Unpacking Human Trafficking: A Survivor's Perspective - Guest Kim Kelley - Resilience & Relationships (R&R) - Stephanie Olson and Rebecca Saunders

In this conversation, Stephanie Olson and Rebecca Saunders engage with Kim Kelley, a survivor of child trafficking, who now advocates for effective solutions to combat human trafficking and child exploitation. They discuss the complexities of trafficking, the need for trauma-informed care, and the importance of community involvement and law enforcement training. Kim emphasizes the misconceptions surrounding 'rescuing' children and the necessity for transparency in NGOs and social services. The conversation highlights the critical role of survivor involvement in shaping effective programs and the need for collaborative approaches to protect children.

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Digital Defenders United - digitaldefendersunited.org 

Takeaways
Kim Kelly is a survivor of child trafficking and now advocates for effective solutions.
Understanding the complexities of human trafficking is crucial for effective intervention.
Law enforcement often lacks the necessary training to identify and assist trafficking victims.
Community involvement is essential in preventing child exploitation.
The misconception of 'rescuing' children can lead to further trauma.
Effective solutions require collaboration between various sectors, including law enforcement and NGOs.
Survivor involvement is critical in shaping effective programs and solutions.
Transparency in funding and organizational effectiveness is necessary for real impact.
Trauma-informed care is essential in supporting survivors of trafficking.
Education and awareness are key components in combating trafficking.


Sound bites

"Awareness is powerful, but we need to take action."
"Not all abuse is trafficking."
"If we don't understand the problem, we can't solve it."


Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Resilience and Relationships
02:29 Understanding Child Trafficking and Exploitation
06:42 The Role of Law Enforcement in Child Protection
12:52 Defining Human Trafficking and Its Impact
18:36 The Complexity of Rescuing Children
25:31 Challenges in Social Services and Law Enforcement Training
29:54 Understanding Trauma-Informed Approaches
36:12 The Role of Law Enforcement in Aftercare
37:32 Vetting Organizations for Effectiveness
40:19 The Importance of Tailored Healing Modalities
48:45 Funding and Transparency in Nonprofits
56:47 Connecting with Experts and Resources

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

Olson,

Stephanie Olson: 0:17

hello and welcome to resilience and relationships R and R. I'm Stephanie Olson. I'm here with Rebecca Saunders. We get to introduce somebody who has become an amazing collaborative partner and a good friend of ours. Kim Kelly, Kim, welcome.

Unknown: 0:34

Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah.

Stephanie Olson: 0:37

So tell us a little bit about what you do, and then we'll talk about some details.

Unknown: 0:42

Absolutely so I'm a survivor of 20 years of child trafficking. I was born and raised in one of the most notorious trafficking cults in the world. Today. I work alongside local, state and federal agencies, law enforcement, etc, to train them on how to identify, intervene and prevent the exploitation of children, because trafficking, most of it doesn't look like what you've been told. Most victims aren't the way we've been told to look for so with better identification, we can also tailor our solutions to be more effective. And I'm very passionate about unpacking the problem as well as the solutions.

Stephanie Olson: 1:18

I love that and and thank you for sharing that. And you know, I'm sorry that that is something that you went through, for sure, I am so grateful that you are using your trauma and the things that you've gone through to just make a difference in the lives of other people. So thank you for that. That's amazing.

Unknown: 1:40

I will say I want to thank you guys for what you do. I've spent years working with various NGOs, and I'm going to be real direct. A lot of them are not as effective as I think we all could be. So I want to thank you again for not only your survivor, informed approach, your trauma informed approach. That's a nice way of saying solutions that actually make sense and that actually helps survivors. So thank

Stephanie Olson: 2:01

you guys. I love that. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. And I think that would be a good topic to bring Kim on again, because I just talked to somebody yesterday that has an organization. They don't have the organization. They saw another organization that says they're trauma informed, and they are not at all. And I think of that Seinfeld where anybody can take a reservation, it's the holding of the reservation that's important. And, yeah, same thing with trauma. Anybody can say they're trauma informed. It's actually the being trauma informed that's critical?

Unknown: 2:41

Yeah, no, I'm big on definitions, not for the sake of words, but for the sake of, like, let's define things correctly, so that we understand the differences and so that our solutions can actually be effective. Because if we're blurring the lines and all these things, again, it's not about the words as much as, what are we trying to say? What are we trying to solve? What is the best solution? Because if we don't understand the problem, we can't solve it. So a lot of times with my I do a lot of public speaking, education and training. I train law enforcement. When I'm talking to families and children, my messaging is going to be tailored to them. But you know, the point remains the same. It's also about, are we targeting the message in a way that's actually effective, in a way that will it will actually be received? Right? So in understanding these things and in conveying the problems and solutions to different people in different sectors of society, there's information tailored to them that can help them be effective. I'm not going to give the same training to parents and to law enforcement with parents. I'm all about digital safety. Please don't give the internet unsupervised, unlimited access to your child. Here's how to do it. Here's how to talk to them. Prevention, I love the education you guys give, and I'm excited to refer my people to you guys, because I love that. That being same law enforcement. Here's my very long story short, generally, law enforcement is not given the training they need to be able to identify and be helpful in these situations. That's a huge deficiency. That's a huge gap that we are now filling, and that, in my opinion, is not acceptable. That's something we that people need to know about, again, understand, but also, let's help them be effective with solutions that actually make sense. Beyond that, within law enforcement, there's the need for specialized training, because what there is a lot of are charts and data, but there's not a lot of actionable data. There's not a lot of information being tailored to the right departments and the right units in the right way to help them be effective with it. So there's large organizations we all know about that collect a lot of data. Every year, they're given billions of dollars to collect a lot of data every year. If that's not actionable for law enforcement, we're just making charts pretty we're not acting on that information. So in the other side of things, I've done a lot of undercover work, where I've assisted law enforcement with various investigations and sting operations and all these different things and different. States around the USA. I've witnessed many situations with local, state and federal where multiple agencies were involved. And let's put it this way, I'm volunteering my time because I just really can't see this job not being done, that being said when we're in the thick of it, often in the heat of the moment when there's real things that we really need to act on correctly. I've seen the deficiencies in training that have led to subpar results and often the bad guys getting away, the kids not being helped. This is not about tearing anything apart. This is about building things that maybe don't exist or that weren't maybe built correctly. The good news there, like again, I'm very I'm very real about problems and solutions, but I'm also here not just to complain. We're here to help solve problems. This can go in many different directions, but like the better the public understands the need for law enforcement training. That's an understatement for this conversation we're going to focus on in the realm of combating child exploitation and trafficking, right? Keeping it right there, though, there's a lot of people that feel however they feel about law enforcement, and I'm not here to change their mind. I'm here to say, Great, let's redirect their efforts towards something we can all agree on, protecting children absolutely. And believe me, I know a lot of law enforcement officers that are just as pissed off. Let's make sure our solutions are actually effective. That way we can actually solve problems.

