 Hello, welcome to Clock Talk. I'm Crystal here on Think Tech Tuesday morning at 11 o'clock. So, you know, last week this whole Trump stuff going on. I am devastated. I don't know about you guys out there, but, you know, hands on, I support you who support him. That's fine. But my concern as a woman and as a talk show host for women's issues is where's our voice going to be. I think it's even more important to give more voice to very important issues because it's probably going to be pushed under the rug, as usual, for people who don't even see harassment as an issue, right? So on that note, we're going to talk about something pretty serious today. Sex trafficking. Now, this is something, again, is a huge international topic that is pushed under the rug. Why? I don't know. We'll discuss it today. But more importantly, we're going to hone in on Hawaii and particularly focus on the underaged girls who are being sex trafficked here in Hawaii. Something that people don't even realize exists or maybe don't care to discuss because it's such an ugly truth. So we're going to welcome our two guests today to talk about this very, very serious topic of sex trafficking, welcoming Tammy, Tammy Bintanga, and Nicole Brody. Now, Tammy, well, both of you are both from Ho'ola, Napa'a, and you've been on before. But today we're going to talk about you as women, you as a trafficked victim before, and Nicole as the new operations manager. So welcome, ladies, first of all. Thank you for having me. Now, Tammy, I understand you just came back from Washington for some very important conference on juvenile trafficking. Yeah. So it was like, it was a conference that kind of went across the United States. We had over 100 survivors there. So although it was a victim of sex trafficking, I consider myself a survivor and victorious over everything that was trying to take away from me, right? So today I'm a survivor, but I also get out there and empower other girls that have been trafficked. So that was the purpose of going to the conference was to find out what they're doing nationwide, and there were some providers from Canada too. Okay. So that was really interesting how Canada is handling the issue of juvenile sex trafficking. What was a big takeaway from it? Or was there something that quite alarming that just woke you up to even newer truths? Well, the confirmation that I got there was that we need to collaborate. We need to partner and we need to be providing services, and it needs to be a multidisciplinary action. It can't just be service providers doing one thing and law enforcement doing one thing. Right. And the community doing one thing. We all have to work together. And so that is what's going to be my mission is to get that partnering and collaboration going in Hawaii. Yes, specifically. And as far as what are we doing at DC and what on that level, I have a very good survivor friend that is right in the White House. She got a job and she is going to make minor domestic sex trafficking is going to be on the forefront and we are going to get kids that have been commercially sex trafficked, the services they need and the recognition and the prevention piece is going to be much better than it's ever been. So glad to hear that. Excellent. Great. And in Hawaii, because I got her up there now. Tap it in. On your newsletter or your information on the organization, apparently Hawaiian sex trafficking was only banned recently. What is that all about? Yeah, last year, we've passed the law that acknowledges that sex trafficking creates victims as opposed to perpetrators. So before, even underage victims of sex trafficking were treated as criminals and were treated as prostitutes and in a criminal way. And so now they're treated as victim. And what does that mean for these young adults? It means that they won't be incarcerated as they had previously been, that there are opportunities for treatment and that there is more help. And it's really the symbolism is also very important that law enforcement and people throughout the criminal justice system acknowledge that these are in fact victims as opposed to perpetrators of a crime. And I think that that mentality shift is very important. And Hawaii was actually the last state in the entire country to pass this law. So that's a little bit of an embarrassment, but a victory that we are finally there. Right. Better late than never. Yeah. How do you both feel as women about this whole kind of victim perpetrator controversy? Because in a lot of cases, particularly in college rape cases, there's always that ongoing argument of how much she put herself in the situation to allow this to happen. You know, all that bullshit. And so what do you feel for me? It has to be a zero tolerance. A 13 year old cannot say that I dreamed to be a prostitute and I am going to go be a prostitute. A 12 year old does not do that. A 16 year old does not do that. And a 17 year old, in my opinion, does not do that. But they can be coerced. And that is what sex trafficking, the definition of sex trafficking is, is force fraud or coercion. So if you put a girl that's on the run, say, doesn't have food, and you put it in front of her that you can make money. Right. And so here, let's let's go do this. And then the guy is making money off of her. He might feed her. But still, that was a sort of coercion that brought her there. Yeah. So even, you know, traffickers, they