1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:17,760 So Tayshia we just want to get to know you a little bit right so maybe you can just give 2 00:00:17,760 --> 00:00:21,840 us a little bit of information about your childhood let's start with just a little 3 00:00:21,840 --> 00:00:26,560 bit of background on your family kind of where you grew up and just take us back to the beginning 4 00:00:26,560 --> 00:00:35,040 essentially it's five six of us all together I have six brothers and sisters I'm the oldest of six 5 00:00:36,720 --> 00:00:44,080 this is me and my uncle Ismael he is 15 years older than me and he always tells me the story 6 00:00:44,080 --> 00:00:50,880 about how I pooped in his pants when I was a baby and if you meet him he'll tell you to 7 00:00:50,880 --> 00:01:02,960 bring him around that's the first story tidy boo boo you know why I call you tidy boo boo right 8 00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:11,600 I got a brand new pair of khakis and I laid you down on them you pooped all over my khakis man 9 00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:21,360 I was gonna be fresh yeah I love my uncle and this is me and my mom and dad 10 00:01:23,280 --> 00:01:30,080 this picture is a reminder of two young people didn't know where they was doing and didn't know 11 00:01:30,080 --> 00:01:34,800 where life was going to take them and made a lot of mistakes but they didn't mean to 12 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:44,480 it reminds me I was made in love they just didn't know what they were doing 13 00:01:47,760 --> 00:01:53,360 you know when I look at the pictures that's right here and thinking about what I wanted to be when I 14 00:01:53,360 --> 00:02:02,240 grow up and I wanted to be an architect that's what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was a little kid 15 00:02:02,240 --> 00:02:10,000 I wanted to build a big house to put my own family in so we got a tv family kind of like the ones you 16 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:16,800 see on the cosby show and that's why I wanted to be an architect so we can have a family where everybody 17 00:02:16,800 --> 00:02:24,400 gets along I would have never thought life would have sent me on the trail that it sent me on 18 00:02:24,400 --> 00:02:33,840 to be sitting here talking to you right now and a lot of other aspirations in life 19 00:02:37,520 --> 00:02:45,440 it was right after my 14th birthday where I met my first trafficker no one says when they're kids 20 00:02:45,440 --> 00:02:52,400 I want to grow up and go all across the country and sell my body and give all my money to this guy 21 00:02:52,400 --> 00:03:01,200 who is going to beat me and make me feel as if I'm less than human no girl says that when she's a kid 22 00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:10,400 that's no one's dream so you started talking to God and you're like God did you put me on this earth 23 00:03:10,400 --> 00:03:21,120 for this did you put me on this earth to be abused repetitively because it didn't just start there 24 00:03:21,120 --> 00:03:27,760 it started way before and you're just sitting there thinking like what kind of God are you 25 00:03:28,880 --> 00:03:43,120 to put me here for this you know 26 00:03:51,120 --> 00:04:16,080 there's all types of experiences um I've had some guys who I've saw for three years 27 00:04:16,720 --> 00:04:20,400 over a period of time and never had a problem with them and I've had other guys who came in for 28 00:04:20,400 --> 00:04:25,840 five minutes and were trying to rape me or rob me or pulling knives on me or whatever the case is 29 00:04:25,840 --> 00:04:33,600 so there's really no way to like protect yourself or or know like what to expect this guy this one in 30 00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:39,440 particular he was uh completely naked when I got there he opened the door he was completely naked he 31 00:04:39,440 --> 00:04:49,040 was high on cocaine he was coming down he was real agitated um he was he was trying to touch me and I 32 00:04:49,040 --> 00:04:54,720 didn't want him to touch me because I was immediately repulsed and this is the first time I finally like 33 00:04:55,360 --> 00:05:01,680 pushed back I'm I don't know what you're gonna do to me he was threatening me he basically told me if I 34 00:05:01,680 --> 00:05:08,320 don't do what he wants he he's gonna hurt me um and nobody's gonna if he could kill me and nobody 35 00:05:08,320 --> 00:05:14,320 would care um he said that I can do whatever I want because I paid for you for two hours 36 00:05:14,320 --> 00:05:32,960 I own you and I knew that he was telling the truth I was thinking like how how did I end up here 37 00:05:44,960 --> 00:05:48,080 sex trafficking is modern-day slavery 38 00:05:51,120 --> 00:05:55,840 we're dealing with the most important human rights issue of our time 39 00:06:01,040 --> 00:06:08,720 too often people think that sex trafficking is something that happens over there with someone 40 00:06:08,720 --> 00:06:16,720 else's child uh people are startled to find out that the vast majority of victims are american 41 00:06:17,520 --> 00:06:22,640 they are in our neighborhoods and oftentimes they're in our home and we don't know it 42 00:06:27,040 --> 00:06:31,600 there's no state in the united states where it hasn't yet been documented 43 00:06:32,720 --> 00:06:38,160 and so we're seeing it happen in rural communities and urban communities suburban communities affecting 44 00:06:38,160 --> 00:06:43,600 people of all races and ethnicities it's everywhere and i think people are slowly realizing that there 45 00:06:43,600 --> 00:06:48,560 is no hiding place and therefore it becomes a major issue not just in california but across the nation 46 00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:54,240 we've seen a trend i would say in the last five six seven years where we've first started to hear 47 00:06:54,240 --> 00:06:59,920 the word trafficking what we thought were prostitutes are actually enslaved human beings who have been 48 00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:03,200 tricked and being sold as objects 49 00:07:03,200 --> 00:07:11,920 just because they don't see it on the street doesn't mean it doesn't exist it doesn't mean that 50 00:07:11,920 --> 00:07:17,200 you know thousands of young women aren't being victimized every year uh through this this terrible 51 00:07:17,200 --> 00:07:29,520 crime we're talking about 14 15 16 year old kids they are required to go out and have extremely 52 00:07:29,520 --> 00:07:35,440 degrading sex acts with adults until they've reached a quota that they can bring home and then maybe 53 00:07:35,440 --> 00:07:38,080 they're allowed to sleep and then maybe they get a little food 54 00:07:40,560 --> 00:07:45,760 every time you get into a car with a