXkxQVCNuChaf3rgzfQ_0YDzmrqKKeWx7CjFb457BKR7D41N8L9Gm0_Vu3NTV0c25ZOLAFYdr3nlvhR3zF61GNNnUkmD4.UuyHX-bMFltwjkduSe0ZgX12lZJfDniC-8IzNHDwkSo&dib_tag=se&keywords=vegas+concierge&qid=1735081018&sr=8-1] * VegasConciergeBook.com [http://vegasconciergebook.com] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Sandie: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode number 335, Investigative Journalism, a Pathway to Understanding Sex Trafficking. We’re here with. Brian Joseph. My name is Dr. Sandy Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. [00:00:51] Sandie: Brian Joseph is an investigative journalist with more than 20 years of experience uncovering stories of systemic corruption, criminal enterprises, and human exploitation. His latest book, Vegas Concierge, is a riveting expose that shines a light on the darker realities of the entertainment capital of the world. [00:01:20] Sandie: Brian, welcome to our podcast. [00:01:23] Brian: I’m glad to be here. Thanks for having me. [00:01:25] Sandie: So you’re used to putting all of your energy into written expression. How are you enjoying being on the speaking circuit. I saw you last night at a book signing and last month at another one. [00:01:43] Brian: It’s, it’s been a change. Obviously I’m feel more comfortable behind a keyboard than anywhere else, but this has been a lot of fun. [00:01:49] Brian: It’s, it’s great to, you know, interact with folks that have read the book and, and it’s always a, you know, I enjoy talking with people. [00:01:55] Sandie: All right. Well, we’re going to have a great conversation. I do have a keyboard here. I could let you hold. So, okay. So tell us what. What drove you to actually do more than just an investigative article, but an entire book? [00:02:13] Brian: Well, I think, you know, by the time that, uh, uh, I started working specifically on, on the case that became the centerpiece of Vegas Concierge, I had already, you know, gathered quite a lot of information about domestic sex trafficking in the United States. And so, and then the, the story itself that does serve as a centerpiece of the book is such a winding tale that it, it just seemed quite, quite obvious that it would, it would most fit as a book rather than anything else. [00:02:38] Brian: There was just so much material, so much of a plot that it, it would, I couldn’t imagine telling that story in any other way. [00:02:45] Sandie: So let’s do, it’s really hard because this, I don’t remember how many pages it is, but can you give us, in a nutshell, the theme and your agenda as you processed how to put this story together? [00:03:03] Brian: Well, uh, Vegas concierge uses a, uh, The tale of a years long investigation into sex trafficking in Las Vegas is a narrative vehicle to explore how American society fails victims and survivors of sex trafficking. It was a project that required a lot of sensitivity and required a lot of work to get it put together in such a way that it was, I felt that it could be beneficial and impactful to the larger society. [00:03:30] Brian: And, uh, it was something that required a lot of, uh, [00:03:40] Sandie: So one of the things, and it’s not a spoiler alert for our listeners, but one of the conclusions towards the end of Brian’s book is a great place to start as we explore more. In this story, he says, this is modern day slavery, a nonpartisan human rights issue. If there ever was one and it’s time it’s eradication becomes a part of the American political agenda. [00:04:15] Sandie: And Brian. I am totally in sync with that. I have served in so many capacities and I am constantly bringing back to the table that this is nonpartisan. So as a disclaimer, before we start our conversation, cause we may not always agree, we are both committed. to the human dignity of our survivors and victims that are out there that we have not recovered. [00:04:44] Sandie: Absolutely. So, okay. So, we’ll dive in. My first big question now is in your very unsettling story, what Initially inspired you to make Las Vegas the focal point. [00:05:04] Brian: Well, that’s, that happened to be where I was, where I was based and where I began my investigation of domestic sex trafficking. So, to some degree, it was just, you know, where I happened to be. [00:05:16] Brian: Now, on a more, on a grander scale, Vegas, as I understand it, is considered by, by many people in the, uh, the pimp prostitution subculture to be sort of the, the Mecca of, of that, of that community. And so it made sense to me to center the book on, in Vegas because it is such a, a nexus for this sort of activity. [00:05:35] Sandie: I have to agree totally with that. I was shocked when I first came back from living overseas and got involved in understanding what sex trafficking looks like here in America, and discovered a pimp conference. In Las Vegas, they get together and they study and share notes and say, Oh, this works, but this doesn’t. [00:06:00] Sandie: They collaborate in sharing knowledge, which honestly, one of the reasons I love doing this podcast is it’s an easy way to share what we’ve learned with others and connect it. our knowledge and insight. So give us a rundown on your top characters in this narrative. [00:06:24] Brian: Well, I would use the word subjects because they are, they are, they are real people. [00:06:27] Brian: Obviously, the, the primary subject of the book is Angela. She’s a survivor and we, we follow her through the course of her life and her experiences in the pimp prostitute subculture and as, as being trafficked. Another main subject is Don. He is a retired vice sergeant from Las Vegas who has a. Deep heart for these victims and survivors and was very disturbed to see how certain issues played out in the community. [00:06:50] Brian: The primary trafficker in the book is a, uh, a hip hop music producer by the name of Molly mall. Uh, and then there’s a number of, of other people, other traffickers, other smaller characters that are, are subjects I should say that are, that are, that were victimized. And then there are just another collection of, of, of police and judicial figures in the book as well. [00:07:10] Sandie: So one of the themes that was kind of new knowledge for me, I mean I supposed that there was a lot of connection with the hospitality industry in Vegas, but that’s an area that you established direct to. connections. Can you expand on how that helps us understand ways to intervene with victims, male and female, ways to begin to establish effective interventions to help them leave their victimization? [00:07:56] Brian: Well, sure. So the book, uh, talks a lot about the interplay between victims and survivors of sex trafficking and sort of the larger casino industrial complex of Las Vegas. Uh, you see in the book, women who are being trafficked, who have to interact with people like taxi cab drivers or valets or security guards. [00:08:16] Brian: And you see how, uh, The tipping culture of Vegas allows them to essentially work their way through the massive facilities that are casinos in Las Vegas. [00:08:28] Sandie: Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This, this is a new New way of thinking the tipping culture is involved in human trafficking. [00:08:37] Brian: Absolutely. So as you may may be aware Las Vegas Runs not [00:08:42] Sandie: a regular visitor to Las Vegas. [00:08:45] Sandie: So yeah, you have to educate me [00:08:47] Brian: Sure, so a huge a huge way that business is done in Las Vegas involves involves tipping So if you you know, you want to you know You know, maybe, uh, get into a certain part of the casino that, uh, you might not otherwise have access to, or you want to, you know, find out, uh, you want to get a, a referral to, uh, you know, a cool club or whatever you might, uh, you might ask a, a taxi cab driver for, for referral and, and either you might tip them for that, or, or maybe, uh, the person that you refer them to the taxi cab driver refers you to might get a tip for, for, for that referral. [00:09:21] Brian: And so that what happens with, uh, with. Victims and survivors of sex trafficking is they will, uh, they will often tip security guards to, to in a casino so that the security guards might let them know if police are in the area so they can watch their back or the security, they might tip the security guard so they can be allowed to, to loiter in an area where they otherwise might be not allowed to loiter. [00:09:43] Brian: And so that sort of tipping culture is a, is a. Is a tool that women who are being trafficked used to to then work their ways through casinos in Las Vegas, and it’s a way for them to sort of operate without being detected. Now, it does speak to the sort of interplay between that that subculture and and the above board casinos that operate in Las Vegas. [00:10:07] Brian: It does. I should point out that it’s unclear at the highest levels of casinos, whether they’re there. intimately aware of what’s going on or if they’re just sort of vaguely aware of what’s going on. I think, I don’t know that there’s any, there’s any doubt that the people at the highest levels know that this happens to some degree. [00:10:22] Brian: I don’t know the extent to which they, they understand that this is happening. [00:10:26] Sandie: Okay. So when we’re talking about these direct connections, then what other levels are there? You, you talk about entertainment, And, and sometimes it feels like even when you’re talking, talking up in a, in the story of tipping that this is something that the women are doing. [00:10:52] Sandie: So it seems to take the trafficker, the pimp out of the story and she appears to have agency. Can you comment on that? On how that comes across. [00:11:04] Brian: I want to make very clear that I don’t believe. Well, I don’t want to take agency away from anybody, but I want to make very clear that that when I’m talking about traffickers, I’m sorry, trafficked women engaging in perhaps tipping. [00:11:17] Brian: This is not something that That they came up with on their own and that they decided they want to do. This is an expectation of them that’s placed on them by their trafficker. They need to do whatever is necessary to execute their goal of selling sex for the trafficker. And so these victims and survivors, these women have to learn sort of essentially the ropes of surviving in Vegas. [00:11:36] Brian: And often they have, of course, most of the time they’ve been manipulated into into this lifestyle in the first place. So. On one hand, yes, they, I guess you could say that they consciously, you know, learn these skills in order to, to operate in Las Vegas, but on a much larger level, they have been coerced into this lifestyle and been convinced that they, they want to and desire to engage in this sort of behavior and that they are indeed being pressured to do whatever, whatever is necessary to, to make a buck in the sex industry. [00:12:07] Sandie: And that really speaks to the blurred lines around the sense that we can call someone a seller and arrest them for selling illicit sex, but not the person. actually see them as a victim. So they look like they have agency. Can you speak to what you learned about grooming that results in this coercive manipulation? [00:12:38] Brian: Well, absolutely. So, so grooming plays a central part of, of the victimization of, of women who are trafficked. Grooming in and of itself, as I think we discussed the other day, at least on its face, as I understand it, doesn’t doesn’t qualify as a crime. I mean, that’s just somebody cozying up to you, but it’s a very coercive behavior that then allows traffickers to become very close to their victims and essentially convince the victims that it’s their own initiative. [00:13:08] Brian: And their own desire to engage in this behavior when in fact, I think the the record will show that these women have truly been been brainwashed and been manipulated into this lifestyle. But it is a very difficult and very subtle interaction that we’re talking about. And it’s something that most people have a difficulty wrapping their mind around. [00:13:27] Brian: And it, and it, it. It’s different for for every trafficker and every victim. It’s, it’s very hard to talk about these things in in vague generalities or sort of in theory. You really, it’s, it’s really important to talk about them with, you know, in this specific case at hand, because Again, the, these things are so, are so nuanced. [00:13:48] Brian: It’s just, it’s just very difficult to say in, in sort of broad strokes, you know, this is the way it is or that is the way it is. It, it, it’s, you really need to look at, I, I believe you really need to look very closely at the, uh, the facts of an individual case to be, to begin to understand, uh, what may be driving, uh, the behavior of a, uh, a woman who is being trafficked. [00:14:07] Sandie: So what. Would you point out specifically about Angela that you used her story with her permission and collaboration to teach us about that? What are some key signs? [00:14:22] Brian: Well, in Angela’s case, I mean, there’s a, there’s a number of, of potential signs you could point to. I mean, I think one of the largest one is, is the number of promises that were made to her by, by, by various, various traffickers that she engaged with. [00:14:33] Brian: And there was always these promises of, you know, a dream team of lawyers of. You know, ascending to, you know, higher ranks of the, of the industry of, of, of, I guess you could even say protection or, um, satisfaction, you know, those were empty promises that she was given. [00:14:51] Sandie: And you use the plural for traffickers. [00:14:55] Sandie: And so give us kind of a timeline or, or a way to conceptualize the idea that this, this Crime is something that can often become a pattern in a victim’s life. They may get away from one trafficker to be controlled by another. [00:15:18] Brian: Well, it’s important to understand that survivors and victims of sex trafficking often don’t Don’t have a clear view of their own of what’s going on with themselves. [00:15:28] Brian: They don’t necessarily see themselves as victims they don’t necessarily really even see the At least initially the the coercion that’s been it’s been affecting them Oftentimes women who are are trafficked have suffered tremendous traumas earlier in their lives long before they ever thought about engaging in in sex work and and and What happens is, is these, these traffickers step in and exploit those traumas, exploit the, the, uh, the harm of those traumas caused, you know, perhaps they, they, uh, these women have low self esteem and a trafficker may step in and say, you know, you know, may, may, may pump her up, may, may make her feel good about herself and use that sort of connection to then push her into, into the work and into sex work. [00:16:14] Brian: And so, So these women, this becomes all that they really know the, the, the only sort of relationships that they, they, they become familiar with are these sort of exploitative, coercive relationships. And so, yes, they may get tired with, with one trafficker. They may, they may get very upset with being beaten or being lied to and eventually leave. [00:16:36] Brian: But once, once that happens, uh, they, they really don’t have a, uh, A picture in their brain of any other sort of relationship, and so then they become, you become victim to the, the coercion and exploitation of another trafficker and then another trafficker. And it’s very similar and akin to, uh, someone who engages in a serial, a series of, uh, of dysfunctional relationships. [00:16:59] Brian: It’s very much in that same vein. [00:17:02] Sandie: And. The, the lineup of people that trafficked Angela is horrendous and, but it really points to something people often overlook. Traffickers are not all like Hollywood images, and it’s, It’s wonderful that you point out that one of her traffickers was female, because we overlook that. [00:17:29] Sandie: We look, uh, and in the early days of doing raids and busts to recover even quote unquote rescue victims, all of the women would be in the same room. And then we’d find out later, Oh my gosh. One of them was going around telling. them, what would happen to them if they. said anything. And so I eventually did some research that showed about 40 percent of sex trafficking traffickers are female. [00:18:05] Sandie: And you did such a great job. And this isn’t supposed to be Great job, Brian. Podcast. But that was one of the highlights of the book for me is you told that story. Do you want to comment on how you saw that? Were you expecting that? [00:18:22] Brian: I, uh, by the time I, uh, began working with Angela, I was familiar with the fact that there are at least some women who, who are traffickers. [00:18:29] Brian: So that, that didn’t necessarily come as a surprise. I, of course, hearing. You know, the details of Angela’s story was, was very traumatic and very upsetting. And I, I would hope that anyone who reads the book would, would come to the same conclusion. [00:18:44] Sandie: So good. So the institutional complicity that was, That was something that was a thread through the entire book and it actually Seemed to contribute to the the word that came to mind is a thriving money making industry. [00:19:10] Sandie: And I, and I want to point out to folks listening that exploitation is the bottom line for sex trafficking. Someone else is profiting by commercially selling another person. So can you speak to how you told the story of that complicity? [00:19:34] Brian: I told that story very carefully. I mean, the difficulty in in in reporting on something like that is it’s not necessarily something that people are going to want to talk about directly, and it’s not something that you’re going to find a lot of direct clear examples of. [00:19:49] Brian: It’s something that you’re going to have to come to by by talking to someone here, looking at a document there and sort of beginning to put the pieces together yourself. There’s not one single. individual that’s going to be able to say, this is what’s going on in this situation. I mean, it’s something that you really need to, to piece together bit by bit. [00:20:06] Brian: And that’s what I, I, I’d like to think we did in the book. [00:20:09] Sandie: So what were some of your methods? You, what are you piecing together? [00:20:14] Brian: Well, you know, my, my method as a, as a journalist is, is to be, is to be very thorough and be very careful and to, You know, to essentially, you know, talk to everyone that I possibly can and to review every, uh, piece and piece of written material that I can and, and to begin to see connections and draw connections and then, and then to return to my sources and ask him, am I making the right connections? [00:20:34] Brian: Am I, am I seeing the right things? And uh, uh, did that numerous times over the course of this book and, and, uh, you know, repeatedly was told, yes, you’re on the right track. This is exactly what the picture truly is. [00:20:48] Sandie: One of the things that I loved about how you told the story is you were totally committed and commented in the narrative in the chapters telling stories about the personal agency, the respect, and checking back to make sure you got it. [00:21:11] Sandie: Right. From their perspective. What made that your like your plumb line for this? Because honestly, sometimes journalists are just looking to see how many people are going to read this. And I don’t always see a lot of it. Respect for the actual person behind the story. [00:21:36] Brian: That’s just who I am as a person. I mean, that’s what matters to me and what’s important to me. [00:21:40] Brian: I mean, the beauty of writing a book is that, you know, I got to call the shots about what the standards would be in terms of how we handled the approach, in terms of we handled the reporting and handled, you know, various disclosures. And the book just reflects what I believe is important. [00:21:53] Sandie: So then if you’re speaking, I’m at a university, I have journalism students that I work with. [00:22:01] Sandie: I was in a conversation yesterday with one of them. Success now looks like a model of social media getting likes and the clear. understanding is that if you want to get those, you have to do the sensational stuff. What was the personal price you paid because you didn’t go down that road? [00:22:33] Brian: Well, I, I guess we’ll still see. [00:22:34] Brian: I don’t, uh, you know, we’re only at the publication of the book. I don’t know at this point what sort of personal price I’ll pay for the approach that I’ve taken to this book. What I, what I will say is that my overriding concern the entire time, even to this day, is, is accuracy. I still find myself going, gosh, did I get that sentence right? [00:22:51] Brian: Did I do that correctly? I mean, I just care very much about that. I mean, the notion of having, Popularity be a priority for me, which just, which just wasn’t