Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

Clayton Cranford joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they discuss how children need trusted adults who explicitly tell them that if something goes wrong online, it’s going to be okay—because what predators exploit most is a child’s fear of reaching out for help. CLAYTON CRANFORD Clayton Cranford is a former Orange County Sheriff’s Department Sergeant, school resource officer, and juvenile investigator with specialized expertise in behavioral threat assessment and online safety. He is the founder of Cyber Safety Cop, a program dedicated to educating parents, schools, and communities about how digital platforms can expose children to exploitation, grooming, and trafficking risks. With over 20 years in law enforcement and years working directly with youth and families, Cranford has trained tens of thousands of parents and educators nationwide on digital parenting strategies, social media risks, and emerging threats such as sextortion, encrypted apps, and AI-generated content. He is the author of Parenting in a Digital World and a recognized speaker at major school safety and cybersecurity conferences. His work aligns closely with prevention-first strategies and community collaboration, making him a valuable voice in the intersection of technology, youth safety, and anti-trafficking efforts. KEY POINTS * Boys are disproportionately targeted for financial sextortion schemes where predators impersonate young girls, quickly establish relationships through unsolicited images, and then extort victims for thousands of dollars, sometimes leading to tragic outcomes within hours. * Online predators use sophisticated grooming tactics on girls over weeks and months, often employing multiple fake personas to build trust before exploiting victims through threats of exposing images to friends and family, creating a cycle of exploitation that can last for years. * Parents must explicitly tell their children that no matter how embarrassed they are or how serious the situation seems, nothing will stop their love and support—because what children know intellectually about online safety often doesn’t align with their emotional responses in the moment. * AI companion apps have become widely adopted by teens, with nearly three-quarters having tried them and half using them regularly, yet these apps lack regulation, age verification, and safeguards against encouraging self-harm or creating unhealthy parasocial relationships. * School resource officers serve as crucial intervention points not for enforcement but for building trusted relationships where students feel comfortable reporting concerns about peers or seeking help before situations escalate to emergencies. * The rapid adoption of smartphones from less than 20% to over 80% of teens in just three years created a gap where parents handed their children powerful devices without understanding the risks of platforms like Snapchat and Discord that facilitate anonymous contact and exploitation. * Prevention requires parents to understand how apps work, implement age-appropriate monitoring tools, ensure notification requirements for app downloads, and have concrete plans with their children about who to contact if something goes wrong online. * Legislative action is urgently needed to require age verification, transparency about AI safeguards, and regulation of technologies being rapidly deployed to children without adequate study of downstream mental health and safety impacts. RESOURCES * Cyber Safety Cop website and resources [https://cybersafetycop.com/] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Clayton Cranford: parents had no idea what they were, what they were kind of getting themselves into when they handed their kid a phone. [00:00:06] Sandie Morgan: She calls her tattoo sleeves armor, covering years of scars from predators who convinced her they were her friends, when what she really needed was one trusted adult. And that’s what your kids need too. Someone who says explicitly, if this happens, it’s going to be okay. [00:00:31] I’m Dr. Sandy Morgan with Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice. And my guest today is Clayton Cranford. He’s a former school resource officer, juvenile investigator, father of two, and founder of Cyber Safety Cop teaching parents and students how to stay safe online. Now here’s our conversation. [00:01:05] Welcome to the ending Human Trafficking Podcast, clay. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. I still remember when your mother introduced me to you. [00:01:17] Clayton Cranford: That must have been a while. Yeah, that was a while ago. [00:01:19] Sandie Morgan: at that point, I, I just promoted out of, I was a school resource officer, just promoted to the school threat assessment team. [00:01:27] Clayton Cranford: and a lot is, you know, a lot’s happened since then. [00:01:29] Sandie Morgan: Well, and your book is like the fourth edition now. [00:01:34] Clayton Cranford: Yeah, I just updated the, this summer and it was actually a complete rewrite. It was, I, I really considered just calling it a new book, but I’m like, you know what? I like, I like the name of my book. And it is, parenting in the digital world, and I’ve read a lot. I mean, I collect all the books that people are writing on this, on this topic, helping parents, parent their child to digital world. and I just felt like, I think parents need a little deeper insight of what, what actually is going on. Talking about things like ai, some new emerging things, and, more importantly, you know, parents, if they want to dig in really deep, I, I really kind of. [00:02:14] Get way under, like what’s actually happening. Like what is the, the title forces, behind this technology and, and, and how it’s changing our kids, but also then making it very simple and saying, Hey, these are the, these are the conversations you need to have, and these are the things you should start doing. [00:02:31] And so before we started the show, we were reminiscing. And you mentioned you started off. When we were at the iPhone four. [00:02:45] Sandie Morgan: So do a a capsule time capsule for us. How old were your kids? What have you experienced as a parent going from a flip phone to where we are today? [00:03:00] Clayton Cranford: Yeah. So, original iPhone comes out in 2007, the iPhone four in 2010, which had the first. Forward facing camera on an iPhone. And at that time, less than 20% of teens had smartphones. They all had the flip phone, they had like the razor phone, stuff like that. and then over the course of like two or three years, and this is when I was working as a school resource officer in retro center Margarita, I had 14,000 students, nine schools in that city. [00:03:28] We went from less than 20% having smartphones. In about three years, we had more than 80%. So it was this huge uptake. And parents had no idea what they were, what they were kind of getting themselves into when they handed their kid a phone. dealing with all the issues and everything from, you know, just being hurtful things happening, which, is to be expected, I guess, when kids are on these screens. [00:03:51] But a lot of other things like sexting, sextortion, sexual exploitation, threats. When I was on the threat assessment team, most of our, most of our threats at schools were happening online. and it’s, Figuring out, so we, I talked to BMI instructors. We talked to students K through 12 at schools all over the United States, but mostly here in Southern California. [00:04:12] Although kids know like what is safe and not safe, but then at the same time to make bad choices online, really kind of understanding why this, why this is happening. Took me a while to figure out, but that’s kind of what we do now. We go to schools and we help kids kind of the digital world a bit better, then supporting parents so that they can mentor support their kids in the digital world as well. [00:04:41] Sandie Morgan: All right, so you used a term from your past school resource officer. Do you wanna tell us what that role is? I think school resource officers are key in this battle. [00:04:58] Clayton Cranford: They are, and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and I, I, frankly, all the police departments here in Southern California, do a really good job of handpicking people. That are the right fit. ’cause you, ’cause you’re basically kind of embedded in the schools. And my office was at the an RSM Intermediate had, you know, I was their first school resource officer. [00:05:19] And so, no, like, they were just happy that I was there. ’cause they’re like, we’re not sure what you’re gonna do, but we’re just happy you’re here. and so it was kind of, it was kind of to some degree up to me. To help fill that role and kind of figure it out. And that’s actually where the, a lot of the cyber safety came from, just BA based with the things were happening. [00:05:38] But it was really being at that school every day, interfacing with the kids every day, being a positive influence. Men, I was a mentor. I wasn’t, I really wasn’t there to get, you know, to enforce things necessarily, but I was there if, if that needed to happen. And, and, and actually the three years as a school resource officer, I never arrested child. [00:06:01] it was everything that I did there by and large was about supporting the kids, supporting the parents, supporting the administrators, and, and obviously, you know, safety on campuses is, you know, paramount obviously. So one of the, the other things I was involved with was, you know, being, going around to the schools in our city and making sure that they were secure and we would do assessments and, you know, we’d kinda shore up, you know, security issues, but. [00:06:31] Most of the time me walking around talking to kids. And, and a lot of times I’d have, excuse me, I’d have a kid, you know, come up to me and say, you know, I was. I was on Skype last night with my friend, and she was talking about wanting to hurt herself and I wasn’t sure what to do, you know? So like I’d, I would have that kind of relationship with the students where they shared with me. [00:06:53] And, and, and that’s really the, the power of, of, of having a school resource officer is, it’s not enforcement, it’s not necessarily a can be, but really it’s about, intervention and, and being proactive. [00:07:08] Sandie Morgan: love that proactive. [00:07:10] Clayton Cranford: the best job I ever had. I loved it. [00:07:12] Sandie Morgan: Oh, I, I can imagine that I would love that job too. And what you just said about that girl that asked you for a resource, what should I do? I do believe that equipping the students themselves to keep their community safe is key because they see things before it gets to the point. [00:07:38] Where we have to intervene in an urgent or emergency situation. So, alright, let’s look at a few things about where we are now in digital spaces. What kind of online grooming our traffickers using as, tactics in, approaching our youth. [00:08:05] Clayton Cranford: So there’s kind of two tracks. There’s, it’s the, we have, we have, people extorting our children for either child sex abuse material. so basically getting ’em in a situation, trapping them, threatening them, and then cosing them into creating more child sex abuse material for them, it’s for, for, for, monetary gain. [00:08:29] It’s, it’s extorting them for money. So. It, it kind of happens in two very different ways. Our boys are, if you look at just the numbers of children who are, who are being extorted exploited online, boys are outstripping girls, by a mile for financial, extortion. So what happens is, They’ll, some, somebody will impersonate a young girl online, befriend, a young, a young boy, middle school, high school, college actually. [00:09:01] quickly establish relationship like, and what that means is maybe sending them an unsolicited nude image and then asking that boy to reciprocate. With, with the promise that if he does, there’ll be more images coming his way or videos, [00:09:19] Sandie Morgan: you immediately get a message from this person saying, if you don’t want everybody to see this, send me like, you know, a thousand dollars or $4,000. and, we have 10 tens of thousands of young men, being victimized every year. [00:09:33] Clayton Cranford: It’s super under-reported. I have a parent calling me every other week, I think, messaging me, saying This happened to my kid, and they’re looking for advice or guidance. sadly. We’ve had, I think last year more than 50 young men take their own lives they were so afraid, that that information would get out and ruin their life. [00:09:58] And, I just, I talked to, two parents this year. Who both lost their, their children, their boys high school, and I think post high school, I think he was, maybe in college like, but still like maybe 19 or 20. And it only took a handful of hours between the threat and them taking their own lives. [00:10:20] So, and then on the, on the, and then on the female side. on our girls side. that usually happens over weeks and months. It’s, it’s not something that happens quite as fast. usually, you know, your, your daughter, will be on a, will be on like a, a mainstream, social media site. And, she’ll get propositioned by someone who she thinks is a, who’s somebody her age and then invite her to, into a private chat, maybe on Discord or some other place. [00:10:51] then. usually joined by other people who often are in on it. They’re, they’re also, adult men pretending to be high school or middle schoolers. then befriending them over weeks and months until finally they break down their inhibitions and their, and basically get them to maybe flash the camera. [00:11:10] and both threats actually, I, I don’t think parents really understand like, what that threat is for a kid. Because what they’re hearing, from that person is that if you don’t do what I want you to do, whether it’s making images or videos, or giving this money, I’m gonna share this, this image with everyone you see. [00:11:27] And just imagine you’re just some, you know, 12-year-old girl or something, and this person saying, I’m going to show this to all your friends. And they’re gonna see how dirty a horrible person you are, and they’re gonna leave you. You, no one will love you. Your parents will see this and they’re gonna throw you out. [00:11:43] You’ll have nobody. So if you don’t do this, I will ruin your life and you’re gonna continue making images and videos for me for as long as I say. And, and, and that’s why we have kids, you know, taking their own lives, hurting themselves. I interviewed, recently a survivor interviewed her. [00:12:07] She’s, we have a video that on our website. Her and her mom actually, this happened to her when she was 12 years old, and had her, they trafficked her online for four years and they were able to do that through the threat. She wanted to keep it a secret. She didn’t tell anyone and. They had this really diabolical plan where person, so they, they, enticed her to flash the camera and then a, who she thinks is a third party, comes in through Skype, actually not through this chat room that she was in, and they say, I hacked the website or something, and I have this video of you. [00:12:46] So she goes back to the group. Who are responsible for all this, but she thinks are her friends, and she [00:12:53] Sandie Morgan: Oh. [00:12:53] Clayton Cranford: this just happened to me. they’re like, oh my gosh, we’re so sorry. And you just, you know, we’re gonna figure out, we’re gonna try to stop this. We’re gonna figure out who this person is, but just do whatever they were telling you to do we’re, and we’re gonna help you. [00:13:06] We’re gonna try to protect you. So she keeps going back to the, to her, her tormentors, thinking they’re her friends. along while she’s being extorted by this other person who’s, who’s, who’s in this group. So they, they kept her on the hook for four years and, and, it was a, it was a living hell for her. [00:13:28] She, started cutting herself, to deal with her anxiety and, and depression because of this happening to her. [00:13:35] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. [00:13:35] Clayton Cranford: And actually one of the guys who’s extorting her found that, Exciting. And, he actually extorted her to cut herself more on camera part of a kind of a FET she had. And, she recently came out to Los Angeles to speak at a conference with me. [00:13:55] I invited her she lives out in New Orleans, came out and what a