Ending Human Trafficking Podcast

359 – Economic Empowerment: The Frontline Against Human Trafficking

Diana Mao joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how economic empowerment serves as a frontline defense against human trafficking, revealing why desperation—not just deception—drives vulnerable families into exploitation. https://youtu.be/NLM4TP2d_lQ   DIANA MAO Diana Mao is a dynamic leader at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking and workforce development. As the President and Co-Founder of Nomi Network, she’s helped raise and mobilize over 30 million dollars to create economic opportunities for survivors and women at risk. Her work has brought together corporate leaders, government agencies, and social impact partners to build pathways to freedom and stability. She’s a Presidential Leadership Scholar and a New York Academy of Medicine Fellow, and her innovative approach has earned her awards like the NYU Alumni Changemaker Award and the Texas Women’s Foundation Young Leader Award. She’s advised Congress on key policy issues, and her voice is regularly heard on some of the world’s biggest stages, including the United Nations, the Bush Presidential Center, and the Clinton Presidential Center. With degrees in Business Economics and Chinese from UC Santa Barbara and a Master’s in Public Administration from NYU Wagner, Diana blends academic rigor with hands-on leadership. KEY POINTS * Economic vulnerability drives trafficking more than deception alone—when families face starvation and earn less than 75 cents a day, they may knowingly take dangerous jobs because desperation outweighs risk assessment. * Nomi Network operates 42 training sites across India, Cambodia, and the United States, providing trauma-informed workforce training, job placement, and micro-enterprise support that creates sustainable alternatives to exploitative labor. * Building capacity within existing community organizations—rather than disqualifying partners who don’t meet predetermined standards—creates more sustainable and culturally contextualized anti-trafficking interventions. * Living immersively in the communities being served allows organizations to co-design programs with survivors and understand the daily realities that shape vulnerability, from gathering water at 5 AM to facing harassment after 6 PM. * Successful prevention requires creating bridges between vulnerable communities and the private sector, as demonstrated by Nomi Network’s partnerships with major employers like India’s largest manufacturers and Toyota subsidiaries that provide direct job pipelines. * Youth in Dallas County’s detention system who complete Nomi Network’s apprenticeship programs secure jobs earning $18 per hour—more than double the minimum wage—fundamentally changing their economic trajectories and reducing trafficking vulnerability. * The anti-trafficking movement is increasingly leveraging technology and AI as tools for prevention and intervention, recognizing that criminal networks are already using these technologies at exponential rates to target vulnerable populations. * Self-care practices including morning exercise routines, faith-based reflection, and intentional rest enable sustained leadership in emotionally demanding anti-trafficking work, helping leaders operate from inspiration rather than obligation. RESOURCES * Nomi Network [https://nominetwork.org] * Invisible Children [https://invisiblechildren.com] * World Vision [https://www.worldvision.org] * International Justice Mission (IJM) [https://www.ijm.org] * Hagar International [https://hagarinternational.org] * Vanguard University [https://www.vanguard.edu] * Ending Human Trafficking Podcast [https://endinghumantrafficking.org] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Diana Mao: And at the end of the survey he offered my male colleague, his youngest daughter, you like her, you take her. And as I looked into his eyes, I could see desperation and I didn’t even know what, if he knew what he was doing. [00:00:11] Delaney: When your children sleep on bare ground and you earn 75 cents a day, risk management isn’t just about losing your car. It’s about facing the decision to take a job that might cost you everything or watching your family starve. Today’s conversation is about why economic empowerment isn’t just a nice idea, but it’s a frontline of prevention. [00:00:32] Hi, I’m Delaney and I’m a student here at Vanguard University. I help produce this show. Today, Dr. Morgan talks with Diana Mao, president and co-founder of Nomi Network. Diana has mobilized over $30 million to create workforce pathways for survivors and at-risk women across 42 training sites in India, Cambodia, and the us. [00:00:53] And now here’s their conversation. [00:01:00] Sandie Morgan: I am so happy to be with you, Diana Mao Kelly for the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. Welcome. [00:01:10] Diana Mao: Thank you. It’s such a pleasure to be here this morning. [00:01:13] Sandie Morgan: I met you through the Public Private Partnership Advisory Council to end human trafficking. We were both presidential appointees and we served for two years. And part of that was during the pandemic, so we haven’t ever had a lot of in-person time, but I feel like I know you so well because of your very strategic contributions to the team during that season. [00:01:49] And I learned a little about your history during that time as I tried to get to know everybody on the council, and I was really struck by your heritage and how that impacted your personal mission formation. Can you talk a little bit about your family history? [00:02:14] Diana Mao: Yeah, didn’t really discover family history really until after the fight against human trafficking. I started Nomi Network in 2009 and so over the course of time I learned more and more about some of the intergenerational trauma that my father faced. He was actually in labor camp. [00:02:36] so really all I knew was growing up in Southern California. ’cause my parents had met and gotten married there, but he definitely has trauma and PTSD from that. And so more and more, as I researched labor camp, connected the dots with the issue I was fighting against human trafficking and what are some of the lingering effects of someone that is in slavery. [00:03:02] Sandie Morgan: And when did you learn about human trafficking? [00:03:07] Diana Mao: I learned about it actually in college. I know Sandie, you work with really bright and brilliant college students. so in college I learned about the issue of child soldiers in Northern Uganda through invisible children. And so as a young person, I was touched by their film and I started raising funds for invisible children and for World Vision. [00:03:36] At the time, they had children’s villages in some of these volatile areas, and so that’s when I first became aware of the issue of human trafficking. [00:03:45] Sandie Morgan: And you led, or you were part of a research trip in Cambodia. [00:03:51] Diana Mao: Yeah, so fast forward when I was in graduate school, getting my master’s, I learned intensely the issue on the front lines. I was there working for a microfinance bank and during that time I was charged with meeting with microfinance clients, some of whom lived in very remote areas, where it would take. [00:04:16] A moped and walking through leach infested muck to get to the community. [00:04:22] Sandie Morgan: Ooh. [00:04:23] Diana Mao: The community was getting microfinance loans, so it was there I met a single father with seven children. He had lost his wife the year before to I think it was malaria, but some disease that is curable but they had no access to healthcare, potable water, electricity. [00:04:42] And so after we surveyed him, asked him about a hundred questions related to his loan and what he was doing with his loan, I learned that he was still earning less than 75 cents a day. Still reliant on low yield agriculture, still living in a mud hut with his children on the floor sleeping without a mattress or any mat. [00:05:05] And at the end of the survey he offered my male colleague, his youngest daughter, you like her, you take her. And as I looked into his eyes, I could see desperation and I didn’t even know what, if he knew what he was doing. And my colleague and I looked at each other in horror and very uncomfortably left his hut. [00:05:25] But his daughter, I still remember her face. I remember her long hair, remember her big brown eyes. And I just, really shook me because in the more urban areas, I would see really young girls like her on the street or in restaurant bars with old foreign men. so at the time in that period, there is high. [00:05:51] Cases of human trafficking is very and apparent during that time and you could literally see children being trafficked in Cambodia. So that’s what really led me to investigate and dedicate my resources and time to fighting the issue. [00:06:09] Sandie Morgan: And you have done exactly that and one of the hallmarks of Nomi Network is how it works at the intersection of economic development as well as social justice. So how do you balance those domains? [00:06:29] Diana Mao: Yeah, would say, we, I look at it as people that we work with are either deceived, they migrate haphazardly. Like in the case where we work in Cambodia, many times they are living in abject poverty, and