Thank you very much for inviting me to come speak to you all about this subject, and It’s something actually I’m brought to professionally because with homeland security investigations, which is the agency I work for, one of the areas of investigations that we are responsible for is human trafficking/ human smuggling and also something, that as it relates to education, which ties into this is child exploitation. 
I’ve spent a number of years in those types of investigations and so professionally it’s something we are actively involved in. Personally, I’ve got three daughters, and that’s all my kids, but I’ve got three girls in my house and they range from my oldest who is 24, who is currently at FAMU, working on her master’s degree. And, I have an advanced 10th grader at Leon High School, she actually just turned 14 in December, and I have a nine year old at Kate Sullivan. 
And so as we go through this discussion, one of the issues about human trafficking, although it involves men and women, boys and girls, primarily the bulk of the victims we are going to find are going to be female victims in the age range of twelve to fourteen years old. And that’s everything from sex trafficking, to labor trafficking, that target group is the one of most concern, so we will get into a little more detail about that.  
But this is both professional and personal in some sorts for me as well. So that is me, I’ve been here in Tallahassee for about seven years now, and I’m responsible for our office here in Tallahassee. We cover about twelve counties out of here, and we have our offices throughout the US and also throughout the state of Florida. And we will dive right in, because I know we have a little bit of time to go through it, but human trafficking is a global problem. 
Depending on where we in law enforcement work or where you may be employed depends on what face of human trafficking you see. So, the state department may deal with it in foreign countries as it comes into the United States. My job is to deal with as it comes in to the United States and it permeates out. Your local police my deal with it specifically in Tallahassee or in Leon County. Everyone has a role, but it’s a global problem. 
This is what we are going to cover today, give a definition of human trafficking/ human smuggling. Reason being is we’ll define human trafficking, but human smuggling is almost like the roadways, the infrastructures that trafficking travels on, so I do want to touch on smuggling just so you have a good understanding of that. We’ll talk about methods of identification, some indicators. We’ll talk about victim centered, because when we deal with this, although I’m in law enforcement and we really want to go after the violators, the primary issue is to recover the victims and get them into a place where they can thrive and get them out of a traffic circumstance. Then we are also going to talk about vulnerabilities and educational environment. 
The educational environment although you have some unique circumstances, trafficking as a whole you will find is going to be identifiable no matter where or what venue you put it in, so we will get there. Definition of smuggling, pretty much the facilitation of transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person across international borders, for the purpose, or in violation of one or more laws for the purpose of making entry into the United States. Illegal entry, although it may be violation, it’s an immigration issue more so than criminals so there are some issues about how exactly smuggling is going to be perceived, but smuggling is the physical movement of a person into the US and then it’s also going to involve the movement and transportation and the harboring or housing of the individuals. 
Brief situation or scenario I’ll give you: if I’m a Guatemalan male and I’m working in a rural county in agriculture, and I’m working hard to bring the rest of my family into the US. Say I’ve got a daughter who’s fourteen and a son who’s nine, while I may pay someone to physically to bring them into the us. And the purpose typically is more opportunity. Better life, getting away from oppression, getting away from a circumstance that America may have that is going to be better than where they are coming from.
So in my scenario, as they are coming from Guatemala, so I work hard here in America to get the money, say its $5000 apiece to bring my two children to the country. I finally make that money, I pay someone to physically bring them across the border into the US. So, that physical movement is the human smuggling because they are not going to come through a port of entry and present their selves legitimately, they are going to be snuck across in some way shape or form. 
So when they come across they have to come to a destination for a moment when I’ll get a phone call saying, “Hey, I’ve got your son and daughter here. They got here successfully. They are here in Houston.” Then I make arrangements for them to get here. So now they are in a housing area where they are being harbored. Physically, they have to be transported to where I am. So the smuggling is the movement over the border, the housing, and the transportation that are all tied to the movement of the person, make sense? So that’s smuggling. If that person continues to move into and throughout the U.S. from job site to job site, place to place, smuggling is still continuing to happen because they came across illegally in the first place. This is typically going to be like I said, its transportation based, this is going to be the road ways which some the illegal activity takes place. 
