 Think Tech Hawaii. Civil engagement lives here. Aloha, I'm Bienvenido to Hispanic Hawaii. I'm Richard Concepcion, we honor human ex Matt Miller. Today's program is about human trafficking. Buenos noches. So we have today with us Ms. Jade Baker. She's Ms. Hawaii High School Pearl City and an advocate for human trafficking. Welcome to Hispanic Hawaii. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to have you here. So let's start the program by telling me a little bit about yourself and also I want to know about your competition that's coming up soon. So I'm in the Ms. Hawaii High School America System under the director of Christina Lum. I attend Rafferty High School along with my twin brother. Together we serve an NJYRTC as Master Chief Petty Officers. My upcoming pageant is coming up in November 4th at the Hawaii Convention Center. So Ms. Jade Baker. What inspired you to get involved with this public health issue of human trafficking? After attending Holonapua's Pearl Gala in 2016, me and my mother had went into the art exhibit of the Gala and it showcased the life of a young girl that had been sex trafficked in the room where she would put on her clothes and everything. And that just really moved me to want to do something about this. Perfect. Can you explain to me what human trafficking is? Human trafficking is more of an umbrella term that goes over sex trafficking and labor trafficking. And labor trafficking is when a person is bought or sold for labor purposes and domestic purposes basically. And sex trafficking is used for just sexual exploitation. You have really informed us well so far on what's going on with this. So this issue affects marginalized populations. So the correlation between human trafficking and sex trafficking, what's that all about? As I've said before, labor trafficking is more of when it's self-explanatory, it's in the name. So it's when a person is bought for labor purposes, then sex trafficking is for sexual purposes. Perfect. Can we see slide number three, please? All right, let's talk about this slide right here. Can you help us to understand and kind of break it down about how human trafficking works? So with human trafficking, you have action means purpose. So you have the recruiters, they will transport the victims and they will provide for the victims to lure them in and basically trap them into submission. And they do this through force, fraud, or coercion. And it's for sexual acts or labor services. So who are the ones trafficking and who is actually being trafficked? So traffickers can be anyone, which makes the problem that much harder to deal with. And sex trafficking doesn't discriminate, so it could be me, so and I may know at school, my brother, my mom, it could be anyone. That is a good point, because it turns out that it's not just our youth, it's adults as well. What are some of the other populations, Ameri-Asians is what I've heard, like India, people from India, China. What have you known about that in your work? Have you been told about that? We have been brought awareness towards that. However, with Ho'obanapua, we work towards the renewal of youth being exploited to the islands of Hawaii. Can we show the next slide, please? So let's talk about the victims right here. You can see that it's 46% end up being in the prostitution on 27 domestic and some of them are misleading and different factors. So when we have somebody into the human trafficking, so there's just no end of being labor, but they also end up being into sex trafficking. So the difference that you mentioned before between one and the other, how do one person identify which one of those that person is getting into it? With human trafficking, the person has to prove force, fraud or coercion in order for it to be a part of the legal system. So for labor, they just have to state what they were being bought to do. So they could say, oh, I was being bought to do labor work, or I was bought to have sex with another person, and that's how they would essentially prove it. Great. So also globally, it has become between 21 to 70 billion dollar industry. Who's profiting from this? The people that are running the sex trafficking rings, and the industry of sex trafficking and human trafficking is so huge, it's, as you've said before, a over $200 billion industry, and it's next to guns and drugs. With a gun, you can only buy a gun once and use it. Same thing for drugs, but with a person, you can buy them multiple times, which makes it that much of an industry that is profitable. So it all goes down to supply and demand, right? So in order for us to stop it, then we got to stop the demand. Exactly. Okay, let's go to the next slide. So we were just talking about the labor and the traffic, the labor and sex traffic, they have some differences. Can you just go over and explain it to me just a little bit? So with labor trafficking, you have the victims being bought for domestic situations, such as being bought to be a maid or something like that. And for sex trafficking, you have them being bought for sex purposes, and they're in massage parlors or even just bars. Yeah. What's interesting, you brought up a very important concept about triple or multi-use, and that is why the numbers have tripled from 21 to 70 billion in the industry, is because they can keep using this vessel, which is the human. So tell me, as far as the community, now the people that are working in the industry