← From Now On
From Now On
THE TRUTH ABOUT HUMAN TRAFFICKING: Today’s Modern Slavery & What Everyone Needs to Know
01:03:48
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- [00:10]
A
This is from now on. I'm Lisa Phillips. Just a heads up. This episode contains discussions of grooming, coercive control, and human trafficking. Some may find it upsetting. We encourage you to take care of yourself as we bring season one to a close. I want to leave you with a truth that's both heartbreaking and urgent. Human trafficking isn't something that happens elsewhere. It's happening right here, right now, in our neighborhoods, on our phones, behind those too good to be true job offers. According to the Global Slavery index, more than 40 million people worldwide are trapped in modern slavery. One in four of them are children. You've heard me share pieces of my story before and how I was brought to Jeffrey Epstein's island. Stepping off that boat, I saw a young girl whose face I didn't recognize at first. It wasn't until 15 years later that I learned she was Virginia Giuffre. Virginia's courage to speak out changed everything for so many survivors. Yet the trafficking she endured left wounds no amount of money could ever heal. It robbed her of her self worth, made her feel as if her body, her very life, was no longer her own. Trafficking destroys futures. It strips people of their dignity, severs bonds of love and trust, and too often leaves survivors with nowhere to turn. In Virginia's case, the abuse followed her like a shadow through a marriage that should have been her refuge. A husband who promised safety but delivered betrayal. Even turning her own children against her. In the end, without the family support and loving partnerships we all deserve, Virginia felt there was nothing left to live for. I will truly miss her. But I will honor her by always supporting survivors and their stories and allowing the truth to be told. So today, I dedicate this final episode of season one to Virginia and to every woman who is being trafficked, hidden in plain sight. Think about them. They deserve a chance at a good life. They deserve the support we give to our own sisters, our own daughters, our own friends. These networks of exploitation span from small covert operations in local communities to high profile rings trafficked by wealth and influence, Epstein's P Diddies, or any predator who uses status to enable their crimes. Our goal moving forward must be awareness. Educating ourselves about the signs, speaking up when something feels wrong, and demanding accountability. For every institution that has failed Survivors, season one ends here. But our work is just beginning. Let's make changes legally, culturally, and personally to dismantle the systems that allow trafficking to thrive. For Virginia, for the millions who are still trapped, for all of us who refuse to look away. Thank you for listening. And I'll see you in season two. Stronger, louder and more determined than ever to fight for every survivor's voice. Today's guest is the award winning international human rights statistician who has developed leading global models to assess risks and vulnerability to modern slavery. Dr. Davina Durgana was a founding author of the Global Slavery Index and contributing founding author of the UN's Global Estimates of Modern Slavery. She is the director of Free the Slaves, the oldest anti trafficking organization in the United States and is currently working on a book on family court reform for domestic violence survivors and their children. I am so grateful today to welcome back Davina Durgana to from noon. Welcome Divina.
- [03:54]
B
Thank you, Lisa. It's great to be back.
- [03:57]
A
I'm excited you're back. So first episode we covered your relationship. This time we're going to cover sex trafficking and your expertise on that. So tell me, how did you get into the academic side of human trafficking and pursue it as a career?
- [04:13]
B
So the academic side of human trafficking was actually the least attractive and kind of sexy part of this whole issue area. This was before taken. So this was when people still didn't really know that modern slavery was even happening. They thought it was all white slavery or, you know, Moldovan women that were trafficked into slavery. There was a very low public consciousness about it. And was on a mission trip in El Salvador with my church and we were teaching Spanish and math to like kids in rural San Salvador and one of the little girls from my community had gone missing. And as you might know, like MS.13 had originated in El Salvador and back then, it was in the early 2000s, it was a very unsafe place. Place they've done great work since. It's not really the same now, but back then it was incredibly unsafe. And we found out that right before we left one of that girl had been trafficked by ms.13 and she had actually died. We'd had the funeral and we went to it with the rest of the community and that really made me deeply affected at that age. I was a freshman in college. I loved the kids that I worked with and I was like, how can we leave them in such an unsafe situation? Came back to where I was doing undergrad in D.C. at the George Washington University and started interning for everyone I could on modern slavery. I worked for Amnesty International, I worked for the un. I worked for Polaris and I actually was on the national human trafficking hotline and resource center for a few years. And I loved the overnight shifts where I was able to talk to victims directly, get them services. It was really eye opening. And what started as an interest in international sex slavery really became a specialization in domestic sex slavery because there just was so much more happening here than I realized. And luckily, DC Happened to be a place that they had centered a lot of that work. As it went on, I noticed that the calls I was getting on the hotline were so different than the way people were talking about sex slavery in policy. They were talking about white female victims of minor victims of sex slavery in America. And the people that I was getting calls from on the hotline were labor trafficking victims or immigrants that were coming, or older women who were trafficked or massage parlor brothels, and people that didn't have all of this protection because they were immigrants or they weren't native English speakers. And so one thing that really concerned me was how can we make policy that works when we have this idea that we're protect. We need to protect the wrong populations. Minor children that are American citizens are among the best protected populations in America. You have Amber Alerts when they go missing people. And one thing to remember is that trafficking is a crime. Right? Traffickers are entrepreneurs. They're not looking for the path of most resistance. They're looking for where the easiest targets are and the least protections exist. That's not going to be your average American female child that a whole community is going to be up in arms about missing. That doesn't, of course, mean that sexual assault or kidnap or other things aren't an issue, but trafficking necessarily wouldn't be the commercial benefit there. If you are worried about evading police.
- [07:26]
A
Detection, what is human trafficking, in your words?
- [07:29]
B
Yeah, so human trafficking is basically the use of force, fraud, and coercion to exploit someone for labor or sexual. And with minors, you don't need force, fraud, or coercion for the sex component. It's. It's any minor cannot consent under the age of 18 in America. One of the things, though, that we talk about with sex slavery here and why the academic side was so important, is that you have runaway and missing youth. LGBTQ plus. We have youth in America that are African American girls that are sometimes just characterized as runaways without any real clarity as to what happened. And as I was doing that, I was like, I can. I'm really good at math. It's not something I love doing. I think, you know, at the time, it wasn't something I was passionate about pursuing a career in. I wanted to work in slavery. But I saw that the niche the slavery field needed was more data, informed science. They needed somebody who could do the statistics and make the policy recommendations that would actually help people. We needed more shelter beds for people that didn't speak English, that had some kind of immigration background. We needed more protections like the Department of Labor has a wage and hour division that doesn't ask questions about citizenship when affirming labor standards and helping people out of sex trafficking. That's what we need In a country where immigration policy is so polarizing, and especially now today, where people are being deported with while still being US Citizens and having legal status, I think it's even more important that we have these social protections in place.