I’m not going to go too deeply into this, but I want to point out a couple issues with this. One thing that you see here is that it seems like all these arrows are pointing to America, or the United States. We are coming from the areas in the red, which tend to be, May be underdeveloped countries, it may be countries in turmoil, it may be countries where the economy may not be strong, but there’s an opportunity where, for people to make the best of their merchandise or product, where do they come? They come to the United States. Mainly because we are primarily a capitalistic society, which means if you are able to make the money, and you have an industry to make the money, then we have an opportunity for you. 
What you see though, is that we have a movement of people coming to America for an opportunity, when we get to it it’s going to be a little more, I’m going to refer to victims at some point initially as a commodity, because that’s how the violators deal with it, so we will talk about it that way so you understand their mindset. If you have a commodity in an area like china or Russia where you aren’t able to make as much money, and you want to go someplace to where you do, there is a network to get you to where it’s more lucrative to gain money for your activity. So pretty much I really wanted you to see that, these roles on the side are going to be the areas where human smuggling and also trafficking are going to take place.
There is somebody who is going to be heading the network who’s going to be making all the real money, there is somebody who is going to be recruiting personnel to be in this process. There are money brokers who handle the money, facilitators, those people underground who are going to put connection together, make things happen in your legal process. You’ve got your document providers. One of the issues about documents when we are talking smuggling, if someone is coming from a foreign country, the one thing that makes them legitimate in America, able to work and able to get around without be accosted by anyone is a document. So passports with visas, a green card to make you a registered alien legitimate. If you don’t have those it’s hard to get a job, it’s hard to go to school, and it’s hard to insert yourself into society. 
So there is a network of people who are document providers that provide false documents to legitimize their presence in America. That’s going to come up again later because the false documents are used for everything. Nowadays they are using it for education benefits, they are using it for driver’s licenses, they are using it for whatever. Local facilitators now you are getting down to the local level of people who may be physically driving, physically housing people in the process. I want to throw in this bottom one here because corrupt officials plays a significant part depending on where you are in the chain. Because corrupt officials are allowing the violators to move within the infrastructure that they would not be able to move if not for a corrupt individual. 
So if you have someone who is willing to turn their head to a process, if they have somebody who is willing to take a payment to facilitate a process, that’s what identify as a corrupt official. Smuggling. Its international in scope, we talked about that. The main reason for it is financial gain. Organized crime, gangs, and criminal enterprises do this because it makes money. That’s the main reason. The deal is though, they make the money through the use of other people or potential victimization, so it makes them a little more heartless. But they are still doing it for financial gain. And as I said they do it through transportation or harboring. These are the elements of that human smuggling. These are actual images just so you know. This an image coming across the southwest border of a tractor trailer that was being scanned for cargo. Using x-rays and gamma rays. And it just so happened that this tractor trailer contained a number of people being smuggled along with the legitimate cargo. That’s an actual photo from a case, just to indicate that it happens. 
This here is actually a housing location where they harbor the victims as they come across the border. That one house is where all those people stayed and resided, waiting for their transfer to another destination. These people can be workers just trying to get to another place3 to work. There could be trafficking victims contained within. When I explain trafficking you’ll see what I mean. I’ve seen this on I-10, cruising through Tallahassee. People packed into a minivan. I go on volleyball trips with my daughter and we may pack 6 people in my truck, and that’s way too much with luggage. When you get a minivan with anywhere from 9-12 people in it, that’s a transportation issue to move people from the purpose of treating them as a commodity. So those are actual images we’ve got from case footage. Now we will get into trafficking. 
We are going to spend the bulk of our time here, because that’s what we are here for. Trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transporting, provision for or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. You are going to see those three things because that’s the root of this whole presentation, this force, fraud or coercion. Remember those three elements. 
