Robert part 2 S3E4

Invading the Darkness Podcast Season 3 Episode 4
 
 Hello and welcome to Invading the Darkness: stories from the fight against child sex trafficking featuring Linda Smith, the founder of Shared Hope International.
 
 Join our hosts, lived-experience experts Yvonne and Kim, as they discuss the stories of other survivors in the movement and share valuable insights that will equip you to join in the fight against sex trafficking.
 
 In this powerful episode, our host, Yvonne and Kim, continue with our survivor, Robert, as he share his life experience with us. Roberts shared his story with Shared Hope International at this year's JuST conference.

Robert reflects on his childhood trauma, the role of faith in his healing process, and the importance of speaking out to raise awareness about trafficking, particularly for male victims. 

At Shared Hope, we train professionals to recognize the signs of human trafficking, empowering communities to identify and support victims. Explore our eLearning resources to learn more.

Many child sex trafficking victims are unjustly prosecuted for offenses linked to their victimization. Help us change this. Text "Shared Hope" to 52886 and tell your legislators: "There are Child Sex Trafficking Victims in Our Prisons!"
 
Don’t forget to subscribe @sharedhopeinternational , follow us on social media, and check out invadingthedarkness.org.

Visit https://invadingthedarkness.org/
learn more about how you can take action https://sharedhope.org/justlikeme/
SUPPORT THE PODCAST https://sharedhope.org/donate/
 
Now, if you’re ready, let’s invade the darkness together.