- [08:56]
A
Can you explain force, fraud and coercion in this context?
- [09:01]
B
So force, fraud and coercion in this context can look really different. But force is typically what you think of when someone's physically detained. They may be locked in a room, they may be chained to a wall, they may be physically prevented from leaving. Fraud is when you're tricked. You might be signing up for a labor contract as hotel staff and then you arrive and you find out actually you're meant to be providing sex in a massage parlor brothel. You've been defrauded, but you have very little agency. What are you going to do? You're already here, you have no resources and you're already indebted to your trafficker, usually for the transportation. So then that's kind of what fraud would look like. And coercion is mostly using threats. So I would say, like, I'm going to incarcerate your brother for his drug dealing or his gang affiliations. If you don't provide commercial sex for me. Some type of inducement to your behavior that wouldn't be normal. Like something like, you know, your dad owes me a debt. So if you provide commercial sex, then we will call that debt. Even your family owes rent, then you're going to provide sex for the rent that's owed. You won't get evicted.
- [10:07]
A
There are a lot of conspiracy theories around human trafficking. Yeah, we're still understanding it.
- [10:13]
B
Yeah.
- [10:14]
A
What are the biggest misconceptions or lies around human trafficking?
- [10:20]
B
There are so many conspiracy theories, and I think they've abounded because it's such an interesting topic and people are universally against it. I think one of the biggest misconceptions we have is that typically trafficking isn't this majorly organized crime. It doesn't have to be. In America, we usually refer to it as disorganized crime. So typically these are lower level operators with four to five women and men that they may control. It's typically not These large, sweeping, taken esque kinds of operations where you have multiple cartels moving people throughout countries, often it's just not necessary. There are vulnerable populations in every single country that can do this. I think the thing that we miss in a lot of the conspiracy theories is just looking at traffickers as entrepreneurs and criminal entrepreneurs. They are going to do whatever it takes to provide the supply of women to the demand that they perceive. If that demand were to shift, that would have a huge impact on the ability and interest of traffickers to be trafficking women. A lot of the work that I do for the US Government looks at trafficking rings like trafficking networks, but traffickers as specifically traffickers of all types of things like wildlife, antiquities, nuclear arms, drugs, and people. It's not necessarily that people are their preferred medium for making money. It just so happens that they're often the most accessible and low risk to do that. But if we could switch the incentives, make it more difficult to obtain vulnerable people, or make it more high risk for them to pursue this behavior, they would switch to something else.
- [12:04]
A
What's the percentage of people trafficked that are women?
- [12:08]
B
So globally, when we did this research with the global slavery index and the global estimates of modern slavery, it started as high as 71% of all of the people we had found in 2016 were, were trafficking victims were female. And that number is almost certainly an underestimate because women typically are going to be missing from a ton of like administrative data and research just by nature of how hidden they can be. They're domestic workers who are often largely women. Massage parlor brothels are largely ethnic networks that are highly protected and really difficult to infiltrate. Like We've worked in D.C. with massage parlor brothel victims who were under the control of their mamasans, which means that they had a cultural tie. They were holding their passports because they're looking out for them in a new country. It's deep levels of manipulation, but it took them years of victim services to even identify that what had happened to them wasn't normal. And so loads of women are conditioned in that way to not come forward. Domestic violence is also very common with domestic servitude. So you're hired to be a nanny or something, and you're paid far less than you're entitled to, and that's technically labor trafficking. But if you're already in the home and being abused, there's nothing stopping sexual assault from occurring as well. And so you see a lot of comorbidity for a lot of these things. I think that you have a huge problem where women especially. There was a report we also issued called Stacked Odds. It was with every woman, every child with the UN and it was a fascinating look at why women are traditionally more vulnerable. And, and it starts from son preference at birth all the way through widows of men being disinherited or not having the same land tenure rates. And when you look at something like that, you can see how women especially what resonated for me was middle aged women having all this unpaid household and other emotional labor that they have to provide, which cuts into our earning potential, which then means that we are less secure later on in life. And those kinds of things can easily lead to financial and other vulnerability factors that then lead to trafficking.
- [14:17]
A
Can you explain why trafficking is a profit driven model?
- [14:21]
B
Absolutely. So human trafficking is a profit driven model because you. A core component of a trafficking crime means that it has to be done for economic gain. So if it were, if there were no economic gain or incentive, and it's not always money, it could be any goods and services. Right. So it could be rent, it could be drugs, it could be literally anything smuggling. And it's hard to think of people as commodities in this way. Right. So I do appreciate that I'm talking to you, someone who has such tremendous lived experience and I am sorry to kind of like depersonalize it in this way, but.
- [14:56]
A
Because sometimes it's power.
- [14:57]
B
Exactly. It's about power and control. And I think there is something to be said that although academically it's clear that trafficking can function just like arms or antiquity trafficking or wildlife or any of that, there is something about traffickers psychology as well that often makes them enjoy the act of trafficking people because of that power and interpersonal connection. And that has more to do with, you know, their crimes. And I suspect that people that are choosing to traffic humans instead of anything else probably have some inner need that's being met that way, some sociopathic and other criminal tendency. And I wouldn't, it wouldn't surprise me if they were also rapists and other like child abusers and status, like there's lots of, lots of things that go into that. I think talking about it academically has been made it easier for me. So when I was working on the hotline, it became really difficult to connect so deeply and so personally to victims and then to still work in this space. Like I actually wasn't sure I'd be able to handle it. So working on statistics, especially at a global level, made it easier for me to work on policy because it was a step away from the kind of heart wrenching and vicarious trauma I was.
- [16:10]
A
Experiencing, I can't imagine that wouldn't be easy.
- [16:12]
B
Absolutely not. And I know you have so much experience with like, vicarious trauma, even from the work you do on this podcast. It can really have an effect on your happiness and your ability to keep doing that work. So for me, looking at it academically meant that I was able to kind of take myself out of the equation and look at the numbers and make the recommendations. And that's been very effective in a policy setting. But then it also becomes very interesting when working with survivors directly because I've done that a bunch and many of the NGOs I've worked in. And it's fascinating because it reinforces that the models I've built for risk prevention. I'm a very good vulnerability modeler. That's kind of like my talent here. It becomes so much more important the more I work with survivors directly because I don't know that there's a real path to full restitution. I don't think we're ever the same people we were before. And I think the kind of dehumanization that occurs with trafficking is even worse because it is for this economic profit. It's not even because there's some kind of perverted romantic relationship or association. It's typically done because somebody is commodified. And that's a hugely objectifying and harmful experience. And I think when we're talking about how this moves forward, it makes me really happy that I chose to work on risk prevention, because I think preventing this, like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I really think it's probably even more so that. Because how are we ever supposed to be the people we were before?