As a law enforcement officer I have to prove those to prove that trafficking takes place. For the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery. Sex trafficking occurs when a commercial sex act is induced by that same force, fraud or coercion. In which a person induced to perform such acts is has not attained 18 years of age. So pretty much for the federal statuette, if you are a minor 18 and under and you are involved a commercial sex act pretty much you cannot consent to the act so automatically it’s going to be trafficking. If you are over the age of 18 then we are going to have to prove that there is some kind of force, fraud, or coercion that took place in order to cause an individual to get into a trafficking circumstance. Its exploitation based, so let me go back to my scenario about my little brother, and I think it was my daughter and my son. 
So now, smuggling is bringing them across the border. Now let’s talk about what trafficking is in that same scenario. So I work hard to get the money, the $5000 to bring my kids over. I finally successfully get them over the border to the stash house in Houston, so I get a phone call, “hey I’ve got your son and your daughter here, they got here safely.” So I’m ecstatic because they made it over safely, but they say it’s going to cost you another 10000 dollars to get them, each. I don’t have that kind of money. In my scenario, I’m a migrant worker and I can’t make that much money. And so they say that I’m sure we can find a way for them to work it off. The 14 year old girl is ripe to be put into commercial sex. The boy is of a ripe age to be put into personal servitude as a butler, a house boy, house slave, something like that. As soon as a victimization takes place is when human trafficking kicks into the process. 
There has to be an exploitation and victimization for trafficking to exist. So for that scenario, you have a young girl 14 years old who is now forced into sex trafficking, they will say it’s for the purpose of working off a debt but realistically after she starts working she isn’t in a position to handle her own money or be responsible for those relationships so pretty much she is going to be worked until she isn’t workable anymore. Let me tell you what the drug dealers are doing nowadays too. This is going to play an impact in our schools, just so you are aware of this. 
Because gangs and local criminal enterprises play the largest role I believe now in trafficking within our schools because it’s financial based. They can make more money. So if I’m a drug dealer and I have a commodity over here, my drugs. I get my drugs from somebody and I purchase it. I now have it, I do what I’m going to do, separate it into my little bags portions and I sell it out. When I finish selling my product what do I have left? Nothing. So I have to go back to my supplier and get more drugs to start my process. Law says that if I’m in possession of drugs or controlled substance I’m already in violation by possession, I don’t have to prove knowledge or anything. If I have it and find it on you, you can be arrested. So it’s also a challenge for the dealer because I’m holding something that is illegal to hold and possess.

 So now I go and get a 14 year old girl and I put her to work in sex trafficking, and just so you know they tend to work 15-20 minutes per session and they have anywhere from 3 to 4 sessions per hour, and they tend to work 10-12 hours a day. So, I have a commodity that I just bought, I use it for a whole day, at the end of the day what do I do with my commodity? I put it to bed. The next day, I get that same commodity and work it for another 10-12 hours. At the end of that day, I put it to bed. 
Being a trafficking victim in sex trafficking is a reusable commodity per the violator. Unlike drug dealers, I don’t have to keep going back and getting more drugs, I just have to deal with this issue of a person I decide to submit to victimization through sex trafficking. That’s the benefit to the criminals is that it’s a reusable commodity. So that victimization is what we lean on because we want to get those folks identified and get them out of that circumstance. The longer they are in it the more difficult it is to get them out. 
Do you recall the emotional or psychological state where someone becomes attached to their captor and feels that they can’t leave? Stockholm syndrome. The longer you are in, the harder it is to undo what got you there in the first place. The reason I say that is that there has to be a force, fraud, or coercion, yes. Some people say ohh she can’t be a trafficking victim because she is able to go to the store in a car and go grocery shopping and come back to the house. She is free to go, she is able to run, she can seek help somewhere. You don’t know what stage of captivity or oppression that person has been in because Stockholm syndrome is in place.
Now they have assigned themselves to the captor and they look at that captor as their main source of support and education, supplies, food and everything else. So they don’t want to let that go because they have now signed on to it, but that is an emotional state. It still doesn’t keep them from being a victim. For those of you who are visual learners, we’ve got the graphics. This is just a category to show you which ones we’ve got. We didn’t go deep into the labor side. I can touch on it, but what we are going to see in the side of the house with education you will see some labor trafficking, but what are kids are being introduced to now due to social media, due to your devices, due to the wonderful computer that functions like a cell phone, they are going to be more susceptible to a sex trafficking circumstance than a labor, but don’t write off the labor. 