have a lot of ways to bring kids into their vulnerability. Are there statistics? I mean, I hate to use numbers, but just to kind of get in the scope of Hawaii and the amount of girls who are out there susceptible to these these dangers. Is there like the Yeah, well, I mean, once girls run away from home that that goes back to what Tammy was just talking about, which is called survivor sex, like the ability to to feed yourself, right, trade your body for food, for drugs, for a place to stay, I mean, whatever it is. And so when girls, and and boys, actually, if they run away from home, there's a very high risk that within 48 hours, I believe, is it 80% within 48 hours? Or Yeah, they've been approached, so about one third, actually, one third of girls who have been who run away within 48 hours have been approached for sex. Is it because these young girls, you know, stand out, you know, what's a 13 year old doing at two in the morning in Waikiki? Right? I mean, yeah, and unfortunately, there's really something that, you know, what's the type of mentality where people see a girl who is alone and needing health. And then they decide to prey on her. And they say, Oh, you know, I can use this for my benefit. And I think that that's really something that we have to examine as a community and as a culture of when and why and how is that ever okay? Has Hawaii been able to kind of tackle the types of people who are trafficking these girls? Are there sources? Well, it doesn't look like what we always think it looks like. So what we typically think a pimp and his prostituted girl work look like is not what trafficking looks like in Hawaii all the time. Okay, you do have that scenario, right, you can go down to Cojillo, you can go down back cost out Hotel Street and you can see it. But typically, it's not always going to look like that. There's back page, there's massage polys, there's family, there's all kinds of different ways. There's the drug addicted uncle that's prostituting his niece for drugs. There's the family that's prostituting their child because they need a place to stay and he she goes and has relations with the landlord. I mean, there's so many different scenarios. And that's where Helena put comes out and says, you know what, people, we need to look at the whole picture and we need to look at how kids are being trafficked. And so that's where our educational piece comes in and we go out in the schools and in community and bring awareness to the fact that, you know, this is what it looks like. This is a real case. This is really what it looked like. And so that people can see, oh my that, I just saw that red flag and I can report it now. And then where do you report it? Yeah. So whole of the police really on the ground, making sure that as a community, we know what we're doing. Yeah, the awareness and communication are there. I mean, I hate to kind of pinpoint it into or stereotype a certain type of girl who would be more susceptible to it. But are there some background, you know, like you said, the uncle who pimps that the stepdaughter to a friend. I mean, there are certain scenarios, which are situations that kind of give them that. Well, to go back to the runaway statistic, 80% of runaways have experienced some sort of abuse at the home. So domestic violence already in the house. Yeah. And so I think kids who have been victimized in their home are more susceptible. But we have found that that's not always the case. And like, it's not universal. But assuming that is like a majority of the cases, these type of girls who go off on their own. What do you think their mentality is at the time? Is it a defiance to to strike, particularly away from their screwed up family? Or is there something in their life that they think they're empowering that they're on their own and they're going to make decisions for themselves, mistakenly. Okay, so I can speak on this from personal experience and that's all I bring historian. Okay. So I was sexually abused in the home by a family member from four to 13. So during that time, it was forced on me and I had no choice whatsoever, right? Because I was in the care of the family member. So as I got placed into foster care, CPS took me, I became awarded the state. My family totally gave me up. And so I was now, you know, in foster care, right? Okay, so my normal family, I come from a pretty well to do family. And so, you know, my dad always drove a Cadillac or a Thunderbird or a Continental and, you know, he was an insurance salesman. And, you know, we always had money. We always had. Right. So then when I get put in the foster care system, I'm in a foster home with five other girls. The lady was super good to us. She taught us a lot of good things, did a lot of good things, but, but was never really able to fill that void for one, the physical intimacy that I had with the family member was null, right? So if you grow up from four to 12 psychologically, 13 psychologically, you have that your body is kind of addicted to that sexual arousal. Okay, so this is like, I'm totally not a therapist, but whatever, I'm just gonna tell you what it is. Yeah. And so, and so then I start looking for boyfriends, right? So I have boyfriends have plenty boyfriends from the time I'm 13 to the time I'm 15. You got a distorted view. Yeah, absolutely. Of love, of what is that look like, right? And so, you know, I have plenty boyfriends till