are being affected. So the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women recently published a publication on human trafficking, and from that came threats to the Executive Director, so they had to close services early for that day, so to speak. Tell us more about what is happening with the community members, because here's people helping in the industry now they're being affected, so tell us more about what's going on in the community. So for the community, what they're doing for bringing more awareness towards human trafficking, I work for Hololana Pula as their first ever state teen educational advocate. So my job is to just go into the schools and provide more awareness so the kids know the signs, and they can prevent sex trafficking from happening towards them. And we do a lot of collaboration work like right now, Hololana Pula thanks you for just allowing me to be on the show, because right now I'm able to talk to your viewers and spread that much more awareness. Great, so when it comes to human trafficking and our victims, why don't they escape from this? I mean you would think with all the information out there now, the acts that, like the 2000 act that came about to help with this measure, there's more resources, the internet, social media, why aren't they escaping from this? Unfortunately it's not that simple for a victim to just escape. Oftentimes the recruiter has built a trauma that's inside of them and has instilled fear, which allows them to be in submission towards the person. And with all that trauma and fear it's just hard for a person to just escape out of a situation like that. In my understanding, I think they're more afraid of the person who's doing the trafficking and the law enforcement, because they feel for their family in case they escape, right? So I want to go into the next slide so we can talk about that real quick. So can you talk about a little bit in detail about who is being trafficked? So one disclaimer that oftentimes people automatically assume about human trafficking is that it's only the ladies being trafficked and that's untrue. As you can see in the labor exploitation, you have 60% of the males being trafficked and 40% of the women. And that's like a little over just half and it's kind of even. And with sexual exploitation, 98% of the women are being used for sexual purposes and only 2% of the men are. That's a great point because we don't realize that the male, they're being human trafficked to do some kind of work. And we're always thinking about it as the female that is being trafficked. That's a great point. So where can we find some of these people that are being trafficked? They're everywhere. As long as you look out for the signs, I actually have my auntie who is a part of the organization. She had been sex trafficked and she had shared with me her story. And just looking at her, you would have never guessed that she had gone through what she'd gone through. Wow, yeah, you don't know who's being a victim. So what are the signs that someone is being trafficked or maybe trafficked? Because there was an incident on the airlines recently. I think it was Hawaiian Airlines. And they suspected and, yeah, they did an investigation. I don't know how intensive, but they figured it out. I mean, so there's red flags and that's a good thing because that's the first thing is get them out of their immediate situation and fly them across the country would be the worst or out of the state or out of the country. But definitely get them onto the immediate situation. But so tell us more about that. What are the signs? So for instance, if you are a youth, you might see your friend coming in constantly late at school or showing more provocative clothing or they recently just got more money and they have an older boyfriend. A lot of the techniques that the traffickers will use is called the Romeo Technique and they will present themselves as a love interest for the person, gain their trust, allow them to get more money from them because money is always motivated. And they will just use their feelings against them to just look out for those key signs. Wow. Yeah. I think some other signs are absenteeism, hanging out, maybe more drug use, that kind of thing. So good. Could you repeat that what you said again? The Romeo Effect. So the Romeo Technique is again where the trafficker will prove themselves as a potential love interest. Oftentimes it's with girls and they will constantly gain their trust, give more gifts and money so they can be trusted and just get the submission of the person that's being trafficked. Thank you. I just wanted you to emphasize that and repeat it so that we can have the youth be aware that it's not, because youth are just discovering themselves and so they're vulnerable and maybe they haven't had a first love and this is the time and so it's a false pretense. So thank you for reiterating that. So I want to talk about resources. So the Department of Human Resource and Development has a human trafficking state collaborative and they help with education and projects and the resources that they provide our materials on human trafficking. Tell me more about maybe where you're at or what you know about materials or resources. So with Holonapua we have our educational and advocacy program and it's again where we go into the schools and we talk to the children about what to look for so they can prevent it for themselves