well good evening and welcome to tonight's event on a very important tiring topic of human trafficking but there are special guest i'll miss michelle can't sing and because the director or advocates for human rights tonight's event is sponsored by the participation in the government and influences public policy through education and advocacy we invite you to join us women and men young and old and in between we have three you can set mean on different days at different times to be sure to find something that works your schedule our speaker this evening has a long history of advocating for human rights she joins me now because freeman raised in one thousand nine hundred ninety as a staff attorney representing asylum seekers and immigration detainees and continue none of those issues as a program director michel is currently the advocacy director of this organization and is responsible for leading issues of human trafficking and refugee  communities here in minnesota she is a coauthor go through the door fulfilling minnesota's promise of seeing her sexually exploited these days michelle spends considerable time at the minnesota legislature you're trying to pass and i'll move this down a little for there we go for that the tall in the short today thank you so much it is just a great honor and privilege to be with the league of women voters this is an organization that i've had the great joy of working with at the capitol and with cathy in particular on a lot of issues over the years relating mainly to immigration and to the voter id amendment and to all of the great work and when we were asked if we could join you here today of course there's nothing better than coming out to a league event so thank you so much and you're right you do advocate every day for a change for a better minnesota and it's just we couldn't do without you so for those of you listening at home who aren't on the league joint and get to work i wanted to start out by telling you a bit about who the advocates for human rights is we are thirty years old this year so i guess as the saying goes you can no longer trust us because we are now over thirty and we are based here in minnesota we have a small staff and a large volunteer contingent who works with us on trying to implement and protect and promote the human rights of people around the world and here in our home community we work up particularly with volunteers in the legal community and other professions because when we started we started with a small group of minnesota lawyers who wanted to make a difference in the human rights movement back in one nine hundred eighty three and we've continued that work today we work on the issues of violence against women which brings me here we also work on international justice and issues of refugee and immigrant rights we work on human rights education drafting and writing standards that incorporate human rights into our curriculum and drafting curricula for a teachers to  use around the state and around the country to better understand how human rights connect with kids we know there's no better power than our youth to get us moving we know that we all have a part to play in building the human rights movement and that's why volunteer are part of who we are it's not just free labor in our work and that's good because i'm here to talk about human trafficking and we don't like to do unpaid labor so it's great to be here our vision as at the advocates is really to envision a world where we all live with dignity and if you're not familiar with the human rights framework it sounds very technical and esoteric and maybe about treaties and laws that we've passed maybe just about nondiscrimination which is an important part of human rights but the real goal of human rights is to make sure that we can live our lives the way we were meant to that we can live it freely we can express ourselves that we can live with joy and peace that we can go to bed at night knowing that we'll wake up in the morning in our own home with our family with us so it is really something that helps us frame our public policy initiatives and i think serves as a good touchstone for all of us in deciding what is and what isn't good public policy and the right thing to do for our state for our country and for our partners around the world and i know that's what the league works on as well those fundamental freedoms making sure we can vote and we don't have to show an i d making  sure that we can exercise our civil liberties and it's again just great to have that connection i wanted to i'm not going to play a video but i'm going to just start out with a bit of a story because i think human trafficking is a really difficult topic to get our heads around and i have on the screen you see the video it's reference playground and if you're interested this is a film that was done by journalist to travel to thailand and she was exploring the issues of the the sex tourism industry which is a horrific problem  the world of human trafficking where really tourists are brought into countries to with the purpose and intent of having sex with children or women and girls in those countries in you know the tourist industry and she was thinking of human trafficking from that perspective the filmmaker traveled there and was appalled by what she saw and by the exploitation that went on of human beings in thailand and in the country she visited and then she stepped back and she started to think about the issue of sexual exploitation and realize that the number one destination for a man in the u s to buy sex from a child is the united states that is something that happens here it's a regular part of our everyday existence it could be happening in a hotel right up highway sixty one it could be happening in downtown st paul where a sex trafficking victim was rescued just at the end of last year and it could be happening in you know town homes or in homes out here in our community where kids are held and clients come to see to see them to pay for sex there was a ring a few years ago that was run out of suburban town homes and they were called the nice guys it was run by an assistant county attorney for