Ep. 165: Hidden in Plain Sight: Protecting Children from Trafficking

Child trafficking isn’t a distant issue — it happens in our own communities, often hiding in plain sight. Erin Williamson, LCSW, Chief Programs & Strategy Officer, Love146, a nationally recognized expert on child exploitation and trauma-informed care, shares insight into the realities of child trafficking. She discusses how health care providers, educators and community members can recognize red flags, build trust with vulnerable youth, and provide wraparound support that restores safety and dignity.

Watch the episode on YouTube.

Featuring:
Erin Williamson, LCSW, Chief Programs & Strategy Officer, Love146

Host/Producer: Carol Vassar

Views expressed by guests do not necessarily reflect the views of the host or management.

Subscribe, review or let your voice be heard at NemoursWellBeyond.org.

Transcript

Announcer:

Welcome to Well Beyond Medicine, the world's top-ranked children's health podcast, produced by Nemours Children's Health. Subscribe on any platform at NemoursWellBeyond.org or find us on YouTube.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Each week, we'll be joined by innovators and experts from around the world, exploring anything and everything related to the 85% of child health impacts that occur outside the doctor's office. I'm your host, Carol Vassar. And now that you're here, let's go.

Music:

Let's go Well Beyond Medicine.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

If you travel by air, rail, or bus these days, there's messaging you've probably noticed. It's pretty prominent on board your mode of transport, on digital billboards at airports, bus, and train stations, even in bathroom stalls at those locations, asking a few questions in many different languages. Are you in danger? Are you or someone you know being controlled? Are you being hurt? Followed by this or something like it, it's okay to ask for help because your safety matters. Followed by a phone number or a QR code to scan. This vital messaging is aimed squarely at those who are being trafficked by others, and many of them are children. Today we're talking about child human trafficking, who's vulnerable to it? What can be done to stem the tide? And what services are available? Joining me is Erin Williamson, Chief Programs and Strategy Officer at Love146, an organization dedicated to combating child trafficking and exploitation. She is a licensed clinical social worker, an LCSW, whose clients have experienced trafficking, and she works with them from a trauma-informed approach. Our conversation begins with a simple definition of what it means to be trafficked. Here's Erin Williamson.

Erin Williamson, Love146:

There is a lot of misconceptions out there about what trafficking is because of the movies and other things that exist. But trafficking, really, especially when we're talking about children, there's two forms. There's sex trafficking and there's labor trafficking. And when we're talking about sex trafficking, it's really any commercial sex act, especially for those under 18. Above 18, you need to have force, fraud, or coercion. But under 18, there just needs to be some sort of exchange of any sexual activity for anything of value. It could be money, it could be a place to stay, it could be food, it could be drugs. And there doesn't have to be a third party for that youth to be considered a victim of human trafficking, especially when you're talking at the federal level.

Oftentimes, what we do see is we do see third parties. Sometimes we see that, and sometimes we don't. But just in terms of services and need, we say there's no such thing as a child prostitute. And so if you can kind of remember that, then you can remember anytime you're thinking of somebody in that way or thinking of a child, that actually is a victim of trafficking. When you're dealing with labor trafficking, you do have to have the force, fraud, and coercion because, of course, children are able to work in certain industries at certain ages, and so you do have to show that there's force, fraud, or coercion for that labor exploitation to be occurring.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

How widespread is this? What kind of a problem is this, both in the US and worldwide?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yeah. So many people think of trafficking as happening over there, and full disclosure, that's how I started my own career, thinking that trafficking occurred kind of over there in other countries. And then I really was forced to look at what's happening here in the United States. And certainly, we do have foreign nationals coming in and being trafficked into this country, and we hear a lot about that, but we also have our own US citizens and our own children that are being trafficked. And at Love146, that's the large majority of actually who we work with. I think when people think of trafficking, they think you have to cross some sort of state line or some sort of boundary. You don't actually. There's no transportation that is required in the crime of trafficking. And so while sometimes we will see children that are brought out of state or brought to another part within the same state, oftentimes children are trafficked and exploited within their own home communities, and that can really impact their willingness and ability to seek support, to disclose what's happening to them, especially depending on their relationship with their traffickers.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

What makes a child vulnerable to being trafficked, especially in their own community? I'm very curious about that.

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yeah. So research really shows that prior sexual abuse is a high-risk factor for trafficking victimization, also system involvement. And if we think about what traffickers look like and flip the script and say, instead of what are the kids' vulnerabilities, what do traffickers seek out when they're seeking these children, they seek out children where they have some sort of need that that trafficker can promise to meet. So they can promise to be the parents that child has always wanted, or that father figure that might not be in that child's life, or offer the love and be the romantic figure that that person has always wanted, or offer the financial stability that that person needs, or the housing.

