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00:08 Jackie Strohm: Welcome to PA Centered, a podcast designed to help listeners be a part of the solution to end sexual harassment, abuse and assault. Each episode, we will take on a topic or current event to help spark conversation and break down barriers to building communities free from sexual violence.

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00:33 JS: Hi everyone, I'm Jackie Strohm, the Prevention and Resource Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. I'll be your host today as we're joined by Heather Shnyder, Education Specialist at Transitions of PA to talk about human trafficking. Heather has been involved in the prevention of sexual and domestic violence for nearly 20 years now, and is one of the top human trafficking experts in Pennsylvania. Welcome, Heather.

00:57 Heather Shnyder: Hello.

01:00 JS: There's been a lot of attention on human trafficking in the news lately, and it's important that we all understand the basics, what it looks like and how we can help. And we know a lot of people really care about this issue, and so we hope today we can talk about ways that people can be part of the solution. So first off, what is human trafficking and what does it look like in rural Pennsylvania? 

01:23 HS: Well, and there is a lot going on right now, and people are hearing rumors and they're hearing things that are not exactly true as how it's defined by what we're seeing in our communities. By definition, it is the exchange of any sex act for an item of value. So those items of value can be anything from money, drugs, transportation, food, shelter. We've had instances where we've been informed that a victim has provided a sexual act even in exchange for something as simple as a Happy Meal from McDonald's. But what we're seeing here in rural Pennsylvania and our communities and our backyards are generally family members who traffic another family member or we're hearing about young girls especially talking about having older boyfriends and how these older boyfriends are taking them places and treating them to different things, and then it turns into where this is an actual trafficker that is getting the young girl into this life.

02:39 JS: Right. And so it's not really like what people have seen on TV and in movies, right? 

02:45 HS: No, it's generally not the movies and TVs. That's not to discount that. There are some situations that might present themselves as that. To really get informed about what trafficking is and how it does affect families and communities, one of the documentaries that we always recommend is I am Jane Doe, and it shows an account of three young women and what their experiences are throughout being trafficked. And so if you really wanna get a good, clear view of that. It's very hard to watch in some cases. One thing we always do tell people that, "If you're gonna educate yourself about this, you have to also prepare yourself and make sure that you're following up on self-care."

03:36 JS: That makes sense. Who is most likely to be involved in a human trafficking situation? And let's start with who might be most likely to be a trafficker? 

03:50 HS: Well, in that particular situation, what we have encountered, and according to the Department of Health and the Department of Justice, the first category is parents or guardians. Now, that doesn't necessarily always mean that right away you look at the biological parent, but there's foster parents, there's step-parents, anybody acting in a role of a guardian, whether it's legal guardianship or not. Those are individuals that are putting themselves in that role. A lot of times in the conversation with a victim, you'll hear the young, especially a young female, which is the majority of the victims that are trafficked, you'll hear her refer to her trafficker as 'Daddy'. And so that's even putting that into that category.

04:42 HS: But then we have other family members, we have those individuals acting as boyfriends, husbands, pimps, other acquaintances, drug dealers, gang members. You start going down the list of the ones you typically expect to be associated with that, but then you have those fake employment agencies which pop up all over the place. You have fake modeling agencies, job placement agencies, adoption agencies even that are not true to what they say. Anywhere there is a situation where... It's just like any other relationship where violence and abuse is present. It's all about power and control. This trafficker is all about having power and control over this individual, and they'll do whatever it takes through force, fraud and coercion to entice that victim into this situation. And many of the victims hold themselves responsible and say it's their fault that they're in this situation, but it is not. The trafficker is the one that has totally manipulated. And especially when a minor is involved, these individuals are professionals at what they do, so they're able to really manipulate the mind of a child to entice them, thinking that they're coming into a better situation when they are not.

06:13 JS: You just spoke a little bit about who some of these victims might be, but could you tell us a little bit more about who's most likely to be victimized by human trafficking? 

06:24 HS: Well, as I mentioned, it's mostly minor girls. You have at-risk youth, especially runaways. We've experienced where kids will run away several times in a 12-month period, and even the Department of Justice indicates that a minor has... There's a high percentage that they will come in contact with a trafficker or be trafficked if they run away three or more times in a 12-month period. Right now, especially with the way our world is turning, we have individuals that are struggling with their own sexual identity. We have LGBTQ and homeless youth, and sometimes homeless not by choice, but look at the fires that are ravaging our West Coast. And we have families that are being displaced, we've had natural disasters like floods even in our own area that have displaced families. And so these kids are finding themselves living with people that they really don't know that well. They may be family members, they may not be family members. They're in situations where they're around other people and exposed to situations that they may not normally be exposed to. And so when you have children that are really struggling in their own situations, it's very easy for someone who knows what they're doing to target that youth and be able to manipulate them. So there's a lot of outside factors that are going on with that as well.