Stephanie Olson: 6:29

I love that. I'm going to jump in here really quickly, because you talked about definitions, and I think a lot of our audience knows what the definition of human trafficking based on some of our previous podcasts. But in case somebody doesn't, would you define human trafficking and child exploitation

Unknown: 6:50

for us? Happily summarized, of course, just real disclaimer for your audience and those who don't know me, laughter and, you know, a real dark humor. So that's my chosen.

Stephanie Olson: 7:03

Tim is fabulous. I'm just gonna go right there say that you're fabulous. Love it. You fit right in with us. You do anyway.

Unknown: 7:13

It's a very healthy chosen form of feeling that being said, All right, let's first define human trafficking, right? Globally, we know it's this massive problem. Unfortunately, it's not just a far, far away problem. So the sale and exploitation of humans, over simplified, can happen in many different ways. It happens all over the world. Unfortunately, America is the biggest problem. We're the biggest source and destination for human trafficking in the world. It's estimated to be around $150 billion industry. No one knows the real numbers, because criminals generally don't report their things. All right, narrow that down to the United States of America. Many ways humans can be trafficked. There's labor trafficking, there's sex trafficking, there's various forms of exploitation, organ harvesting, all these different things. Many ways humans can be exploited, and that people are profiting from that exploitation. Now, let's narrow that down to child trafficking. There are many different ways children are being trafficked in America. A few years ago, it was confirmed at around $50 billion a year. Recently, it's more at confirmed 74 billion. I believe, once again, we're barely scratching the tip of the iceberg because traffic traffickers aren't filing classes, and nobody knows the real numbers, because most of these businesses are not reported. I'm speaking from lived experience on all of these things, as well as referencing available data, I want to make a note about data, because I'm a data expert. I'm a marketing professional. Data matters very much to me. However, I would like people to research the data on child exploitation and trafficking in America, because if you know what you're looking for, it explains a lot about why this problem is not being solved. There are severe gaps in the data, if we can even call it that, there are a lot of things that are not even being addressed, much less acknowledge and definitely not we're not changing our laws to protect the innocent. It doesn't seem that the system is actually with, you know, withholding children's best interest in mind when we really unpack these things. And what I mean by that, here's one of many examples, because I'm not here to tell people what to think. I like to help them unpack the logic for themselves. Rhetorical question, why don't we have a federal agency that is dedicated to combating human trafficking? Important question, great question. And, you know, I think that from what I've seen just giving, like presentations and education to the general public, that a lot of people assume that we do, yeah, and I think that there's this big misconception out there that people are just believing, oh yes, this is a problem. So law enforcement is receiving mandatory training. We do have people fighting this, and that's just not the case. Oh, and again, I'm summarizing so much here. When I ask people these rhetorical questions, they should be horrified, not because I'm using it's not a fear mongering thing. This knowledge is power if we choose to do something with it, right? So again, we have to acknowledge the problem. But awareness or acknowledgement just means like, hey, my house is on fire. Now you got to put the fire out. Now, we got to do something about it. Otherwise, we're just going to turn to the ground, right? So awareness is powerful, explaining the problem, unpacking the problem, people like me with lived experience. No one can call it a theory to my face, right? However, I'm also here with lived experience to correct the premise, because we haven't even defined child trafficking yet, right? But there's a lot of things we need to understand about this problem in order for our solutions to be effective. All right, so on a federal level, we don't see a concerted effort to combat this issue, you know, how, like the whole war on drugs thing, there's this whole effort, right? And lots of votes and lots of things have been said about it, right? Lots of promises have been made. I don't see that same, you know, pretending to care over here with the whole protecting children thing. Yeah, I'm being a little facetious, because it's difficult to really, you know, take it seriously, but here's the point that I'm making, but I'll give you more evidence to support this, right? We have two options if we want to be real about this problem. Is it incompetence, or is it intentional? Now, either way, it's unacceptable, but I want to give people that logic to unpack, because if our assumption is that we have to, you know, go tell people in Washington about this, to make them aware, then we probably won't be that effective. But if we realize it is up to us, it's up to we, the people, number one, to protect children. But number two, there's a lot of things within the system that are not designed to protect the innocent. So within the realms of law enforcement, a lot, to your point, a lot of times, the public doesn't understand the layers, the dynamics and all the things that don't exist. Right? Law enforcement already has an impossible job. I'm not blaming them for not knowing. I'm exposing the fact that they, I think, are intentionally not given this targeted training, and that's a huge gap that we can fill right now. Beyond that, within law enforcement, there's all these different units and departments, and they don't all do the same thing. I'm oversimplifying this for the public, right? But within training, we give targeted training for patrol officers, for ICAC units, for the investigative side, for the digital, for the online, etc, intelligence side, that's a very different type of training, very different they need different information than the patrol or task force or SWAT guy who's on the street. You just need to know who and where, right. If this information is to be effective, we need to make it actionable for law enforcement. The other side of that, the public needs to understand how much training law enforcement does not get in general, but specific to protecting children, then we can actually target our resources effectively, not only towards training, but towards these task forces and sting operations and resultant efforts, these good results, these positive results that can occur when we have The personnel that's actually trained, qualified and equipped.