And this is going to sound crass, but really, traffickers are looking at it many times from a business perspective, an opportunity. If a child has already been sexually exploited and sexually victimized, from a trafficker's perspective, that's great. That child knows what's expected of them. That child probably knows how to keep secrets. This is going to be a normalized behavior for that child. They probably already have thoughts about their value related to that exploitation that might not have been addressed prior. So again, we see a lot of traffickers go after kids that have these gaps in their life.

Now, I will say we've also had traffickers go after kids who come from more affluent families where there are two parents in the home. Usually, what we see there is that the parents are kind of emotionally absent, and so the trafficker's meeting this emotional need, or those parents are just not aware of what's happening on the internet. A lot of our traffickers are now identifying, grooming, and recruiting kids online, and if parents don't have a good sense of who their child is connecting with online and maybe assume school's dealing with internet safety issues when oftentimes they're not, those children also can be vulnerable to this form of exploitation as well.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Now, you mentioned that it can happen, it sounds like, just about anywhere, and that's an interesting point, and perhaps a misconception that it's only going to happen in this neighborhood or that neighborhood or that state or this country. What are some other common misconceptions about child human trafficking, specifically, that you run up against? And what do you say about them? How do you address them?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yeah, oftentimes people think that it's kind of that old school stranger danger thing where, well, I just need to teach my child to not talk to strangers. But the reality is that part of what traffickers do is they ingratiate themselves with children; they become part of these children's lives. They become their best friend or their romantic partner, or their adult figure, or they already have existing relationships. We have familial trafficking where there are parents who traffic kids, where there are aunts and uncles or older siblings. We've seen coaches, we've seen parents. And so if they don't already have a relationship, they develop that relationship, and then they use that relationship to exploit the children. And so I think when you see the movies, when you hear about it, you hear about that white van kidnapping. We have had a few cases where kidnapping has been the case, but I will say the large majority of our cases, that is not true. Really, these children have oftentimes deep relationships with their traffickers. That is part of how these traffickers control these children and manipulate them to get what they need out of them.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

What should healthcare providers be looking for, and parents be looking for, so that it doesn't get to the point of trafficking? What are the signs, I guess, of the grooming process?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yeah, no, and that is a great question because ideally, we want to stop this before it gets to the exploitation. So some of the things that we talk about are kids' behaviors, all of a sudden changing? Are they all of a sudden being much more secretive about what they're doing online, or who they're talking to online, or who they're going out with and associating with? Oftentimes, we have parents who, and even providers who, default to drugs. That's the assumption. Oh, their behavior's changing. They must be getting involved in drugs. And they don't really think about, oh, well, it could also be that there's a predator that's trying to pull them away from their current relationships and really make them dependent on them as a sole provider of emotional safety or physical needs. And that really is what a grooming relationship is, is it's pulling that child away from other trusting individuals in their lives and making them dependent.

So if you see those changes in behavior, the other thing we'll sometimes see is we'll see children, especially children who maybe don't have financial resources, all of a sudden they're showing up and their hair's done or their nails are done or they have new shoes that really we know that their family can't afford. And so asking questions, and it doesn't have to be in an accusatory way. It can be in a really, oh my gosh, those are nice shoes. Where do you get them? Oh, how did you get them? And kind of following that money and seeing how that child reacts. Again, if that child got those shoes or those nails or hair in a very innocent manner, they'll be more than happy, usually to share some sort of information about that. But if they become really nervous or anxious or really not willing to share information, you don't necessarily need to probe at that moment, but you need to mark that as something in your mind that's kind of like a red flag you need to follow.

The other thing that we've noticed is a lot of times children will start to break little rules and then longer rules, especially around curfew or running away, disappearing for periods of time. At first, this might be kind of a test of what happens when I break curfew, what happens when I run away for an hour or two? And then it might get longer and longer periods of time. But certainly, I would say if there's any child in your practice that's showing up where their parents or caregivers are mentioning that they're running anywhere, or they're missing a lot or they're leaving home, that is for sure a red flag that I would probe more because we do see a high correlation between running away and vulnerability to exploitation. Again, if you're thinking as a trafficker, you're thinking if I see a kid that's maybe spending time on the street or living on the street, that child's probably not getting their basic needs met, that something has probably happened in that child's life either at home or somewhere else, that there's a gap I can come in and utilize and manipulate to control them and get what I need from them.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Erin, you've mentioned the internet a couple of times. Is this where the vast majority of the grooming is taking place? I recall in the seventies, eighties, when I was growing up, it was the bus stations, the train stations, picking up the runaways in New York, or that kind of thing. The internet has really changed the way this all happens, hasn't it?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

