Welcome. If you quick housekeeping notes note. You could silence your cell phones now so we dont get interrupted it would be great but usually we have about 30 minutes of talking and then we take questions. We are filming so it important and i hope you all have questioned that use the microphone and get up and ask them as opposed to shouting from the audience. If you would think of questions from there and asked them that would be great. Those of you who are familiar with our offense would ask you to pull that the chairs, dont fold up the chairs today. Thank you. If you enjoy this event we do 500 operatives a year so check out the events calendar. We have november and december out a lot of good stuff. If you havent been down there its beautiful. We have events there and its a great space. Now for the good stuff. Im excited to introduce kimberly mehlmanorozco. Kimberly holds a doctorate in criminology law from George Mason University with an expertise in Human Trafficking. Shes one of the few researchers with a background to qualify as an expert in human trapping and promote Civil Court Page served as a peer reviewer for Human Trafficking publications and publications and talk team attracted new material the number one ranked Criminology School the country the university of Maryland College three cheese here to discuss her new book hidden in plain sight americas slaves of the new millenium with information director narrative accounts of reallife trafficking cases interviewed with Empirical Research in criminal case files and intellectually rigorous account of mock him enslavement. Every sizable city in this country is home to some form of Human Trafficking and every one of those at some point as a product of modern day slavery so we are all affected by it and it behooves us to learn more about the roots of the issue and what we and more importantly our government can do to address it. Please join me in welcoming kimberly mehlmanorozco. [applause] first and foremost i wanted to say thank you to politics and prose for hosting my first book talk and signing event after the publication of my first book. Thank you for the wonderful and forgot chin. Though bit more about me in addition to serving as an Expert Witness being an author and consultant on Human Trafficking issues im also the mother of four children, two girls, two boys so its very busy in my household. But i tell you that because i wanted to tell you how i became interested in looking into Human Trafficking. I first heard about the graduate school i was taking a course by dr. Louise shelly who is one of the foremost experts on the issue and she was telling me about how modern days later he existed which was news to me. Theres something very troubling to me that this was going on. I hadnt heard about it up until that point. I started looking into the issue myself. I started researching articles conducting systematic reviews conducting Empirical Research and publishing an ivory tower in graduate school but nothing could have prepared me for the moment in which bank counter the first person i suspected of being a victim and the reason being is it was on the front doorsteps of my home in montclair virginia. I was cooking dinner and my husband was still at work. We were getting ready to take my oldest daughter to track tractors and i heard a knock on the door. It was a dinnertime interruptions and as you can imagine with four children i was kind perturbed and i didnt really want to answer it. I went down and it was a young lady selling an allpurpose cleaner. She said hello maam im selling this magic in the bottle. A few squirts and it will erase any stain you have. Can i talk to about this . Most people if you are like me dont really like doortodoor salespeople and usually they will shut the door pretty quickly but i have recently learned about Human Trafficking within doortodoor sales groups. I heard her out and started asking her questions three she was up here in virginia from north carolina. She was staying in a motel with 15 other kids. Some were runaways, some were homeless and they were all pooling their money together. Their money was taken every day. They didnt eat if they didnt make money and it was red flagged after red flag situation. Thats when i started to look into it a little bit further and the concept for my book came out of the reality that existed behind the headlines. Im sure a lot of you have heard about Human Trafficking but i guarantee none of you have heard it from the mouth of the human trafficker from inside of the victim and understanding what happens behind those headlines. The objective of the book was really threefold. I wanted to take data behind the headlines of what actually happens. And i wanted to expose the various forms of Human Trafficking that existed in the United States that we consume and interact with on a daytoday basis enzi i wanted to confront sales and understand how we bridge this gap between law and the pokemon action. Objective number one in order to do that i actually did a survey. I started writing interviewing convicted human traffickers but i want to get insight about their crimes through their eyes. One of the things that i found was they are actually quite nice. It didnt happen like ahmad made for hollywood tv movie. Coming in and rescuing his infant daughter from mobsters. These men were very nice. They were very intelligent. They were very charismatic and thats what they used to exploit and use women. I want to read you a few quotes that are in the book because i think it sheds light onto who people are. The first quote i read this from chapter 1, page 11 and this comes from a man who trafficked a 12yearold girl from new york to d. C. He was the first person to spend time in prison for his crime. Sex traffic to a woman across multiple states or this child rather. When asking him why this happened why did he engage in this type of crime this is what he told me. Why does a prostitute need need . To guide her, to love her, to protect her. The is the father that she never had carried he is the big rather or the boyfriend