I'm 15. A girl comes into the foster home who is being prostituted in Waikiki. They pick her up as a runaway. She comes into our foster home. She tells us all the glory, the glamour, blah, blah. And I'm over here giving it away for free. But now she's telling me how much money you can make by, you know, having a man and being able to get paid. And she's happy doing this. So it's totally glamorized, right? And this is in the 70s. Okay, so I'm kind of aging myself or whatever. And so, you know, I, with my girlfriends, we go to Waikiki, we meet up with some guys, they got weed, they got drugs, they got everything, they got an apartment. So that night, I didn't go home to my foster home. I went home with the dude and I was 15. Okay. And so he was like 33 or so. And so, no, totally not from here. And totally did not look like he was from here. He was, he was, I don't even want to say, but maybe that was why he was attracted. But he was quite studly. He was very, very good looking, very, very good looking, had it together, apartment in Waikiki, was living the life. So I, you know, I went home with him. I got, I got hooked in, you know, and I was vulnerable. Yes. You know, I wasn't even a runaway at that time. I had a place to live. Right. But I was lacking this, this thing. And so part of that is that the sex abuse that happened did not get addressed. I had no therapy. No, there was no addressing. All they did, okay, now we're in the 70s, right? So they didn't know better. They just removed the child that's being abused from the home, put them in a safe place, life goes on. There's no supervision or... There was no therapy. I had a social worker, but nobody was addressing the damage the sex abuse did from 4 to 13. Right. So I'm still damaged goods, right, out there trying to live my life. So I was in the summer after ninth grade and I thought, okay, I chose to be with this guy and now I got to do whatever he tells me to do. What did you think, though, going into his life? So he was going to take care of you? I just knew. I mean, I already knew. At 15, I'd already been giving it away. I was like, did you think he was going to control your life? Oh, absolutely. I was ready. I was fine. I was ready to just say, yeah, I'm going to be your main lady. Okay. So that was my mentality. But what my point is, is that because I didn't have the sex abuse addressed, now I had control. I'm your main lady. I'm going to make your big money. I'm going to do what you want me to do. That was my mentality. And let me tell you, I did it to the fullest. I actually worked in a massage parlor in Alaska. So he pimped you to all the other places. So I worked in Waikiki for a little bit. I just streetwalked in Waikiki. And then I went to Alaska. And I worked inside. And then I worked outside. Okay. And I'm not glamorizing that life at all. But I'm just trying to make a point of what my mentality was like at that time. Yeah. And let me go a little bit further because I got away really quick. I was only with him for six months. I did not. I ran away from him because he was in Alaska and I came back to Hawaii. He was wanted here for attempted murder. So I came back to Hawaii knowing he would never come to Hawaii. So I wasn't afraid that he would come back. Okay. And I cruised Waikiki and I did everything. And I kept on pulling that little card out of my pocket whenever I needed it. And I did it for 20 years. Wow. Yeah. Okay, wait. This is loaded. Tammy, do you mind? I can't believe I'm talking to someone who's experienced this. And people think you see it in just in movies. But listen, people out there, there's sex trafficking that Tammy's talking about. She's making a light story of something that's just so damaging and destructive. We need to come back to this. Let's take a little break. If you have a glass of wine, go sip it. We'll come back and continue with Tammy's story and hopefully bring truth and reasons and understanding to all this. Hello, I'm Marianne Sasaki. Welcome to Think Tech Hawaii, where some of the most interesting conversations in Honolulu go on. I have a show on Wednesdays from one to two called Life in the Law, where we discuss legal issues, politics, governmental topics, and a whole host of issues. I hope you'll join me. Aloha, my name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Law Across the Sea. Join me every other Monday when we bring lawyers who know how to get across the sea to meet people and resolve problems into your house. Thank you. Aloha, I'm Chantel Seville, host of the Savvy Chick Show on Think Tech Hawaii. This show is for you. It's all about inspiring and empowering girls of the future to do what they love, get out there, and be healthy, fit, and confident. If you're up for that, 11 a.m. every Wednesday, I'll see you there. Where is it talking about this? Back on sex trapping with Tammy Batanga and Nicole Brody, you know, heavy stuff. I mean girls, everyone out there, you have women in your lives, and if somebody is in danger of being affected by someone who's just forget, oh god, or let's just talk. Tammy, just complete your story in, I'm sorry, but the time frame, but you said that you got hooked into this world, and then you got pimped all over in Alaska and here, and then you came back, and then. So I came back to Hawaii, I stayed on the run for another six months or so. Were you making a lot of money? Uh, yeah, but that's kind of beside