Transcript

0:00

Thank you for tuning in to Shared Hope International's Invading the Darkness, an anti-sex trafficking podcast. We want to acknowledge that the content we discuss can be emotionally challenging and may evoke strong reactions. The stories we share often involve tough subjects related to suffering caused by sex trafficking, which may be difficult for some listeners to hear. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome to season three, episode three of Invading the Darkness. This podcast shines a light on the hidden realities of domestic minor sex trafficking brought to you by Shared Hope International. I'm your volunteer host, joined by my dear friend Kim, where both survivors of sex trafficking using our voices to break the silence and spark change. Invading the Darkness is proudly produced by Shared Hope International, an organization founded in 1998 by Congresswoman Linda Smith, after she witnessed the heart-wrenching realities of trafficking in an Indian brothel. As Shared Hope, we focus on three key principles, prevent, restore, and bring justice. Prevent the conditions that lead to sex trafficking, restore, offering support and healing to survivors, bring justice, ensuring justice for those affected by trafficking. This season also features the Just Like Me campaign, a dynamic new effort to empower communities with knowledge and resources led by survivors and advocates who are changing lives. Each episode will take you deeper into the stories of resilience, hope, and transformation. Whether you're new to this topic or you're committed advocate, our conversations will equip and inspire you. Together we'll tackle the misconceptions, amplify survivors' voices, and challenge the systems that perpetuate trafficking. In this episode, we're diving into part two of Robert's personal story and the journey that led him here. Don't miss the post-interview discussion where we'll unpack key themes and provide actionable steps for advocacy. Stay tuned because together we can make a difference. I'm still recovering. I will recover the rest of my life. I survive things that people can't imagine and I won't get over it. And I don't presume that everybody's in the same place mentally or emotionally or any other way. But I'm always excited to support someone else and find out where they are and encourage them if they're on a path to continue that path. So. I'm encouraged by it, but I know it's a long way yet. You we come to these conferences and I don't know, you mentioned that there's 120 survivors here. I don't know the percentage of male survivors. I'm guessing it's less than 10 % of male survivors at this conference. So I'm hopeful that that number will increase. When I was doing my research and my work, I had contact with a local FBI agent with an Innocence Loss Project, and she shared with me statistics of boys that were rescued from trafficking in a set period of years in Colorado. And in this six-year period, in year one of this six-year period, there was 0%. And in year six, there was almost 20%. And I asked her, said, do you think there were no boys trafficked in year one? And she said, no, I'm certain that there were boys trafficked. We just didn't see them. We didn't find them. We weren't looking for them. And I said, you're right. That's many more percentages than you could imagine. you know, I don't like statistics because they're based on false facts. mean, the statistics about what percentage are boys, you don't know the truth because nobody's been looking for boys. Law enforcement has not been looking for boys. There are no other very limited number of nonprofits that are servicing males. And so the statistics about boys are completely flawed. This idea that, oh, it's one in six. That's not true. There's a study from John Jay College in New York that in certain boroughs, was 44.5 % of the trafficked youth were boys. So when you point to me as to say, well, boys make up 10%. First of all, what does that matter? If girls only made up 10%, would you think it's unimportant that girls are trafficked? no less important that boys are trafficked. So the idea that we should rely on false statistics is ignorant. And it doesn't really matter. If it was only one boy or one girl being trafficked, would you still not care because it's only one person? What if it's a hundred thousand people? Do you care now? Does it matter? I think we should be trying to make a difference no matter the statistics. I used to not share it all because A, I thought probably nobody could relate to it and that or they just didn't want to hear it. And then I had some of people that I consider my mentors who said, don't edit your truth, tell your whole truth, because it's going to matter because there is somebody out there who can relate to what we went through. So for me, my abuser was my dad and he started the grooming when I was two or three years old. And he would tell me, well, know, this is what dads do to teach their sons about their bodies and don't tell your mom because you'll just make her feel sad because girls don't have the same parts as boys. And so it was in my mind as a very small child, it was instructional that he was helping me. And it was that grooming of, know, this is normal, this is okay, this is what we do. And don't tell your mom. That's, of course what a perpetrator or a trafficker does is isolate the victim, get the victim to stop trusting or, you know, relating to a safe adult. And so his grooming started when I was still in diapers, literally. And the sexual abuse was gradual from molestation to oral sex to sodomy when I was five years old to trafficking when I was five years old to nine years old. Reading, yeah, I used to voraciously. would read, you know, in grade school there was this, back in the day, there was how many books can you read over the summer? How many books can you read in one semester? And I would blow that chart off because I would read simultaneously. I would read one chapter of one book, it up, read another chapter of another book, read another chapter of another book, and I would read two or three books at a time. I just couldn't get enough reading because it was my escape. I had to some way of going somewhere. so reading, I could literally place myself in those stories and experience those stories by reading, just endlessly reading books. That was one of my early forms of escape. I think the most important thing is to keep including boys and men in the conversation. I know it's not the most popular thing in the world to say, But this idea that gender neutral language is appropriate, gender neutral language is not inclusive, it's dismissive. So when you say women and children, you are not including boys and men. That's not inclusive. That's offensive and ignorant. That's not helpful. And so when you're talking about victims of trafficking, you should be saying men, women, boys, girl, or other gender identities. You should be saying them specifically to identify them and include them in the conversation. Using the general, well, you're included in the concept. I know this will be very unpopular, the VAWA, the Victim