hennepin county who was indicted on that so this is something that affects us all and that journey that the filmmaker libby spears went through in thinking about that that this isn't an issue of trafficking foreign born folks into the united states or in traveling from here to a foreign country but it's something that is a human rights atrocity here in our community really hit home for me my background is as you mentioned is in the immigration law and the primary work that i did for many years was representing people seeking asylum from other countries from persecution that they faced and it was amazing and powerful work and when i started working on this issue and hearing the stories of sex trafficked victims here women and girls who could have been me my age who went to the mall and fell for that guy who was following them around and telling them they were beautiful and saying you should be in movies let you come with me  i realize that you know like ramsey county attorney john choi often says one of the greatest human rights atrocities are going on in minnesota today is that of human trafficking and prostitution we've had the opportunity to work on legislation for the past couple of years around specifically around child trafficking and prostitution here in minnesota and as you mentioned over the course of the last few weeks we have spent very very very many hours at the legislature it's getting a little tiring but but we've had the great fortune of having one of the police officers from minneapolis krantz nater testify on these bills and he tells the story of amanda amanda was one of the first girls the gr remembers actually rescuing he was working street crimes at the time about thirteen years ago so he was working on a crack house in minneapolis went in went down to the basement that was locked and found amanda in the basement she was on a dirty mattress she was wearing nothing but a dirty white t shirt she didn't have any pants on her legs were covered in sores from being raped so many times and she was smiling when he walked in because presumably he was another customer and he rescued her got her out but his approach to her was as a runaway as a prostitute as a kid who'd made a bad choice he helped her get back home she ran away again and again and again she ran away six more times he said over the course of the next two years and that was a girl from northern minnesota she had come down to the city's come down here because her dad and her brother were sexually abusing her she felt that this was a better place to be them back home and our system didn't have a good response for a yes grant came in and helped other officers other police personnel helped nobody really was getting at the heart of the issue going home wasn't the option and staying on the street wasn't the option either so we have an opportunity here today to really start to rethink that how do we respond and i think one of the most joyous parts of a very you know difficult topic is that public policy has made a real difference and wh i hope to do tonight is to take you through a little bit of that story of not just the tragedy of human trafficking and what it is but also how minnesota has the opportunity to really change how we think about this how we respond what we do and really make things possible for a girl like amanda to survive so i mentioned that human trafficking is really what we consider a grave violation of human rights and i think there's no disputing that  constitution's thirteenth amendment says neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist article four of the universal declaration of human rights says that no one shall be held in slavery or servitude slavery the slave trade should be prohibited in any form the u n as a protocol is a treaty that requires states to sign on including us to prevent suppress punish trafficking in persons and calls on us to take as many steps as we can to do that  traffic we have to recognize the trafficking is a predatory crime it is characterized by violence the average life expectancy of a woman in prostitution is seven years she on average will be dead within seven years of entering into prostitution women in prostitution regularly experience rape sexual assault other assault death threats death threats against themselves and against their families if they try to leave chemical dependency is endemic it's promoted by traffickers to keep women in control and to keep and used by women to cope because this is the an experience that often requires numbing traffickers exploit victims feelings of shame social isolation telling them they can never go home and they're right in many ways that after an experience of being raped over and over and over again the shame and stigma that surrounds both about a sexual assault and being a prostitute a person who is on the outside of society is something that keeps many women in prostitution so how do we maintain this industry why is that happening why is there flourishing in continuing to thrive here in our community really this diagram high profit low risk and demand is the key human trafficking is in essence a modern day slavery where people profit from the controlling exploitation of others somebody is profiting this is about money is the second largest criminal enterprise worldwide behind drugs ahead of guns it brings in an estimated thirty two billion dollars annually to traffickers and that's not counting sort of extra revenue say from a hotel that rents a room to that's used in prostitution penalties are low although i'm happy to say in minnesota they're growing and the risk of being caught is even lower it's easy to when somebody is caught with drugs on them to say those are legal drugs you're caught with them if a woman's walking down the street with a she's caught with them she says she's the girlfriend there's nothing illegal about that it's hard to catch and it's really a difficult crime to investigate taking specialized skills another insidious part is of course you can sell drugs once you can sell a woman over and over and over and over and over again until as often as described she's used up profits are high as they mentioned