Stephanie Olson: 13:02

So, you know, I think there's a very important key here, and I'm just taking some notes, because I want to make sure I remember all of this. But you keep saying protecting children, and I think that is one of the key pieces that community members are not grabbing a hold of or we think protecting children is something different than it actually is, and we move into quote, unquote, rescuing children. And I think that is one of the problems that we have to combat, because we are such a reactive society, and we have movies that come out that are all about rescue and things like that. So can you speak to that at all?

Unknown: 13:53

Yes, I also realized I didn't fully answer your question to define child trafficking, but I'll tie that in as people can understand. You know, this is a layered problem. I like to oversimplify things, but there's many layers to understand. So to the definition, and then I'll expand we're talking about the sale and exploitation of children. Is child trafficking in general. Child sex trafficking is estimated to be about a $74 billion per year industry in the United States that is disgusting. Okay, within the sexual exploitation. Now this is how I oversimplify it. Not all abuse is trafficking, okay? There's a separate entirely nasty spectrum of abuse, all kinds of different terrible ways that children can be abused or exploited. Not all of that is trafficking. I call that the umbrella, Yep, absolutely, exactly exploitation or abuse is an umbrella term for bad things all right. Now there's the separate spectrum of trafficking, which I oversimplify as the sale and exploitation. We're talking children in the United States being sex trafficked. That's at least a $74 billion per year industry. The. Public doesn't see it. We often don't know it exists, that there's many complexities about this, but it's not a one size fits all problem. There's not one way it looks. There's not one way it happens. There's not one category, category or pattern of this that makes it difficult to identify, as well as to combat right now, to your question, there are, there are a lot of people tend to oversimplify things. And on the one hand, I agree with you know, there's some low hanging fruit problems that are very solvable, that we should address. I'm very focused on combating child sex abuse material. CSAM is a stupid problem. We should not have it. We have solutions that exist. It's just that we have to make them want to implement them. That's me being sarcastic. All right, to your point, right? When a politician talks about protecting children, sometimes I throw up in my mouth, because generally, the band aid they're advocating for is not even a helpful solution, or sometimes the wound is not even what they're describing. So there's a lot of you know people. It sounds very pretty to talk about protecting children, but what does that really mean? There's a lot of layers of this problem. So there are also symptoms of this problem. If we don't understand the root causes of these problems, we're just going to continue being reactive. So there's many different levels I can break this down into, right? There's the prevention side of things that involves a lot of parenting, talking to children, communication, a lot of prevention technology, things like monitoring your child's online safety, right? That's a whole other subject. You guys have a lot of education about how to communicate with your children. We on, you know, on the side of law enforcement, we can't replace the parents, right? If they're allowing their children access to unsafe things like that's a whole other problem within society. Side note, unfortunately, familial trafficking, number one most reported type of child trafficking in America. That means families and friends trafficking their children. Unfortunately, that's my lived experience. I was born and raised in this cult. That's the other story. But like, yes, my parents thought that was God's highest will. It can be difficult to identify the real victims. If we have this mindset or this feature in our head, from what we saw in the movie that like chains and cages or something else, we are not going to identify the victims right in front of us. So there are

Stephanie Olson: 17:27

many literally wrote down familial trafficking, as you were saying, as you said, absolutely fabulous.

Unknown: 17:33

Yes, it's very horrifying. It's very shocking. Like, yes, it's very dark. All of this is most of the public. They've been fed this narrative that is like big bad guys and somewhere, and I'm it's not that I disagree with you, it's that I want to bring it closer to home for people, because if we're over here, like reading things on the internet, but we're not involved with our community, we're going to miss what's happening right in front of us, right people, I see the same trend about well meaning people that are like, I just want to help. I just want to protect children. And to your point, like, I just want to rescue children. And I'm like, you. I'm like, thank you. Random stranger on the internet, we can't just go, like, taking kids out. That's called kidnapping. Like, you are not qualified. Kick down because detriment like, thank you. But it's not that heroic. You know what I mean? Like, it's a lot more practical and maybe, like, less entertaining in our heads. But talking to children, monitoring children being involved, being involved, who with who has access to children, right? I challenge everyone to pick five kids in their community, like within a five minute walk of your house, I promise you there are five kids who need help. Start there, protect them. Promise me, it won't be them, right? That's how we bring this awareness into action? Because knowledge is only power if we choose to do something with it.

Stephanie Olson: 18:46

Oh, I I love that. Hallelujah. I think there are so many important keys that you just said there. But I think that what people forget too, with the whole rescuing children, kidnapping, I love that that's not trauma informed, and we absolutely have to remember that if somebody is being trafficked by family members, by somebody they trust, by somebody they love, whether it's family members or neighbor, whomever This is someone they know and love and trust, and to rip them out of that situation is traumatic, whether it feels right or wrong to us.