powerful, young woman she is. And she’s willing, you know, to talk about this, but you know, she has, all sleeved up on her arm and she calls it her armor to cover up the scars. [00:14:14] Sandie Morgan: Oh wow. [00:14:16] Clayton Cranford: I, I guess when I talk to parents and I, and I, and I tell them that story about Kaylee, what I tell parents is you love your kid and you think your kid knows. [00:14:29] That no matter what, you would be there for them that no matter what, if they had, if they needed help, you would give it to them. But we really explicitly need to tell our kids, well, one, that this kind of thing is happening. Like we need to just be upfront about like, these are the issues. And a lot of parents just don’t know to have that conversation. [00:14:45] But more importantly, if you get into trouble, no matter how embarrassed you are or how horrible you think it is, nothing gonna stop me from loving you and. [00:14:58] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. [00:14:59] Clayton Cranford: It’s maybe, I’ve discovered after talking to, to, to kids for the last 15 years, hundreds of thousands of them, is that it’s not really about what they know. [00:15:10] ’cause they kind of know these things happen to some degree. But what they, but what they understand is that is a reality beyond that screen. what they’re doing on that screen is not really lining up with what they know to be true and safe. They’re doing things based on how it feels. And so you need to understand that even if you talk to your kid and they say, oh, mom and dad, I would never do that. [00:15:32] You, you also need a plan that if they do it, they know what what they need to do, right? They need to, [00:15:37] Sandie Morgan: I, [00:15:38] Clayton Cranford: they need [00:15:38] Sandie Morgan: I like that [00:15:39] Clayton Cranford: how to get outta that situation or know who to talk to. Or, I told my boys if, [00:15:43] Sandie Morgan: I. [00:15:44] Clayton Cranford: wasn’t me, if you couldn’t tell me because you’re embarrassed, of course I told him, you can tell me anything. [00:15:50] But is there like an adult at the school that you trust [00:15:53] Sandie Morgan: So [00:15:54] you gotta have a plan. I, I think one of the things you just hit on, that really connects to my background in pediatrics and working with young people is the sense of teen invincibility is a well-researched element in this prevention strategy because. When we talk to our kids and we tell them who’s behind this screen, [00:16:28] they sometimes kinda like roll their eyes. So I like this idea that they have a trusted adult besides a parent, but, parents are right there when some. [00:16:43] Creep is online upstairs in their bedroom. What can parents do? What kinds of signs should they be looking for that might indicate they should intervene? [00:16:58] Clayton Cranford: Well, so with boys, what’s scary about the boys is that they go from zero to a hundred very fast. And, and when I talk to that parent who lost her son within eight hours of the threat. You know, here’s a parent who loved their, loved their son. She said, we have a great relationship. Could tell me anything. [00:17:16] And it still happened. So, I I, I, when I was talking to her, I was like, so what are we missing here? Like, are you telling me that there’s, there’s nothing? And she goes, well, she goes, I, you know, I never, I never had that conversation with him. I like explicitly said, if this happens, it’s gonna be okay. Your life’s not over. [00:17:32] And in fact, when we go talk to students. with our, we talk to students K through 12, but when we, we kind of start talking about this like around fourth grade actually, we don’t get explicit, but we just say, Hey, if you make a mistake and if somebody’s scaring you, then you need to tell someone we, we start there. [00:17:49] Then we get into middle school and high school. We get explicit. But you need to have that, you need to be look your kid in the eye and say, I don’t expect you to always make the right choice, but if you, but if you run into a problem like this, it’s gonna be okay. You can still talk to me. If you have a younger child, I think you should have, maybe you should install something on their device, like, like an app that would run in the background, maybe alert you if there’s a problem. [00:18:18] there’s many out there like Bark or OurPact or something like that. There’s, there’s apps out there that will help you, but nothing’s really gonna replace that conversation with your kid. As far as behaviors go, I, I would say you, you kind of know what your child’s baseline behavior is, right? [00:18:36] you, we immediately see a lot of withdrawal when, when a kid is in that situation and it, and, and withdrawal, is, is often the first sign that there’s something wrong. It could be various things. It, it, it just, they could be upset about something, but it, but it could also indicate something a little more serious and I think. [00:18:52] You know, opening up that line of conversation with your kid and saying, Hey, what’s going on? Like, you’re, you’re hiding out in your room. like that’s something that we should start kind of digging into. I also think parents need to have a good understanding of how these apps are working and understand what, what, what’s involved. [00:19:12] So, and, and like when I do my parent workshop, I, I go through the apps. I kind of give them my high level take. But if, if a parent wants to really get the nuts and bolts of like, you know, how does Snapchat work? What are the little things and all, you know, what does it all do? How does Discord work? [00:19:29] Which, which is a very, very important social media app kind of community forum parents have really no grip on, and it’s incredibly impactful and you need to understand the influences that are available to your child on that. Application and the, and the community groups that they can, join. [00:19:52] And many of those are not healthy for your kid. There’s, there’s a lot in there that is not appropriate for them. And so if you want it, like I, I would say to a parent, if you want to understand it, I have videos on my website that walk you through it. I, I demonstrate the video, the, the, the, the apps. So you should kind of understand what those apps are, how do they work? [00:20:13] Sandie Morgan: And when I was an investigator and I would investigate, investigate crimes and write search warrants, you know, Snapchat was probably the one that I was most interacting with because of the, you know, the, the availability to talk to strangers on it, the disappearing messaging that can occur there. but discord, I think we’re gonna be hearing a lot more about it, So tell us the how to find your website so we [00:20:40] can see that video. [00:20:41] Clayton Cranford: go, to cyber safety cop.com [cop.com]. And I have, these, I have webinars, that I do and, and you can see them there. So, they are, they are part of my membership. I do have a free trial for 30 days [00:20:59] Sandie Morgan: Oh, okay. [00:21:00] Clayton Cranford: you can do free, no risk. it for 30 days, check out the videos. [00:21:04] But there’s always something new. There’s always a new app, AI, companions, like there’s, there’s. [00:21:11] Sandie Morgan: And we started talking a little bit about AI at the top of this, conversation. So let’s go that direction and think about the emerging threats. And it feels to me as a healthcare professional that the idea of prevention is going to be critical here because by the time it’s fully, Unleashed on, on a kid. [00:21:42] it’s, it’s like trying to rescue someone from, from a, a river. And so what are your recommendations with the emerging technologies? [00:21:56] Clayton Cranford: I would make sure that, you have a, you have your child’s app store set up so that you get notified for permission to download apps onto your child’s device. a lot of these AI companion apps, which by the way are, it’s different than like chat GPT. So basically, it’s a. AI personality, I guess is the best way to describe it. [00:22:21] It’s like an avatar. You can [00:22:23] Sandie Morgan: Okay. [00:22:23] Clayton Cranford: what the imagery, what the person looks like, usually sexually explicit is, is kind of the what’s happening right now. and then, and then you can kind of choose the personality o of the ai and it just interacts with you and kind of learns about you and. Is, it is created to be very engaging in, in, in, in, app development. [00:22:47] They call it sticky. It, it makes you want to stay on that app, and they do that by manipulating your emotions. So if you’re a kid, especially who’s, you know, with an, you know, with, with friendships or anxiety or, know, or, or just kind of. kind of curious, and maybe you’re like, I just want to kind of talk to this. [00:23:11] You know, maybe you have a boy who wants to talk to a female, but is like, but I’ll, I’m gonna try out talking to an app first. So it’s a, it’s [00:23:20] Sandie Morgan: Oh my goodness. [00:23:21] Clayton Cranford: kind of entryway into these, [00:23:23] Sandie Morgan: Safe with air quotes. [00:23:25] Clayton Cranford: Yeah. Safe [00:23:26] Sandie Morgan: From their perspective. [00:23:28] Clayton Cranford: don’t have, to worry about that person reacting in a way. [00:23:31] Sandie Morgan: hmm. [00:23:32] Clayton Cranford: programmed to. Say great to whatever you say. So it, it’s, it’s kind of a false sense of connectedness. The, real problem here is that, number one, these things tend to get romantic and a little bit spicy, which obviously is wildly inappropriate for teens. you could have a kid who becomes emotionally attached to, to this, to this app because it does mimic, you know, a, a person and, and. [00:24:04] there’s been, there’s been a couple, but there’s been a very few, but a few, children who were struggling with some of their, with their mental health and turned to an AI app like this for, for advice or connectedness. And, in fact, just recently in, in my city here in Rancho, we had a, we had a child who took their own life, last [00:24:27] Sandie Morgan: Mm. [00:24:27] Clayton Cranford: And, and it was. and they were talking to this app, about doing that and the app kind of affirmed thoughts about, about taking their own life. So [00:24:40] Sandie Morgan: So in, [00:24:40] Clayton Cranford: family’s [00:24:41] Sandie Morgan: in, [00:24:41] Clayton Cranford: company. [00:24:42] Sandie Morgan: in light of that, what kind of policy changes should we be looking for? What can the community do to make it safer for our young people? [00:24:55] Clayton Cranford: the these companies have zero regulation about how they do this. There’s no transparency about what’s going into these apps, they shove the technology down our throats. don’t know enough to say, wait a minute. I don’t, know if this is okay for my kid. [00:25:11] The kids adopt it without really a lot of discussion. And then later we discover this was not good, right? Like there are, there are downstream problems or like social media, like all the mental health issues we’re having with kids and the addictiveness. now after, you know, 15 years that we’re now like, Hmm, maybe that wasn’t a good idea. [00:25:30] So here comes, here comes AI coming like a freight train. And this particular. Kind of genre or, or aspect of AI is so captivating that, it’s, it’s, I I think it’s gonna be super addictive and. So impactful and unfortunately there’s no discussion going on right now, whether this is okay for our kids. [00:25:55] Very little. A common sense. Media just did a survey this year on this particular thing, AI companion or AI chat app, bots, almo. Nearly three quarters of teens said they’ve tried it ’cause they’re curious, but half of them say they use it regularly. [00:26:10] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:26:11] Clayton Cranford: a third say they use it for having quote unquote important conversations. [00:26:16] So it’s not fringe. There’s not a few kids trying it. A lot of kids are using it and it’s kind of flying under the radar. Parents need to understand that this is not healthy for their kid. We really should be pressuring our legislature to pass laws to say there needs to be age verification on this. You should be, I think, an adult. [00:26:37] I think you should be at least 18. To use these apps, where you’re mimicking a kind of a parasocial kind of relationship with this app. And at the very least there should be some transparency about what are the, what are the safeguards. If you’re talking about self-harm, like what does the app do with that? [00:26:56] where’s kind of the emergency breaks on, on this technology, and right now there are none. [00:27:00] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:27:01] Clayton Cranford: up to parents to understand what’s going on and make a decision and change in your own home about what your child is using. Unfortunately, parents just don’t know what’s going on and. You know, I, I was at a a a A rather large school, a high school last night up in Los Angeles speaking to parents. I think there’s like 2200 students at this school. And they opened it up not just to the high school, but to their feeder K through eight school. I had like 10 parents show up. [00:27:35] Sandie Morgan: Oh wow. See, that makes me crazy. And that’s another episode. We’re gonna have to have that conversation where. Are the parents when we offer the training and ensure justice is coming up March 6th, 2026. You’ve been an ensure justice speaker. Our safe community, safe kids, peer educators are going into the high schools and the middle schools, and when we host opportunities for parents, we have the same thing. [00:28:11] 10. 12 people show up, so [00:28:14] that’s [00:28:14] Clayton Cranford: 10 or 12 that go to everything. [00:28:16] Sandie Morgan: Yeah, that’s [00:28:17] right. They’re not, yeah. [00:28:18] Clayton Cranford: that are the most engaged. [00:28:19] Sandie Morgan: Yeah, it’s the president of the pt. No. [00:28:23] Oh, clay, we could talk for hours. We agree on how significant this moment is for our schools, for our parents, for our community to intervene because our kids, their brains are developing and they need help. [00:28:43] They cannot manage this. On their own. [00:28:48] So what I’d like to do right now is for you to tell us how to access, your book and your website as we sign off. [00:28:59] Clayton Cranford: Yeah, so, you can find my book actually I have two books. I have Parenting The Digital World and its fourth edition just published. And I have another book called Screen Time Standoff. Negotiation skills to unplug your kid. ’cause one of the other things I did for the sheriff’s department, I was a crisis negotiator. [00:29:15] Sandie Morgan: Oh, [00:29:16] Clayton Cranford: turns out that the same, the same communication negotiation skills that we use to get somebody that’s barricaded inside of a building to come out and surrender to the police. Not too different than getting your kid to put down their phone. So, I [00:29:31] Sandie Morgan: oh, we have to have that conversation. [00:29:33] Yeah, we’ll do that another time. I. [00:29:35] Clayton Cranford: it’s, it’s, a, it’s techniques that are not intuitive and, when I learned to be a negotiator, it changed actually everything for me. [00:29:44] How I talk to my kids, how I talk to my wife. Everybody. and I share those techniques with you in that book so that you can have a really productive conversation with your child about their healthy screen time or unhealthy screen time parenting, digital, all these are available on my website@cybersafetycop.com [website@cybersafetycop.com]. [00:30:01] Well, We will put links to those resources, and we are grateful that you’re right here in our backyard in Orange County, and we’ll be calling you again because I wanna have a conversation about negotiation. Thank you so much, clay, for joining us today. [00:30:21] Thank you, Sandy. [00:30:23] Sandie Morgan: Thanks Clayton, for that powerful reminder. Our kids need to hear us say directly, if this happens, it’s going to be okay, and they need a plan for who to tell and how to get help. Listeners, if you loved this conversation, make sure you check out our website@endinghumantrafficking.org [website@endinghumantrafficking.org]. [00:30:48] You’ll find tons of in-depth show notes and more resources. If you’d like to help us grow the podcast, start by sharing this episode with someone and connecting with us on Facebook. Instagram or LinkedIn. And as always, thank you for listening.

