trafficking and will be talking about this subject and basically reverend bristol lever will be talking to us about the importance of getting some information about knowing what's going on and finding out what the what the coalition is doing so that we can eventually you know about wish this issue and put it behind us but there's a lot to speak about but first i want to thank everybody who's been watching over the many years as we start our eighth year on the air and we've received a lot requests for different shows and we hope to get them in the weeks to come and we thank you very much for continuing your response of efforts to give us direction as to shows that you'd like to hear on the air in the future but first of all back to welcome you which empowers church and community to do abolition including prevention detection action advocacy and survivor care can retrofit existing services to serve survivors when those services exist they work collaborate to create those services and this can collaborated with water hovan home to open a new jersey female residential recovery home with an eighty six percent success rate for addiction and human trafficking as i said before she is the executive director of new jersey coalition against human trafficking which is an organization made up of over one hundred forty diverse organizations for the purpose of uniting new jersey communities to bausch human trafficking she has twenty four years of abolition advocacy fourteen years of service development for survivors and cross reproach informed her additional service as an advisor to the new jersey attorney general's human trafficking task force a member of the new jersey city serve justice team a member of the national consortium to fill the traffic and co chair of new jersey so you know in on the issue of human trafficking well my first taste of what we now call human trafficking an unofficial way so was when i was a teenager i was fourteen years old and i helped what we would now call a victim of human trafficking she was sixteen at the time but that's that was the first unofficial service version i did but part of this is been part of my face journey and helping meet needs where they came  i've had a sense of a calling to help rescue what throwaway children and people that are in difficult situations and that passes led me here when i was in college studying for ministerial studies  i that's where i first heard about human trafficking and slavery we called it just modern day slavery back then and what that looked like was our overseas organization one of their our people in a cult couple in india said they went to the red light district and they were working to help one of the females that worked in the red light district there and and they were literally handed her baby and in that they realized for the first time that these people are free and they began to they created an organization called project rescue and it's in india and in several other nations in the service provision organization but they also work collaboratively internationally with other similar organizations to help identify victims of human trafficking there so that they could replicate their best practices and they serve also as advisors in the united states and to can as well so they're an amazing couple but but that's it's kind of been an unfolding of what human trafficking looks like first we thought it was overseas initially in the eighty's and ninety's then we recognized it's here in the united states we first thought it was just foreign nationals now we recognize that eighty three percent of the victims of human trafficking in the united states today are own citizens and so that changes kind of the conversation who to warn who's who needs to be watching and so that's where we came up with the project every day everywhere everyone because we really need because traffickers are going after the everyone  anyone can be a victim anyone can be a trafficker and so what that kind of hidden in plain sight it looks a lot to you know it looks different in different situations so we really need everyone aware so we can find this so we can prevent it  that's why we need your help in the way this is so important so if we appreciate you it's good just so the audience gets a clear idea of what human trafficking is so let's just start from the baseline to explain exactly you know what we mean when we say the words human trafficking ok there are a lot of misconceptions because the term human trafficking for example people think that it trafficking that a person has to be crossed lines of a border of some kind  either county or state or national not true human trafficking is the exploitation of another individual by the use of force rod or coercion in the cases of minors and sex trafficking you don't have to prove wars or coersion there are six forms of identifiable modern day slavery globally and we have some of them in the united states but our state and federal law specifically deal with sex slavery and which is number one in the united states and number two globally and the second is labor trafficking which is number one globally number two in the united states true for every scenario where a person will think oh you know this can't happen to me or someone i know i can tell you a case in point where it has happened to someone and so it's really important to recognize it can happen to anyone and it it can happen and a anyone can be a trafficker another myth is that money has to be exchanged no it can be it can be the exchange of goods or services another myth that is really common is that if we talk to kids about this it will draw their innocence not true in a scenario that's a growing scenario our middle school students backed by gangs are trafficking other middle school students while they're in school and so in those cases only children will see only children can report and so it's really important to to talk to kids you know fifth grade again that the typical age range when american victims are first inducted into human trafficking is eleven to fourteen that rings true in new jersey from the service version i've done as well so that's fifth grade to ninth grade so we need to start this conversation immediately in those ages especially and so it doesn't actually rob their innocence it can protect their innocence that awareness has led to students that i've talked to from being protected because traffickers are invading all of the common spaces children are from the apps and the that online gaming and that everything they do have weaseled their way into these situations so it's really important that we recognize this is something we have to be proactive about but it's really not a new issue we've always had this issue i have a friend over fifty years ago in a middle class long island neighborhood she was trafficked by her own mom so it's not a new issue but it's escalating because it's so profitable i wish to have a she was trafficked in her neighborhood by some people that it was by her own and she would sell her kids and not just this one lady that i know but her other siblings as well to neighborhood pedophiles so