there. My, my, my focus was on telling the best, most empathetic and truthful story that I could. [00:23:08] Sandie: I, I just love how you treated the victims who were being exploited. [00:23:14] Sandie: So sometimes we can clearly identify that someone is by law, by the elements of force, fraud and coercion, a victim. of sex trafficking, of human trafficking. But sometimes it’s not as clear, and I’ve heard you use, and I read, the word exploitation. So how are you using that language? Because language matters. [00:23:44] Sandie: Absolutely. And it contributes to an understanding of that pathway. So talk to me about that. [00:23:54] Brian: I mean, this may, this may be a simplistic way of putting it, but for purposes of our conversation, you know, I tend to very generally think of exploitation as, as simply, uh, another person laboring, uh, for the benefit of another. [00:24:09] Brian: And that’s certainly what, uh, what is going on. As it relates to victims and survivors of sex trafficking, there is a pimp, uh, above them who, uh, through manipulation or through force, uh, makes them engage in activities and then the reaps almost, almost or entirely the benefits of those activities that to me is exploitation and should bother anyone with a pulse. [00:24:35] Sandie: That shows the humanity side of you, Brian. I, I, when I think about exploitation, I actually have begun to look at it in my own world because it’s an economic term, which this human trafficking is an economically based crime. [00:24:58] Brian: Absolutely. [00:24:59] Sandie: And so we will be sitting around the table making a strategic plan for our company, our business, our, our newest program. [00:25:11] Sandie: And someone will say, well, how can we exploit these resources? It’s a business term. And we’re very comfortable leveraging because leveraging is one of the elements of exploitation. Do you think culturally that kind of profit agenda is something we have ignored in our prevention and intervention? That’s [00:25:40] Brian: a good question. [00:25:40] Brian: I don’t, I don’t know. Um, I mean, if you, if you’re talking about using the term exploit as in the business terms of say, you know, you’re, you’re an automotive manufacturer and, uh, you’re in a meeting and you say, you know, we have a good relationship with this provider of tires and they can make a lot of tires quickly. [00:26:00] Brian: We should exploit that by, you know, doing whatever. I don’t, I don’t find that upsetting. I find, I find using terms like exploitation or exploit in reference to people upsetting. So I guess my, my response to that would be context matters as well as, as language. And when you’re talking about people, I think we should, we should think more carefully and, and more thoroughly about the language we use. [00:26:26] Sandie: I agree. One of the most interesting chapters is when you start talking about policy agendas. So talk to us about your understanding of decrim, legalization. What do you think is the most important thing for people to pay attention to? [00:26:48] Brian: Well, I think, you know, there’s a number of different ideas on the table for addressing sex trafficking, both in the United States and elsewhere. [00:26:56] Brian: There are a number of people in the anti trafficking movement here and across the globe who, who believe different things. You know, some believe legalization, some believe decrim, some believe the Nordic model, some believe, you know, the status quo is the, is the best way to go. Uh, Me speaking for myself only. [00:27:13] Brian: I appreciate those, those debates, but I don’t know that the time is now to have those debates because from my perspective, it certainly seems that not enough people, at least in the United States, take this issue seriously. And so my belief is that instead of having these squabbles within the anti trafficking community over what, what’s the best way to move forward, there should be a focus on just. [00:27:39] Brian: Getting the general public, the larger public to take this issue seriously. So that’s the, uh, The only, uh, message I guess that I would advocate for is just simply that my sense is that the general public doesn’t take this seriously enough and that that that really needs to be addressed before we begin talking about specific policy options. [00:28:00] Sandie: And for our listeners, we’ve done a few interviews on this issue. Dr. Donna Hughes, Brad Miles, uh, Lisa Thompson talked to us about the kind of vocabulary we use. Um, her big concern has always been, Stayed in my head all the time, because when we start using language like sex worker, it legitimizes this as a job that your kid can grow up and aspire to, and that concerns me, which is why I prefer to look at this from the lens of exploitation, and I don’t have it. [00:28:42] Sandie: An answer to where we need to go. I do believe that our law enforcement teams are beginning to recognize the victimization on a more general across the board, proactive policing agenda, like we talked about in the last episode. So I encourage you as a listener to make this a point to get more knowledge and insight, seek some education, because this is an area where intervention can begin to develop real concrete steps to help women and men leave that kind of exploitation. [00:29:30] Sandie: Brian, I have two more questions for you. The first one is How long did it take you to write this book? [00:29:38] Brian: That’s a good question. I mean, it depends on what you mean by, by write this. I, I, um, I spent a couple of years researching domestic sex trafficking when I was working for the paper in Las Vegas. When I then was on my own, I spent roughly four years working on the book involving both research and writing. [00:29:56] Sandie: And have you changed your mind about anything? Have I changed my [00:30:01] Brian: mind about anything? Yes, I guess, I guess if I had to point to one particular thing that has changed for me, it’s, it’s simply that this understanding that it’s very difficult to, to talk about relationships, to talk about individuals cases without looking at the specifics of those cases. [00:30:19] Brian: As I mentioned before, it’s very, it’s very tempting to sort of talk about. Issues of sex and issues of exploitation and sort of a vague sort of way, but it’s really not helpful. We, we, we need to, to really, if we’re going to talk about, you know, A case, we need to talk about the case in its entirety in the details of the case, you can’t just sort of talk vaguely about, well, you know, my perception is that if I was in that situation, I would handle it this way. [00:30:45] Brian: Well, you don’t really know because you don’t know all of the specifics of that case. So I guess for me, what’s changed is, is, is a, uh, I’m much less I’m less likely to, to think in sort of broad strokes and to think more specifically about each individual and each individual case that I come across. [00:31:03] Sandie: Thank you for that. What is your call to action [00:31:07] Brian: to your readers? Well, I don’t know that I have a call to action. I, you know, I, I, as a journalist, I, I work very hard to, to focus on, on telling the story. And to getting at the truth and letting other people decide what the, what the call to action is. I guess if I did have a call to action, it would be simply to, uh, uh, to engage with this issue in a, in a real and substantive way and to, uh, to not rely on what you’re seeing in, in pop culture and what’s being discussed vaguely in, in, in conversation, but to really understand it yourself and to educate yourself on this issue. [00:31:40] Sandie: That’s great. And how can they get your book? [00:31:42] Brian: So the, uh, um, the old catchphrase, you can get this book wherever books are sold actually does apply to Vegas concierge. Our publisher, Roman and Littlefield has an excellent distribution network. And my understanding is that you can get it, you know, just about any, any bookseller. [00:31:57] Brian: So of course available online through Amazon and Barnes and Noble and other places like that. That’s wonderful. And do you have a website? We do. Our website is VegasConciergeBook. com. You can find some summary materials as well as some documents that we used to flesh out the research of the book. [00:32:14] Sandie: All right. [00:32:14] Sandie: And I did really appreciate the heavy annotations. You’ve been wonderful. Did a great job from a professor’s perspective of making sure people’s voices were documented, and that’s really commendable. I appreciate that. I look forward to your next book, and I have questions. That I’d like you to investigate. [00:32:42] Sandie: Yeah, I’m all, I’m all ears. Thank you. Okay. All right. Well, thank you, Brian, for joining us today and for your dedication to exposing injustice. And for my listeners, I encourage you to follow up. It’s pretty heavy reading, but you will gain a deeper understanding of systems that are behind the scenes. That are not as easy to just say, well, we’ll fix this. [00:33:12] Sandie: And it’s very nuanced and that comes across. Thank you for listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. Go online if this is your first time and become a subscriber and you will receive the show notes every time an episode drops every two weeks. See you again soon. Bye.

Derek Marsh joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as the two discuss the role of law enforcement in preventing human trafficking. DEREK MARSH Derek Marsh is the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is a retired Deputy Chief of the Westminster Police Department, CA, with over 26 years of service. He co-founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force and has been a national and international leader in anti-human trafficking training, investigations, and advocacy. A former Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellow, Derek has worked extensively to improve labor trafficking investigations and task force collaboration. He holds master’s degrees in Human Behavior and Police Management & Leadership and continues to advance education, outreach, and justice initiatives through GCWJ. KEY POINTS * It is important to shift law enforcement’s focus from a traditional reactive approach (arresting perpetrators) to a proactive model that prioritizes prevention of human trafficking through holistic strategies. * There is a strong focus on utilizing victim-centered, trauma-informed approaches in law enforcement to provide appropriate support for victims while addressing the dynamics between victims and perpetrators, rather than solely relying on arrests and punitive measures. * There are financial implications of preventative versus reactive responses. Investing in preventive measures could ultimately be more cost-effective than dealing with the long-term consequences of exploitation and incarceration. * Collaboration among various stakeholders—including law enforcement, social services, and community organizations—is necessary to effectively address human trafficking and to support prevention strategies that mitigate risk factors for exploitation. RESOURCES * Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force [https://www.ochumantrafficking.com/] * Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellows  [https://bja.ojp.gov/program/visiting-fellows/overview] * Health and Human Services [https://www.hhs.gov/] * gcwj.org [http://gcwj.org/] * Department of Social Services [https://www.cdss.ca.gov/] * Enhanced Collaborative Model [https://ovc.ojp.gov/funding/opportunities/o-ovc-2024-172001] TRANSCRIPT Sandra Morgan 0:14 Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #334: Law Enforcement’s Role in Preventing Human Trafficking. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Our guest today is Derek Marsh, an old friend and frequent guest on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. Derek serves as the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice. He is adjunct faculty in the criminal justice major, a retired deputy chief of Westminster Police Department, and co founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force. He’s also been a former Bureau of Justice Assistance Visiting Fellow. Derek has worked extensively to improve labor trafficking investigations and Task Force collaboration. We are so grateful that he’s on our Global Center for Women and Justice team, and we’re eager to dive into this conversation. Derek, welcome. Derek Marsh 1:42 Thank you for having me again. Sandra Morgan 1:43 Yeah, it’s kind of hard not to run into you around here. Derek Marsh 1:47 You being the boss and telling me what to do kind of helps. Sandra Morgan 1:49 I know I love it, though, when you were the boss, but I get to have that role now, so it’s great. I’m excited because you know how much I love talking about prevention, and usually you’re talking about finding the bad guys, locking them up, and making sure they can’t do what they did ever again. But now, we’re going to look at this from the perspective that law enforcement has a role in preventing human trafficking. Let’s start with that question: How do we change our lens so that we’re more proactive instead of reactive? Derek Marsh 2:35 It’s a difficult lens to change, because a lot of our work in police work is we’re rewarded financially, or through evaluations, or through the public perception, by reacting to issues quicker. The sooner, the more long term that impact has, the greater we get that positive feedback. Human trafficking, unfortunately, isn’t always one of those situations where you can just pop in, make a quick arrest, refer a victim to a victim services provider, and think you have a win. I guess it is a win in the short term sense, but it’s not a win in the long term sense. After being retired, and thinking about these things, and teaching in the CJ, the Criminal Justice Department, I’ve come to think of prevention as being a much more holistic, complete response, as is just opposed to putting people in jail. Which I enjoy doing, I probably still would enjoy if I had the option, but I don’t know if that’s the actual answer in the long term for eliminating, or at least mitigating significantly, human trafficking. Sandra Morgan 3:39 Well, we’ve talked about prevention a lot on this task force, my background in pediatric nursing. I want to find how do we teach people to brush their teeth, that equivalent, so that we can end trafficking, really do prevention? And we’ve looked at prevention through the lens of the prevention framework at Health and Human Services, which really focuses on a primary prevention strategy, a public health agenda, and as well as a socio-ecological model. So can you help us see that in the context of criminal justice and law enforcement? Derek Marsh 4:27 Well, sure. So human trafficking has frequently been referred to as a public health crisis these days, and for good reason, there’s physiological issues, cognitive issues, societal issues, financial, economic issues that result as a result of the crime of human trafficking. Health and Human Services and most of the anti trafficking world these days, in our federal world, focus on the public health model, which has three different levels of prevention, if you will. You have your primary level which focuses on actually what we consider prevention, stopping something before it happens. We have secondary and tertiary, both which deal with reacting to an event, whether the person is a perpetrator or they’re experiencing exploitation or trafficking. The secondary deals with short term, basically arresting someone, putting them in jail, or just immediately identifying someone and offering them assistance. The tertiary deals with long term, so basically, how are you going to make that person stop being a perpetrator? Or how are you going to make sure that person who’s been a victim, survivor, not recidivate anymore, not go back, not get sucked back into the life, or not be further exploited by other people. Sandra Morgan 5:42 Give me an example, tell me a story that I can understand that. Derek Marsh 5:48 Well, here’s the thing. I’ll go back to the days of the dinosaurs when I was working on it. I mean, you go to a house, you get a report. Someone says there’s something fishy at this residence. It turns out to be a residential brothel. You go through your surveillance, you get your information about who owns the place. You get license plates, you see people repeatedly.You see if they have any warrants or anything like that. You go to a judge eventually say, “Well, this type of activity appears to be related to either drugs,” because they’re very similar in residential brothels, “or maybe it’spotentially human trafficking,” or some kind of pimping and pandering. So then you convince the judge based on your experience, and you move in, and you do a search warrant, and you find people who are being victimized. You find people who are victimizing them, and you find people who are offering them. From the idea of trying to figure out what’s happening ahead of time, we’re not. What we’re doing is we’re responding basically to a call for service, or to an observation from a citizen. We go there, we deal with the immediate situation, we close down the residential brothel. We identify who the perpetrators are and who the victim survivors are going to be, and in that short secondary prevention aspect, you’re dealing with the issue. We’re actually preventing, in a sense, right? Because that’s how that public health model works with that. On a long term basis, you’re looking to see how long can they be put in jail? Or maybe they can get some kind of restorative or rehabilitative justiceapplied to them so when they come out, they won’t do it again. On the victim/survivor side, you’re saying, how can we help them and provide services, we’re working with them so they don’t go back and fall into that, in this particular example, sex trafficking situation. But it works the same for labor as well. How can we make sure that they have a long-term, sustainable plan where they can get what they need as a person and realize and restore their personal dignity, while the same token not being subject to being victimized, exploited again? Sandra Morgan 7:47 So what that looks like in a day to day routine, I remember the day when if there was a call out on a brothel, which is illegal commercial sex, everybody got arrested. That model has changed now and there is more intentional concern for the people that are there, that might actually be there under coercion. Now, how does that fit into this scenario as an element of a prevention strategy? Derek Marsh 8:33 Exactly. You’re talking about like 20-30 years ago, where you go into a residential brothel, or you know wherever you go. You can go online now, same idea, “I need to find someone at a hotel,” the difference is minimal, but basically everyone who’s there is arrested. There’s no consideration for victim-centered, trauma-informed, culturally-aware, all those issues we now deal with, with human trafficking. From that non preventative at all, just strictly enforcement, deterrent, kind of, capacity mindset, you move into more of a reactive prevention sense that, “Hey, I see an issue. We’re going to address it. We’re victim-centered, trauma-informed, so we’re not going to try to trigger our folks,” I know that’s not the word we use, but we’re not going to try to trigger them. We’re not going to try to further traumatize them. We’re going to treat them as victim survivors, make sure they have agency in this process, we’re not going to put handcuffs on if we can avoid it, all those other things. Whereas we’re still arresting the perpetrators and keeping them separate. From the old school way of just taking them all to jail and we’ll sort them out there, to understanding there’s a victim/perpetrator dynamic that we need to be aware of, and that they’re not just victims and we’re not there to save them, we’re there to help liberate them so they can come to better terms and restore their dignity, and understand that we need collaborative effort to make that happen. The police aren’t solo. So that’s the evolution that we’re talking about when it comes to prevention. What the next level of evolution would be, would be to actually prevent it from ever happening at all, if that makes sense. You have, according to the public health model, your primary prevention is what you’re focusing on. You really want to, in the long run, create a space for people where they never get exploited, where they never feel they have to exploit others to get ahead, so that these people can live without having to go through this sexual trauma, the trauma of commercial labor, the idea of being exploited by people for financial ends, the idea of exploiting others for financial ends, that there are other alternatives that are more viable. That’s where the long-term end goal, if you’re asking me about anti trafficking, is to create a planet