In my scenario, my son who was 9 years old, will be put into a house as a butler. This is a debt bondage. He is supposed to be able to work until he pays off his debt. So the wages he would make serving that employer would go towards paying off his fees to the smuggler. If it was fair, once he reached that he should be free to go, but what they do is bill another costs. You still eat the person’s food, they still cloth you, and they still provide things for you, so that comes off what your costs they are supposed to pay you so you never come out of your debt. That’s how they keep them enslaved completely.

Debt bondage, forced labor I think is self-explanatory, domestic servitude is the method of bondage, so my nine year old son in this circumstance would be a domestic servant. And that would be his role in the trafficking. Child soldiers, that’s something we don’t necessarily do here in the United States, that’s more of an international thing, where children are forced to serve as military members. And then sex trafficking, which we are going to spend a lot of time on. And Like I said before, human smuggling is the railway or the roadway in order for trafficking to take place. 
Elements of trafficking. Some of these are pretty violent, but that’s truth, and we need to understand this because as parents, as people in our community, as educators, it is violent business in how they deal with indoctrinating someone into being a trafficking victim. Force, examples. Rape, beating, and confinement to control a victim. Alright, there is, you’ll have to forgive me because I’ll tell stories all day. 
Young lady in high school, I’m going to use the reference here since we are familiar with Tallahassee, about being in Lincoln and Leon. We’ve got a student in Lincoln, she’s a C student. Per the social norms, she may not be the most beautiful girl, but she is not the most ugly girl in the world and I’m talking their terms, so she is acceptable or pleasing to the eye to whoever the person is that is seeking out this individual. Seems to be in decent shape, is on the soccer team, not a starter, rides the bench, but is happy to be a part of the team. So she is in there trying to find her place. 
She gets connected on one of these social networks, meets a guy, seems to be real hot. Has a nice jaw, hair, real good looking young man, and he meets her and engages her in an online manner. You know what happens, here’s how the story goes. He talks to her, he has access to her personal Facebook. He knows she plays soccer, knows she’s got two parents, and knows she lives in town. So he says you know what, I go to Leon. Now he may be a 28 year old male, but he is using what is going to connect to her to make him have that relationship. Just so you know this is the recruiter. 
His whole job is to look for girls that are going to be worthwhile to put into servitude. So in this circumstance that took place he cultivates her. He knows she’s not the strongest student but she’s working on it. She’s on the bench, she’s not on the field but she is trying, she is hanging in there. She is on the fringe, and she is what you would call vulnerable. Remember that word, because vulnerability is what opens the door for potential exploitation whether it’s trafficking, sexual exploitation or anything that we deal with.
If we have vulnerable people they are going to be subjected to things we don’t want them to be subjected to. So in this case the guy cultivates her and talks her language. Yeah I play lacrosse, I’m out their scoring and she is getting infatuated with this guy, so they agree to meet. And he says I know it’s kind of creepy to just meet folks, so why don’t we meet at the food court of the mall. And my dad has this hot mustang, its red, tinted windows, it would be nice if you could see it. So she is now infatuated with this young man who seems to be hot, successful, and everything else. To be spending time with her, because she is on the fringe. She is not the cool girl in school. She doesn’t have those relationships so she is still on the fringe. 
So here’s the story, calls when you get to the mall, hey I’m here at the mall. He’s been sitting outside the whole time saying, “Well you know parking is real bad, I can’t get a spot. Why don’t you come out to the doors and I’ll show you my car”. So she comes out to the doors and then he waits until there is a line of cars in front and says, hey I’m at the end of the line, come on down and come to the car. So now she leaves the food court, leaves the front of the food court walk way and goes off to the side which is where it is out of public view. He opens the door, red mustang, she gets in. He proceeds to beat the living daylights out of her. In the car, in front of the food court, in a sexy mustang with tinted windows, and dares her not to say a word. The indoctrination started as soon as she got into the car, and he left with her. 