so they migrate to Thailand or other places within Southeast Asia for a job. Many cases our clients end up being trafficked, like one client who is promised a job in Malaysia and [00:07:01] Sandie Morgan: Mm [00:07:01] Diana Mao: and abused and managed to escape. [00:07:04] repatriate back to Cambodia. And we helped her start, we provided with her with the training and healing and also helped her start an ice cream shop that now is prospering and she’s able to support herself. So you have deception and then you also have desperation like I mentioned. The single father who I met living in abject poverty, trying to support his family and economic interventions such as NOMI Network, providing them with trauma informed training and technical training a job, or helping them start a micro enterprise along with continuous support, ongoing support and counseling so that they can retain their job and grow their business is very important to combat. [00:07:51] Desperation because if I had to put myself in the shoes of some of our clients, I would say yes. I may be aware that it’s not safe to migrate from the north of India to the south of India, or from Cambodia to Thailand or to Cambodia to Malaysia. However, if I have five mouths to feed, may ignore that. [00:08:17] Voice and take that job right and end up being in a very bad situation. So that’s why it’s so important and our focus is both on desperation side by building economic resiliency so people can stay in their communities and have that support system to begin with so they’re not trafficked. [00:08:38] And of course, deception, preventing people from being deceived and encouraging them not to take jobs where they’re not certain that is an actual job. [00:08:49] Sandie Morgan: So what you really point out so well here is this idea of risk management. We come at it, I mean, we’re both here in the vicinity and have lived in Southern California. So risk management for us to accept a job might be about the traffic and the commute, or how much it’s going to cost to move to a new job, and what kind of risks we might take if we got into a bogus job and we might lose our home, we might lose our car. [00:09:27] But when your kids are sleeping on the bare ground, what do you have in your hand to risk? And so is it risk management? Is it a poor decision? And if there’s not another avenue to improving your family’s situation, and I hear that over and over again. So I love your strategy for connecting this with the economic empowerment. [00:10:06] And I also have been so impressed by how you’ve scaled up. It’s not Know Me House or No Me Bank. It’s Know Me Network. And tell us where Nomi network, where are all those nodes? [00:10:23] Diana Mao: Yeah, absolutely. So we have 42 training sites, 35 in India in the four high prevalent states of India. And then we have five training sites in Cambodia and also two in the us. And so our network, it started with me enlisting to be Nomi’s Network. Nomi is a young survivor who I met the following year where I went back to Cambodia to speak with IJM Hagar, all the anti-trafficking organizations that were providing either rescue or rehabilitation. [00:11:02] And so across the board, they all were trying to help women get out of that system, the shelter system. Some of the women there were there as long as eight years already living in the shelter. So the next step is more of the economic, the reintegration side. And so at that moment when I met Nomi, she’s a survivor who’s eight years old. [00:11:23] I felt deep connection with her. She carried such hope. She had already been at the shelter a year, and she’s eight years old. When I met her, she was trafficked by her stepfather and she greeted my co-founder and I with such hope and joy, showed us her pet rabbits, walked us around. And [00:11:43] Sandie Morgan: Uh. [00:11:43] Diana Mao: that moment, I wanted to be her network. [00:11:46] I wanted to see her grow into adulthood, and I’m still in touch with her today. She’s in her twenties really be the network behind KnowMe. So that’s the impetus of our name. And so since then, 15 years later, we now in every place, all the 42 sites, we have government partnerships. We work with the ministry. [00:12:08] Of Labor Ministry of Women’s Affairs in Cambodia. We work with Dallas County specifically, providing training to youth as young as 12 years old who are in the detention system. And many of them have, unfortunately been trafficked or have sexual exploitation in their background. And so, the network has really expanded across. [00:12:34] The globe, we have partners that we work with, nonprofits that refer clients to us and all of these places, specifically in Dallas as well. And in Houston, we have really strong nonprofit partnerships where we provide that continuum of care at the economic empowerment side, while we leverage the strength and expertise of other nonprofits to focus more on the counseling and other social services. [00:13:05] And then of course we have employment partners, and so we work with India’s largest manufacturer. We work with the subsidiary of Toyota in Cambodia for job placements. We work with [00:13:17] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:13:18] Diana Mao: international in Dallas. where I’m so proud of the youth that we’ve been able to place in jobs in Hilti, they’re earning $18 an hour in apprenticeship program, and Dallas minimum wage is 7 25. [00:13:35] So already, [00:13:36] Sandie Morgan: Oh my goodness. [00:13:37] Diana Mao: As high school students apprenticeship program, and so I really see the change in trajectory of their lives as their first job landing it at that rate. I mean, the sky’s the limit for them as they grow into young adults. [00:13:54] Sandie Morgan: So in scaling this model, I heard a couple of things that really struck me, especially your networking and collaboration with other nonprofits for some of the ancillary services and support for survivors that you are working with. How does that work? Because it’s obvious that the social enterprise model that you’re using is very focused on building an economic foundation to build on like a young person in an apprentice or a young person in a micro enterprise. They can look at the future, not as I’m stuck in this job for generations like my father, but I could build something. But somebody has to do the support. And you mentioned the trauma and those things. [00:15:04] So what does that part entail in your network and how you partner and collaborate? [00:15:12] Diana Mao: Yeah, that’s a really great question. I would say we really contextualize region by region. In the US there’s a really robust network of social service providers and so we look at our organizations and what are their assets? So some of them have very large offices, right? [00:15:33] And it’s not fully utilized. So we go onsite and provide them with training, the clients there. And in the case of Dallas, we go onsite into the Dallas County Detention Center. We provide our trauma informed training, and then once the youth are out of detention, they get ongoing case management support and we continue to work with them because some of them is our young, as 13 years old, we work on their. [00:16:02] and education goals on an ongoing five-year basis. We do believe, particularly for youth in the US it’s important that they have that consistency because many of them lack the parental support that they need to get at a very difficult situations. And so in the case of India, for example, we’ve been there since for over 10 years. [00:16:25] And so we work in 35 training sites, and we identify local HIV clinics, local schools, local religious institutions, local hospitals that are very under-resourced. They’re in rural communities. And so we start working with them on building their capacity to work with us on delivering economic empowerment programming. [00:16:56] So in one case, we may rent a space that’s part of a school. And so it’s more of a focal point already in the community. We’re just coming alongside and building the capacity and the economic engine. In many cases, we’ve actually been able to draw in capital and draw in private sector investment. One region that we work in, in India because of us, a large manufacturer, was willing to set up a technical school with us that provides sewing machine training. And so then directly after women graduate from the technical school that we co-facilitate with this large factory. [00:17:37] It’s a pipeline into their factory. So the women are able to secure jobs directly. And so we’ve been able to attract private sector investment because of our presence, because employers know that Now we’ve addressed a lot of the barriers in these communities. We’ve also upskilled women in life skills, critical thinking, problem solving, preparing them for more of a formal workplace. [00:18:02] And so these are more extremely remote communities that typically don’t have that pipeline. We in essence built a pathway into these communities for employers to engage. And these are the exact communities where unfortunately, traffickers prey on women and children and men. And so [00:18:25] Sandie Morgan: right. [00:18:25] Diana Mao: we are really preventing that cycle from happening, but also building a bridge between the private sector and these more vulnerable communities. [00:18:33] Sandie