where that doesn’t occur. Sandra Morgan 10:52 So when we’re talking about prevention, then, we can imagine a continuum. We missed it, we didn’t teach them how to brush their teeth when they were one year old, and now they’re already in the midst of decay. They’ve been exploited. Our prevention is preventing further exploitation. Derek Marsh 11:18 Right, it’s always public health. Let’s look at a health example. You catch somebody and they have a cold, or a disease, or something like that. You break your arm? Okay, well that happened. We’re going to fix that arm, we’re going to reset it, we’re going to do what we need to do. It’ll be good as new. But they still broke their arm. You didn’t stop them from breaking their arm, or flu or whatever. But you could have avoided that through wearing a mask, washing your hands more frequently, or other things like that. You probably could have but again, we’re reacting to the public health world. I’m not saying that’s everything that public health does, but a lot of times it becomes reactive. What I’m saying is here, while we are very good and technically we are doing prevention by arresting people, referring them to resources, both short and long term, and that’s important, I’m not minimizing it. I’m saying it would also be good to focus on the third, the initial, the primary aspect of prevention, which is never have it happen at all. But these are often dealing with bigger issues, like poverty, like educational opportunity, like medical health access, like job opportunities, all those things that police aren’t normally associated with handling, which I agree with. However, you’re also in areas where you have to feel safe and secure, like your neighborhoods or your communities or your inner cities, and that is something police can partner with and help in an element of creating a safer, more secure environment that minimizes those factors that can promote the possibility of people being at risk of being exploited, or exploiting others because they feel they have no other options in their world. Sandra Morgan 12:59 So when I, as a nurse, approach something like this. I’m looking how to identify, how to find the protective factors. But in criminal justice, you have a model called Sarah. How does Sarah help you? Derek Marsh 13:18 In a public health world, there’s like four different levels, roughly. I’m taking this from the Health and Human Services Anti- Trafficking Framework, but they’re right. I’ve read others, and they’re very similar. You start with finding a problem, you want to monitor it. Then you want to ID your risk, maybe come up with some protective factors that would keep you from doing it. You develop and test some preventative strategies, and in the end, you walk away saying, “Okay, well, we’re going to adopt this worldwide and make it stop.” Well the criminal justice world does the same kind of thing, they call it problem oriented policing. Basically they have what they call the ceremony. Sandra Morgan 13:54 They call it what? Derek Marsh 13:55 Problem oriented policing. They identify an issue. Initially they survey something, they go, “Okay, well, we’re going to survey an issue,” let’s say burglaries or auto thefts, “and we’re going to look at and analyze this area, and figure out what’s going on.” So first, you’re going to survey it and see if it’s really a problem. Next, you’re going to analyze issues in your city, maybe there’s a particular parking lot, or maybe the mall, where a lot of people park, that’s where they’re losing their catalytic converters, or whatever the case may be. Then you’re going to find out, what are the MOS, how are people perpetrating these steps? At what times? How many people are involved? Are people ever seeing it happen? Those types of things. What kind of cars are being targeted? Then you’re going to say, “Okay, well, I want to respond a certain way.” As you’re patrolling a mall or you’re patrolling a larger parking lot space, then you can say, “Okay, well, I’m looking for this kind of car at this time of the day. Those seem to be the target areas by these people to focus on,” the perpetrators of it. At that point, you do a response for, let’s say, a month, and then you look at your monthly response, see how many people you’ve arrested or questioned, and does it lower the overall crime rate that’s reported there? Successful, not successful, and you go on to repeat the Sarah process again. Same thing that’s happening with public health, we just made it a little bit more simple for patrol officers and for people that are not trying to be researchers, they’re trying to address particular issues. So that’s the difference. Sandra Morgan 15:18 Okay, so this actually changes my frame of reference in my collaboration with my local law enforcement partners. Because I think in my mind, and I kind of feel like some of my listeners may identify with me, I think when I show up as the victim service providers, that you’re off duty now. You’re not helping with prevention anymore. I showed up, I’m taking care of this, but this makes it sound to me, more like you’re actively creating a strategy for that specific call out, when it gets repeated, that is going to also have the opportunity for widespread adoption, just like in the HHS plan. Derek Marsh 16:14 Sure, there are lots of programs in police work that you started, and for instance, even the Sarah if you think of it as a system of approach, or crime analysis, or things like that, where people started doing it, seeing the system works. It does work, whether you call it hotspot policing, whatever you want to call it, and you identify those issues that seem to be perpetuating and seem to be true issues in your particular community, and then you work on it. But again, it starts off as a reactive because you’re for things that are already happening, and then you try to figure out a strategy or process where you can, by doing a normal patrol, or by doing focus patrols, you can keep it from happening in the future. It’s easy to metric for police because we’re measuring the number of, let’s say, catalytic converter thefts. You know what it was six months ago or for the last six months, then you implement your program for three months, and you compare the numbers. Did it go down? Did it not go down? Or did it go down here but it went up in another part of the city? Prevention for human trafficking is that much harder to do, because while we are addressing on the secondary and tertiary ways of the immediate rest and identification of a potential victim survivor, giving them the care they need, and addressing the criminal justice consequences of perpetrating that crime. Are we really able to go back now and find issues that we can address, and mitigate those factors that make people vulnerable? That’s harder to measure, because how do I measure someone not being a victim? Especially when we went around telling everybody, “Hey, we’re not counting well to begin with.” We’re only hitting the tip of the iceberg, right? Maybe we only had two reports, and now, after you implement a program, you have only two reports. But think about it, maybe there were five reports you would have had, as opposed to the two reports, if you hadn’t done what you were doing. For instance, people being recruited outside of high schools. Why not stick a cop car ,or person out there, or a collaborative partner, whatever, to help make sure that those people don’t get to interact? All the underlying things, the things that are behind the scenes, behind the curtain, are those being stopped? You want to hope so, but you don’t know until later on, until you’re able to take an entire look at the history of how it’s working. Sandra Morgan 18:23 Don’t we have to consider how much that’s going to cost, to have somebody parked outside a high school every day at three o’clock when the bell rings? Derek Marsh 18:31 Sure. We’re paying for people to be there anyway, though. You’re paying for law enforcement to be there. Now, they have to respond to calls for service, and so you’re looking at special programs. But what’s the cost of treating someone who’s a victim of human trafficking? What’s the psychological cost? It’s very difficult to put a number on. What’s their impact, as far as their ability to work in our society? What’s the cost of someone you arrest who’s exploiting people? How much do we pay for them in prison? I think the last numbers I’d seen were anywhere from 35 to $55,000 a year, to house and feed somebody in jail, in prison. So that’s a lot of money. The idea here is that if you get a school resource officer, for instance, and then have them be at the school and be aware of these things, and just take their time when school ends, instead of hanging out in an office space or whatever, go outside and just walk outside the school, see who interacting with the students. Sandra Morgan 19:22 If we start looking at primary prevention, because you want us to measure things. Measuring victims isn’t working very well because we can only measure what we find, and that’s very spotty, depends on resources for recovery, who has a grant to pay salaries, those kinds of funding issues. So if we look at the cost of prevention over the cost of deterrence, by putting somebody in jail, or the cost of prevention compared to the cost of restoration, then maybe we start placing higher value on prevention strategies. Because in our 5 P model, prevention typically does not get as well funded. Derek Marsh 20:21 Again, as we’re thinking of prevention in the 5 P model, or as we think about it from the federal level, even while HHS has come up with this three-level, public health model of prevention, again, technically, we are doing prevention by funding police and funding social service providers to handle situations that are already occurring. To intervene and help people stop, or help liberate them from their situation so they can get better care and self care, to arrest perpetrators or people pursuing those types of trafficking activities. From a secondary and tertiary perspective, they are funding prevention. But it’s that difficult to measure, because we’re so obsessed with measurement and making sure we get it right, which is important, but difficult to measure, quantitative way of saying, “Hey, how do I show that my efforts prior to that, my community outreach efforts, my environmental design efforts, where I’m trying to create better lighted neighborhoods, neighborhood watch, things like that, help actually prevent people from being victimized or susceptible to financial poverty issues, to being susceptible to poor schooling?” Those are things that you have to have partnerships, because it’s not criminal justice anymore, it’s partnerships with other people, other groups in the community, other federal groups, local groups, that can help mitigate and change those issues. Sandra Morgan 21:45 You’re sliding into the socioecological model, and that feels overwhelming to address. How do we break it down so that everyday people, like me, can keep it all organized in my thinking? Derek Marsh 22:05 I would say that if you’re going to break it down, or you’re going to look at these different elements or factors, we’ve known the Steven model, for instance, that you and I have developed. You look at what Steven stands for; sociocultural, then you have T for technological issues online. There’s a lot of issues with those, access and things like that. You have ecological, you have your economic, you have your political, you have your historical, and when you put all these things together, then you can look for their connectivity, their issues, how people are networking together, the collaborations, and you come up with strategies and tactics on how to address those issues. We have the Steven which is the same as their socioecological model, and that’s fine in some ways, but again, on a line level, cop on the street, ‘how do I do prevention?,’ it doesn’t help. Because they don’t have that skill set. Their job is to enforce laws to make sure people are safe and secure. How do you do that day to day? You do it through programs. We did a program once where we were called out to ahousehold where gang activity was occurring, or to a place where drug activity was occurring, or even domestic violence, we would actually refer the kids who were experiencing this, through observation, hopefully not directly through abuse, to schools. We would have a whole program set up for them to show that they could work together with the police, and with educational groups, and with nonprofit organizations, to show there’s much more to life than just watching their parents, or the people in their homes, or their brothers or sisters or whoever, abuse each other, exploit each other, take advantage of each other. We gave them a more positive example, if you will. Those things are possible, it takes some finances to back them up, but we put a lot of money into arresting people, and we put a lot of money into treating people. And guess what? I think treating people and arresting people are important things to do, but I also think that you can’t arrest your way out of the crime. We talked to John Cotton Richmond, he said that multiple times. I don’t think you’re going to, in a way, you can help people get better from a psychological, emotional, cognitive perspective, and that’s important to do, but I think not ever having them experience those types of issues is way better. From a financial perspective, and also from a personal perspective, from a societal perspective, probably just a lot more healthy people walking around. Sandra Morgan 24:28 Does this then support the enhanced collaborative model for task forces? Derek Marsh 24:35 100%. I mean prevention was like, I look at the original three: prevention, protection, prosecution, and in a sense, those are the three groups, or even one of those is people, but three activities that are really at the heart of anti trafficking. We look at prevention, we’re looking at the same things we always have before. You want to identify what’s going on, you want to come up with solutions, you want to make sure that you can intervene, to make sure people don’t even get involved. If that doesn’t work, then you fall back on your people who need support for what has occurred to them already, or what they are doing to others. And that’s okay, it’s a necessary part of the entire system, but I would hope that as we get more mature, and as we’ve been doing this now, it started in 2000 and we’re in 2024, so 24 years down the line, we could keep putting a lot of money into arresting people and treating people, and those are important things to do, and I’m not minimizing the importance of it, but I think an equal, and if not, greater, amount of money could just be put into programs or research that can help us identify how you mitigate these factors in society, in individuals, in communities, that can create an opportunity for people not to have to experience any of that at all. Sandra Morgan 25:48 Well, and no one can have the attitude that, “My particular role in this process is the key piece to this.” I remember when we did a study abroad with our students here from Vanguard in Romania, and we were invited to do a training for all the domestic violence police sergeants, I’m not sure about… Derek Marsh 26:18 In Bucharest. Sandra Morgan 26:19 Yeah, in Bucharest, and they wanted to understand how to do a better job of intervening in domestic violence, and learn to apply that in the work on anti sex trafficking. What we discovered, I still remember trying to answer some questions, because in our presentation, we had the experience of we had a list of people to call when we had something happening. They didn’t have a number to call for somebody to show up, and so the only place to take the victim was to the police station, and that, to me, sounds like a criminal justice adjustment that requires that Enhanced Collaborative Model, and with this socioecological prevention strategy, we start integrating that in all five P’s, instead of only having it in the first P. Derek Marsh 27:29 I agree, and I think that you have to understand the historical context. We went in there with the great intention of helping them understand anti trafficking. Within five minutes of that presentation, they wanted to talk about domestic violence, because for them, that was the more immediate issue that led to people potentially being exploited and maybe even being pimped or pandered. We switched gears right away. We’re like, okay, that’s what you need to talk about, and that’s what we’re going to talk about. We had two hours of a great training with a room full of cops in Bucharest, to understand what it took to address domestic violence, which, again, is a type of exploitation, a type of physical, powerful exploitation, where you have victims and you have perpetrator. It is an element, in many cases, of some human trafficking situations as well. So mission accomplished, we worked on anti trafficking, but we understand the historical context. They had just gotten the idea of a restraining order, which was brand new to them. They were just starting to be allowed to actually go into someone’s home if there was a report of domestic violence, as opposed to standing outside the door and hearing things without being able to do anything about it. Those were issues that they were working through, and that mindset was changing. Sandra Morgan 28:39 And the other thing that happened, because we’ve got to tell you guys the rest of the story, is the nonprofit that we were working with suddenly realized that they could help. They created a contact card that these police officers could have in their cargo pants when they needed to reach out for victim services in one of those situations. They had a community partner so they could do this enhanced collaborative model. It was a game changer. Derek Marsh 29:13 Sure, and again, the local line level officers aren’t usually going to be able to recognize who those players are, who those NGOs are, who those service providers are. They may have a General Department, like Department of Social Services, but they’re not going to be able to say, how can we help if we just want to get independent help, short of the Department of Social Services. Because nobody wants to be on the radar in a federal, or municipal, or city sense. They can go to get individual help without making it aware to their partner ,if they’re being abused or whatever. The idea being that the whole collaboration makes sense. Again, instead of having to get a call for service, or experience excessive or any kind of domestic violence, those cars can potentially save people, not just people there, but if they’re shared out, they can share it with people who might be a victim, but realize there are other ways that they can handle those issues. Sandra Morgan 30:06 Derek, you and I have worked together for a very long time, 20 years. Wow. Derek Marsh 30:13 Sorry. Sandra Morgan 30:14 I’ve changed my mind on a few things, especially when it comes to working with police officers, federal agents, investigating. What have you changed your mind about? Derek Marsh 30:30 I would say, definitely the importance of the victim-centered, trauma-informed approach. I think I had that, to some degree more esoterically, like theoretically, it made sense, but seeing it on the ground helped me just bring it into my heart. But also the idea that it’s great to arrest people, again, love doing it. I know it sounds bad but there’s certain closure to taking somebody who’s abusing somebody and putting them in jail. However, much better in the long run, I think much better for the people involved, that they never get in those situations before. I’ve kind of lost my cop hat to some degree, after being retired as long as I have, and seeing that prevention and understanding that people, if we can keep them from even being exploited or exploiting others, is a much more long term, societally comprehensive solution than just throwing on some handcuffs and throwing them into a jail cell. Liberating a person who’s been exploited and providing them with services, but them having to struggle with those issues and the trauma for the rest of their lives. Sandra Morgan 31:34 Yet I still remember you teaching me that we can’t have tree huggers only, and I was the resident tree hugger, at a scene, because it wasn’t safe. If you could just tell me again, teach me again why we do have to have cops, police officers who are there for the public safety, and why that’s important for the victim as well as the rest of us in the room. Derek Marsh 32:13 Yeah, I’m perilously close to hugging trees when I talk like I’m talking. Sandra Morgan 32:16 I know, oh my gosh. Derek Marsh 32:18 It’s killing me, I see the tree. It’s close, I can almost reach it. But the reality is that police serve a function. I think we’ve seen our lane. The idea here that we’re trying to enforce laws, but