and we have a lot of pamphlets that we will hand out to them so we have like emergency cards where we can put our a trusted adult's name or the police so they know who to call if they find themselves in trouble. Thank you so much for your information but we got to take a quick break and we're going to return and continue to talk and start about human trafficking after this important message. Hi I'm Bill Sharp host of Asian Review here on Think Tech Hawaii. Join me every Monday afternoon from 5 to 5 30 Hawaii Standard Time for an insightful discussion of Contemporary Asian Affairs. There's so much to discuss and the guests that we have are very very well informed. Just think we have the upcoming negotiation between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. The possibility of Xi Jinping the leader of China remaining in power forever. We'll see you then. Aloha I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at 2 o'clock live from Think Tech Hawaii and on our show we talk about taking your health back and what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means let's take healthy back. Aloha. Hi and welcome back to Hispanic Hawaii. We are here talking about human trafficking. Jay, I want to say thank you so much for giving us so much information but we have a video that you provided to us and we're going to play and after the video let's continue to talk about human trafficking. Okay we're working with what we have and I was like what do we have and choose like your body. I didn't know about sex trafficking until I was in the middle of it. After a while you just kind of get used to it like everything that goes around just doesn't seem out of ordinary to you. We really believe that she was getting ready to be sold. Brianna comes from a small town, was an A student, did everything you hope your daughter would do. My dreams were to become a nurse while I was in high school I had found a waitressing job. I love school, I love being around my friends and my science class was like my big thing. These traffickers or pimps, they pretend to be an older boyfriend and these young girls actually fall in love with these guys and believe that this guy loves them back. He was like 24, he played football at a university, he had bought me some designer jeans and things. Go to like movies and malls, trips, stuff like that. He bought me a dress and some jewelry because I didn't really have stuff like that. It's important for the pimp or the trafficker to separate these girls from their family and their friends. He really gave me the courage to kind of stand up to my mom. He was like you know just kind of keep it on the down low. One day he asks for something and even though she doesn't want to do it she's so worried about losing him that she will and once he's had her do it once he pretty much can control her from then on. He kept saying that he needed money, I was like you know I'll help you or whatever. I made a choice that night but I found out that they actually had chosen me. What a great video, thank you so much. I want you to tell me a little bit about this video, what is the purpose of this video and how do you use the video to promote human trafficking? So again I work with an organization called Oolana Pua and where we use the video is we go into the schools and we show the videos like this to promote the signs of sex trafficking and how it can happen to anyone and just the Romeo technique is displayed perfectly in the video and the video is from shared hope international which is another organization that Oolana Pua works with. So what is the reaction between the student watching this video, do they have any question for you after watching the video or did you stay there like just finish watching the video inshallah well it's not going to happen to me. So I remember one instance I had just got done speaking at the leadership global institute down at the Puneho school and I had showed this video and a lot of the students didn't believe it was going on and they were like oh because all the students were from around the world so like Tokyo they were like it's not going on where I live but how can we help you and it's sad to know that a lot of the kids don't know that this is an issue that directly affects them and it happens everywhere because sex trafficking doesn't discriminate. So a lot of the times their reactions are either shocked or just they didn't know. So the main reason they don't know because lack of education from the community to the students is that's the main reason and that's where your organization come into place to educate the community. So what is the state of Hawaii are doing to help the people in Hawaii understand that we have this kind of problem. Many organizations like O'Olanipu are doing a fabulous effort in trying to promote this issue because in my opinion awareness is the first step to solving the problem. If more people know the signs and if more people understand that this is an issue that directly affects them then it becomes that much real to a person my age who's kind of oblivious and worried about Twitter drama or something. So do you think that this program could be part of the school curricular or task so they can get a better understanding what is happening. It doesn't your personal opinion. It's a little bit hard to implement it into the curriculum because we already have a set based curriculum in school. Thanks to the duty. But