Morgan: So I want to look a little closer at how you build that bridge because oftentimes when organizations are going into a community, they do an assessment. They find out who is here, who is there, and then they evaluate those orgs and disqualify. They don’t do this. So no, we are not gonna collaborate with them. [00:19:01] This is not their value. So no, they don’t fit, but you are taking a different approach to actually build their capacity, not just in their ability to attract jobs, but in their ability to promote that wellbeing that health that is not just physical, but a life attitude it feels like. Tell me how you decided not to disqualify people, but became a capacity builder for another organization? [00:19:49] Diana Mao: Yeah, it has directly to do with the fact that my co-founder and I lived there for two years. Combined. We lived in [00:19:57] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:19:57] Diana Mao: Bihar is, some diplomats have noted that Bihar is like the Afghanistan of India. So in 2011, got a State Department grant to start working in region. We picked up our bags and I was in my early twenties and moved there and it was very difficult [00:20:20] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:20:20] Diana Mao: being foreign. [00:20:22] At times, my life was in danger. At times we had to stay indoors after six ’cause women weren’t seen on the streets and would, if they were, they would get harassed or attacked. so living there really helped me contextualize and understand the local context, understand the dynamics, understand the resources available, understand the cultural, the cultural nuances really. [00:20:55] And so at the same time, I really understood our clients more. I understood the women that we worked with, ’cause we worked with them directly. We heard their hopes, we heard their dreams, we heard their fears. We heard they wanted out of the program, they in essence, co-designed it with us. So we had the curriculum that we had in mind on best practices. [00:21:20] They gave us the realities of their lives and what they face, the challenges on a day-to-day basis. I took the design thinking approach of really like understanding what are their jobs every day. their job is to wake up at 5:00 AM go draw the water and gather to start a fire for their tea, to start cooking for their children. [00:21:46] And so all the way from that time early on till like 8:00 PM how taxing their lives are. For us, we have the convenience of opening up a faucet and drawing water. We have the convenience of electricity. people around the world don’t have that. And so for me to actually live there experience it allowed me then to build that bridge directly with the clients and therefore also understanding the constraints that these nonprofits locally or these schools or HIV clinics, what the constraints they have as well. [00:22:22] So how do we bridge that or help them overcome that because they are there providing services for the community. And so we wanna help amplify that and really create a more sustainable vehicle so that the local economy can be more prosperous as well. [00:22:38] Sandie Morgan: This is such a great process to understand how you perceive, ’cause you used the word contextualize a lot. But I’m not gonna be able to go and live there for two years, so how am I going to help people understand those kinds of economic and local factors and how they contribute to human trafficking, exploitation, and why rescue is not enough. [00:23:11] Diana Mao: Yeah, I mean, I would say contextualizing it, let’s, I’m just assuming to students and people, I also lived in Southern California and I know that I lived in a bubble up until high school, right? Like people have a context of for you Orange County, for me it was Pasadena. [00:23:33] And so that’s really a thousand steps to the bridge we’re trying to form between the communities that we’re serving. and so I think contextualizing it comes with first of all, someone that’s willing to learn, right? If someone is not open, then I think as much as you share and provide context stories, trainings like that, that may be a closed door if someone’s willing to learn. [00:24:00] I think for us it’s allowing people to learn more about the how behind the work. Also, we have webinars where we have some of the partners we work with or communities, clients that signed on to share, be able to share directly. because I think the worlds are so different between rural India and even New York City where Nomi network was birthed. [00:24:34] And so you’re right, not everyone’s gonna pick up their backs and go to rural India or rural Cambodia. But I think as anti-trafficking practitioners, you and I, like, we have the challenge and opportunity to share. And the scope of trafficking is changing second by second, now we have online grooming, now we have all of these things that I’m even learning about. [00:25:01] So I even am feeling like I’m catching up with some of the latest technology advancements that sadly have really exponentially increased the amount of children and youth that are trafficked in our country alone. So I think that’s where, [00:25:18] Sandie Morgan: Mm. [00:25:19] Diana Mao: as long as we continue to be that bridge and to have the opportunity share very specifically and strategically, I think that’s how we bridge and help contextualize and with policy makers, I think have a role in this. [00:25:39] That’s where it’s important, particularly for people like you and members of different councils, series of influence to be able to share and inform decisions and policies and resource allocation. I think that’s really important, especially during this time, this critical time in our country. [00:26:00] Sandie Morgan: And you use the expression a thousand steps. And so I feel like when we have students, I love being at Vanguard University. We give them a path and they begin to take those steps and sometimes that means they’re going to end up living in another country. One of my students is on a Fulbright scholarship in Taiwan and other students have been gone off to Nepal or studied in Spain or Argentina. We do regular study abroad, but that beginning starts with walking down that path and it’s like last night I had told you at the beginning, before we started recording, I had a really late night because our students put on our Fair Trade annual fashion show and it’s educational and prevention focused, and they want to disrupt fast fashion. [00:27:10] That has such a huge footprint in labor trafficking and exploitation. And as the students were the voices and they shared their research and their experiences and gave people practical applications. I could see how this next generation is going to take our movement to a new level, and I wanna be able to support that in my community and figure out what it looks like in another country or another culture. [00:27:50] Diana Mao: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. That’s incredible. I mean, I agree with you that these opportunities go abroad are instrumental. I mentioned I started Nomi in my early twenties and I started actually even before that fundraising for the fight against human trafficking by fundraising for other organizations. [00:28:13] I did not mention that when I was 15 years old I volunteered in rural Mexico on a volunteer trip, and then [00:28:22] Sandie Morgan: Ah. [00:28:23] Diana Mao: in Brazil in the slums of Brazil the following year. And I’ve also volunteered in college in the slums of Egypt. and so my grandmother was a firm believer of exactly what you’re saying, and so she would encourage me and support my volunteer trips abroad. [00:28:41] And so in the slums of Egypt is where I actually lived in a garbage village for two months [00:28:48] Sandie Morgan: Oh my goodness. [00:28:50] Diana Mao: volunteered in Mother Teresa’s orphanage in that garbage village. So literally, many people that walked in the garbage village would start throwing up because literally it’s raw garbage, like mountains, mountain high of garbage. [00:29:05] so those experiences were really formative in my life. And so what you’re saying in terms of what you support and vanguard in terms of students going abroad is really key. [00:29:19] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. How can we walk in someone else’s shoes without at least taking a few steps in that direction. I am inspired by your description of a thousand steps and it motivates me to create pathways for my students to begin a journey like yours. I wanna ask you a little bit more about your leadership and sustainability. [00:29:49] You have 42 know me sites now in the network, and you are a recognized and celebrated leader of a mission-driven organization in a really difficult field. So how do you sustain your own energy and continue to be innovative? [00:30:16] Diana Mao: Yeah, absolutely. I would say for me, running full speed for the past 15 years, I’ve learned to have self care as well. So that includes like morning rhythms of exercise. I know, Sandie, you mentioned your morning routine of exercise. So for me it’s actually, I run marathons. [00:30:45] So running, and lately I’ve really adopted Peloton biking, and so that helps me kick off my day. I also really lean into my faith and so I have really quiet time, devotion time, prayer time, usually