Unknown: 19:34

Yeah, so let's be real on the civilian side, like there's a lot of ways people can make the situation worse if they don't know what they're doing. That's me saying it as nicely as I can and oversimplified, right? Unfortunately, I've talked to a lot of survivors who were traffic in the United States as children, right? Sometimes people or law enforcement intervene, and it made things worse on the real like, it resulted in some people losing their life. Okay, the victims. My point is that if we don't understand the problem, we can't solve it. You see how, like I'm really bringing it, highlighting these points, because there's huge importance in handling things correctly. I'm not asking for the perfect words or the perfect response, but I'm letting you know we can make things worse. We can let victims and bad guys get away. We can complicate the problem, meaning adding unnecessary layers of complexity. We can also distance the right people from getting involved when things are not done correctly. Now I want to back up law enforcement with something here. I see this trend of, you know, YouTubers and even nonprofits and people that are like setting up sting ups to get bad guys and look, I'm with you like my heart and soul, right? I think our communities, long story short, I think our culture should turn into one that is not tolerant of predators. Totally, right. I want predators to know they're being hunted. That's a different story. But when it comes to intervening in these situations, sometimes people who are not trained and qualified can make it worse. It might feel heroic in the moment. You might be very excited, but for the victim, for the process in the court of law, you may not know the aftermath or the impact of what you are doing or not doing. I'm going to share a quick story that in that it really depicts the Power of Awareness. But as well as you know, a lot of complexities we need to understand about a situation, all right, there are two reasons I did not suffer worse abuse as a child. I'm the youngest in my sibling lineup. Just happened to be, but it's because around the time I was born, there was a series of international raids. This was an international religious cult. We were in almost every country around the world. It started in the late 60s. By now it was in the early 90s. All right. Fast forward. A lot of people had escaped this cult, notified their families or local authorities or whatever, and there was a coordinated series of international raids in four different continents around the world, local authorities stormed these cult compounds. They arrested the adults, and they put the children into institutions. I'm going to speed the story up to focus on the lessons. Two short years later, there was an international court case out of the UK, and for some reason, despite pages of evidence and information and names and victims, this entire group was acquitted. That means, go home. Everything's fine. Nobody's to blame. Not one adult was convicted anyway. All right, you see there like we could unpack the colossal failure. You could even call that corruption, for sure. Now let's talk about the failure, right? We were mostly American children being trafficked all over the world with our parents. Okay? Our parents thought it was God's highest will to raise us in such a way where trafficking was one of the many forms of daily abuse, all right, so in this situation, there's definitely a lot of layers of this problem. Let's add one more. Unfortunately, these children were taken into institutions. Often, these were third world countries. Often, these children suffered the same and worse abuse in these institutions. It's a very nice way to say they were not trauma informed at all. Some babies lost their lives in these institutions. All right, now, when these children were returned back into the same lifestyle, right, our stories didn't end there, as you can imagine, they should have. Now, many documentaries were made. Many people were filming the problem, aware of the problem, evaluating the problem, documenting the problem. There was not a trauma, informed solution for us, children were born and raised under a rock without access to the outside world. We did not have any type of support system or advocacy. So this show and dance resulted in not very much change, unfortunately, but one thing it did do this is the power of awareness. Awareness reduces the predator's ability to operate when bad guys are exposed when we, the people, are aware of what's really going on, it makes it harder for the bad guys to get away with doing bad things to children. So that whole shindig forced this cult to pretend to be less abusive. They literally burnt the books. They literally had to implement age minimums for different types of bad things. Yeah. So I'm second generation, meaning born and raised in this cult. The second and third generation kids from around my age down, we suffered a lot less than that of my eldest siblings. Okay, so I'm being real about this dynamic. I'm explaining to that just because the headlines say kids were rescued, doesn't mean kids are safe. Just because we think there's intervention or there's exposure or you see them on the screens, does not mean the kids are safe. It doesn't mean the bad guys were taken down, right? I'm going to add, you know, another layer that the public needs to understand. Bring that back to the United States of America. Okay? There's a lot of people blaming the police, or saying, Yeah, but the police won't in my area that okay? I talked a lot of these people on the internet, right? A lot of times when we don't understand the system, we don't, we're not look we're looking at the sharp end of the sword, but we're not a. Aware of the hand that's wielding the sword. That's how I oversimplify that, right? The sharp end of the sword, it's a good way to say that it can absolutely do damage, but the hand wielding the sword is responsible for the intensity and the direction of that damage. So in the United States, if we don't understand the system, right, the district attorneys, the Attorney Generals, the Sheriffs, the mayor, the city council, people, the budgets like if we don't understand all these closer to root causes, right? We're only blaming the sharp end of the sword. So this is why education matters. This is why being trauma informed matters. This is why we have to also move past awareness into action, but informed action, not just chaos.

Stephanie Olson: 25:44

I love that, and I have two questions for you, but one of them just kind of bounces off that last one. There are so many, well, actually it's kind of the same question. There are so many social service agencies that actually say they do this work law enforcement. Why is it that so many social service agencies, so many law enforcement agencies, so many people even saying they are doing this work, are not trained to do this work appropriately, effectively and safely in a trauma informed lens