 The good part of the story is about three days later she was recovered about two states away by a highway patrolman. That is how simple it is for someone to get indoctrinated, and this one is through force. Rape didn’t take place there, but beating and confinement in a vehicle under the control of somebody else and he begins berating and physically assaulting which is all part of the indoctrination process when you are using force. This is what our kids can be subject to, which is why good decisions are important in keeping them under coverage. Stockholm syndrome, just so you know. IF she is only a couple days in, what is her normal response to being confined or taken? Do you know what it might be? Have you heard of the fight or flight syndrome? Usually early on the tendency is to want to fight and flee and get out of there. That’s why she was recovered by law enforcement because she was still in the mindset of fighting and fleeing and getting away from her assailant. Stockholm people who are subject to the Stockholm syndrome after going through this for years don’t try to flee anymore, but they are still victims potentially. 
Fraud. You get somebody who addresses an ad to be a model, comes over here from a nice place they go in and find that the modeling agency is really a front for sex trafficking. That’s a fraudulent process. Working. Come in and promised them a certain wage for the work they are going to do. They get there, and all of a sudden you are not paid the same as everyone else. Stuff that you do in your employment, you get garnished your pay to pay for certain things, and everyone else gets a full wage’s pay. That’s a fraudulent process. Coercion. I know your family. I know your sister goes to here. I know your mom is from this village. I know your family are from Michoacon, Mexico. I know what neighborhood you lived in, anything that is going to cause you to respond because of a threat according to somebody else. These are how the elements manifest themselves in rea life. 
Force, fraud, and coercion, those are the elements of trafficking. Types of trafficking, sex, labor, and organ. We are not going to go too much into that but nowadays, especially in foreign countries people are harvesting their organs because why? It makes money. So this is a monetary gain, don’t think you are not seeing what it really is. The reason they are doing it is for financial gain. It just so happens that I can make money by putting someone into sex trafficking, I can make money putting somebody to work and not paying them, I can make money by harvesting something that is difficult to get. Those are all relative in the process. The way the rules work, if you have one of this list, plus one of this list, plus one of this list, you are going to have trafficking. And this is what I as law enforcement have to show. Somebody was recruiting through force put into sex act, that’s the elements of trafficking. 
So this is just a pretty easy chart and all it is is the laws of the United States, in the state of Florida by the way, has done a great job of instituting laws that mirror the federal laws which were initially the strongest for trafficking, but now the state of Florida has some of the strongest laws against human trafficking, which is a big kudos to what our legislature and advocates are trying to do here in the state of Florida. These are the elements. Really this is the main reason I want you to see this one. Victims did not ask to be trafficked. No one wakes up and says I want to be a trafficking victim today. That just reiterates what I said earlier. The average age is twelve to fourteen years old. Industries that are susceptible to trafficking, you’ve got on the labor side, sweatshops, commercial agricultural workers, fields, processing plants and canneries, domestic service, construction, nail salons, restaurants and custodial work, and hotels and hospitality. Those are industries that are susceptible to it. On the sex trafficking side, working on the streets, brothels, strip clubs, porn industry, massage parlors, escorts, bookstores, modeling, bars, very young prostitutes, which is another industry in itself. Those are for the more sick of the sick.
 So, look at the labor trafficking side of the house, are there any industries in or around Tallahassee that are associated with this list? Any of these? Now I haven’t ran into any sweatshops around here, but what about that? Just so you know, that’s Gadsden County. It relies on agriculture. Domestic service, construction, nail salons, restaurants and custodial work, hotels and hospitality. This just goes to show you just because we are in Tallahassee doesn’t mean it’s not happening. On the sex side of the house, what things are on this list that are here in Tallahassee? And enlighten me, I’m not a native of Tallahassee, I’ve come to learn about the last seven years. What on this list is relative to Tallahassee? I’m talking within the past year they’ve been cropping up. Bookstores, what else? Escorts.