this is this is part of the pedophile conversation to protect children so anybody even parents can in new york because she was staying in new york but she brought her teenage daughter to service the hotels in new york for our super bowl so this is a situation that really you know again it can be parents and it really if it's awful because it can high people are exploiting children normally that wouldn't have an inclination to her child her children for example my husband he works as a part time chaplain in the bergen county jail and used to be in the jail system that if you were a pedophile there was what you call jailhouse justice right where you're kind of persecuted by other inmates were because it didn't matter what you were in for if you're a pedophile that's just for unheard of and you sutton well the age range ok that's just being young being connected all those common areas so the risk factor is something that we all have other risk factors are for reach eighteen will be sexually violated one in five males so that's a whole lot of our population so when we talk about risk factor there are uncommon risk factors like homeless homeless teenagers they're at high risk but the most common and the ones we see the most are just these basic parts of every everyone's life is very they're very common so it's it's there are risk factors you know of course of drug abuse and other things but those are also things that traffickers use to lure you away often traffickers will boyfriends or friend they'll use other students not just to traffic but also to lure people fake jobs people literally at job in a pimp might have you know this is specific to sex trafficking where that is the trusted individual that was the victim of trafficking and then they are trusted enough to control where one of the other myths i didn't talk about but it's really important and  it applies to this is that victims are often chained right we look for those signs of chains and i mean there can be bruising in other outward signs but typically there is a mental chain a trauma bond for example victims of human typically have twice the rates of post traumatic stress disorder as the combat military and that's because of the systematic abuse and it what it looks like the grooming stage is befriended her boyfriend in but then there's abuse there's isolation from your support system and it looks like abuse abuse abuse and a moment of kindness sleep deprivation starvation and then a hamburger so that the trafficker sick simply systematically break she down and then all of all of you not just bad but good experiences in life come from your trafficker so royalty forms even sometimes an a love can form so that someone that is a bottom girl ok is no longer looking to escape but might be be the one to lure in others or kind of keep everyone else in check so even though they're become victimizers it is a symptom of their abuse as well so yeah definitely not every victim of human trafficking when it comes to traffickers just like not every victim of pedophilia becomes a pedophile but it is it is a part of a part of the cycle is a very prevalent in new jersey as compared to other places that's difficult it i very prevalent in new jersey national human trafficking resource center every year puts together a report that's based on the hotline tips that come in and so they'll put they represented in a  map of the country and then you'll see different states lit up kind of all these dots and jersey is just lit up like a christmas tree but that's not necessarily a bad thing that means people are calling for there are a lot of different the but human trafficking is in every state if you look at the map that puts out and there will be states that don't have anything that just means no one's calling for pardon but actually anywhere that has a truck stop there they're everywhere and it's not just in cities in areas that you might think but it's in the suburbs we just moved out to the country of new jersey to develop services for survivors in that kind of natural setting so we could do a point therapy and other therapies and as we were out there they were victims of human trafficking from those areas so it really happens anywhere so because of that we really need a nationwide response not just the city response not just the population hubs response but of course in new jersey we have so many multicultural things can hide very easily you know we've got a lot of different nationalities so international human trafficking for example labor trafficking that looks like we've had a case with the tomato farm in south jersey  contractor in central jersey and on par in bergen county a braiding salon in new jersey in newark so it it hides kind of in all of these common spaces sex trafficking also hides in other industries some that are illegal where you're going traffickers typically will spend spent sex traffickers especially the labor traffickers and as well will spend like months in an area sometimes and then move sometimes out of the state but they systematically move to avoid detection so you jersey really set up for that but human trafficking is everywhere in every state ok so i guess the natural question is you know what exists what can we do about  that's exactly what we that's the most important piece because typically we think of something as ugly as human trafficking and we don't want to know more about it if we can't do something about it and that's the takeaway center here is our our former attorney general former senator he put it this way he said the number one weapon we have to combat human trafficking is our citizens and he's right because we can have the toughest law nation and we do we were the first state to prosecute a trafficker under state law but he recognizes the law enforcement both federal and state that we work with they recognize they were they look to us to write our law the coalition helped to write our law which is the toughest in the nation but also to help implement the law to  help advocacy groups you know and survivor we have the new jersey coalition against your job to give me about fifteen committees all active some doing community outreach like our soap event which helped identify and find missing children in our hotels we do teacher training speakers really the indicators for human trafficking are in every community are in every profession so for example can my organization church and me i wish network we are equipped with new jersey learning management credits for a vast range of professionals so we'll do as an accredited human trafficking we're in a training we in the coalition we have an education committee health care committee just about anything you can think about we have a committee for that and we do professional community trainings some of our most our strongest advocates are students and their leading organizations like project seybold that have received incredible work but before i was able to speak in any school and i've been doing  twenty three years before i was allowed to speak in schools the students started and they brought the message regularly to students a student a student there