we’re also trying to keep communities safe. There needs to be a line. And then people, as a community, draw that line themselves, awesome. That’s what it should be, really. But if they can’t, or they won’t, then there needs to be other people, like ourselves, police, to go up and say, “This is the line, whether you want to acknowledge it or not.” If you cross that line from a criminal perspective, there are consequences, accountability. But also if you’re a person who’s being victimized in a crime, then you need someone there to be able to say, “Look, I can take you out of this space when you’re not thinking clearly yourself, when you’re in a horrible situation, when mentally and habitually you’re just used to that kind of experience, and you think it’s normalized, then you need someone to help liberate you from that, or a group to help liberate from that.” Not that we’re riding white horses or we’re knights, or that you can’t liberate yourself, I get all that. But sometimes we all have weak moments, or we have times in our lives where having somebody there to support you and to offer you the options, is important. I think that’s where police fit in. I would be a horrible person to provide long term counseling. Definitely not, too many trees around, I’ll get confused. But I mean, can I identify someone who haspotential challenges and needs some help? 100%. Then I can direct them to people who are experienced, have that training and education, to give them the best opportunity to engage in a way that they can help heal themselves and make that informed decision. Then I win too. Not only do I get somebody into handcuffs, if that’s what’s needed, but I also have somebody who has been liberated from not just physical handcuffs maybe, but also from a psychological exploitation and the handcuffs that people put upon them through coercion, force, and other ways of manipulating others. Sandra Morgan 34:24 That’s good. That’s so good. To close out this episode, Derek Marsh runs our anti human trafficking certificate program. Derek, would you tell our listeners how to access that and what the breadth of it is. Derek Marsh 34:44 We have an anti human trafficking certificate program. It works for both professional level folks and for people who want to do academic as well. The professional costs are much less than the academic because you don’t get units. However, we have 13 different courses. We’re always adjusting them for current activities and things that are going on in the world. We have people who teach who are active in the field, or have been in the field, have actually worked in anti trafficking before, so it can help in a mentor perspective. They are eight weeks, and if you do four courses, the Basic Human Trafficking Overall View, the Ethics and Human Trafficking are the core, if you will, required courses. Then we have other courses, CSEC, actually Prevention is one of the courses I’m teaching right now. There’s Sex Trafficking, Labor Trafficking, Immigration Issues. We have a bunch of different courses that, depending on where your bent is and where you want to look at, can work. Faith Based and Faith Based Work With Human Trafficking, reflected on by your book that you wrote with your partner. Again, the idea here is to make people more informed about what trafficking is about. You take the courses, you get a certificate saying that you’ve been through what we’re doing and we’re providing. I think in the end, being more informed at that level, whether you’re going to be a police officer or a social worker, you can work at a church or you can work in a business. You can work in a medical facility, it doesn’t matter, all of us can apply some of that information, some of those techniques and strategies where you work, to help people understand what’s going on and maybe intervene in those situations as they go. Sandra Morgan 36:20 Where are you going to find that? Derek Marsh 36:22 You’re going to find it online. You just look under vanguard.edu, and we’re there. If you go to our gcwj.org, you can find that information there, and there’s links there to go to Vanguard. It’s a very straightforward process. You don’t have to have a degree to get in the program. You have to be pursuing a degree to get in the program, though, of course, you can get units. All those are options you can do. In fact, I’ve been very blessed in a sense, that a lot of times when people look for anti trafficking education, we populate on the first page in Google, which I have no idea how that worked out, but great for us, and hopefully great for you if you’re able to take advantage of it. Sandra Morgan 36:57 We love being a resource, because we do believe education is key to prevention. Derek, thank you so much for helping out today on episode #334. Derek Marsh 37:12 Thank you for having me. Sandra Morgan 37:14 Listeners, we want you to know that in the show notes there will be links to all the things Derek and I talked about. If you have more questions, you can go to feedback and send those questions in. Your next step, if you’re not already a subscriber, is to go over to endinghumantrafficking.org and sign up. You’ll get a newsletter every two weeks, telling you that a new episode is dropped with information about what was in that episode. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and tell your friends to join us as we study the issues so we can be a voice and make a difference in ending human trafficking.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Josie Heyano as the two discuss the importance of bridging communities to prevent human trafficking. JOSIE HEYANO Josie Heyano, LMSW, is a Deg Xinag Athabascan advocate from Alaska, focused on creating holistic and decolonized practices to serve Alaska Native and Indigenous communities impacted by human trafficking. With extensive experience supporting youth facing homelessness, exploitation, and trafficking, she founded Signify Consulting, LLC, to further her collaboration in anti-trafficking work across Alaska. Josie is a Presidentially appointed member of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, advising federal policy, and in 2023, she received the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award for her contributions to prevention and intervention in Alaska. Her work honors her great aunt Linda Miller and others still awaiting justice. KEY POINTS * Traditional introductions are important as they reflect relationships and community ties, highlighting accountability and cultural identity. * Serving on the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, Josie highlights the importance of humility and listening to voices within her community that are often unheard. She cites a recent visit by the council to Alaska as an opportunity to humanize the data and issues surrounding human trafficking. * Human trafficking is a symptom of broader systemic issues, such as domestic violence, homelessness, and mental health crises. There is a need for a holistic approach that addresses these interconnected challenges within Indigenous communities. * The Alaska Human Trafficking Data Needs Assessment revealed gaps in data and understanding regarding trafficking. Community relationships and collaboration across different sectors (service providers, law enforcement, academia) are necessary to improve data collection and response strategies. * Cultural practices and community care can serve as protective factors against human trafficking. It is necessary to integrate traditional values and practices into prevention efforts, focusing on unconditional care, relationship building, and addressing basic community needs. * A preventative approach that extends beyond immediate trafficking interventions includes ensuring that community members have access to essential resources, support systems, and a sense of belonging from birth, thus preventing vulnerability to trafficking in the first place. Active, compassionate engagement with community members fosters safety and well-being. RESOURCES * U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking [https://www.state.gov/u-s-advisory-council-on-human-trafficking/] * FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award  [https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/anchorage/news/fbi-honors-anchorage-community-leader-with-national-award] * 277: Navajo Nation Interview, with First Lady Phefelia Nez [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/277/] * Prevention Now [https://prevention-now.org/] * Data For Indigenous Justice [https://www.dataforindigenousjustice.org/] * Missing and Murdered Indigenous Girls Report [https://www.uihi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Missing-and-Murdered-Indigenous-Women-and-Girls-Report.pdf] * Ride my Road [https://www.ridemyroad.org/] * Not Invisible Act Commission Report [https://www.doi.gov/priorities/strengthening-indian-country/not-invisible-act-commission] * Federal Indian Boarding Schools Report [https://www.bia.gov/service/federal-indian-boarding-school-initiative] * ACF MMIP Action Plan [https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ana/report/culture-prevention-strength-based-culturally-grounded-journey-toward-prevention] * Alaska Native Justice Center  [https://anjc.org/] * Signify Consulting [https://www.signifyconsultingak.org/] TRANSCRIPT Sandra Morgan 0:14 Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #333: Bridging Communities: Indigenous Approaches to Combating Human Trafficking. This is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference. Our guest today is Josie Heyano. Josie is a presidentially appointed member of the U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking, advising federal policy. In 2023 she received the FBI Director’s Community Leadership Award for her contributions to prevention and intervention in Alaska. Her work honors her great aunt, Linda Miller and others still awaiting justice. I’m so grateful for you to be here with us today, Josie, and I’d like to start with a traditional introduction please. Josie Heyano 1:30 Thank you, Sandra, good morning. Ade’ yixudz everyone. My name is Josie Heyano. I am Deg Xinag Athabascan. My mother’s family is from the village of Tanana on the Yukon River. My mother is Naina Heyano. My paternal grandparents are the late Paul and Mary Star and Alfred Miller of Anvik. My father is David Heyano from the village of Ekuk in Bristol Bay. And my paternal grandparents are the late Pete and Rosa Heyano, also of Ekuk village. It’s great to be here with you today. Sandra Morgan 2:06 Thank you. And for some of our listeners, would you please give us a little background on the traditional introductions? Josie Heyano 2:19 Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you giving space for that introduction. It’s a really important part of how I show up, because that’s how I was taught to introduce myself. You’re taught to introduce yourself to explain your relationships, and part of that is culturally, our relationships are how we exist in the world, who we are, how we want to be seen. When I tell you that my grandmother is Mary Star and my grandpa is Alfred Miller, and I tell you about Pete and Rosa Heyano, that means that I show up to this conversation as a representation of them, and that when I introduce myself for people listening to me, they can know who my family is and know where I come from. A piece of that is accountability too, right? I always think people in the audience know my family, know the communities I come from, and it’s really important for me to speak with integrity and to speak clearly and to speak with pride. More importantly for me, is throughout my professional career, you get degrees and letters, and things like that, but the more important thing is not titles that I hold, but who I am and how I came to be here. Sandra Morgan 3:34 Let’s talk about your degrees and your titles in addition to this, because that is also how you show up. Josie Heyano 3:42 Yeah, of course. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to pursue some really wonderful academic channels. I am a graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. They have an incredible social work program. I am, first and foremost, academically, a social worker. I practice social work here in Alaska, and I got my masters at the University of Kentucky. I just finished up my clinical hours, so I will shortly be sitting for my licensing exam to be able to be a licensed clinical social worker. I think that’s about it for degrees. Sandra Morgan 4:23 Oh my goodness. Well, you’re definitely an amazing leader now in this space, and you’re serving at the highest level in our nation. I’m curious what that means to you in the context of how you just shared about showing up. Josie Heyano 4:48 I think serving at the level of the U.S. Advisory Council has meant having a tremendous amount of humility. Paying attention to the voices in my community that maybe haven’t been heard, to the topics and the issues that haven’t had the attention that they need, and doing my best to voice those, and to bring education, to bring awareness, to help people understand some of the issues facing my community. We were very privileged this year, the entire U.S. Advisory Council on Human Trafficking actually came to Alaska with my first my persuasion. They got to walk on the streets downtown, and they got to be a part of our community and meet the people who live these experiences here. That was a really wonderful opportunity. But I think in my role in the advisory council that was my job, was to bring the members here, have them meet the people that we write about, and to bring a humanness to this work too, and remind us that we are doing really high level federal work. Behind some of those numbers and some of that research, and some of the data, are people and experiences, and that’s been a really beautiful part of being a part of the council. Sandra Morgan 6:10 My experience, and you may have listened, I interviewed Phefelia Nez, who was leading this effort with the Navajo Nation, and we have partnered. We’ve had conversations about some of the larger systemic issues, missing and murdered Indigenous women, and Human trafficking as maybe an umbrella or a symptom. How do you see that? Josie Heyano 6:13 Yeah, I definitely see it as a symptom. I think in my federal work, I’ve gotten to have a lot more conversations with leaders and matriarchs across the country who are leading this work in their community. I do think that human trafficking, I do look at it as a symptom. I appreciate you bringing up the missing murdered indigenous relatives conversation, because most of my work has been centered on we can’t talk about human trafficking and then talk about our missing, murdered indigenous relatives crisis. These are the conversations that we need to have together, and it is the conversation that needs to include domestic violence. It needs to include our relatives who are houseless. It needs to include mental health services, substance use services. It needs to include harm reduction. It’s really having a more holistic conversation about human trafficking, so that’s been primarily where I focused my work locally in the community, is helping to bridge that conversation and be able to talk about these issues together. Sandra Morgan 7:53 One of the things that intrigued me as I read more about your work is you did a fellowship with prevention now, and out of that, you co-created the Alaska Human Trafficking Data Needs Assessment, which seems to fit or have an overlay with your comments just now, with all of these aspects systemically. Can you tell me about that? Josie Heyano 8:23 I was so excited to talk about that today. My good friend Kristen Harris, CEO and founder of Prevention Now, I had actually just reached out to her as a college intern looking for practicum placement, and said, “Hey, I’m living in Alaska, and I’m struggling,” because I was working direct service, and I was kind of at the point in a person’s life where they had already experienced trafficking, and it was becoming really prominent to me that we didn’t have a lot of prevention, and we weren’t having a lot of conversations in our communities about what trafficking is. So Kristen, being the amazing human being she is, just took me under her wing and allowed me to just research and have the resources with her. That Data Needs Assessment was actually a result of; we first thought we would gather the data that existed to start to see what some of the regional factors were that were causing trafficking, and that we were going to use Kristen’s AI model to find that out. What we realized was: there wasn’t data, or at least there wasn’t data that made sense. There was data that had a lot of different definitions of trafficking. There was data with a lot of different types of people collecting those data, and there was a lot of data that wasn’t talking to each other, so there was duplicated data. There was no real way to get a clear picture of what’s the understanding. And when we started talking to people about data, the other thing that was really interesting about this project is we also got a weariness. We’re talking to direct service providers, and law enforcement, and educators, and healthcare workers who are very often underfunded and under resourced. Then we bring up the data question, which translates to the notes that you didn’t do, or the extra box to check. The Data Needs Assessment really transformed into not only what are you using to track human trafficking related data, but how do you feel about data? How does data impact your work? How do you value or see data as important in this conversation? I think that really opened up a different type of conversation, which was that people did value data and were simultaneously overwhelmed by it, and didn’t necessarily see it as helpful to them in their role. When we started the Human Trafficking Data Summit and we partnered with Data for Indigenous Justice, hopefully we can provide a link to their website, they are a local, nonprofit organization. My good friend Aqpik founded that one as well, and that’s all about reclaiming indigenous data, and they actually curated the first Alaska list of Missing, Murdered and Indigenous Relatives. One thing I’ll add about that too, is the first report that Data for Indigenous Justice released, there were 229 names curated in that report of missing relatives, which is the number of tribes that we have here in Alaska. It was a really powerful number. Sandra Morgan 11:23 Wow. Josie Heyano 11:24 But the data Summit, really, above all else, became kind of a gathering of women. This is kind of a strange way to take this conversation, but when I think back on the data summit and how that came to be, we also partnered with ride my road. So my friend Lauren came, has strong connections in Alaska. She came and volunteered her time, and it was a bunch of women who said, “We recognize this is a problem in the community. What are we going to do? How do we start the conversation?” And we recognized that in order to start having this conversation, we needed to have relationship with each other. We needed to have relationship with the people in the work, and this was kind of right after COVID, too. We also recognized, we need to bring people together again, and so we did. We had a very small event. Our very first Human Trafficking Data Summit was in a small community area, and it was wonderful. We had people from multi disciplines come and show up and be a part of the conversation. More importantly, though, I think we just spent time with each other. We got to know each other, we got to know each other’s work, and we invested in the relationships that we had with each other. I think that’s what has developed, for me, into a larger impact, is that we didn’t just come to talk about data, we came to actually care about the work that we were all doing and show up for each other. Sandra Morgan 12:54 I think we’re moving into a space where we can shift the conversation, shift the narrative from, “Here are all the bad things happening, here’s the vulnerability,” to some kind of approach, strategic plan for how we’re going to do prevention and protect our community. Can you speak to that? Josie Heyano 13:28 I can definitely speak to that. One of the things that I’m really excited about is just, especially with my my federal platform, getting to meet people across the country. There is so much being done in tribal communities right now that really focuses on our culture, and our culture as a prevention and as a protective factor. I think even if you look in this last four years, what the Biden-Harris administration has done to emphasize work on Missing, Murdered Indigenous People, and to really address that crisis. We’ve seen the Not Invisible Act Commission Report.We’ve seen the the Federal Boarding School Report. We’ve seen all of these reports that are really putting data and information