It has. I will say we still see about half of our, or the majority, a little over half of our kids being identified and groomed and recruited offline, individuals that they're meeting through life, through life circumstances, being introduced to by friends. Sometimes traffickers will send in kids into their schools to groom and recruit other kids once they've found someone and they've exploited. So we've seen a lot of grooming and recruiting happening in schools or in residential facilities, or in places where kids already are. The internet I think has really changed it for two reasons. One is a predator can really get into any child's bedroom. That's the concept. A predator really has access and unfiltered access. And there's a lot of communication that can happen through online platforms that nobody can see, either because it's encrypted or it's in direct messaging or it's just not out for people to kind of keep an eye on.

And so what we do see when we see recruiting and grooming on the internet is kind of that quickly taking somebody from maybe a public platform into a private message, into a much more private relationship, and that can be really hard for parents to monitor and for practitioners to know about. I do think having healthcare providers ask, especially, well, really kids at any age, but what they're doing on the internet, what their social media access is, how they make decisions. I think that healthcare practitioners have this ability to ask questions in a way that's very neutral and that's very non-threatening. And I also think that healthcare professionals have an opportunity to provide what's universal education. And so maybe you're not going to identify a trafficking victim by providing that universal education. You might. But you're going to talk to them about how do they make decisions about who they're going to talk to? Do they know they can set their privacy settings? Have they looked at their privacy settings on various social media platforms? But I will say there's not one platform. A lot of times, parents will say, "Well, what are the apps that I need to look out for?" And I say, it's really, I mean, we've had kids that have been trafficked through Pinterest.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Really?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yes, yes. So I mean, it's not about this app. I mean, certainly, there are certain apps that you need to be concerned about. There's Omegle, for example, right now, which is kind of like a Chatroulette, what Chatroulette used to be, where you can talk to strangers online. Theoretically, you have to be over 18, but you just click a button saying you are, and all of a sudden, you can just talk to strangers. And you can imagine what happens on sites like that. But you might not think twice about giving your kid access to Pinterest. And we have seen even these benign sites being used for exploitation. So really educating your child about what do you do if you find yourself talking to somebody, and what are the red flags and kind of knowing who can you go to and having those conversations is really important.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Let's flip the technology question on its head. How are you and anyone fighting human trafficking, child human trafficking, using technology to fight it?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

So we try to spread a lot of our message through technology. It's a great way for us to share information en masse. So, for example, if you go on our website right now, on the top of our website, which is love146.org, there's a banner where parents, but really anyone could sign up, even healthcare providers can sign up to get emails that talk about introducing technology to your kid. That's a common question we get. What age? How do you do it? And we go through different, really practical ways to do this, equating giving technology to your kid to teaching your kid how to cross the street. You're not going to take your kid into New York City and say, "I'll be back in an hour. Good luck. Let me know how this goes." But that is kind of what we do when we give kids a phone and unfiltered access to the internet.

And so we talk about it. First, you're going to hold your child's hand. You're going to look both ways. You're going to talk to them about street safety. You're going to talk to them about why they cross the street at the corner and not just in the middle of the street. And then as they get older, you're going to drop their hand. You're not going to be holding it. You're going to maybe not remind them to look both ways and see if they do it on their own. And eventually, your child hopefully is going to learn to cross the street. And it might not be a major four-lane highway that they're first learning, it's going to be a smaller street. But the goal is that by the time they're 18 and they're leaving your house, they could cross any street, even one in New York City.

And the same is really true for the internet. We need to start by walking them through and talking with them about what is social media? What is the internet? How do we talk to people? And you can no longer say, in today's age, it doesn't make sense to say, "Don't talk to strangers online." You really need to explain what does that mean? Because again, a lot of these kids will develop relationships and then, well, that's no longer a stranger, that's my buddy. Sometimes you'll have kids, that's the only person I can trust, they know all my secrets. Because if I tell someone online as a child what's happening, well, they're not part of my school social network, they're not going to tell all my friends. And so in some ways, that seems safer because my business won't get out. And what they are not thinking about is, well, one, do you know that that's actually who they say they are? And two, they can also use those secrets that you've told them to get you to do, to compel you to do different things.