always in the morning to help ground me as well. so I find that when I do that, those things, there’s much more clarity throughout the day for me, and [00:31:17] Sandie Morgan: I [00:31:19] Diana Mao: doing things out of a wing versus a weight. [00:31:23] And I would say when I feel times a bit weighted is challenges come all the time and I think it’s more of the posture of my heart and I find myself when I do those key things that helps ground me and keep me in this hopeful, faith filled state. [00:31:39] Sandie Morgan: Hmm. So good. So what do you see in the next five to 10 years? In our movement, in know me network, in what we need to be doing. [00:31:52] Diana Mao: That’s a great question. Well, according to our institutional supporters, like Nomi Network is the only organization that’s provided workforce development and jobs at scale for the anti-trafficking movement. And so that means for us, currently about 4,000 women and girls a year. We just embarked on our strategic plan process. [00:32:16] Yeah, the board has approved our plan from 2026 to 2030, and by 2030 we were going to, we’re gonna get to a hundred thousand women and girls annually terms of job placement and training and micro enterprise, which is very exciting for me because we are already in those 42 sites that we work, measuring resilience against trafficking and other indicators. [00:32:40] And so that’s exciting to be able to target these hubs and really see meaningful change that’s measured. also we are in the process of taking our curriculum and making it more available to the private sector as well, so that there’s a lot of traction there. so that’s also really exciting in terms of potential earned revenue for our organization, for the movement, I was just in a. [00:33:10] A conference in Colorado with movement leaders. And we were brought together by people like Tim Tebow and others. And so we were in working groups and that was really powerful because I was able to build new relationships with organizations that I’ve learned about that currently aren’t in my orbit and continue in the working group. [00:33:38] I think one thing that anti-trafficking movement recognizes is that we as a movement are very under-resourced and underfunded. we are more keen on working together to further the outcomes of our clients. So that is really encouraging. I’m gonna see, I’m excited to see more of that. I’m also excited to see how the tech world is gonna engage by trafficking. [00:34:00] We are all across the board talking about that. And Nomi network is at the forefront of also doing it and incorporating AI and tech into our programming and interventions. So that’s really exciting. Is that, how can we use AI and tech to fight trafficking because right now the criminal network is using it at an exponential rate to target vulnerable peoples. [00:34:25] And so I see really in the anti-trafficking movement in really leveraging that tech community as well. [00:34:36] Sandie Morgan: Diana Mao Kelly, you took us to the garbage dumps of Egypt and now you’ve inspired us to be part of a movement going forward with limited resources. So we have to depend on each other. We have to figure out how we are going to engage the tech responses. So we’re not just, I’ve been talking to a lot of people about how they’re protecting youth and they build fences around them when we actually need to empower them, strengthen them, put scaffolding around them so they can take the lead and. [00:35:25] I just wanna stay in your orbit. I wanna learn from you and I wanna see how my students can be just like you. [00:35:37] Diana Mao: Oh, well, it’s such an honor. Sandie, you are a great inspiration to me, and I firmly believe that your students will go 10 times farther than me and the anti-trafficking movement because the sky’s the limit. And I feel like young people nowadays know so much more technology wise and are much more hungry, that new wind, fresh wind, fresh fire that this movement needs. [00:36:08] So I’m excited to see the people under you being raised up. [00:36:13] Sandie Morgan: And how we pass the baton to the next generation. You are a leader now. I am nearing the end of my leadership and I want to pass it off well, so that it is moving people, moving students, moving communities down that thousand step pathway that you’ve described. Thank you so much for being here today. [00:36:43] Diana Mao: Thank you, Sandie. [00:36:45] Delaney: A huge thank you to Diana Mao for helping us understand that trafficking isn’t just about deception, it’s about desperation. When you have five mouths to feed, you might take a job, you know is risky, and that’s why economic empowerment is the frontline of prevention. Listeners, if you love this conversation, make sure to check out our website at endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources. [00:37:09] If you’d love to help us grow this podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with somebody and connecting with us. Thank you.

358 – Beyond the Front Desk: Empowering Hotel Staff Against Trafficking

Michael Dominguez joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they explore how the hospitality industry can move beyond discomfort to become a powerful force in preventing human trafficking through intentional cultural change and staff empowerment. https://youtu.be/2kniCIaa21g   MICHAEL DOMINGUEZ Michael Dominguez is the President and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International (ALHI), where he leads a global sales organization of nearly 80 professionals across 26 offices worldwide, serving as a trusted partner for meeting and event professionals seeking the best independent luxury properties and experiences. With over 30 years of experience in luxury meetings and events, Michael holds the Certified Hospitality Sales Executive (CHSE) credential and has earned multiple accolades for his leadership. He is an active and influential member of several industry associations, including serving as Past Chairman of Meeting Professionals International’s (MPI) International Board and co-chairing Meetings Mean Business. Michael has been recognized among the “Top 25 Most Influential People in the Meetings Industry” and “50 Most Influential Hispanics in the U.S.” In 2025, he received the ASAE Global Association Visionary Award. Under his leadership, ALHI has become a leader in anti-trafficking efforts within the hospitality industry, earning the Freedom Award for their commitment to this cause. KEY POINTS * The hospitality industry lost critical ground during the pandemic when hotels shifted to mobile check-in and bypassed front desks, which had been a primary checkpoint for identifying potential trafficking situations. * Training hotel staff to recognize trafficking signs includes looking for unusual requests like multiple room keys, excessive towels and linens, extended “do not disturb” signs beyond 24 hours, and implementing wellness checks within that timeframe. * Major hotel brands and management companies are now required to participate in American Hotel Lodging Association’s accredited training programs, though franchise owners and smaller independent properties remain gaps in universal coverage. * Making people “uncomfortable for 10 minutes” at every opportunity is essential because the hospitality industry naturally avoids discussing difficult topics, yet this intentional discomfort drives cultural change and awareness. * Personal storytelling that puts a human face to trafficking—such as sharing survivor Faith Ramos’s story—creates deeper impact than statistics alone and motivates 80% of people to ask how they can help. * The “pounding the rock” philosophy from the San Antonio Spurs—asking daily “are we better today than yesterday?”—provides a framework for sustained, incremental progress in anti-trafficking efforts across the industry. * Collaboration is expanding beyond hotels to include clients, electrical companies adding hotline information to service trucks, and organizations like the Aruna Project that employ survivors, demonstrating how every sector can play a position in the broader movement. * AI technology offers hope for identifying trafficking patterns by analyzing unusual service requests and alerting staff to abnormal frequency of activities that might otherwise go unnoticed in large hotels. RESOURCES * Episode 352 – Empowering Change: Holding Hotels Accountable for Trafficking [https://endinghumantrafficking.org/352-empowering-change-holding-hotels-accountable-for-trafficking/] * Spurs Video – “A Beautiful Game” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3y7cWmoBCI] TRANSCRIPT [00:00:00] Michael Dominguez: One thing I promised is, I promise you I’m gonna make people uncomfortable, at least for 10 minutes at every opportunity I can. [00:00:06] Delaney Mininger: Every hotel is either part of the prevention network or a gap that traffickers exploit. And the signs are there, multiple room keys, extra towels, privacy signs that are up for days. And when COVID removed their front desk check-in, they lost their most important checkpoint. [00:00:22] Leaders like Michael are showing us how to rebuild it and make it stronger. Hi, I’m Delaney Mininger, a student here at Vanguard University and I help produce the show. Our guest today is Michael Dominguez and he will be speaking with Sandra Morgan. Michael is the president and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International, the Freedom Award recipient, and he’s leading his industry’s fight against trafficking with intentional cultural change, and now here’s their conversation. [00:00:56] Sandie Morgan: I am here with Michael Dominguez, president and CEO of Associated Luxury Hotels International. Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. [00:01:09] Michael Dominguez: Thank you so much, and thank you for the invite. It’s excited to be here. [00:01:13] Sandie Morgan: Well, and people usually expect my experts to be from law enforcement, aftercare, prevention, but you are very unique. And the first time I met you, was on Zoom. We haven’t met in person, but we’re looking forward to making that happen. I saw the Spurs jersey in the background in your office, and can you tell me why that’s there? Cause it made so much sense to so much of what we’re doing. [00:01:50] Michael Dominguez: Without a doubt. And, I’ve mentioned that, you know, first and foremost I was born and raised in San Antonio. So there’s the connection to the Spurs. But, the Spurs have been an organization that has been literally featured and studied around their culture. And the reason that matters is it’s, yeah, the basketball and what they’ve done on the court and their wins and their championships and the most winning franchise over a 30 year window. [00:02:15] Yeah, all that matters. But the important part is their culture and their culture and how it’s built and how it’s maintained. You know, it’s amazing that they’ve been in the league over 50 years and they’ve only missed the playoffs nine times. Ever. [00:02:30] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:02:31] Michael Dominguez: And it’s that kind of measure of success that they’ll tell you the culture is special. They’re a small market team. You know, they’re not LA, they’re not New York, it’s San Antonio. And, and yet they’re so successful and their culture is all built around respect and people. You know, there’s a book that everybody that comes into our organization gets a book called, Culture Code by Daniel Coyle. [00:02:55] And it’s in a, it’s a study of organizations that do culture really well and that are really unique and, you know, Navy Seal Team Six is in there, as well as about 30 pages dedicated to the San Antonio Spurs. And, and it talks about their culture and how it’s put together and how thoughtful everything is. [00:03:15] Everybody who comes into our organization, they actually get a rock. And this rock has a story on it and it’s kind of our mantra and very much Sandie kind of applies to the work that is being done around trafficking. And the mantra is very simple and, I had the privilege of being able to go see their locker room. [00:03:33] It’s the only thing in the Spurs locker room. The mantra is a story by a 1920s immigrant rights activist named Jacob Reese. The story simply says, when all hope fails, I think of a stone cutter hammering away at a stone more than a hundred times with no success. And on the hundred first strike, the stone splits, and I know it’s a hundred strikes before that split the stone. [00:03:55] and the mantra of the Spurs is we’re just pounding the rock. The rock is our mantra here at ALHI and pounding the rock is a very simple way to live. Where are we better today than we are yesterday? And if we are, we hit another, we’ve hit the rock one more time. And when I say that’s perfect for the work we’re doing around trafficking, all we can do is continue to hit the rock. [00:04:20] If we continue to hit the rock together, eventually that rock will split. [00:04:24] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Well, this may be the shortest podcast ever. That was Drop the mic. That’s what will do. But seriously, after our last conversation, I got the book. I read the book and became your fan too. And so, I had never real, I think I’d heard the team name Spurs, [00:04:46] Michael Dominguez: Yeah. [00:04:47] Sandie Morgan: Then, Coach Popovich, his influence that inspires you, really I believe is something very transferable to our mission and our work to do prevention as well as identification and intervention. So. [00:05:08] Michael Dominguez: I could not agree with you more, and you know, just as if you’re gonna build a great culture, it has to be intentional around your leadership. I believe the work around here has to be intentional. It has to be pervasive. It has to be intentional, it has to be every day. And that’s something that, you know, we’ve really grown as an organization. [00:05:27] And you know, what I was proud of, you know, proud of is that this was the piece I wanted to focus on as an organization. ’cause I was very passionate around it, where I was excited as it started with a team of six. That was our committee to kind of figure out how we’re gonna drive this initiative through our organization and how we’re gonna start to live and breathe awareness around human trafficking and what we can do. [00:05:51] And then where I’m most proud is the entire organization has embraced it. And what I think is really interesting as a sales organization, they’ve embraced it even further because they figure, they know how much it resonates with our client base. Now that’s not why we do it. But for our clients to understand, you know, Sandie, I just came back from our largest show in our industry. [00:06:11] It’s called IMEX America. We had 12,000 people in Las Vegas. [00:06:15] It’s an intense appointment based show. We had a thousand appointments in our booth over a three day window, all about business and future conferences. But we have, they’re hosted buyers and we had a large hosted buyer group and we have a hosted buyer breakfast, and at our breakfast, [00:06:32] You know, and it, even pre-breakfast, we sent ’em a note, but at the breakfast I made an announcement. I said, look, if you’re in this room, you’re doing okay. And if you’re in this room, we’ve decided instead of giving you a bunch of gifts that you probably don’t need, we’re gonna [00:06:46] Sandie Morgan: With our brand on the side. [00:06:48] Michael Dominguez: Exactly. We are, we are gonna make a large contribution in lieu of those gifts to our efforts around human trafficking impact. [00:06:56] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:06:57] Michael Dominguez: And there is unsolicited applause from the group to say, you know, instead of you getting a gift, you’re contributing to something that’s a really great cause. That’s where this starts to pick up steam, because who is not gonna be in favor of us working towards, you know, what I call modern day slavery and helping, you know, this main issue. [00:07:18] And there’s nobody. But for some reason, as I say, we’re the hospitality industry and because it’s uncomfortable, we don’t like talking about things that are uncomfortable. When we won the Freedom Award, a few years back in, in my acceptance speech, the one thing I promised is, I promise you I’m gonna make people uncomfortable, at least for 10 minutes at every opportunity I can. [00:07:40] And that’s what I mean by being intentional. [00:07:42] Sandie Morgan: Wow, and, and that’s almost sounds like an oxymoron coming from you. We were just talking about the book, Unreasonable Hospitality. We had tech challenges yesterday because it was raining here in Orange County and you were gracious and kind and hospitable to the nth degree. So making people uncomfortable has a purpose here, and you know how to do this because your expertise in the hospitality industry, your advocacy, your innovative approach combined with your influence is [00:08:25] Obviously moving the needle, and so I wanna jump right into the big question I sent to you ahead of time. In episode 352, we spoke with attorney Pat McDonough about his groundbreaking $40 million jury verdict against a hotel for enabling child sex trafficking. You can go back to that episode, listeners [00:08:58] and hear about the 16-year-old client that was trafficked in just 40 days while hotel staff sold her condoms and ignored obvious signs. [00:09:13] Sandie Morgan: So give us your reaction and how hotels can do so much better. [00:09:20] Michael Dominguez: Yeah. You know, I, I put that as an outlier, Sandie, in being that latent in ignoring the situation of what it is. And I say it’s an outlier because over the last five years, I don’t wanna discredit the tremendous work that has been done by the American Hotel Lodging Association by my industry organizations, which are MPI and PCMA, and this is in the forefront and AHLA taking a huge lead, you know, on this, which was, you know, most hotels are part of the American Hotel Lodging Association. [00:09:57] So by being part of the largest association that now has an accredited program to train around human trafficking and what the signs are and what that looks like. I think the work being done is really positive. Where we lost a lot of ground, and I feel we’ve made it up over the last 18 months, was during the pandemic. [00:10:18] Sandie Morgan: Oh. [00:10:19] Michael Dominguez: The pandemic was a very odd time. And what we talk about in the hotel industry, and it’s not an excuse, it just means we have a lot of other focuses going on at the same time, and you can kind of miss it. You didn’t have the same level of staff that we