to the things that we have known in our communities for a long time, and so through that we’ve also seen a lot of focus on culture. A lot of focus on combating human trafficking through the lens of ‘we actually already know how to do this,’ and how we know how to do this is caring for our community. And so many people say it better than I do, so many other indigenous leaders across the nation. If we’re going to have the human trafficking conversation, if we’re going to show up and care about combating human trafficking, we have to show up and care about each other. We have to care about every member of our community. We have to have spaces for people to be fed. We have to have spaces for people to be warm, and clothed, and cared for. Ultimately, we have to have spaces for people to experience connection, to be in relationship with each other, and to know that they are valued, and they’re important, and sacred. I think that’s what makes me the most excited right now, is there are so many programs across the country, and more needed here in Alaska, I’ll say, but that are starting to emphasize that the way that we combat human trafficking doesn’t have to look like the checklist that other people, in other places are using. It can actually be the way that we’ve always addressed harm, which is to just unconditionally care for people. There’s so much beauty in that, there’s so much ease when you take the step back and say, “Human trafficking isn’t this complex, unapproachable topic that we don’t know what to do with. Actually, as Native people we do know, inherently, how to care for and protect everyone in our community.” I think seeing the programs across the country that are emerging, that are focusing on culture as the protective factor, I’m thinking about programs in the lower 48 where there are naming ceremonies for trafficking survivors, where they get to be named by their community and really hold the power of that name and learn what that means. I’m thinking of programs where there are sweat lodges, there are ceremony incorporated into the healing process, and the recognition that that might not be right for everybody, so having nuance within that to make sure that we can help whoever is impacted by harm in the best way possible. I think in the Alaska version of this, I’m better at talking about Alaska and my community, that looked like, when I was working direct care, there was kind of this, “Here’s a list of things to do for a trafficking survivor,” and I used to, probably to people’s dismay, throw that list out the window, because it was ridiculous. What I actually needed to do was to sit and have tea. What I actually needed to do sometimes was to just sit, and sometimes just to say, “My door is always open and I see you, and you can be here anytime that you want,” and to have those non transactional relationships, and to just see people and to show up and care about them unconditionally. I think when I think of culture, that’s what I think of, that piece there, where there is no transaction in our relationship. I accept you and respect you and care for you, because you are you, and that’s a really important piece of this conversation. Sandra Morgan 17:50 Integrating those traditional values and practices in the healing and restoration, I keep going back to, because I find it so amazing, the Alaska Human Trafficking Data Needs Assessment. Now, how do you take that and leverage it in your comment earlier about accountability? Josie Heyano 18:19 Actually, the Alaska Native Justice Center here in town, is getting ready with a new Data Needs Assessment that I’m excited to see come out, kind of a chapter two of this. But what we did with that Data Needs Assessment was we had another summit, and this one was bigger, and this one was fantastic. We had, well they were both fantastic, last- oh my goodness, that was actually this Spring, I think. Time is so strange lately. We had the Data Summit again this Spring, we had it at the local library, and we had so many more participants, we had so many more workshops and speakers. This time, we really said, “Okay, here’s what we know is missing, how are we going to address these things?” We brought in people from academia, and we said, “Who are the researchers? Who is in programs right now and you’re looking for a thesis? Who needs a question to be asked to our community?” Here are now the service providers who have a problem. Let’s pair the service providers and the researchers together in the same room so that they can actually understand, so that the researchers aren’t just asking the question they think needs to be asked, they’re hearing from the service providers, “Here’s where the gap is.” Then we took the law enforcement and Department of Law, and prosecutors in the room and we said, what is it that you’re struggling to prosecute? What is it that you’re struggling to see and understand? And we took those service providers, and we took those people with lived experience, and we put them in a room to say, ‘where are the gaps?’ Where might someone not want to tell you what their story is because of how some of these laws work? And so we really asked people to come together and to be solution focused in this, and to say, “Hey, from what we know from the data, the data is not great. And why is that?” Well, the biggest reason was that we’re not talking to each other. We’re kind of creating our own data systems, our own methods of combating human trafficking in a really siloed way, which was not unique. I think we’ve seen that across the country, but I think what was really unique about the Needs Assessment leading to the Data Summit is that we really intentionally said, “We’re not going to set up zoom meetings. We’re not going to just continue to be in groups or task force, or whatever you want to call them, we’re actually going to get together in a room, and we’re going to try to solve a few problems while we’re there together.” I think what came out of that was really deep, meaningful relationships and groups of people who historically are not in the same room together, or who have maybe feared being in the same room together. We created safe places where people could come and have the conversations, because we all had a mutual interest, we all had a mutual goal, and because of that, we were able to have conversations with each other that we hadn’t had before. Sandra Morgan 21:17 I am just so inspired and encouraged by your vision for the future of integrating your own cultural practices with decades of challenges that we’re all facing in this movement. I’ve been in it a really long time, so listening to you is extremely encouraging for me, and I’m going to send this interview to some of my other friends who are also, the word you used at the beginning is weary. We need your generation, Josie, to bring all of your excitement, your energy, and your big questions. I also wanted to work into our conversation a little bit about Savannah’s Act and how that may have influenced the conversation in indigenous communities. Can you take just a couple minutes to speak to that? Josie Heyano 22:28 It’s a little early, and I don’t have a lot of the dates and facts off the top of my head, but I think most impactful to me coming out of Savannah’s Act was the Not Invisible Act Commission. Most impactful for that, for me, were the listening sessions. Part of the Not Invisible Act Commission’s work in their first report, was going to communities and listening. I think that goes back to the conversation we were just having about the Data Summit, which was really what that was about, right? We need to listen to each other, we need to listen to the stories being told, and we need to understand from those stories, not showing up with our bias, or our anger, or our weariness, but to show up and hear each other. That was really impactful for me. That was actually one of the first times that I spoke or addressed anyone on a federal level about what was happening in my community, and I got to speak for the very first time at a federal level, I got to sit there and say, “Our Alaska Native youth are dying and are being killed, and are going missing and they are being murdered, and human trafficking is a common denominator in so many of these cases, and it’s not anywhere. It’s not in our news, it’s not in our community discussions.” Sometimes for me, that was a lot of anger. I was coming out of years of direct service where I was seeing people harmed. I was seeing a lot of harm because of trafficking, and still, our community wasn’t really having a very high level trafficking conversation, or too high level, you might say. We talk about the weariness. One of the things I always notice is how tired I am of having the Human Trafficking 101, conversation. I really appreciated the Not Invisible Act Commission. I really appreciate the work in Savannah’s Act to help create coordinated community response plans, and to start having more community efforts in our tribal villages, our reservations. Here in Alaska, we are PL280 states, so we don’t have reservations in the same way that the lower 48 does. But Savannah’s Act and Not Invisible Act, really helped to start to tell some of those stories and to create action from those stories. For me, it was a lot of forward momentum. Sandra Morgan 24:46 You’ve created a lot of interest for me now, to learn those stories, and I’m going to be seeking them out. I’ve already started making a list of people you’ve mentioned that I’m going to ask you to introduce me to, but I I want to go down the path of what you see for the future in prevention. We started out Prevention Now, prevention is one of my heart’s desires. I go into the schools, we equip our students here at Vanguard to go into the schools. What can we do for indigenous people groups for prevention? Josie Heyano 25:30 When I think about prevention and the human trafficking conversation, I like to ask people to take a step back from just the trafficking conversation. I struggle in this space a lot because I don’t identify strongly with ‘lived experience expert,’ I don’t identify strongly with ‘survivor.’ I don’t know many other Alaska Native women that have not had similar experiences as me. The data, which is terrible, and Alaska shows that we have all survived many things, and we also have these incredible gifts and these incredible protective factors that make us these immovable forces. I think when I show up to the trafficking conversations, my first thing is we have to take a step back. We see the excitement with trafficking, where people want to lean in and they want to do the work, and we know that it’s a problem in our communities, and I ask people to take a step back and look around. Yes, we want to prevent human trafficking, and the way that we do that is what I said earlier. Do people have places to live? Do people have food? Do people have clothing? Are our relatives outside and cold right now? Because if they are, we’re not preventing human trafficking, and we can’t only care about their lives and their value when trafficking occurs, that’s not okay. We have to care about the humanity and the livelihood of every member of our community from the very beginning, not just when a crime has occurred. That’s where I think I find the most heartache sometimes, and balance it with where I do the most service, is we have a lot of members of our community that are struggling and that are not seen as valued or worthy of resources. For prevention efforts, I would ask service providers, what are your policies? Who’s turned away at your door, who is not able to access services, and how can we amend that? Locally here, we have a lot of people who will not be able to access services because they use substances. We have a lot of people that won’t be able to access services because through their lifespan, they’ve never had the access to mental health interventions and services that could have supported a better, safer, and just overall better well being for them. It’s really hard for me sometimes when people say, “We want to fight trafficking,” and it’s the same people who don’t want to fund housing programs, who don’t want to fund community food banks, who don’t want to fund community centers. It goes down even further than that. When we go to our villages, our reservations, our communities, is there clean water? Is there access to healthy, nutritious food? Do young people have a place to go to experience connection, belonging, mentorship? Is there a sense of pride of who you are and where you come from? Is there a way to instill that if there’s not? Those are the things that are prevention to me. I have never met someone in Alaska, in my work, who experienced trafficking, that didn’t have a very long, long story that started far before a trafficking experience occurred. We can’t just show up when it’s trafficking, and prevention means from the day that young person is born, all throughout their life, do all members of our community have safety, have access to community? I think above all else, my grandma Mary Ellen taught me this, and she didn’t teach it because she preached it or she said it in words, I just watched her. My grandma loved people unconditionally. You didn’t have to say the right thing, dress the right way, look the right way, she just loved you. She wouldn’t even say that necessarily, but you could tell in her actions that she would never treat people unkind. She would never snub her nose at people. She would never have judgment. She just knew and understood how complicated it is to be human, and how much all of us need to be seen, to experience connection, and to have another human being look at us with value and respect. When I think prevention, that’s what I try to do in my role. It’s not the big frameworks, it’s not the big systems, those are helpful. Number one, prevention: how do you go out every day in your community and show the people around you that they’re cared about? Sandra Morgan 26:36 We talk about for kids here, if they have one adult attachment, one person who sees them, and knows them, and cares: that is prevention. I feel like today, I’ve had the opportunity to become a little bit of a part of your community, Josie, and I want my listeners to follow you. How can they find you? Josie Heyano 30:14 Absolutely. I have a small consultancy. I had to kind of formalize it because I was just going out and talking at people, and then people would want to know more information. I have a website, signifyconsultingak.org. There’s ways to get in contact with me on that website, I’m also on LinkedIn. You can find me under Josie Heyano, but those are probably the two best places to get in touch. Right now, my work is pretty locally focused, especially I think these next few years, I’m really going to turn my attention to my local community to see where the need is and to be more connected in that way. I still do some work in the federal spaces, but my heart is really on the ground, with people still. Sandra Morgan 31:33 Josie Heyano, what a pleasure to have you with us today. For our listeners, we’re inviting you to go to the endinghumantrafficking.org website, where you’ll find these show notes and links to the things that Josie has talked to us about. It’s also a great opportunity to start subscribing to the newsletter where you’ll get an alert when a new episode drops. Follow us on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram, and I’ll be back in two weeks for our next episode.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Peter Baynard-Smith as the two discuss Hagar International’s Community-Based Care Model. PETER BAYNARD-SMITH Peter brings over 20 years of international development experiences across Africa, Asia, UK, Ireland and Australia, working with World Vision, Concern Worldwide, Tearfund, Engineers without Borders, and most recently the Brotherhood of St Laurence. As Asia Regional Director with Concern, Peter managed country programs across South and SE Asia, including in Livelihood Security, HIV/AIDS, Education, Governance, and Advocacy. With World Vision Australia, Peter led technical specialist teams in economic development, WASH, health, food security, gender and child protection, as well as the research and evaluation unit. Recently, Peter has been focused on the employment and community services sector in Australia, in the context of COVID 19 impact. His journey has also included work as an NGO strategy consultant, leading a technology start-up developing an innovative solution to better safeguarding compliance, and a social enterprise enabling refugees and asylum seekers to pursue their professional career journeys on arrival in Australia. Peter has been a Board member for Habitat for Humanity Australia, and a lecturer on International Development Masters programs. KEY POINTS * The community-based care model focuses on holistic support rather than institutional care, ensuring that survivors are supported long-term. This model includes long-term case management and addresses survivors’ varied needs such as counseling, legal support, education, and livelihood development. * The concept of “the whole journey” involves comprehensive support for survivors that extends beyond immediate assistance. It emphasizes the commitment to work with individuals for as long as it takes to help them rebuild their lives and reintegrate into their communities. * Training for foster families and community partners is crucial. All stakeholders, including employers, law enforcement, and service providers, receive training in trauma-informed care to ensure they understand and can adequately support survivors, reducing the risk of re-traumatization. * The community-based care model challenges traditional institutional care and seeks to engage and strengthen the broader systems in which survivors exist, including legal and law enforcement systems. This shift promotes the idea of creating a supportive community environment for survivors over a purely reactive institutional approach. * Hagar International aims to expand their approach beyond the four countries they operate in, to collaborate with local NGOs and share their successes in building community-based models for care, emphasizing the importance of capacity building and system strengthening in different contexts around the world. RESOURCES * Hagar International [https://hagarinternational.org/] * World Vision International [https://www.worldvision.org/sponsor-a-child?&campaign=400085402&utm_campaign=search-trust-fy23-brand&utm_medium=search&utm_source=google&utm_content=Brand%20General%20Q3FY23&ds_rl=1274668&gad_source=1&gbraid=0AAAAAD_qsmztbCjHpERfFZeOuAJr3lh-P&gclid=Cj0KCQiA0MG5BhD1ARIsAEcZtwRoYuRJzqc_vu2mBmj92rO4AlkA_9EflKyABtTFb2IsgGapOx1HjQQaAs0zEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds] * Concern Worldwide [https://concernusa.org/] * Engineers Without Borders [https://www.ewb-international.org/] * 45- War, Conflict, and Human Trafficking, with Esther and Camille Ntoto [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/45/] TRANSCRIPT Sandra Morgan 0:14 Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #332: A Community-Based Care Model, with Peter Baynard-Smith. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Our guest today is Peter Baynard-Smith. He has over 20 years of international development experience, working across Africa, Asia, the UK, Ireland, and Australia with organizations like World Vision, Concern Worldwide, and Engineers Without Borders. There’s a lot to learn about Peter, but I want to start with asking about your experience with Engineers Without Borders Peter, because usually on this podcast, we’re not talking to engineers. I’m so excited to have you join us on the show today. Peter Baynard-Smith 1:27 Thank you, Sandie, it’s wonderful to be with you. Yes, my background as an engineer actually started out at university, and my passion for International Development and Engineering combined together because I believe that people in all sectors and all professions need to understand the challenges of sustainable development and international development issues. Engineers Without Borders is an organization that educates and empowers engineers and engineering students to engage with social development, with sustainable development goals, and I was the CEO at Engineers Without Borders Australia for a couple of years. Engineers Without Borders Australia is part of a global network of EWBs around the world, including in the USA. So yes, it’s unusual perhaps for an engineer to be working in the anti-trafficking sector, but I think that the important thing is that all of the work that every sector and industry is involved in has an impact. If our working on the ground in development agencies of all sorts, whether we’re doing engineering work, technical development, livelihoods, education, it all touches on the significant challenge and tragedy of human trafficking and modern slavery. I’ve been able to bring some of that experience across into Hagar and focus it on the anti-trafficking space. Sandra Morgan 2:55 I love that my listeners are used to hearing me talk about multi sector collaboration. I often tell the story from my time living in Greece, about the big jars. Pithari, they were called, that the Minoan people, more than 3,000 years ago, carrying down into the king’s pantry a jug that holds 500 liters. To do that, they baked in handles from the top to the bottom, as an engineer, I think you would appreciate this story. Peter Baynard-Smith 3:31 Yep! Sandra Morgan 3:32 …All the way around, so then multiple people could grab the handle they could reach. I think you are an amazing exemplar of finding your handle to join us in the movement against human trafficking. I’m eally delighted to have you here today. Peter Baynard-Smith 3:53 That’s a beautiful picture. I’ll take that one away. Sandra Morgan 3:56 Yeah, you’re gonna borrow that, huh? Okay, good. Well, let’s start off with trying to understand we have listeners in 167 countries. So the principles are what are most transferable for learning how to create a community-based care model. So let’s start with, what do you think are the key elements of a community based care model? Peter Baynard-Smith 4:26 Well, I might start by just explaining that Hagar began 30 years ago in Cambodia at the community level. So our roots as an organization, and therefore the approaches we take, is thoroughly embedded in grassroots community. The key elements that we package together in a concept that we call ‘the whole journey,’ is all the holistic elements that are needed to help a survivor of trafficking, or slavery, or abuse, to restore their lives, to overcome their trauma, and to rebuild their lives and their livelihoods and their future. Those elements include being well managed, case management, and one thing that’s very important at the community level is that case management takes time. It’s not something that somebody can have packaged up for a year, and then that’s it. We work with our survivors, clients, what we say is we work with them, do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes. We put no limit on how long we work with a survivor. I think that’s one of the most important elements, is actually not being rushed, not being time bound, not being project bound, but actually committed to working with clients for as long as it takes. The elements we include are counseling, legal support, making sure that they are in a safe shelter environment, safe environment of accommodation, whether that is a shelter or not, usually not actually normally in the community, legal support, also education, skill building, making sure that a survivor is able to get back their livelihood or develop a livelihood despite what they’ve been through and the trauma that they’ve experienced. For Hagar, the community-based model is about a wraparound of all of the provision of all of these areas of need outside of establishing any sort of institution. The important thing is that those in the community that can, whether they are service providers or they are actual community members or extended family, can provide all of those elements. So that’s for us, the most important thing, is being with a survivor for the long term and bringing all of the different elements in a holistic package to provide that support for as long as it takes. Sandra Morgan 7:02 I love the analogy of the journey, because we don’t know if we’ve reached our destination just based on how long we’ve been walking, or if our- I don’t know even how to express this, but I get this sense that in your community-based care model, when we compare that, let’s do that. Let’s try compare and contrast what a community-based care model offers for that more longitudinal journey approach, as opposed to a victim service provider model that’s based on an aftercare facility or some kind of institutional program. Peter Baynard-Smith 7:53 Yeah, I’ll use the example of in Cambodia, the number of women that have been forcibly returned from having been trafficked in China, forcibly returned, particularly during and immediately after the COVID pandemic, and returning back to Cambodia and having nowhere to go, and having been also ostracized and not permitted to return even to their families and their communities. In many, in some traditional models, those young women would be regarded as having to be in some form of institutional care, because where else are they going to go? What Hagar’s model has done is identify a home in the community where, at the initial stage, those young women can return to. We call them Homes of Love, and they can return and literally, they will be there a couple of weeks. They’ll be there simply to be able to get started making sure they’ve got a case manager, they’ve got somebody to support them, that their immediate health and well being needs are being attended to, that the counseling and the support can begin, just that beginning of the journey with them. But all along, it is about reintegrating them into their community and starting that process of overcoming the barriers that they feel, that even their families and their communities feel. Often, there’s great discrimination on women that have been ostensibly married off into, in this case, in China, and have have returned having been abused and having in many cases, severe trauma and severe psychological impact. The ‘Home of Love,’ is in the community. So even though it’s a home, it’s not an institution. It is a house mother in her own home in the community, bringing nd allowing those girls to stay with her for a number of weeks, get themselves back on their feet, and then all of the services and the support from Hagar kicks in over that time, so that then the ongoing case management, the ongoing counseling, any legal work that’s required, and any skill building and training, and all of those aspects can kick off, including reintegrating into the community. It’s bringing a natural family and community environment around the individual, rather than placing them in an institutional environment where they don’t have any connections and they don’t have a sense of a future beyond that. And that’s the big risk, and has obviously been the big change over the last 10 to 12 years, has been a recognition that that kind of institutional model does not lead to long term, wholesome, long term outcomes. Sandra Morgan 11:02 It sort of contributes to some insecurity. And I don’t know how many subcommittees I’ve been on where our topic is “placement,” and “placement,” is is a little dehumanizing. “We’ve got to find a bed,” those kinds of things, but you’re talking about a home environment, and then you’re talking about community integration. I don’t quite understand how to look at that integration piece, because they’re not going to stay in that home. But where are they going now? Peter Baynard-Smith 11:41 There is a few layers, a few levels of that. Obviously, the preferred outcome is that that survivor can return to their own family, their own extended family, in their own home village. When that’s not possible, we look at a wider circle of kinship care. It might be extended family in a neighboring community, might be relatives or cousins in a different town or a different province, so that sort of next circle out of kinship. Beyond that, we train up, we identify and train up long term foster homes. It’s really replicating almost the kind of model that a lot of developed nations would have around their approach to fostering and out of home care. We identify and train up families in provinces all around Cambodia, so that wherever the survivors have actually originated from, after spending time with Hagar in the home of love, they are then able to, if they cannot return to their family or there is no wider kinship care available to them, there is the foster care and home environment. Now this is young people and adults. Again, it can be children, but many of these young women, by the time they return, they are approaching adulthood, or they are adults. That foster model also is around evolving fostering from purely fostering of children, to actually that fostering and caring for vulnerable adults through that model as well. Sandra Morgan 13:23 Love that. So this approach then moves the care that is going to stay with this survivor into a wider safety net, if you will. My next question then, is, when that happens, how dothe community partners….is it very prescribed? How do they become woven into this person’s life? Peter Baynard-Smith 14:03 It’s a very community by community model, so identifying foster families and foster homes and training them up and supporting them, alongside supporting the client themselves through the reintegration process and all the ongoing support, because alongside this, their skill building, their education, their vocational training, their legal work, if there’s a court case going on regarding the broker or the perpetrator of the trafficking crime, all of these sort of things can be going on alongside actually reintegrating and trying to get her life back on track. There’s a multitude of supports alongside, but the foster home is simply the environment where they can live and be safe. The other aspect of the community around all this is related to prevention, because many of the girls that have ended up in these situations have come from situations of vulnerability, whether that’s related to poverty, whether it’s related to domestic violence in their own families or communities, whether it’s related to being susceptible to unsafe employment, the attraction of migration for employment that turn out to be very unsafe migration practices. Built into this model is a whole set of tools available to work with communities, right at the level of the household. One of the things I love in Cambodia, and we have a similar initiative in Vietnam is called The Good Wives and Good Husbands Group. It’s absolutely fantastic because it’s working with, in the case of the Good Husbands Group, actually working with men who mostly, even they themselves have self identified, as enacting domestic violence or not understanding the risks of trafficking, not understanding children’s rights, not understanding rights for women and girls. So actually helping to educate men and husbands around creating a safe home environment that, actually over the years, means that a young woman growing up in that home environment is far less susceptible to being attracted out into a potential migration that turns out to be a very unsafe and indeed a trafficking situation, or seeking unhealthy relationships and this sort of thing. It’s really about building understanding of respectful relationships, the vital role of a healthy and caring home, that that all actually contributes to preventing these situations arising in the first place. Sandra Morgan 16:56 Building this community-based care model, then you’re actually building the community to be a safer place too. Your description of this reminds me of an interview, and I’ll put a link in the show notes, when we interviewed Esther and Camille Ntoto from Congo. Camille had started a men’s group that sounds just like what you’re doing, and it created a safer community for abused women to return to a normal life. So that’s very exciting to see different versions of the same strategy, I love that, that’s very exciting. When I think about this idea of a foster home, because you could tell I was thinking, “Oh, so they’re only going to take care of kids,” because we think of fostering that way. But this idea that you’re providing that safe space for someone that’s an adult, this is a little bit of a new way of looking at things. How do you train the families? You mentioned training and preparation. Peter Baynard-Smith 18:14 A number of years ago, around eight years ago, Hagar in Cambodia really led the way in creating a rigorous and systematic set of guidelines around foster care, fostering in the community in Cambodia. So it wasn’t something as you know, the institutional environments in Cambodia had been very established and had been running for a long time, and the last 10 years or so, there’s been a very significant shift away from that, and Hagar has been at the front leading edge of that when it comes to this particular alternative. The community-based Foster Care is a much healthier and a much better set of outcomes, and a much better way of doing this. The guidelines that Hagar has developed, the work that Hagar does with the government, at ministry level and also provincial and district levels of those ministries, ties it all together. You can work on national guidelines, but then you also need to support and train, and build the capacity at a commune, and a district, and a provincial level to ensure that those guidelines are followed. That’s where the training comes in. The training isn’t just with the foster homefamilies, it’s also with the service providers and the duty bearers around them, because it’s a system. We’re very keen on making sure the work that we do is not setting up a parallel system. We want to strengthen the system and improve the system, and that includes and that requires government and duty bearers to be on board, to enforce it, to enact the same principles and standards in care. We want others to pick up the model, and that’s very important for Hagar. We’re not just about doing it ourselves, we’re also about building the capacity of local NGOs, local organizations, not only in the countries we’re working but also in some other countries as well, so that the standards and the principles, and the good approaches, can be picked up and run and have an impact in other places as well. Sandra Morgan 20:34 If I’m imagining what this is going to look like, because you talked about economic tools and training empowerment, this training isn’t just for the foster families, but say I’m going to employ your survivors in an office building, then the people training the women to be computer data entry people, they have to go through your training? They can’t just start training them for the computer? Peter Baynard-Smith 21:09 You’ve got it. You’ve got it. The one aspect of training that we do with all stakeholders that we work with, and that our clients engage with is trauma informed care approaches. If I take the example of if we’re brokering an opportunity for a survivor to have a job in, let’s just take that example in a data center, for example, it is vital that that employer understands how to work with and have their their eyes and ears open to the impact of trauma in that new employee’s life. If they’re providing their employment services in a way that appreciates the experience that someone may have been through, understands the impact of trauma, they are going to have a much more successful employee, they’re going to have a much more successful employer/employee relationship, and then the survivor is going to have a much more sustainable, successful, long term employment, placement, and opportunity. The training that we provide around trauma informed care is not purely on the social work side, in terms of the care per se, it’s also on employers and indeed, judicial services, immigration departments, immigration officials, police officials, all of those different services that a survivor comes in contact with has to be trained around trauma and understanding how you manage, and work with, and support, and not re-traumatize an individual through the services that you’re providing. Sandra Morgan 22:58 You’ve got all these partners, collaborators, everybody working alongside. I like that because we’re doing it together. To me, that means that your language around partnership is really related to your comment at the beginning about systems. You’re talking about the system, not parallel systems, and at the time I thought, “Huh, I want to know more about that.” And now it makes more sense, but can you explain that just a little bit more? I think it’s unique to an engineer’s mind. Peter Baynard-Smith 23:38 I think there’s three pillars, if you like, that we think of when we think of our work. I’ve talked about survivor care, I’ve talked a bit about prevention. The third pillar is this strength in systems. There are multiple systems, as you say, an engineer’s mind sort of thinks of systems in systems way, that one of the systems that we really want to focus on, and do focus on significantly and increasingly, is the law enforcement and judicial and prosecution system. Because survivors of trafficking are right from the get go, whether it’s in terms of them being identified as a victim, right through to the kind of impact statements that they’re required to give, right through all the evidence gathering process, right through all of the trial, and the legal, and the compensation processes that take place, that whole journey, if you like, that “system,” a victim or a survivor is at the heart of that system, and is highly vulnerable. They are highly vulnerable before they’re even identified. Obviously, they’re in a position of vulnerability in the first place, but they’re also highly vulnerable through that process. We work really closely, particularly in Thailand, our work in Thailand very strongly focused on law enforcement capacity building, victim support through the legal and prosecution process, and strengthening the level to which trauma is understood and factored in to the way that police and investigators, and indeed the legal profession approach and handle survivors of trafficking. That whole system, we’ve got a number of touch points with training, capacity building, building of evidence, and direct support to the survivor through the process and even at the other end. One of the things that I found quite shocking, is the very low level of compensation claims. Compensation may be ordered by the court, but such low levels of compensation end up in the hands of survivors, and obviously, once a court orders compensation, there’s a whole other set of processes involved in actually securing that compensation. Again, supporting a client properly through aftercare, through packages of support, again for the long term, because they can’t rely on a court order to redress and compensate them adequately for what they’ve been through, so you have to bring the ongoing counseling and support, and help with finding work and education in at that end of what is otherwise a judicial and legal process and system, but it’s a system that’s affecting humans, and the individual at the heart of that. Hagar is focused on those individuals and on those survivors, and making sure that all the aspects of the support they need are provided, even while we try and strengthen the systems for the longer term. Sandra Morgan 26:55 I keep hearing this ongoing language, and that really supports the premise of this is a journey, and we’re doing this with the survivor in a community. As the community begins to function in a way that is very organically supportive, what do you see as a future trend that we can expect from the system changes happening because of a community-based model? Peter Baynard-Smith 27:34 I think one of the trends is an increased understanding and recognition of the impact of trauma, and more and more stakeholders being trained and having their own system environments, their own institutional environments, let’s say, in the police. In countries where the treatment of trafficking survivors has not always been front and center, even actually taking up trafficking cases and prosecuting them has often been put to the side and been regarded as less important than prosecuting other types of criminal activity. I think an increasing recognition of the terrible impact of trafficking and slavery, the fact that we can identify it, we can support people, and we can restitute and transform, and heal those broken lives. I think that that recognition is growing, so I think that’s one trend. The other is that Hagar works with Hagar International Offices in four countries, Cambodia, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and we are with a partner of ours in Thailand. We have that direct working in those four countries, but we also are seeing a trend of being able to bring our learnings, our expertise, and our strengths to other organizations in other countries that are not necessarily going to be a Hagar program country, but a partner organization that can do all the same great work. An example of that is in the Solomon Islands, also in Myanmar, and I think for Hagar, the trend into the future is expanding the impact from all of the 30 years of experience that we have, by building the skills and bringing the expertise to other organizations that are local. All local organizations, local NGOs, and in the case of the work in the Solomon Islands, has actually, over the last 12 months, brought to the law enforcement process the very first cases of human trafficking in the Solomon Islands. They’re not the first cases that existed, but they’re the first cases that are being brought to the courts, and survivors are being supported, and evidence is being gathered. It’s a big change for a country like the Solomon Islands to actually have an organization, a Solomon Island organization, with the kind of skills, with the backing and support of an international NGO like Hagar, to bring that level of capacity to a system that did not have it before at all. So that’s a very big step, and we’d like to see more of that, we’d like to see Hagar’s work, being able to support and inject that skill set and expertise into local NGOs in a number of other countries around the region and indeed, globally. Sandra Morgan 30:54 Well, I want to help you with that. Can you give our listeners some direction on how to get connected with you to get support on those initiatives? Website, contact. Peter Baynard-Smith 31:08 Yep! Follow us on our socials, on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Go to our website, hagarinternational.org. We’re always open to collaborating with more local and indeed, international organizations working with vulnerable and traumatized populations. The evidence is that modern day slavery and trafficking is occurring everywhere, sadly, and so development and international aid organizations working in many, many countries could, I think, really benefit from having a focus on understanding the trafficking risk, being aware of the trafficking context, and also the impact and the trauma that survivors have been through, and actually be able to work with them within the communities that those organizations are working in. We can bring those skills and training, and we would love to hear from any organizations interested in partnering with us in whichever part of the world they are. Sandra Morgan 32:11 I know when we talk about community based care, we’re thinking of the survivor, but I think part of the outcomes of this strategy is that communities begin to care. Your example of the Solomon Islands, we know trafficking has been happening, but now there is a system response. Peter, I am so grateful that you joined us today. Thank you. Peter Baynard-Smith 32:40 Thank you, Sandie, it’s been wonderful to meet you, and thank you to all your listeners and all your supporters of your podcast. It’s terrific, thanks so much. Sandra Morgan 32:50 Thank you. Listeners, we’re inviting you to take the next step. Go over to endinghuman trafficking.org. You’ll find the resources that Peter mentioned, and the link to past podcast. If you haven’t visited our site before, this is a great time to become a subscriber, and then you’ll get a newsletter every two weeks with the show notes of that particular episode. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, and of course, I’m going to see you again in two weeks.

Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Daniel Varon as the two discuss the important of retribution and restitution for victims of trafficking and abuse. DANIEL VARON Daniel Varon joined the Zalkin Law firm in 2020 bringing his experience as an attorney in the Office of the District Attorney in Orange County.  He is an experienced trial attorney, having tried approximately 60 jury trials during his work as Deputy District Attorney. The California District Attorney Investigators Association recognized him as Prosecutor of the Year in 2017. While at the Orange County DA’s office, Daniel worked in the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit (HEAT). He maintained a full caseload and tried the first human trafficking of a minor case, following the passage of Prop 35. As a Senior Deputy in the DA’s office, he handled pre-trial writs in the California Court of Appeals, drafted and argued appeals in the California Court of Appeal and Superior Court appellate department, and drafted requests for review in the California Supreme Court. During his time with the Orange County DA, he was also deeply involved in developing and presenting comprehensive human trafficking training programs for law enforcement and prosecutors in 12 counties across California. He served as a subject matter expert for California’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and training for development of its human trafficking training video and the Post Institute of Criminal Investigations, advancing human trafficking investigations. Before his work at the Orange County District Attorney’s office, he worked for the law firm of Gilbert, Kelly, Crowley and Jennett in Los Angeles. KEY POINTS * The vertical prosecution model is essential in ensuring effective outcomes for victims, as it dedicates prosecutors to human trafficking cases, encouraging collaboration with police and law enforcement. The success of the HEAT unit relied on building trust not only among law enforcement but also with juvenile defenders, victim service providers, and the courts, creating a comprehensive support system for trafficking victims.  * Daniel now represents victims of childhood sexual abuse and human trafficking, and he stresses the significance of focusing on restitution for victims, highlighting the long-term impacts of sexual abuse. * The criminal and civil justice systems have key distinctions, particularly regarding the representation of victims, with criminal prosecutors acting on behalf of the state. In contrast, civil attorneys advocate directly for the victims. * It is important to balance empathetic support for victims while providing them with the necessary structure for independence and self-empowerment.   RESOURCES * Zalkin Law Firm [https://www.zalkin.com/] * Orange County District Attorney’s Office  [https://orangecountyda.org/] * California District Attorney Investigators Association ‘Prosecutor of the Year’ Award [https://cdaia.org/awards/past-awards/#prosecutor-of-the-year] * Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit (HEAT) [https://orangecountyda.org/the-human-exploitation-and-trafficking-unit/] * California Courts of Appeals [https://appellate.courts.ca.gov/] * California Supreme Court [https://supreme.courts.ca.gov/] * California’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training [https://post.ca.gov/] * Southwestern Law School [https://www.swlaw.edu/] * Interview with Daniel Aaron [https://www.kuci.org/podcastfiles/1136/Part%204%20Human%20Trafficking%20Dan%20Varon.MP3] * 112: Juvenile Justice Inspiring Hope: An Interview with Hon. Maria Hernandez [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/112/] * Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (IVAT) [https://www.ivatcenters.org/] TRANSCRIPT Sandra Morgan 0:14 Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #331: Retribution and Restitution, with Daniel Varon. My name is Dr. Sandie Morgan and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Our guest today is Daniel Varon, and he joined the Zalkin Law firm in 2020 but I knew him a long time before that. His experience as an attorney in the office of the district attorney in Orange County was a huge part of the battle against human trafficking in my backyard. He is an experienced trial attorney, having tried approximately 60 jury trials during his work as Deputy District Attorney. He was recognized as Prosecutor of the Year by the California District Attorney Investigators Association in 2017. That’s an amazing honor, and I congratulate you. While at the Orange County DA’s office, Daniel worked in the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit. Colloquially, we called it the “HEAT Unit,” because they put heat on those traffickers. He maintained a full case load and tried the first human trafficking of a minor case, following passage of Prop 35. As a Senior Deputy in the DA’s office, he also handled pre-trial writs in the California Court of Appeals, drafted and argued appeals in the California Court of Appeal and Superior Court appellate department, and drafted requests for review in the California Supreme Court. Now to my listeners, you know I don’t usually do long bios, but I think this could be like a timeline for those aspiring attorneys that have talked to me, who want to be in the battle as an advocate. So I’m going to do just a little more than usual. During his time with the Orange County DA, he was also deeply involved in developing and presenting comprehensive human trafficking training programs for law enforcement and prosecutors in 12 counties across California. He served as a subject matter expert for California’s Commission on Peace Officer Standards and training for development of its human trafficking training video and for the Post Institute of Criminal Investigations, advancing human trafficking investigations. This is really important because we need those who have gone and been pioneers to help all of us reach the same level. Prior to his work at the Orange County District Attorney, he worked for the law firm of Gilbert, Kelly, Crowley and Jennett in Los Angeles. He has done so many outstanding things, and I think learning more about him outside of when he was serving here in Orange County, my favorite new thing to learn is that when he was at Southwestern University School of Law, he received the Best Advocate Award. I think we could all agree that he still qualifies in that area. Danny, welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, and I apologize for that long bio. Daniel Varon 4:33 Well, thank you, Sandie. It’s great to be here, it’s great to see you. I think I did your podcast, I think seven years ago, while we were in the midst of all of this. Maybe longer, actually. It was great to see you in Orange County a few months ago, and it’s great to do your podcast. Thank you for having me. Sandra Morgan 4:50 I plan to put the link to that podcast in the show notes, so people, if you want more of the content we’re going to talk about here, you can go back and listen to our previous conversation. Let’s get a little history on what happened here in Orange County and what it was like for you to be on the first HEAT team. Daniel Varon 5:15 Well, it was amazing. And I have to say, I was thinking over those days, back in 2011/2012 when we were envisioning what the HEAT unit would look like. It’s hard not to feel like I was the Forrest Gump of human trafficking. Honestly, and you remember back in those early days, we were law enforcement led. We had a grant from the federal government, from the FBI. We had a wonderful federal agent, Steve Wrathall, who kind of spearheaded that effort. They created a task force at Anaheim Police Department, I think in 2010, and part of what they were obligated to do as part of receiving that grant was to learn and then train on human trafficking. In 2011 I happen to be assigned to a felony prosecution unit that dealt with the Northern District of Orange County, and that included Anaheim. I happened to get a few piping cases on my caseload, and we happened to get one close to trial, and that’s how I met those police officers. Greg Freeze, Shane Carringer, Paul Delgado, and others, I don’t want to leave anybody out, I probably did. I really followed their lead. I mean, these were guys that were willing to learn and do new things. They were vice officers at the time, and they took a new approach, and I learned the approach from them. It’s embarrassing to hear my bio read like that. Thank you for the kind words and the kind introduction, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that, like I said, I was the Forrest Gump of human trafficking that happened to be in the right place at the right time, and if I was smart on anything, it was I was smart enough to follow the lead of really good police officers. Sandra Morgan 6:53 Thank you. That’s great. I worked with police officers before we had a vertical prosecutor, and I left the Office of Admin for the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force just as you were coming on. The difference in the outcomes for our victims were astronomical with the vertical prosecutor being available. Can you explain what that means? Daniel Varon 7:32 Sure, Orange County, I think, is different from a lot of DA’soffices, in that it really does have a vertical prosecution model for the serious felonies. What that means, as opposed to a non vertical prosecution model is, the best way I could illustrate it is the difference between what I would say are garden variety felonies, simple assaults, burglaries, robberies, non gang crimes, non sex crimes, non homicides, those garden variety felonies are handled by different units at different times. So somebody gets arrested, police officers prepare reports, they submit it to a preliminary hearing unit, and they’re the unit that’s just designed to go to court to show the judge that there’s probable cause to hold the defendant to answer on those charges, and then once that happens, it gets submitted to a general felony unit, which is the unit that I was speaking about earlier, that I was assigned to the north team for. Then it’s prosecuted to trial by a trial deputy, and then if there’s a conviction and an appeal, the appeal gets handled by the Attorney General’s Office. Vertical prosecution means, instead of having these two separate units within the DA’s office that handle the first and the second phase of the case, the vertical prosecution teams tend to be assigned to specific crimes. Because they’re assigned to specific crimes, they get very involved with the police officers who investigate those crimes. We get very involved in understanding how the crimes work, how they’re investigated, how they’re prosecuted, and we get involved from the very earliest stage. The moment that a crime occurs, the police officers know who the assigned prosecutor is going to be, they can have conversations to make sure that the evidence is collected in the right way, that all of the elements to the crime are accounted for, it’s the DA who reviews those search warrants, reviews all the evidence as it comes in, and is able to meet the victim at the earliest possible stage. And then it also creates consistency for the victim of crime, because the victim has one prosecutor that she knows is handling her case and as it works through the process. It’s, in my view for serious crimes and for complicated crimes, it’s a much more effective and meaningful way to present a case through the process. It’s more effective for the victims. It’s more effective for law enforcement, and, quite frankly, I think it’s more effective for the courts. If you think about homicide, homicide is very complicated, and you want an attorney on the case who really understands the intricacies of the law of homicide. Human trafficking is no different. Human trafficking is very complicated in many respects. It’s complicated because of the social and the psychological components of it, you really have to understand what makes that trafficking relationship tick. You really have to understand the victimization. We used to call it, in the trainings, we used to refer to it as victimology. How does a trafficker recruit their victims? What are they looking for? What characteristics? How do they manipulate them? How do they bring them in? How do they keep them trafficked? You need somebody that has really immersed themselves in that culture, so to speak. And then you also need somebody who understands how to take that information and apply it to the laws. In our case with trafficking, we also were involved in drafting laws. If we thought things needed to change, we were not quiet about drafting proposals to send them to the legislature as well, and I think over time, that vertical prosecution model gave us a lot more credibility with the courts. As we got more and more cases through the court system, the judges knew that we were the trafficking attorneys, that we understood the law. It felt like, at times, since I’m not in the the DA’s office anymore and I don’t practice criminal law in Orange County, I could say it, but there were many times that we felt that we were educating the bench, and that was a really, really important facet of what we felt our role was and what we were doing. Sandra Morgan 11:31 That speaks to one of the elements we talk a lot about on this podcast, is collaboration and federal grants, for the last decade or so, have focused on an enhanced collaborative model. Without building trust, it is not possible to really collaborate, and that’s what I observed with the HEAT unit. I worked in the juvenile courts, and could see the trust between all of the partners supporting one youth who was now involved in this case. So kudos for the emphasis on including the folks on the bench, the law enforcement, the victim service people. I always felt, as a part of the task force, that I was personally part of the victories that we then had with the convictions. Daniel Varon 12:34 Actually, if I can just add one crucial component there, which is that the way that the task force was structured at the beginning, and that I think it’s still supposed to be structured, but I haven’t been there for four and a half years, is it wasn’t just police, and that’s to your point, right? It wasn’t just police and law enforcement. The trust was absolutely crucial. We had to earn the trust of the juvenile defenders, the attorneys who were representing minors who were going through the juvenile court process, we had to earn their trust that if there was a minor that we recommended for detention in a juvenile facility for a short period of time, we had to earn their trust so that they understood that we were doing it to protect the minor from being trafficked, from being abused, from being victimized further. There were some wonderful juvenile defenders who understood that, and we were able to work with them to figure out what’s really in the best interest of the minor. That’s the crutch of California’s juvenile delinquency program. Really, the obligation is for everybody to look at it from the perspective of what’s best for the minor, and we did that, and I’m really, really proud of the work that we were able to do through the juvenile court system. As you know, we had an amazing judge during my time there, Judge Maria Hernandez. She was somebody who was just so dedicated to trying to figure out how to use the courts in the proper way to try to help the minors. She was instrumental in that process. The public defenders who were assigned there that we worked with, some of them were really, really terrific as well. The trust that you’re referring to, it has to go much further beyond just law enforcement and prosecutor, it has to go system wide. Sandra Morgan 14:16 Absolutely. Thank you for that, and thanks for the shout out for Judge Hernandez. We’ll put her interviews in the show notes too, because she has some great comments to add to this. But now you’re not here in Orange County, and you’ve moved from criminal law to civil. What is that about? Daniel Varon 14:38 You know, it was just the right time for me. I had a very long commute, and that wasn’t the only thing, certainly. But the work that we were doing in human trafficking is very taxing. We really, like I’ve alluded to, we really made it our business to be involved. It was never a nine to five job for us, in the unit. Brad, Shane, Laban, who you know obviously, and the others, Julia and the others that we worked with, Brian who is now a judge, we worked a lot. I think when we each came in, the entire emphasis of the HEAT unit and what we were doing was the victim centered approach, that we were taking the perspective of the victim and really trying to do what was in the best interest of the victim, and to achieve justice. Our jobs as prosecutors, fundamentally, were to achieve justice, and we were dealing with crimes that, by their nature, are recidivist. They’re not crimes that, they’re not one-offs. Somebody commits an assault in a bar, a lot of times that could be a one-off offense. Somebody steals a car, you hope that’s a one-off offense. The very nature of human trafficking is that it’s a crime that continues, it’s of a continuing nature. They recruit and victimize somebody so that they can sell them over and over and over and over. And every time they do it, it’s the money maker for the perpetrator. And so we know that when people get out of prison in this arena, they reoffend. I don’t know what the percentages are, but I venture to say it’s in the high 90s. We saw recidivist offenders over and over again. From our perspective, achieving justice meant that if you had an offender, it was our obligation, within our ethical bounds and ethical constraints, to use admissible evidence to ensure that they were convicted and that they were sentenced appropriately. We were focused on it, and we knew that learning and understanding and growing was key to that, so we went out with our law enforcement partners on ride alongs a lot. I spent many, 12:00 till 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning on Harbor Boulevard in Santa