And we've seen a lot of that. You told me this, I wouldn't want to have to share that. Can you just send me a photo so I know you're safe? Just send me a photo once a day. And then those photo requests become more explicit, and then those photos are used to for sextortion and for other things. And then next thing you know, let's meet up in person. And so it is a process. So, really, explaining early on to your children what this looks like? And I will say I have a 13-year-old and I have a nine-year-old, and we're right in the thick of it. And our 13-year-old, who has a phone. It's monitored. We use the Bark Phone, and we get through AI alerts about violence (and) sexual content. And we're not constantly reading everything, but once we get an alert, we look and we make sure.

I will say that our oldest child, who obviously has probably heard more about internet safety than your average child, has come to us and said, "I took myself out of two group chats because they started talking about inappropriate things. And I knew you were going to get alerts, and I didn't want to be part of that." And has asked, "Can you limit my time on YouTube because I feel like I'm becoming addicted?" And so if you can say to your children, "Look, I can provide that safety net for you," children will utilize that. They know they need boundaries. They might not act like they need boundaries, but in their minds, it's scary because they're pushing boundaries, and part of what they're doing is making sure, "Is somebody there to catch me if I try to go too far?"

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

At what age do you start introducing this? I have a two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, and they live on a not so-busy street, but I'm already teaching her look left, look right, make sure there are no cars. She doesn't quite get it yet. But at what age do you start the internet safety talk?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yeah, so it's kind of like you talk about different things at different developmental ages. So usually at younger ages, what I suggest and what I talk about is not internet safety specifically, but a broader conversation about secrets. Our family doesn't have secrets. And so if anybody ever asks you, "Can you keep a secret," you tell them, "Our family doesn't have secrets." Because part of, again, what predators are going to do is they're going to look for who's the most vulnerable child, and they're going to test out is this someone who's going to keep my secret of what I'm doing to them? And one of the best things that a child can say to them is, "Well, I don't keep secrets from my family," because to a predator, that's like, whoa, okay, well then I can't mess with you because you're going to immediately go to your parents.

So we teach our children and we encourage others teach their children from a very early age concepts like we don't have secrets, concepts like this is my body, my space, and so that they have a choice over if somebody wants to give them a hug, if somebody wants to, that they can say no if they feel uncomfortable. And then as they get older, kind of increasing it, talking about that mommy and daddy are safe for you, but not all adults are safe. And you need to know that if you ever feel like an adult is unsafe, you can always come to mommy and daddy. Let's figure out who else you could go to. Who are some other people that you think you could go to if something was happening to you? And helping them to think about who are the people in their life in their natural social circles, adults and children that they could go to even if mommy and daddy were not around. Who's someone at school they could go to? Who's someone at their camp they could go to? And just helping them kind of proactively think about safe people.

We want to say things like go to a teacher, go to your counselor. Sometimes that might be the right person for that child, but we also need to remember that people in those positions have also hurt children. And so it's really helpful to let the child lead with who they think they would go to and why. Why do you think that that would be a safe adult for you? I will say that before my child got his phone, I did say to him, "If you are old enough and you think you're responsible enough to get a phone, and I do too, that's why we're having this conversation, you're old enough for us to have a really honest conversation about online safety, pornography, and something." And I said, "And if you're not old enough to have this conversation with me, you are not old enough to have this phone." And we had a fairly frank conversation. And I said to him, one of the things I said to him was, "You can never unsee something. So if you're pausing at something and you're saying, 'Should I swipe, should I not swipe,' swipe, immediately swipe because you can't unsee something. And there's nothing that's so important that you have to sit there and watch it. And you can end up in this moment where you're kind of frozen watching something you really don't want to see.”

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

I want to talk about some of the children and adults who when they were children who were victims of trafficking. You have a trauma-informed practice. How important is it that you employ trauma-informed care when working with these teens, children, and, I'm guessing, adults, not just young adults, but even older?

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yeah, trauma-informed care is really important, and really understanding what is kind of normal trauma response. Because I think that things that are very normal trauma response can be misidentified as delinquent behavior or noncompliant behavior, especially among systems that are very wanting people to comply with standards, and protocols, and behaviors. And I think the same way that... I'll just give an example. It's very common for our youth who have been trafficked and have run away to go back to their traffickers, even after they have disclosed that they've been trafficked, even after we've offered services and support. It's not this; they don't run into our arms and say, "Thank you, you saved me." And I think a lot of people who are not familiar with this population, they assume that that's the case, there's kind of this rescue and this youth is so happy and grateful, and kind of there's this nice bow at the end, and that's really not the case.

