 This is Think Tech Hawaii, Community Matters Here. Good morning and welcome to Rotary in Hawaii, people of action. Rotarians around the world engage each other and share a common vision and then meet, plan and take action. Today we're going to have a little conversation on human trafficking and we're really fortunate to have with us Veronica Lamb from the Susanna Wesley Community Center and Mark Mariam from the Rotary Club of Metropolitan Honolulu and someone who's been vital in Rotary's efforts in Hawaii to educate and combat human trafficking in the area of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Veronica, would you take a couple moments and talk about yourself and the Susanna Wesley Community Center? Yeah, sure, thank you. So I've been working on the issue of human trafficking for just a little over a decade now and it started off where I just really felt called to get involved and worked on a number of aspects of it as far as raising awareness. Eventually started housing program to be able to house survivors working primarily with adults and did that for a number of years and have worked with, well interacted with because we did direct services out in the community and meeting survivors where they are, was fortunate to meet and interact with literally hundreds of survivors and I've mentored over 100 of them, mostly women and children but occasionally men also and many of them I actually live with while we were doing a portion of time of actually starting the housing program. So that's my background but I work with Susanna Wesley Center as a victim specialist now and Susanna Wesley Center has been in the community actually for a very long time we joke that it's one of the best kept secrets in Kalihi because it's been there for 125 years, serving the community and they picked up and started helping on the human trafficking issue years ago but we're you know quiet about it as they always are sort of humble servants in the community and they now have the TVAP program and I'm a victim specialist with that program and we assist both children and adults who are victims of trafficking. TVAP? What is TVAP? Yeah TVAP stands for Trafficking Victims Assistance Program and we created it within the last couple of years to really formalize our services and build a bigger team to be able to support human trafficking victims. And does that work directly with young people with older people or a whole variety? What's the services? We support a whole variety of individuals who are victims of trafficking. So we are state contracted by child welfare services to provide the services for any children that are trafficked and that could be sex trafficking or labor trafficking and we support them and that's statewide so even the neighbor islands we provide support and services and so that includes like consultation, crisis calls, support for other providers and we are also networked ourselves with other providers in the community like Pacific Survivors Center, Olahao Clinic with Dr. George Rhodes and things like that so we provide this comprehensive case management and connecting survivors whether it be children or whether it be adults with the services that they need trauma-informed care that has the experience to really understand where they're coming from and help them move on and get into their healing journey. Okay we'll come back to in a couple minutes and talk about human trafficking and its status in Hawaii but I'd like to ask Mark to introduce himself as well, share a little bit about your experience in Rotary, where you come from and why this is something that you are connected to. Rotary is an amazing organization because we can get involved in the community and support amazing organizations and that are working with children, adults, seniors making a difference in the environment in human services and both local and globally we're able to make a difference. We have Rotarians across the state with 52 different clubs and they each take on their own projects and as a district, the district of Hawaii, we decided to tackle and begin to talk about human trafficking as we realized that that's a subject that's not talked about enough and so we've been trying to bring that more out in the open and say it's an important topic to talk about because with education we can start making a difference. It is and five years ago I attended a Rotary Peace Conference in Ontario, California. It was kind of more on a whim than anything else and I had no idea really what all of the subject matter would be and I chose the one that I knew the least about and that was human trafficking and I remember my calling, if you will, the thing that connected to me. When I heard Basel Baz speak, Basel Baz is with the Association for the Recovery of Children. He's a former CIA agent. He travels on his own expense and goes out and brings children back to their families when they've been trafficked around the world and I came back to Hawaii really very curious and passionate connected to what's the status of human trafficking in Hawaii. We don't see it on the street much. It's not in your face like the homeless issue is where we see it everywhere. Veronica, would you share with us a little bit about the dynamics of human trafficking today? Maybe how it happens? How children get involved in it? Some of the statistics that our viewers might be interested in. Yeah, absolutely. So human trafficking, I think it is something that it's hard to talk about and therefore it's easy for us to be in denial about in our community and we may not either be seeing it or we don't recognize the signs and so we don't think that we're seeing it but what we've learned over