Dr. Douglas Gilmer joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how 30 years of carrying the memory of arresting a child who needed help, not handcuffs, drove his commitment to building true collaboration in anti-trafficking work. DR. DOUGLAS GILMER Dr. Douglas Gilmer is a 35-year law enforcement veteran and proud military veteran who retired from the Department of Homeland Security and Homeland Security Investigations in August 2024 after 25 years of federal service. In his final role, he served as Senior Law Enforcement Advisor at the DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking in Washington, DC. His journey in this field began in 1993 when, as a Charlotte police officer, he encountered a 14-year-old girl being sold for sex. Throughout his federal career, Doug worked and supervised numerous human trafficking cases involving both sex and labor trafficking, domestic and international victims, and adults and minors. He also served as Chief of the Human Rights Violators and War Crimes Center. After retiring, Doug founded Resolved Strategies LLC, a global justice solutions group dedicated to building collaborations and developing solutions to counter human trafficking. He holds a PhD in Organizational Leadership, with research focused on multidisciplinary collaboration in anti-trafficking work. In January 2025, Doug received the William Wilberforce Lifetime Achievement Award. KEY POINTS * Dr. Gilmer’s research on multidisciplinary teams revealed that the MDT construct is being widely adopted because the old ways of responding to trafficking simply didn’t work, and both law enforcement and service providers report more positive attitudes toward each other than commonly assumed. * Many social workers are taught in school and by veteran colleagues not to trust law enforcement, creating initial skepticism that dissolves once they experience collaborative work and realize officers genuinely care about victims and wouldn’t stay in this demanding field otherwise. * The distinction between cooperation and collaboration is critical: cooperation involves helping someone achieve their goal with selfish motivation (“I” or “me”), while true collaboration means working together toward shared goals where your mission becomes mine and mine becomes yours (“we”). * Law enforcement agencies are shifting their metrics of success, with HSI agents now receiving the same recognition for identifying and recovering a victim as they do for making an arrest, reflecting a genuinely victim-centered approach. * Human trafficking should be approached as a “crime of crimes” with multiple prosecution pathways including money laundering, child sexual abuse material, and other charges that can achieve justice while protecting victims from the retraumatization of testifying. * After 30 years of carrying guilt over arresting a 14-year-old trafficking victim in 1993, Dr. Gilmer found closure when a survivor told him at a conference: “You have to learn to forgive yourself for the things you did before you knew better.” * The current funding and grant process for anti-trafficking work fosters competition between organizations rather than collaboration, creating a system where groups work against each other instead of for each other despite shared goals. * Years later, a 16-year-old victim told Dr. Gilmer that after being trafficked since age 13, his response was “the first time law enforcement has ever tried to help me,” illustrating how far the field has progressed in adopting trauma-informed, victim-centered approaches. RESOURCES * Resolve Strategies [https://www.resolvedstrategies.com/] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Douglas Gilmer: I can remember handcuffing her, putting her in the back of my patrol car, thinking to myself, if this is the best we can do, why are we doing this? [00:00:15] Sandie Morgan: Our guest today was driven by 30 years of carrying the memory of arresting a child who needed help, not handcuffs. I’m Dr. Sandie Morgan with Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice, and our guest today is Dr. Doug Gilmer. He’s a 35 year law enforcement veteran, recently retired from Homeland Security Investigations and now leads Resolved Strategies. [00:00:51] His focus is on building true collaboration in anti-trafficking work. Now, here’s our conversation. [00:01:06] Alright, Dr. Doug Gilmer, thank you so much for joining us on the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. [00:01:15] Douglas Gilmer: Thank you so much. [00:01:17] Sandie Morgan: I’m excited because when I first met you, you were in HSI, but you wanted to have side conversations, and we started talking about the research you wanted to do as you were pursuing your PhD. And so let’s start there. Why did you wanna interview me? [00:01:41] Douglas Gilmer: Well, I had, I had long been a fan [00:01:47] Sandie Morgan: Okay. I can have fans. [00:01:50] Douglas Gilmer: of Dr. Morgan and was very aware of the work that you had done, and I knew that collaboration was very important to you. It was, it was evident in your work and it was evident in the work that the task force did, you know, that you helped to lead. And so you were, you were really kind of a natural fit for this project. I figured if, considering your experience and really your tenure in this field, I just knew that you would be a great, a great resource and really an expert. [00:02:25] Sandie Morgan: I’m gonna borrow that language instead of presenting myself as old an old timer in this field. I now have tenure in this field. That’s much better. So just really quickly, the highlights of your findings in that research. Can you give us a synopsis? [00:02:47] Douglas Gilmer: Yeah, so really the research focused, it was qualitative research, focused on the outcomes of multidisciplinary collaboration between law enforcement and service providers encountering human trafficking. What we learned through the research is that the multidisciplinary team construct, the MDT construct, works, that people were adopting the MDT construct because the old way of doing things didn’t work, and it was proving to be more effective. We learned that contrary to what we sometimes hear, law enforcement generally has a very positive attitude towards service providers, and that service providers actually have a positive attitude or a positive opinion of law enforcement. [00:03:42] Sandie Morgan: Well hold up there because I wanna know why the myths still exists, that they’re opposing forces sometimes. [00:03:53] Douglas Gilmer: Well, I think law enforcement comes from a slightly different mindset. We’re very skeptical [00:04:02] Sandie Morgan: Mm-hmm. [00:04:02] Douglas Gilmer: early on until we get to know somebody, until we learn to trust people. And then there was a theme that developed when talking to service providers, especially those who had degrees in social work that were, you know, licensed clinical social work workers, LMSW, that kind of thing. And what they shared was that they were really kind of taught from the beginning not to trust law enforcement when they were in school. They were told, don’t trust law enforcement. You can’t trust law enforcement. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your clients. All they care about is making a case. And then when they got out and they went to work and they were being trained, the veterans were telling them, you can’t trust law enforcement. Don’t trust law enforcement. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about your clients. They only care about making a case. So they said, we went into this with perceptions based upon what we had been taught and what we had been told we couldn’t trust law enforcement. And they said, but you know, once we, so we were very skeptical when we became part of this MDT or this collaboration. But what we actually found was that law enforcement really did care [00:05:27] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. [00:05:27] Douglas Gilmer: that they wouldn’t be there doing this work if they didn’t care. You typically don’t choose this line of work. This line of work sometimes I think chooses you. It’s a passion, it’s a calling [00:05:38] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. [00:05:39] Douglas Gilmer: right? And so the people that are there and the people that stick with it, I think are truly committed. [00:05:47] Sandie Morgan: That really reflects my experience because when I first started working with law enforcement at the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force, my boss was Derek Marsh. And as the law enforcement co-chair of our task force, he trained me. And the words you used, from the get go trust was a big part of how he trained me. He made sure that I understood his job was to make sure everybody at the scene was safe. And I knew it was dangerous. I knew the traffickers had guns. I knew that I did not have the situational awareness to manage that. Now, I was a nurse. I still am a nurse, and I knew how to provide victim care, and he trusted my expertise. And so we developed a very strong collaboration. So I think trust is definitely part of that, and we are erasing that myth and finding out that we have common goals that are survivor-centered and justice focused. So let’s talk a little bit more about how your career was shaped by encountering human trafficking. I always remember my first case, we didn’t even have the language of human trafficking. I admitted a 14-year-old boy at two o’clock in the morning and his family members had been selling him. My brain could not wrap itself around that. What was your moment of clarity? And maybe we can use your word calling. [00:07:54] Douglas Gilmer: I think for me it began there, there were a couple of events. The first one was in 1993. And so this was before we had the TVPA, before we had really modern human trafficking legislation. This was before really we had CACs across the country. [00:08:19] Sandie Morgan: Define C. A. C for my listeners. [00:08:22] Douglas Gilmer: Child advocacy center. [00:08:24] Sandie Morgan: Okay. [00:08:24] Douglas Gilmer: And I encountered a 14-year-old girl on a street in Charlotte, North Carolina who had propositioned an undercover vice detective [00:08:41] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. [00:08:42] Douglas Gilmer: and I was there to support their operation. And this is actually a very difficult story for me to tell. I had to arrest that 14-year-old girl and charge her with prostitution, and I can remember handcuffing her, putting her in the back of my patrol car, thinking to myself, if this is the best we can do, why are we doing this? And to be honest, Dr. Morgan, I have dealt with so much guilt and shame since 1993 over that incident. But you know, I did what I was told to do. I did what the law told me to do. I did what I knew to do in 1993. And actually it wasn’t until just recently, a few months ago, I actually, I had to tell this story in front of a room of a couple of hundred survivors and it was very, very difficult for me to tell this story. And I had no idea what the reaction was gonna be. But afterwards, someone came up to me and gave me a hug and said, it’s okay. You have to learn to forgive yourself for the things you did before you knew better. And that was a, that was kind of like a big closing chapter for me in that story. But then even more recently, you know, back, I guess about eight years ago now, there was another girl who was 16, who had been trafficked. Just a horrible, a horrible story. The things that had happened to her. And I just remember at the end of that, end of that evening, you know, getting her to a safe space, really looking out for her needs. And as I was getting ready to leave, she turned to me and she said, Mr. Doug. And I said yes, and she said, I want you to know that this has been happening to me since I was 13 years old, and this is the first time law enforcement has ever tried to help me. [00:11:44] Sandie Morgan: It’s a new day and what that survivor advocate said to you. Until you knew better. I think that until you knew better is now in the field of law enforcement. And that’s a great segue for us to talk about your new organization. What’s the name of it? [00:12:12] Douglas Gilmer: Resolved Strategies [00:12:13] Sandie Morgan: Oh, it’s, it’s on your shirt. I love that we’re doing this video, Resolved Strategies. So tell us how that is going to change the landscape. [00:12:25] Douglas Gilmer: So, you know, the term, I think we all pretty much know what strategies are, but the term resolved according to the dictionary means to be firmly determined to do something. [00:12:36] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. [00:12:37] Douglas Gilmer: That’s the tech, that’s, [00:12:38] Sandie Morgan: My mother said that was stubborn. [00:12:41] Douglas Gilmer: It could be that too. And but what I have found now over 30 years in this field is that there are a lot of people, there are a lot of organizations, there are a lot of agencies that all say, we are firmly determined to do something about this issue, but they don’t know what they’re doing. And when I talk to some of these organizations, sometimes they can’t even tell you why. They can, they can tell you big picture. They can say, well, we are, we are determined to end the scourge of human trafficking globally. And my answer is generally great. So is everybody, [00:13:34] Sandie Morgan: Me too. [00:13:35] Douglas Gilmer: Why are you doing this? [00:13:36] Yeah, right. Why are, but why are you doing this? And they can’t identify a mission. They can’t identify their purpose. They can’t identify their core values as an organization. And a lot of them don’t understand how to truly collaborate. And if you can’t do those things, if you can’t, if you can’t identify who you are, why you’re doing what you’re doing, what those things are that mean most to you and you can’t effectively work with other people, collaborate, not cooperate, collaborate with other people. The best you’re going to do is move in circles. You’re never gonna, you’re never gonna move forward. You’re gonna be like a ship without a rudder, or a rudder stuck in one direction, and you’re just gonna keep going around and around. And I don’t, I don’t want that, I want organizations to succeed in what they’re doing. [00:14:27] Sandie Morgan: Help us understand why you’re delineating between cooperation and collaboration. [00:14:36] Douglas Gilmer: So cooperation at its core has a selfish motivation, not necessarily selfish in a negative term, right? The example I often use, if my cows get out of my fence on my farm and I call down the road to my neighbor who doesn’t own my cows, but I say, Hey, can you come down here and help me get my cows back in the fence? That’s cooperation. He’s coming to help me achieve my goal or my purpose, which is getting my cows in the fence. Right? He doesn’t have a stake in my cows, but I do. And so there’s kind of a selfish motivation that goes along with cooperation. When I ask, when we talk about cooperation, we’re really talking about I or me. Collaboration on the other hand is about we. It’s about working with others to achieve a shared goal or shared purpose where your goals become my goals and my goals become your goals, or working together in shared purpose. [00:15:48] Sandie Morgan: I like that. Okay, so resolved strategies, we’re determined and collaboration is a key piece of the strategy. What kind of reach do you have with Resolved Strategies? [00:16:08] Douglas Gilmer: Well, define reach. [00:16:10] Sandie Morgan: Well, I just, I’m like kind of inching towards the international aspect of your approach because one of the problems that I’ve identified is when, for instance, I think in one report early on when I was task force administrator, we identified victims from 29 countries in one county. So having cultural knowledge, cultural humility, linguistic resources, that international component, we have jurisdictional boundaries. The traffickers do not. [00:16:56] Douglas Gilmer: Correct. [00:16:57] Sandie Morgan: So how are we building international collaboration? [00:17:04] Douglas Gilmer: So I think well, and that’s, that’s an important aspect of working collaboratively and working in an MDT environment because you bring that cultural relevancy, you know, into that environment, hopefully, you’re, you know, you’re doing that. Granted most of my work, not all of it, but most of my work is domestic, you know, working, you know, working here in the United States. But I know we are, you know, just putting my DHS hat back on my HSI hat and having retired out of the center for countering human trafficking in DC, I know that we have been pushing collaboration at the international level as well, and doing vast amounts of training overseas to train our foreign partners. And also working, you know, because HSI has 80 plus international offices around the world, and so, you know, trying to get, you know, those offices on board with their foreign partners as well, you know, to work collaboratively on these cases that might involve, you know, international, you know, sex trafficking, labor trafficking, and that kind of thing. And really continuing to push, you know, being victim centered and trauma informed, which is a policy of HSI. [00:18:42] Sandie Morgan: Well, and it’s, that policy comes with language that helps us understand, that helps us understand our common goals. And in my experience with law enforcement training overseas, I think we need to figure out how to adjust how we label it, because we don’t want to come across as, oh, we know how to do this, and we’re gonna teach you [00:19:12] What I’ve discovered in my international work with law enforcement that if we want to be better collaborators, we have to figure out how to have common language. So that takes a two-way street. [00:19:31] So they’re training us on their language, they may, they won’t call it necessarily human trafficking. They may call it THB, trafficking of a human being. Depends on what country you’re in. And when we’re talking about victim centered, it may sound differently in a different context. So our collaboration in convening a training may actually be a cultural exchange of one agency with another, so that we can communicate well and understand each other for better collaboration. [00:20:19] Douglas Gilmer: Absolutely, and I think that would benefit everybody if we did maybe more cultural exchange. So for instance, I always thought it would’ve been really cool to go spend a month over in the UK for instance, working with the Met Police in London or, you know, Scotland or somewhere working with authorities there investigating human trafficking because not only their laws are different, but their authorities are also different. So there are things that we are allowed to do in the United States that they’re not allowed to do there, vice versa. And I think that, I think that you can learn something, you know, by working in different cultures and different areas where they have different laws. Because I think it really kind of forces you to come back and think outside the box. [00:21:27] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. Oh, that’s helpful. So when I was prepping for this interview, I looked at the title of your workshop that you did at the Attorney General’s Conference in Arlington, Virginia recently, and the title of the workshop really inspired my conversation with you today, and I’m