have during normal times. So you know that those are things you have to consider in the environment, but in normal environments, this is very, very, very much on focus. [00:10:44] Something that people would look at, you would not see, and where I think you almost have to separate it. Our industry, when I present about the industry, I talk about us being bifurcated and we are bifurcated as well, in that I have my main brand hotels and mainstream hotels. Then you have some hotels that are just kind of outliers. [00:11:04] The outliers are the harder ones because the mainstream hotels, they’re all part of programming today. They’re training housekeepers, they’re training front desk staff. [00:11:13] Sandie Morgan: So one response I’ve received when I’ve reached out to executives at certain hotels. They explained to me the difference between a hotel owner and a franchise owner, [00:11:32] And so when I talked to a franchise owner, and I’m not going to use the brand, I was discouraged and insulted because [00:11:44] Sandie Morgan: he said I didn’t sign that code of conduct. That’s, yeah. And I’m here for blah, blah, blah. And so there was no training going on there, [00:11:56] And there was no culture of human dignity that was being promoted. So how do I deal with understanding the difference between a hotel brand and a franchise? [00:12:11] Michael Dominguez: Well, a couple of things is, the brands today, you can name any of ’em, any of the large brands. They don’t own any of their hotels, Sandie, they’re management companies. Where it’s gotten further than that is, you know, even some of the largest brands in the world. IE someone like Marriott. [00:12:30] They only manage a small portion of all of those hotels. Of those almost 10,000 hotels around the world, the rest of it are licensed and franchised. And where it gets bifurcated once again, is that the owners of these hotels, it’s not the owners by the way. The owners do not run the hotels. [00:12:50] The owners own the asset and it’s a real estate asset. So the owners traditionally hire a management company. Those management companies, there’s hundreds of ’em today will be hired because an owner says, I’m gonna, I’m gonna license a Marriott franchise, I’m gonna hire a management company to manage it. [00:13:12] ’cause Marriott’s not managing it for me. I’m just part of the marketing system. So where it’s bifurcated is these professional management companies, they’re doing a really good job around this effort as well. There’s lots of ’em. The Ambridge of the world, the pyramids of the world. They’re doing a good job. [00:13:28] And they’re involved in it just like any major brand would be. But they’re not a brand. They’re actually supporting a brand from the franchise. So it’s a very convoluted world today in the hotel world and how it’s owned and managed. But my point to all that is any of your top management companies, any of your top brands, they’re all focused on this and they are doing their due diligence to make sure that people are educated and aware [00:13:56] Of the issue and really pushing it forward. And then there’s many on the client side, you know, we’re partners with Maritz, which is a large intermediary company that does everything from full planning to, you know, program work for their group of customers. And they’re one of the largest in our industry. [00:14:15] And they have been part of the code for over a decade, and they have been promoting this for over a decade. And you know, David Peckinpaugh, their CEO just won the Freedom Award this year and was recognized for their work. So my thing is, it’s getting broader and broader in our industry. And this is something that many people are involved in. [00:14:34] You’re always gonna have these outliers, and that’s incumbent upon all of us to make the bad actors, not be bad actors. And, you know, I’m encouraged that, you know. Understand there is a, there’s legal and ethical, not even a liability involved, but there’s an ethical responsibility, but there’s also a responsibility in running your business because there is liability involved in that. [00:14:59] And that’s what the case showed. But I, I don’t want to, wouldn’t want to paint it that there’s not a lot of good work done. And I think everything in life is Pareto, you know, it’s 80 20, it’s the 80 20 rule. [00:15:12] Sandie Morgan: Yeah. Okay. [00:15:14] Michael Dominguez: We’re, I would think we’re probably 70 30 in that ball. We’re not quite at Pareto yet, but you’ve got a lot of people that are focused and pointed in the right direction and movin in the right direction where I’m encouraged that we’re gonna continue to make a dent. [00:15:28] Sandie Morgan: Well walk us through what training looks like for you. For staff and who, who’s included in staff. Because I had one conversation where the security people did not respond when we asked them to report what we were observing. [00:15:48] And, and so we went to and asked to speak to the night manager and they said, oh, that’s a third party contract. So we don’t have any control. So who gets the training? [00:16:00] Michael Dominguez: Well that, and that’s my point about the bifurcation. You, you’re not gonna find anything universal, but you’re gonna find many, again, of the main brands, you don’t have a lot of contract security. They’re gonna be hotel security, they’re gonna be employees, and that’s all, that’s all training. You bring up a good point though, that is to make sure all our contractors. [00:16:19] Are we requiring all our contractors to go through the same training that we’re requiring [00:16:22] Sandie Morgan: Yes. [00:16:23] Michael Dominguez: Our team to go through? That, that’s probably a great opportunity for us to kind of close the gap just a little bit. But the training is intense and it’s deep. And, you know, the biggest points of influence are gonna be around housekeeping, front desk. [00:16:38] And then of course the management that would have to deal with it. And that would be, it’s not that much training on what to do when you come across it because it’s, please call law enforcement. And don’t try to be in the middle of this because all that happens is you put somebody else in danger, you put the literally trafficked individual in danger and you put yourself in danger. [00:17:01] So that’s not the hard training. The hard training is dial 9 1 1. That is not hard to train on. It is being able to identify and understand how things look and what that looks like. And Sandie, I mentioned the pandemic. We kind of went backwards during the pandemic because one of our greatest points of of identification were at the front desk, it had always been at the front desk. [00:17:23] Well, during the pandemic, what we got really good at because of the pandemic, was bypassing the front desk and getting into mobile check-in and [00:17:31] Sandie Morgan: Oh, Oh, [00:17:34] Michael Dominguez: Which means one of our anchors on training now has less relevance. I don’t wanna say no, but less relevance than it did in the past. So we have to rethink that, revamp it. [00:17:46] So now your responsibility falls more on back of the house, it’s making sure the housekeepers, when they’re in a room, what are they identifying? And somebody that has a privacy, you know, a privacy sign on their door, it’s not gonna stay on for three days without us going to check a room. And that’s where hotels are getting better, that there will be a wellness check in a 24 hour window, even with a privacy sign if it’s been more than 24 hours, that type of thing. [00:18:12] But you know, there, there are easy signs there, there’s always a request for more towels, more amenities, those type of things for the rooms. More extra linens. Those are things that are now identifiers. And, and this is where I have hope, Sandie, that you know, where we’re going with AI and the ability to identify things is like, you know, I’m sure we can create a system where AI is looking at the identifier quickly and bringing up alerts of requests that are happening and, and how frequent they are. [00:18:43] Because looking at a large hotel, these requests sometimes can be under the radar. Because those requests can be common with normal guests. You know, why would normal guests need extra sheets? They have kids. Somebody wet the bed, they’re trying to make sure they’re prepared. It’s all of those things, that do happen and some of that is normal. [00:19:02] But then you get the abnormal [00:19:04] Sandie Morgan: Alright, so those trainings and policies, that’s moving us, I like the having, a metric to follow the trend. So that 70 30 is your estimation of where we are. Hotel awareness and training, understanding and identifying and oh my goodness, the examples that you used for what people ask of, of housekeeping are not on my signs list [00:19:39] when I’m training, in general communities. So the expertise in the hospitality industry is really helpful for those, particularly our community motels that may not be associated with a bigger group and, and to really think about outliers. Are they outliers because of some, nefarious agenda, or are they just not big enough to be included in some of the greater, agendas and strategies? [00:20:22] Michael Dominguez: Yeah, I, I think it’s a little bit of both. And, and I think there’s, you know, that some of the things when you talk about