 We're the voice for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce here in Hawaii. We work hard to be a resource for the Latino community by offering bi-weekly podcasts, our show, Hola, Aloha, Welcome. And we also have bi-monthly Buenos Dias Breakfast Networking events, so please join us at those. And we also offer a weekly newsletter, also named Hola, Yaloja. So my name is Barbara Salazar Deluca, President, and my lovely co-host is Marisol Ruiz. Hola, my name is Marisol, and I am the Vice President, and as she said, co-host of our fabulous talk show, podcast. We're really excited about today, and one of the things that we offer, she was mentioning, is our Buenos Dias Breakfast, and it's an opportunity for us to network, and we're so excited because from the event that we had last time, we had an awesome opportunity to meet our current guest. His name is Eric Madden. He's the Education and Training Program Manager at Ho'Olaonapua. And for those of you that don't know Ho'Olaonapua, it actually means New Life for Our Children, and it's an organization that was founded to shine light on the dark criminal enterprise of sex trafficking. They are committed to the prevention of sex trafficking and providing care for children who have been exploited. We are so excited to have Eric Madden here with us, and if you can please share with us a little bit about yourself, Eric, we'd love to hear from you. Yeah, so thank you so much. You know, I kind of just fell into coming to that breakfast, and I loved every moment of it. It was great. I enjoyed the presentation by the gentleman that was teaching self-defense. And yeah, so thank you all so much for having me here today, having me be able to speak on behalf of Ho'Olaonapua in regards to trafficking and what that looks like here in Hawaii. A little bit about my background. I've been in Hawaii now for roughly about, or just over five years now, and I moved here working with developmental disabilities. That's where I've been in the last 12 years, but I really felt a pull towards this organization and their work that they do here. And that's kind of what I really enjoy doing over the last couple of years. What I get to do is I really get to go out and spread awareness and spread truth behind what sex trafficking is and what CSEC really is. When I say CSEC, I'm referring to commercial sexual exploitation of children. And that's what we focus on highly as an organization. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm super excited to share up with it, share about it, share what it looks like here in Hawaii and how we can be protected as a community, as well as identify some of those risk factors or vulnerabilities that maybe we can start to identify so that we're not going down these paths of being vulnerable and being exploited in different pathways. Eric, that's so interesting that you said you have experience working with the developmental disabilities department. I have a daughter who just turned 19 over the weekend and she does have an intellectual disability. She was born with a brain, you know, brain damage basically due to birth complications. So anyhow, you know, I have a major concern with CSEC, the exploitation of children, especially since she, you know, has issues with communication. The school last week I dropped her off at school. She was running late and they call me well as in my gym class and let me know that she wasn't in her classroom. And right away I just, I panic because I thought maybe she tried walking home on her own because she's 19 now and she wants to be independent. So by the time I got in the car, they called me and said they found her. She was just hiding in the girl's bathroom. She didn't feel like going to class. But all these things raised through my mind right away, you know. So, yeah, let's talk about some of the protective factors. Yeah, absolutely. So the protective factors are really going to be knowledge. We truly believe that just understanding and knowledge is key. If we can get out there, what trafficking looks like and what it truly is versus some of these myths or some of these ideas that we, when we think of trafficking, we think of, you know, maybe we think of kidnapping or stranger danger and things like that. But if we can look at it from a statistic standpoint of what we truly know of a sex trafficking and CSEC, then that protection and that knowledge is key. And that's going to be the number one most protective factor that anybody out there can have is just understanding the law, understanding their rights and understanding what it looks like. Also, you know, just understanding those vulnerabilities, what they are, knowing that when you're out, when you're putting yourself out there, there's people with bad intentions that can exploit later. So, we're understanding what those vulnerabilities are, recognizing them, you know, recognizing in yourself so you know I'm protected. I'm not vulnerable in that situation. I have protection. I know I can call somebody. I know I can talk to somebody. Also, one of the most important things for our youth, 19 year olds, 16 year olds, whatever this case may be, is understanding what healthy relationships are. A lot of our kids these days don't know what a healthy relationship looks like. So, maybe they've grown up in like a broken home where they only see unhealthy relationships. So, that's what they associate is as okay. It's okay to be in this situation because you're protected, you're loved or you have a place to go home, you have things