and the real issue here is demand somebody is buying sex from every traffic victim that's the essence and confronting that demand in our men or boys who are buying sex from women and girls and boys in our community has to be on the list of how to confront this issue so what really is human trafficking can break down the definition a little bit victims of human trafficking include children who are involved in the sex trade they involve adults who are involved in the sex trade and the one forced into labor services for which they're not paid or for which they're underpaid such as domestic workers held in a home there was just i think a case in new york of somebody who's being prosecuted for basically enslaving woman in her apartment in new york a domestic servant farm workers who are forced to labor in the field against their will who aren't paid i've just had a call from a  colleague whose uncle is working in a farm labor situation here in minnesota and they're not being paid their wages they're undocumented not being paid they don't know what to do about that victims of human trafficking are found around the world and in different places and in different parts of the world human trafficking really presents in different ways but sex trafficking is something that really is a homegrown problem for us here in minnesota it is something that is not new to minnesota i don't know if of you remember a made for t v movies movie that ran i think it was in the eighty's called off the minnesota strip they found familiar with mary winning him who had run away from home and was from minnesota and was found in a particular part of new york city that was a place where girls were in prostitution coming from the midwest and it was a common place it was called minnesota strip because so many midwestern girls were brought up there or got off the bus after running away and were trafficked into prostitution in that neighborhood it's not a new thing we hear about it from women who are in their fifty's who remember they're disappearing off the reservation or out of their communities onto the ships in duluth to where the brothels were operating it's part of minnesota and it's something we do need to think about it and create and confront so how do we define sex trafficking  in minnesota we have an incredibly innovative and forward thinking law that really defines sex trafficking is the receiving recruiting enticing harboring providing or obtaining by any means an individual to aid in the prostitution of that individual is part of our prostitution code and it really recognizes that in under minnesota law that the most common form of prostitution that is prostitution involving a pimp is human trafficking and it's critical to understand that under any definition federal state or international definitions of human trafficking a person's initial consent to participate is not legally determinative of whether they're trafficking victim yes i might think i'll be a dancer in a club that doesn't mean i agree to be raped over and over and over again i might have run away yes i did know i was taking a risk by running away that didn't mean that i understood that i would be treated for sex by a pimp to another pimp to another pimp in state after state after state that initial consent isn't what makes the determination but we get that a lot but she know what she was getting into why did she make that choice so how do we find how do we find prostitution and get into this it's important to note that sex trafficking is really all around us at this point  i brought up a page called back page dot com backpage dot com is something you might be familiar with from the paper publication city pages those back the ads at the back of city pages were consolidated into an online billboard system called back page dot com that used to be run by the village voice media it's now by a third party and you can sort by cities around the country have pulled up minneapolis and st paul and you see all sorts of things that are great trading places child care collectibles in and t x instruction for music roommates wanted and you also see adult services escorts body r strippers strip clubs dom and fetish ts male escort phone web sites adult jobs these are prostitution sites that's what's going on the police will watch these every day yesterday by about noon there were about one hundred seventy new ads posted in minneapolis st paul for that day if you go on you'll see them over and over and over again so if you would like to have a prostitute come to your house if you would like to engage in prostitution you can just go on and order one like a pizza you'll see photos of the girls in hotel rooms you might recognize the bedspreads and the linens the hotels do and they've taken steps to try to train their employees here in ramsey county on how to identify and intervene by calling the police when they suspect sex trafficking is going on in their hotels which is great news very very helpful but this is something that is out there in such common fashion when you pick up and you go online and there are dozens and dozens of these kinds of sites this is the one that's most frequently being used right now but there are other kinds  tagged dot com and a range of others the minneapolis police that they have prosecuted every case but one has involved back page dot com this year that they've been involved with so this is right now where where the girls are being bought and sold most fifteen year old girls don't have a credit card to put the ad up on the service so somebody is helping them out traffickers have really learned that this is one of the most effective ways to market to control and to recruit pimps will apparently go through these sites see somebody they want to bring on to their stable and recruit her through this now the good news is that it is electronic so the law enforcement able to do some tracking to buy it but it's just one more evolution in this phenomenon the online interplay also reaches into how kids find themselves in sex trafficking and we've seen one case in particular that it's very disturbing to me it was a woman who was  seventeen years from iowa and she