 Now, when I first moved down here, I moved down here from Washington DC. If I left the house and went downtown to DC and I started at nine o clock, I could find a prostitute walking the street if I wanted to. The quality of the prostitute and the number of them improved as the night went on. Because it is a huge city and the infrastructures there to make it a lucrative business. When I first moved to Tallahassee I saw no strip clubs, haven’t seen them. Limited number of adult bookstores. So are you telling me that the same people that live in DC that like that kind of attention and they patronize those locations they don’t have it here in Tallahassee? Yeah they do. It’s just disguised as escort services. It’s used as massage parlors, and there are, I’m going to circle bars, because you could have a bar that allows you access to the sexual services someplace else. So Tallahassee doesn’t seem to be pervasive in our area, and when I say Tallahassee I’m talking about our general area. You are not going to find strip clubs, I don’t think, until you get into Georgia or until you get closer to I-75, that’s where they start. These industries exist here, so think about it. Indicators. This is an actual indicator that ended up proving to be accurate. There was a work camp in central Florida where when they started looking into it there were allegations of trafficking of workers taking place, and one of the first things they noticed when law enforcement first rolled up on the work camp is that barbed wire is set to keep things out of something, correct? So if you want to keep someone out of your yard usually the barbed wire points outward, to keep things from getting in. This fence was pointed in with the barbed wire. Simple thing, but now you are meant to keep something from getting in rather than getting in to what you are protecting. It’s an indicator that something is not right, what are you trying to do? Barred windows, locked windows, and isolated locations.
 Mobile brothels typically servicing migrant work camps could be something as simple as a tractor trailer backed into a remote location. The trailer is left there, that trailer is the brothel. And when work is over, they hook it up and move it off site. When it is time to work they bring it back, but they usually park those in remote locations. So that is your issue of remote locations. Victims live at the same premises, you get somebody that works at what you believe to be a legit massage therapy place, but the people that work there don’t leave, and they can’t leave. You never see them going anywhere. We’ve had complaints like that here in Tallahassee. People go by this place every half an hour to an hour and there are multiple cars that come by this place and I never see the people leave, it’s an Asian girl but I never see her leave the place. Indicators. Are we saying trafficking is taking place? Not sure, but those are indicators. Victims are transported between places. When you leave here at the end of the day you are free to get into your vehicle, you are free to get onto a bus, you are free to get onto whatever transportation you need to get where you are going. But at the end of the day, if I’m escorting you all out to the van that I drive and I take you home and in the morning I bring you back, at the end of the day I take you on, there is a controlling that is taking place, an indicator. 
The reason I’m saying these is because when we talk about them here in just a minute there are some indicators within our schools and around our institutions of learning that play into these same indicators they are just disguised differently. Victims are chaperoned for medical treatment, traffickers may translate for the authorities. So all of a sudden we roll up on somebody and say “Hey what’s going on with you? If you don’t speak the language well you may come speak to me”. And now you want to keep talking to me, but I want to talk to her, but you keep talking to me. Why are you talking for her? Indicator. Presence of fear, intimidation, abuse, and physical and psychological control. This is a victim based circumstance. Our whole job is to locate and identify and recover the victims wherever they are, put them into a place where they can get proper treatment, and as a law enforcement officer I would love to get there information, but first we are going to deal with the victim and get them  into some place where it is safe. Partnerships, this is what we do. Partnerships is what we are doing here. I’m law enforcement trying to educate you, if you get more information you come to me, we have a relationship. That’s how Michelle and I met. We need to develop those relationships. And we follow the money, that’s my job. Because the money is what got people into this business into the first place. 
The reason I put this up is because victims need to be stable and safe to be effective witnesses. First they need to be safe and stable to do anything. I’m interested in them becoming an effective witness. Like I said, we make sure they receive services. In order for them to be worth anything after they’ve been victimized they require certain social services and stabilization to exist in their lives. We’ve got more, but I’m going to leave it here for a moment because I’m going to let you digest that while we talk about some things.