like that. So, a lot of our youth that are seeking those relationships, they need to understand what protective factors are and what healthy relationships are. Also, one of the biggest things that we can do as parents is talking about it. Talking and sharing and just asking questions. You know, I have a 2 year old and a 16 year old that lives in the house and always on gaming systems, always online. So, we really need to just have conversations, have an open conversation at dinner. Has anyone ever asked where you go to school or has anyone ever like just fished for information that you really don't know this person? Having open conversation is a big protective factor. We're going to talk a little bit later about online safety and being safe online is a big one. Everybody is online. Everybody engages with the internet every single day, multiple hours a day. So, we really need to practice being safe online. And then I think what we all can do, whether it's trafficking or any situation is just practicing self care, self regulation and just practicing loving yourself. So that you're not at risk for seeking that inappropriate or that other relationship out, that's feeding your self regulation. And then, you know, we have programs such as having a mentor. If you're at risk for, you know, if you're at risk or you have vulnerabilities. You can set up a mentor where somebody, a trusted adult that has gone through a well vetted training situation will be that mentor for you. So those are all good protective factors as well as, you know, just having your basic needs met having a place to sleep and place to stay and food and all those things. I think it's interesting how you mentioned the healthy relationship and the fact that a lot of our children are online. I mean, when I get my notices on my phone, it says I've been online for eight hours. You know, that's my average for one week. Wow. And I'm trying to cut back as far as knowing what a healthy relationship is and those boundaries. I feel like since our children are online so much, they don't have those communication skills in person. They're used to texting and sending instant messages and not necessarily being engaging and having just the, you know, organic conversation with with their peers. Because it's just it's a different era. Yeah, it's a different world. That's for sure. Absolutely. So, yeah, just teaching, you know, I mean, there's no way around relationships online. That's where most of it all happened. But we really need to start to identify if. If they ask for photos and, you know, you feel like maybe you sent one and then they're starting to ask for more and more and more than we need to have those conversations. That's getting to unhealthy or controlling. Don't go here. Don't go do that. Controlling the activities that you do or the people that you hang out with or monitoring your, you know, where you're at all the time. Things like that are, you know, are good factors or good emblems of the unhealthy relationship. And now isn't that exactly, I think, I mean, I don't know, but the reason why, I mean, it starts real small, right? Just, oh, one little picture here or, you know, maybe a discussion goes one way. And, you know, it's just you start off small and I feel like people are groomed into certain positions, whether it's, you know, sex trafficking or physical abuse or anything like that. Right. So I don't know if we really see it right away, right? Until it's like we've kind of gone down that rabbit hole. So you talked about, I mean, I have like a thousand questions for you. But one of the, one of the things, it starts with education and communication and I wholeheartedly believe that I have two young children myself and my biggest fear in life is that something like that would ever happen to them because you cannot undo something. That once it's done, I mean, it's done and I fiercely try and protect them from anything like that. So dialogue is important. So it starts at home, right? But is there anything that may be allowed to pull out or any other organizations because our children spend most of the time at school, right? They're there six to eight hours. And is there anything that we're maybe trying to do or implement at the school level that has these little classes maybe? I mean, I remember I had sex education, like, I think it was like third grade or something. I don't know. But something like that that's talking about relationships and friendships and what's healthy, what isn't? Can you maybe talk a little bit about that? Absolutely. So that's kind of right in my wheelhouse is the education training. So we are in schools quite a bit. Unfortunately, we are not at that age that at that young age where maybe third, fourth, fifth grade really needs to hit it. We do have a curriculum that is fifth grade based, which is called C or CEL for CEL, SEL stands for social emotional learning. And it is a 12 week educational based program that the teacher takes on and teaches the youth about all those things about healthy relationships, about engagement, about communication, about just that social emotional learning, how to learn from your own emotions. And how to take all that all that information in. So that is a great program that starts at fifth grade. And then other than that, we do, we do school based programs all the way from middle school all the way up to high school. More, more typically partnered with the health class when they start talking about reproductive systems and health and things like that. And then