- [17:41]
A
So many different emotions going through, you know, the victims, and some of them are beat. There's so much physical abuse.
- [17:48]
B
Oh, physical, absolutely. And I think, you know, the justice system hasn't caught up. They require victims to testify against their traffickers. The traffickers often have just re traumatizing. It is so re traumatizing. And then on top of that, we're not even clear that traffickers will be held accountable. Like the just. The justice system just isn't really giving the kinds of sentences that even provide any sort of justice. Not restitution, not revenge, just even justice. And I think we look at the Cassie and Diddy trials and you look at what she's gone through. There was a clear commercial relationship. He was in a position of power and authority. He was clearly coercing her into those freak off and other sexual activities and into subversive activities that she clearly didn't consent to. She was having negative health implications and she was still being vilified now for coming forward under a subpoena, like under a requirement to testify.
- [18:43]
A
Right. The number one thing is like, why didn't you leave? You know, it's a huge power dynamic. It's also her boss, she's under contract. A lot of times you don't look at all the, and not even just the things that he's doing or saying to her to manipulate her mind.
- [18:57]
B
Right.
- [18:57]
A
And people don't understand that chorus of control.
- [18:59]
B
No, no. The context was so important and I'm glad you mentioned the course of control element because it was her career. I mean, this was, this was P. Diddy. I mean, he was a hugely important, relatively speaking, in her industry and in general a hugely important figure. And she would have had so much less power. And that's exactly why he did it, because he could. Right. And that's kind of the same in any sphere. Right. Anyone with a, with a relative amount of power can use it to abuse vulnerable people.
- [19:28]
A
Yeah. Prey on the ambition.
- [19:31]
B
Yeah.
- [19:31]
A
You are an international human rights stats expert. Can you explain how being a mathematician actually helps the effort to end human trafficking?
- [19:40]
B
Statistics is not always the sexiest or most interesting sounding. Oh yeah, thanks. I mean, I love it. I do think it's really helpful because data represents real people and I kind of have always said that like it's not just, you know, numbers on a spreadsheet. That's a person, that's their experiences, that's, you know, their reality. It's just when we're looking at a different scale, it's, you know, looking like numbers. But for me, applied statistics which like looks at, you know, statistics in the real world is messy. It's tough. You don't have perfect data, you don't have perfect models, you don't have anything complete. It's, it's really difficult and it makes it one of the more challenging areas of statistics and it makes me so much more excited to try to innovate the math in that area. But it's also been really important because policymakers and even like general populations are more and more data driven. They want to know what the, what the information is. They don't want your opinion on something if it's based on like one or two stories. Always they want to know, well, is it a million people? Is it 5 million people? As if that takes away from the individual Experience, which it doesn't. But it does help when you're thinking about how much money are we giving this country to attack this problem, how many people will be taken out of slavery if that were to happen. And I think that's the really powerful part of math to me and statistics in this space is it. It gives real power to the experiences of each of these individual people. Like, you may not care or know even about one individual deep sea slave who's on like a sip, a shipping vessel for like seven years and never comes to port, but when Greenpeace and Minder foundation when I was working there, were able to make this argument on their behalf overnight, we were able to get, basically with the publishing of the U.S. department of Labor's forced labor and child labor products list, we were able to get that entire industry overhauled because we said all these deep sea fishing products from these specific countries were using deep sea slaves. And so in that way, looking at the data behind each of these individual people that like, amount to this immense number of suffering led to a policy change. And I think that's been very inspiring for me that the policy has really been responsive to numbers.
- [21:57]
A
So the policies can only be changed once they see the stats of how many victims there actually are. So that would support why survivors need to speak up.
- [22:06]
B
Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. And the more education we do, like your podcast and having people understand what slavery is like. So many people I've worked with have almost no idea that they're being manipulated and exploited. Labor exploitation is time.
- [22:21]
A
You don't even know until you're Absolutely.
- [22:22]
B
No, no, absolutely. And, and the worst part, and one of the things that I think about often is that globally, one of the major reasons we found for why people stayed in a situation of slavery, like why did they stay? Why didn't they leave? Was withheld wages. And that was kind of similar for Cassie too. Cause it was like the number of albums she was meant to produce. Right. But it is financial abuse. And these people stay in situations of slavery, allowing it to compound, allowing the money they're owed to increase when they never actually will receive it. And the fact that we published that and shared that joint experience among all these people was really helpful to so many survivors because then they were like, oh, but that's me too. So if I keep staying, I might actually end up just like everyone else. Like, we're all in the same boat. And I think that's the most important.
- [23:05]
A
Thing you just said, is they. Or promise something they actually never receive. Yes, I hear that so often. And like you said with Cassie as well, she had a 10 album contract and I think she got only one.
- [23:15]
B
Yeah.
- [23:16]
A
So she was staying in it because, oh, I was promised another one and it never happened.
- [23:20]
B
Keeping you on the hook is a huge, like, coercion mechanism. Why wouldn't this. You have the relative power.
- [23:26]
A
That's all the power.
- [23:28]
B
Absolutely.
- [23:30]
A
In what spaces does human trafficking thrive or exist within the US economy?
- [23:36]
B
So trafficking will always thrive where there's a lack of social safety nets and a lack of oversight. So when there's more surveillance, for example, there's been ton of really great press around Super Bowls and that's really because of like an increase in demand, right? Yeah, exactly. When there's more surveillance, you tend to uncover more trafficking. Surprise. So the best and a lot of.
- [23:56]
A
Trafficking happens at these types of games.
- [23:58]
B
Exactly. Because you're pulling in the demand. And I think that's really where the key is. It comes down to demand. And that's the truth for labor trafficking as well. If we stop demanding cheaply made goods and labor and we ask about the supply chains, there'll be more of an incentive for companies to clean that up. So I think that's kind of an interesting corollary. But in the US this happens only where there's demand for it. When there's demand for cheap sex, when there's demand for cheap labor. And the literature on sex trafficking has been really interesting over the last like two decades. But one of the most helpful distinctions I've understood is, is the difference between preferential and opportunistic buyers. And that ties into kind of supplies. So let's say you're in Las Vegas on a bachelorette party and you're offered commercial sex. You might not have gone looking for it, but if it was offered to you, you may take it. That's kind of an opportunistic buyer of sex. Preferential buyers of sex are typically people that want children or want subversive sex or unsafe sex. They're going to be looking for sex regardless of where they are. And so when you make something more readily available, like in Las Vegas or anywhere else, where there's like a hedonistic kind of like culture of like, lots of, you know, thrill seeking and fun. And men sometimes like the Super Bowls or like, you know, Las Vegas in general is kind of like an evergreen environment for this. They're more likely to have opportunistic opportunities for sex. So then people are then exploited there. Preferential buyers of sex are often like pedophiles and different things, like, they're going to exist regardless, but both of them can be addressed if it's less readily available.