with organizations like O'Olanipu just going into the schools. I know that they went into my school which is Radford. They had gone into a class for career day and they had spoken to the students about what sex trafficking is. Just trying to implement themselves into the school system is already a great effort. We have a couple of slides that I wanted to talk about. Can you show them this slide. Can you talk about this slide right here who profit from this business. So for sexual exploitation you heard me talk about the sex trafficking rings the Romeo technique this is all part of that and 66 percent get the profits from human trafficking and it's a $99 billion industry and for domestic servitude you can see it's a little bit less. Only 5.3 percent and they get $8 billion from this industry and as you can see the green is forced labor so they get $43.2 billion from this industry. Wow it's unbelievable. Can we go into the next slide please. And we was talking about the different signs right here that we need to be aware to understand what is happening. Let's talk about here in Hawaii I want to know if you know some statistics what is really happening every day in Hawaii. So the thing about Hawaii is that we have a really huge population of teen runaways and of those teen runaways 33 percent of them get approached within the first 48 hours of them being on the streets for sexual coercion and this presents a daunting issue because a lot of the teens don't know when they are in school so. That's Hawaii because it's a place they have so many attraction like tourists you have the military here is that it's one of the main reason that it become a place that people want to do human trafficking. I have been taught that anywhere where there's a lot of male populated areas is a huge like sign for sex trafficking. So big football games Hawaii is a great location to host the Super Bowl and stuff like that and concerts even at the beach you can find it it's happening everywhere and if people just know the signs then we can stop the issue. Yes you are very informed that it's a daunting issue and that it's where there's big events and the male population it's good that you're the advocate for this for sure. So what are so you mentioned the locations the teens that are vulnerable who are they mainly. Homeless. One thing about being a teen and I can speak for myself since I'm only 16. Well I was 16 too I can tell you okay but we search for acceptance and that's something that the traffickers can use against us. So we will do anything to just fit in with the crowd and just to have an easier life at school for there's no specific kind of teen it affects everyone no one is discriminated for sex trafficking. Well I want to know a little bit about the organization that you work with tell me more about your organization. So Hualapua was founded by Jessica Moniz and they're focused on the renewal of youth being exploited to our islands and right now they're working on an awesome project called Pearl Haven and it's out in North Shore and it's going to be a therapeutic resident for the girls that have been sex-crafting so they can get the help that they need from the trauma that they've been through and just having that comfort when they simulate themselves back into society. Wow that's a great program I'm glad you mentioned that I think I know where they're at because I live in the North Shore so that organization I think is doing multi-purpose which we have to do that with the non-profits the monies are tight so it's good to do more than one thing so it's called Pearl Haven right on I'm glad that you mentioned that so there are places that they can go now I want to reiterate again you said runaways so what is going on with the runaways as far as I know there were street advocates when I was involved in a non-profit are there still street advocates for them I believe so honestly I am not familiar with that I'm sorry oh no no but I believe that there is advocates for the runaways so my focus is on teens and youth as I work with Omanapua so if we want people to know how to get help who do they call who they get in contact with can you tell me more about that so they can call the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and I believe that will be posted on the broadcasting and the National hotline for human trafficking well any final thoughts we almost run out of time and I would like to know what is your final thoughts I just want to say thank you for having me it was a pleasure being able to talk more about sex trafficking I don't think I have anything else to add well yeah we want to say be ready because you come into a competition in November is your competition yes so it's the Miss Hawaii High School America system and I will be vying for the title against nine other beautiful contestants and I just can't wait for that so far I've made so many great friends the pageant is great for community service and just heightening the community's awareness towards the contestants platform as mine is anti-sex trafficking well I want to say good luck in your competition thank you and hopefully you can come back later on after the competition and continue to visit Hispanic Hawaii I will all right all right we want to say thank you so much for watching Hispanic Hawaii and don't forget you can rewatch this program I think take hawaii.com and many other programs just like mine thank you gracias and aloha