point. I'm Asian. I'm Asian, and so I'm Asian and I'm young, so that's what a lot of buyers like, Asian and young. So anyway, that was the 70s. So, and then I still, you know, I came back to Hawaii, I got, I went back to school, I went back to high school, all the while, trafficking was never a word. I prostituted myself, I was a prostitute, I was pimped. Yeah, some of them, you know, some of them knew kind of what I was doing, and then I went back to high school, I normalized, but I did a lot of drugs, I smoked a lot of weed, I did a lot of homework. Does it always go hand in hand, based on? Sometimes, and what I know today, what I was doing, was just numbing myself. Yeah, self- medicating. Yeah, so I, I got into like a, like a psychologist would come by then, they figured I needed some help, so they would send the child psychologist to my foster home. So I had that for like a year, but it wasn't that effective. Right. And then I got pregnant my senior year of high school, went into a very violent relationship with my son's dad, got out of that, went into a domestic violence shelter. From there, I had another boyfriend, which was violent, and then another boyfriend, which was violent. So by the time I was 30 years old, I had three TROs against three different men, and it was just, I was like a caged animal, and so if you ever, like I finally had to take responsibility for my part in those TROs, because if you're ever in, if you're ever a victim of any kind of violence, you just, you just act out in every way, you know, you just act out, you just act out. Okay, so by the time I was like 34, I was just in this whirlwind of crazy, and my girlfriend said, you know what, Tom, you're going to kill yourself if you don't stop this. Now, all the while from, I started working in a law office when I was 22 years old, so I worked in law offices, and, but I would still go in the drink bars and work, I'd go in a strip bar and work. Because I was just part of your habit. Yes, so, you know, I'd, we'd go to the club, I'd pick up a date in Waikiki, I, it was just a double life that I lived. I was raising my son. Wow. So by the time my son was 16, you know, we had been through a lot, he had seen a lot in his life, you know, he was kind of damaged, he had to get counseling. Did he know what was going on with you? Totally knew, but it was very, you know, I don't know, it was just the way of conversation with him. We've had many conversations, he's 33 today, and we've had many conversations, and I, there's a lot of guilt that went along with the lifestyle that I lived, but, but at about 34 years old, my girlfriend said, you gotta change, you gotta stop. So I did, I went to church with her, and I started figuring out that I needed healing, that I needed to stop that life, and so for about 10 years, I, I went through a lot of inner healing, and a lot of just, just abuse, recognition, like who's the abuser, me, or them, and, you know, stop the substance, the drinking, the alcohol, like, all of that, like. Why did it take so long? I'm sorry to it took so long. No, you are hitting it on the nail. That is exactly what we want to talk about, is because we never addressed the sex trafficking, we never addressed the abuse. So, right. And the self-blame, right. So I go to church, and I go to this women's conference, and then people are talking about it, and I'm like, oh my gosh, they're talking about it. What is that sex trafficking? And so I go, and then I realize, and I really compact this, I realize that I was a victim of sex trafficking. I realized that when I was probably about 45. That's crazy, right. All that time, 30 years, I thought I made a bad choice, right. And so, even then, I would talk to them, my whole Anapua sisters, and survivor sisters, and I would say, oh my gosh, he wasn't even that bad, you know. Like, he never abused me. Was this psychologically trying to make yourself feel better? No, that's what I believed. Really? I believed that it wasn't that bad, and he never hurt me, and he never abused me. I'm sorry. I think there are defense mechanisms, right. Yeah, I was going to say. In order to survive, you convince yourself of certain things, and I think, could you see through that when she's telling you these stories? Um, I didn't know her then, and I don't know that I, yeah, and I don't think you can necessarily see through that. I think you understand that. No, the response would be, Tammy, he sold you. Tammy. You need to be heard that day. He put your life in danger. That's what kind of the light bulb finally went on, and then they were talking about sex trafficking, and then I was like, oh my gosh, I was impressed on that. And so, yeah, it's like boom, light bulb, and then it was like, I cannot sit here any longer with my mask on, and say, I have a normal life. My life is totally normal. Back to, like, all in a pool, what we're trying to do is identify these girls immediately, understanding the trauma that they've been through, the trauma of trafficking, perhaps trauma that happened before that, and treating it at its core, like what Tammy was saying, because the initial abuse was never treated, it just led and manifested to all of these other things, just decades of self-harm, and potentially harm to others as well. Absolutely. And so, it's really identifying it right then and there, and getting them the treatment that they need to deal with all of that