from back in the day. He is the husband that she fantasized about over and over. The popular guy in school that paid attention to her in class. To her it is what christ is to a christian the length of thompson are hard and keeps you moving. Without him there is no hard. You need to understand she was put on this earth to be by her. What we all have in common is a unique way of life and love for women and how they are put to use what they have two get what they need. Notice i said need. We all need money to survive. Chilling. Disturbing. This convicted human trafficker never lets his left hand know what the register and katie was compartmentalizing information in order to exploit and use each of the women and children who are being sex traffic by him and he wasnt alone. Interviewed trafficker after trafficker after trafficker and they all have this Common Thread thread. They were all extremely charismatic and very intelligent intelligent. In chapter 8 of the book i interview a convicted human trafficker from the ukraine. He trafficked adult women from the ukraine to a strip club in detroit. He spoke four languages. He could quote great philosophers from memory. He was very very intelligent. He told me a cunning individual is very capable of making another person believe that he or she is in control concealing their intentions and lead that person to the edge of a cliff. Thats how i trafficker is able to recruit, control and exploit victims, concealing information. Thats one of the reasons why its so very difficult to prove it in a court of law because these men make these women and children believe that they are in love with them and promise them promised them every dream that they could imagine. They will fulfill those dreams. The reality doesnt come out until months, years later and by that time sometimes it can be too late. They are too afraid to. Reporter Law Enforcement. They have done things that they think they would be judged for criminalized for and thats what happens. The same trafficker the one who trafficked girls to exploit this as an early stage of the interview and it shows how he can interact. He knew i was smart and he knew i had a doctor than he wanted to portray himself also as an intellectual person. He wrote at the end of the day the experience makes me a better and stronger person to do things it took i took for granted before will be cherished now. Like a sica rebirth. You get to experience life all over again. How many people can say that put people out there tired of monotony. They go through life like a repetitive exercise always complaining and never content not realizing how fragile life is and how easily it can be turned upside down. We never truly in respect things so you lose them. I lost almost everything but it never lost the will and determination to persevere. I didnt buckle under this but instead forged as a person. In the grand scheme of things you can always obtain material wealth. The question is can you obtain character . Character is forced under pressure. Pressure alone can make or break you. I think that was beautifully put put. It really resonates in me and i said wow this person is really smart. Hes very intelligent. The emotions that he expressed about being in prison was really affected me and i said this is really surprising but thats exactly what they do. They put on this facade, they put on the persona and it isnt until months later that comes out. This was in the early stages of our interviews. Can you imagine what he said to me six months later . Do you think it changed . Well, it did. He wrote if i were a dude and i could get my hands on you i would eat your [bleep] brains and anne grimm member how to [bleep] your words. On the streets you get me or i get you [bleep] you. Now go play in traffic trades sorry for all the bleeps that there might be children. Its not leapt out in the book. Shocking. It was like dr. Koechlin mr. Hyde. Let locale we spoke in a matter of six months. They believed they were engaging in a consensual relationship. They have no idea that they are being used and exploited until its too late. Those are some of the posts from trafficker is but for this book i also interviewed and the pain post for consumers of the commercial sex trade, men who purchased sex for sale. But demand aspect of the commercial sex industry. When i first saw this i thought these are in back alleys. This isnt somebody that i know. The man that i interviewed most of them have masters degrees. I interviewed a journalist, a ph. D. Educated professor who started in the commercial sex services after his wife contracted cancer. I interviewed and antiaids nonprofit j. D. , an attorney. Men who purchased these services are all shapes and sizes from different socioeconomic backgrounds from different educational backgrounds and races and ethnicities, it bridges all demographics. In one of the chapters up, in a later chapter i talk about the mentality of these men. You hear about them in the news as john. They pay for sex. Thats not what they call themselves. They call themselves mongers, monger as in war. This one individual, i followed him over period of time. He was a former member of the military and he engaged in sex tourism across the world procuring services. His wife had divorced him and he thought he was living it up. He claimed to be making 160,000dollar year salary and this is how each of us to spend this money purchasing women. If one tonight one of his requests he would have another within 20 minutes. But it the pool on him as well. These men are not good, they are not bad. They are multidimensional. Later on after he had been purchasing the services for years and years and years he wrote this is bad, very bad. Im presently an eighth downward spiral in my life and may not be able to reverse because my behavior and the women i surround myself with. Im so sick of my lifestyle. The garbage to boast that is a veritable substitute for intimacy. New country new [bleep] more money but the same hollowness inside. God forbid the day i start hitting the minibar that i would give it all up