As Prepared
Welcome
Thanks, Melissa. I am delighted to join you today for the Sheltered Conference. This morning, I would like to focus on a specific challenge facing our protection efforts. If we are going to be successful in caring for and empowering survivors, our community must address this challenge in the coming years.
Gratitude
But before I get to the challenge, let me start our conversation today with gratitude. Having spent most of my career working to combat human trafficking, I have met lots of passionate people.
I have met amazing investigators going the extra mile to separate victims from their traffickers. They have pioneered a victim-centered law enforcement approach that understands trauma and makes survivors the priority.
I have met talented activists who creatively raise awareness about human trafficking and work to educate the public by deconstructing the persistent myths about human trafficking that harm our ability to identify victims.
I have met passionate advocates who study policy, legislation, and appropriations. They understand the political game and wield relational capital to improve the legal landscape.
I have met tenacious prosecutors who consistently take difficult cases to completion. Human trafficking cases always look terrible in the beginning, riddled with obstacles. Yet, it doesn’t take talent to find the problems in a human trafficking case, it takes grit to work through those problems to build a successful case.
These investigators, activists, advocates, and prosecutors are essential. We are grateful for them and we need more people to take up those professions.
Service Providers
But another group of people is set apart in my mind as I’ve prepared to talk with you this morning: direct-service providers. Many, if not most of you gathered for the conference today. You are a group whose engagement does not center on gathering evidence, getting a bill passed, educating the public, or making arguments before a jury to support a conviction. Instead, your engagement is centered around individuals. You provide direct services to survivors and you hold a special place within the anti-trafficking movement. Your work to stabilize and care for victims is intense work.
A few years ago, I was having dinner with my friend, (whom I will call “Shelly”), who runs a shelter for victims of forced labor and sex trafficking. I had just landed in the country that afternoon and met Shelly in person for the first time. Over the course of dinner, she told me her story – She told me how she learned about human trafficking and got involved in shelter work and then she shared two challenges that make this meaningful work so difficult.
She had lots of energy and little experience. She jumped in and began working for an NGO that served survivors. At first, the work was rewarding and she learned everything she could. Survivors taught Shelly about their experiences. More experienced professionals trained her on their systems, “theories of change,” grant restrictions. She learned lots of “three-letter-acronyms” and a few “four-letter-acronyms.” They instilled in Shelly some “good habits” and some “bad ones.” Then she shared the two challenges that make shelter work so uniquely difficult.
Shelly shared that she thought she would be using her education and degrees to help survivors work through the trauma of trafficking. But she quickly learned that the trauma of trafficking was just part of the challenges survivors face. She explained that the trafficking experience was almost always heaped upon prior trauma. She told me that almost every survivor she worked with had experienced abuse, sexual violence, or some other trauma before the trafficker ever entered into the picture.
(In my experience with traffickers, this is not accidental. Many traffickers seek out people who have suffered prior abuse. One trafficker in the United States explained to me that he would always look for girls who, in his words were, “spoiled.” I asked him what he meant by “spoiled” and he explained that he looked for folks who had suffered sexual violence as a child because he thought they were used to it. A stunning admission. It is no coincidence that survivors often have prior trauma.)
Over dinner, Shelly continued to explain that beyond the trafficking trauma, there were dependency issues. So many of the survivors she cared for were addicted to drugs or alcohol.
Many had mental health issues too (depression, anxiety, or more complicated conditions).
They also had legal problems. Some had pending charges, some had criminal histories, others didn’t have immigration status. Some survivors had kids they were responsible for . . . but as a result of the trauma and lack of support they faced incredible parenting challenges and suffered terrible guilt. The list of challenges to providing care went on and on . . . a parade of difficult circumstances creating additional obstacles along the road to recovery.
What Shelly was communicating is what many of you already know. Providing services to survivors is not limited to the crime of human trafficking. Caring for people means that you care for each person in the situation they are currently in – and people are complex. Service providers deal with people in all their joyful and sometimes messy uniqueness.
Burnout
The second unique problem Shelly shared is that so many service providers are overwhelmed. That is, the dedicated team she worked with was burning the candle at both ends. Self-care was talked about but not demonstrated. She and her team always felt as if they were in crisis and operating at the extreme limits of their capacity. Burnout under these circumstances was routine and retaining staff was a major challenge. Shelly shared that she no longer worked for that shelter and instead she started her own organization. She built on the good things she had learned and developed a sustainable work environment that was healthy for the staff.