was on my space one of those you know sort of social media sites and somebody was you know become her friend he wanted her to come up and visit here in the cities and you know i'll buy you a bus ticket so she was development to leave delayed she agreed she was really excited somebody wanted her to be your friend should bring up to the cities when she got to the bus station she had to pay for the ticket by having sex with one of his friends oh she's kind of committed now she's run away from home you know she's not supposed to be doing this so she comes up they took her into downtown st paul took her out for breakfast at mickey's diner for her birthday and then held her in the hilton garden in downtown st paul for several days by the time she called the police she had had sex with about thirty men over the course of just a few  she called the police when they had gone out of the room the trafficker got out of the room frantic saying they're going to kill me they tell me i owed them money because i been eating and take you know i owed them this debt and they're going to kill me if i don't keep doing this and i'm terrified she left the method under you know in the room for her mom saying i'm sorry i ran away then all this was going to happen so it gets to the next question you know is  choice is this something that you know our sons and daughters going on line know this is going to happen to them and should they i think we should be talking to them about that but is that a choice this comes up again and again for us  came up in testimony this in the last few weeks in front of the legislature one of the members of the house saying doesn't you know it's wrong you know don't these kids know that prostitution is wrong thing to just take responsibility wow that's the traffic here is pretty clever and he's looking for that teenager and recruiting or but that's a question is that a choice and it's something we get a lot of question about is it a choice to start and then change your mind after the death threats start how do you change your mind so how do we get into prostitution and trafficking this is something that really i think is important for us to understand the violent predatory nature of human trafficking and this is something that our friends at breaking free in organization based st paul that is really you know one of the very few in the country that provides services and housing to women and girls leaving prostitution have broken down for us a little bit recruitment into prostitution introduction how do you think people are recruited into prostitution rape gang rape kidnapping sexual abuse and incest force drugs alcohol threats to the family we worked with the young woman who was involved in the somali sex trafficking case a few years ago and she was talking about how it started in her testimony i did she got involved  she was living at home why was she doing this and what had happened if she had been raped by a gang member and they said now you you work for us and if you don't keep doing this we're going to tell your mom that you that you had sex with us and that's going to be a problem and so she was exploited that vulnerability was used to recruit an exploiter as i said people you know predators look at social media  troll strip clubs looking for girls who may be you know getting trying to you know get into that area and think that's fun and then find themselves brought along there's also a lot of grooming and this is something that really hit for me as a kid who grew up you know here i wanted always when i was in junior high to go to maplewood mall you know all my friends went to me and said you know you're nice going to go hang out at the mall if you're going to do something that's fine you can spend a few hours there but you're not going to spend the day at the mall and i had no idea what she what was wrong with that was like going to do what was i going to get in trouble well that's where our traffickers lurk one of our testifiers a couple years ago described how she hung out at southdale and she was not having a great time at home she wasn't from a bad home you know western suburbs no abuse she just was having a hard time with her mom and this guy loved her and he hung out with her every time she came to the mall he was her boyfriend it's great he was older he was handsome he said when she got mad one day let's just take off let's go somewhere let's get outta here let's go florida so they want she's fifteen years old she's mad at mom this guy is going to take her you know her it sounds fun they get down there baby don't have any money you know what you need some money to pay for the hotel if you could just do this this one time for me you know we can pay the hotel bill will get back that was the next step that was the initiation and what happened for her th was what you sometimes hear that breaking the bench that was her first customer and from there he sold it to another pimp that was the whole point of this predatory behavior was to get somebody recruited took her out got her out of state fifteen years old no driver's license no bank account no way to get home this want to call mom because moms and she took she was in prostitution for years before a trick a john commercial sex abuser helped her escape out the bathroom window and she came home other ways about breaking process the breakdown of identity again more rape for sex with the traffickers friends stripping dancing to fake name you know you see dancers names that kind of funny they're all you know kind of silly names that don't sound like real names they're not they're fake names you get a new identity you lose your old identity branding the girl with the tattoos but the pimps name is often common and it really brings it back to a branding is branding a cow or a piece of livestock that you  and then there's the enslavement that's the next piece because once you're in this it seems like why don't you just leave right when to just leave the extreme physical violence that women describe in prostitution boggles the mind joy friedman who works at breaking free talks about she was in prostitution for over ten years she said you know i was shot