the years by servicing our clients is that it is very much real here and another thing that I think surprised us and may surprise the the viewers is that it doesn't only affect one area or one social economic class of people. We've seen it be pervasive across Hawaii and it's not just on Oahu. It's on the neighbor islands. It's not just in the low income areas. It's in the high income areas also. It's not only a problem in the public schools but we've seen it throughout many private schools also and so it often looks different than what people are expecting it to look like. Yeah, that's one of the things that I've discovered is that I really didn't realize that it's local girls that are impacted. These are teenagers that are impacted by human trafficking local kids. That was an awakening to me and got me thinking and wanted to be more involved with the subject because it's not being talked about and we think about it might be international people coming but it's local kids that are impacted and the agencies that are doing work with these kids is phenomenal. Yeah, it definitely is a local issue and we're really encouraged. I don't know if you saw in the paper if the viewers saw last week there was an article that came out and I brought a preliminary report of it but it was a sex trafficking in Hawaii research. It's a part two. It's done in conjunction with the state commission on the status of women and a researcher from Arizona State University and so they were talking with local adults and families whose kids have been trafficked or for the adults that they were trafficked as adults or as children and they interviewed 22 different women but one of the things that they found and I thought that this was really telling was that it was almost 80 percent of them were part Native Hawaiian. Well, here it is. 77.3 percent of the participants were at least a portion of Native Hawaiian and so it's definitely something that's happening here. Another thing that was very clear is that even though they were adults as they were being interviewed or the parents of children were being interviewed the adults identified that when they got into it they were children and our children are being targeted and we hear that in the study that is now you know this is a great study because it's peer reviewed and everything that we can we can really trust but it's something that we've been hearing in our clients for years is that it's happening they're getting recruited and it's not like that snatch and grab white band thing that's went viral on social media that's kind of a myth when it comes to trafficking. It has been a coercive a manipulative relationship that is usually started with the children or with the vulnerable young adults and then lures and mixed promises and that kind of stuff in order to get them into their control. An interesting statistic that I read a while back was and I think many times we have preconceived ideas of who traffickers are but I read a statistic that 42 percent of traffickers are women and that there is a natural bonding between in a sense that we feel safe with a woman as opposed to a male. Is that true? Is that a statistic that you're familiar with or is that even plausible? I haven't read that specific statistic but I do think that it's plausible and it's plausible in two ways like one in the cycle of abuse that an individual is going through it's often to search for a point where the victim wants to feel stronger and it's easy for them to then turn into a victimizer and we see traffickers and pimps really play on this because they try and pick one victim that they're going to make more promises to and that they're going to treat better so that the other victims in the stable feel as if they are less it creates a sense of competition between them and then also they want to put elements of the crime so they're not they're not going to face the full consequences they want to put elements of the crime on other victims so they teach victims even teenagers and kids how to recruit others and make that their job and if they don't recruit they could face punishment you know such as beatings and things like that and so we have seen cases and it's actually been charged and it's moved forward but we've seen cases where kids have been groomed into being recruiters and so they're literally recruiting their high school peers or even going down to the middle school level we had a case where the main trafficker had groomed the older teens to become recruiters and they were going down to the middle school level and recruiting kids and then threatening and doing elements of of the of the force and the fraud that kind of stuff with them to create fear inside of them and then it felt like that it was almost like a gang atmosphere and becomes very scary for the kids and hard for them to imagine how they're going to get out of it especially if this is within their school and this is who they're running into they they have trouble feeling like that there's a safe place that they can go to how does that cycle of abuse eventually get stopped how does it get cut how does well the cycle of abuse I mean it's a challenging thing and I think that all service providers regardless of whether they're helping up domestic violence or other forms of crime like how they help victims get back on their feet with adults in some ways it's a little bit easier on the recovery because cognitively they have grown and they have matured more and usually when they are asking for help it's because they really want help and they're they're making a form a firm decision then of like trying to get out they've probably already tried a number of times before