Unknown: 26:26

to your answer of why, look, I'm big on why. I think it leads us to a lot of wisdom in everything. When we ask why, I always come back to, is it intentional or is it incompetence? I don't know if there's a third option. I just like to oversimplify things for the sake of clarity. It's okay. So in order for our solutions to be effective, we have to have a correct premise. Right? Now, I don't have all the answers to all my questions about this, right? I do believe oversimplified. We need an informed approach, and we can benefit from a collaborative approach, meaning not all of us need to do the same thing, but if we have cohesive communication, meaning we're not duplicating efforts, we're not competing, we are collaborating in a way that actually makes sense, right? I think we can all benefit from that. Now I'm going to talk more about the NGO world. However, I think this could apply to a lot of different institutions, right? I've seen, directly said, I've seen a lot of people that are simply exploiting the problem. What I mean is collecting millions of dollars in the name of combating trafficking or protecting children, but they're not combating it. Now, you could call that intentional or incompetence, but then they're, you know, making a lot of money, that that's not going to the real victims to the resources aren't being correctly allocated, right? So in a nutshell, and I think there's a spectrum of intensity here that's exploiting the problem. I know that's part of the problem right now. There's different ways we see that play out. I think that pattern applies to a lot. I think a lot of these solutions are quite logical to me. They're very intuitive. And when I've presented a lot of these things, let's talk about specifically law enforcement training, these ideas have been well received. And they're like, Wow, that makes so much sense. That's genius. And I'm like, thank you. I feel like just logical. I think that pattern can apply to a lot of things. But I also think, you know, if we're if we're willing to recognize a lot of this is intentional, that's a big part of the problem. We could say there's a lot of corruption, for sure. There's also a lot of outdated models. We see this in law enforcement training, where sometimes things don't train until someone loses, sorry, sometimes things don't change until someone loses their life, and that's all too unfortunate. A lot of data, research, training methods, initiatives are outdated, and again, we're emphasizing the need to be trauma informed, because a lot of these things are not considering the survivor's perspective. They're not considering the psychology of what's going on. So as an example of that, if we're looking for the victims to say the right words, and if they don't say the right words, we can't handle them, process them correctly. We can't treat them like a victim. We have to treat them like a criminal. That's not a trauma. Informed understanding of what's really happening here, how scripted they are, how controlled they are, how afraid of you they are, how controlling their traffickers are, and all the different other dynamics, right? So the other aspect is that a lot of times, you know, let's let's be real, these things are quite complex. And when it comes to the aftercare side of things, right, that's not law enforcement's jurisdiction. So there's a huge separation in understanding, and, again, in the cohesiveness of how they should work best. A big part of what I do often is when working with, when collaborating with different law enforcement agencies, local, state and federal, also being able to vet the aftercare for this situation, because there are some situations that are great for this when a. Child comes out of certain type of traumatic events, right? There are things that can benefit their healing. There are things that can make their healing more difficult. You see very nice words, right? Often, there's physical trauma. There's always mental trauma, okay? So in receiving a child and rescuing children, etc, the processing, process has to depend on the situation. Sometimes urgent medical care is needed, and that has to be trauma informed as well as safe. You can't just take them to the emergency room, right? This is a trafficked child. They have to be physically protected beyond rescue, so law enforcement can still be involved to that extent, right? But then, often in certain agencies that are there to protect children, right? We have outdated processes. We have survivor centers or safe houses that are not truly safe, much less trauma informed. So there's a lot of gaps here, in what the public understands, in where the resources go, as well as law enforcement's jurisdiction. Again, they are not tasked with aftercare, but sometimes the transfer process, the raid process, the rescue process, sometimes all of that can actually re traumatize the victim. And that's not always avoidable, but often it is. So I'll give you an example in law enforcement training, an idea I've presented to law enforcement just based on, quite honestly, logic that I've only heard of two detectives having implemented in the past that I didn't know about before, and they've had wild success. Now. We were very excited to find each other, because these incredible individuals had, you know, 2030, years in law enforcement, had been doing all these things, and basically what they were told to do wasn't working, but what they were doing on their own was working very well, and they were given that permission to like, Hey, okay, keep getting these good results, right? They were trauma informed, because, let's be honest, they dug into and understood the problem, at least in their environment, right? So the model I'm talking about when we for example, let's say we know we're going after these three bad guys, but we bust room, and there's 10 people in it, and we don't know who these other seven people are. So instead of for context, we're talking about adults when it's children, they are objectively victims as a different situation. When it's adults who tell us they want to be there, they consent to be there, whether they're sex workers or whatever's going on. Here's my point, if we're going after traffickers, right? But we're treating sex workers like they're being trafficked, or like they're the bad guys, or even like they're all victims. Often, we are overlooking people who could be helpful and not only helping us understand the problem, but the informant model that works very effectively in the drug trafficking world, that is generally not being used in the combating human trafficking world, right? So, instead of treating these people like criminals, what if we were to buy them a piece of pizza and a sprite and talk to them and let them know we're not there after their business model, they can trust us. Number two, we're after the real bad guys that are selling children. Guess what? These grown women often suffer terrible things in their history. They often are mothers, but the point is that they will absolutely rat on the bad guys selling children. Why that's a different buyer, that's a different industry, if you will. There's a lot of overlap, but if we don't understand the nuances and the difference, number one, we're not able to identify victims, much less help them. And number two, we're often missing so much about what's really happening in our streets, because if we think pretty charts and data are going to tell us what's really going on and who's really running things and how we're going to miss the entire point 100%

Stephanie Olson: 33:37

and treating these individuals, like human beings?

Unknown: 33:43

Yeah, so I think it sounds so simple, but isn't happening like most law enforcement is tired of arresting the same people, right? We're going to use the term sex workers as sort of an umbrella, but like pimps and, you know, like the same people that you're going to keep arresting like number one, as a survivor of actual child trafficking, I would like to define the difference between trafficking and sex work for many different reasons, but to your point, right? There's a lot of nuances involved. Some of those people can assist us in targeting the real bad guys and identifying the real victims. Also, if we're assuming all of them are bad, all of them are victims, or all of them something. Again, we're failing the real victims. So I'm big on correcting the premise, on defining all these nuances, all right. So I'm big on defining not only these terms, but also the differences, so that we can tailor our solutions to be effective.

