Thank you senator, and mrs. Mccain for coming to join us to talk about Human Trafficking. Ive worked on Human Trafficking for 20 years now as a lawyer and academic. Ive witnessed tremendous changes in the field where much of early antitrafbing efforts focused entirely on women and girls and to the sex sector, we have finally come to understand traffic as a phenomenon that affects men, women and children in a wide range of sectors that affect our daily lives. We recognize trafficking can take place on farms that produce the food we eat and in the factories, along the supply chains that produce the clothes we wear and it can take place in traffic home, and even in our Public Schools in the deceptive and abuse of teachers abroad. As our understanding of the depth has evolved so has our efforts. In the countries from which trafficked people originate, the lack of economic and Educational Opportunities compelling individuals to accept various conditions in hopes of finding a means for survival. Or the destination of the United States, the lack of retaliato retaliatory or in the case of trafficking within our own borders, the failure to provide adequate care and shelter to our homeless and runaway youth. This confluence of factors among so many others have contributed to our Current Situation where an estimated 20. 9 Million People around the world are trafficked or in forced labor. Thankfully what is undeniably an immense global problem has inspired a deep commitment on the part of government, ngos, corporations and sid like yourself to take parts in efforts to eradicate Human Trafficking. I have the great privilege today of moderating a discussion with two of the leading voices in the movement, senator Heidi Heitkamp and cindy mccain. I will introduce our speakers and then spend about 30 nints discussion prompted by a series of questions theyve ive prepared in advance and then well open up to questions from the audience. So to introduce senator heitkamp. She is the first female senator elected from north dakota. She has quickly become a leader in the fight against Human Trafficking, first sounding the alarm bells as a Law Enforcement issue in 2013 and she serves as Ranking Member on the subcommittee. She helped pass the Human Trafficking act which president obama signed into law, securing trikter punishments for traffickers and included her bill to provide safe harbor laws nationwide. After working to hold the ceo of back page. Com, a site notoriously used by traffickers to buy and sell victims accountable for refusing to testify on his companys failure to disclose safe guards against trafficking, she voted to hold him in civil contempt of congress, the first time the senate has done so in 20 years. [ applause ] earlier this year senator heitkamp challenged leadership of back page for its role of Human Trafficking on its site. When the u. S. Senate committee on momentland secured and Governmental Affairs and permanent subcommittee on investigations on which she serves released a report finding the company knowingly facilitated online sex trafficking. She recently reintroduced her bipartisan soar act to make sure heath workers have the training they need to identify and help protect victims they frequently see and will keep fighting to make sure our most vulnerable, our runaway and Homeless Youth, dont fall prey too these crimes. Senator heitkamp continues to work to build a Strong Global Network to work against these courtrooms, traveling across the country and with department of Homeland Security trainings. Im also pleased to mrs. Mrs. Cindy mccain. Mrs. Cindy Hensley Mccain has spent her life fighting on behalf of women and children and has been a strong leader in the fight against Human Trafficking. She works seamlessly across political, public and private lines and has engaged with the National Football league, the International Center for sports security, both the democratic and Republican National committees, polaris, National Center for missioning and exploited children, google and Many Organizations to work to eradicate human tracking and has advised in london, kenya, congo, cambodia and the ivory coast. S she is dedicated to efforts to reduce Human Trafficking in arizona, throughout the United States and around the world, as well as working to improve the lives of victims of Human Trafficking. Through her work with the Mccain Institute, several partnerships have been formed with antitrafficking organizations working on solving various aspects of the problem. Mrs. Mccain has worked to shed a light on the different facets of every day life affected by Human Trafficking such as Law Enforcement, health care, the internet and Child Welfare systems. She addresses Human Trafficking at the International Level by heading directly to the front lines of the world with the most vulnerable populations subject to Human Trafficking. On the shorelines of greece and turkey, mrs. Mccain worked with organizations to educate refugeeson the signs of human tracking and to avoid falling prey to traffickers. Shes traveled, tense i around the World Learning more about the issues and the multitude of ways to fight this heinous crime. She sits on the Advisory Boards of too small to fail and warriors and quiet waters. She holds an undergraduate degree in education and masters in special education from usc and is a member of usc