stranger every time you walk into a hotel room with someone you 55 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:51,200 don't know you could be it can turn on you in a second so all the people who are surviving through 56 00:07:51,200 --> 00:07:56,400 prostitution have stories of violence at the hands of johns if not at the hands of pimps he would like pull 57 00:07:56,400 --> 00:08:02,480 knives on us permanent black eyes sprawled out on the floor with him over top of me punched me in my 58 00:08:02,480 --> 00:08:10,000 face scars on my leg pushed us out of cars he started to hit me my nose was broken it was like a fingernail 59 00:08:10,000 --> 00:08:24,400 foul he started stabbing me just like stuff you don't really think really happens but it does 60 00:08:26,400 --> 00:08:30,800 happen to be a police officer to protect us and we're doing that and we're doing that but it can 61 00:08:30,800 --> 00:08:32,880 be done to be a police officer to protect us and we're doing that and we're doing that 62 00:08:34,560 --> 00:08:37,200 those of us who are watching the street level trafficking 63 00:08:38,560 --> 00:08:42,880 who are watching the activity that is underground who are watching the dark web 64 00:08:42,880 --> 00:08:49,840 we see activity increasing now 80 percent of sex trafficking is happening on the internet through 65 00:08:49,840 --> 00:08:55,480 apps through social media. 66 00:08:55,480 --> 00:09:11,480 It really happened in the late 2000s when we started doing everything online. 67 00:09:11,480 --> 00:09:18,120 It's just made it easier for people to commodify and buy people. 68 00:09:18,120 --> 00:09:25,520 It took on a totally new character once people were for sale online. 69 00:09:25,520 --> 00:09:31,000 When a buyer had to go out of his way to drive to the track, to what was typically a seedier 70 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:37,180 part of town, to buy sex, he had to take a few extra steps there, right, to be engaged 71 00:09:37,180 --> 00:09:39,120 in sex buying activity. 72 00:09:39,120 --> 00:09:46,120 But when he can log on to any site where paid sex is available, that creates a sense that 73 00:09:46,120 --> 00:09:51,640 sex buying is more normal than it actually is. 74 00:09:51,640 --> 00:09:57,280 When you start to realize just how many guys in the sex trade are looking more broadly for 75 00:09:57,280 --> 00:10:05,160 a very young female, it starts to become obvious why then people would try to supply underage 76 00:10:05,160 --> 00:10:12,160 girls in the sex trade. 77 00:10:12,160 --> 00:10:32,680 We're seeing evidence that traffickers and buyers are targeting teens. 78 00:10:32,680 --> 00:10:44,200 We've seen the use of technology, social networking apps, and apps on phones being used to target 79 00:10:44,200 --> 00:10:51,280 children to learn about their vulnerabilities and use that information as part of the traffickers' 80 00:10:51,280 --> 00:10:54,520 recruitment strategy. 81 00:10:54,520 --> 00:11:03,520 No family and no kid is completely immune from this activity. 82 00:11:03,520 --> 00:11:10,440 Because of the reach of the social media, they're able to reach into the bedroom and actually seduce 83 00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:24,640 and deceive and manipulate even kids who don't come ready for this kind of exploitation. 84 00:11:24,640 --> 00:11:31,900 It's not uncommon for them to send a blanket message to hundreds of kids saying something 85 00:11:31,900 --> 00:11:36,420 as simple as, you're very pretty and I think you could make some money. 86 00:11:36,420 --> 00:11:43,100 When you're asking about whether young girls are a target, they are the target. 87 00:11:43,100 --> 00:11:47,360 The younger the girl, the more cooperative she is, the less resistance. 88 00:11:47,360 --> 00:11:52,840 She isn't aware of what's going on and she's easy to bait. 89 00:11:52,840 --> 00:11:58,960 The street value of girls is just like a product. 90 00:11:58,960 --> 00:12:11,300 So the younger the girl, the higher the price tag. 91 00:12:11,300 --> 00:12:21,360 The most requested age is 14. 92 00:12:21,360 --> 00:12:25,720 Teenagers are particularly at risk for being recruited because they are thinking with the 93 00:12:25,720 --> 00:12:26,720 teenage brain. 94 00:12:26,720 --> 00:12:31,240 They're looking at finding connection, finding love, finding validation. 95 00:12:31,240 --> 00:12:36,340 They're trying on different personalities, different empowerments and that's what the 96 00:12:36,340 --> 00:12:40,340 pimps just zone in on. 97 00:12:40,340 --> 00:12:45,240 You may think trafficking recruitment isn't happening in your town, but it is. 98 00:12:45,240 --> 00:12:47,740 You just haven't seen it or you don't know what it looks like. 99 00:12:47,740 --> 00:12:49,260 But this is how easy it is. 100 00:12:49,260 --> 00:12:50,260 It's happening everywhere. 101 00:12:50,260 --> 00:12:51,520 It's happening in your malls. 102 00:12:51,520 --> 00:12:52,520 It's happening in your schools. 103 00:12:52,520 --> 00:12:56,240 It's happening in your library, at your movie theater. 104 00:12:56,240 --> 00:12:57,240 Guys come up. 105 00:12:57,240 --> 00:12:59,740 They see a group of girls or they see a pretty girl. 106 00:12:59,740 --> 00:13:00,740 You're beautiful. 107 00:13:00,740 --> 00:13:02,860 Hey, why don't you let me buy you something? 108 00:13:02,860 --> 00:13:03,860 You know what? 109 00:13:03,860 --> 00:13:04,860 I'm a modeling photographer. 110 00:13:04,860 --> 00:13:05,860 I'm a movie caster. 111 00:13:05,860 --> 00:13:06,860 Whatever. 112 00:13:06,860 --> 00:13:09,340 And they get the girl to believe just enough. 113 00:13:09,340 --> 00:13:10,760 And then they get her to trust him. 114 00:13:10,760 --> 00:13:12,960 And then he buys her a bunch of stuff. 115 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:15,460 And then maybe her parents think, oh, this is a great guy. 116 00:13:15,460 --> 00:13:16,540 This is a modeling agent. 117 00:13:16,540 --> 00:13:18,140 This is my daughter's future. 118 00:13:18,140 --> 00:13:21,560 Pretty soon, he has more access and more access and more access. 119 00:13:21,560 --> 00:13:23,140 And pretty soon, she doesn't come home. 120 00:13:23,140 --> 00:13:25,140 Oh. 121 00:13:25,140 --> 00:13:43,140 The victims often have what we call multiple trauma, complex trauma, because they've already 122 00:13:43,140 --> 00:13:44,940 suffered trauma. 123 00:13:44,940 --> 00:13:51,860 They're basically ripe for this kind of exploitation because they've already been exploited. 124 00:13:51,860 --> 00:13:53,440 Their life has been tough. 125 00:13:53,440 --> 00:13:55,600 They've been thrown out of the house. 126 00:13:55,600 --> 00:13:58,880 Their parents don't act like they love them. 127 00:13:58,880 --> 00:13:59,880 They abuse them. 128 00:13:59,880 --> 00:14:02,240 They've witnessed domestic violence. 