08:16 JS: Absolutely. And then, the last category of folks I wanted to touch base about is who are the sex buyers? Who is making human trafficking continue to exist? 

08:28 HS: Well, and that's just it. There's a lot of studies that have dated back even as early as back in the 1940s with things. There is the National Johns Suppression Initiative that was started by a sheriff in Cook County in Illinois to really draw attention to the role of sex buyers and how they fuel the sex trafficking business. It's like supply and demand. Without a demand, there wouldn't have to be a supply. And so what we're seeing here is, according to arrest records and other data that's been collected, through these studies it's indicated that the majority of sex buyers are white males who work full-time jobs, mostly educated, married, making between 30,000 and maybe close to 45,000 a year. The first breakdown category was an age bracket of 30 to 39, and the second age bracket was 40 to 49 for the same profiling.

09:39 HS: So here we have this situation where we're really getting a good view as to who these buyers are. And they can be the guy next door, it can be someone that you're around that you see all the time that you don't know has this other side to them. But when I first started to really approach, my passion for trafficking was to get to the victims and share with the victims that there's help, there's assistance, we can do whatever. And victims are very reluctant to come forward, they don't wanna point the finger at their trafficker because they're threatened beyond belief with horrific acts, they're scared to death, terrified, they feel that they've been abandoned. And that's why I say this isn't like the movies. Nobody's gonna have a father that's going to jump continents to come rescue them, to bring them back home.

10:36 HS: These kids are often the forgotten kids, they're the throw-away kids, they're the ones that nobody's going to come looking for, so they're struggling. But in the same token, they have this bond with the trafficker, that they feel some sort of responsibility to continue to do what they're doing to provide for the trafficker. And in some cases, when it's a young girl thinking that this is her boyfriend, she feels this is love because this is what the trafficker tells her. When we really didn't get a clear direct line to helping victims because they were reluctant, not because they wanna be where they're at, but they're scared to leave that life, so then I thought, "Okay, well, let's go after the traffickers because we can get law enforcement and we can bust down doors and we can do whatever we have to do to make sure that we get these people off the streets and that they're not selling these kids anymore."

11:32 HS: Traffickers are always one step ahead of everybody else. They can do things that are against the law. Where law enforcement, trying to arrest these traffickers, they have to go by the book and they can't break laws to arrest people. So traffickers were always in the background, they were always very distant, they were always in positions where they weren't easily gotten to. So then I thought, "Okay, now, first, victims, I'm not gonna get anywhere with them. Traffickers, they're gonna always be way out there. So without the sex buyers, there would be nothing, so let's go after the sex buyers and let's start having conversations that we need to have that will share with these individuals that this isn't right, this isn't appropriate, you're taking a child's life away from them, you're taking a victim away from their future. This isn't what we need to do." We need to end this and we need to bring more people on board in this conversation and make this a commonplace conversation that this behavior is unacceptable and it needs to end and it needs to end now.

12:46 JS: Yes, I agree with all of that. I know in a bit we'll talk about how folks can get involved and prevent things like this from happening, but just to get a little more background information, can you talk about where human trafficking happens? 

13:03 HS: It can happen anywhere, anywhere, any time, in some of the places where you least expect it, in your own backyards, in your communities. Things are happening with victims that sometimes are right under our noses. Sometimes when you find out that there's been an arrest or there's been suspected trafficking just down the street from you, or around the corner, or at the local truck stop nearby. We really have come to learn that nowhere is off limits if there's a trafficker who wants to perpetuate this crime. Trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, and the profit from it is over $150 billion. So it's motivated by money. You have individuals that are living in poverty that feel that this is the best way to get out of that situation. They're looking at whatever it takes to benefit them at all costs of anybody else involved.

14:14 HS: We do a lot of trainings with truck drivers at the local driver's academy here in our area, and there's a national organization, Truckers Against Trafficking, because they're the eyes and the ears on the road and they see things, they hear things, they know things, and they're really one of our strongest allies now with reporting. We've had victims tell us that they've been trafficked right out of their own homes, and they live in rural communities, they live in suburbs, they live in big cities. It doesn't matter. Wherever there's somebody that feels that this is a crime that they want to be involved in, they're going to try to push the issue. So we just have to learn to recognize some of the signs when... Especially like I said, when you have a younger girl talking about an older boyfriend, you see behavioral changes, you see signs of abuse or torture. A lot of these victims are tattooed or branded with the markings that identify them as property of the trafficker.