Gratitude
As I listened to Shelly’s story, I was reminded of so many committed service providers I have seen in shelters all over the world. Direct service providers deal with so much. They deal with the practical personal impact of traffickers’ wicked decision to commit this crime.
It is meaningful work. It makes a huge difference in the lives of survivors. But it is hard work. It is work that doesn’t end at the conclusion of a political term or grant cycle.
When I was prosecuting human trafficking cases, at the end of each case – after the conviction and sentencing took place – I would get on a plane and fly to the next city to handle the next case. The charges against the average federal human trafficking defendant resolved in 27 months. While I flew away, the direct service providers remained, slogging through the hard work of recovery, long after the bright lights of the case had faded.
You, as the front-line, are drawing close to survivors and walking with them through the ups and downs. There are no quick fixes. There are no silver bullets. Just sustained demonstrations of practical love.
That is why I was excited when several years ago, I heard people talk about starting the National Trafficking Shelter Alliance. The speed of your membership growth is evidence of the need for this Alliance in the movement to end trafficking. In less than two years, the National Trafficking Shelter Alliance has become the nation’s largest coalition of human trafficking organizations.
To everyone here striving to get better at caring for human trafficking survivors, I want to say, “Thank you!” There must be times where you feel as if your work is not seen or appreciated, (sometimes even by the survivors you are serving). We are grateful for your faithfulness, passion, and service.
USA
It is in the spirit of gratitude that I have joined you today to share about how the United States is thinking about the protection of human trafficking survivors and the challenges ahead. This is a good time to stop and reflect. 2020 is the 20th anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act – the landmark legislation that has framed the modern anti-trafficking movement. The TVPA solidified the “victim-centered approach” and challenged us to think about trafficking in a “Three P Paradigm”: Prosecution, Protection, and Prevention.
It was through that law the United States established the position I now hold. When most people think about “ambassadors” they think about an ambassador to another country. Those are “ambassadors-in-residence.” They represent the United States to one specific place on a wide variety of issues. The TVPA created an “ambassador-at-large” position for human trafficking. An “ambassador-at-large” represents the United States not to a specific place, but to all places and not on all issues, but one specific issue. There are only six ambassador-at-large positions in the United States, and I am thrilled the trafficking in persons was elevated to that status. This is the highest-ranking position in the federal government dedicated to human trafficking.
As you may know, each year the State Department publishes the Trafficking in Persons Report. It is often referred to as the “TIP Report.” The TIP Report is unique for several reasons. Not only does it provide a detailed narrative for 188 countries about their government efforts to combat human trafficking, but it also provides a ranking. Each country is placed on one of four “tiers.” For countries on the lowest tier, the TVPA restricts all non-humanitarian foreign assistance and applies other restrictions. As I represent the United States to other governments, I can tell you that they are paying attention to the TIP Report rankings and the detailed recommendations contained in each narrative.
Interestingly, the TIP Report is distinct from most other State Department reports because it also covers the United States. The State Department drafts a narrative on the U.S. government’s efforts to combat trafficking and make recommendations for areas of improvement. This is part of the TIP Office’s domestic mandate as we work to support the coordination of the federal interagency to combat human trafficking right here in America.
The US narrative is the longest and most detailed narrative in the entire TIP Report. And the list of recommendations is also the longest. Of the 15 recommendations for the United States in the 2020 TIP Report, more than half of them focused on “protection” issues – the very issues you are working on.
They include:
- increasing efforts to identify victims through screening of people in custody
- finding more labor trafficking victims
- increasingvictim services for all victims
- improving access to stable housing for victims
- encouraging state and local authorities to implement policies to prevent prosecuting victims for the unlawful acts their traffickers compelled them to commit.
- reducing obstacles for victims to get immigration relief like “Continued Presence” and the “T-Visa.”
Other Challenges
These are just a few of the challenges in our protection work. There is also the constant challenge of having shelters that are secure enough to keep traffickers away yet not so secure that survivors feel trapped within the shelters. Security needs vary from place to place and many prefer low barrier options. There is a debate about mandating survivors’ participation in a program versus empowering survivors to choose what services they receive. There is the problem of courts not ordering traffickers to pay restitution to their victims . . . even though restitution is mandatory.