129 00:14:02,240 --> 00:14:04,860 They've been molested as small children. 130 00:14:04,860 --> 00:14:10,940 They've been sexualized so that their bodies don't feel already like they belong to them. 131 00:14:10,940 --> 00:14:17,940 So what the traffickers tell them is, at least you can make money off of it. 132 00:14:17,940 --> 00:14:32,940 I think that a lot of things that have to do with my upbringing and the sexual abuse, the combination, kind of prepped me for a trafficker. 133 00:14:32,940 --> 00:14:39,940 I'm associating with abuse with love. 134 00:14:39,940 --> 00:14:46,940 This person loves me if they hit me because they're disciplining me. 135 00:14:46,940 --> 00:14:49,940 I didn't value my body. 136 00:14:49,940 --> 00:14:52,940 I didn't value me. 137 00:14:52,940 --> 00:15:00,940 You know, when you grow up with sexual abuse, you tend to associate sex equals love. 138 00:15:00,940 --> 00:15:04,940 And I started to realize, well, all I'm good for is sex. 139 00:15:04,940 --> 00:15:07,940 That's all I'm good for. 140 00:15:07,940 --> 00:15:12,940 The easy targets are the ones that are already broken down. 141 00:15:12,940 --> 00:15:14,940 They're already looking at the ground. 142 00:15:14,940 --> 00:15:15,940 They already hate themselves. 143 00:15:15,940 --> 00:15:16,940 They're already bullied. 144 00:15:16,940 --> 00:15:22,940 They already think that they're not worth anything, and no one cares. 145 00:15:22,940 --> 00:15:37,940 They know how to lure them into this sex trade, usually just by starting off with, by paying attention to them, by being a strong role model they never had in their own lives. 146 00:15:37,940 --> 00:15:51,940 So when pimps approach teenagers, they don't say, here's a great idea, let's do a job where you give me 100% of your money, and it's physically demanding, psychologically exhausting, and sort of soul-crushing in a lot of instances. 147 00:15:51,940 --> 00:15:56,940 Instead, they say, let's go party, it's going to be fun, you're going to have all the power. 148 00:15:56,940 --> 00:16:00,940 And very quickly, the narrative changes. 149 00:16:00,940 --> 00:16:22,940 Sex trafficking isn't just a girl being kidnapped out of her home or a girl being snatched away. 150 00:16:22,940 --> 00:16:28,940 Sex trafficking is as easy as Bobby from the barbershop pulling up on your daughter. 151 00:16:28,940 --> 00:16:30,940 Oh, your mom made you mad. 152 00:16:30,940 --> 00:16:32,940 Your dad made you mad. 153 00:16:32,940 --> 00:16:33,940 Oh, don't worry about nothing. 154 00:16:33,940 --> 00:16:35,940 Bobby's going to take care of you. 155 00:16:35,940 --> 00:16:37,940 Let's go shopping. 156 00:16:37,940 --> 00:16:39,940 Let me help you pick out some clothes. 157 00:16:39,940 --> 00:16:40,940 Let me do your makeup. 158 00:16:40,940 --> 00:16:41,940 You never had that done. 159 00:16:41,940 --> 00:16:51,940 Let me give you everything that you've never had done, and I'm going to kiss on you a little bit, tell you how much I love you, and this is what you got to do for me. 160 00:16:51,940 --> 00:16:58,940 And we're going to go all across the world and do it, and I'm going to make all your dreams come true the way your family didn't do it. 161 00:16:58,940 --> 00:17:05,940 It's a Romeo thing. 162 00:17:05,940 --> 00:17:12,940 It's coercion, and it's fraud, and it's you really feeling like you love this person. 163 00:17:12,940 --> 00:17:15,940 I remember that I liked him. 164 00:17:15,940 --> 00:17:17,940 I thought he was a cool dude. 165 00:17:17,940 --> 00:17:21,940 He always appeared to be looking out for my best interest. 166 00:17:21,940 --> 00:17:33,940 And, you know, we kind of developed a relationship where he knew I needed money, and then he easily exploited that. 167 00:17:33,940 --> 00:17:36,940 So he was getting what he needed out of the deal. 168 00:17:36,940 --> 00:17:40,940 There was no real care for my well-being at all. 169 00:17:40,940 --> 00:17:49,940 They start out with a seasoning process where it's one instance where I need you to do this for me. 170 00:17:49,940 --> 00:17:57,940 And then when the child resists doing it again, it's not uncommon for the trafficker to say, I know where I got you. 171 00:17:57,940 --> 00:18:00,940 I will go back, and I will kill your family. 172 00:18:00,940 --> 00:18:06,940 I will beat up your family. 173 00:18:06,940 --> 00:18:11,940 In other instances, they've taken images of child pornography of that victim. 174 00:18:11,940 --> 00:18:26,940 And they say, if you run away from me, I'm going to send these to your family, to the other people in your school, to your community, so that they think negatively of you. 175 00:18:26,940 --> 00:18:32,940 It was confusing for me because I agreed to do so many things out of fear that I normally wouldn't do. 176 00:18:32,940 --> 00:18:35,940 And so I just started feeling really weak and, like, really stupid. 177 00:18:35,940 --> 00:18:40,940 And so, yeah, I just really lost, like, my self-identity. 178 00:18:40,940 --> 00:18:43,940 I already didn't have a self-identity enough. 179 00:18:43,940 --> 00:18:49,940 And so once he came into the picture, I just completely, like, didn't know who I was, so. 180 00:18:49,940 --> 00:18:52,940 I was conditioned to think that this was normal. 181 00:18:52,940 --> 00:18:56,940 First name whore, middle name whore, last name whore. 182 00:18:56,940 --> 00:18:58,940 And that's what I embodied. 183 00:19:00,940 --> 00:19:05,940 We see a lot of similarities between domestic violence victims and sex trafficking victims. 184 00:19:05,940 --> 00:19:09,940 And this is because the mentality is actually very similar. 185 00:19:09,940 --> 00:19:15,940 And that is that there is this one person in a girl's life who is her provider, her companion, 186 00:19:15,940 --> 00:19:21,940 maybe the only person she sees that isn't a client, and he does everything for her. 187 00:19:21,940 --> 00:19:24,940 So who would she be without him? Where would she go? 188 00:19:24,940 --> 00:19:29,940 And one of the things that traffickers do is they disconnect this girl from every support system 189 00:19:29,940 --> 00:19:31,940 and everyone in her life. 190 00:19:31,940 --> 00:19:37,940 And within a short time, we find that girls will literally do anything for her pimp 191 00:19:37,940 --> 00:19:40,940 because he's the only thing that she has. 192 00:19:40,940 --> 00:20:05,940 There are hotbeds of sex trafficking in the United States. 193 00:20:05,940 --> 00:20:08,940 Southern California is definitely one of them. 194 00:20:08,940 --> 00:20:17,940 What we're finding is that locally, a lot of the trafficking cells are in Los Angeles and in San Diego. 195 00:20:17,940 --> 00:20:23,940 And these are where we have concentrations of pimps, enforcers, where girls are actually living. 196 00:20:23,940 --> 00:20:27,940 Trafficking is going to be most prevalent where there's money, right? 