we kind of come in on whenever the timing fits to where we can educate the youth on what trafficking really looks like. So we have, we tailor those to the audience, we tailor those to the students. Obviously, we teach the seniors very much different than we teach the seventh graders, but it really is getting into the schools and getting into those classrooms to be able to teach the kids. And what, what we need to do to stay protected and what we need to do to have those healthy connections, healthy relationships. Absolutely. Oh, sorry, were you going to say something Barbara? Well, I'm curious, what are the majority of cases that we see in Hawaii? Is our state different in any way than the mainland or. Yes, so our state is pretty unique in itself. We do have some studies that were done over the last four years with Arizona State University alongside the Hawaii State Commission on status women to be able to give us some of those numbers. And some of those numbers that makes our state unique is one, the average age in Hawaii is 11.3 years old for the first time with exploitation. The national average is 14. Also, one of the numbers that is really hard to swallow is 84% of cases. The relationship to the trafficker was a family member of friend or romantic interests. So that is also unique to Hawaii as well. So we see a younger age in Hawaii, as well as we see more cases that are by family members or close friends or romantic interest. Can I ask something else? Sorry. So, yeah, I can't even wrap my head around that. It's really difficult to even, like, it's pretty heartbreaking actually. But let me kind of take it a little bit more basic. So can you, for like you said earlier, a lot of us, we have a certain image or vision of what sex trafficking is or isn't. Can you just share with us, just by sex, sex trafficking and CISA? Yeah, absolutely. So it's important that we do understand the definitions of sex trafficking. One, because sex trafficking is a federal definition and Hawaii is adopted that federal law. So even in Hawaii, the age of consent, we know the age of consent here is 16. Whereas federally, the age of consent is 18. However, under this federal definition, 18 is the cutoff. So what it is, is it's a broad definition. It involves 7 factors, which is harboring, recruitment, solicitation, transportation, provision, obtaining and patronizing. And then if any of those are in place and if there is forced fraud or coercion and you're over the age of 18, then that is sex trafficking. So if you're having to do a commercial sex act, which means something, a sexual act that there's some sort of value involved in that, and you're doing that over the age of 18, and if there's forced fraud or coercion, you're protected. So we think about maybe adults that are in pornography or strip clubs and things like that. Even if they're over the age of 18 and they can consent to that, but they're being lied to or they're being forced into doing that, that person that is doing that sexual act is protected under this federal law. If you're under the age of 18, you also have rights under this definition as well, because if you're under the age of 18, there is no questions asked. You don't need to show forced fraud or coercion, which a lot of our youth don't understand. So maybe it's that they sent a photo and they're 16 years old. They feel like they're the victim. However, if they're not the victim because it was the person that used that photo against them. So they need to understand that, but they're protected under this federal law. Even if they could consent to that of being 14, 15, 16 years old, they're protected under that law. And then the other factors, the harboring, transportation, all that, those just show how broad it is. So if you're being held in a room or if you're being driven from place to place or you're being asked or requested, you're not at fault for that as well. And then CSEC, which is commercial sexual exploitation of children, what that looks like is really any sexual act plus anything of value. And under CSEC, we don't get to determine that thing of value. Unfortunately here in Hawaii, with our age being so young, oftentimes it's not that 10, 11, 12 year old that's getting that value. It's maybe the family member, it's the friend, it's a romantic interest that is getting whatever that value is, whether that's drugs or alcohol or money or whatever it is, the child might not be getting that. But they're protected under this law because there's something of value being received or any sexual act. So when we look at CSEC, that's any sexual act plus anything of value and anything of value determines by that person. Kind of getting into the weeds about like online, a lot of our youth really are seeking that influence or status, right? So someone can come along and say, hey, you know, if you send me these photos or you do this or that, I'll get you that blue check mark by your Instagram page, you know, I promise I'll get you that. And that holds value, even though it's not money or something tangible, you know, they're striving for that. And if you don't have to get there, it can just be a promise of getting that piece of value as well. So understanding the definition is key, understanding what they look like, understanding that it's federal and then understanding what your rights are really helps our youth be protected. And what does that look like here in Hawaii? Because I know we had a conversation after the Buenos Diaz breakfast and I was just, I mean, I was just blown