Already exposed to some kind of instability in their lives, and there was a time when Law Enforcement across the country would say that cant be a Trafficking Victim because she was pretty prosecuted. They are now saying let me look at the trafficker exploited the vulnerability. There were times when Law Enforcement across the country would say a jury in my district will not believe an undocumented woman who knowingly came to this country illegally and did some knowing she would prostitute because thats just an illegal prostitute thats not going to be a sympathetic jury. Now we are seeing people say wait a minute, there is somebody behind this who facilitate that whole smuggling and prostitution scheme by manipulating this victim and knowing that she was not inclined to speak out and would not turn to authorities for help precisely because of those attitudes. Thats what we are transferring when data time one case at a time when survivor anytime and i look for to continuing to do that. Thank you to all our panelists. [applause] now back to live coverage of the Justice Department conference on Human Trafficking. I will each of the panels take a few minutes to introduce themselves, talk about what works and specific what kind of work they are doing. Id like to start with you. In addition so you talk to us about what brought into this field and what you do day in and day out. Thank you. Thank you so much for having here today. Its truly an honor to be here with you guys. Thank you for understanding how important it is to have survivor speak on this issue. It is different than a few years ago and so this is just an exciting day for me to be here and just to share with you guys what were doing and atlanta. I am a survivor as you guys well now. I entered the life 20 years ago and had been out 14. I am a graduate of the wellspring Living Program and now and the Program Coordinator of the same program. We changed a little bit over the years. Currently we serve women ages 1832. 1832. We have a 16 bit facility. Our program is 1218 months long. We really do go from the initial stability, safety, sobriety, all the way through hopefully living wage employment, and independent is our ultimate goal so the women dont have to go back to the life that they came from. We do have a licensed professional therapists that works on our staff that as one individual specialist with the one in each they do three groups a week with the therapist. We also work on skills so things like dialect behavioral therapy teaches that women they dont have to run away from things when they feel uncomfortable. We hope to empower them to really ask question and use their voice and stand up and be something different. We have comprehensive care as i mentioned. I think one of the most important things for our organization is survivor leadership. Constantly asking what do you think about this . What doesnt the survivor said . We have a few survivors who work in organization and is is rather impresses i think we been around for a long time so we made a lot of mistakes. When i was in the program we did not have any resources for employment after the program. Nobody would hire me. I didnt have any kind of Work Experience apart from waitressing working in a restaurant, and wellspring decide theyre going to give me the opportunity to prove myself for lack of a better word and starting out as a cashier at a retail store. Thankfully the women currently go to a program dont have to go through that anymore. We have built a partnership with higher hope and they get living wage jobs and a corporate setting. Offer paid apprenticeships for the ladies did it really does build their confidence and prove to them that are worth it. People give them a chance no matter what the background looks like i what their work history might look like. And some going to pass it off to mary frances so she can speak more about the academy if thats okay. Mary frances, and i got into this book almost by accident. We were working on some issues that were going on in atlanta and in connecting with a nonprofit, there was a need for residential facility. We thought we were just going to help that Organization Get it started but about 30 days into it he became ours. The very first young woman over 16 16 years ago who walk through our doors was a survivor of trafficking. Really we didnt know what we are doing anyway and we really didnt know what to do with her. And so she taught us everything we need to know. One of the things thats most important i think for someone thats going to be involved with survivors into understand there are a lot of complex needs. As you heard in the panels earlier. And so we look at how we can look at the person. How can you take care of their mind, body and spiritual needs . How can we comprehensively provide the things that are most needed by them . And so as andrea said we had a situation where he didnt have an opportunity to get them into really good Employment Opportunities because it was hit or miss. Because of an executive called me one day and said we want help your women get jobs and they were willing to just do the hard work figuring out okay, what is this going to look like and what do we already have and what can we give you and how can we Work Together . Was pretty unprecedented and we of course learned a lot from each other what is happening now almost four years later is that we are seeing young women come in, over a ten week time frame theyre professional development, therapeutic counseling sessions. Theyre having life skills. Theyre working alongside caseworkers. Theyre doing intense Case Management make you should have everything ready to walk in the door for their