197 00:20:27,940 --> 00:20:28,940 They need buyers. 198 00:20:28,940 --> 00:20:32,940 So Southern California particularly attracts tourists. 199 00:20:32,940 --> 00:20:33,940 Hollywood attracts tourists. 200 00:20:33,940 --> 00:20:38,940 That's one of the big reasons that L.A. is really popular for trafficking. 201 00:20:38,940 --> 00:20:42,940 Also, sporting events is one of the big draws. 202 00:20:42,940 --> 00:20:44,940 Conventions is another big draw. 203 00:20:44,940 --> 00:20:52,940 When you find that in San Diego, Atlanta, you know, any place like that where people can come in and out quickly and disappear, 204 00:20:52,940 --> 00:21:01,940 that's where you're going to find a real prevalence of trafficking. 205 00:21:01,940 --> 00:21:07,940 In San Diego County, sex trafficking is the second largest criminal industry. 206 00:21:07,940 --> 00:21:14,940 So that means this is a big problem. 207 00:21:14,940 --> 00:21:22,940 We understand from our undercover work that the buyers here pay more for victims. 208 00:21:22,940 --> 00:21:31,940 And so that makes it a hub for that sort of activity for prostitution. 209 00:21:31,940 --> 00:21:34,940 The traffickers are mostly gang members. 210 00:21:34,940 --> 00:21:37,940 So that makes it even more complex. 211 00:21:37,940 --> 00:21:44,940 It's hard enough to get a victim to come forward in domestic violence because of the attachment to the abuser. 212 00:21:44,940 --> 00:21:51,940 But when you add the intimidation that comes with having the abuser be part of a gang, 213 00:21:51,940 --> 00:21:57,940 so it's not just the abuser, the trafficker, but his whole gang set that's going to come after the victim, 214 00:21:57,940 --> 00:22:02,940 it provides just more, more challenges. 215 00:22:02,940 --> 00:22:07,940 The gang members will even share these women back and forth among gangs. 216 00:22:07,940 --> 00:22:11,940 It's unheard of when you're dealing in drugs or other illegal activity. 217 00:22:11,940 --> 00:22:17,940 About $800 million in San Diego County alone for human trafficking. 218 00:22:17,940 --> 00:22:20,940 That's a lot of money. 219 00:22:20,940 --> 00:22:25,940 When we're talking about who is trafficking girls now, 220 00:22:25,940 --> 00:22:29,940 the trend is becoming increasingly toward gangs and organized crime. 221 00:22:29,940 --> 00:22:34,940 However, we're also seeing opportunistic pimps. 222 00:22:34,940 --> 00:22:38,940 And at the foundation of it is money. 223 00:22:38,940 --> 00:22:47,940 Humans are a renewable resource in that if I sell you drugs, I have to give you the drugs and you take off with them. 224 00:22:47,940 --> 00:22:52,940 But if I give you a girl, I get her right back just the same as I gave her to you. 225 00:22:52,940 --> 00:22:53,940 I haven't lost anything. 226 00:22:53,940 --> 00:23:04,940 We were finding that on average, they were telling us they're making somewhere in the range of $120,000 per victim. 227 00:23:04,940 --> 00:23:09,940 And on average, we're controlling between four and five victims in a year. 228 00:23:09,940 --> 00:23:15,940 So, you know, making upwards of $600,000 a year is a very lucrative business. 229 00:23:15,940 --> 00:23:22,940 The money didn't go to me. It didn't help me pay for school. It didn't help my kids. It didn't help me pay my rent. 230 00:23:22,940 --> 00:23:24,940 Like, I didn't even have a house to live in. 231 00:23:24,940 --> 00:23:29,940 It went to my pimp. It went to his drugs. It went to his fancy shoes. It went to his Gucci clothes. 232 00:23:29,940 --> 00:23:34,940 And it went to his rims and his system and his car and his rap career. 233 00:23:34,940 --> 00:23:40,940 They were pimps. They made money off of women. They surrounded themselves by women. They talked to women. 234 00:23:40,940 --> 00:23:45,940 Their get up from the time they woke up to the time they went to sleep was, 235 00:23:45,940 --> 00:23:50,940 How can I get more women? How can I make more money off of women? 236 00:23:54,940 --> 00:24:00,940 You usually hear of women having to go through 10 to 15 people a night. 237 00:24:00,940 --> 00:24:04,940 And this is mainly to make a quota that they're being forced to make. 238 00:24:04,940 --> 00:24:09,940 My initial quota started at $1,000, so $1,000 a day. 239 00:24:09,940 --> 00:24:13,940 Once I was able to easily make that, it would go up. 240 00:24:13,940 --> 00:24:19,940 Sometimes if you didn't make your quota for the day, you'd be out all day and all night trying to get it. 241 00:24:19,940 --> 00:24:25,940 Until you did get it, sometimes there'd be consequences. 242 00:24:25,940 --> 00:24:31,940 It was like a constant chase of money. Like you got to chase it from place to place. 243 00:24:34,940 --> 00:24:40,940 So what's happening is the cells that are trafficking girls are nationwide. 244 00:24:40,940 --> 00:24:46,940 So most of the cells that are trafficking girls effectively have satellites in every major city. 245 00:24:46,940 --> 00:24:50,940 So the girls are very easily moved around. 246 00:24:50,940 --> 00:24:53,940 Why or how often? It boils down to this. 247 00:24:53,940 --> 00:24:56,940 How much money are they making? Is it enough? Could they make more in another city? 248 00:25:00,940 --> 00:25:06,940 It frequently will only be the price of a plane ticket to fly this victim to Las Vegas, New York, Chicago, 249 00:25:06,940 --> 00:25:13,940 for some major event that draws a lot of men who are away from their families frequently and looking for prostitutes. 250 00:25:13,940 --> 00:25:35,940 You know, from the time that boys grow up as kids, they're almost groomed to do this. 251 00:25:35,940 --> 00:25:44,940 They're almost allowed to think that this is natural or a rite of passage. 252 00:25:44,940 --> 00:25:49,940 That this is an okay thing to do and that it's harmless. 253 00:25:49,940 --> 00:25:59,940 So they convince themselves that it's harmless. 254 00:25:59,940 --> 00:26:04,940 They want this. They're promiscuous. They like having a lot of sex in a day. 255 00:26:05,940 --> 00:26:13,940 They basically leave reality in order to make themselves feel better about what they're doing. 256 00:26:16,940 --> 00:26:19,940 What we call that is the normalization construct. 257 00:26:19,940 --> 00:26:24,940 And when guys subscribe to that belief system that the women and girls enjoy it 258 00:26:24,940 --> 00:26:30,940 and that it's just totally normal for guys to do it, that that belief system is the single strongest predictor 259 00:26:30,940 --> 00:26:33,940 of their likelihood of buying sex now and in the future. 260 00:26:38,940 --> 00:26:41,940 It's sometimes referred to as the pretty woman effect. 261 00:26:43,940 --> 00:26:49,940 That that movie appeared to show that she was a willing participant. 262 00:26:49,940 --> 00:26:52,940 That she was happy with her decision. 263 00:26:52,940 --> 00:26:55,940 This is not pretty woman. 