i was stabbed i had a gun shoved down my throat cigarettes put out on my body i was raped my family was threatened they were going to kill my kids that's a day to day experience that level of extreme physical violence threats to family you know i'm going to leave anything shoebat you get you know get a phone call from your little sister she's sitting in the restaurant with your pimp and you want to leave you try to leave i've got your sister here we're going to be friends so it's not that easy twelve to fourteen is the average age of child enters into prostitution in the u s twelve to fourteen years old twelve to fourteen sixth and seventh grade that's a little kid slightly younger for boys and ninety two percent of individuals in one survey so they wanted to leave desperately this isn't a choice of you know profession i didn't grow up and say you know i'd love to be a prostitute that's a good career choice for me i've got a lot of options here i was thinking of accountant a banker maybe going into stem research presta touche and because they'll make a lot of money that's just not the case almost every single person says yeah this is a voluntary choice does it because you've got to have some pride and some ownership a kind of victim that's my boyfriend i'm not a victim i made this choice i making decision i'm calling the shots if you want to leave what would you do if you had something different can you leave when you start digging beyond that and when service providers who know how to talk with victims start talking with them you know let's let's look at what's really going on and what you'd like to think is going on and start to make some connections and it's obvious that over time you know people have to cope in some way but you know it's not something that is a volunteer sort of happy transaction that's the victimless crime and that's something that i think we've really as a society thought of you know thought about prostitution for so long it's a victimless crime it's two consenting adults who want to have sex somebody wants to pay some the you know wants to have sex they change money that's good that's fine no harm maybe annoying if it's on your street corner so it might be something you don't want happening in your neighborhood it might bring down the property values it might not be something you'd share with your wife or talk about at a dinner party but you know it's it's just something that happens but in fact we're starting to see and recognize and understand that it's not a victimless crime there is a victim in se trafficking there is a victim in prostitution and there's always a perpetrator in the room prostitution is not a single person activity and i think one of the of uplifting parts is the power of our public policy to really start to promote social change an understanding of what this issue is and how we can effectively confront it how we can really take steps that get women and girls out of prostitution and make sure that we can address their needs get them off the street and not get another one back into a place that what's happened has been a journey through belt language and that's been really kind of funny to see  we talk about prostitution as the world's oldest profession right the media carter would say is the world's oldest profession which i like better but it's something that it's just there it's just there but when we start to break it down and talk about human trafficking people are open to that would we have come together tonight to have a discussion about prostitution all right it's something we've learned to accept and learn to think about and say you know that's really too bad but it's not mine not my problem i didn't make that stupid choice but human trafficking we start to understand more of the dynamics of what it really is it is the buying and selling of a human being the exploitation of a human being for the gain of somebody and it really brings out the commodification of the person being bought and sold so in two thousand and about two thousand the united states in acted the torture sorry the trafficking victims protection act there's also a torture victims protection act so sorry the trafficking victims protection act that for the first time created the crime of trafficking now slavery has been a legal for a long time peonage debt bondage those things have been a legal and prostitution has been illegal for a long time and sent new crimes but thinking about it and saying human trafficking buying and selling another human being is a crime it's a federal crime and soon after that states began to enact similar laws minnesota enacted our law in two thousand five and redefined the state law as i said earlier that it's the recruitment harboring enticement inducement of a person for the purposes of prostitution we have criminal d child prostitution engaging in the prostitution with a child a very serious crime for a long long time twenty years if the child in jail if the child under thirteen which is good that's the way it should be right prostitution of a child should be treated severely and prostitution have it in gauging in prostitution that means that john that means the the purchaser who purchases sex with a sixteen or seventeen year old faces five years in jail and a ten thousand dollars fine that's stiff penalty that's a felony and that's the way it should be that's been a crime for a long time but when we started defining things around trafficking we started to get more at the systemic issues and in two thousand and five as i said minnesota enacted trafficking crimes that now put a trafficker the pimp away for fifteen years that their traffic an adult twenty years for trafficking a minor in twenty five years if there are certain other factors present and stiffer penalties again the way it should be treating this for what it is with that started different discussion around the state capital started different discussion in our homes a different discussion for me personally i didn't think about prostitution as a human rights violation i thought about it like many people do as you see in pretty woman what we see in the media and what we've just been taught that