what to look for. I’ve only had one hotel manager that did this, but I was so impressed with what he did in regards to the fact that you only had one key per ID that would be issued. [00:20:49] You know how you go to hotels and they ask you, how many keys do you want? He’s like, no. Single key, single ID. You want two keys? Gimme another ID. And it, the reason that matters is because, again, another sign to look for, at the front desk, is multiple keys. Because today the elevators, many of the elevators are keyed off by floor, which means you need multiple keys if you’re trying to send people up the room or get ’em up to the floor of those type of things. [00:21:15] So multiple keys is another, another one of those signs that we look for. But I think it’s just important in that when you ask about the training, that’s the kind of training that we’ve continued to see, you know, [00:21:27] Sandie Morgan: And a lot of our hotel staff, especially in housekeeping, are not first language English speakers. So how do we accommodate for training in multiple languages? [00:21:47] Michael Dominguez: Well, the funny thing is, if you think about it, we have to train them in multiple languages on everything else we do in the hotel, so that’s not the issue. There’s no way to train ’em how to do the room without training ’em in multiple languages. And there’s no way to train ’em on all the other policies we have at a hotel without training ’em in different languages. [00:22:06] So that’s really not a holdup as much as making sure that the human trafficking and the signs we’re looking for are part of the training. That’s the important part of it, because we have to train ’em on everything else, you know? [00:22:19] Sandie Morgan: That, that is in so many sectors, that I work with in the nonprofit world. Translating materials into other languages is a barrier and, but obviously your guests come from around the world and I do have to do a shout out to Surf and Sand here in Orange County. And Amy McLimore, she’s the one that really helped me begin to understand this, and she told me she’d already gone through training and we got connected because of her passion [00:22:59] for pursuing this. And that kind of brings us back to the culture that is a top down leadership agenda item. So I have a couple more questions. The first one is, how do leaders effectively integrate this human rights issue, human dignity, into the culture of their hospitality? [00:23:29] Michael Dominguez: I think one, you have to learn how to be a good storyteller and when I’m learning, when I tell you that this is uncomfortable for the hospitality industry at times, because we don’t talk about, we’re warm and fuzzy people, so we don’t like to dwell too long on this. And I also have always have to think like when I’m at a live event, where do I place this and how do I emphasize it? [00:23:52] And what I don’t do is overemphasize it for a three day window, but make sure I’m taking 10 minutes to be very impactful. Make sure they understand that. And the fact that we run an auction at every one of our events and there’s these auctions running and we’re reminding ’em, the auction is running, it’s reminding them about human trafficking over a three day window without it, after [00:24:13] I’ve already teed it up on why we’re doing this and why it matters. And you know what the difference is. And one of the things I do, Sandie now, is I have an image and it’s from the Freedom Award. When I won the award and I took a picture with Faith Ramos. The reason I do this is Faith Ramos is part of the survivor’s council. [00:24:33] She’s been on our podcast. She was trafficked from 14 to 17 years old. And when I tell Faith’s story high level, like, why am I so passionate? Because it becomes personal when you put a human being into it. And I think sometimes we story tell, and I haven’t quite hit the connection because they can’t see a face and a person and a human being. [00:24:58] And by me showing that it’s made a difference because it’s impactful. I can say, I know Faith. I’ve gotten to know Faith, and she is a woman. I think she was named appropriately because she has a great deal of faith. But you look at what she’s done. I said it’s very personal with me because I’ve met not only Faith, I’ve met others on the Survivor Council. [00:25:21] When you realize how prevalent it is, and that we can make a difference. I was like, I have no other choice than to accept that responsibility. And that’s storytelling. And when you can grab somebody in storytelling, that’s when you can make an impact. And I don’t think enough leaders that they talk about the what, [00:25:39] they don’t understand the why, and they don’t explain the why enough. So I’m always explaining the why and that is the one that can kind of hit you in the face, shake you up. And, and again, I go back to Pareto, not everybody in the room is gonna resonate with it. Not everybody’s going to jump on the bandwagon, but you’ll probably get 80% of the people saying, what else can I do? [00:26:02] How? How else can I learn? And that’s what you’re trying to do. And I always say one person at a time is how we can make a difference. [00:26:09] Sandie Morgan: That’s so good and I follow Faith as well, and I need to reach out and invite her to do an interview here too. Yeah. So, [00:26:17] Michael Dominguez: She’s a wonderful human being. [00:26:18] Sandie Morgan: So talking about the Pareto, we’re at 70 30, we wanna be at 80 20. Actually, I’m an overachiever, so I’m going for 90 10. Yeah, join me. So tell me, looking ahead, you are using your influence, your leadership as a force for good. [00:26:44] What gives you hope that we will make it to the 80 20 this decade? [00:26:50] Michael Dominguez: The fact that everywhere I go and we have a conversation, that I have another company coming up and saying, you know what? I got an idea. This is how we could help. I had a client that is one of the largest, literally electrical associations, in the country. So all the electrical companies, you know, basically are part of his association. [00:27:14] He goes, Mike, how do we put trafficking information on the side of every truck they’re in, every neighborhood they’re in, [00:27:21] Sandie Morgan: Oh yeah. [00:27:22] Michael Dominguez: Every city. The fact that people, you start triggering ideas to say, how can I help with messaging? How can I help with awareness? How can we do that? That gives me a lot of hope and what I’ve learned, Sandie, and the fact that we’re having this conversation is a great example. [00:27:38] The more I am engaged and explain our commitment to trafficking, the more I continue to get introduced to a large group of people [00:27:45] Sandie Morgan: Mm. [00:27:46] Michael Dominguez: that are doing a lot of good work in different cities and we have a magazine called Beyond the Meeting Room, and we always feature a different organization that’s doing some really great work in human trafficking awareness and they’ve all been brought to us by clients or members or somebody else. [00:28:02] And yeah, you know, the same thing. Our dear friend at the Surf and Sand is why you and I are connected. [00:28:08] She knows I have a passion about this and that’s why we’re connected. And the more that you’re putting it out there, the more I continue to get introduced to [00:28:21] a bunch of people and organizations that are doing good work. And the reason that matters is the more that we know we’re doing good work and the more that we can help each other, the bigger the cause that means we just have greater momentum. [00:28:31] I got introduced to the Aruna project in, you know, in Atlanta. And, you know, we do a lot of gifting in our industry, especially on the sales side of it. [00:28:40] Well, the Aruna project is literally some great gifting items and bags and gift bags and leather goods. But every single person employed with the Aruna project is a survivor from trafficking, and it’s letting people know you’re going to buy these products anyway, but by buying these products, you’re supporting an organization that is helping women that have been trafficked and getting them into stable jobs, stable housing, and getting their lives back on track. [00:29:06] Those are the opportunities [00:29:07] Sandie Morgan: See. That’s teamwork. Or in my world, we talk about collaboration and every time you add a new thread to the connections, that means when we have a denser safety net victims won’t fall through unidentified, unseen. And I love that we started this conversation about basketball. It was the only sport in high school that I actually shined in because I was a guard. [00:29:44] And I think, ’cause I’m vertically challenged, people actually tripped over me. But I learned a really important lesson playing basketball. My gym teacher, Ms. Marston, made sure we left that season understanding everybody plays their position. If you try to play somebody else’s position, the team will not thrive. [00:30:14] And I love that your training says, call the hotline, call the police, do your part and then pass the ball. And that’s so significant. [00:30:28] Michael Dominguez: You just, Sandie, since you played, I will send you a clip later, but it is, it is a video that was done in 2014. It’s called A Beautiful Game, it was all done around the San Antonio Spurs and it was, it’s narrated