264 00:27:02,940 --> 00:27:07,940 The fantasy that you allowed me to build for you was all bullshit. 265 00:27:07,940 --> 00:27:08,940 It didn't count. 266 00:27:08,940 --> 00:27:10,940 I didn't even remember your name. 267 00:27:10,940 --> 00:27:11,940 I don't remember what you look like. 268 00:27:11,940 --> 00:27:16,940 You play different roles for the buyer to where they think in their head, 269 00:27:16,940 --> 00:27:21,940 she likes it, she's getting money for it, I'm going to give her money for it. 270 00:27:21,940 --> 00:27:23,940 We're all satisfied. 271 00:27:23,940 --> 00:27:25,940 I didn't enjoy any of it. 272 00:27:25,940 --> 00:27:27,940 I didn't care for any of them. 273 00:27:28,940 --> 00:27:30,940 And I was repulsed. 274 00:27:30,940 --> 00:27:33,940 I remember the first time throwing up afterwards. 275 00:27:33,940 --> 00:27:40,940 We know then that that belief among buyers is mythology. 276 00:27:40,940 --> 00:27:48,940 The question I think is whether or not they are creating that belief system to justify what they know to be wrong behavior 277 00:27:48,940 --> 00:27:55,940 or whether or not they just tell themselves that over and over and over again is a way to cover up the reality of what they're actually seeing. 278 00:27:55,940 --> 00:28:10,940 It's about five to six percent of U.S. men who are currently involved in paying for sex. 279 00:28:10,940 --> 00:28:16,940 It sounds like a small percentage, but when you really do the math, you realize we're talking about hundreds of thousands, 280 00:28:16,940 --> 00:28:25,940 if not millions of men each year whose spending and whose paid sex activity causes the problem of sex trafficking to perpetuate. 281 00:28:37,940 --> 00:28:40,940 When you talk to buyers, they know it's illegal. 282 00:28:40,940 --> 00:28:44,940 They know what they're doing might get them in trouble. 283 00:28:44,940 --> 00:28:47,940 They haven't really thought beyond that. 284 00:28:48,940 --> 00:28:53,940 And when you say, well, have you thought about the kid that you had sex with or the person that you're intimate with, 285 00:28:53,940 --> 00:28:59,940 they've given it no more thought than the waiter who brings their food or the valet who parks their car. 286 00:29:00,940 --> 00:29:05,940 So if you're that guy that goes for a consensual commercial sexual act with another woman, 287 00:29:05,940 --> 00:29:09,940 and it is, our research is true, then it's like a coin flip. 288 00:29:09,940 --> 00:29:11,940 You don't know. 289 00:29:11,940 --> 00:29:14,940 You don't know if that person is consensual or not. 290 00:29:14,940 --> 00:29:18,940 You're going to take that risk, exploiting somebody else's daughter. 291 00:29:18,940 --> 00:29:23,940 When you, in your fantasy, think it's a consensual act, it's most likely not. 292 00:29:23,940 --> 00:29:40,940 Men that would never dream of driving down a boulevard and stopping their car and trying to cut a deal with a prostitute on the street, 293 00:29:40,940 --> 00:30:05,940 now in the security and the anonymity of their office, maybe, on their computer or on their phone, will make a date. 294 00:30:05,940 --> 00:30:14,940 There is no typical John, if you want to call it that. 295 00:30:14,940 --> 00:30:22,940 When I call my talks, the guy next door, because it was every profession, it was every income level, 296 00:30:22,940 --> 00:30:24,940 it was whoever on the way home from work thought, 297 00:30:24,940 --> 00:30:29,940 hmm, I could go through drive-thru and get a milkshake, or I could stop over on that street and get a blowjob. 298 00:30:29,940 --> 00:30:38,940 Almost every girl that I've represented has told me that they had customers who were law enforcement officials, 299 00:30:38,940 --> 00:30:44,940 who were school teachers, who were city officials, judges, attorneys, and even politicians. 300 00:30:44,940 --> 00:30:53,940 Well, they definitely are all walks of life. I mean, I've seen guys that were 18 and brand new to the military, 301 00:30:53,940 --> 00:31:00,940 and I've seen guys that are 80 and married for 30 years and successful businessmen. 302 00:31:00,940 --> 00:31:03,940 Married. Most of them married. 303 00:31:03,940 --> 00:31:13,940 You know, I've worked with people who've worked on the streets who say, you know, dads will come and pick them up 304 00:31:13,940 --> 00:31:17,940 with the babies strapped in the car seat and expect a sex act. 305 00:31:17,940 --> 00:31:24,940 So, you know, we could try and explain that the mom's at home and not as sexually available as before, 306 00:31:24,940 --> 00:31:30,940 but it's much deeper than that. Why would you feel like this was an appropriate sort of activity to add to your day? 307 00:31:30,940 --> 00:31:34,940 You know, I'm going to go back to work relaxed and it's all going to be wonderful. 308 00:31:34,940 --> 00:31:38,940 When really, after the moment, it was stressful, it was nervous, it wasn't good sex, 309 00:31:38,940 --> 00:31:43,940 but it's the anticipation and the idea that it's going to be all about them in that moment. 310 00:31:48,940 --> 00:31:52,940 For many of these guys, they're not having a good experience either, 311 00:31:52,940 --> 00:31:58,940 which makes it all the more sad that they're continuing to engage in it because of the harm that it causes others. 312 00:32:00,940 --> 00:32:07,940 It becomes easy to see how strip clubs, legal brothels, and how much of the pornography industry 313 00:32:07,940 --> 00:32:10,940 fits into that same category of commercial sexual exploitation. 314 00:32:13,940 --> 00:32:20,940 What's the same across all of those forms of exploitation is the inherent devaluation of women. 315 00:32:20,940 --> 00:32:27,940 And that objectification of women and girls feeds into this idea that somehow they can be treated as a commodity, 316 00:32:27,940 --> 00:32:31,940 they can be bought and sold, and that therefore, a guy who wants to buy sex, 317 00:32:31,940 --> 00:32:36,940 it's not a big leap to begin to do that if he's engaged in some of these other activities 318 00:32:36,940 --> 00:32:39,940 that are associated with exploitation. 319 00:32:39,940 --> 00:32:52,940 The supply is occurring in response to the demand, which means the demand is the problem. 320 00:32:52,940 --> 00:32:55,940 It's not underlying the problem, the demand is the problem. 321 00:32:55,940 --> 00:33:00,940 Very few of the men who say they've bought sex in a lifetime have only done it once. 322 00:33:00,940 --> 00:33:07,940 We find that a quarter of sex buyers fall into that high-frequency category, 323 00:33:07,940 --> 00:33:12,940 where they're buying at least multiple times a month, and in some cases, multiple times per week. 324 00:33:12,940 --> 00:33:17,940 Now, that's only one in four sex buyers, which may not sound like much, 325 00:33:17,940 --> 00:33:20,940 but when you realize how many transactions they account for, 326 00:33:20,940 --> 00:33:26,940 they actually represent about 75% of all the sex trade's transactions. 