they're bad people make stupid choices and that's not me in twenty eleven we had an amazing next step and next iteration in this and that was the movement toward a safe harbor for sexually exploited youth and this was something that takes us beyond just holding the perpetrator accountable which is key to the human rights conditions and protecting the human rights of victims and making sure that we are doing our job as members of society but went to looking at what happens to the victim and safe harbor back in two thousand and eleven to find children who are under sixteen who are prostituted out of juvenile delinquency and let me step back and explain why that would be necessary if you might know that if you're a kid and you commit something that's a crime if committed by an adult we don't try you for a crime because you're a kid so if you're under eighteen generally you're can process through or adjudicated through the juvenile delinquency system and you might face juvenile detention probation other conditions you may be taken out of the home there are other consequences but juvenile delinquency is sort of the approach of the criminal justice response for kids and what we found is that children who were prostituted were defined as the victims of a felony right it's a felony to engage in prostitution with a child those kids were also engaging in the misdemeanor conduct of prostitution and what's the easiest thing to do when you encounter prostitution it's to bust the girls there are a lot easier to catch then to set up a sting to get john into the room or to try to track through the human traffickers to track down the pimps it's a lot easier to  dress the girls so the girls were ending up getting involved in the delinquency system and the traffickers were just getting new girls or they were getting the same girls because the girl get arrested and who would post bail the p it wasn't with the police they arrested him put her in jail so safe harbor took the step of recognizing that those kids who are prostituted are not the perpetrators of misdemeanors they are in fact the victims of felonies and it took them out of the delinquency code safe harbor two thousand and eleven also recognize that that's great that's nice to say you're a crime victim but without an effective response to those kids we were out of luck because we have to have some way for those kids to get off the street to have safe and secure housing sending them back home is not necessarily an option it might be and that should be encouraged if it can be but it might not be the right option because she was on the run in the first place it recognized that victims sex trafficking much like victims of torture are subject to much higher rates of post traumatic stress disorder anxiety suicide depression as well as a myriad of physical ailments and infections a sexually transmitted diseases and infections injuries cognitive problems from being beaten around the had it's much more common to be women scalp where the hair covers up so that they don't look bad when they're meeting trick so there were lots of problems dental problems teeth being knocked out if meth was being used if drugs were being used to help keep her under control that had definition of delinquency to take effect next year in two thousand and fourteen and we gave the state some time to build out an effective system to think through as creatively and competently as we could how we should respond to sexually exploited kids so this year in the state legislature we have a couple things going on first we want to make sure that all kids not just kids under sixteen but seventeen sixteen and seventeen year old kids who are sexually exploited are protected by safe harbor so legislation has passed both the house and senate policy committees is sitting on the floor waiting for floor action very excited  twelve ninety four and house file eleven eighty seven are awaiting house action and those would define sexually exploited kids who are sixteen and seventeen and younger as victims and take them out of the delinquency code that's a really important step it propels us to to having that effective response and so if you're an interested leader who likes to take action and call your representative and senator please feel free to do so there will be floor debate on this and and so far and we went through many committees i think we had eight hearings in the last three weeks we only had one no vote that was the person who wanted the little kids to not be coddled to make sure they took responsibility  door is the response that we built collect throughout the state of minnesota to create a model that has never been created anywhere in the in the u s before a real victim centered trauma informed culturally appropriate and specific responsive model to sexually exploited kids it was led by the department of public safety the department of health and the department of human services and it was year long process involving about seventy active participants from around the state of minnesota who came together from a bunch of different sectors from prosecution and police to child protection to nonprofit activists advocate survivors people who were working on this issue think what do we need to do what do we need to make sure that we are ready for when we can no longer use juvenile delinquency to respond to these kids what the group came up with as a model is to create a statewide director of safe harbor and six regional navigators throughout the state so that we can connect the dots with existing service providers really not build a new service provider model but provide training and support to existing models like homeless youth shelters domestic violence providers sexual assault services all of whom are dealing with these kids already and who with some additional support expertise and referral networks can do it even better to allocate money for some construction renovation and operation of shelter and housing that's appropriate for these kids it's been interesting learning about this that sometimes mainstreaming sex trafficked victims is really hard we've talked to survivors who said yeah it's great to be in