professional development. And as we had done that, right in the middle of our very first session i reached out to the same person again and i said we really need internships. She went to h. R. And a tricky back and said we cant do that but we can do paid apprenticeships. That was music to my ears, and so we said yes, and so they go through ten weeks of really the training and they have 12 weeks of unpaid apprenticeship and because they are connected with other corporations, they will be other opportunities besides just inside to get jobs. Also their employees are amazing. They have voluntarily committed to being like a mentor. Its called an advocate and there with the young women when theyre going through training, going to the petition with the get the first job. Thats also great because thats the job is to get people jobs. That helps our young women getting to implement. We are seeing an 80 employment as a result of that. Andrea gets to see so many of our young women go through this and what that means to didnt get i think you can speak to the medicine i can. Absolutely. Just to see the light come back. They go for the first we can become a like let me tell you what i did today. They are just so excited and have confidence back again. They believe in themselves because somebody else is believing in them. Somebody else is saying you can do it. I know this is hard, keep pushing, dont give up. Its almost like an extension or a different arm of what were doing the home. The academy is well aware of the issues, some of our women face. Special in a corporate setting. They are willing to do like mary frances said the hard work and get in and its not always pretty and it doesnt always look super perfect. On the end the women who go through a program, they go through the program are better off and thats our goal. Its not about how pretty it looks or putting in a box or making it super cookiecutter. [inaudible] you can hear me, good. Im jordan, a physician at the childrens healthcare of atlanta and the medical director of the institute on health care and Human Trafficking there. I also work with the National Center for missing and exploited children as their medical consultant. My interest is mostly with children and child trafficking and exploitation. Most of what i know involves children under 18 but i think a lot of what they see in our practice is mirrored in the Adult Population as well. We see an extraordinary amount of physical and Mental Health effects from child and adult trafficking. Just to name a few from her own research on our own children in atlanta, about onethird of the girls that we identify the history of pregnancy. These are kids who are less than 18. Almost 50 of them have an active sexually transmitted infection when we see them. That is they have gonorrhea what have chlamydia. A third of them have had a prior history of infection. Drug use is very, very common, almost 90 use drugs. In another study of child survivors almost 50 had a drug abuse problem and 75 had postherpetic stress disorder. So when you think a poster manic stress disorder think of vietnam vets of people have been through horrendous things. These kids have poster medic stress disorder as well because they had been through horrendous things themselves. Almost 50 reported a prior prior history of a Suicide Attempt within the last year. These are adolescents. 50 trying to take their own lives. So we know theres tremendous Health Effects associated with trafficking and exportation. Again this is met with the Adult Population as well. Its incredibly important for Healthcare Providers to be aware of the possible indicators of trafficking. Theres very good resource to suggest that many victims of sex trafficking in the United States have contact with Healthcare Providers. In one study of adults and adolescent girls for sex trafficking survivors, 88 said the scene a Healthcare Provider while there are being exploited. None of them had been identified in the healthcare setting. What does that say to us . It says victims are coming to get healthcare but we are not recognizing them. We have yet to see a victim come in and say my chief complaint, my concern is Human Trafficking. They dont self disclose spontaneously. Its up to physicians and nurses to be aware of possible indicators and yet we have no training on that. Most providers and the United States have never been trained on Human Trafficking so they have no idea what to look for, what you say, how to act if they have a concern. We are very concerned about providing a culturally appropriate trauma informed responses to possible trafficking and its extremely important that the Healthcare Provider doesnt further traumatize the victim when they come and seek medical care. At the same time we have to be able as questions we can identify victims. Its something that has to be trained. We need to get information to Healthcare Providers. One of the things i think is extremely important is to not only train Healthcare Providers about what to look for, what to say but also put into place specific guidelines. Think about the clinic you go to when you seek your annual checkup care with Emergency Department to use the hospital you go to. Every one of those places should have a protocol saying this is what you look for. If you see these five things, think about Human Trafficking. Once you think about ask these questions. What you get positive answers make these referrals. Do this kind of an exam. Think about how good that would be. Thank you. Well, thank you for having. My name is jeff rogers with the u. S. Institute against Human Trafficking first of all i will just say what i said backstage is that its an honor as