gonna read it here. Your workshop was titled Shared Mission, [00:21:58] Shared Measures, Collaborating for Survivor Stability, Accountability, and Dignity. So the part that caught my attention was shared measures. One of the things people have said to me with my fascination with collaboration is how do you measure collaboration? And I’ve probably done a podcast on that, so I’m not gonna use your time, but I want to know how you see shared measures and their role in the trust building we started off this conversation with. [00:22:40] Douglas Gilmer: Yeah, I think it goes back to, you know, when you’re truly collaborating, your goals become my goals and my goals become your goals. We may have different objectives. We may have different, different roles within that environment, within that MDT, that task force. But we’re all working toward the same, the same end goal. It was interesting in my research that when I asked about how, how do you measure success? How do you measure outcomes, law enforcement overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly said, success is measured by victim stability, which I thought, wow, that’s interesting. ‘Cause I would’ve [00:23:39] Sandie Morgan: That sounds like the social worker. [00:23:42] Douglas Gilmer: The social workers, although their number one answer was still victim stability. A very close second was the number of cases and prosecutions, far outseeding, exceeding the law enforcement response. So, which I thought was interesting, but it also goes back to if you’re truly collaborative and you truly have shared purpose as an organization, as a task force, then your goals become my goals and my goals become your goals. And I think we recognize that if we’re doing our job effectively as law enforcement, then we’re going to, we’re gonna help provide victim stability. If the victim services folks, the advocates, the social workers, whomever, if they’re doing their job right, and we’re truly collaborative, then it’s gonna help us ultimately make, you know, better prosecutions. [00:24:49] Sandie Morgan: So I’m gonna kind of play devil’s advocate here. I, under the Enhanced Collaborative Model here in the US, did evaluation for three different task forces all in California. I regularly interviewed law enforcement and as I did, I tried to find the ways where our goals overlapped, and they did, and there were those [00:25:23] who made a way forward that didn’t necessarily fit their paradigm for reporting, because if you are in the police department and you go out and you spend all these hours and then you don’t have any charges, you don’t have anything that will stick, your paperwork doesn’t support a more law enforcement heavy criminal justice [00:25:53] output, which outputs and outcomes are different. So our outcomes can be shared. But promotions and rotations, all of this, is often based on outputs for a particular officer and I think one of the areas of weakness from a collaborative perspective is when the rest of the team doesn’t understand the requirements of being a [00:26:29] police officer. You have to track if you’re gonna give tickets for people running stop signs or red lights. How many did you cite? And if you are picking up people who are breaking the law, and now we’re talking a lot about forced criminality in human trafficking, but now you don’t charge them. [00:26:55] Now you get victim services. How are we going to change the way that we measure an officer’s success through output? I think that’s the next big question. [00:27:11] Douglas Gilmer: Yeah, so I think that, I think that there is a growing shift. So for instance, within, within HSI, an agent gets essentially the same credit or the same recognition for identifying and recovering a victim and getting that victim into services as they do if they make an arrest. [00:27:40] Sandie Morgan: Okay. [00:27:41] Douglas Gilmer: So, and that’s part, that’s part of being of that victim-centered, trauma-informed approach. You’re not always going to make a human trafficking case. And there’s been a shift in some of the more progressive agencies around the country where they’re also starting to recognize that success just isn’t on charging human trafficking, right, or Mann Act or whatever. [00:28:13] We’re not doing ourselves any good if we’re, if we’re disregarding the needs of the victim or the survivor and forsaking, forsaking them for the case or for the purpose of making a case. And so I think that there’s a little bit of a, there’s a little bit of a growing shift. It’s also why I’ve always been very passionate about teaching law enforcement around the country that human trafficking is a crime of crimes. It’s, it could be in theory, it’s possible, it could be a single scheme crime, but it never is. Right. If, [00:28:52] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. [00:28:53] Douglas Gilmer: if typically there are going to be, there’s gonna be drugs involved, there may be guns involved, there may be child sexual abuse material involved, especially if we’re talking about minor victims. There could be money laundering charges. There could be tax charges. Inevitably, if it’s a commercial enterprise, they’re not paying, they’re not paying taxes. [00:29:20] Douglas Gilmer: And so there are, and then of course, then there are things like the, you know, the Mann Act and use of a communication device in interstate commerce. [00:29:30] There are all of these different ways that we can potentially prosecute a case, and still get, still get an outcome, in which we, maybe we don’t have to put that victim on the stand. That survivor maybe, maybe they’re just not healthy enough yet. Maybe they’re not in the right place and we don’t want to, we don’t want to put them up there and risk retraumatization. [00:29:58] Sandie Morgan: Yeah, that’s right. [00:30:00] Douglas Gilmer: But we can make a money laundering case. We can make a CSAM case. Because, you know, it’s a, it’s a minor victim and he had, you know, 30 images and, you know, 10 videos that he was using to post on sites. And now suddenly just based on that, we have a, we have a life sentence. [00:30:20] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:30:21] Douglas Gilmer: I think that there are, there are other ways that we can, we can show outcomes, you [00:30:31] Sandie Morgan: Mm-hmm. [00:30:31] Douglas Gilmer: you know, for these cases. [00:30:33] Sandie Morgan: Doug, 30 years. Wow. So what gives you hope for the next 10? [00:30:41] Douglas Gilmer: I think the fact that there is, there is growing interest. I mean, there was a, there was a time where law enforcement didn’t want to do this work. We just didn’t, or we did it poorly. We weren’t working human trafficking. We were just working prostitution. And I think that there’s a, there’s a growing movement nationwide. I think when you look at law enforcement agencies, especially larger departments nationwide, medium sized departments that have the resources, they’re dedicating, you know, human trafficking units or they’re dedicating folks to task forces. So I think, I think that’s good. I think that there, there’s a growing amount of training across sectors, to include, you know, victim advocates, and especially healthcare, right? I mean, that’s a, there’s a huge need in healthcare for, you know, for better training and recognition, and we’re starting to see that. So I think the fact that we’re seeing a growing, a growing interest gives me hope. What gives me pause is the fact that there are so many people out there trying to do this work, they’re not working with one another, they’re not, they’re not truly collaborating and, you know, one of the, one of the biggest conflicts or challenges [00:32:58] that was identified, there were two big ones that were identified in the research. One was the application of roles. So people knowing their job, you know, law enforcement doing what they do and service providers doing what they do and service providers not encroaching into the lane of law enforcement and vice versa. But the other big challenge was funding. [00:32:58] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. [00:32:59] Douglas Gilmer: It wasn’t, it, it wasn’t so much that we don’t have funding. People said, we’re, we’re gonna find a way. I mean, even if our bank balance is zero, we’re gonna call around, we’re gonna dip into our personal saving, we’re gonna do what we have to do to help a victim. But it’s, it’s the grant process. It’s the funding process itself. We, we have created an environment in which we’re not fostering collaboration between organizations. We’re fostering competition. And that is driving a wedge, I think, in this field because it’s become so competitive to get funding that people are working against each other instead of working for each other. [00:33:48] Sandie Morgan: Well, now you’ve moved into a new topic that is going to have to be a follow up episode, but, wow. Yes. Collaboration gives you hope. Competition is something to pause and consider. [00:34:08] Doug, thank you so much for being with us today. [00:34:11] Douglas Gilmer: Oh, thank you, Dr. Morgan. It was, it’s, it’s an honor. It truly is. [00:34:16] Sandie Morgan: All right. [00:34:17] Thank you, Dr. Doug Gilmer. [00:34:20] This conversation about collaboration really emphasizes our shared goals where your mission becomes mine, and mine becomes yours. It changes everything about how we work together. [00:34:36] Listeners, if this conversation was meaningful for you, please check out our website, endinghhumantrafficking.org. There are tons of resources there. You can look at old episodes. You can share the episode with someone else. Help us grow our community. Connect on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. [00:35:03] Thanks for listening.

Carissa Phelps joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they discuss an unprecedented opportunity for trafficking survivors to access $215 million in remission funds from the Backpage settlement, with a critical February 2026 deadline that could finally put survivors ahead of their traffickers for the first time in movement history. CARISSA PHELPS Carissa Phelps is a licensed attorney, author, and survivor advocate who founded Runaway Girl, Inc., a social purpose corporation providing survivor-led experiential trainings nationwide. She earned both a Juris Doctor and MBA from UCLA in 2007 and holds a B.A. in Mathematics from California State University, Fresno. As a pioneer in survivor-led advocacy, Carissa has spent nearly two decades empowering communities and amplifying survivor voices through innovative strategies. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir “Runaway Girl: Escaping Life on the Streets, One Helping Hand at a Time” and co-producer of the award-winning documentary “Carissa,” both powerful tools used worldwide for education and training on child exploitation and trafficking. KEY POINTS * The Backpage remission fund represents $215 million available to trafficking survivors who were exploited on Backpage.com (2004-2018) and CityXGuide.com (2018-2020), marking the largest victim compensation fund in trafficking history. * Unlike previous restitution processes that required court appearances, this remission process uses a third-party administrator, removing the traumatic requirement for survivors to face their traffickers in court. * The February 2, 2026 deadline creates urgency for outreach, as many survivors remain unaware of this opportunity and the application process requires documentation of trafficking and economic losses. * Survivors First community was formed as a working group under Love Never Fails Us to conduct weekly webinars, provide step-by-step guidance, and connect survivors with pro bono legal assistance and medical providers. * The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has partnered with over 15 major law firms to provide free, trauma-informed legal representation to help survivors navigate the application process. * Economic losses are calculated at federal minimum wage for a 40-hour work week during the trafficking period, though survivors can request higher amounts with proper documentation of different wages or hours. * This funding opportunity represents a chance for the anti-trafficking movement to get ahead of traffickers for the first time, particularly as new technologies like Web3 and blockchain create new frontiers for both exploitation and prevention. RESOURCES * 19 – Runaway Girl [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/19/] * Survivor’s First Community [https://www.survivorsfirst.community/] * Backpage Survivor Remission Network [https://www.backpageremissionnetwork.org/] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Carissa Phelps: For the first time, for the first time in the history of this movement, we have an opportunity to get ahead of traffickers. [00:00:08] Sandie Morgan: Right now, $215 million is waiting for trafficking survivors. This is money that most survivors don’t even know exists. The deadline is February 2nd, 2026. The legal system is finally learned from mistakes. There’s no court required here. Victims don’t have to face their traffickers to apply for this funding. It’s a pathway to justice. [00:00:45] I am Dr. Sandie Morgan from the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University. And my guest is Carissa Phelps. [00:00:57] She’s an attorney, a survivor advocate, founder of Runaway Girl Inc. And she is leading the charge to connect survivors with the Backpage remission fund. Let’s join our conversation. [00:01:16] [00:01:22] Sandie Morgan: Okay, so Carissa Phelps, welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. I have looked back at our history, and the last time you were here was 14 years ago. [00:01:37] Carissa Phelps: Oh my goodness. [00:01:38] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Listeners, if you wanna hear that interview, it’s number 19. So welcome Carissa. [00:01:46] Carissa Phelps: Thank you. Thank you, Sandie. Thanks for [00:01:48] Sandie Morgan: having me on. [00:01:49] So what have you been doing since we talked last? [00:01:53] Carissa Phelps: So, catching up, I guess. I mean that’s over a decade of work, but we built Runaway Girl as a flexible purpose corporation, so a social purpose corporation. We went out with full force. We had. Prop 35 in that timeframe to come out with a historic support for, more penalties for trafficking that saw increased prosecutions for sex trafficking, especially of minors. [00:02:18] And we’ve been in a uphill battle in terms of getting survivors into leadership positions. But that’s happening now more and more. It’s expected for survivors to not just be at the table or in the room or subject of the conversation, but to be part of the conversation in developing services and reaching victims where they’re at, and survivors where they’re at. [00:02:43] And so this has been, it’s been an exciting decade and a half. [00:02:47] Sandie Morgan: Wow. And I just am happy to report to you that the very first human trafficking victim rescued in Orange County, Shyima Hall, who was an Egyptian child, made in an upscale neighborhood, is now serving on the Global Center for Women in Justice Advisory Board. [00:03:11] Yeah, so we’re trying to practice what you are teaching us as a leading survivor advocate. So I got really excited a couple weeks ago when I saw your post about NCMEC remission, and when we’re talking about survivor-centered justice, why is that important? And for listeners just joining this conversation, NCMEC is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. [00:03:45] Carissa Phelps: So I did, I posted, my friends at NCMEC National Center for Missing Exploited Children are doing something similar to what we’ll talk about with survivors first, but we are all trying to respond to this Backpage remission, which is an historic amount of funds [00:04:01] available for survivors of trafficking that were trafficked over 20 years ago, some of them, from 2004 when Backpage was prominent, to 2018, 2004 to 2018, when backpage.com existed and served traffickers really and served buyers and. [00:04:22] Was a means of exploiting victims, rampantly all over our country, all over the world, really all over the globe. And so there were so many victims out of that website. It was finally shut down, with the help of Maggie Krell, who was at the Attorney General’s office in California and others in US Attorney in Arizona, Kevin Rapp, and like there, there were so many people that stepped up to the plate to say this was wrong. [00:04:46] this went even beyond maybe what Craigslist was doing in terms of, just, uh, catering to traffickers in, in what they were posting. So they were, assets were seized in that effort and those assets are now available to victims of trafficking. There was a settlement reached in 2024 with the company, and so some of the funds did go back to the company owners and so that that can be resolved in civil suits and other ways. [00:05:15] But this 215 million has been made available in a victim restitution fund. For victims to come forward to show that they have losses, economic losses, so lost wages, lost time that they could have been working or doing something else when they were being trafficked. And also medical costs and other costs that they would’ve incurred while being trafficked. [00:05:37] Sandie Morgan: So, Carissa, one of the things that was so inspiring when I first met you is you did a double grad program so that you have an MBA and you’re an attorney. So break this down for us. What are you talking about with remission and, asset forfeiture? Tell me about that. [00:06:01] Carissa Phelps: So anytime somebody uses their assets to commit a crime or takes or steals things from people fraudulently, their money or their assets, that those assets could be seized and forfeited to the government. [00:06:19] And if they’re prosecuted, criminally prosecuted, they first be seized and then they would be forfeited. So that happened. It happened with City X Guide in 2021. There was actually a restitution process for victims in 2021 and a $15 million fund, and nobody really learned about it. It was not as well advertised potentially, or people didn’t get the word out, and maybe because it wasn’t as large of a fund, but that $15 million, if it’s not accessed by victims, it doesn’t it, it didn’t disappear. [00:06:55] Fortunately, it’s coming into this fund. But it’s now a remission process, which is different than a restitution process. A victim restitution process is sort of during the criminal trial and before sentencing, somebody could come in and put in a restitution form and say, I’m due this money because I was a victim of this crime. [00:07:14] And the Texas, the US attorney in Texas did make that process available with the City X Guide person being prosecuted. Martono was his name. He was prosecuted. He ended up being sentenced and victims had a chance to go and to give a victim impact statement and to also apply for these funds as a restitution. [00:07:35] But what happened is that the word probably didn’t get out wide enough. There weren’t enough. There wasn’t enough support maybe for victims to get this fund in. It’s a scary thing to go to court. And ask for anything, especially if you’ve been victimized more recently. Mm-hmm. And the victimization with that was between 2018 and 2020. [00:07:54] And so you’re asking in 2021 really early stage people who are coming out of