away at what we were talking about. And we were with the, in the hotel, how you you'd given an example how I'd like if you could maybe touch a little bit on that. And because I myself personally have been in situations where I've seen something and it didn't feel right, but I didn't say anything. And then after the conversation I had with you, now I'm like all over it because and so if you could touch on that a little bit for those of you curious. Yeah, absolutely. So what it looks like here in Hawaii and kind of going back real quick, you know, we talked about our research. So we did research, a four part study research. The four part study looked at buyers. It looked at the stories from the survivors. It looked at the experiences across Hawaii. And then the fourth study, which was just completed in 2022, looked at the the exploitation amongst the homeless population on Hawaii Island. So here in Hawaii, we had, we had more buyers than than you can imagine. We had 407 buyers for our one ad that we posted on a website and within 24 hours. So the amount of buyers that we have here in Hawaii is insane. We did the same study in a few other cities and one of them was Phoenix and they compared to us by only 45 buyers. So Hawaii had 407 Phoenix only had 45 and it was kind of it was conducted the exact same way. So we can see that there's a large amount of buyers. Unfortunately, in Hawaii, we also see that we have that large that low number of 11. And then so when we did the research and we talked to the experiences across Hawaii, we surveyed 363 individuals. It is important to note that these individuals were at risk youth. They were part of child training services. So they already had, they already had some risk factors going against them. And the ages range from 5 to I want to say 55. And so we surveyed them. We asked them, we talked to them. The average age came out to about 11.3. And then the amount was about 1 in 3. So 1 in 3 of those 363 individuals had experienced trafficking. So the number is extremely high as far as percentages here in Hawaii. Also, when we in and kind of going back to what you mentioned, when we talked to them, nobody offered any of those individuals support. So they just maybe they had that gut feeling, but they never went up and talked to them. I had the opportunity to speak with a guy at one of our events and he was a he was a pilot. And he said, you know, he said, I don't feel comfortable like walking up and talking to these people. I feel like it's I feel like they're in a situation, but I don't feel comfortable doing it. And that's it's a tough thing to go down. It's a tough road to cross. It's a tough conversation to bring up. But what I encourage him and I encourage anybody listening to do is just have something that they can offer them or just ask them if they're okay or just ask them if they need something or if they if they need anything. We have a whole bunch of stickers at our organization that have our logo and our name on it. And to somebody it might just be a sticker, but to somebody that truly needs it. They'll look at that sticker and look up our name. Google hold and I'll pull and be able to be able to realize that someone noticed them and someone cared about them. We did a presentation at a hotel and the hotel management. They were like, oh, yeah, we've seen that but we didn't know we could ask or we didn't know we could talk to them. And a lot of times these women and boys that have been exploited. They get overlooked and they get passed by and that's going to be the one of the hardest things because if they got passed by by so many people. The chances of them kind of reaching out to anybody is just lessening and lessening as time goes on because they feel like they're not seen. They feel like they're not going to be heard. So we can definitely make that make that choice to offer support when we see it. Is there a code or a sign that you can use if you're in, you need help and you're in danger. There's numbers. There's not necessarily a code or a sign. Like sign language would be great if you could just. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't really have that one. I mean, we have numbers, but as far as like a code or sign language, I would, it's really just it's really just that gut feeling and that look on that person. There's obviously some red flags that we can look at some of the flags could be such things as. You know, the situation that they're in or the clothes that they're wearing or. You know, if we see a youth that looks 12 years old and they're done up like they're 25 and they're with somebody that is way older than them. You know, that's something that we can look at a second cell phones are often a red flag because the trappers given them a second cell phone to communicate through. Signs of physical or sexual abuse are a big one that we can look at, you know, we can kind of see those from the outside looking in. And yeah, and then just really just kind of like engaging it taking that gut feeling is going to be one of your main protected one of your main sources to figure that figure it out. I know. Go ahead. I was just going to say I think I think I think a lot of people, I mean, because once you go back or in retrospect, I think we do we instinctively like we know when something is off. Yeah, and I think it's really great that right now, even like you said if there's a stick or something because I wouldn't even know what to say to somebody like I, I mean, I was in Minnesota and there was these little I