 In our schools and around our education institutions, the children leave their parents. If you are high school students, they are in class by 7:30. If they are a middle school student they are in by 9:30, and they are gone until the end of the day when we pick them up after they have been through extended care or if you are lucky enough to get them when they are soon to get out of class you can get them at whatever time they get out of class. During the time they leave the control of the parent is all the potential time they can be bombarded with opportunities to be victimized. Now, I go crazy everyday with three daughters thinking they are going to be victimized every day. I may not be able to deal with that. I, personally, work on self-esteem. You are going to be strong in your self-esteem then you are going to be able to combat certain things, but our victims are the ones that are vulnerable to other outside influences. So we need to make sure we are providing an environment that is safe. In your schools, that’s supposed to be a safe place. The educators that are in the schools, the staff members, they are seeing the kids every day, and the trick with seeing something every day, and we do this in law enforcement, if I see you every day over a period of time I’m going to understand what your norm is. If she is happy go lucky, always high fiving the SRO when she goes to schools, always going by and saying hi to the secretary and everything, and all of a sudden she is not happy go lucky. She is now recessed into her mind. She is not as friendly, she is withdrawn, and there is a change in behavior. That is an indicator that something is wrong, and that our educators need to understand that that is something they need to pay attention to. It could be she got yelled out because she got bad grades and her momma wore her out that day, got on her case about not doing the right thing. But it could be somebody is pestering her all day long talking about how cute she is. Oh I like that outfit, or we need to do this sometime, or pummeling her with the unwanted communication, and just like people now desensitize ourselves with music, with movies, with everything else, whatever your position is on that subject matter the argument is that there is a desensitization. So if I’m a recruiter, you know how boys are. If I can get her to look at me, I’m making progress. If I can get her to speak to me, I’m making progress. So if I can get in, I’m going to keep cultivating. And the one thing the violator or the recruiter has is they have patience, they are not on a time table. So, look in our areas that the kids travel, they go on trips. They are in school all day. Afterwards they may go to work. They are traveling on buses. 
Just so you know, some of the worst recruiters in the bunch are other older students in the class from the school that they have access to. We know who the crazy kids are, we know who bad seeds are, we know who the kids are that we need to stay away from, and those are things that we need to be cautious of. So the recruiting can take place right under our noses, but it’s important for the people on staff to just be attuned to what’s going with the kids at the school. One thing real quick, this was a story in Texas about educators. The story pretty much says that an individual teenager was charged with human trafficking and prostitution after it was discovered that he drugged a fellow classmate, held for about three days, then sold her out for sex trafficking. Truancy. When I was growing up we had truancy people. They weren’t belief, they were truing officers, and they would wonder why are you not in school where you are supposed to be. Now our kids are free to go many times. They can walk off the property and no one is going to be looking for them. At a certain age in school you can go off campus for lunch. You can get around where you need to. This is why I think it’s important not only for us as adults to understand this subject matter, but it’s important for our decision makers in education to understand this matter. And it’s also important for our kids in the schools to get the same message because it can happen, you just need to know when it’s happening to you that this is not really what is supposed to be happening. And that is one of the things that is important. So we want to decrease the vulnerability of our kids to make sure that they are not going to be subjected to the victimization that these people are trying to put on our kids. That is in a nutshell what this trafficking thing is all about. Take away from it vulnerability, victimization, if there is a force, fraud, or coercion  that results in some type of forced circumstance including commercial sex, especially for minors under 18. That is what human trafficking is, and the trick is we have to figure out how we can keep it from happening. Because it’s just like everything else, opportunistic people are going to look for ways to victimize and take advantage. This is another way that people are doing it, and it’s important to understand it. I’m going to be quite, because if I keep talking you all are going to be gone for lunch and I’m going to be here by myself. Thank you very much for giving me an opportunity to talk to you about it. Hopefully, it’s of interest and you learned something.
Question from the Audience: Ralph, it was so powerful your story about the local Leon/Lincoln soccer students, particularly because she was average, she wasn’t exceptionally vulnerable. So I’m wondering if given that circumstance without violating confidentiality, was that story able to be conveyed to the students at both schools to give them a real picture that it could be any student, not just somebody that is especially vulnerable.