327 00:33:26,940 --> 00:33:32,940 So, we strongly recommend that states adopt what we call a graduated penalty structure. 328 00:33:32,940 --> 00:33:37,940 If they recidivate, if they offend after they've been arrested once, 329 00:33:37,940 --> 00:33:41,940 there needs to be heightened penalties to reflect that. 330 00:33:41,940 --> 00:33:46,940 It's completely unacceptable when a community's average fine is $100. 331 00:33:46,940 --> 00:33:50,940 The guy spent more than $100 on paid sex, 332 00:33:50,940 --> 00:33:55,940 so there's no way that a $100 fine could, you know, be the real source of problem for him. 333 00:33:55,940 --> 00:33:58,940 That's completely inadequate. 334 00:34:02,940 --> 00:34:06,940 They pay less as a John than I do. 335 00:34:06,940 --> 00:34:12,940 I pay $1,000 because I was prostituting, and they pay $182. 336 00:34:12,940 --> 00:34:15,940 The buyers have the least consequences. 337 00:34:15,940 --> 00:34:20,940 I've had a buyer get mad and say he want his money back, 338 00:34:20,940 --> 00:34:24,940 and take my purse, and I call the police, and the police show up and say, 339 00:34:24,940 --> 00:34:26,940 well, you got to give him his money back. 340 00:34:26,940 --> 00:34:30,940 As long as there's no enforcement for the buyers, there's no negative consequence. 341 00:34:30,940 --> 00:34:33,940 There's no pressure for them to stop it. 342 00:34:33,940 --> 00:34:37,940 What we do have is the stigmatization of people who sell sex, 343 00:34:37,940 --> 00:34:41,940 without that accompanying sort of shaming of people who buy it. 344 00:34:41,940 --> 00:34:46,940 Historically, the response had been to arrest women and girls involved in prostitution 345 00:34:46,940 --> 00:34:48,940 because they were the eyesore, 346 00:34:48,940 --> 00:34:50,940 because they were the ones that neighbors were complaining about, 347 00:34:50,940 --> 00:34:53,940 because they were the ones that were problematic. 348 00:34:53,940 --> 00:34:58,940 Again, it speaks to the stigma involved for women and girls in the trade. 349 00:34:58,940 --> 00:35:10,940 I did go to jail a lot, a whole lot. 350 00:35:10,940 --> 00:35:14,940 I have over 100 cases. 351 00:35:14,940 --> 00:35:26,940 I am what they consider a career criminal. 352 00:35:26,940 --> 00:35:31,940 So now I'm documented as a prostitute, and so every time they even, like, run my name, 353 00:35:31,940 --> 00:35:36,940 they're automatically looking at this, and it just became easier and easier for them 354 00:35:36,940 --> 00:35:39,940 to, like, have a reason to throw me in jail. 355 00:35:39,940 --> 00:35:43,940 There was nobody offering services, nobody asking, are you all right? 356 00:35:43,940 --> 00:35:47,940 It was definitely, like, criminal mentality. 357 00:35:47,940 --> 00:35:54,940 But I am thankful that nowadays it's shifted a little bit to, like, services offered 358 00:35:54,940 --> 00:35:58,940 versus just throwing people in jail and not understanding where they're coming from. 359 00:36:02,940 --> 00:36:08,940 San Diego really led in this area of shifting the lens of law enforcement, 360 00:36:08,940 --> 00:36:14,940 shifting the lens of community, so that these kids are not viewed as prostitutes. 361 00:36:14,940 --> 00:36:19,940 We created protocols where it was a victim-centered approach. 362 00:36:19,940 --> 00:36:25,940 Every person encountered in prostitution is first looked at as a potential victim 363 00:36:25,940 --> 00:36:27,940 rather than a potential suspect. 364 00:36:27,940 --> 00:36:33,940 That mindset changed, and then we changed the laws to match our mindset. 365 00:36:33,940 --> 00:36:40,940 There have been a lot of awareness efforts that are pushing to change the concept of these girls 366 00:36:40,940 --> 00:36:44,940 from being criminals to actually being victims. 367 00:36:44,940 --> 00:36:54,940 So over the last couple of years, primarily, more than half the states in the country 368 00:36:54,940 --> 00:36:58,940 have adopted safe harbor laws, which are these laws that say they're victims, 369 00:36:58,940 --> 00:37:02,940 they aren't criminals, you can't charge them with something they were forced to do. 370 00:37:02,940 --> 00:37:06,940 But we have a long road ahead of us as far as trickling down to everyone, 371 00:37:06,940 --> 00:37:11,940 because the girls on the street are still being treated badly in many areas. 372 00:37:15,940 --> 00:37:20,940 One of the big challenges we have is these women don't see themselves as victims. 373 00:37:20,940 --> 00:37:25,940 And it might take one, two, three, four, ten times before they finally realize 374 00:37:25,940 --> 00:37:27,940 they're the victim of the crime here. 375 00:37:27,940 --> 00:37:30,940 And it's almost like you have to deprogram them. 376 00:37:30,940 --> 00:37:37,940 I wasn't chained to a bed, and I wasn't forcibly, like, physically forced to stay anywhere. 377 00:37:37,940 --> 00:37:42,940 Granted, sometimes I was, but for the most part, my chains were, like, in my mind. 378 00:37:42,940 --> 00:37:49,940 So how do we, like, how do you get out and try to explain that to people? 379 00:37:49,940 --> 00:37:51,940 Like, how do I get out and try to explain to people, like, 380 00:37:51,940 --> 00:37:54,940 I'm not handcuffed, but my mind is handcuffed? 381 00:37:54,940 --> 00:37:58,940 Like, for me, like, that sounds crazy to me when I say it out loud. 382 00:37:58,940 --> 00:38:03,940 And so to try to explain that to my family and try to explain that to myself 383 00:38:03,940 --> 00:38:09,940 and understand myself got so stressful that I just, I didn't want to deal with it. 384 00:38:09,940 --> 00:38:13,940 He told me, you know, nobody wants you. 385 00:38:13,940 --> 00:38:16,940 Nobody cares about you. Nobody loves you. 386 00:38:16,940 --> 00:38:19,940 Look what I do for you. I take care of you. 387 00:38:19,940 --> 00:38:22,940 I make sure you eat. I check on you. I bail you out of jail. 388 00:38:22,940 --> 00:38:25,940 Sometimes, depending on how bad I hurt you, 389 00:38:25,940 --> 00:38:28,940 I take you to the doctor when you need to go. 390 00:38:28,940 --> 00:38:34,940 I am your everything, and you believe that this person is your everything, 391 00:38:34,940 --> 00:38:37,940 and you feel obligated to this person. 392 00:38:37,940 --> 00:38:39,940 You feel like you can't leave them. 393 00:38:39,940 --> 00:38:42,940 You feel like you can't go nowhere else. 394 00:38:42,940 --> 00:38:44,940 There's nowhere else to turn. 395 00:38:44,940 --> 00:38:47,940 It's mental handcuffs that this person has on you. 396 00:38:47,940 --> 00:38:49,940 Society doesn't care about you. 397 00:38:49,940 --> 00:38:52,940 Nobody gives a fuck about you. 398 00:38:52,940 --> 00:38:54,940 You're just a whore. 