Rossier School of j kaegs board of counselors. Mrs. Cindy Hensley Mccain passionly fights by convenes ak dem ings, politicians, Corporation Officials and Technology Officials to Work Together to stop this crime against humanity. Im going to lead off the discussion with a question to both of you. So how did you first get involved in the trafficking field . You can start because you tell such a fantastic story and ill look really bad if you tell that story after me. First of all, im so glad to be here. And i hope that we together can have a good discussion tonight. The first time i ever saw Human Trafficking, i did not know what it was. I was traveling in india, i had just finished some work that we were doing in calcutta and we have a daughter from bangladesh so i was out trying to buy some sari feerl for her, finished what i was doing in the kiosk and was busy with that. Calcutta is a very vibrant, sighting and a exciting and ae noise going on inside and outside. As i went to pay at the kiosk, i can hear this fluttering of noise and i asked him what it was and he said it just my family, they live below the floor boards. Very possible in a place like this. When i went to lay the money down, i looked down and you could see between the floor board, i know i looked at at least 50 sets of limb eyes and they were all little girls and they were all, you know, they werent all his, thats for sure. But what i did was is i didnt do anything. I didnt know what i was looking at, i didnt know what i just couldnt fathom what was going on. So i walked out of that kiosk, got on my nice airplane home, went back to my lovely home with my lovely family and didnt do anything. But what it did do was spur me on to find me out just what it was. So this has been a long quest for me to not only understand the issue completely but also figure out a way that we can stop this stuff. Its horrible. So for me it was like you know, you can turn something bad in something good and im just grateful that i had the experience and can actually be in a position of being able to do something now. Well, for me, im the former attorney general from north dakota. One of the reasons why i ran in 92 is at the time the Domestic Violence programs in my state and across the country were in the Public Health arena. This was not considered a criminal justice issue. If you think about it, in 1992, we were attacking this as if it was a family problem. And there was ongoing and consistent tension between Law Enforcement and the voadvocatest that time. If you ever want to see when people say youll never get people to get along who had that much animosity towards each other, you should look at the seamless work that Law Enforcement in many, many states and Domestic Violence advocates are doing today to combat Domestic Violence. And so that was kind of my frame of reference. And when i ran for the United States senate in 2012, i went and visited all my Law Enforcement friends, who started talking to me about because it was a time of tremendous growth in north dakota, they said, heidi, weve never seen this level of prostitution before and we just dont have time to investigate it. Were investigating assaults in bars, murders, were investigating thefts, we just havent had time to investigate this prostitution but we see it everywhere. And i got to thinking about this prostitution in north dakota, what that actually meant and just look cindy, started kind of rethinking what that meant in my state and why that was and started really learning about what goes on when people buy other human beings so that they can resell them to other human beings. And when they capture and imprison other human beings so that they can resell other human beings. Now, the easiest place here in terms of Public Policy is obviously minors, is getting the word prostitution out of the language as we arrest minors, beginning to address what we do with people who purchase children, whether we treat them as typical people engaged in the sex trade and as johns as opposed to child predators and pedophiles. So we have a whole language around prostitution that doesnt really fit with whats going on and the heinous nature of this crime. Now, to give you an idea of how difficult it is to begin to have that discussion, not only in Law Enforcement circles, but a discussion about how we as a society ought to look at commercial sex, we began this discussion about what do the laws say and how should we ch g change these laws. Mileperho my first interest came as a result of indigenous native american women and the stories they would tell of being sold by their cousins, or sold by their families for a fix or just money and just literally thrown away. And when you look at the dynamics of Domestic Violence and you look at the dynamics of trafficking, the one thing that is a constant is the devaluing of that person. You know, if you want to get someone in a position where you can in fact abuse them in a family relationship, you devalue them first. And when you want to take a child, who already probably is susceptible, you devalue that child. And thats why a lot of what we really need to talk about in this lane really goes to the runaway and Homeless Youth program. Like saying this this wait thisk there are a lot of people think there is Laura Ingalls wilder running through the fields and some dark monster swoops her up