15:26 HS: Most times I tell people, if you notice a new tattoo or something, usually people that get those types of things really want to share the story and the history because it's meaningful to them. But if you get an individual who doesn't wanna talk about that tattoo, can't give you some information about that, has a very rehearsed response to questions that you ask, if you ask them if they can come and go as they please, and they can't, if they're living in a home where there's multiple children living in that home, and you see a large amount of activity of adults coming in and out of the house. There's a lot of things where kids will have serious mental issues and health issues and you rely on your gut instinct. As adults, we get to a certain position in our life where if something's not right, don't just discard that feeling. Err on the side of caution and make a report.

16:36 JS: And I think you bring up a really interesting point about going with your gut and if something is not right to report it or to ask for help. And I think, as we alluded to earlier, there's a lot of things circulating in the news and the media about human trafficking and about people potentially being abducted for human trafficking, but I know that that's not always the case or oftentimes not usually what's happening. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about how most victims... I know you talked about it a little bit already, but what it looks like most common for a victim of human trafficking to initially get involved in this.

17:20 HS: In most cases, it's not a blind side abduction. Not to say that that doesn't happen, but yeah, there are a lot of things, especially on social media right now with, "Be cautious of this, be cautious of that." We should always be cautious of our surroundings. We should always be in a situation where we're watching out for ourselves and for others. The situation where we're seeing and the victims that we're working with have usually been trafficked by a family member, and we're seeing a lot of situations where the family member traffics, and like I said, mostly the young girls in the family. Because you can sell a gun once, you can sell a drug once, but you can sell a victim for trafficking for sex acts over and over and over and over and over again. And because of whatever the dollar amount is that you're getting for that individual, when that individual is no longer able to be put out there for sale for whatever reason, there's always another one in the family, there's always another one that you know.

18:37 HS: And victims are more likely to trust older people in the family that they know, and some victims have even told us that they've been born into this life, that they were born to be trafficked and to be sold. There are some pretty horrific stories that victims have shared. There have been stories that victims have shared that they feel that this was their responsibility and their duty to provide for their family in this way, even though the victim almost never gets any financial payment for this. The trafficker gets all the money, not the victim, but the victim is being told that this is their responsibility and their role in this life. And you get individuals that have been in this life for so long that they feel crushed, they feel defeated, they feel this is all they're going to ever be, this is all their worth is. And so they feel they have no choice, and they feel that there's no one out there for them to trust. Trafficked victims have serious, and justifiably so, have serious trust issues. And so trying to get a victim to look at anybody with trust and hope is very difficult. Not that it cannot be done, but it takes some time.

20:10 JS: And I think with all victims of sexual abuse and sexual violence, like you said, there's some element of trust there, there's some element of grooming, trying to convince them to stay or not tell or that this isn't a big deal, and it sounds like that's absolutely one of the tactics that abusers and traffickers continue to use to keep victims a part of the cycle.

20:38 HS: Fear is the biggest thing, fear is the biggest thing. And then there's drugs that are involved as well, because what will happen is when the victim complains or says they no longer want to do this, they're either told, "Okay, you can leave," but we had one victim that was told, "You can leave, but your 10-year-old sister will take your place." With the number of sex acts that these victims are required and it's demanded of them to perform almost daily, drugs come into place because the victim is now saying, "Well... " Or the trafficker is giving the victim of drug saying, "This will help with all that, this will help you deal with what's going on." And they use it in two ways. One, "This is what you need to be able to do what you need to do for me. Or if you don't do, I'm gonna withhold this drug." So now you're taking a victim and turning them into an addict and holding that drug over their heads in front of them so that they continue to do what you want them to do because now you have that power and control over them. So we're seeing a lot of victims in the sex trafficking business also have serious substance addictions.

22:02 JS: We know that people want to get involved and prevent things like this from happening, and so what are some of the things that people can do to help? I know you talked a little bit about how to identify some of the warning signs. Are there any other warning signs that folks should be paying attention to? 