would honor to on a panel with you. Every survivor i meet truly changes my life and i can tell you the reason i do what i do is a cousin beating survivors you, andrea. Thats why do what it do suck him out of corporate world. I was at ibm for 15 years as long story short my life got rocked with the truth of whats happening in our country around this topic of sex trafficking. Ended up founding the u. S. Institute against Human Trafficking with kevin malone who was with us today for kevin is a former general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers so it comes out of an incredible professional career in baseball and one to two of us got together we started talking about this topic at Human Trafficking. Kevin has now dedicated to it for about eight years. I been dedicated five to six years and when we met and started talk about the problem one thing we found in common between us is that we truly believe that we can in this problem. So thats the foundation of the organization that we run is that our mission is to intimate trafficking in america. And so its a bold statement but we do believe we can and we believe as an organization and as a society we must. Because of all of the social issues that our society faces, ive got to believe and thats why you today ive got to believe that we collectively can and Mass Organization rate of our nations children for profit. Of all of the social problems we face we should be able to stop that one. Thats where we are at as an organization committed to ending this. As an organization one of the first things we did is we started a safe home for young boys. Long story but how to get into that, but we truly couldnt find very Many Services around the country have dedicated to services for young boys victims of sex trafficking. And so about two years ago we started the program and we think the open the home, a small residential facility with five beds, for young boys victims of sex trafficking in central florida. These are boys age ten to 17 and the Program Actually is designed for biologically born males, no matter where they identify on the gender spectrum. Thats very important because as we begin to work towards understanding the male population of Trafficking Victim, boys, what we begin to understand as well is a significant proportion of them that are transgender. Its very important we designed this program to be able to address and take care of any child biologically born male the matter whether at on that gender spectrum. So thankfully we have this thats been running about eight months and the boys are just doing incredibly well. So that is what i like to say on the back end of the problem. So its the rescue rehabilitation of the survivors that are trapped up in this and thats extraordinary important. We had to do that. Like i sit as an organization our mission is to end this. What we recognize is we will not in Human Trafficking by opening safe home. Spirit we must have services in place for the rescue and rehabilitation of the survivors absolutely but if we as a society are going to end this with you to change the approach and we have to add to that approach in the form of to what i consider to be the beginning of the problem. And the focus therefore on demand. In my secure the focus on this problem ive come to an understanding that sex trafficking is a supply answer to demand problem. So the problem lies in the demand. Where is the demand coming from . Is it something you . The demand for sex isnt something new. Thats obvious but the increasing insatiable desire for sexting children emphasize something new and its running rampant in our society and so where is that coming from . As we focus on demand we are trying to get to the absolute core of what is this coming from. Our friends at the nexus of Sexual Exploitation are truly leading the charge across the world proving the effects of pornography and are hyper sexualized culture that is driving this insatiable desire for sex and the purchase of sex including that with the children. So they are very strong part of ours, working together, and National Jump with many other organizations around the country to begin to identify pornography is a Public Health crisis. This is something were also read with the Florida Legislature on and they think its going to pass this year in identifying pornography as a Public Health crisis in the state of florida. Weve got to begin to understand the demand and we have to begin to chop off the demint at its feet. So absolutely we need to focus on restoration of survivors absolutely we need to focus on capturing the bad guys, capturing the traffickers. But i will also contend potentially the greatest amount of focus that our country needs to place right now is on the demand, on the buyers for sex. If we had a scenario where we could rescue every single victim of sex trafficking in the country today, i would contend that tomorrow all we have is an incredible vacuum of supply at the traffickers would absolutely fill within a matter of time. Its a business equation unfortunately for them. Weve got to begin to address the demand. How do we do that . We have developed we call a trafficking freezone program. This is an identification of some promising practices around the country. When we look and so im looking at this from a business perspective, like a senna came out of ibm. Im not looking at this as as a social service, from a social Services Perspective and neither is my cofounder kevin malone look at this. Really kevin has been his path was building championship teams who is we get this thing okay can we build and World Championship team across this country to end Human Trafficking. We are looking a