and carries her away to this evil place. Im not saying that doesnt happen and doesnt fit the profile but fundamentally theyre kids who have been thrown away, kid on the street, probably engaging in survival sex at some point and it just takes the next step. So we have to start looking at this issue differently. And the same way we morphed from thinking that this was a family problem and that this was a problem of Public Health in Domestic Violence, we have to start being very, very serious as a society in addressing the victimization that happens in commercial sex. And where we talk about minors, because that seems to be kind of that entry point, almost all of women that ive met who are in the life or who began in this life began as minors. And so to simply draw that harsh line and say, well, because youre 18, you know longer have the protections that we want to see for other women, for girls seems really harsh. And so weve got a lot of work to do in terms of our cultural chang b change but it has to begin with change of the dynamic like we did in Domestic Violence and really begin to be very honest about how complacent we are as a society and how willing we are to turn away from this whole problem of human slavery, particularly human sex slavery. Thank you. So one of the and picking up on this point about child victims of sex trafficking, one of the most troubling statistics that ive come across in recent years concerns restitution to victims. The Human TraffickingPro Bono Legal center, a fabulous ngo, did put out a report a couple of years ago that found through enormous research of prosecution dockets across the country found in only 36 of trafficking prosecutions this prosecutors actually ask for restitution for victims. Now, that is a mandatory requirement, right. Prosecutors are supposed to ask for restitution and restitution is very important in order to fund after care, continuing care to deal with the trauma and the other needs of the victims of trafficking. And im wondering yet on 36 of trafficking prosecutions did we find that the request was even made. So im wondering if you might speak to why that is and what do you think we could do about that problem. And ill also add the least likely to receive restitution was found to be child victims of sex trafficking. Theres a number of issues and i know heidi can speak to this as well. But number one, first of all, getting a child into court to testify against a trafficker is a monumental feat. Most of the time they run. Once they get them in, do they have to face them to testify against them or are they allowed to video testify . Thats an issue right now in arizona. Theres a number of factors, so getting to the point of, quote, restitution, is a long, long road. Now, with that said, we completely i mean, its the law. I completely agree with you, but until we can actually educate our prosecutors on the difficulty that it is to get a child into court, were not going to get anywhere on this and were going to continue to see low numbers, less prosecutions and really more just disappear kids that disappear as a result of it. You know, when i was attorney general, i started a special unit in my office. You can imagine north dakotas theres only 1,400 swore peace officers in all of north dakota to give you a sense of kind of the population base and there are prosecutors in fargo, theres prosecutors in grand forks, our major cities who are well equipped to handle that kind of prosecution, but if it happens in slope county or, you know, these counties that are very sparsely populated where theres a very parttime prosecutor or states attorney, its really difficult to develop the experti expertise to do the. On child Sexual Assault, cases you say thats not trafficking, absolutely its trafficking. Its the same trauma worse trauma than Sexual Assault that doesnt involve, you know, repeated behaviors. But if you look at it, we need to have a whole different look on how we address prosecutions and how we address victimization in the courtroom. Its going to require continued and ongoing training for prosecutors, for judges. Because frequently judges will not grant leniency in terms of videotaped, theyll save you have a right to confront your accuser. These are all challenges in any kind of child Sexual Assault prosecution. Theyre also challenges as an adult Sexual Assault where people just dont want to live through this experience again and thats what it requires. So we need highly trained prosecutors, we need specialized units in states like mine that actually are equipped and trained to handle these kind of investigations and these kind of prosecutions because you can have the best prosecutor in the world but if the investigation is botched, its going to be awfully hard to prove up this assault. This is where our bill on soar, which requires training in hospitals comes into focus. And so what we recently on the back page hearing, we heard from a number of mothers whose children had been trafficked and the tchallenges they had. I asked a simple question, what would you like to have seen done to have changed outcomes for your child and both of them said better training in emergency rooms. Both of them felt that was a point of intervention and then when they actually showed up for the investigative, forensic exam, no one knew how to do a forensic exam that involved a traff