There are challenges around sustainable funding sources. There are challenges around ethical story-telling and the use of survivor images. There are big challenges around data and metrics. Improvements over the next 20 years require a data-driven and evidence-based approach. Gone are the days when the anti-trafficking movement can survive on emotion and anecdote alone.
There is a chronic challenge around the non-prosecution of victims. I have long worried that victims are far more likely to go to jail than traffickers. Victims should never be penalized for the things their traffickers forced them to do. If governments have wrongly burdened survivors with criminal records, we must vacate those convictions and expunge their records.
And let’s be clear, failing to prosecute the traffickers sends the wrong message to victims about their value. Globally, the prosecution of traffickers has dropped by 38% over the last five years. Meanwhile, the number of victims identified has increased. Traffickers haven’t had a change of heart or changed their minds about the value of every human life. They continue to recruit, groom, and coerce people.
Recently, I asked a direct service provider (who has been in this movement for a long time) about perpetrator accountability. She told me that almost none of the survivors she served had ever seen the government hold their traffickers accountable. I also hear people say that “we have tried the criminal justice approach and it hasn’t worked. We can’t keep doubling down on prosecutions. We will never prosecute our way out of trafficking.” This, of course, is a strawman argument. Although prosecutions are not sufficient, they are necessary. They are part of the overall solution. The data don’t support the argument that we have over-emphasized the P of prosecution. Quite the opposite, the numbers are far too low. I do not think prosecutions have been utilized and found wanting. I think prosecutions have been found difficult and left under-utilized.
If you steal money from a bank the likelihood that you will be caught and convicted is incredibly high. We value money and want to keep it safe. If you coerce a person to engage in commercial sex – denying their freedom – and violate their human dignity – you will likely face no consequences. What message does that send about what we value?
I often hear people complain that a survivor might “go back to her trafficker.” This complaint is often a justification for requiring the survivor to participate in a program or stay in a facility the survivor doesn’t want. I know how to stop survivors from “going back to their traffickers”: put the traffickers in jail. All of them. Enforce the law. It is not the survivor’s job to avoid the trafficker. Governments must do their job to stop traffickers from continuing to torment and manipulate their victims.
There are so many challenges and I am sure that each of you could add to this list. But I would like to take a few moments for us to consider one of the biggest challenges facing our protection work — the challenge of “individualization.”
Individualization
As my friend Shelly described, every victim is unique. They have a wide variety of personalities, needs, and histories. Traffickers recognize this and they adapt their coercive schemes to fit the individual victim. For instance, threatening to traffic a victim’s sister may be sufficient to get one victim to meet their quota, while the trafficker might also need to use physical force to compel another victim.
However, even as traffickers readily adapt and individualize their schemes to exploit victims, I worry that we, as a movement seeking to serve survivors, are not conversely adept at meeting their individual needs. I’m concerned there is a gap between how we design our organizations and programs and the needs of the survivors we are trying to serve.
Professors in the social sciences write about “vulnerable populations” and advocates generalize about what “survivors” need. Stereotyping large communities may be helpful from a policy perspective. We talk about the “refugee population” or the “foster care population” or “underserved population.” When we do this we take one characteristic of a person, match it with a similar characteristic in others, and group them together to make a broader point.
Yet, I am not sure the “populations” construction benefits our protection work. I have never met a trafficker who exploited a population. Traffickers target individuals. I have never seen a shelter serve a population. Shelters serve individuals. What the “populations” construction misses is the unique texture and individuality of each person.
As we professionalize, we implement systems and create policies. Funding restrictions and grant agreements often dictate the type and kind of care an NGO can provide. The concern I am hearing in the field is that we are asking survivors to fit into our programs instead of tailoring our services to fit the individual survivor’s needs. Some NGOs, dealing with funding constraints, feel pressure to shoe-horn survivors into its pre-existing programs.
As an example of this shoe-horning, when I was working for an NGO in India many years ago, a well-intentioned organization set up shop to serve a group of survivors. Their plan was to create a “sewing center” to provide jobs for all the survivors. The NGO designed a program to serve the population of survivors. It never occurred to them to ask the individual survivors what type of work they wanted to do. Turns out that some survivors do not want to be seamstresses.