Stephanie Olson: 34:34

So this is, again, I how do we get organizations, and let's just talk NGOs for a minute, because we have talked about this offline and the importance of NGOs understanding all this. How do we get NGOs to recognize that they are. Trauma informed, or that they need to do more research, more study, or at least connect with people who can train them effectively. Because I think there is a huge, huge gap in that, and some of that to your point of of incompetence, is this happened to me. I have a heart for this, and so I'm just going to start a nonprofit, because this is what happened to me. And you know, when I think about I'm a survivor of sexual and domestic violence, an expert in my own story, but I'm not an expert in I'm going to build a shelter, and just make sure everybody is, you know, all of that stuff, speak, speak to that a little bit. Lots to speak to that's to speak to

Unknown: 35:51

make an entirely separate episode just about vetting organizations. And we

Stephanie Olson: 35:56

should actually, let's do that, yes, yes, but go ahead and speak to it, and then we will do another one as well.

Unknown: 36:03

There's a lot of patterns I would want to draw people's attention to. I think the shortest way I could say it is, let's make sure their output matches their input. If they've raised millions of dollars, we should expect millions of results in the United States with children being sick like that's, you know, that's where I could say, there again, my dark humor helps me laugh. But like, it's really unfortunate, as a survivor that there are so many organizations exploiting the problem, but anyway, bringing it all the way back, how can we help them understand, right, if they're not trauma informed? And like, how to actually be helpful? So I think there's a few patterns here. But like, if they're not consulting survivors, if I don't, they don't need to be survivor led, but if they're not involving survivors, if they're not listening to survivors, if they're not helping survivors, again, direct humor, like, let me be real. I've vetted lots of different organizations and safe houses and organizations that specifically claim to house and support survivors, like after care for survivors, safe houses for survivors of trafficking, I had survivors who qualified for every single thing I spent hours on the phone and sending letters and talking back and forth. In one case, they sent the survivor a $25 gift card to Walmart that was their poof. Go away, right?

Stephanie Olson: 37:22

And, wow, so helpful, so helpful. It's not

Unknown: 37:25

even worth the time I've spent making phone calls. That's why I fund the work I do myself. But it's also, like, it's horrifying, really, that there's real people who need help, and then there's a lot of things that are not helpful. So again, if we're not talking about the intentional aspect of this, if we're really just talking about, to me, the incompetence spectrum of like, well intentioned, but not as effective as they could be. Right? Involve survivors, I'm going to summarize a whole lot here. Right? Involve survivors in both your understanding of the problem as well as your proposed solutions. Right. Number two, make sure you have measurable results for your solutions. So things that are intangible, like awareness, are great, but they don't cost millions of dollars, right? Right? Social media posts like all of this, education, great. How many schools, how many hours of investigation, how many survivors? Right? I'm not asking you to name people. I'm asking you to quantify results, and if you can't, maybe we should take a different approach that's more effective, right? The other aspect is summarizing a whole lot here in the aftercare process. One of the things that I'm building and working towards with organizations like you guys and those who are really here to actually solve problems is a network of trauma informed therapists and modalities that are helpful for different types of childhood trauma, because right now, in the academic world, that doesn't exist, we need to understand that most therapists, while they are excellent at what they do, they are also not trauma informed when it comes to child trafficking. That's right. Most are not, and they will admit that right? My point is that we need people that are specialized in order to be helpful here. So there's not an abundance of availability of people that really understand how to help these situations. There's also a lot of misconceptions about what might be helpful. So there's a lot of safe houses or aftercare facilities that have a very stringent model of what they require of the survivors or the victims who get helped from them, right? And they'll say, Sure, they can stay with us, but, you know, every morning we wake up and sing about Jesus, okay? Well, this child was just rescued from a religious cult environment that would be very traumatizing for them. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm saying for this child, it would not be helpful for their healing. Could we maybe? You know, tailor, nope. Have to do it this way. Yeah, okay, well, thank you, but that's not going to help this child, right? There's 100 examples like that I could give. So while there's no. One size fits all, solution for healing, for anybody's journey, for any of these issues, right? What we can do is identify patterns and categorize types of trauma and pair those with types of healing modalities that have shown to be helpful, an example of that, right? There's a lot of specifics that are not helpful for certain types of things, but they can be helpful for something else. Now, there are some healing modalities that have been shown to be generally very helpful for many situations. Things like that are art and music therapy, nature therapy, animal therapy. Not every kid is going to like every type of animal, but my point is, generally speaking, those are very general ways to help the child reconnect to themselves, to a safe companion, not have to answer questions or be judged, but just sit there with presence that is safe. So in some cases, the kid wants to be hugged and needs that affection. In some cases, the kid does not want to be touched. We need to understand that although we think a hug is nurturing, it may not be for this kid right now, 100 others give but that's an oversimplified way of explaining trauma informed if our body go ahead, no, I'm sorry. I'm just gonna I think that's so important what you just said. Because I think oftentimes well meaning people think this is what I would want. So it's what everyone wants. Absolutely so important to make that distinction of every person has different needs. And if you're truly about helping them heal, you'll focus on what they need.

Stephanie Olson: 41:44

Yes, that. Yes, absolutely, I love that. And I will say too to your point, I think ego is a huge piece of this. And when we let ego get in the way of actually helping individuals. We lose they lose that. In fact, I saw an organization that wanted to do equine therapy. That's a great idea. I love it. And they were using an organization that actually did equine therapy. Knew what they were doing, it well. Well, they decided I want to do equine therapy, no training whatsoever in equine therapy, no training in all of that. But they wanted to do it because they wanted to build the kingdom. And so I do think that that's a big piece of it that stop with the ego, yes, get me out of a job, please, right?