Traffickers have spent a long time really integrating some really horrific ideas into these children. You're dirty. You're all these other words that you can only imagine. Nobody's going to want you anymore. You're different. You're not the same. This was your fault. You made choices. When you go back to school, everyone's going to look at you differently. They're going to blame you differently. Law enforcement's not going to believe you. No one's going to believe that this stuff happened to you. And the reality is, sometimes they come back, and some of the things that the traffickers have said are true. It's very hard when you are 13 or 14 and have experienced that type of violence and victimization to go back into a school and have people talking about what they're going to wear at the next school dance. You just can't relate to them in a way that you used to be able to relate to them because you have experienced things that you should never have experienced. And so it can be hard to connect back into your community and your friendships.

You might have a bad experience with a provider or a law enforcement officer. And again, what you think about is what your trafficker said, not that you've had 10 other great experiences; it's that negative experience that you're like, "Maybe they're right." And it's oftentimes we'll hear children say, "It was too hard. It was too hard to go back and be expected to be, quote, unquote, normal. It was easier when I was back with my trafficker because at least I knew what was expected of me, and I knew I could do it. I come back to school and I'm having trouble concentrating and I'm having trouble focusing and I am having outbursts when people are saying the wrong things to me and I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do, and it's just too hard."

And so if you know that that's a pattern of behavior, you can work with that, and you can really help support and normalize that this is part of the healing process. And it's not a linear process. It's going to be the craziest roller coaster you've ever ridden. But if you don't know that, then it can be really, you're going to address it differently in terms of a therapeutic relationship or in terms of service provision. So having that real deep understanding of trauma and how trauma manifests itself and really helping that child or, like you said, youth or adults, understand that it's not a one-and-done. Trauma is going to pop up in your life, and sometimes it's going to pop up at times really unexpectedly. For example, a lot of times our children, when they have children of their own, what their parents may or may not have provided for them, the protection that they may or may not have received, really, really resonates as they look at their children and imagine them at that age and knowing what they experienced.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Before we finish up today, I want to ask about Love146's prevention education program. You work to protect vulnerable youth before they are trafficked. Tell me about the program. Tell me how you're measuring success with that program and other programs.

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Yes, and I love that you ask about success measurement. I love it. Evaluation is a huge, huge, holds a huge place in my heart. So yes, we have a prevention education program called Not a Number. It's a five module program that brings kids together and provides information on not just human trafficking, but things like healthy relationships, what's consent, how do you decide your boundaries, and it really focuses on skill building. We worked with the University of New Hampshire's Crimes Against Children Research Center in developing this curriculum, and they really pushed us beyond that information deficit model. They said, "Kids know drugs are bad, kids still do drugs. You really need to teach them skills." So what do they do when they're in a potentially dangerous situation? How do we make sure they know all the resources that exist, that they know that there's hotlines? Let's practice calling those hotlines.

So we've actually worked with the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center for the last 10 years, doing various levels of evaluation. They evaluated our pilot test of our curriculum. We just did a quasi-experimental evaluation of the curriculum in the Houston Independent School District. And now we're actually in the process of doing a randomized control trial in Minnesota, which, as a state, has adopted this curriculum as its primary kind of education tool to prevent human trafficking.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

It sounds like you've done a lot of work, a lot of work yet to come. Erin Williamson, absolutely fascinating conversation. Erin is the Chief Programs and Strategy Officer at Love146, and I believe the website is Love146.org. Thank you so much for being here today.

Erin Williamson, Love146:

Thank you so much. It was great to be on your show and be able to talk about this important topic.

Music:

Well Beyond Medicine.

Carol Vassar, podcast host/producer:

Real conversations with real people about real issues faced outside the doctor's office by children in our midst. Thank you, Erin, for sharing your expertise. And thanks as always to you for listening. The Nemours Well Beyond Medicine Podcast comes to you each Monday morning, and you can get it directly in your podcast feed by clicking follow in your favorite podcast app or by visiting our website, NemoursWellBeyond.org. We also have a monthly e-newsletter highlighting recent episodes, and you can subscribe to that at NemoursWellBeyond.org as well. While you're there, you can leave a voicemail with podcast episode ideas or send an email with episode suggestions at producer@NemoursWellBeyond.org. The podcast is also available on the Nemours YouTube channel and by asking your smart speaker to play it. And we encourage you to subscribe to the podcast wherever you may find it. Our production team this week includes Cheryl Munn, Susan Masucci, Lauren Teta, and Alex Wall. Video production by Britt Moore. Audio production by yours truly. Next time, Thanksgiving week, we talk food politics with the esteemed Dr. Marion Nestle. Please join us. I'm Carol Vassar. Until then, remember: we can change children's health for good — Well Beyond Medicine.

Music:

Let's go Well Beyond Medicine.