a group of sexual assault survivors except i'm the only one who is a hooker and i want to tell them about that they were all victims of something else and i feel bad and you know and i can't even be honest with the people in my group about when i went through so being in peer support groups being in the right setting makes a big difference and also having all of the services available that are needed to deal with those other issues that we talked about also looking for money to build or to support services that are necessary and for training and that's really  the bottom but it's sort of the base of this whole thing training and victim recognition and identification and referrals and services really understanding how we can find traffic victims where the term no wrong door because kids are going to show up all sorts of places they're not necessarily going to knock on the police officers door and say hello i'm a victim of sex trafficking in fact they'll never say that because that's not how victims identify themselves they have free agency they're making a good choice they're doing what they need to do it may be a school counsellor it may be a nurse at the e r who notices that the the waiting room is waiting for her patient it might be the police officer who picks her up on some other charge it might be the child protection worker but any of these folks who encounter whatever door you knock on will get you into the services that are needed so that bill those bills there too of course as a three eighty four and house file for eighty five are making their way steadily through all of their policy committees and we had our first finance committee hearing it seems like weeks ago but i believe it was only yesterday right at eight o'clock at night well first it was ten in the morning then it was eight then it was six then it was seven but we got there and it's held over for inclusion hopefully in the  health and human services budget and there'll be a hearing in the senate hopefully right after recess as you might have heard targets were set very low for that budget and it's going to be a difficult fight to make sure that some money is allocated for protecting and serving sexually exploited kids is we were forward so we have an opportunity here to really take some action to really redefine how we respond to sexually exploited kids how we think about prostitution and sex trafficking and how we want our society to work the good news is that in the programs that have been working around the state piloting on this the girls who work in these programs come out better than the average girl in the minnesota student survey you know we can do it we can repair some of the stammered and move forward it's not going to be true for every single victim but it can make a difference this isn't just you know putting a band aid on something and it's certainly not putting a band aid of detention delinquency and continuing through the revolving door until like amanda we find her dead killed by her pimp a few years after  she lost track of contact with the police that girl that that officer snyder talked about he worked with and rescued seven times eventually was killed murdered by her pimp she was one who we didn't have the right response to and we can do better so i think i'll leave things there and thank you so much for coming out tonight and taking some time to think about this issue and think about ways that you can get involved there's a lot to be done so thank need a place for when girls picked up were boys picked up found in prostitution being trafficked or at risk of being trafficked that there's a place that they can go because the first thing they need is to get off the street who are out on the street are likely to be trading sex for survival within forty eight hours of hitting the street maybe a little less so they need a place that they're safe and that they aren't necessarily going to run from now that might be a place that is somewhat secure you can secure places with staffing so that the pimp can't get in it could be someplace that's remote so it's not so easy for the girl to just walk out the door and get  car so places that are safe and secure and are readily available right now the state of minnesota doubled its capacity for bed space for sexually trafficked youth we now have four beds in the state of minnesota for they are all privately run they're run by breaking free in st paul so they're not readily accessible to the kid who is found in the or up on the truck stops on highway ninety four or anywhere else in the state so we need to have some response that's available the estimate is about thirty to forty beds available on any given night of both emergency housing  through long term permanent housing that would be available if kids can't get back with their homes now some kids it's overnight some kids are staying at home and intervening and getting in touch with them we've had some excellent models developed here in ramsey county by the county attorney's office of the midwest children's resource center that really take a public health approach to intervention with actually to afric kids and that means that they have nurses go visit the kids they work you know a much different method than probation officer type model it's what do you need and how do we fix what's broken and how do we get you what you need it's very practical and for that reason the recommendation from the taskforce was to put the staffing in the department of health and to really transform this from a criminal justice or public safety model into a public health model that being said of course our  partners are critical to this and we've got some amazing amazing police officers leading the investigations and and they're going to be the front line in the most emergent cases but that bed space is really critical and you're right we have four beds available so i can do my best to talk about boys but it is an elusive category we know they always are sex trafficked the legislation obviously is open to and really was intentionally written and  the report the no wrong door report that it's based on addresses to the best of our knowledge dealing with