Unknown: 42:44

100% I'm like, do better than me, please. Like, I don't want to be the one talking about this. It's just, I don't see a lot of people out here. Yeah. So what you said, 100% applies to so many aspects of this problem and solution. I see that in the nonprofit world. I see that in law enforcement as well. Law enforcement will absolutely agree with this, right? So I work at the ranch, Texas. It's a law enforcement and government contracting training facility all the military agencies, etc, etc. Government agencies train here. We also do some programs for civilians. The point is that we're like Switzerland, right? We're not law enforcement, but we're where everybody trains. Law Enforcement knows that between, you know, within their realms, there's all this, you know, drama, I call it, and I'm just happy to stay out of it. But my point is, like, we're this safe place where, no, seriously, we're, like, 100% of the type of protectors who train here are the type that would actually go out of their way to protect children, right? So we have those fireside chats and those real conversations where there's like, we need to do something, yes, right? And now it's beyond, like my department or my unit or my chat, and it's like, help, right? We need, we need this to actually work. And then we start building these collaborative task forces and staying ops and things where we come together for the sake of protecting children, not because of anybody's situation with each other, right? Positive results can happen. The other thing is like, I'm not here to take the credit, if anything, like, I'll give all the credit to law enforcement. I just want the outcome right? We need people that are outcome oriented and not just there to take the credit. Absolutely.

Stephanie Olson: 44:09

That is huge. Yeah. Oh, this is amazing. I I'm thinking about all these things like, Okay, we need to do a show with Kim so we can talk about this. So we could talk about this. I mean, it's just, it's fantastic. You have so much knowledge and and lived experience, but I think beyond that, you are a collaborative person who wants the best for the outcome, and I think that is so important, but at the same time, you're really smart about who you connect with and who you collaborate with. So I think that is, that is everything.

Unknown: 44:52

Thank you, and likewise, and again, like I keep saying this, but I've worked with, I've talked to a lot of organizations, and. I used to be a lot more like, you know, let's wait and see what's gonna happen. I'm a lot more direct now, not only because, like, I don't have a lot of bandwidth and time, right, but it's also, like, I'd rather know right off the bat, if we're like, on, you know, me, we don't have to agree and think the same way. But like, I start with, hi. How are we defining sex trafficking? Like, if you're an animal trafficking organization, I think I did that with you guys. I was like, Hi, my name's Kim. Plus, yeah, find sex trafficking because, like, if we're not in the same body of water, then, right? You know, I mean, it's gonna take a lot of correcting the premise for us to even Yeah. So I really appreciate people that get it, that are willing to understand, that are open to new information, that are open to collaboration, but are also very like outcome oriented with results. So I love the education you guys are putting out the training. I'd love to support that, to help as you know, like, I want to bring you guys in with some of the training programs we're doing at the ranch, Texas. We have an annual training event that's free to all law enforcement. It's called Police Week. It's every May, and we invite law enforcement from all around the country to come for this four day training symposium. And in 2026 this next one, we're going to have anti trafficking as part of that training symposium. So it's going to be great. That's sort of like a taste of, you know what we offer, and just getting people aware of, hey, this training is available here in Texas. It's called T coal, but we're actually credited training, so like, accounts towards your hours and all those things. We want to not only like spread awareness, but really make it tangible for people in the world of law enforcement training. I'm getting it funded so that law enforcement doesn't have to pay for it. It's accredited, so that it counts towards things like, we want it to be helpful and practical, targeted, absolutely. If y'all you know, if you know someone who wants to help, wants to help, wants to be a part of this,

Stephanie Olson: 46:42

please reach out. I love that. I love that. My final question for this podcast, we're doing more, but there are definitely more. My final question for this one is, you know, you talked about funding, what? What I've seen, and to your point, when you've got people who are getting funded millions of dollars to do this work, and the work ends up providing maybe really wonderful and beautiful charts or wonderful comments among whatever, whatever it is, I See a lot of people who are funding those organizations, and there's just not a lot of return. And when you look at organizations like your organization, our organization, a million dollars would change so much of the world. And so I don't know if you can speak to that at all, but I think that's an important piece of the puzzle.