victimization to come and try to get funds. It wasn’t happening and it didn’t happen. So now when the back page settlement was reached in 2024 after a criminal conviction of one of the, one of the founders, one of the CEOs of, of that organization, there was this $215 million settlement. [00:08:20] And so these funds have now been combined by the DOJ and their money laundering department to create a process that looks similar to the one in 2021. But is run by a program, called Epic. They’re epic global, so they’re the administrator. And so now we’re not going to court to get this money. We’re basically going to a middle person between the victim and survivor and the DOJ and submitting documentation that would be proof of the trafficking, that it happened during the time period, that there’s a remission time period of 2004 to 2018. [00:08:59] 2008 for back page 2018 to 2020 for City X Guide. And so you’d have to show some sort of proof that there was some trafficking that happened during that period with those websites, sex trafficking particularly, and then also claim lost the lost wages for that time. Much like the Cal, the California has a crime victims’ compensation fund. [00:09:25] Yeah. Claim lost wages. And it would be calculated at minimum wage, federal minimum wage at that time, unless there could be a way of showing that there was a different wage amount, unless there could be a way of showing that there were different hours worked. It would be 40 hour work week. One of the things that we’re doing, we could talk about, you know, whether there’s really truly a work week when somebody’s being trafficked, right? [00:09:47] Yeah, yeah. Um, [00:09:49] Sandie Morgan: over time. But [00:09:50] Carissa Phelps: there’s, there’s this process now set up that we don’t have to go to court. We’re going to a third party administrator with documentation proving the trafficking and a lawyer doing that with a, with a survivor, with a, with a victim of, of this, which we’ll call a claimant. Now, a claimant on this form is important. [00:10:12] I think it really is important. it’s not a complicated process where you have to peer in front of court, but it’s still a lengthy application and it requires some proof, [00:10:21] Sandie Morgan: So, when we talk about being survivor centered justice, the first time there was restitution funding available, not many applied, and it’s a scary process. [00:10:38] So this particular model now. Means that the survivor doesn’t have to go back to court. That’s a big deal that recognizes it’s more trauma informed. So as I look at the information on this, the deadline is coming up February, 2026. Yeah. So what are the practical steps that survivors and our communities need to take? [00:11:08] So this doesn’t get left on the table. [00:11:11] Carissa Phelps: Thank you so much for asking that. And February 2nd, 2026. So I’m only thinking, oh my goodness. Deadline as January. January, [00:11:18] Sandie Morgan: okay. January is our [00:11:19] Carissa Phelps: deadline if you really think about it. And then you have the holidays in between. So it is a very tight deadline. it’s one of my first requests. [00:11:26] As soon as I get a meeting with the DOJ, which I anticipate we will, survivors first will be meeting with them. Is, can we get some equitable relief, some fairness here about, you know, we were looking at populations that are inaccessible. They’re in jail, they’re in hospitals, potentially they’re not, they’re incapacitated. [00:11:43] We have deceased survivors and victims. Their families have to get a state set up to make the claim. So we do have some, some fairness here about getting an extension. We don’t anticipate it. We’re not going to plan for it. We’re gonna plan for no extension and do the best we can with every application that. [00:12:02] In my case, I’m trying to do about 500 applications myself. I know other lawyers who have hundreds or thousands of them, so we’re anticipating, you know, tens of thousands potentially applications going in. this means that the funds that will be received per person may be pro rata down from what they’re requesting. [00:12:25] So we’re really encouraging everybody to request the full amount that they can legitimately request because we do anticipate if we exhaust the fund, it will be, it will be pro rata down. so yes, it, it is a lot to set up, the groups that we really need to have at the table, like you mentioned, NCMEC, NCMECS, backpage remission network.org got launched. [00:12:48] Yoda Sous, who’s over there, has been in this fight for a very long time, and I’m very happy that she’s at the table doing this. I hope you have her on a, as a guest as well, because [00:12:57] Sandie Morgan: I’ll make a note for sure. About [00:12:58] Carissa Phelps: enough, right? Mm-hmm. Um, me and Melissa Snow and others at at NCMEC are making this a priority. [00:13:04] They already work with law firms, so they have a, you know, over a dozen law firms who have committed pro bono to assist in this application process. To assist survivors and just very, very narrowly assist with the application process. And then also they have connection and relationship with people they trust in the therapy field, in the medical field. [00:13:29] And so they’re, they’re connecting those two groups up to help streamline the process of getting the applications done. Survivors First is doing it a little bit differently. And we’re doing it differently because we wanna see when survivors come in the door that they have the option to maybe even start their services. [00:13:47] Sandie Morgan: Let’s stop for a second here. Yeah. And tell me what is Survivors first and what is the agenda there? [00:13:56] Carissa Phelps: Yeah. So Survivors First is it. It is a working group that was formed other, it’s under Love Never Fails us. Love Never Fails Us, is a nonprofit. That helps to empower survivor voice. [00:14:10] So Vanessa Russell, who founded Love Never Fails us reached out to me when she heard of the deadline. I was actually on an international flight when it came out on July 31st. And she reached out to me and I just immediately went into action. I had a, me a meeting with 25 of very close friends, allies in the survivor space, um, attorneys, doctors, people who would talk to me right away. Um, from Spain [00:14:34] I had this meeting. I said, let’s, we have, we have to get this done. And so we began meeting, we planned a weekly webinar where every week, Wednesday at 1:00 PM PST, we’re getting people on air talking about. what’s going on with the application process? What’s going on with the remission process, how we can give, um, sort of step-by-step guide to victims and survivors and those who are supporting them, because not every claimant is gonna have an attorney. [00:15:02] So we know that human trafficking advocates are also gonna be helping walk survivors through this form, that some people will not have legal assistance, even though there is the pro bono legal assistance through NCMEC. We hope that everyone has legal assistance, but we don’t think everyone will end up with legal assistance. [00:15:20] So to give people sort of a guide of what to expect, even what if, what to expect even before they go and see a lawyer, if they’d like to think it through. Some people are not sure if they want to do this right? They want more information first. So we’re speaking to survivors, we’re speaking to experts. [00:15:35] We’re speaking to the providers to try to get together and share resources. And as quickly as possible, cut through the red tape and really empower all the allies and attorneys and medical providers who are out there so that we have strong claims built for this, for the claimants, for those survivors. [00:15:56] Sandie Morgan: So time is of the essence. Time, right? Time is of the essence. So if you’re listening to this conversation with Carissa, you need to share this podcast with your survivor network. Even with your anti-trafficking network and engage more survivors, because there are people that we haven’t been able to reach with this message. [00:16:23] And the internet is a common denominator for many of us. Let’s use it for good here. [00:16:31] Carissa Phelps: Yes. And that is one of our key reasons for forming, was just raising the awareness, raising the awareness. Hosting these weekly talks with survivors and then also with the providers, all about getting the information out there, lowering the barriers that exist. [00:16:46] Because some people don’t have computers. They don’t have the ability even to apply. It’s a difficult application. You can’t do it on your phone in one sitting. I’m not saying don’t do that. If that’s your only way to do it and get it done, then get it done, get it done by the deadline for certain. but I just, I really, I believe that there’s, there’s this [00:17:05] gap in understanding that this is for you. A lot of victims will think, well, I didn’t have a prosecution. I didn’t testify against the trafficker When the prosecutor asked me to, maybe I don’t have a claim. No, you still have a claim. It doesn’t mean you don’t have a claim. You can still have a claim, a valid claim if you were trafficked on this site, didn’t have to be proven in court. [00:17:27] It didn’t have to be something that you had to cooperate with law enforcement. This is not court. You’re not going to court. I do suggest trying to get attorney and attorney representation. There are some attorneys that are signing up cases for a contingency fee and even those attorneys we’re working with them. [00:17:43] I understand that model. I work under that model. So we’re working with them to help try to lower the costs that would go to survivors. It would come out of their portion. So we wanna make sure providers are available for those survivors through grant funds, through other means to come up with help for those applications to make them the strongest that they can be without incurring costs to a survivor. [00:18:06] Sandie Morgan: So how do people contact Survivors First? [00:18:11] Carissa Phelps: So SurvivorsFirst.community is our website. We’re also on Love Never fails.com. Love never fails us.com. Under their events tab, we have a webinar link there. at Survivors First dot Community, you’ll find information about the remission process, our webinar links and our resource form so that providers can sign up and share their information, tell us how they wanna be involved, tell us where they wanna be involved. [00:18:40] Tell us their background and experience. We are asking that people have at least one year, 12 months of experience when they sign up. if they’re a provider with something that is trafficking directly related to trafficking, human trafficking and training in that area. We do have some time to train people and some experts who are out there will support. [00:19:00] Specialists because we do need some specialists at times that maybe don’t have training in trafficking might be a dental issue, it might be an, an ocular or ophthalmology issue, could be a skin or dermatology issue. And we, and we, we need those experts too. Those people. To help with treatment plans, but we’d want them working alongside of somebody who has that experience. [00:19:21] Sandie Morgan: So getting this message out is important not just to the survivors, but also to our legal community. Yes. And I started thinking when you first started talking about all the survivors in my world. And how I’m going to share this with them. And now where I am starting to make my next list is all the attorneys and judges and, advocates in the legal system that will be critical for us to meet that 2nd of February deadline. [00:19:56] I’m with you. I’m gonna just say January 31st. Yeah, [00:20:00] Carissa Phelps: yeah, [00:20:00] We will also have a toolkit we’re building for survivors. So I’m working alongside Felicia Rosario, and maybe you have us both on it sometime, but, or she’s. She’s a medically trained, doctor, so she’s medically trained. [00:20:12] She has a md, she’s Dr. Rosario. She’s amazing, and she’s not able to issue the treatment plans necessarily, but she’ll work right alongside of doctors and helping them understand medical codes and right alongside survivors to help them understand how to care for themselves, what to ask for, how to advocate to get their treatment that they need, and they deserve. [00:20:33] A lot of survivors don’t, don’t necessarily understand the connection between something like an autoimmune disorder later in life and the stress that they, that they had, strangulation has come up. Things that dental issues have come up that could have been caused by trafficking or excessive drug use that was, that was forced upon them during the trafficking. [00:20:53] So all these things are things that we can address. tattoo removal, those types of. Scars, tattoos, skin infections, things like that, that would require dermatology. There’s, a [00:21:04] wonderful app that I’ll share with you as one of the links that, Dr. Shadi Kourosh has come up with that links providers who have training and trafficking and also skin related trafficking issues that are available because of her work at Harvard. [00:21:19] So there’s there. These resources are out there. That’s the exciting thing, Sandy, I don’t think 14 years ago we could have said this. No, we would’ve been scrambling in the dark for something, and I know these resources are out there. I hope that these listeners, the listeners that you have that are so faithful, the listeners that you have. [00:21:34] Will sign up on the form both on Backpage, remission network.org, and then also with Survivors First Community. This is a global message, but we really are trying to activate people locally because we know survivors if they hear this message in their own community. That it’ll be more real. We want this to be real. [00:21:54] We want it not just this to be a headline in the news they see, but something that is real and actionable. [00:21:59] Sandie Morgan: I am so excited that as the ending human trafficking podcast community, we get to be front and center to watch. As you lead this survivor-centered initiative, um, what I’d really also like to ask, just because I know we’re gonna have more conversations, but as we lead up to that after February 2nd, what are you looking for in initiatives like Survivor First and shaping the future of our anti-trafficking efforts? [00:22:39] Carissa Phelps: Well, you can, I mean, you can just give me chills right now because I mean the work that we need to do to get ahead of traffickers, like for the first time, for the first time in the history of this movement, we have an opportunity to get ahead of traffickers. If we don’t take it, it is on us. So Web3 is here, Web3 is coming. [00:23:00] It’s here. Blockchain. All this new technology is available, and it is a new frontier, a new world that if we don’t learn and become a part of, then we will have handed it over to traffickers. Once again, like we did with Web 2.0, we will have handed it over and we cannot do that. We can’t stand by while it’s done. [00:23:21] We cannot allow it to happen. We need to get educated and out in front of it. That doesn’t mean by shutting down innovation, that means by being the greatest innovators. That means by being the best innovators, let’s not wait. For people to harm our children before we create tools like Bark or tools that help to regulate their use online, their usage online, and who accesses them, right? [00:23:42] Let’s do this ahead of time. So that’s what I’m calling out to everybody, and that will be my sort of battle cry as I go forward after February 2nd. [00:23:51] Sandie Morgan: Oh my goodness. I am so inspired. I can’t wait to join your team. Before I sign off, I want you to tell me about the books in the background of your screen. [00:24:02] Carissa Phelps: Okay. So, um, in human trafficking, so I worked some of that time during our, during from 2019, I filed my first case against, 15 defendants, a whole host of hotels, motels, and then also, Craigslist. So my client was this amazing, very brave client who had been trafficked as a minor, and she stood up and to, to those individuals, to those hotels, and to the. [00:24:30] One of them being Motel six, G six, one of them being, Craigslist. And she, we fought, we fought all the way to the Ninth Circuit. And unfortunately, I’ll tell you my new book that I’m working on that’s gonna take up the next base over here is gonna be called Bad Law because I don’t think that the ninth Circuit got it right when they reviewed our case. [00:24:49] Um, there are other cases who were argued alongside of me that continue to fight. My client was, was sort of done and reached a, a resolution, that was agreeable for both parties and so I was just so proud of her for fighting. I worked for, um. Mike Papantonio and Levin Papantonio Rafferty when I was doing that, and he was writing his book in human trafficking at that time and became a huge ally and friend to the world of, of anti-trafficking. [00:25:15] He supported my work in filing multiple lawsuits, creating a whole department at Levin Papantonio Rafferty, and at his conference or their conference, really Mass Torts Made Perfect. That is in Las Vegas that reaches so many attorneys, thousands of attorneys around the world. Really. And so this has been, a fight that Levin Papantonio has been in, and I’m in their studio and this is his book. [00:25:38] Oh. So that’s what’s, what’s Behind Me. Oh, I love that. And then Michael Book, runaway Girl. And, one of my colleagues from here, from the office had a copy and brought it in. So my book that, I am so proud of, but came out in 2012, so not, not long after we had met, it was coming out. it’s due for not just an update, but also, like I said, I have a whole nother book, not just another chapter that I’ve lived in the last decade and a half. [00:26:02] So that will be the next book that will be, that’ll be the next book that I come out with, and I’m excited about. [00:26:08] Sandie Morgan: Carissa, you are an inspiring survivor leader, and I wanna be an ally and bring a community of allies to sign on. Go to your website. We’ll put all the links in our show notes for everybody. [00:26:27] Thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you. [00:26:30] Carissa Phelps: Thank you. Thank you. [00:26:32] Speaker 6: Thank you to Carissa Phelps. This episode, this conversation really showed survivor-centered justice and it’s happening right now. We can’t let that $215 million sit there unclaimed share this episode, the deadline. February 2nd, 2026. This is a wake up call for a movement beyond the deadline. How are we going to promote survivor centered justice? [00:27:07] If this is your first episode of the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast, go to our website, endinghumantrafficking.org. You’ll find show notes, tons of resources [00:27:22] and of course you can listen to past episodes, for instance, Carissa Phelps was on the podcast in our first year, episode number 19, and if you’d like to help us grow the podcast, please connect on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. [00:27:44] Thank you for listening. [00:27:46]