in a heartbeat if i could pick became an addiction addiction, being able to purchase women for as cheaply as possible being able to pay for them to do anything you want and thats what happens. So having this inside a pink provided me with a nuance is of who is fueling this demand, for the people that are committing these crimes and it gave me insight into the survivors and victims as well. One of the women i talk about in the book in one of the later chapters i rescued her in front of the springfield mall in virginia. Per human trafficker was down here on pretrial release for Malicious Wounding charge against another woman and he was selling this woman for sex. This woman have been trafficked on and off for 20 years at one point being shot at point blank range requiring a transfusion. Which he called the police the Police Arrested her for prostitution. They did not arrest her trafficker. The trafficker eventually had this charge is dropped in this woman bounce from facility to facility seeking services that were never provided. The gaps are so stark its not a surprise to me that most of these women find themselves read victimized or criminalized. She told me it took them five days to dig a hole so deep that it would take me five years to get out of it, about her trafficker. And she still working and struggling to try to get out of that trafficking situation. Its one of those things where you are operation Cross Country on the news then you rescue all these women and children but they dont tell you the story after that headline. They dont tell you the story thats in the up that most of the charges are dropped against the traffickers they dont play the story that most of the victims find themselves read victimized, criminalized and denied services with no place to live, no job, nothing to sustain or reestablish their life. Also in the book i wanted to go to the various forms of Human Trafficking so a ill talk about sex trafficking because i got a lot of things from the Different Actors that in but in addition ipath about trafficking up runaway children massage parlors mail order brides, military sex tourism gang trafficking, trafficking of legal nonimmigrants. How many of you enjoyed chipotle every now and then or mcdonalds or taco bell quickset think all of us that one time or another. Do we question how we are able to procure that labor said chief chief cheap . To a question where they get their akel products from quite a lot of it comes from tempore guestworkers that have their documents held in arthel than indentured servitude or slavery type conditions fighting in protesting for a 1 penny increase. Peter care about that. We dont realize that in sometimes we take it for granted. I think they have all enjoyed chocolate at one point or another. Do we question where that chocolate comes from . 75 of our chocolate might be tied to the exploitation and slavery of children in the ivory coast. Its not something wed discuss. Textiles, each of those industries is discussed in this book in depth telling you how you are likely to encounter different forms of modernday slavery. I also talk about sales pollution there a few stark gaps with how we are applying Human Trafficking laws. I brought some items for show and tell for show and tell because its important to understand the history behind antitrafficking laws. The one thing that i notice in how these laws are applied today today, they are very racialized. Incredibly racialized. I talk about in this book during a oneweek time period i was interviewed by a number of Media Outlets for two different stories. One was a white mother who was shopping at ikea and she thought traffickers were targeting her children. Do you remember or have you heard that story of the ikea mom who was targeted . Google it and you will find it. She was heralded as someone who stopped her children from being slaves. At first everyone is saying great job he recognized the red flags that thats not how typically Human Trafficking happens. Human traffickers are going to go to public space and kidnap kids with a bunch of cameras and people around. It would be an anomaly if that were true but another story with viral, the d. C. Missing teens, the girls went missing. The pictures portrayed of them are mugshots or pictures in unfavorable poses are not looking the way the other mother did. People said they are not being victimized. They ran away. They chose to leave. When i was interviewed i sent those kids are the ones that are at highrisk of being trafficked trafficked. It was astonishing to me that they take that potential victimization seriously so i started to look back. One of the earliest and the Human Trafficking acts, if you know the history of how was applied it was applied very mutually. On the far right your far left i have an article from 1913, original. One of the first people that were prosecuted under the man act for sex trafficking was a black oxo by the name of jack johnson. In his prime he was giving material to his white wife to say interracial marriage was okay. Thats why he was arrested. I also have a pair i dont want to go too far with my mic. These are original mugshots of women who were arrested for prostitution. I will pass this around. I want you to look at those. Do they look like sex workers . Texas was in the early 1900s. Or possibly could they have been recently emancipated slaves that were falling under jim crow and being exploited the question, i wont know but i will know. That same period of time when those women were being arrested is when we started to see white women portrayed as the victims of white slavery sex trafficking trafficking. While white women were being portrayed as being white slaves being sex trafficked somewhere being arrested in this carried on for years and years and years years. This is a magazine from the 1940s. I was sold to japanese white. Do you have any guess when this might have come out . One year after pearl harbor. Criminalizing. Who is the criminal it was a the victim in portraying beast people how we have portrayed them racially over time. Racialization h