trauma, and so that's what our home is, a therapeutic residential facility that will be dealing with those therapeutic needs that are very unique to this community. Right. Well, the healing aspect, I can imagine, is just, you know, a lifelong process. But, you know, the girls who were lucky enough to be identified at an early time, you know, you got something going on there, what about, like, Tammy, you know, you let it slip by, you went through continual struggles and complications because you didn't even address or think that you were a victim. So, what about these women who were trafficked, like, 10, 20 years ago? Are they emerging and realizing after your awareness programs and education networks that they are, indeed, part of this and coming out to voice it? Is there some kind of a rise in that? Yes, absolutely. So, I have about three other survivors in Hawaii that are over 40 years old that we have been trying to come together and just address the issues that we deal with today. And so, that's, you know, that's another story. But, what we really, the real issue here is that we need a place for these kids to go because that's what's happening is we're identifying them today. And we identify not only that they are, have actually been trafficked, even if they've been trafficked for one day, if you can imagine somebody who's been raped one time, the trauma that they deal with one time, okay? So, if you have a girl that's been on the street, say for instance, maybe she's been on the street for a week, yeah? Maybe she's being trafficked for a week. Potentially, if she's had five dates a day, how many times has she been raped? Right. So, we call that complex PTSD because her trauma is deeper than that one time. And so, that's the issue that we have today is that these kids deal with so much trauma. And the way that we compare that is, if somebody's been to war, and somebody's been trafficked, and if you do that brain scan thingy that they do, I don't know what it's called because I'm not a medical person, but whatever we call it, the firing, the lighting up of the brain is the same because the trauma is similar. So, if we can teach them, and you know the self-hatred and all the guilt, and a lot of times we, like, I was down for my man. I was not going to turn him in. I ran away from him. Did you have feelings for him? Is that all you had feelings for him? That's the problem, right? That's part of their technique, if they do is get girls to fall in love with them, and they're much more easy to manipulate that one. So, when you pull these girls off, do they admit that they were a victim, or does it take time for them to release all that? We have to be very, and we have to be very, you know, innovative about the way that we approach that, because they do not, if they're, okay, think of it. If you're in a foster home, say it for me. I was in a foster home, and then I had all this freedom, and I had all this drugs, and I had all this boyfriend, and it was like, my life was totally good, and then, and then I had to go back into foster care, and then I had to go back to school, and then I had to go, you know, like, you get all your freedoms taken away from you, like, really? Like, how much better are we doing this? Because at 14- How come the foster homes had no more supervision in terms of how you lived your lives outside of school? I mean- It wasn't the foster care system. It's not the responsibility to care what you're doing at midnight, as a 13-year-old? Well, by the time it was midnight, I was on the run, so I was reported. Oh, boy. Okay. So in our short time left, unfortunately, you're going to just have to come back and talk about more cases, but for this short minute left, what do you both ladies have to say on this issue, or how can we all support and help and move this all forward to create awareness? Oh, man. I mean, for me, one thing that I- I hate the word slut. I would love if we could just eradicate that from our language entirely, completely, forever for everybody. I think that making women feel bad about having sex, having whatever, whatever their situation is, I just think that that needs to stop in all of its forms. And I think that part of the tools that people who are trafficking girls use is that blackmail of I will tell everyone what you've done, you are worthless because you are like this, and that a lot of the trauma could be undone if we would just stop using that word and stop slut-shaming. To respect. Right. Okay. Slut-shaming. Right. Yeah. Good one. Yep. Yeah. Okay. I think just making sure that as we identify these girls is that they know where to go for help. So, Holland and Puller has a mentorship program so that- because we don't have our home open yet, but we do- we are able to reach the girls that we do identify today. Well, we have the website we just put up, so we're here to help. Please, everyone, you know, this is a community thing, this is a world international issue. Hope you all can embrace this issue, heartfelt from both of you. Thank you so much for being here. And remember, talk to the people in your family, educate and respect, especially with boys, I think that it starts from there too. Thank you for tuning in and I hope that you take this very serious topic to mind and be a little more concerned for that community and support it. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. Thank you for having me. Bye.