doing amazing things that have been recognized by the un by the  amazing work jersey students in fact we've got jersey students that are serving overseas as human trafficking advocates and service providers so jersey is when it comes to human trafficking and students and advocacy and  action we're doing quite a bit in fact we've got some training is coming up of we're going to miss some of them before this airs that i know there's one our annual human trafficking summit that's on january eleventh january eleventh this national human trafficking awareness day the whole month of january is human trafficking prevention month so we have a lot of activities going on in january but one in particular i want to highlight is our summit we like to make this excessi everybody there our first summit we did we had four hundred people come to one it was a statewide get breakout sessions for students professionals of all kinds community leaders this year last year we had three simultaneous meetings so that you would anyone in the state of new jersey would be within forty five minutes now this year we're doing facebook live so this summit on january eleventh you can we have students classes we have  professional groups and individuals plugging in to this event so they can send their questions in live here the speakers specific to their area you can plug in at a certain time that has the area that you want to talk what you want to learn about so that no matter where you are you have access to these trainings typically are trainings are created this one because it's on facebook live can't be accredited we have limited seats available in this studio audience but this is a great opportunity to  learn you know what human trafficking looks like and what you can do about it so we'll have for example our h one n one speaker will be our victim our f b i victim specialist callum you know as we have just i can't even begin to name all the speakers in the different groups  know promotional things that are going on you know yes we we have a piece of legislation that we're advocating for it's if senate men meant to the communications decency act and it has been what  online companies like back page dot com have hid behind in order to sell children and not face consequences than that how they done that you go to backpage dot com i don't know if you remember the adult right there ls site so the back page became the recipient of all of that business so it's it's like craigslist it's a bulletin board for all kinds of things but they have been found to not only allow the sale of children online but they have been found to have coached traffickers on how to craft their language to identify if the person is a minor in a way that can't be detected so they are they are complicit in this but they have been essentially bullet proof because of this one part of the communications decency act so we're working to change that so if you go to our website n j human trafficking dot org you can click on the this particular piece and we have a written out the updated on a regular basis who we're asking you to call so we're asking you to call your two senators and your one congressman your u s congressman if you don't know who that is it tells you what county by county who the person is their for their contact number and exactly what to say to them so that your person your representative can help vote the way you want them to vote in support of this legislation and we have we had the legislation is has a different number in that in the senate than it does in congress so all of that wording is there on this one document it's if easy enough for me to follow so i want to encourage you if you're listening today call your your ask you about is also you talked a little bit about the the resources that are available and i think you have volunteers that are currently working with your organization or how do people want to get involved in this you know t help how can they get involved who's the context or the counter use or somebody contact the call right if you can just go to our web site we have that info out or you can e mail me directly we have all sorts of resources my direct group for your particular area of interest a lot of people want to not just advocate generally but they want to use their skill set their interests to make a difference and that's what we like to help empower people to do if there is a victim out there of human trafficking who is currently for for assistance great question i think that the greatest thing you can have and share with people is the national hotline number because a lot of times victims will cross state lines or one particular state hotline number won't be effective in another state and that's eight eight eight eight eight and the text is be free ok so and all tips can be left anonymously and there are translators available as well so this is been a lifeline this is a state funded or a nationally funded  nonprofit that is connected to service providers and state law enforcement so they can direct that whatever some people call me don't want to do with law enforcement they want to just get a resource they're available ok ok because that support is very important if you take away one thing that's one thing that everybody can have fearful eight three seven three seven tripoli so you know obviously the go with b c you were trafficking eliminated and the you know commissions that put it basically you put out of business right so what you see in the upcoming years is for as and he needed funding any resources anything to fight the issue from trafficking and provide resources for  wow that is a great question some of the provisions for provision for victims of human trafficking we actually have in our state law but some parts of our state laws have not been fully implemented yet  server service providers but also for for example what we call john schools and that's been very helpful when say someone has been has purchased a victim of human trafficking there are john schools that are prevented it as far as that goes so those are pieces of our legislation that though it was an act in two thousand and thirteen we still haven't fully implemented of course there are all kinds of service providers that need funding there are different streams of funding we have a new administration coming in and we hope you know we have strong partners with our governor and our attorney general to continue this fight so they've been in past years have been phenomenal we just we hope that that continues to be an emphasis and a priority but again that's i think especially when it comes to service provision that victims of human trafficking get the help they need  are working to get a grant to to help with that this project to identify all of the resources medical resources dental mental health that are that exist because that's very difficult so whether it's our victim  about human trafficking and hopefully you know be able to you know provide resources for those in need and identify this so that you know future individuals know that there is a hope for them and that we can eliminate the issue of human trafficking in the