for children there isn't that grace period of giving them time to think through it and see the abuse for themselves if law enforcement or social providers or even if other non-profits or schools or teachers or faith communities if they suspect that a kid is being trafficked it is now law that they have to call that end to child welfare and so the kid is more likely to be forcibly removed from the situation and it's hard because they may have heart strengths tied to that trafficker because of the manipulation yeah and it's hard for them and it takes a lot of therapy support understanding listening encouraging to help them come around and see how they've been taken advantage of that brings me to the question how does community or parents brothers and sisters family how do we recognize the signs of someone who's just getting into that cycle or or is being put in that that on the tenuous position whereby they're they're being approached so that something can be done to prevent that from happening i'm not sure that that any of us are are in the community anyway are really knowledgeable about how to recognize the sign yeah that's a great question and there's actually two parts of it so there's one there's very early prevention and raising healthy children and raising healthy people one of the key think key trends that i noticed when working with survivors is that there was often failed key relationships in their life so the foundational relationships that should have been there for them somehow failed at some level and that could be because of something really awful happening like abuse or it could be struggles within the family with addiction or it could simply be because a child has a family member who's part of the armed forces and they get deployed overseas for eight months and that has a relational cost to it and that can be hard for the children so there's that side of it is that we need to stay connected and make sure we have good supports around our youth in general all across the board when you've got vulnerable youth and traffickers are very clear that they're looking for vulnerabilities and they're looking for someone who has been previously abused physically abused ideally sexually abused because they feel like if those boundaries have already been broken down it's easier for the trafficker or for the pimp to manipulate them and put them into a selling situation another sign that you want to look for is a grooming relationship so if there is a relationship that seems kind of inappropriate maybe there's an inappropriate age difference another big red flag would be if they are suddenly receiving expensive gifts you know so with children are now suddenly showing up with really expensive purses bags items of clothing shoes cell phone you know like the latest new iphone or gadget or you know whatever is trendy at that time and that child previously didn't have access to that so like if it's a teacher or a community member you know that this family hasn't really had a lot of expensive items previously that's a red flag or if you're a parent you know that you haven't bought this for your child they don't make that much money if they have a side job you know so you're curious as to how is this happening and it doesn't seem quite right for this new relationship to suddenly be giving these expensive gifts that's a red flag that maybe there's grooming and manipulation going on super um it's my understanding we need to take a break okay we'll be right back okay thank you great yeah good job you're on this is stink tech hawaii raising public awareness i'm getting older do i need to worry about falling yes you do each year one in four people 65 and older will experience a fall and many will be serious the majority of falls happen at home so remove things that could make you trip and install handrails to keep you steady to learn more about the steps you can take to help prevent a fall please talk to your doctor you can also visit aarpfoundation.org or medicaremadeclear.com slash falls this message was brought to you by united health care and aarp foundation aloha my name is mark schlau I am the host of think tech hawaii's law across the sea law across the sea is on think tech hawaii every other monday at 11 a.m. please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and hawaiiana all across the sea from hawaii and back again aloha and welcome back to think tech hawaii rotary and hawaii people of action we're here with susana with the Veronica lamb of susana westley community center and mark merriam the rotary club of metropolitan honolulu and we're talking about human trafficking in the context of the commercial sexual exploitation of children the acronyms c-sac mark welcome back and would you share a little bit about the current projects or current educational programs that we're using in rotary throughout the state to create awareness of the issue and what we're doing to prevent children from being involved in trafficking and rotary one of the amazing things is you have a critical mass of people so you get enough people working together on a single issue and we can and do make a difference with governor wins leadership this year our focus has been on human trafficking and so there's about 30 different clubs that formal presentations have been made to to well over a thousand rotarians already discussing the issue bringing awareness to it talking about what we can do to make a difference we're working with hole on a pool which is one of the agencies serving traffic girls and they're working to build a residential facility on the north shore so we're we're helping and supporting that and and their efforts we're we're