Violence Against Women Act. well, know, there's things about men there too. Really? So can we call it violence against men and just say that women are included instead? That's not inclusive. That's exclusive, dismissive, and hateful. So we just need to include the right language so that we can see all the people who are victims and saying, women and children includes boys. No, it doesn't. If I change it to men and children, do you feel included? No, you don't. Because I didn't name you. I didn't identify you. I didn't recognize you or value you. So we need to change the language so that we're including everyone that was trafficked and just including boys and men in the language is our first step. When I started my first therapy, my first committed therapy with a phenomenal therapist who I feel like I owe my life to her, she handed me the only book available, which was A Courage to Heal, which was a book written by women for women. And she said, well, when you see it's a girl or woman, just think to yourself, boy or man. Because that's all that I had. That was the only book for people recovering from sexual abuse. And it was demoralizing and emasculating and hurtful. But it was all we had. It needs to be expanded. The language needs to be expanded. We need to be included. And so that's the first step is just saying we recognize that. You know, the worst part of this process is that when boys and men are not included, It has five effects. One is that the general public doesn't know boys and men are trafficked to, and that's a terrible thing because the general public controls a lot of what happens. Their money goes to where they believe needs to be helped or fixed. Law enforcement doesn't see boys and men as victims on the street corner or on the internet. NGOs, nonprofits, you know, there is the A Law Review article by Professor Jones that regarded in 2011 that there was two out of 220 institutions receiving federal funding that were providing services exclusively to boys and men. Less than 1 % of federal funding to fight trafficking was going to boys and men. If it was the reverse for women, would you not be outraged? And why are you not outraged that boys and men are receiving less than 1 % of the federal funding? So that's three. Number four is that victims are not being able to identify as victims because they're not included in the language that boys and men are trafficked. So victims don't even recognize they're victims because when they Google human trafficking, it's all about girls and women. And so victims can't even understand or identify that they're victims or that they count because nobody else sees them. But the absolute worst message is to the traffickers. Hey, traffickers, here's an entire group of our population that we're not going to even recognize as victims. So go ahead and traffic them because you're never going to be caught trafficking a boy or a man because we don't recognize them as victims. And the reality is that's been documented. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, UNODC, just published an article last year on boys being overlooked and they did a study and in a 15 year period the trafficking of boys and men quintupled. Quintupled. Traffickers are listening to the message that we're sending out that boys and men are not victims. They're quintupling how many victims they're using because they know a population that aren't recognized as victims. We have to change our language and it has to include boys and men. It can't be implied. It has to be explicit. For too long, boys and men were overlooked and Robert discussed the need for inclusive language when discussing sex trafficking. So a lot of the times it says women and children, girls and rarely do you hear about boys, but we do know that trafficking does happen to boys, turn into men, and we do have boys that have been charged and criminalized through the justice system and are doing time and are a men now. So Kim, you do a lot of action, your boots on the ground. So you've worked with a lot of victims that are on the streets. So would you say there's a larger number of boys now as opposed to maybe when you first started your work and they're just kind of coming out with, what about me? Yeah, absolutely. So Let me hit a couple key points here of why we're not identifying male victims. Number one is a lot of times male victims, they are so full of shame and guilt and condemnation. They have a hard time speaking up and saying, hey, I am a victim of sex trafficking because it's a huge label that they carry after that, right? There's been countless times even in court where I've had a little boy look at me and he is just so. full of just disgust and shame and he's just so embarrassed by it. And so they're most likely not going to say anything, you know, and be overlooked. So there's just so many different dynamics, Yvonne. And that just breaks my heart because where does the healing begin for them if they can't even talk about it? Correct. Yeah. Correct. Absolutely. Yeah, so I am actually very appreciative of Robert speaking out. In some of our later seasons or episodes in this season, we're going to hear from other men. And so please stay tuned for that. What I love and admire about Shared Hope International as far as resources go, a lot of our training material is free. So please go to our website, sharedhope.org and look at what we have to offer. We also have the White Van Campaign because it's about internet safety. Nine times out of ten, Predators aren't meeting kids where they hang out anymore as far as people, places, and things. Well, they're going to things, which is chat sites on video gaming system, or they're texting, you know? And so we do have the white van campaign. So I would encourage you guys to, again, go to our sharedhope.org website and look at the material that we have because it's free. So why not use it? And educate yourselves and pass it on to your neighbor. or your youth root pasture or friend, you know. So a lot of it is downloadable PDFs and you can share that along. So. Yeah, absolutely. Education is key and it's there for free. So as my friend Yvonne said, take it and use it. Educate yourselves. So next week we have a great interview with Kim as she shares her life with incredible boldness. Kim's journey has been one of unimaginable hardship and transformation from enduring severe abuse as a child to facing further exploitation and isolation as a young mother. Kim's early years were marked by manipulation and trauma. A victim of trafficking, she spent six years under the control of a predator who exploited her deepest fears. Today Kim is a powerful advocate and spokesperson for Shared Hope International's Just Like Me campaign. She works closely with law enforcement using her personal experience to help identify and prosecute traffickers. Alongside myself, Kim is committed to preventing future generations from facing the same horrors that she herself has endured. Please subscribe and visit Just Like Me website found in the links below as well as Invading the Darkness. Until next week, I'm Yvonne. And I'm Kim. Thanks for joining our show.