Erin West joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they uncover why that random text asking “Can you come for ribs?” might be the opening move in a $5 billion crime operation targeting vulnerable people through sophisticated romance and investment scams known as pig butchering. ERIN WEST Erin West is a globally recognized expert in transnational organized crime and the founder and president of Operation Shamrock, a nonprofit uniting law enforcement, industry, and everyday citizens to disrupt pig butchering scams—the world’s fastest-growing form of transnational organized crime. After 26 years as a prosecutor, including eight years on the REACT High-Tech Task Force where she became known for her relentless pursuit of cryptocurrency-enabled criminals, Erin retired to launch this cross-border fight to expose the scam economy and protect both victims and the trafficked workers forced to run these schemes. She is also the host of “Stolen,” a podcast that takes listeners inside the darkest corners of the scamdemic, where love is weaponized and billions are laundered. As a sought-after international speaker and educator, Erin continues to equip audiences worldwide to use their skills and platforms to fight back against these sophisticated criminal enterprises. KEY POINTS * Pig butchering scams are long cons that can last up to four months, involving four hours of daily texting to build the relationship victims have always wanted before stealing their life savings. * Chinese organized criminals created this crime model by repurposing casino towers in Southeast Asia during COVID, literally translating “pig butchering” as fattening up victims with love bombing before cutting their throats financially. * The scams begin with seemingly innocent outreach through wrong number texts, LinkedIn connections, or social media befriending, then quickly move to encrypted platforms like WhatsApp to conduct criminal activity without oversight. * Hundreds of thousands of people from Africa, Bangladesh, and Pakistan are being trafficked to Southeast Asia under false job promises, then forced to work 16 hours a day running these scams under threat of violence. * Victims of forced criminality face arrest and detention when compounds are raided because they’re treated as criminals rather than trafficking victims, creating a massive repatriation crisis. * The scale of this crime is unprecedented, with victims reporting losses of $4.9 billion in 2024 alone, representing a generation’s worth of stolen wealth from retirement and college savings accounts. * End-to-end encryption, while protective for legitimate users, is weaponized by criminals to conduct relationships and transactions away from law enforcement visibility. * Effective response requires unprecedented cross-sector collaboration between banking, law enforcement, cryptocurrency platforms, diplomacy, victim assistance, and NGOs working together rather than in silos. RESOURCES * 351 – Hidden Crimes: Fraud and its Impact on Vulnerable Communities [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/351-hidden-crimes-fraud-and-its-impact-on-vulnerable-communities/] * Operation Shamrock [https://operationshamrock.org/] * Stolen Podcast [https://operationshamrock.org/library/podcast-stolen-erin-west] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Sandie Morgan: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. I’m Dr. Sandie Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issue, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. [00:00:23] Today, we’ll discover why that random text asking “Can you come for ribs?” might be the opening move in a $5 billion crime operation [00:00:36] I’m joined today by Erin West, founder and president of Operation Shamrock, and former prosecutor who spent 26 and a half years. Fighting high tech crimes. And now here’s our interview. [00:00:53] [00:00:54] Sandie Morgan: Welcome to the podcast Erin West. I am so delighted to meet you. [00:01:02] Erin West: Thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I’m delighted to be here. [00:01:05] Sandie Morgan: It was really interesting. [00:01:07] Debbie Deem, who was on episode 351, mentioned you and she mentioned you in her context talking about pig butchering, and she had my full attention right away. And then she talked about your nonprofit. So, at the top of this interview, I wanna frame everything with what you are doing with Operation Shamrock. [00:01:37] Somehow my imagination took me to Ireland, so, tell us what that is. [00:01:44] Erin West: Sure. So I was a prosecutor for 26 and a half years, and the last three years of my career I was deluged with victims of a certain type of crime known as pig butchering. It’s a long con, it is a romance slash investment scam. And what I was seeing was that we had never seen anything like this before, we’d never seen a scale like this, and ultimately, my passion for trying to do something about it made me realize that I needed to leave my career, retire from being a prosecutor and open a nonprofit. [00:02:26] At Operation Shamrock, our mission is to educate about, mobilize against and disrupt transnational organized crime. The, the Chinese organized criminals that are, that are running this horrible crime. And so that’s what we do. [00:02:41] Sandie Morgan: So what is a long con? [00:02:44] Erin West: Yeah. You know, I think that, and a good example of a short con would be those calls that you get where you are led to believe that, your, your grandchild is in custody somewhere and you need to go put money in an ATM real quick. That’s a, that’s a deceptive trick. [00:03:01] Sandie Morgan: oh, I got a text, I got a text yesterday that said, mom, I lost my phone. Text me at this number. [00:03:12] Erin West: Yeah, [00:03:13] Sandie Morgan: like, ah, [00:03:15] Erin West: Ugh. That’s, and the fact that that happened to you yesterday shows how ubiquitous these crimes are. So, so when you ask about a long con, a long con is something where, oh my gosh. And I just got a text right now. That says hello. I’m Sophia from the Indeed Human Resources Team. We recently came across your outstanding resume. [00:03:39] That’s a job scam and it’s happening. That’s, that’s how frequently this is happening. So the long con is, is when you get one of those texts that says, Hey, I’m making ribs tonight. Can you come over and you say, oh, I think you have the wrong number. And then you start a, what can be up to four months of a relationship with someone that you met in a very random way on the internet. [00:04:03] These bad actors have tried and true techniques that they use to lure you into believing that you are in a legitimate relationship and it’s the kind of relationship that you’ve always wanted. [00:04:16] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. So I’ve done so much work in the youth prevention field, and we always call that like the Romeo Pimp, the Romance Con, those kinds of things. [00:04:31] And so those kids don’t have any big money. So why is this happening? [00:04:37] Erin West: I’ll say that the enemy is so sophisticated that they are attacking every, every demographic. And so they have, we’ve recently found out that sextortion is coming out of the very same compounds that are doing these long cons, and the enemy is willing to do anything to make, to make money. So the short amount of time it takes to get some money out of, out of younger victims, they’ll do that, but they’ll invest a longer amount of time when they know that you have a retirement account or you have funded college accounts for your kids, they will know that it’s worth the amount of time to do that [00:05:23] Sandie Morgan: Okay, so how long would a long con go? Like weeks, four months. Okay. So we’re talking regular communication. [00:05:33] Erin West: We’re talking four hours a day of texting. We are talking, we are talking that they become the relationship that that victim has always wanted. That they are the, the happy, the happily ever after. They’re selling a dream, and it takes a minute to sell a dream like that. [00:05:50] Sandie Morgan: Mm. So Debbie first mentioned pig butchering in our episode 351 when we were talking about online scams, particularly targeting senior citizens. And I think the stat she shared with us was $4.9 billion in 2024. Can you really break down what a pig butchering scam looks like, the steps, how do I begin to recognize when that’s what’s happening? [00:06:27] And how did it get a name like that? [00:06:29] Erin West: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, so you’re asking all the right questions. So let, let’s start with that part first. So, I’m gonna take you back to what was happening in Southeast Asia. That’s where this is coming from, in, in COVID Times and Chinese organized criminals. And when I say that, I mean legitimate Chinese organized criminals. [00:06:48] Members of the triad, thought it would be great to build a bunch of casinos in Cambodia and lure Chinese gamblers down there and make money from gambling. And when, COVID hit and people weren’t moving, they said, well, let’s figure out another way to fill these large buildings that we have and let’s figure out another way to make money. [00:07:09] So they thought, Sha Zhu Pan, that is the Chinese term for it. It literally translates to pig butchering. And the idea is, let’s fill those towers with, with workers and have them fatten up the pig, build these love bomb relationships with victims, and then once the victims are in, let’s cut their throats and let’s take everything they have. [00:07:35] Sandie Morgan: Oh my gosh. That’s brutal. [00:07:37] Erin West: And so that’s what pig butchering really means. And it is, it is vile in so many ways. For a long time, there was a whole movement to not call it pig butchering because that was, that was cruel to victims. [00:07:50] But I think that the reason why we need to call it pig butchering is that’s what they call it, and it gets attention and it gets attention to what is a crime, the unknown crime that is killing a whole strata of our society. [00:08:07] And these people aren’t talking about it because they feel shame and embarrassment. So when we think about how a pig butchering scam works, it begins with an initial reach out. It could be one of those texts we’ve talked about, or it could be someone friending you on LinkedIn connecting with you and saying, I see that you’ve recently moved to Southern California. [00:08:30] My niece is thinking of moving there. Can you tell me what a good neighborhood is for a young woman? or something like that, that gets your attention and, and feels not at all nefarious. And you, you might think, oh, I’d like to be helpful. It could be someone befriending you in your over fifties women’s travel group on Facebook, which happened to me. [00:08:52] It could be someone on a dating app. And so what it is, is there’s this initial reach out. There’s an initial. Connection. And from there they move that connection to wherever it started, to WhatsApp or to Signal or to Telegram. Somewhere that’s end to end encrypted and over time they [00:09:11] Sandie Morgan: Wait stop that for just a second [00:09:12] Erin West: You stop me whenever you want. [00:09:14] Sandie Morgan: Okay. Because I’m like listening to this as a first timer and I’m thinking, oh, wait a minute my tech guy told me, end-to-end encryption will protect me. And now you are telling me they choose end-to-end encryption. Go back. [00:09:31] Erin West: I am so glad that you stopped me because this is important to me. I think a lot of people in this industry use a lot of buzzwords terms. They talk through stuff and, and it makes it difficult to say, wait, wait, wait. Stop. Let me, let me make sure I understand that piece. So I’m glad you stopped me. So let’s talk about end-to-end encryption. [00:09:49] End-to-end encryption is great, if you want to keep a secret. It is great if you want to send information to someone else that you don’t want anyone looking at, and that’s what these bad guys want. They want to be able to communicate you with you in a space where there’s no one looking. So, I just saw an example on Airbnb this morning where somebody was talking on Airbnb. [00:10:16] The guy wanted them to, to speak in WhatsApp. They went to WhatsApp and he started suggesting that they go on a date. So the, the point is WhatsApp is where things happen that people want to conceal. So it can be good for you. If you want to talk to your son and have him send you his checking account number in a, in a concealed way, it can be not good for you when you are getting lured into a fictitious relationship over a four month period. [00:10:48] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Okay. So pick up again from the encrypted. [00:10:54] Erin West: So then, uh, these texts come in and these texts are, always good morning. How are you? Good. Uh, have a good night. Sleep well, always, and just absolutely checking in on every aspect of your day with a genuine interest. I spoke with a victim last week who said, you know, I, lost $75,000, but I, would almost pay that for the relationship that I had. [00:11:19] We are, yeah, I see you reacting to that because it’s, it’s a lot right. [00:11:23] Sandie Morgan: Mm-hmm. [00:11:25] Erin West: We are living in a society where people are so desperate for a human connection, that they’re, they’re willing to trade quite a bit for that human connection. What I’ve heard other victims say is, I never felt so heard, understood, listened to. [00:11:41] The enemy is masterful in creating a very human connection that feels very, very real. [00:11:50] Sandie Morgan: So, one of the things that, in my conversation with Debbie Deem and with others is the link to human trafficking is really nebulous sometimes with this, because we’re, we’re talking about some of the same fraud techniques, but then they’re not selling the person, they’re scamming the person or fraud. Ah, wait a minute, Debbie told me not to use the word scam because it’s shame-based. Yeah, right. So I’m still [00:12:24] Erin West: We’re we’re learning [00:12:25] We’re all learning, [00:12:26] Sandie Morgan: but the idea of those casinos that were built also created a venue where forced criminality became an issue, and what I understand is luring. So it’s like this is a multi-level crime where they’re luring workers to come to a job where then it isn’t what they thought it would be, which is very typical in trafficking, and now they are forced to do the scams. And what does that forced criminality look like? [00:13:10] Erin West: It is horrifying and the worst part of this entire business in that if I take you back to Chinese organized crime building, these casino towers in Cambodia COVID hits, people aren’t moving. They decide to go to pig butchering. Well, that requires a lot of human workers. And so to do that, they started flooding Meta, with advertisements for, for jobs. [00:13:39] And at that period of time, and still today, there’s a large unemployment rate in Southeast Asia. Particularly in Africa, and we’ll get to that in a minute. But what’s happening is, they are luring people with the idea of getting a real job. And so the advertisements are very official looking. [00:14:00] They are interviewing people, they’re making them take a typing test. They have every reason to believe that they are coming to Bangkok to have a legitimate job in a live work environment where they will be able to send money home, and the level of deception is outrageous. When you think of luring a human being to leave their home and come to [00:14:24] a country that is foreign to them. When they arrive at the airport, they’re met, their passports are taken, their phones are taken, and they are driven hours on end. Some are put in boats and moved across rivers. They’re, they’re moved against their will and then they are put into a facility where they go through a guard gate with guards with AK 40 sevens, and now they’re told, no, you’re not here to do data entry [00:14:49] You are here to scam your fellow humans. You are here to make people fall in love with you and then steal all of their money and you’ll be doing this 16 hours a day and if you don’t do it, we’ll beat you and we’ll make you beat your peers and we will. I mean, the level of the level of criminality involved in making people do such a horrific task is war crimes level. [00:15:15] It’s, it’s beyond. It’s hard to stomach what I’ve heard about how they motivate people to do this to their fellow humans. It’s horrific, and the scale of it is. Unbelievable. We have never seen this level of forced criminality. And if I could go to Africa for a second, that’s where they’re really recruiting hard right now because Africans speak English. [00:15:42] They’re recruiting hard in Kenya, in Uganda, and they, and now we’ve got a whole sociological issue when you traffic hundreds of thousands of people to a different area of the globe and, and keep them in custody and make them do this work. [00:15:58] Sandie Morgan: So are they moving them from Africa to like Cambodia? [00:16:02] Erin West: That’s exactly what’s happening. And so what we know is I’m in contact with a Ugandan who’s inside a, uh, in Cambodia, and he tells me the nationalities of the people around him and their Kenyans, Ugandans, their Bangladeshi, they’re Pakistanis, they’re coming from, from countries where that country is not going to stand up and fight for them. [00:16:24] Those countries have enough on their plate without fighting to get to repatriate, people that have been stolen from them. And so it’s very intentional. It’s very, it’s very well thought out. It’s sophisticated and it’s, and most importantly it’s working and it’s working at a scale that we could not even contemplate. [00:16:44] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Wow. Okay. So the forced criminality part, when we’re talking about human trafficking, we’ve covered that in this podcast when, particularly juveniles have been engaged in delivering drugs or recruiting for the gang that’s controlling them. And now when someone is found in a facility that is doing the the scamming. [00:17:24] And creating this pig butchering scenario, instead of being rescued, they have been reportedly arrested. Talk about that. [00:17:37] Erin West: So what happens is, is these victims are lured recruited into doing this dirty business. They don’t know this. They, my Ugandan colleague said that he was working for a hundred dollars a month in an internet cafe in Uganda. [00:17:54] A fellow Ugandan came in and said, would you like to make $1,000 a month? And he his 23 years old and he thought, yeah, I think I could go abroad for six months and make more money than I’ve ever thought about. Yes, I think I would like to do that. And now he is in a compound in Cambodia, unable to get out. [00:18:13] There’s, I’ve been trying for six weeks to figure out a way to get him out of there, and I’ve, I’ve pulled every thread I can think of, and I do not have a way to get him out of there. But when we think about what happens to them in the rare occasions that they do get released. They are treated as criminals in that country because you don’t have a visa to be in this country. [00:18:39] You came in here illegally and through no fault of their own, right. So, so they came to, they came to Thailand legally because they thought they were getting a job. They get moved to other countries. the best example of this is, is the Philippines. So the Philippines is one of the few countries to actually disrupt some of these scam compounds. [00:19:03] And when they do that, now they’re left with, okay, we’ve disrupted this compound. We have 650 people. That, when you think of, when you think