boys making sure that we're talking about having services that are appropriate to girls and boys and to questioning kids to bisexual kids to transgender kids to gay kids because everybody needs to get off the street and get out of the cycle and you know it has to be open to everyone we know there are smaller numbers lower numbers of boys than girls in prostitution by a long shot but we know the boys are out there and the other thing that we have learned from the programming that's been tried is that the responses that were developed for girls don't work for boys and so there needs to be work done and one of the tasks of the door staffing that hopefully will be in place will be to really do some evaluation and some testing and to make sure that we're trying to develop the models possible to respond effectively t really pleased with the response and the outcomes that have been documented for girls particularly with the runaway intervention project here in ramsey county and showed excellent results over quite a period of time now they've been an operation since two approach a safe harbors approach there were a few states ahead of us what's unique and what's giving us a real opportunity to kind of lead the country in our response is that this is a very very definitely a multi sector multi disciplinary approach that involves you know both the sort of the law enforcement side and the victim services side and in some states in new york there was a great push to get a safe harbor law through it was a much more emergen situation because the new york city's policy was to arrest and incarcerate these kids and that was that was their strategy and that was their sort of hope was to lock them up so they had hundreds of girls in detention and this is not been our practice we were in more in a position and they said they figured out a way to get around this the only way the girl qualifies for save her purse is if she cooperated she never cooperates with a teenage girl ever cooperates is anybody even the mother of a teenage girl we don't teenage girls don't that's what we do and so you know if they were just getting around the safe harbor law and that was their strategy to deal with it so we took a much different approach here in bringing board  in developing the two thousand and eleven multi sector input and then also mandating the state process and i have to say that the state of minnesota the commissioner of public safety commissioner of health the commissioner of human services each delegated this responsibility to incredibly talented staff who ran this process through very rigorously were incredibly focused on the legislation's mandate of creating a victim centered model and really helped the group stay focused on that and demanded that we accomplish that mandate and they did their best to bring in why array of stakeholders who stuck with it that's a long process people weren't paid to show up and be on this task force that was you know we did get lunch but that was courtesy of the women's foundation of minnesota who underwrote the implementation process so you know lunch was great but it you know it wasn't compensation then so we had to have lots of people showing up and spending their time that's created a system that people have bought into and really gotten comfortable with and it's been interesting to see this delayed implementation give systems and individuals who were initially resistant or worried about engaging in this about changing their approach tend to get used to it while we were in the midst of the two thousand and eleven legislation the county attorney's association you know was looking at it and some county attorneys thought it was a great idea they were doing it some were opposed they said no you've got to be able to threaten the kids with prosecution of they'll never testify against the pimp you know the question of how many times does threatening the little kid to testify against the pimp who's going to kill or you know if she testifies going to work but so that you know that's given them some to time and now we've come circled back with them like yeah it's great and county attorneys throughout the metro  and in st louis and olmsted county abandon the practice of prosecuting kids for these delinquency offenses and doc did a victim centered approach back in two thousand and eleven and have had time to work with it so you know this is given us time to get used to it and really build some buy in and we're seeing law enforcement and county attorney's going we're making really good cases that days in case in the roseville days in the case that i referenced earlier where the hotel workers were the ones who spotted something going wrong they got a plea bargain from the perpetrator for twenty one years so you know i take that plea bargain that's pretty good and they're there seeing that there's some they're getting the bad guys off the street by building the trust of the victims there's a women the there are two bills and one is simply to change the ages of safe harbor eligibility to make sure that kids who are sixteen and seventeen as well as younger kids can get into services and housing and are not  criminal justice or juvenile justice system that's that and there will be well that's that would create that's a harbor and then the second bill so the bills with four digits eleven eighty seven and twelve ninety four just change the ages and the bills with three digits forty five and three eighty four would create the mechanisms and the places the housing the services the money the money and so those and it also includes the age change in there as well so hopefully we will have some places we are going to need lots of phone calls and lots of discussions during recess with elected officials and lots of you know just weighing in on this is a priority well thank you this has been just so nice to be with you tonight for a rather dark and depressing topic there is a lot of joy and a lot of hope and it's i think something that we wouldn't have expected just a few years ago that we'd be able to say oh i think we can do this i think we can do this but i really do think we can so thanks very much for having me