- [25:29]
A
So with Jeffrey Epstein in his New York ecosystem of trafficking, he was mostly trafficking models, women in the art world. These were young women who all wanted to make it in some form of the entertainment industry or arts. Are there any stats around trafficking in the entertainment industry that you've uncovered?
- [25:49]
B
Yeah. So one of the biggest problems we have with industries like the arts and things that. Where the known odds of success are so low, is that predatory men like Jeffrey Epstein can prey upon that and say, I'm a person of influence. I'm a person of connections. If you affiliate with me, you may or may not be able to succeed in this space because it isn't about your individual talent as much as it is about who can help you make these connections. And there's even an entire trope in pornographic film industries about, like, casting couches and, like, what can. What sexual favors can you trade for success in this art industry? Like, usually it's like movie casting. Oh, sure.
- [26:28]
A
Yeah.
- [26:28]
B
And the idea becomes that the problem is there aren't enough structural protections in industries where labor exploitation is so rife. So industries like entertainment, where so many people want to be a part of this, have so much latent talent, but there's so many less opportunities than there are people. Many people are willing to take on riskier and riskier options to try to make their breakouts in these areas. Also knowing that it's often time limited, which adds a huge amount of pressure to any of these potential victims, because they know that, like, oh, but if I don't make it before I'm 40, am I gonna make it in this industry? What is it gonna look like? And there's all of these, like, socialized patriarchal pressures about women's appearances and age and beauty and all of these things that play into it. But absolutely, in industries like that, and there are a couple. I mean, there aren't many that are as. As focused on physical beauty as, of course, the entertainment industries are. Or the odds are actually increasingly worse for, you know, success because it's so rare to get, like, those breakout stars. But when you have a situation like this that's structurally rife for exploitation, it's pretty common that almost like 80% of people that enter these industries are going to face, if not labor exploitation, at least 80%.
- [27:45]
A
I mean, it could at some point.
- [27:46]
B
Yeah, at some point, it's much likely very, very much higher, because how many people aren't taking Jobs as extra extras or hot people or anything for very minimal pay, just for exposure. And that's where this really, like, predatory sense of, like, do anything for the big break comes in. And that's when people are really at risk. I mean, it comes in a little bit abroad, but. Very bad.
- [28:09]
A
Yeah, I was gonna say. And also because they know that if I don't take this opportunity, I may.
- [28:12]
B
Never get it exactly right.
- [28:14]
A
So it's like it's dangled in front of you.
- [28:16]
B
Absolutely.
- [28:17]
A
And, you know, it's always the ambitious, that ambition that they prey on.
- [28:21]
B
And that's it. It's not the weakest people. These are people that are willing to take chances. They're willing to. To risk everything for their dreams. They're incredibly admirable. And it even happens that way globally, where tons of the people we see that are being trafficked from, like, poorer countries, like throughout Africa or the Middle east, into, like, Europe. They're not the poorest of the poor. The poorest of the poor are worried about survival. These are people with, like, college educations that believe that they can actually make it and these offers are legitimate. And then when they get there, they have very few options to return. So it is almost always like the. The victims aren't people that are, like, foolish or weak. They're often really ambitious and brave and willing to take these extreme chances to have the life that they deserve.
- [29:06]
A
Well, like I always say, when you're up against a master manipulator, you always lose.
- [29:10]
B
Yeah.
- [29:11]
A
So it's not like you're weak. It's like you have no idea that the person that you're talking to intentions aren't real.
- [29:18]
B
Absolutely. And that's awesome.
- [29:19]
A
How would you know? Because you can talk to someone else and their intentions are real, or they want to help you or just introduce you to someone. Because, you know, in this business, everything's kind of a give and take. It's relationship building, networking. So how do you know the difference between this person and usually the person who wants to traffic you is very charming and believable, you know, so that's the scary part.
- [29:44]
B
And they probably are more successful because of that. I think the other issue is that you have, as you mentioned, these people that are at inherent disadvantage because they want to take that chance. And the problem is, like you said, if they don't take the chance, they may never get it again. And it's a really common pattern. It happens globally, it happens domestically. I think it's a sad thing. The only thing that would save that is if our enforcement mechanisms and the structural protections in place could actually intervene, then if they intervene in a timely manner that wasn't disproportionately burdensome to the victims, these people would be less likely to do that. But that's just not the situation we operate in.
- [30:26]
A
Yeah. And what do you know sometimes when you're 19 years old, like Cassie, and it's like, well, I'm thinking, you know, Sean Combs is the only way that I'm gonna become a star. No. She probably could have done it many other ways, you know, because a lot of times they see the beautiful talent and they just want to suppress you.
- [30:40]
B
Yeah.
- [30:40]
A
And hurt you and minimize, you know, your potential.
- [30:43]
B
Yeah.
- [30:44]
A
And get caught up in that. How do you figure out, when you're up against people like that, those red flags to look out for?
- [30:51]
B
And Cassie's example is extremely problematic because she had a contract. This wasn't some under the table, like, you scratch my back, I scratch your back. This was a contract that she was allegedly protected by. And normally, if we were talking about anyone else, I would say get the contract, get the legal labor protection, get something that you can take back to court. That really didn't save her in this scenario. So I think it's just the.
- [31:14]
A
That's a big sex trafficking ring.
- [31:16]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [31:16]
A
Like Epstein and Aditi is bringing in these women for. But let's talk about the ones that are, you know, aren't famous. There's so many sex trafficking rings throughout entertainment, arts, sports, different cities of the US who don't have that power. They're always promising something to you as well.
- [31:35]
B
Yeah.
- [31:36]
A
But they don't have really, probably the means to give it to you.
- [31:38]
B
Absolutely. And they'll keep you compliant on. And. And that's. I mean, the sex component of all of this is also comorbid with all the labor trafficking. Right. Like, these people are almost certainly being labor exploited. Like, think about the semi pro football leagues, for example. I mean, that's an interesting example of extreme labor exploitation. They're being paid minimally for, you know, sporting events that other people are paying to attend, and they're being kept on kind of the wheel. Like, oh, but if you keep doing well here, if you keep doing this, then, you know, you might make it to the pros, you might make it here. And I mean, it's that kind of carrot that you mentioned before that's constantly being used.
- [32:15]
A
So another way that Jeffrey trafficked young girls was through massage therapy. Why is the massage service industry so ripe for trafficking?