of like, technically about how this is gonna work, okay, so now we’ve, we’ve got 650 people, where are we gonna put them? What are we going to feed them? How are we gonna make sure they have medicine and whatever they need? [00:19:24] And then how are we gonna, how are we gonna sort out who’s a bad guy and who is a human trafficked victim? And then how are we gonna repatriate them? And it’s a massive, massive problem. And so what happens is everyone gets held as though they are a criminal until we, until they can sort stuff out. So another example is in Thailand where there was a crackdown in February of 2025 where, 5,000 people were released from Myanmar compounds. [00:19:55] I think it was 7,000. And immediately China came and got their 5,000 people. They ran seven 30 sevens down to China and down from China into Thailand and picked up their people. Brazil came and got their people other countries came and got their people and they were left with 137 Ethiopians and Ethiopia said, we are not coming to get these people. [00:20:20] We don’t have the money and we’re not doing it. So then you have 137 people who are being held. They, they, they can’t, they’re not legally allowed anywhere right now. Thailand doesn’t want them in their country. Ethiopia won’t come get them. And so what do we do? No matter how we look at this, no matter what happens in the next five years, we’re going to have a huge repatriation problem, and we are going to really see the effects of what happens when you move hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world into Southeast Asia and abuse them for five years or six years or seven. [00:20:55] Like, we don’t know how this ends. We are in the middle of it, but it, it’s not going to be good. [00:21:00] Sandie Morgan: So what is it going to take, and I know you are like, I am a huge proponent of collaboration, but what kind of cross-sector collaboration will it take to address this? [00:21:18] Erin West: Yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking about this and I, I know that this doesn’t end until the world stands up against this, and this doesn’t end until we bring together banking, law enforcement, crypto diplomacy, victim assistance, and NGOs. And I think what we keep seeing is different parts of those connecting and siloing the information. [00:21:44] This is not a who done it. We know who’s responsible. We know who’s behind all these, and we know that they are for the most part named, named Chinese organized criminals that we’re already familiar with. So in order to do something about that, we need to work together using every tool in our arsenal. So we need American law enforcement to indict these people and work with Interpol to get them extradited into the United States. [00:22:14] We need diplomacy, we need American diplomats on the ground in Southeast Asia really forcing their hand and limiting access to American funds — Cambodia if you continue to allow this dirty business, if you continue to allow your country to be the scam economy that is stealing a generation’s worth of wealth from the United States, we are going to make your life very difficult. [00:22:40] Sandie Morgan: Okay, so, you also mentioned banks and crypto. [00:22:45] And these are not cross sector collaborators that I’ve worked with. Uh, law enforcement, victim services, State Department, all of that. This is the bread and butter of collaboration and anti-trafficking. How do we engage with banks? And I don’t even know where to begin with crypto. [00:23:09] Erin West: So what I will say is that, banks have been coming to the table with regard to this because banks are the ones who are regulated of this whole industry. And so when I think of where the, where the issues are coming from, to me they are, are social media is, is enabling this. [00:23:30] Our banks need education to help them stop the movement of money and crypto. I think, I think crypto has visibility into where this money is going. Everybody has a piece of this. So with banks, I think it’s super important and I’ve been working to educate credit unions, banking about the gravity of the problem. [00:23:53] I think in a, in banking, everyone from, the person emptying the trash at night to the person in, in the CEO’s office needs to understand the gravity of how big this problem is. And so, it’s important to help educate them because what’s happening with banks and why banks are relevant is that our victims have to, they have to move the money and to move the money. [00:24:17] It’s been the bank’s interest generally in helping you move your money as smoothly and as quickly as you’d like it to be. And we need to help them understand that adding friction to that makes sense and that adding friction to that when we are in a scamdemic makes sense. And so that’s, that’s how our banking fits in. [00:24:40] Sandie Morgan: Okay. And we did a couple of podcasts and, listeners, I’ll find those links and put them in the show notes. [00:24:49] And we interviewed folks from Validate where they do that kind of forensic accounting to find the bad actors when we hosted a round table on the financial implications of human trafficking. Erin, this has been such a challenging conversation. There is so much more we need to learn. How do we follow you? [00:25:16] Erin West: Thank you for asking. So I, I have a website. It’s operationshamrock.org. And because it is such a challenging thing to learn, I started my own podcast and my podcast is called Stolen. It’s on Apple Podcasts on Spotify. Anywhere you get your podcasts go to Stolen with Erin West. And what it does is it breaks this down in a way that [00:25:40] it is understandable to my Aunt Terry. Everybody needs to understand what is happening out there. And so I talk to survivors of this. I talk to, police officers who engage in, in trying to fix it, and I talk to banking, so it’s a great way to stay up to date with what is happening out there. [00:25:58] Sandie Morgan: All right. What a delight to meet you now I understand Debbie Deem’s fascination with what you’re doing and commitment to partner. [00:26:10] And we will too. Thank you so much for coming today. [00:26:13] Erin West: Thank you for having me. [00:26:15] Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Erin. You opened our eyes to pig butchering scams. You made us aware that end-to-end encryption can be weaponized by criminals, not just protective for users. That changes how we think about digital safety completely. Listeners, if you loved this conversation, make sure you check out our website@endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources. If you’d love to help us grow this podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with someone and connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. [00:27:02] And as always, thanks for listening.

Dr. Beth Lorance joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they discover how a high school coach gave one of his players expensive gifts, things her mother had refused to buy, with the mom posting online asking what to do, not realizing she was witnessing grooming behavior that creates the same vulnerabilities traffickers exploit in trusted spaces throughout our communities. DR. BETH LORANCE Dr. Beth Lorance is an adjunct professor at Vanguard University, where she teaches Family Violence and has also taught Introduction to Psychology and Psychology of the Family. She earned her PsyD in Clinical Psychology and previously served as the director of Vanguard’s counseling center. In addition to her academic background, Beth is a licensed minister with the Assemblies of God, which allows her to bring both psychological expertise and theological insight into conversations about abuse, trauma, and healing. Her passion is deeply personal, rooted in her own family history of child sexual abuse, and she is committed to equipping others to use their voices to prevent abuse, protect the vulnerable, and walk alongside survivors. Beth also works to bring awareness into the church, encouraging faith communities to reflect Jesus’ response to victims and to take seriously the call to protect those who are most vulnerable. KEY POINTS * Family violence creates deep vulnerabilities by teaching children harmful lessons that love is transactional, they’re not enough, and there’s something wrong with them that they can’t overcome – wounds that become embedded in their brain chemistry when trauma happens at a young age. * Traffickers don’t create vulnerabilities but rather exploit existing wounds from family abuse, stepping into unmet needs and exploiting lessons already learned about intimacy being tied to exploitation. * Statistics reveal that 90% of abusers are known to their victims with only 10% being strangers, and 31% of traffickers are actually family members of the victim, making “stranger danger” education insufficient. * Grooming is a process of control and manipulation that builds trust, chips away boundaries, and creates dependency so victims willingly comply when lines are crossed into inappropriate behavior because they’ve been normalized to the perpetrator’s actions. * Training is essential for leaders, staff, pastors, volunteers, and teachers to recognize grooming signs like expensive gift-giving, requests for secrecy, and isolating language such as “your parents don’t understand you, but I do.” * Clear boundaries and policies are crucial, including no one-on-one supervision between adults and children, with swift consequences when policies aren’t followed to prevent grooming opportunities. * Children need to be empowered to say no even to trusted adults, with parents and leaders respecting their boundaries and teaching them about “tricky people” rather than just strangers. * Trauma-informed communities must stop asking “what’s wrong with you?” and instead listen without judgment, sitting with broken people without requiring them to change or behave in prescribed ways to receive care. * Parents should be vigilant about adults in their children’s lives, knowing what interactions look like and requiring that any adult who wants to be friends with their child must be friends with the parent first. * Breaking the cycle requires communities that believe victims, provide someone to stand up for those who can’t yet stand up for themselves, and create new family structures when biological families fail to protect. RESOURCES * 204 – Is Your Organization Trauma Informed and Why Should It Be? [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/204/] * 124 – Prevention: Trauma Informed and Transformational Schools [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/124/] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Sandie Morgan: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. I’m 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. Today I’m joined by Dr. [00:00:22] Beth Lorance. She’s an adjunct professor at Vanguard and former director of Vanguard’s Counseling Center. Beth earned her PsyD in clinical psychology and is also a licensed minister. Today we’ll discover how a high school coach gave one of his players expensive gifts, things her mother had refused to buy. [00:00:49] The mom posted online asking what to do, not realizing she was witnessing grooming behavior. This same pattern creates vulnerabilities that traffickers exploit, and it’s happening in trusted spaces throughout your community. Now here’s our interview. [00:01:11] Well, Dr. Beth Lorance, I am so excited to have you on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast today. [00:01:20] Beth Lorance: I am excited to be here. [00:01:21] Sandie Morgan: We were just chatting before I hit the record button, and we have known each other for two decades. [00:01:28] Beth Lorance: It’s been a long time. [00:01:30] Sandie Morgan: and what a deep friendship and collegiality, as I was pursuing my PhD and you were pursuing your PsyD and clinical psychology [00:01:44] and, changing off, I taught family violence. Now you teach family violence and I’m a guest in your class, and [00:01:54] Beth Lorance: I know. It’s wonderful. [00:01:56] Sandie Morgan: love it, the collegiality and just tossing things back and forth as we work together to make things better for our kids. [00:02:07] So we’re gonna talk today about the link between family violence and human trafficking. [00:02:14] And I know in my world that many of the victims of human trafficking that we’ve served right here in Orange County, California started with some kind of childhood trauma, [00:02:31] and that often happened in a family context, [00:02:35] so I would like to start with talking about how you help your students unpack the complex dynamics of abuse and how that might contribute to fostering vulnerabilities that then traffickers exploit. [00:02:59] Beth Lorance: Yeah. really when we look at family violence, what we see is that it creates all of these vulnerabilities in a person’s life. And if they don’t find healing from those vulnerabilities, if they don’t come to recognize them, if they don’t come to get over them, get over is not the right terminology, but to, um, move beyond them, [00:03:21] then they can be exploited later on in life. And we do that in my class as we talk about what family violence does for an individual. And we look at things like, the lessons that abuse teaches a person. And when a person faces trauma or abuse at a young age, they learn these lessons that they’re not enough, [00:03:42] that love is transactional, that there’s something wrong with them that they can’t overcome. And, no matter what the type of abuse is, if it’s sexual abuse or emotional abuse, neglect or physical abuse, they begin to learn these lessons. And it’s more than just a, like a lesson you would learn in school. [00:04:03] If the trauma happens at a young age, it begins to rewire your brain chemistry and it really becomes embedded in how you see the world and how you, interact with people around you. How you experience, love. You begin to confuse danger with love or attention. it will impair a person’s decision making. [00:04:25] It will increase their fear response. And all of that is because of this trauma that they experienced in their family at a young age or even at a middle age, like a adolescent, that kind of thing. And so that’s what we do in my classes. We unpack that and we look at how, that impacts a person and how we can prevent and intervene and bring healing to people that have experienced that in their lives. [00:04:52] Sandie Morgan: So let’s go and look at this from the perspective of a victim of human trafficking. [00:05:00] We often credit the traffickers at being master manipulators. They start grooming someone and three weeks later they are turning them out in a prostituted situation, [00:05:14] but that grooming seems to have started at a much younger age. Can you connect the dots for me? [00:05:24] Beth Lorance: Yeah. So there’s a couple of ways to look at that. The first is, if we look at example of a person that maybe was neglected at a young age, and so they have, they weren’t given their basic needs of life. And so they, come to see themselves as an invisible and unwanted, they don’t have their, any affection that they, needs being met. [00:05:48] those kinds of things. And they begin, they, that they begin to believe that they are not, they do not deserve to be cared for at all. and that leaves them vulnerable. So a trafficker can step right into that vulnerability and say, I can provide these unmet needs for you, but this is just what you need to do for me so that I can provide those unmet needs for you. [00:06:13] Or somebody that has experienced sexual abuse, they are taught and they learn lessons about and lies really about intimacy and relationships, and they come to believe that love is tied to exploitation. They, learn that their value is only what they can give someone else. [00:06:32] And these are wounds that are deep that a trafficker can just step right into and exploit for their own purposes. And so, when we talk about grooming, we’re not talking about a trafficker coming in and grooming somebody that comes from a family where they’ve learned they have value or they learned that they can be, [00:06:54] stand up for themselves, or they’ve learned that they have a voice. They already have these deep wounds and these lessons that they’ve learned that allow the trafficker to exploit those things. [00:07:06] Sandie Morgan: So when I am looking at this grooming process. That starts from a base of lessons learned and. Honestly, when you first started talking about lessons learned, I’m an educator and I love learning, and so hearing lessons learned in a negative context is like fingernails on a chalkboard [00:07:34] for me. Why? Our students, why are my kiddos learning lessons that are wrong? And those lessons are then deeply ingrained from the time they’re a child. [00:07:48] Whether it’s the, the violence is the first response, whether it’s the neglect. And one thing I used to teach the family violence class. I wanted to see my students’ faces when they began to understand that neglect is often the number one [00:08:12] prevalent form of abuse. [00:08:15] There are no marks. It’s all internal, but it creates a very fertile field for the kind of manipulation and coercion that traffickers use. So. [00:08:30] Thinking about, how they introduce coercion into that grooming process. What does that look like? [00:08:41] Beth Lorance: So, when we talk about grooming, we have to really, for some people, we have to define what do we mean by grooming? And it’s this idea that, um, it’s a really a process of control and manipulation that. Begins to build trust in a person. it chips away their boundaries. [00:09:00] It creates dependency so that when the line is crossed to inappropriate behavior or wanting the person to do something that’s, that’s inappropriate to trafficking somebody, They are already well willing to do that because they trust this person, they love this person, this person is meeting their needs. And they, it may confuse them, like, why is this person that loves me or that I trust wants me to do these things? But they’ve been normalized into how this person behaves. So I think of a person who, a, a groomer who is very charismatic, very gregarious, very friendly, very loving, and starts to show affection to somebody, puts their arm around them, gives them a hug, and wears down this idea that physical touch is inappropriate with a, with somebody of this age, and when they then cross the line into something. [00:09:58] inappropriate, the victim is like, oh, this is normal. This person loves me. This person is just this way with me. And because of that, they’re able to, they’re able to do what they need, what they want to do with the, with the victim. [00:10:14] Sandie Morgan: Okay. So what you’re describing feels natural [00:10:20] for, for this child or this, young person and just in the last week, we both live here in Orange County, a high school coach and a church staff member were arrested for child abuse. [00:10:36] They were entrusted communities where giving a kiddo a hug or something is, it feels okay. Right? [00:10:46] So talk to me about our fixation on Stranger Danger and not understanding how we protect our kids in, in our trusted communities. [00:11:01] And I’m using air quotes. [00:11:03] Beth Lorance: Yeah. Well, Perpetrators of abuse can be anywhere. they, they can be coaches, like you mentioned. They can be teachers, they