399 00:38:54,940 --> 00:38:56,940 That's all you're good for. 400 00:38:56,940 --> 00:38:59,940 And your brain thinks that. 401 00:38:59,940 --> 00:39:00,940 You think that. 402 00:39:00,940 --> 00:39:03,940 Even if I try to leave, where am I going to go? 403 00:39:03,940 --> 00:39:04,940 What am I going to do? 404 00:39:04,940 --> 00:39:08,940 Who's going to hire me with a record a mile long? 405 00:39:08,940 --> 00:39:11,940 Who's going to, what man is ever going to want to be with a woman 406 00:39:11,940 --> 00:39:16,940 that's been with a million other men, and they could still see the sins 407 00:39:16,940 --> 00:39:18,940 that's all over her body? 408 00:39:18,940 --> 00:39:21,940 Who is going to want me in the end? 409 00:39:21,940 --> 00:39:22,940 You feel that. 410 00:39:22,940 --> 00:39:25,940 You feel like this is the only person that wants you. 411 00:39:25,940 --> 00:39:27,940 So it is hard to leave. 412 00:39:27,940 --> 00:39:30,940 It is really hard to leave. 413 00:39:30,940 --> 00:39:47,940 It's so easy to use our preconceived notions about what it means to be a person involved 414 00:39:47,940 --> 00:39:52,940 in prostitution and to just ignore the problem that way. 415 00:39:52,940 --> 00:40:01,940 But when we start to peel past those layers of stigma and recognize those people as people, 416 00:40:01,940 --> 00:40:05,940 and then we start to understand what difficulties they are facing, 417 00:40:05,940 --> 00:40:08,940 what types of trauma they're experiencing, 418 00:40:08,940 --> 00:40:11,940 you start to recognize the person as a person, 419 00:40:11,940 --> 00:40:16,940 and you start to understand that it's not something that they jumped into. 420 00:40:16,940 --> 00:40:18,940 It's something that is being done to them. 421 00:40:31,940 --> 00:40:34,940 They often say, you know, prostitution is the oldest profession. 422 00:40:34,940 --> 00:40:35,940 I don't think it was a profession. 423 00:40:35,940 --> 00:40:37,940 I think it's the oldest abuse of individuals. 424 00:40:37,940 --> 00:40:39,940 But still, it's been around forever, 425 00:40:39,940 --> 00:40:43,940 and we still have not changed our perception of it very much. 426 00:40:46,940 --> 00:40:48,940 These girls are hitting in plain sight, 427 00:40:48,940 --> 00:40:52,940 and it seems as if, you know, no one seems to see them. 428 00:40:52,940 --> 00:40:55,940 They walk by them, they belittle them, 429 00:40:55,940 --> 00:40:58,940 and they've been forgotten by society. 430 00:40:58,940 --> 00:41:02,940 To be forgotten and to be not thought about anymore 431 00:41:02,940 --> 00:41:07,940 is probably the worst punishment ever. 432 00:41:07,940 --> 00:41:12,940 Just to know that, you know, somebody's daughter feels like she can't go home 433 00:41:12,940 --> 00:41:15,940 because she's been on the streets, and this is what the pimp told her. 434 00:41:15,940 --> 00:41:24,940 There's still girls out there that's roaming around looking for a family, 435 00:41:24,940 --> 00:41:27,940 trying to gain acceptance, and this is where they see acceptance. 436 00:41:27,940 --> 00:41:33,940 This is where they seek refuge because the rest of society has forgotten about them. 437 00:41:33,940 --> 00:41:39,940 I think what people from the outside look in to see, like, this black and white issue of, 438 00:41:39,940 --> 00:41:42,940 well, you're being treated bad, so you should go. 439 00:41:42,940 --> 00:41:43,940 There's a lot more to it. 440 00:41:43,940 --> 00:41:44,940 There's financial struggles. 441 00:41:44,940 --> 00:41:45,940 There's legal struggles. 442 00:41:45,940 --> 00:41:47,940 There's gap in job history. 443 00:41:47,940 --> 00:41:49,940 There's lack of education. 444 00:41:49,940 --> 00:41:52,940 There's people that have been abused previously. 445 00:41:52,940 --> 00:42:00,940 There's people that have kids that are single moms that don't know how to survive without using their body. 446 00:42:00,940 --> 00:42:11,940 There's all of these factors that go into this that really impacts somebody trying to exit and move forward. 447 00:42:11,940 --> 00:42:15,940 The truth is that you can tell a girl all day long, you're better than this. 448 00:42:15,940 --> 00:42:17,940 You need to get out of the life. 449 00:42:17,940 --> 00:42:21,940 But unless you're willing to provide for all the needs that her pimp is providing for her, 450 00:42:21,940 --> 00:42:23,940 there's no chance that she can really do it. 451 00:42:23,940 --> 00:42:25,940 She needs a place to stay. 452 00:42:25,940 --> 00:42:26,940 She needs food. 453 00:42:26,940 --> 00:42:28,940 She needs a source of income. 454 00:42:28,940 --> 00:42:29,940 She needs mental health. 455 00:42:29,940 --> 00:42:31,940 She needs medical care. 456 00:42:31,940 --> 00:42:34,940 She needs all these things, and if you're not ready to give it to her 457 00:42:34,940 --> 00:42:40,940 and have access to those resources, you can forget the fact that she's going to go with you. 458 00:42:40,940 --> 00:42:45,940 We have to understand how difficult this change is and that it's not immediate 459 00:42:45,940 --> 00:42:51,940 and that they're going to backslide in terms of not being able to comply with all of these straight, normal rules. 460 00:42:51,940 --> 00:42:56,940 So we have to have the patience to understand that it takes six or seven times to exit 461 00:42:56,940 --> 00:42:59,940 before they've got the strength and the belief that they're worthy. 462 00:42:59,940 --> 00:43:05,940 So you have to keep working with these people because it takes a lot for us to build up trust. 463 00:43:05,940 --> 00:43:12,940 So many people we've trusted in have broken it and broken us that we don't know who to trust. 464 00:43:12,940 --> 00:43:14,940 The recidivism rate is so high. 465 00:43:14,940 --> 00:43:26,940 The majority of women, they go back four to 16 times before making it out, if they make it out. 466 00:43:26,940 --> 00:43:33,940 We see the highest rate of suicide is not our returning military, it's our sex trafficking victims. 467 00:43:33,940 --> 00:43:45,940 The highest rate of overdoses from drugs, the most horrific physical abuse and diseases are to our sex trafficking victims. 468 00:43:45,940 --> 00:43:57,940 It's estimated that within seven years, if we can't recover a victim and help her escape, that she's very likely going to be at the medical examiners. 469 00:43:57,940 --> 00:44:15,940 Sex trafficking is not something that can be solved alone by nonprofits, law enforcement, prosecutors, service providers. 470 00:44:15,940 --> 00:44:23,940 We all have to play a role in continuing to highlight this issue, the gaps that still exist, and what we can do to make improvements. 