- [32:25]
B
Yeah, the massage parlor industry, but the massage industry in general is a really interesting front for trafficking operations because there's an inherent intimacy to the actual service provision. So there's an unclothed, typically client and there's the privacy, the inherent privacy of. Because they're unclothed, you have like this, you know, closed off space. And so the person that's providing the services is not as protected because it's not as visible, it's not like a nail tax. And other people can obviously be exploited for labor as well, but it's less likely that you're going to be exploited for sex in full view of the potential public. Massage parlors and massage industries are already like, you know, pretty secluded as they were.
- [33:05]
A
Behind closed doors.
- [33:06]
B
Behind closed doors. And so a lot of the protections that are federally in place now for massage parlor brothels are no locking doors. There's supposed to be protections about, you know, the standards and like the identification that's used, but really it's an inherently intimate type of service that's already done in private. And so I think anything that's done in private by necessity could easily be rife for exploitation for sex.
- [33:31]
A
So who is the most vulnerable and susceptible to trafficking?
- [33:35]
B
Yeah, so I spend so much of my career looking at risk models for who's most vulnerable. And the first model I created was actually about minors in the US and their risk to labor and sex. The biggest risk by far was aside from like your political status, like your immigration status was community insecurity, which meant if you came from an area where people were less likely to have any kind of social safety net, like big brothers, big sisters, or just generally people that were invested in your community, if you weren't known, if people didn't know to look out for you or knew who your parents were, knew your siblings were. And a lot of times that comes down to the quality of the education system, the public education system, because that's kind of like the last fail safe. You're essentially at most risk. If you have the least support, the least financial resources, and you have any kind of immigration or political vulnerability, you face an extremely high risk of exploitation. Because like you said, there's this perception that if I don't take this chance, if I don't take this risk, I'll be one of the many that are deported, one of the many that don't make it. And it's. And poverty first and foremost, typically is the guiding factor there.
- [34:43]
A
So what are social protections and why are they important to prevent trafficking?
- [34:49]
B
So social protection sometimes Looks like I'll give you a great example. So I have been a global anti trafficking expert for almost 20 years. I lived on the corner in Virginia of this beautiful neighborhood and there was a bus stop. It always struck me as odd that someone could traffic a child waiting at my bus stop in front of my house just because I didn't know the child. I didn't know their parents, I didn't know who they were supposed to be going with. And they wouldn't necessarily even know me well enough to ask for help. They had no idea what I was doing. And there's a book called Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam in an Academic Circle. It's about the social decline in America. About like bowling leagues were like a way that communities could get together in the age of smartphones and all of this individualized attention. Now we're in a place where people really don't know their neighbors. There's not this level of community connection. And outside of like a school environment, because our children are socializing, really, other unaffiliated adults will have no idea how to help or protect even if they were safe enough to do so. And so social safety nets typically come in where like community protections can't be financed. So I mentioned I was a volunteer firefighter in our previous session. And as a volunteer firefighter, many firefighters in America are volunteer because like career firefighters are very, very difficult to obtain and they're not well funded. So volunteers supplement many of them. Those types of relationships are people who are taking on positions of public trust to try to be more involved in the community, people that have more to do with the schools, people that have anything to do with park spaces and playgrounds. These are the kinds of people that are building social safety nets. There's Big Brothers, Big Sisters, there's the national court appointed special advocates, these types of social community and safety nets, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts of America, everything that kind of allows adults that are caring and like parents and vetted to have more of a connection. Even youth sports leagues is a great way to bring people out and get more people involved. It also increases the risk that like children will be exposed to more adults that may not be safe. But it's also probably the only way that more safe adults can be identified for the children in those situations so that if there is a problem, if there is unhealthy behavior that it can be found. That's also the case with a lot of the online predation that's happening because when children are online and being groomed or contacted by potential sex Traffickers, and they don't have safe adults in their space. Or perhaps their parents are more conservative and not. As they don't have that kind of open dialogue. Having other safe adults and people in their lives will be hugely important in terms of deterring any potential contact.
- [37:30]
A
So traffickers, they don't work alone?
- [37:34]
B
Typically not. Yeah.
- [37:35]
A
So like serial predators, they require laborers, loyal friends, customers, enablers. Is there any research or stats on the ecosystem that are required to have a successful trafficking ring?
- [37:51]
B
So what you really need are recruiters. So those are the people that you often have traffic, sometimes even trafficked before. They're sometimes called bottom. So they're the people that you've trafficked the longest, that you've then somehow deputized to be kind of like your contact. That happens often in group houses in the foster care system. I've done a ton of work there. So lots of times you might be a trafficker of one girl and posing as her much older boyfriend, and then she's put into the girl's, you know, the girl's house, and then she'll recruit her. Her dorm mates from there to come into your trafficking ring.
- [38:24]
A
You just explained Epstein's trafficking ring?
- [38:26]
B
Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's kind of the. The Romeo effect or this. Like romanticizing a relationship and then having their friends kind of recruit other friends. Like, that's kind of an easy, classic way that traffickers have been doing this. And the recruitment component of trafficking is probably the part that they use. Aside from the purchasers of the sex, of course. That's probably the largest network they have. And these are people that are willing to vouch for them. Oh, he's such a great guy. Oh, he's. Whoever he is. He's so successful. He's gonna help you. He's helped all these people. And then, of course, there's the purchasers who are the first and foremost, you know, I want to say responsible party, because if they weren't purchasing the sex, it would be. There'd be no one to traffic for.
- [39:09]
A
Makes sense.
- [39:10]
B
Yeah.
- [39:11]
A
So how can we as parents, aunties, neighbors, better protect the kids in our community from human trafficking?
- [39:19]
B
So because now we're both mothers, so you know how interesting this question becomes, because I spent so much of my career without actually being a mom, and now that I am a mom, I'm surprised at how much my perspective changes.
- [39:29]
A
Perspective changes immediately so much.