22:20 HS: Well, sometimes if you work... Especially if you work around children, sometimes these kids are even allowed to go to school, so that there's no red flags. Now, that we're in a pandemic, it's a little bit difficult because some of these kids can be pulled out and homeschooled and then they kind of just drop off of everybody's radar. But these kids, they're gonna act fearful. They usually won't ever talk for themselves. We've talked to nurses and doctors and ERs where a patient has come in who has been seriously abused and sexually assaulted, and there's an adult or another person with them that speaks for them, answers all the questions. The victim generally doesn't say a word. So when you see that someone is stepping in that role of taking over the conversation, you'll have someone... If they do answer your questions, it's very rehearsed. You can ask the same question 20 different ways and you're almost gonna get the same exact response each time.

23:23 HS: Someone might mention that they're traveling a lot here, there and everywhere, there's really not a specific address that they can give you because they're really not living anywhere long enough to have an address. Live with several people, mostly other young kids, talk about the older boyfriend buying them things, taking them places. That's incurring a debt to that trafficker, it's debt bondage. And the trafficker always holds that over their heads too of, "Well, I bought you this, I took you here, I'm giving you room and board. You think that's free? Well, these things don't come cheap and you have to work this debt off." So there's a lot of things. And like I said, mostly the tattoos, the signs of bruising. We don't always see the signs of mental and emotional abuse, but definitely someone that's acting very timid. If someone's just starting to be tricked and lured into this life, you might take somebody who a year ago was very vivacious and happy and outgoing and excited about life, and now they're very low-key and calm, most time won't even make eye contact with you, let alone carry on a conversation with you.

24:43 HS: So you can definitely start to see a change in that individual's behavior or their mannerisms, and pick up on that there's something going on. And usually, like I said, if something's going on and you can't quite put your finger on it, there might be something there more to it. Now, one of these things here and there does not necessarily mean that a victim is being trafficked, but you got a variety of these warning signs and these red flags and there might be something more going on, then let's make a report so that you can let the actual investigators figure things out and help with the situation.

25:27 JS: So talking about reporting, what would that look like? If somebody had a suspicion of trafficking, what would they do? 

25:34 HS: Well, first and foremost, if you suspect a child or an adult is being trafficked, 911. That's the call that needs to be made, 911. If you're not sure that it's a 911 call, there's something going on but it doesn't appear that anybody is in immediate danger but you want it checked out, you can call the National Hotline, which is a 888-3737-888. And that's run by PolarisProject.org, and that's the National Human Trafficking Hotline. You can follow up after you've called 911, especially if it's a child and you're thinking that that child is in immediate danger, you can always follow up and should follow up with a child line report after the 911 call. And that can be done through an online portal or by calling 800-932-0313. Or you can call us at Transitions, and we can make the proper referrals at 1-800-850-7948. There's PCAR, Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, that you can make the referral to. We work with a lot of agencies through a collaboration, it's called PAATH 15, Pennsylvania Alliance Against the Trafficking of Humans, and it focuses its efforts along the Route 15 highway that really cuts north and south through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

27:14 HS: And we work a lot with agencies, our sister agencies in Dauphin County, Lycoming County, Perry, York. We have sister agencies all through the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that are rape crisis centers and can refer to the appropriate agency if they're not prepared to help in that particular situation. So there's a lot of us that are on board, there's a lot of us that are on the same page, there's a lot of individuals and organizations that are popping up that are making claims to be able to help victims of trafficking, and that might all be well and good, but you wanna make sure you're reporting to a reliable, credible organization, institution that's going to be able to get that victim help immediately. So the ones that I mentioned through PCAR, Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape, and our sister agencies and ourselves, 911, law enforcement, absolutely, the national hotline, those are all the ones that you need to make sure you have in your phone at all times. And if you suspect, just... You can report anonymously, and report as a mandated reporter. All those individuals out there, fine individuals who are mandated reporters of suspected child abuse, this is one of those things where if you suspect it, report it and then make your report.

28:42 JS: That's a great reminder for folks to put those numbers in their phones so that they have them at all times, 'cause you really never know what you're gonna run into and when you're gonna need to help out.

28:53 HS: Correct.

28:56 JS: That's about all the time we have today, but Heather, I wanted to thank you so much for joining us to talk about human trafficking. I know I learned a lot and I'm sure our listeners will too.

29:06 HS: Great, I'm glad to do it. Thank you so much for having me.

29:11 JS: And so if anyone has any more questions about human trafficking, you can visit pcar.org or your local rape crisis center. Thank you all for listening to this episode of PA Centered.

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29:31 JS: If you or a loved one needs help, a local sexual assault center is available 24/7. Call 1-888-772-7227 for more information, or find your local center online at pcar.org. Together, we can end sexual violence. Any views or opinions expressed on PA Centered by staff or their guests are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of PCAR or PCAR's funders.