Response: that is one of the challenges. And just to clarify, I was using those to schools, it actually happened but it was not at those two schools. My point is, the relationship was the same. It was somebody who knew enough about that local city or town to be able to communicate with this young lady who has lived there before. So the point is, that’s happening everywhere. But the challenge is how do we get the message to the kids in the school? And one of the struggles we’ve run into, and I don’t think it’s due to a lack of interest, but its difficult to get an hour’s worth of a student’s time at their school because our student calendars are jam packed with everything else they need as well. So that’s one of the challenges within education that if we can overcome that by just finding some way to get that out to everybody because most of our kids are sensible, and if they hear it then the majority of them are going to digest and get something from it. 
Question from the audience: Have you been requested to go to the schools and provide this same presentation?
Response: Yes I have been asked by parents. And I have to confess that I’m a volleyball parent and slowly all the other parents realized that I do this kind of stuff and they were like wait a minute. But the questions come, can you do this here or can you do this where? We’ve spoken at TCC and we’ve also spoken at FSU and FAMU, but it’s been in small venues. It’s not something that the institution says we need to grab this by the hand and give this to everybody. The high schools? The issue there again is getting that body of time. They are interested, but the problem is getting that body of time to get as much access to the people that need it. It’s hard to get an hour’s worth of time or 45 minutes or half an hour in a high school schedule. We will do some after hours for parents, we may get to a PTA meeting, we may get to do it through their health enrichment program time, but then that time is not going to hit every student, it’s going to hit whatever cluster of students is available to participate in that segment of the schedule. So the interest is there, as we see them. And many of the interest comes from folks, we also work with child exploitation, which may not be this type of trafficking but the cultivation of our youth to be involved with sexual activity although it may not be for commercial sex. It may be a child predator seeking a relationship with another person. And we see that as well, and we can discuss that as well as a side onto this, but I think the interest is there as people begin to realize it is in their community.
Question from the audience: You mentioned the red flags, but you didn’t mention, is there a hotline or someplace that we can make the reports to?
Response: Yes, there is a hotline and I believe it is on my flyer that I sent out to you guys. Let me make sure it is, if not I think that it’s on here. Within homeland security, the blue campaign is our human trafficking entity that has a set of resources which is what this flyer is. There is also a private entity called the Polaris project which is another entity that you can learn and get resources about human trafficking. I’m drawing a blank on that phone number. 8883737888. That is the National Human Trafficking Resource Center number. And believe it or not they did make that number to be remembered. It begins 8’s, end with eights, and there is a 3737 in the middle. But that is a hotline. Florida is the third largest market for human trafficking by state. And it’s happening.
Question from the Audience: Is that because of our agriculture?
Response: I think it is a combination of many things. We’ve got large metropolitan areas, and if you are looking at the Miami’s, the Tampa’s, the Orlando’s, and don’t forget about the industry in Orlando. Think about how many tourists we have coming to Orlando? Miami is just huge, large city that has opportunity for everything. The ability for transportation to bring into the area. The type of activities also generate interest. There was a statistic out there once before, I’m not sure if it’s still the highest, but the super bowl was one of the largest venues where human trafficking was present. Means and volume, elite clientele, people from all over the world, they come there. I’m talking more opportunity than anything else. Any venue like that can bring a certain clientele that will take advantage of these kinds of circumstances.
Question from the audience: What were the states, 1 and 2, that were before Florida?
Response: New York and California. And let me tell you, here in Tallahassee Its happening in our local hotels off the interstate. I’m sure there are massage parlors where it’s happening. It’s happening in our rural communities. A friend of mine is a Fish/U.S Forest Service Special Agent. He polices the national forest, and he came me one day and said I need to talk with you about this trafficking stuff. He said, I have allegations about a woman who comes into the national forest because it’s isolated. She brings her daughter in her own vehicle they meet the john. They engage in the act backseat of the car that moms in, and she calls herself protecting her from the john. But they use the national forest to do it. It happens in big cities, it happens in rural towns, it happens wherever. It happens, so the more aware we are the more we can raise the flag and try to do something about it.