471 00:44:23,940 --> 00:44:30,940 Everybody wants to raise awareness, and we're raising all this awareness, and so now everybody's aware of the problem, but then what? 472 00:44:30,940 --> 00:44:32,940 Like, then we don't have anywhere for anyone to go. 473 00:44:32,940 --> 00:44:37,940 Our human trafficking reports are going up, but our shelters aren't going up. 474 00:44:37,940 --> 00:44:44,940 Everyone's calling the hotline to say, like, hey, that girl I just saw may be trafficked, but then what? 475 00:44:44,940 --> 00:44:51,940 There's no one silver bullet, one simple answer. 476 00:44:51,940 --> 00:45:05,940 It's the community coming together with prosecutors, law enforcement, community-based organizations to provide those wraparound services that'll make that victim safe and hopefully get her back to a normal life. 477 00:45:05,940 --> 00:45:10,940 Education is very important, and deterrence is important. 478 00:45:10,940 --> 00:45:17,940 When we deal with prevention in the schools, it can't be just about girls protecting themselves from harm. 479 00:45:17,940 --> 00:45:23,940 It's about boys not being part of that harm, and also protecting themselves. 480 00:45:23,940 --> 00:45:28,940 So the prevention has to include boys, girls, men, and women. 481 00:45:28,940 --> 00:45:50,940 Where I think the biggest stride and success is going to be is to start bringing people into the roundtable and sitting down with them, survivors of exploitation, survivors of the pimp life, people that have pimped and been on that side, people that have been buyers, implementing all the dynamics and coming together and respecting them for more than their labels. 482 00:45:50,940 --> 00:45:55,940 And you can create a program, and you can create collaborations that actually work. 483 00:45:55,940 --> 00:46:00,940 To the extent that we're unwilling to talk about the issue, we allow it to fester. 484 00:46:00,940 --> 00:46:15,940 It's something that people don't want to pretend has affected their families or affects their communities, but until we have those conversations, it's hard to imagine anything getting solved. 485 00:46:15,940 --> 00:46:22,940 There's so much we don't know about sexual behavior in the U.S., because we're not talking about it early enough, and we're not talking about healthy sexuality. 486 00:46:22,940 --> 00:46:30,940 So we can't get to the unhealthy or potentially criminal or potentially harmful sexuality if we're not even starting with the basics. 487 00:46:30,940 --> 00:46:36,940 I mean, it's a cliché that prevention is far less expensive on a community than the cure. 488 00:46:36,940 --> 00:46:39,940 In this case, it's magnified a thousand times. 489 00:46:39,940 --> 00:46:43,940 I do think there's a lot of momentum, a lot of progress being made. 490 00:46:43,940 --> 00:46:50,940 But moving to a fully mature institutional attack on trafficking, we're still a few years out from that. 491 00:46:50,940 --> 00:46:58,940 I believe that as just concerned citizens, that we should take a look at how can we get involved in this fight. 492 00:46:58,940 --> 00:47:05,940 If we do not do something today, we're going to see human sex trafficking take our nation by storm more than it already is. 493 00:47:05,940 --> 00:47:21,940 I think people get caught up in this, like, well, trafficking doesn't really, like, impact me specifically, and so it's hard for me to figure out my avenue to get involved. 494 00:47:21,940 --> 00:47:24,940 How do I make time to volunteer? You don't have to. 495 00:47:24,940 --> 00:47:30,940 Even if all you do in this movement is to stop stigmatizing, that's doing enough. 496 00:47:30,940 --> 00:47:39,940 Instead of driving down the street and saying, oh, that's a dirty prostitute, say ink to yourself, I wonder what happened to lead her there? 497 00:47:39,940 --> 00:47:54,940 The harm started way before the sex. And we have to recognize that. Shame on all of us. Shame on society if we think that we can pin this only around the sex itself. 498 00:47:54,940 --> 00:48:04,940 We have to ask ourselves, knowing that sex trafficking has been around as long as it has, why have we not done anything about it? Why have we allowed it to perpetuate? 499 00:48:04,940 --> 00:48:15,940 Why isn't this making everyone crazy that children are being taken from their families and sold on the street as objects for sex? It should drive us crazy. 500 00:48:15,940 --> 00:48:28,940 All the innocence that was taken away from me from the time I was 14 all the way up until I was 30 years old. 501 00:48:28,940 --> 00:48:39,940 Just think about those years and what I could have done with those years if one person would have reached out to me and said, you know what, it's okay, you don't have to do this. I'm going to help you be a kid. 502 00:48:39,940 --> 00:48:50,940 It's important to save those girls because they shouldn't have to go through what I went through. Nobody should have to endure that type of lifestyle. 503 00:48:50,940 --> 00:49:01,940 They may not have our last name, but they are definitely from our neighborhoods. And it's up to us because it's our kids. Failure is not an option. 504 00:49:01,940 --> 00:49:11,940 If you care at all about your own kids or your neighbors or your grandkids, you need to be involved because they are the next victims. 505 00:49:11,940 --> 00:49:24,940 To not do anything would be devastating. And that would be the worst thing in the world, to basically give up and to believe that we don't have the capacity to change. And we do. We've made great changes. We just have more changes to make. 506 00:49:24,940 --> 00:49:49,940 We will keep fighting this. We will bring every resource we have. And we will keep working to make sure that we recover the victims and we hold the traffickers accountable. And that we hold the buyers accountable. Because this is what will define us as a civilization. We cannot, we cannot have this form of slavery continue. 507 00:49:49,940 --> 00:49:58,940 Toenews 508 00:49:58,940 --> 00:49:59,940 . 509 00:49:59,940 --> 00:50:00,940 . 510 00:50:00,940 --> 00:50:04,940 . 511 00:50:04,940 --> 00:50:07,940 . 512 00:50:07,940 --> 00:50:08,940 . 513 00:50:08,940 --> 00:50:09,940 . 514 00:50:09,940 --> 00:50:10,940 . 515 00:50:10,940 --> 00:50:11,940 . 516 00:50:11,940 --> 00:50:12,940 . 517 00:50:12,940 --> 00:50:13,940 . 518 00:50:13,940 --> 00:50:14,940 . 519 00:50:14,940 --> 00:50:15,940 . 520 00:50:15,940 --> 00:50:16,940 . 521 00:50:16,940 --> 00:50:17,940 . 522 00:50:17,940 --> 00:50:18,940 . 523 00:50:18,940 --> 00:50:48,920 Thank you. 524 00:50:48,940 --> 00:50:51,300 Oh, my gosh. 525 00:50:51,900 --> 00:50:53,500 Look how nice you do. 526 00:50:53,980 --> 00:50:55,900 Oh, I didn't want to cry, guys. 527 00:50:56,480 --> 00:50:57,080 Wow. 528 00:51:18,940 --> 00:51:48,920 Oh, my gosh. 529 00:51:48,920 --> 00:52:18,900 Oh, my gosh. 530 00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:48,900 Oh, my gosh. 531 00:52:48,920 --> 00:53:18,900 Oh, my gosh. 532 00:53:18,900 --> 00:53:48,880 Oh, my gosh. 533 00:53:48,900 --> 00:54:18,880 Oh, my gosh. 534 00:54:18,900 --> 00:54:48,880 Oh, my gosh. 535 00:54:48,900 --> 00:55:18,880 Oh, my gosh.