Although that group meant well and NGOs are much more nuanced today, I wonder if we don’t still suffer from this design challenge. We build programs to serve what our experience and education suggest most survivors might need. Yet generic survivors never show up – individuals with complicated lives do.
Anyone who has more than one child knows how different people can be. Even siblings with almost identical DNA from the same two parents, raised in the same home, enduring the same family dynamics, turn out so differently. My wife and I parent three children who can best be described as “robust.” Each of them is different and we have had to adjust our parenting strategies to their individual needs. We have to tailor our parenting to the individual child. What worked for our goal-setting firstborn may not be effective for our rambunctious youngest.
Recently, I spoke with a very thoughtful direct service provider and she shared how she fights the urge to create more rules at her shelter. She’s begun to notice that, when something goes wrong her reflex is to create a new policy to prevent repeating that wrong. As a result, she tries to notice this reflex and instead to counterintuitively follow a discipline of not adding rules in reaction to circumstances. Instead, she intentionally builds rapport, recommits to understanding the role of trauma in the issue she is seeking to fix, and focuses on relationships.
The question is, “How do we build and grow professional shelters with strong programs while simultaneously remaining nimble and adaptable to care for individuals?” There is a tension there worth considering. If we wrestle with this tension, I think there might be some good outcomes.
Comprehensive Burden
One outcome of wrestling with this individualization tension could be that we deconstruct what I call the “comprehensive burden.” It has become popular in organizational jargon to say that our programs or NGOs are “comprehensive,” meaning, that our organizations cover the vast array of services a victim might need. Individual donors, foundations, or governments have criticized groups for not providing “comprehensive” services. What if we could release that burden? I have seen some amazing NGOs around the world. I have never seen an organization that can meet every need of a victim.
It reminds me of the one-man-band guy at the county fair. He has seven or eight instruments strapped to him and he tries to make music. He is a novelty. Music critics don’t take him seriously. Serious musicians play one instrument at a time. What if we didn’t expect every NGO to do it all?
What if we worked to make the movement as a whole comprehensive instead of expecting that of every individual NGO?
Networks
The second benefit of increasing individualization is that networks become more powerful.
Survivors could select the services they need from a networked community of service providers. It also could allow shelters to specialize in different approaches or services. When an organization doesn’t have to play all the instruments, it can excel at a few. Such networks would allow NGOs to collaborate with each other as they band together to find what the individual needs while ensuring the survivor maintains agency. Survivor leaders in this movement have already contributed a great deal to the movement and they can be strong contributors to networks. There are already loose networks, listservs, and friends building these networks. We should encourage them.
Relationships
A third outcome of focusing on individuals is that it draws us toward relationships. I consistently hear from direct services providers that survivors want “homes” not “placements,” “careers” not “jobs,” “relationships” not “rules.”
To be clear, we need structures, strategies, and even a few policies here and there. What I am describing is living with this tension so that our NGOs do not become institutions. We want our programs to serve survivors and not the other way around. This is an art, not a science.
Conclusion
A final benefit of individualization is that it brings us back to the reason we are in this work. What makes human trafficking wrong is not that a legislature prohibited it. It was wrong back when congresses and parliaments democratically approved of human trafficking. What makes human trafficking wrong is not popular opinion’s unanimous opposition. It was wrong when popular opinion wasn’t unified.
Human trafficking is wrong because people matter – individuals matter. They do not matter more because they are part of a “population,” have legal immigration status, or enjoy temporary political power. The United States’ Declaration of Independence tells us that everyone has “unalienable rights” – that is people have rights because they were created. The UN agrees. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says these rights are “inherent and unalienable.”
When you serve individual survivors in your shelters you honor these rights and the human dignity of every person. Traffickers tell victims they are worthless, that they do not matter, that no one will listen to them, that people would never accept them if they knew what the survivor had done, that their only value is tied to their ability to produce money for the trafficker. These painful lies are refuted by your work. You declare the truth that every individual has value. You show them they matter, You listen to them. You accept and do not judge them, and you do not condition your services on their ability to produce.
There has never been a better time to be engaged in this work. We have never understood the issues around trauma-informed care better than we do today. Information moves around the world at the click of a mouse. We are marshaling resources to fight for freedom. We have strong legal frameworks that must be equitably implemented. This is an exciting moment to make a difference. There are many reasons for hope – and your protection efforts inspire us all.
I am glad we are in this fight together.