Ana to learn. I’ve been out to Anaheim’s tracks on Harbor and Beach Boulevard a lot. There were times when juveniles werelocated, where I’d go in at five o’clock in the morning so that I could interview her with the police officer. Those are things that we did, and so it’s very taxing. It’s taxing our families, it’s taxing physically and emotionally, obviously, the subject matter is very difficult. After my time in the HEAT Unit, around 2019, I was moved into the writs and appeals unit, which was a welcome change of pace for me. At that time, I kind of started to reassess where I was at. I did sort of a mental check in, because I don’t share this very much, but in my mind, as a prosecutor, every three or four years, I’d sort of reassess where I was at. I did that because I felt like it was my obligation to either recommit, mentally and emotionally to what I was doing, or find something else that I would commit to. Because if you’re just going along like, “Oh, it’s going to be a 30 year career,” you get stale. You don’t bring the same passion to your work, and it’s not fair to the victims that we try to achieve justice for. It’s not fair to our colleagues. It’s not fair to the office. It was 2019, I was kind of going through that mental check in, sort of, to see where we were. I knew Irwin’s Zalkin and I’d actually given a presentation. He asked me to give a presentation at IVAT down in San Diego, which is – you’re nodding. I think you know what IVAT may be, right? Sandra Morgan 18:20 But for our listeners. Daniel Varon 18:22 Well, I’m going to get the acronym wrong, but it’s an institute that focuses on violence against women, essentially sexual abuse and domestic violence. I gave a human trafficking presentation there, and we had remained in contact. By early 2020, we were in touch, and I ended up here. This is really, it’s a perfect progression for me. What we do in our firm, the vast majority of the work we do is representing victims of childhood sex abuse. Some of that overlaps, obviously, with human trafficking. What we had seen, we never actually got deep into the statistics, but it was very obvious to us that many of our human trafficking victims have been sexually abused when they were minors. Whether they were adult or child victims, when we got them in human trafficking, we learned that a lot of them were abused early. You’ve heard me say this before, Sandie, but we wanted to learn From traffickers and traffickers themselves talk about targeting young women who have been sexually abused when they were minors, it’s one of the risk factors to getting trafficked. The damage that’s done to a child who’s sexually abused is incalculable. It’s a lifelong, life lasting impact, and obviously it impacts everybody differently. For some people it made them more vulnerable to sexual abuse beyond the initial abuse. For others, it made them more vulnerable to human trafficking. For others, it makes them more vulnerable to alcohol abuse or drug abuse, difficulty with relationships. I mean, the manifestations of harm that are done when a child is sexually abused you really just can’t put to words the lifelong impact. For me, this is like the perfect place to be, it’s really where my passion is, is helping people who have been victimized in that way. The natural progression for me was, when I came here, is to look at, well, what about the civil component to human trafficking? And it’s something that we’ve spent a lot of time talking about and looking at, and researching. That’s an area that we’re certainly open to as well, it’s trying to find restitution for people who are victimized in that way as well. Sandra Morgan 20:31 In some of my focus groups with victims of human trafficking, one of the consistent themes that comes up is what justice looks like. It began to concern me that their response was more about restitution so they could build a new life, and they really didn’t care if the sentence was five years or 25 years. If they were out of the system and independent, self reliant, it was a new life. I began watching restitution. I watched some restitution cases in the civil courts in Los Angeles, and I talked to those victims. Can you compare criminal justice with civil justice? Daniel Varon 21:32 There’s a lot of misconceptions, I think people don’t fully appreciate what the role is of a prosecutor. I alluded to it earlier, that as much as we felt that we were trying to achieve justice for the victims, the main distinction between civil and criminal law, I think, if you wanted to just pick one, the main one is that as a prosecutor you don’t represent the victim. In civil law, if you’re a plaintiff’s attorney and you represent somebody who’s been trafficked or been sexually abused, you represent that person. So everything you do is geared towards achieving some result for that person. On the criminal side, you represent the people of the state of California. That might sound a little cheesy. When you look at a criminal complaint, it says the people of the state of California vs., and then it names the defendant. When we would stand up in court as prosecutors, we would say, “Daniel Varon for the people.” Some people might say, “Well, that sounds a little bit strange or a little bit cheesy, or hokey, or whatever,” but it’s not. Every individual in California has an interest in the Fair Administration of Justice, and part of that means that when somebody commits a crime against society by victimizing another member of society, it’s up to a prosecutor to stand up on their behalf, to ensure that justice is done for what happened. We know that there are many, many crimes out there, human trafficking oftentimes is one of them, where the victim, like you said, has no interest in their perpetrator going to jail there. How many domestic violence cases do we know about where the victim goes sideways and she doesn’t want her partner or spouse in jail? It happens over and over again, but the role of a prosecutor is, we can take into account what a victim tells us, but at the end of the day, it’s not a victim’s decision whether a case is brought or not brought. On the flip side to that is, a victim can yell and scream that she wants somebody to be prosecuted, but again, we have ethical obligations to represent the people, and if we don’t have admissible evidence of the crime, we don’t get to bring case, right. One of the hardest things that you ever do as a prosecutor is, a crime that you know was committed against a victim who you know was victimized, but you know that you don’t have admissible evidence to prove it to 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt. That was our burden, and so you have to decide not to file the case. It’s an agonizing decision at times, but it’s one of the most important decisions that you make as a prosecutor, is the decision whether to file or not to file. On the civil side, obviously we have ethical burdens on when we bring a case or file a case on behalf of a client, but we represent the client, and we try to achieve an outcome for the client. You make recommendations to the clients, but there are certain things that only a client can decide. It’s not the same on the criminal side. Sandra Morgan 24:31 In your work, on the civil side now, how is that impacting justice for victims? Daniel Varon 24:40 Well, our justice system is, I would argue we have the best in the world, in my opinion, but it’s not perfect. We can strive for perfection, and I think the fact that, as a society, I think we’re always moving the ball forward, but we’re not there yet. One of the imperfections, I think, is that there really is no way that I have found, to achieve full restitution for victims on the criminal side. That doesn’t mean that in all cases you’ll never get restitution, but in the vast majority of cases that I’ve seen, it’s really difficult to get full financial restitution for victims. We’re not talking about somebody stole your car and you lost $5,000, and then you got $5,000 back and got a new car. Okay that, fine, you get restitution. But when you talk about sexual abuse of a child, or you talk about human trafficking, which involves obviously sexual abuse of a child or a young woman, and I know I’ve been very gendered, by the way, but in my time at the DA’s office, I hadn’t prosecuted any cases where they were male victims. I don’t mean, at all, to suggest that there are not male victims of human trafficking, we know there are, but in my experience that I had dealt with, it was always female victims, and so that’s why I keep using ‘she,’ so please don’t take anything by that. But, you talk about the lifelong needs of somebody who’s been trafficked or sexually abused as a child, the cost is astronomical. The impact to that person is potentially lifelong counseling. Which estimates show that somebody who’s sexually abused as a child could cost anywhere from 250 to $400,000 over the course of their lifetime, just in therapy costs. What about their ability to go to school, housing, change in their employment outlook? What about all of the things that we really don’t talk about a lot, like sexual dysfunction? I’ve dealt with a lot of cases with male victims of child sex abuse, and there are ramifications for them that a lot of people don’t like to talk about. Sometimes we’ll question sexuality. Sometimes we’ll have sexual dysfunction. These things interfere with relationships. There’s no criminal court that will look at an 11 or 12 or 13 year old child who’s sexually abused and say, “Well, I’m going to award $500,000 or 600,000, or a million or 2 million, or ten million dollars to account for all of these things that we expect you to be impacted with over the next 65 years of life expectancy.” It just doesn’t work that way. The side note to that, Sandie, is that even if it did in the perfect world, where the abuser is caught and prosecuted and sentenced under California’s laws, they’re going to be away for a while. So, if they don’t have money sitting around, they’re not going to pay any kind of judgment. Even if a judge ordered hundreds of thousands of dollars of restitution on a criminal case, what happens from a practical standpoint is the victim gets a restitution order, then he or she can go in and try to enforce the restitution order. It becomes a judgment, and then it’s enforceable as a judgment. So go and enforce the judgment against somebody that doesn’t have any assets to speak of, and doesn’t have any prospects for future earnings. It’s just a piece of paper. Sandra Morgan 28:05 So with the civil approach, how does that overcome that hurdle? Daniel Varon 28:11 The civil approach, what we really emphasize in our cases is, whether there are other entities that are responsible for the abuse that happened. If there was a school or a church, or a business or something that was aware that somebody was a risk to abuse, and they turned a blind eye, they covered it up, or what have you, they didn’t follow their own policies and procedures, things like that. If there’s an entity that’s responsible, then you can bring a lawsuit against the entity and you can achieve restitution that way. A lot of the entities are insured, for example, for negligence. If they’ve negligently failed to protect somebody from a known abuser, or they negligently fail to supervise their agent, their teacher, their priest, whatever, then that’s something that they can be held accountable for, and that’s a way to achieve restitution for a victim of some of these offenses. Sandra Morgan 29:10 I’ve worked in the public, non-profit sector for decades, and this is always, in my job description, under ‘risk management,’ because we know that we need to follow certain guidelines. For me, I’m curious if you feel that this approach supports maybe transferring some of the, I can’t really find the right words, but I’ve gone into hotels, to hospitals, to churches, and done training, but it’s always been- not always, I don’t want to say always- it often feels like I’m just checking a box. But when you hit the bottom line, it’s more than checking a box. Can you give me your understanding of that aspect on restitution? Daniel Varon 30:15 Yeah, well, that’s 100% right. The reality is that there are, in our society, there are institutions that we put our trust in all the time, and we trust them with our most precious also. We’re talking about schools. We trust the school to supervise our children, we don’t even think about it most of the time. You have a kid, kid’s in second grade, you go to the first day of school, you drop them off at school. If it’s a private school, maybe you looked at the school, you interviewed there, and you looked at the facilities and all of that. But how many of us are going into the personnel records and checking to see if somebody’s had a prior complaint of abuse? We don’t get to do that, even if you wanted to, but most of us wouldn’t even think to ask that. And we kind of take for granted that these schools that have, really by having a name on the door, we trust them. If it’s a public school, it has the added credibility of being a government institution, and we trust them. We just drop our kids off, and then we come back six hours later and pick them up. And that’s it. If you want to make sure that institutions are doing what they’re supposed to do when you entrust your most precious things in the world, your children to them, then you have to hold them accountable when they fail to do it, because, like you said, the last thing that they want to do is lose funding. Whether it’s a private or public institution, they don’t want to lose funding. Most of these institutions are insured, and insurance companies are in the business of managing risk, and if you can’t follow the insurance company’s guidelines on managing your risk, you’re not going to get insurance, which means you’re going to be exposed as an entity to the liability. Some insurance policies have exclusions. One of the exclusions they have is that they don’t insure things that are expected or intended. So think about it this way: you get in your car, you get into an accident, god forbid, you’re insured. Because you had an accident. It’s negligence on your part or somebody else’s part, or both your parts. That’s what insurance is for. We buy it and hope we never need it, that’s what it’s for, it’s for those accidents. You drive your car and you see somebody you don’t like on the sidewalk, and you decide to intentionally drive your car up on the sidewalk and run them down, that’s intended. Now, insurance company is going to say, “Sorry, we have an expected or intended clause, you’re excluded. We’re not covering that. You’re on your own.” Well, let’s say you had a teacher in a school that was continually accused by students of sexual abuse. They keep reporting it, and the school investigates it, and then they don’t really do much about the teacher. Well, at some point, an insurance company could look at that and say, “This is expected or intended, we’re not covering this,” and then the schools on the hook. They don’t want that. It’s a way of giving them a negative incentive to do what they should do anyway, and how it translates into trafficking is, ou’ve got civil laws that specifically allow a plaintiff who’s been trafficked to hold institutions, the one that always comes to mind is hotels and motels, accountable. If they’re not doing their part to prevent human trafficking on their premises, and that’s another avenue for victims to achieve restitution, is through those institutions that were in a position to help, had an obligation to help, and didn’t. Sandra Morgan 33:44 I have so much hope in how this translates in our communities to more corporate responsibility, more government responsibility. Because even if the initial response is not because I presented a passionate cry to protect our children, but because the board of directors is expecting that the bottom line is met. This is like a new tool, maybe not so new, but certainly you’re fine tuning the approach so that it actually is, like you said earlier, a progression in your work. In our final moments here, I’d love to hear, what have you changed your mind about since you started this journey as an advocate fighting human trafficking? Daniel Varon 34:45 You know, I’ve given that a lot of thought, and it’s a complicated question. Because I feel like I’ve gone through this evolution, not only as a prosecutor, not only as an attorney, but as a human being, and as a father, as a husband. I mean, I’ve learned so much in the process. I started my life as a prosecutor in Orange County, which we always refer to it as being ‘behind the orange curtain.’ We said there was such a difference between the way they prosecute crimes in LA and Orange County, and we really prided ourselves on what we viewed as the relative safety of Orange County, and we felt that we were an integral part of that, and that meant that our job was in seeking justice, to hold people accountable for what they did. We believed very strongly in personal responsibility, and so that’s how we approach the job. As a young and naive prosecutor in the mid i2000s, let’s say 2006/2007-2010, if you saw a young woman come into court with prostitution charges, you would see the same thing. That she had been in three or four, or five different jurisdictions. She got arrested and then failed to appear in each one of those jurisdictions. I would look at that, say, “She’s thumbing her nose. She’s giving the big middle finger to the courts. She’s just saying, ‘I don’t care about you. Your law doesn’t matter. Whatever.'” You would say, “Well, Judge, she needs 90 days of jail. She’s got to be in jail,” and that’s the only tool we thought we had, right. When we get to 2010/2011 and I start working with the guys I mentioned earlier, started to learn the victimology component and what it was that was driving this set of crimes. We didn’t stop to think, ‘How does this young woman, who’s been to five different places to get arrested, how does she get here? She doesn’t live here, but she’s got no phone and she’s got no wallet, she’s got no money.’ We never stopped to think about that, right. Part of it was learning that in 2011 let’s say, and understanding the bigger picture to the crime, and understanding that these were victims that were being brought there, that were being exploited. That changed everything. What it gave me was a sense of greater empathy and understanding to the human trafficking world, and I think that we try to operate,as much as we can, with that empathy and understanding and victim centered approach. But I say it’s an evolution because empathy can be great, but empathy can go too far. I know that in today’s day and age, that might be a very controversial thing to say, and if my wife listens to this it may be controversial in my own house, but it can be. I think where I’ve come today, through this evolution, is that what we do needs to be informed by an empathetic approach and an understanding of both sides of an issue and who we’re dealing with, but blind empathy can also be very dangerous. It can remove from us skepticism, which can be very important, especially as an attorney, you have to have a skeptical eye about a lot of things. But it’s also counterproductive for the person that you’re empathetic towards. You can kill somebody with kindness, and I’ve seen it. I’ve seen it with an approach to victims sometimes, and I’ve seen it with an approach to clients sometimes, where you want to do everything for a person because you care so deeply about what they’ve been through, and you want to help them, but you remove their ability to learn to help themselves. If somebody doesn’t learn to help themselves, they’re never going to get out of the human trafficking life. They’re never going to heal from sexual abuse. They, I think more than anything, what I’ve seen is that people who’ve been victimized, just like the rest of us, they need empathic understanding from people around them, but they also need structure and guidance, they need to have confidence, and they need to know that they have the ability to stand on their own feet and walk forward. Sometimes empathy can be an impediment to that. Sandra Morgan 38:51 Wow. Okay, a little choked up here. I’m going to spend some time thinking about that, and I’m so grateful, Daniel, that you came to the podcast today. I’m probably going to call you again once I process all of that. Wow, that was not what I thought you’d say, but really valuable. And I ask listeners to maybe go back and listen to that part again, just hit your rewind button. As we’re winding up here, I want to tell our listeners thank you, and go to the endinghumantrafficking.org website, and in the show notes you’ll find previous interviews and interviews with the people that Daniel mentioned here. Follow us on LinkedIn, Instagram, and I’ll be back in two weeks. Danny, thank you so much. Daniel Varon 39:49 Thank you, Sandie, it’s such a pleasure to talk to you.