Unknown: 47:46

100% I'd like to do a separate episode just about vetting organizations and like, what we should expect from the inputs, as far as you know, some some low hanging fruit that if we really were serious about solving problems. Here a few of the things we'd at least expect, yeah, but in summary, yeah, I've seen a lot of the really pretty nonprofits and like, I'm in marketing. That's actually my professional background. I'm big on messaging and awareness, and I use that expertise in, you know, conveying the problem in a way that helps people care right, and targeting my message. Like, I'm all about making sure your messaging is effective. That being said, there's a lot of large organizations that look very pretty. They have very pretty online presence, etc, very well funded. But again, we don't see a lot of measurable results, or there's a lot of intangible results, like awareness and social media views. But are we really actually helping victims that we could be helping with all of that? Right? So you know, as you and I can agree, if we were to get a million dollar sponsorship, I could quantify what we're going to do with that. I'll tell you later what we did with that. I'll brag about what we did with that. In fact, right? My personal opinion, if an organization isn't quantifying, and really, like, I'm not saying bragging, but you know what I mean, promoting the exact measurable output, then I feel like they're not being that transparent right now, I encourage people to look at people's 990s every Yes, every five, one c3 is supposed to have financial documents called a 990 they're supposed to be publicly available on their website. Now, I want to give people some caution that there's charity rating systems like Guide Star and Charity Navigator and a lot of other ones, and the way that works is you really just have to recategorize the way you spend money, and they'll, you know, rank you higher, but it's nothing to do with the actual use of the money. So there's rating systems that I don't think are necessarily effective, but there's also a lot of intangible promises, like awareness or supporting survivors. So before somebody supports one of these organizations, even though they look pretty or say the words you like to hear or relate to you and whatever appeals to you, right? I want to empower you to ask them questions and know that if they were really proud of their results, they would be very specific about them with you, right? We're not asking for names. We're asking them to quantify the impact. So the other way is that if you offer to volunteer, I understand not everyone has. Is the time, right? I encourage people to help however they can. But if the more involved you can get with these organizations, the more you're going to understand about them, the more you'll be able to peer behind the veil of what's said and what's done and how and whether or not there's lasting impact, right? Because I wanted to, like, look, there's organizations making claims that I don't think people would normally question, because they're so specific, right? But when you look into it's not true. Like taking credit for warrants that were never issued, arrests that were never made, 100% conviction rates that aren't there. So these really specific claims, like, even though they're promoted, we should fact check them, and there's ways to do that publicly, of course, like look into the arrest records. Look into these situations when you can to see are, are they really being transparent? And if not, in my opinion, if they're exploiting the problem, they're part of the problem. And I want, I want to see people direct their resources to where they're really helpful. So just, I'm going to tie this up with a bow, with a quick story, because earlier this march was when it kind of, you know, almost draw that broke the camel's back for me in terms of trying to understand which organizations were helpful, and wanting to work with everybody, but not everybody, but, you know, wanting to be like, Hey, let's all at least support each other, and then realizing, hey, you know, we're often not even in the same body of water. So that was a very well funded project that, you know, a lot of churches and community leaders supported, right. Very well funded. And what they said their mission was, was we, we work with law enforcement to combat sex trafficking. And I was like, Okay, how are we defining sex trafficking? And they did a lot of you know, awareness about the dangers of pornography. And I don't, you know, I'm trying to find the correlation still with sex trafficking, but it's a lot of you know, porn addiction related education. And look the way that I describe this, very nice. I'm not pro born. That's not my thing. I'm not interested. But it's a different body of water than trafficking, right? There's a lot of people who choose that lifestyle, and my point is not that we should judge them, it's that you can disagree with their lifestyle, but let's not assume that it's all trafficking if we don't really understand the complexities, right? Right? So claims were being made that I know for sure were, you know, not actually how that works. And when I questioned them, they were like, Oh, that's interesting. We didn't know that. And I was like, huh, so all that to say, when it came down to, you know, the claim about assisting law enforcement, I was talking to law enforcement that were at that event, and what it turns out is that this organization had a prayer ministry for when law enforcement set up a sting operation with adults posing as sex workers, and when adults showed up to pay for sex with those adults in motel and law enforcement made those arrests. This organization showed up and prayed for the buyer. Prayer ministry for the buyer. And, you know, I saw a video testimony of someone being like, praise the Lord, I'm no longer addicted to porn, and they were very happy with that result, you know. So I just want to encourage people to look in very closely, as closely as you can, what's being said and what's being done, and if you're aligned with those outcomes, like, is that the outcome that you're donating for, that you're expecting, that you're thinking is effective in this fight. And you know, again, the more we understand the problem, the better we understand whether or not the solutions are

Stephanie Olson: 53:08

effective, right? Because we also have to understand that porn addiction, sex trafficking, they're a different beast, right? And so we have to understand those pieces when we're trying to work to better our communities and so really being very, very honest and intentional about what we're doing and why we're doing it, too. Yeah, I think that's really important.

Unknown: 53:41

Like, you know, again, very generally, but like, we can't allow our bias to cloud our judgment. Yes, just because something is peace, love and healing for me, does not mean you and vice versa, right? So, like, it's not that things or methods. Sometimes the method is not good or bad. It's just not right for this situation. And then, to your point about transparency, we need to do what we say, let's not raise money to combat trafficking, but be, you know, combating porn addictions like, that's not the same, that's not honest, that's not helping real victims. And again, right? Unfortunately, you don't have to be the cute puppy sometimes I call it, but I have to be like, Hi, I'm a survivor of actual child trafficking. Okay, here's all the differences, you know? I mean, just make sure we're if we're advocating for survivors of trafficking or victims of trafficking, like, let's actually help with that, because this is not going to help those people, right?

Stephanie Olson: 54:30

Absolutely, I have absolutely loved this conversation. We are doing this again. This has been amazing. How can people find you.

Unknown: 54:40

Kim, thank you. Well, work at the ranch Texas. You should check us out ranch tx.org. We do have some training programs for civilians, but we do a lot of law enforcement training. So contact us if we can help. I also have a nonprofit called Digital defenders united. The goal is to unite the experts to actually solve problems. So that's in the digital realm, that's in awareness as well as law enforcement. Training and Educational Resources. So digital defenders united.org. Is my nonprofit website, and you can contact me on either site,

Stephanie Olson: 55:07

and I will make sure to get that and your socials in our our whatever, our comments, our whatever. And so people can find you and reach out to you if they have questions or want training, all of those things, but this has been incredible. Kim, we appreciate all the the work that you're doing. We are so grateful that we have connected because you are doing amazing things. And I appreciate you very much.

Unknown: 55:38

Thank you. Likewise, it's really an understatement. I want the public to know, like again, really highlight the heroes that are really here for the right reasons. So thank you guys for the work that you do, and I'm excited to continue supporting

Stephanie Olson: 55:49

it. Yes, thank you, and we are so glad you joined us. See us next time. Get some R and R until then, bye. You you.