- [39:31]
B
And I also realized that my answer before may have been something like, oh, you know, just befriend the kids in your neighborhood and, like, get to know them. And now I realize that if some other woman was trying to befriend my daughter, I'd think it was odd, right? The clear way to do this is probably to befriend the other parents. And so one of the things that I've done in all the communities I've lived in is talk to the schools and actually offered like stranger danger workshops because, you know, playgrounds are targeted and oftentimes women are used because we're seen as often like the, the vast majority of their teachers, their mothers, their safe family members. So if a trafficker is using a woman to get children to come, they'll often come. And I would do this whole thing. I was like, parents, you know, there's no adult that you don't know that's going to need your help for something. Like, we're adults, we can handle it. Don't like, you know, you don't need to go with them, you don't need to go look at the animals or anything interesting. There's not something they need your help for. And then if I go to the, you know, a similar group later and have someone go up and ask them the question, invariably these kids are so sweet and so innocent, they'll like come and try to help like any random woman. They may be weary of like men because they've been trained and conditioned to see them as the direct traffickers. But of course it's even more dangerous when they don't expect it to be that way. So what I would suggest is that as women support the other women, like if you can socialize with the other moms, the other aunties, and have these types of conversations or even know who their kids are like, take an interest in the women you meet at the playground. Like, don't just sit on your phone anyway because that's, you know, all of our kids can run off in a second. But that's like just so easy. Practice being present, practice socializing with the other moms, practice finding things that they like to do and just like have those organic conversations. But building those community networks of women with women is the best way to protect our children. Because you also don't know how many of these women are in situations of domestic violence or unsafe parents and need and may need that help and may want to reach out to you.
- [41:31]
A
The American society is way more individualistic than most global societies. Does that open us up to more risk of human trafficking?
- [41:40]
B
The American society being more individualistic and I would say even a little bit more self concerned. Like we're not as always concerned about our neighbors welfare as many other societies are, certainly does open up our children to higher risk and even our peers. Because if we see something as someone else's problem, we would never intervene to assist. In fact, there's significant bystander intervention research in criminology that indicates that you are less likely to get help if you yell rape or murder. In fact the recommendation is that you should yell mom and most able bodied women will come and potentially bring their partners or whoever's with them to help intervene. I mean, and that's a really interesting thing that like mothers and women as mothers are still the caretakers of society. And I think that's still true because if as Allegra is my daughter's mom, if I now were to see another 2 year old or another 10 year old walking around without their parent or like crying or looking lost, my first inclination would be to help them.
- [42:43]
A
Oh yeah, always.
- [42:44]
B
And I think there are many times that we underestimate the value of mothers as mothers. But that physical connection we make to children, it doesn't just stop with our kid. Like we see all children as like deserving of that connection.
- [42:59]
A
But things have changed so much where you want to help that child you see kind of by themselves. But then you're like, oh, is that a scam? Is this a setup?
- [43:06]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it could be.
- [43:07]
A
You start to think that way too.
- [43:08]
B
Well, and that's kind of why it's so important to protect yourself first always. But in the event that you can help, right, like you see a kid crying, it's. And this is a bit different in America because at least in America you could take them to like the front of the store and that they'll have some kind of system for that. You could call like local law enforcement and do a welfare check on a kid that you see, you don't even have to get involved directly. But like when you're abroad and you're like oh no, then you, you could actually, you'd have much more of a risk of something like that. And even here you have more protection. It's never fully safe, but I mean if you see a child and like you can ask, it's always worth it. And then of course you still can use your judgment if like whatever they're asking seems unusual, right? But women have a unique power here that I think we haven't really appreciated that women as moms, women as aunts, women as all of it, we can really have, we can really regain some of the power we've lost, I think, in our society by banding together.
- [44:02]
A
I think it's really important. What are the ways we can come together from a labor standpoint to end human trafficking in the US Economy?
- [44:11]
B
Yeah. Labor unions have always been my favorite response to this. That's the case for Thai fishermen, and that is the case for electricians in New York. I think labor unionizing is so important. There should never be ambiguity about what any of your peers or any of your colleagues are being paid. That is an incredible scam that only benefits the corporations that are in charge. It certainly doesn't benefit the workers. And this, like, imposed secrecy is very unhealthy and very concerning to me. So, like, websites like Glassdoor and different things like you, we really need way more transparency in order to be able to negotiate effectively. Also, when you have colleagues that are maybe going for your, like, a promotion to your position, give them a clear understanding of what your earning was like. Allow that to be the case, because what are you gatekeeping? You're gatekeeping your salary so that they could make less. Like, there. There really has to be some concept of a ladder here where workers understand that we are each other's best resources and that the corporations and the leaders of these companies are never going to put our interests above theirs. But labor unions in general, with, like, labor transparency, labor rights, all of that, that is. And unionizing can be more formal, or it can even be like collective information and bargaining. Like, what information? Like, what is your salary? How do we negotiate that?
- [45:32]
A
So I want to talk about the impact of human trafficking on survivors. Are survivors more susceptible to future abuse?
- [45:40]
B
Unfortunately, survivors are absolutely susceptible to future abuse because first they've been victimized, so then they have all of this trauma if they have children or other obligations, or they have to be sent back to their home country or make a home in a new country. They're now in a position of trying to deal with all of these other structural changes in addition to, like, sometimes putting their own trauma on the back burner. And then, of course, they're gonna be more likely in that compromised situation to be susceptible to domestic violence. Abusers, people that can prey upon their vulnerabilities and even being retrafficed. It's often the case that trafficking survivors get out and then aren't able to stay out of the life because. And I mean the life meaning like an exploitative situation like this, because they don't really have the opportunity to develop other skill sets. They don't really have the connections and the resources and the community Support. And they have compounding debt and other issues that are now making them even more vulnerable than they were when they got into the first situation.
- [46:37]
A
And you forget that they're taught that they're worthless.
- [46:41]
B
Absolutely. The dehumanization.
- [46:42]
A
Yes. It's the dehumanization of the way they feel about themselves that puts them back into it.
- [46:49]
B
They expect less and less for themselves. And because they've been used to accepting less and being treated worse, they believe that they almost. They believe that's a norm.
- [47:00]
A
Yeah, that's the cycle of abuse. If they don't go back into human trafficking, they'll usually choose an abuser. It makes them feel that way.
- [47:07]
B
Absolutely.
- [47:08]
A
You know, until they heal through it and that.
- [47:11]
B
And that's if they're lucky enough to heal through it, because.
- [47:15]
A
Yeah. Is there any information on the physical and mental impact of survivorship?
- [47:22]
B
Yeah. So the physical and mental impact of survivorship is complicated. I mean, there's the physical, I think. And most survivors of any type of violent crime will agree that the physical harm pales in comparison, pales to the emotional violence, I think, almost. And speaking as a survivor of domestic violence myself, I also think that I would.
- [47:41]
A
I'm a.
- [47:42]
B
Exactly. Yeah. I would. I would have taken any amount of physical pain to save me. The emotional and mental anguish. It just is not comparable. And the emotional mental anguish is much harder to heal because now you have a situation where you're rebuilding your self worth, as you mentioned. You're rebuilding your sense of who you are and your independence and your boundaries as you're still in this compromised situation. And so the problem is the compounded abuse by any potential abusers you now encounter. And also, it's not even affordable to receive the kinds of therapeutic assistance you need in America. It's incredibly expensive.