by Magic Johnson to start. [00:30:44] Sandie Morgan: Oh, wow [00:30:44] Michael Dominguez: But what he’s talking about is this unique culture and as Pop likes to say, he goes, you know, we deal with a bunch of people that got over themselves long ago, and it’s a very low ego team. [00:30:59] And the reason the Spurs won’t have a leading scorer or necessarily a leading rebound, or they’ll have a bunch of people in the top 10, but they’re not gonna be the leading because every night somebody else is gonna be the leading scorer because who has the best matchup? Who has the best open shot? And that’s how the team looks at it, even with this group of superstars. [00:31:18] And that’s a different mentality, but it’s exactly what you said. And they were the first team to bring in a bunch of Europeans because Pop always said, you know, they still know how to pass the ball. [00:31:28] Sandie Morgan: Mm. Oh. [00:31:30] Michael Dominguez: Europeans are great passers and they’re not they’re not big dribblers on one-on-one isolation. They literally move the ball around and that’s what the Spurs are known for. And you’ll hear ’em say, we have a shot. I’ve got a shot, but you’ve got a better shot. And, and to know, here’s my excitement. They’re now into their next generation and about to run with Wemby being their superstar, who came from France and is one of the most humble individuals you’ll ever meet. [00:31:57] He’s seven five, but moves like a guard. The guy is so nimble, but the other day asking him about a shot he gave up to one of his teammates and he said, I could have made that shot, with my eyes closed. And he says, but my teammate could have made that shot in his sleep [00:32:16] Sandie Morgan: Wow. [00:32:18] Michael Dominguez: And that’s why I passed it up. But he is their star, but willing to always say, I’ve got a teammate that is wide open and can make that every day. [00:32:30] Sandie Morgan: Passing the ball. Passing the ball. That’s right. [00:32:33] Michael Dominguez: And it’s never about me. It’s about us. And what makes us most effective. And one of the things I did not share with you is, in front of me, which you can’t see, is another jersey and it’s Manu Ginobili. [00:32:46] Ginobili was with the Spurs through that entire run with Duncan behind me. And Ginobili was the most decorated international basketball player of all time. Came from Argentina. He’s won Olympic gold with Argentina. He literally is already in the Hall of Fame here in the US. Yeah, but here’s the thing. [00:33:06] Ginobili for his entire career came off the bench for the Spurs, did not start when he would’ve started with any other team in the NBA, only because it made the Spurs better. And the interesting thing is he was willing to sacrifice that. But if you ever look at the Spurs, when none of them cared about their ego, [00:33:26] None of them cared about individual awards. What they cared about was winning championships. And the reason they were so deadly for all that time is who else has a future hall of Famer running their second unit? The Spurs never went down with the second unit in. And if you look at the Spurs stats, everybody plays about the same amount of minutes whether you start or whether you come off the bench. [00:33:48] And that’s what’s unique with their organization, they believe in their system, they believe in a team system. So it’s not about some player always playing 35 minutes a game for them to win. But that unselfishness around Ginobili is what I think permeated through the Spurs. And you heard it often, you know their starting point guard, Tony Parker, who’s another hall of Famer. [00:34:12] His entire career in the middle of the season, they had drafted a young point guard and during a shoot around Pop puts his arm around Tony and says, it’s time. And what he meant was, you’re gonna come off the bench, the young kid’s gonna start, and your job now is to teach ’em everything you know. And the interesting was, Sandie, there was no press conference. [00:34:32] No big to-do. Tony said, how could I ever complain when Manu came off the bench his entire career? Like how can, that’s not the Spurs way is you’re gonna do what you’re asked to do to make the team better. [00:34:46] And that’s what I think we should be doing as a society here. [00:34:48] Sandie Morgan: That’s exactly what our movement needs to hear right now. And I’m kind of in that space where trying to learn how to pass the ball to the up and coming voices and leaders in this movement and my friends who have been with me for decades, this is something we have to grab a hold of. [00:35:13] Mike, I appreciate your time. This won’t be our last conversation and hopefully our next one will be in person. [00:35:21] Michael Dominguez: Absolutely. We’re looking to January. [00:35:24] Sandie Morgan: Yes, January. Yes. We’ll reach out to Surf and Sand. We’ve got plans. If you’re listening and you’re in Orange County, let me know and we’ll definitely make sure you get invited. [00:35:39] So thank you so much for being here, Mike. I appreciate you. [00:35:43] Michael Dominguez: Thank you for the invite, Sandie, and thank you for all the good work you’re doing. [00:35:46] Sandie Morgan: Alright, take care. [00:35:48] Michael Dominguez: You too. [00:35:49] Delaney Mininger: Thank you to Michael Dominguez for showing us how one industry leader can spark a movement. From training housekeepers on new signs to adding hotline numbers on electrical trucks, Michael shows us that every sector has a role to play. [00:36:03] Listeners, if you loved this episode, make sure to check out the website endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources. [00:36:11] If you’d love to help us grow this podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with somebody you know, connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. As always, thanks for listening.

357 – Navigating New Threats: Parental Roles in Cyber Safety

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. https://youtu.be/1t42r59-nIE   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. Sandie 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 understand 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 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. [00:07:10] 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 are 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 coercing 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. And 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 fetish he 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, what 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 there is a reality beyond that screen. And 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, they need to know how to get outta that situation or know who to talk to. Or, I told my boys if, 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 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 that 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] 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, [00:20:39] Sandie Morgan: So tell us the how to find your website so we can see that video. [00:20:41] Clayton Cranford: So go to cybersafetycop.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: That anybody can do free, no risk. Do it for 30 days, check out the videos. [00:21:04] But there’s always something new. There’s always a new app, AI, 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 choose [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 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, struggling with an, you know, with, with friendships or anxiety or, know, or, or just sexually 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 a safe [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: Yeah you don’t have, to worry about that person reacting in a way. [00:23:31] Sandie Morgan: hmm. [00:23:32] Clayton Cranford: And in fact it’s 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. And 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 year [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 and I believe that family’s suing that 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. Parents 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. It’s 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. 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: So it’s really 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. 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 that’s [00:28:14] Clayton Cranford: And it’s the same 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 PTA. 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. [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 at cybersafetycop.com [ 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, Sandie. [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 at endinghumantrafficking.org [http://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.

356 — From Guilt to Growth: Lessons in Anti-Trafficking Collaboration

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. https://youtu.be/rAcXKRUkS68   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.

355 – Unlocking $215 Million for Trafficking Survivors: A Call to Action

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. https://youtu.be/5XfS9sZG7-8   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]