building a garden right now that as they continue their construction of the facility we're building a garden that will be a peaceful serenity garden for the girls as they're in that residential facility we've also through our educational programs on on tuesday january 29th there's a significant awareness day that's going to be in downtown honolulu on fourth street mall fourth street and king it is national human trafficking awareness month that's why we're here and so it's anybody that works downtown is welcome to come and see there'll be a number of agencies there that have on educational displays and to learn more about the the issue and to become better educated about how we can recognize signs in particular to help these help these girls break that cycle so it'll be from 10 o'clock in the morning to two in the afternoon on tuesday january 29th on fourth street mall great um anything planned for the future any thoughts on on where we're going with this uh going forward i think as people become more aware and better educated that they're going to start taking issues in different directions and supporting in different ways reaching out to additional agencies as anna westley and the others that are doing such such good work in the community and partnering with all our individual rotary clubs they can partner with different agencies and and continue our efforts that way it's uh been a learning curve for the for the last year and a half as we kind of got into this and now it's gaining speed and traction and people are committed and knowledgeable and uh the partnerships will continue in the community great um veronica if um if someone was to want to become more involved in uh the the issue and the the fight um what would you suggest in terms of uh outreach in terms of things that can be done schools i mean i was talking to amanda lennard and one of the things that that shocked me was and she deals with runaway children um and that kind of stuff one of the things that surprised me was she related that that we have hundreds if not thousands of children uh in the state that run away every year and that uh many of them are uh um solicited within five hours of running away that that i was shocked by that what yeah that's a lot on your plate right there i think there's a lot that the average community member can do and i got started as an average community member and so i'm a big believer in that um one of the things that they can do is on the awareness side of it and you know at one point i think that it was easy for some of us that are in the field we feel like we're talking about trafficking every day everybody's got to know about it by now but in talking about this report the sex trafficking in hawaii the first part of that came out in the fall and if you guys remember it reported huge numbers of demand here so online it estimated compared to other cities and what they had seen that there was one in eleven um men there's one in eleven men searching for sex to purchase you know and they're searching for that through the online ads and things like that so i think awareness is so huge because if we have that big of a population that's still looking to purchase sex and isn't understanding how trafficking is tied into this and the number of children that are tied into this are families families yes and we need to be talking about this more so i think awareness is a huge thing one of our partner is pacific survivor center they created a film for kids and it's called tricked and it uses the voices of survivors that were trafficked as children here in hawaii so it's local places it's local voices you know it's totally relatable it really gets the kids attention and so if people want to help partner with pacific survivor center they've been going into schools but to get in the more schools get into youth groups get into any sort of clubs that has kids and then they also have it's a discussion that they have with the kids but they have facts and they have discussion that they could have in a parents meeting or in a concerned community members meeting right and so they can be talking with teachers with school administrators with people of faith community leaders you know retarians and saying hey these are the signs and it really walks everybody through and recognizing the symptoms who bring more awareness to that whether uh school counselors are trained in that whether police officers are trained in recognizing um emergency room professionals you know that that kind of education and training we probably need to do a better job with to uh help people recognize the signs of human trafficking yeah marica i i think we could sit here and talk about this uh unfortunate subject if you will for for a long time but we're we're running out of time with this this segment i hope you'll come back and and and talk to us again and further our discussion about human trafficking and i'm hoping that our our audience will engage with us uh more you can go to rotary d 5000 dot org um and and see about rotary um in may we're going to have a a conference on peace uh here in the district and with hawaii rotarians it is open to non-rotarians as well and we will have brian rush of the human thread foundation um from the pacific northwest uh come and be our keynote speaker uh you're certainly welcome to come and join us uh once again thank you very much uh for you this morning um and if you're interested in all that rotary does uh please join us we have 52 clubs throughout the state um and you can connect with those at any point in time i'd like to take a moment just to say thank you to think tech hawaii for hosting uh rotary in hawaii people of action