- [48:20]
A
Incredibly.
- [48:21]
B
Even as a co parenting situation, I've had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy and mediation and all these things, and it almost never can yield what it needs, because this is a product of time and growth and change when you may not have the luxury.
- [48:37]
A
Oh, for sure. And also, even on your path to healing, maybe you get therapy, really good therapy if you can afford it. But there's also, like, parents or family friends who are still making you feel like everything is your fault, like, why didn't you leave? And constantly keeping you in this cycle of thinking that things are your fault. So it takes a lot more time if you don't have that support around you.
- [49:03]
B
Absolutely.
- [49:03]
A
And that's the most important part.
- [49:05]
B
Well, and a lot of time People can't understand it, right? They just can't understand, like, why did you make these choices? Why didn't you come to us sooner? Why didn't you do this? And especially for, you know, multicultural or immigrant families, like, there's a huge amount of shame and internalized, internalized grief over what's occurred. And being able to be honest about that is such a hugely important part of your healing journey. But it also sometimes means that you're then isolated further from the people you.
- [49:34]
A
Need, from the, the people you really need the most.
- [49:36]
B
Absolutely.
- [49:37]
A
Have you ever worked with any whistleblowers of sex trafficking rings?
- [49:41]
B
Absolutely, yes. And so whistleblower survivors are fascinating to me because they function within an operation that they want to see fail. So it's almost really interesting because. So one of the biggest anti trafficking networks I've uncovered recently was during my pregnancy in Cyprus. I was able to do this for surrogacy anti trafficking thing. And I figured it out because I was pregnant myself and needing an ob GYN and there were just way too many in Nicosia, this random small Mediterranean country and city had way more OBGYNs than I could find in my area in New York. It was just incomprehensible. And it turned out that because IVF and other things had so many regulations and were so prohibitively expensive in many of our countries, it was Germany, Australia, Ireland, the British Commission, so that's the UK and the US and Israel. You have all of these people coming to Cyprus to get surrogates from the north. It's unregulated and essentially owned by Turkey. And then having those children brought down to the south where they can then have citizenship papers transferred to our citizens. It was really fascinating. And it was one of those things that we were, when we were looking at it, you're trying to uncover how to best say that these medical procedures, these medical groups are not at the standard they should be, that the people signing the contracts are actually, you know, not getting the protections that they need in place. And then the whistleblowers in that context were also pregnant women. So they were willing to work with me, but they were terrified. They came for fraudulent universities in the north that didn't exist. And once they got there, they were, you know, they had very few options other than to be trafficked for, you know, the surrogacy work. And so those whistleblowers are just so incredibly brave and like working with me, another pregnant woman who was also like, trying to uncover all this before I gave birth so I could try to, like, set up some of these protections. I mean, the whistleblowers that actually try to take themselves out, they're so inspiring because often survivors will engage in small acts of sabotage, like whatever they can do to get back at the survivor, at the trafficker, with, like, with very little guarantee of protection. Whistleblowers like that are willing to take the whole thing down and often have so much bravery because they have no guarantee that any of these whistleblower protections will actually keep them safe. But they're so invested in justice and seeing it end and other people not being victimized that they do this. So it's actually really fascinating when you think about it that way. And I think the pregnant women in the four surrogacy ring are a really good example of, like, you can be tremendously vulnerable. These women were, like, visibly and physically vulnerable as well, and they were still willing to fight for a better future for their children.
- [52:24]
A
So you're talking about all these women were brought from these different countries to Cyprus to carry a baby full term.
- [52:31]
B
Well, that's what ended up happening. Yeah.
- [52:33]
A
And they weren't being paid for it.
- [52:35]
B
Exactly. Yeah. No. So in the north of Cyprus, the south of Cyprus is kind of what you would think of as, like, where you might go on vacation. Like, it's part of the eu. It's like a normal place. The north of Cyprus, the same island, but, like, a separate territory, is owned by Turkey. And they have these fraudulent universities. So people are attracted to come, but then they get there and there's no university. So these people are, like, vulnerable and ready to be trafficked. So if they're not trafficked for labor, they're trafficked for sex. They have, like, traditional brothels there. And because the IVF community is, you know, like, probably expensive in other places, these people end up becoming proxies. So there were Georgian women, women from the Ukraine that were white passing. There were women from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa that were then just used as, like, complete surrogates. And, like, it was a sliding scale based on race. So if you were white passing, they might use your eggs as donors, and if you were not, they would just use the whole product, like the egg and the sperm from the donor parent. And you were just an incubator, essentially. And what was really interesting was the medical regulations in the north didn't exist. So even when I was doing my research as a pregnant woman, I couldn't even spend longer than six hours in the north, because if something happened to me, my baby and I would not be okay. Because what they would do is they would use Clomid and hyperfertility medication to have, like, multiple implantations, because in normal IVF contracts, you can't guarantee a healthy embryo. But they could, because they didn't care.
- [53:58]
A
About sex, because Clomid can make you have, like, several eggs.
- [54:01]
B
Exactly. And they didn't care about the health of the surrogates because they were trafficked victims. So they would then selectively abort the fetuses that they didn't want. It was incredibly dangerous and very threatening their lives.
- [54:12]
A
Oh, that was scary. I didn't know about that.
- [54:13]
B
Yeah. I uncovered it. It wasn't something really like even a part of our academic literature until I happened to be in Cyprus for my own situation and then uncovered it and then managed to come up with all of this before and get the other embassies involved to preventing it before I left. Israel and Ireland and a few others have actually issued reports or like, you know, warnings prohibiting their citizens from engaging in forced surrogacy there because of it.
- [54:41]
A
Wow, that's mind blowing.
- [54:43]
B
It was really. I was. Especially for someone who'd worked in slavery and seen so many different types globally for so long, it was shocking to me to uncover, like, a new trafficking type and modality. But it just shows that, you know, traffickers are enterprising. They'll really do anything.
- [55:00]
A
Big money business.
- [55:01]
B
Yeah, big money business. Huge amount of money. They were playing, you know, imagine what you would pay, like in our normal countries for ivf. And then these. These girls were being then billed back for their medical visits. To even be putting their own lives there, I mean, it was crazy. Yeah.
- [55:15]
A
You have to carry a child for nine, 10 months.
- [55:17]
B
Yeah.
- [55:19]
A
So generally, are whistleblowers properly supported when they come forward? Just thinking of, like, Virginia Giuffre, who was the whistleblower for Jeffrey Epstein and the sex trafficking ring.