knew something was funny. But they were, you know, happy shopping very little older than I looked a lot older than than what they were with this gentleman that looked way out of. I mean, it just it was like textbook. Yeah, but I didn't know, like, do I even say anything? Do I not? What questions do I ask? But what if, you know, I get looked at crazy. I just didn't know what to do. Right. So even here in Hawaii, something like that, like the stripper here's a number or, you know, is everything okay? Because what did you say out of all those people that 3 out of 363 out of the out of like the 26.7% that experience trafficking, nobody said that they were offered support. Not one person. I mean, that's outrageous. But probably there were people that in their mind wanted to say, but they didn't know what to say or ask, right? Well, you do and it could be something as simple as. Do you need help? Yeah. Is everything okay, right? Yeah. Yeah. I'm really excited. That's all I wanted to say about that. But I feel a little bit more courageous now, right? Like, okay, there's I might not be able to physically help you, but I can maybe point you somewhere else or just even give that, you know, we all want to feel seen, right? Yeah. We don't want to be in the shadows. And I think that, you know, over time, if that continues, you just get completely discouraged and deflated. And then, and then yeah, you then you don't seek the help because why would you nobody even knows you're there? Right. Exactly. Exactly. Real quick, when you say trafficking, I just didn't realize it was so prevalent in Hawaii because being from Arizona, you see a lot of missing children and I assume, you know, trafficking means they've taken them to across the border to Mexico or something. But in Hawaii, we're on an island and it's kind of hard to traffic somebody and take them off the island. But I mean, unless like the pilot said, you know, I travel with my children and they don't require ID if you're under 18. So I think it might be easy to get them off. But sounds like there's a lot of it just going on here without even having to leave. I don't know. Yeah. And, you know, I know, and that is one of the big myths is that that crossing borders things. Most cases, like 75% of cases are domestic, meaning they stay within the state they don't cross borders. So most of the cases that are here in Hawaii happen here in Hawaii started here in Hawaii continue to happen here in Hawaii. Yeah. Is there a like a social media or public page that you can post it, you know, like, I my dog is I posted and I'm still in stuff Hawaii and there's like 100,000 followers on then I got all kinds of people that you know I found my dog. So I'm not comparing the dog to a child ever but I'm just saying there somewhere we can, you know, we do have those missing and endangered children's pictures that you see up at stores. We do have those, but as far as that's a great point, there should be something like that. I mean, would it be hard to get a social media page where people could go you can post their pictures so if you see them anywhere like I see them randomly but if it was one place where I could go I think it'd be great or is it just harder to do because they're underage. A lot of it might be the underage factor as well. Okay. So we have we're going to wrap up this show goes by still fast. We only have half an hour or so. Anything else you wanted to cover. The only thing else that I would love to cover. You know, really reach out to me if you guys, if anyone wants trainings or once presentation, this is just, this is just scratching the surface there's so much more so you have my contact information. Look up our organization. We do free presentations, free customized presentations to anybody. Anybody anywhere not just here in Hawaii, but any island in any place. Yeah. Eric, you had also mentioned at our breakfast. You have like a training program though, right. If somebody wanted to. Within how long before. A mentor, like a mentor. Yes, can you touch a little bit on that? Absolutely. So we have, we have a mentorship program that is a one on one mentorship program that does a very much in depth at a training. So anyone that's over the 21 that would like to be a mentor for anybody that is age range from. 9 to 24. They're welcome to join us and become a mentor. We need mentors. No questions about it. We need. We need mail mentors. We need female mentors. We let the mentee choose. The mentor that they want. So we need. We need a large pool to pick from to be able to meet those needs. Absolutely. So thank you, Eric. So, we, you know, thank you for your time and we have an upcoming show. Our next one is June 8. And it's going to with Ruben Fortes. He's a board member and he's also, you know, the heads out this. Organization called H is easy. Hi Steve, I'm restoring health, but in Hawaii. So that's our next show. But I do want to thank you for your time today. Yeah, thank you very much. We'd like to have you back because like you said, we bear. I mean, we just like. That surface. I'm yeah, we can get down. Yeah, we'd love to have you back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. We'll do a breakfast with you guys. That'd be great. Awesome. All right. And thank you, Marty stole for joining us. Thank you for joining us here and think tech Hawaii and we'll be back two weeks. Make sure you tell your friends. I'm Barbara DeLuca and Adios and hello, everybody. Thank you. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii.com. Mahalo.