can be, people in your church, your pastors, your lay leaders. They can be a close family friend. Really what we’re finding now, statistics show the CDC has come out with statistics that [00:11:23] say the 90% of abusers are known to their victims, and only 10% are actually strangers. and then when we look at trafficking specifically, the US State Department came out with a statistic that said 31% of tracker traffickers are actually family members of the victim. And when we, when we look at that, we’re looking at people that you are in your everyday life, that know your family, that know your parents, and we’re not warning our children how, or teaching our children how to stay safe from them. [00:12:00] And we’re not. being vigilant when we look at interactions between these quote unquote trusted individuals versus strangers out there, and I like to say, you know, when I was a kid, we were taught stranger danger in school, you see a stranger and you run away, you yell, you do all these things. What I teach my kids is we need to be worried about tricky people. [00:12:26] And tricky people are people that try to trick you into doing something that is wrong or that you don’t wanna do. And, it can look like a variety of things. It can look like saying, let’s keep this a secret from your mom. You know, we’re gonna have this special moment that we keep a secret from her. [00:12:45] Here’s, here’s a lot of gifts, giving gifts to the child or the young adult and saying, oh, but don’t tell anybody about that I’m giving you this gift. They won’t understand or saying to a child, your, or a teenager, your mom doesn’t understand you, your dad doesn’t understand you, but I understand you. So you can tell me your secrets and I will understand what you’re going through and be here for you. And when we’re more vigilant about adults in our children’s lives that are doing those kinds of things, we can begin to protect them from groomers and things like this. [00:13:20] Sandie Morgan: So when I was teaching that class, you were my guest [00:13:26] and, I remember talking to you about one of my students who wasn’t able to rejoin her family for Christmas because her abuser was a relative who would be at the holiday table. Talk about what happens when this strikes a family unit. [00:13:53] Beth Lorance: Well, this really, [00:13:54] Hits into my personal story and I come from a family that has a history of family violence. This is why I am passionate about this topic and I so enjoy teaching the class family violence that I teach. And I came from a family that, from the outside it looked very perfect. [00:14:15] It looked like, you know, it’s the kind of family you wanna be a part of. We were large. We got along well from the outside. We were very close. We spent a lot of time together. I was raised in the church. My parents were missionaries. So my dad was a minister. All of my growing up years. My grandparents were very faithful church attenders. [00:14:37] They were, they taught Sunday school, they were on the board. They did everything you can to volunteer at a church. But what nobody knew was that my family had a very dark secret, and that was that my grandfather was a child molester. [00:14:55] And he, had been molesting children in our family, children outside of our family, people that saw him as a trusted adult, people that saw him as their church leader, as their educator. [00:15:10] and, for many years, and this did not come out until I was an adult, until I was in college. And while I was never a direct victim of my. Grandfather. Many of the people in my family, many of my siblings and my cousins, and my aunts and uncles were victims of my grandfather. And so when we talk about how do you then live with an abuser, it becomes very difficult because especially when you’re disclosing for the first time and you’re having to work through all of your feelings about that. [00:15:48] And when that. That abuser is protected by other family members and you’re not allowed to talk about it or you’re not believed, that this could be happening. And I was very lucky in my family. We were very lucky that the victims were believed from the beginning, and that when my grandfather was finally confronted, he confessed and he ended up going to prison. [00:16:12] where he has since passed away in prison and that was, he passed away about 15 years ago. but my story is unusual in that most victims are not believed by their families. And so then to go and be a part of that family unit is a very difficult thing and it takes a lot of, um, strength of mind and of. [00:16:32] Of will to say this isn’t right and I’m gonna stand up against what happened to me. And so there’s really no good answer except for having somebody that can walk alongside the victim and say, until you have the strength to stand up for yourself, I will stand up for you. And I will be your voice and I will listen to the ways in which your family hurt you. [00:16:56] And I believe you. And if you need a new family, we will, we will be family so that you don’t have to subject yourself to that. And, it’s a long process to get to a point where, they feel that they can stand up for themselves, then [00:17:14] Sandie Morgan: So breaking that silence [00:17:17] and then being believed, and particularly thinking through how a community can be more trauma informed, [00:17:27] that’s going to support the, the healing process. [00:17:31] So. [00:17:32] Beth Lorance: Yes. [00:17:33] Sandie Morgan: What does trauma informed look like? Okay, so your family situation [00:17:38] was in the church and Oh my gosh. In the church there is so much shame. [00:17:43] some families just quit going to church. What do you say to church leaders to make sure their team is trauma informed? [00:17:57] Beth Lorance: We need to stop asking the question, What’s wrong with you? You know, I think that’s so much what people do is they’re saying, what’s, what’s wrong? why are you acting this way? Why are you, why is that happening to you? And just listening and listening and being supportive and being nonjudgmental. [00:18:19] And so for me, it’s, when I talk, speak to church leaders, I talk about how, Jesus calls us to get down in the broken places with broken people and listen to them. and not to try to change them, not to be judgmental, not to try to tell them how they’re supposed to be responding, but to just be with them. [00:18:43] and that’s, that’s really what I encourage is in part of being trauma informed, is just listening and, sitting with people. And not judging them for their, for what they do and what they say. [00:18:57] Sandie Morgan: And. For me personally, in my experience, that not judging piece is the hardest thing for those who want to come alongside. They want to see progress and they might say things like, well, I’ve been praying for you, so you should [00:19:16] feel better. You should be coming to, this extra opportunity for a Bible study or a women’s group, or a youth group. How do we in a trauma informed perspective, adjust people’s expectations of the healing process? [00:19:37] Beth Lorance: Yeah. Part of it is realizing that sometimes it’s really hard to share your story, and it’s really hard to be seen by people ,to truly be seen. And if we require a person to, if we require an understanding of somebody’s story to be able to love them, then we’re not really loving them. We’re doing exactly what the people that abuse them to do. [00:20:03] We say our love is transactional. You have to tell me your story. You have to behave the way that I behave, that I want you to behave in order to receive the care and the love that, I wanna, I wanna give you. And, if people begin to realize that their actions are not that much different than that of the abuser, if we make. [00:20:27] If we prescribe to a victim how they should act, then maybe they, we would start to see a change and maybe we would start to see people be less judgmental. But just to reframe, when I say to somebody, I’m praying for you, why aren’t you getting better? Or, why aren’t you coming to church? Or, why don’t I see you at Bible study? [00:20:48] What I’m saying is, I’m only praying for you so that I’ll see a change in your life. And if I don’t see what I deem quote unquote as change, then maybe I’m not gonna pray for you anymore, or maybe I’m not gonna support you anymore, or maybe I’m not gonna listen. And that does a disservice. [00:21:06] And that’s not what we’re called to do. We’re called to listen to people and sit with people in, in spite of how they act, even because of how they act. And maybe the fact that they can’t come to the Bible study or they can’t come to the prayer meeting, that’s really a sign of them saying, this is where I’m hurting. [00:21:25] That’s a symptom of their healing process and we need to respect that. [00:21:32] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:21:32] Beth Lorance: it is hard. It’s hard to be non-judgmental. I have to say to myself all the time, we listen and we don’t judge, and I mean it’s hard, but that’s what, that’s what we’re called to do. [00:21:44] Sandie Morgan: wow. I’m gonna write that one down because Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so we understand. The process for trauma informed and we’ll put links to some previous episodes where we’ve spent some time drilling down on trauma informed. But I wanna go [00:22:03] back to grooming because I’d like to make sure that those of us who are in communities where. It’s a community of trust, a school, a faith organization. How can we protect and recognize grooming behaviors early before they can be, weaponized? [00:22:28] Beth Lorance: This is really important and really, it’s about training leaders, staff members, pastors, volunteers, teachers, what the signs of grooming are, And so that they know when they see it, they can recognize it and they can respond to it. I was watching a video just this week of a woman telling a story about how her daughter came home with a really expensive gift from her coach, and the woman was like, I don’t know what to do about this. [00:23:01] I it was a really expensive gift. I don’t think my daughter should accept it, but what should I do? And then the next day she had posted another video saying My daughter came home with another really expensive gift. And this gift I had actually told my daughter I wasn’t going to buy for her. And the woman was like, I don’t know what’s going on. [00:23:23] And that is a basic sign of grooming. The fact that this coach is giving expensive gifts to one girl on the team and their, their gifts that the mother would not buy for the girl on her own. And if people don’t realize that, that’s a sign of grooming, they don’t know what’s going on and they. They think it’s innocent. [00:23:45] They think it’s no big deal, and they just allow it to happen. So we need to train clearly our, and equip our educators, our pastors, our volunteers, parents with what it looks like, what grooming looks like, and then once they see grooming and do they respond to it? What do they do? I think the second thing we need is clear boundaries. [00:24:08] We need to create policies that limit the ability for an adult to groom a child. So this might mean that there’s no, your policy says there’s no one-on-one supervision between adults and children. And, youth pastors always get upset about that ’cause they’re, they say things like, well, how can I mentor, this youth member, how can I help them know they’re cared about? [00:24:36] And I always say, well do it with two. You know, like it, the more the merrier. You don’t need to individually mentor somebody for them to be changed by a relationship with you. You can do that in a way that keeps the child safe and keeps you safe. And so you have to have clear boundaries, very specific boundaries, and people that, respond and follow policy correctly. [00:25:07] And that when policy isn’t followed, that those people receive the consequence of that very swiftly. You have to be very clear on those things. And then the other thing I think is so important in preventing grooming is we have to empower our kids. We have to teach our kids about tricky people. We have to explain to them what unsafe behavior it looks like, and we have to give them the ability to say no even to trusted adults. [00:25:39] You know, I, it’s so often you go and somebody wants to hug my daughter. I have a, a very cute daughter. She’s very lovable and people want to hug her all the time. And sometimes she doesn’t want to hug them, and I have to give her the right to say no to that. And that when the adult insists on the hug, I have to stand up for her and say, she said no, so you don’t need to hug her. [00:26:08] and that’s something that’s important that we empower our kids to say no, and we respect it when they say no. So that they learn that their, that their boundaries matter and their words matter. [00:26:21] Sandie Morgan: So if a child comes from a situation where there is family violence, so we know there’re going to be more vulnerable to grooming and [00:26:32] to just plain inappropriate adult, uh, tension. how do we teach that child about tricky people? because in many situations we have as leaders deferred to, oh, it’s a parental supervision issue, I’ll tell the parents. But, if the parents aren’t listening, if the parents have not been involved in this particular aspect, how does like a youth leader or a coach begin to integrate that kind of resilience in their. Their leadership with kids so that those kids know they can say no. [00:27:23] Beth Lorance: I think it’s respecting the words a kid says. So when a kid speaks, it’s really listening to them and believing them and encouraging them to talk about how they feel about things. So I think that’s something a leader could do, a teacher could do. Also I think it’s important to remember that grooming happens to, to the victims but [00:27:46] often parents are groomed also and somebody that wants to, hurt a child, victimize a child. They will often also groom the parents and they will ingratiate themselves with the parents and, Make it so that the parents have no qualms when the child wants to go off with that adult, have no concerns when the child is spending a lot of time with that adult. [00:28:13] And so for me, I like to tell parents that you need to know what your child is doing with a [00:28:21] adult, even if it’s an adult you trust, as much as possible. So I want parents to just be aware of the adults in their kids’ lives and know them, but know them, know what the interactions with that, that adult and their child are like also. [00:28:40] And so that when their kid comes and says things about that adult, you understand what is going on in that relationship. I’m very careful that, in my own family life that I watch, the inner action that my child has with these adults so that my child doesn’t spend time alone with any adults that I haven’t watched how they interact with each other. [00:29:02] for a significant amount of time with that adult until, so I can see how that adult responds to my children. And if I don’t like how they respond to my children, I don’t allow my child to be alone with that adult. And it might not just be a fear of them being groomed or sexually abused, but maybe I fear of them not being treated nicely or being talked down to because. [00:29:23] or being made jokes about that kind of thing. I also am really big on if my, if a, if an adult wants to be friends with one of my child, they need to be friends with me first. And, don’t come into a space where I’m with one of my children and talk only to my children without talking to me. Oftentimes, especially, with younger children, you’ll have other adults that wanted to interact with them. And I’m like, that’s fine. As long as I know you and you’re friends with me, then you can talk with my child. But otherwise. You know, greet me first. Talk to me first. This is the relationship you should be worried about. [00:30:05] Not a relationship with my five-year-old. So that’s another thing. I think we need to teach leaders that, they can help impact families. ’cause they can pass that information onto to parents as the, and they can pass that information on to kids and so that would be something else that I think would be important. [00:30:23] Sandie Morgan: Wow. This gives us some deeper concerns about understanding grooming, and I encourage listeners to go back and review some of our past episodes as well. So, Dr. Beth Lorenz, what gives you hope for the next generation of leaders and advocates to prevent family violence and possible grooming for human trafficking? [00:30:57] Beth Lorance: Really, there’s two things that give me hope, and one of them is my students. And when I, we just started this semester and I’ve taught one class, and, I am so excited about the students that are in my class this semester. They’re engaged with the topic. They wanna learn, they wanna understand. They wanna say, you know, violence is not, should not be in our homes, violence should not be in our churches. [00:31:23] It should not be in our schools. And they’re excited about learning to use their voice to stand up for those that don’t have a voice. And that’s often what violence does. Abuse does. Trauma does, is it steals a person’s voice. And, um, so that, that gives me hope that there’s young people that care about this, that wanna use their voice, that wanna learn how they can impact [00:31:52] the vulnerable, how they can sit with a broken, and that’s always exciting for me. I also get excited when churches, I work a lot with churches and training pastors and I get really excited when churches get it. They begin to understand what Jesus’ view on victimhood is. And they understand what they need to do to help a person find healing. [00:32:19] And it’s always exciting to me when I talk to a church leader and they’re able to. Express something to me that I’ve always known, you know, or that’s part of what I teach, and they’re able to, and they agree, they agree with what the current research is saying, or they agree with how we need to be responding to victims, or they agree with, um, [00:32:43] what it looks like to walk with a person that’s a victim. [00:32:48] They agree with this idea that it’s our job to protect the vulnerable, and that always makes me excited and gives me hope for the future. [00:32:58] Sandie Morgan: I love it. I love it. And what a great opportunity to take this podcast back to your community and find out if they agree and you can be a voice and make a difference in reducing vulnerability for kids that may be more [00:33:21] susceptible to grooming. Thank you for listening. [00:33:25] Thank you Dr. Beth for being with us today. It’s been great. [00:33:30] Beth Lorance: It’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me. [00:33:33] Thank you, Dr. Beth Lorance for sharing your expertise and personal story with us today. Your insight about teaching children to watch for tricky people rather than just strangers, completely reframes how we protect kids in trusted environments. [00:33:52] Sandie Morgan: Listeners, if you loved this conversation, make sure you check out our website@endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources. [00:34:05] If you’d love to help us grow the podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with someone and connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. And as always, thanks for listening.