- [55:31]
B
Honestly, I think most survivors are not supported in the ways that we. They would need. I think sex trafficking survivors in particular are really misunderstood in terms of how complicated the abuse is and the commodification of a person. I mean, it really takes a lot out of you. I. I don't want to discourage whistleblowers from coming forward because I think there are government agencies and there are individuals and groups that can protect you. I think nonprofits are doing a great job of that and not putting you at risk until they need to. But as you know, with Virginia, I think the effects of trafficking itself are just so long standing and so difficult to treat and eradicate. That it's always risky business being a slavery survivor. But I think in this situation, whistleblowers should feel more comfortable now coming forward than they would have 10 years ago. And I think that's only gonna keep increasing because trafficking is being really mainstreamed. Like law enforcement's understanding, governments are understanding, the UN's understanding. I think there's a much greater likelihood that you'll be supported, but it may still not be everything you need. The use of nonprofit organizations and free mental health assistance whenever you can cannot be understated. The importance can't be understated.
- [56:45]
A
Yeah, things are changing, but it's very slow. That's the importance of the awareness.
- [56:50]
B
Yeah, absolutely.
- [56:52]
A
Most people don't even understand, like you're saying modern day slavery. Is that the exact same thing as human trafficking when you say it?
- [56:59]
B
Yes. Yeah. They. We use the term modern day slavery academically to distinguish between what's happening today and what's been happening since like the end of historical slavery in the US and globally. Mostly because slavery historically was legally sanctioned, whereas what we would call modern day slavery or slavery that has always been illegal, like the slavery you'd encounter with sex trafficking will never be legal.
- [57:25]
A
Right. What advice do you have for anyone listening who realize they are currently being trafficked or knows of someone who is being trafficked.
- [57:34]
B
So if you are being trafficked yourself, the National Human Trafficking hotline is really amazing. They even have a text line that's be free. That's where I like someone like me answered the calls for most of the time I was in my PhD program. And you'll have really experienced people like helping you to talk about your options, to talk about your assistance. Like domestic violence, it takes many times before people are actually willing to leave or make a move. So be comfortable exploring those options in a safe way. Be careful with what you're browsing. Make sure that your controller doesn't have access to that kind of information. But if you can start talking to those people about an exit plan, that is really the best thing you can do because it's going to take a long time for you to get comfortable with the idea of actually executing it. But it's so important to have something like that in place.
- [58:22]
A
What is your hope for the future in the space of human trafficking?
- [58:27]
B
My hope for the future in the space of human trafficking is that we collectively can make it so prohibitively expensive to traffic somebody that it just isn't appealing and it no longer becomes a crime. I think that can happen a few ways that can happen from Us asking more questions of our favorite companies and supply chains and how much labor is being exploited in these rings. I think it can also happen from societal shifts like us asking about why we think commodifying sex or commodifying women and anyone is acceptable and starting to have a real cultural shift because the purchasers of sex are our brothers, they're our husbands, they're the people we know. And if we can start making those shifts in our own households, in our own communities, in our own societies, I think we can see an end to trafficking.
- [59:14]
A
Where do you think that starts?
- [59:15]
B
I think it starts with literally taking an interest in what the people in your sphere are doing. Are your brothers going on bachelor parties? If so, what are they doing? Is it something that they'd be ashamed to talk about? And if so, let's talk about why it's not really appropriate to commodify this woman and think that that doesn't also hurt all women, including their own mothers, their own sisters, their own family. And I think personalizing it that way is probably the only way to do it. Some John schools do a really good job of having, you know, these are sometimes men who are fathers and having their daughter's age come in and talk about the impact of this. Part of it's humanizing, but part of it is also as a community, us changing our societal acceptance standards for behavior.
- [60:05]
A
I know I've already asked you this, but in the context of human trafficking and you hear the powerful statement from now on, how would you end this sentence?
- [60:14]
B
It's so interesting because as I mentioned, I think this is my favorite question that you have. And I've thought about this a lot too because you know, I've been involved in this space for so many points and I've seen so many really great trajections like change and really exponentially change. Like from no one knowing what trafficking was to now like all like millions of dollars in anti trafficking funding and all of this research being done and us even being able to talk about this is really empowering. From now on, what I would like is that we have a standard that changes American society's view of the human worth. That if we see individual lives as valuable as our own, then it doesn't stand that we can also exploit them for labor or exploit them for sex. And it almost follows to the same corollary we have to the world. I want to see for my daughter. I think we should only accept what we would want for ourselves and our children.
- [61:05]
A
Yeah, to stop it generationally.
- [61:06]
B
Exactly. Yeah. And even if that means less convenient clothing options, if that means, you know, more expensive chocolate, it, it might mean personal sacrifice, but we can speak with our pocketbooks. So much stronger than any policy shift can happen. Refuse to buy sex.
- [61:24]
A
Right.
- [61:25]
B
Refuse to buy trafficked goods. That's, it's, it's really could be that simple.
- [61:32]
A
Yeah. Sounds pretty simple.
- [61:34]
B
Right. Everyone has to do it, though. That's the danger of collective action.
- [61:38]
A
Yeah. And being self aware.
- [61:40]
B
Exactly. And asking the questions. Because, I mean, the Modern Slavery act now has all of these companies required to post on their websites about what they're doing. I mean, it's accessible information. We just have to care.
- [61:50]
A
Yeah, I see little changes happening. Yeah, A little change here and there.
- [61:54]
B
Exactly.
- [61:54]
A
Yeah. That's where we start, right?
- [61:56]
B
Absolutely.
- [61:57]
A
Yeah. Thank you so much for being here today.
- [61:59]
B
Oh, thank you so much, Lisa. This is a pleasure.
- [62:01]
A
Yeah, it's always a pleasure talking to you.
- [62:03]
B
Thank you.
- [62:04]
A
This is from now on, I'm Lisa Phillips. And until next time, stay informed, stay empowered, and remember, there is so much strength in speaking out. And special thanks to our amazing guest, Dr. Davina Durgana. Elizabeth Windham is our senior producer, Christopher Leon is the editor, and Jose Orellana is our studio producer. Our theme music is Many Worlds by Memory Theory. If you have any thoughts, questions or stories about your own views on topics discussed on from now on, email us@from nowonpodmail.com and please follow, rate, comment and review on Apple, podcasts, Spotify and YouTube. If today's conversation resonated with you and you are seeking more support in your own healing journey, if you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, help is available. Call 800-656-HOPE. If you or someone you know is being trafficked, contact the national human trafficking hotline. Text 233-733. That's beef. Ra Pave is a 501c3 nonprofit creating a world free from sexual violence and building communities to support survivors. To learn more, go to shatteringthesilence.org speak out act reclaim soar is dedicated to providing a safe and empowering space for survivors of sex trafficking to reclaim their stories and stand up for their themselves and each other. That's www.speakoutactsreclaim or.