Hidden Signs of Child Trafficking: What Every Parent And Educator Should Know

Human trafficking isn’t just “out there.” It’s happening closer to home than most people realize and many children and teens don’t even know it’s happening to them.

In this episode, Mandi and Erin from Love146 break down the hidden warning signs adults often miss, the emotional tactics traffickers use, and why so many cases go unnoticed in everyday communities. They also open up about the challenges of parenting teens in a digital world where harmful content and unsafe relationships can reach kids instantly.

You’ll hear:

• How trafficking can look like drug use, bullying, or an “unhealthy relationship” from the outside
  
  
  
• Why believing youth—and understanding their vulnerabilities—matters
  
  
  
• Real talk about creating safe, judgment-free communication with teens
  
  
  
• The power of “pre-permissioning” so kids know it’s okay to seek help
  
  
  
• What behavior changes adults should watch for

Mandi and Erin from Love146 wrap up with resources, ways to support ongoing anti-trafficking work, and a reminder that awareness and honest conversations save lives.

RESOURCES

Love146 website and Instagram and LinkedIn

National Human Trafficking Website and Hotline 1-888-373-7888

Connect with Mandi:

• Website: WomenAwareAndPrepared.com
• Take the Free Intuition Quiz WomenAwareAndPrepared.com/Quiz
• Instagram: @WomenAwareAndPrepared
• LinkedIn: Mandi Pratt

The primary purpose of the Women Aware and Prepared Podcast is to educate and inform. This podcast series does not constitute advice or services. Please use common sense for your own situation.

Transcript

 These signs, you know, when people see them, when it's advocates or family members, they think, oh, maybe they're involved in drugs, or maybe they're hanging with bad crowd and, and they don't, they don't really ever think about trafficking. So again, that's why it is important to talk about it because sometimes those signs that we talk about when we're thinking about bullying or when we're thinking about drug use.

They do mirror the signs of of being trafficked, becoming more tired, more secretive. It can be really hard to differentiate, which is why, you know, it's so important that we start having really open and honest dialogue with kids constantly, like right, regularly, not just when we think there's a problem.

Hey, brave one. Welcome to the Aware and Prepared Podcast. I'm your host, Mandy Pratt, trauma-informed, resilient speaker, domestic violence victim advocate, and narcissistic abuse survivor. Here we keep it real with true crime stories and real world strategies to prevent emotional and physical harm. My guests and I share a mix of insight and survivor grit, all to help you feel safer, trust yourself more deeply.

And live with greater peace and power. Let's trade fear for freedom and step into the peace that you deserve.

Hello and welcome in. A quick heads up today. You'll hear the first ever ad in my podcast about halfway through the episode, but don't worry, it's not super annoying. It's just me. It's a quick little ad from my own business. Women aware and prepared. All right. Welcome back to the Aware and Prepared Podcast.

I have Erin Williamson here with us. She's the Chief Programs and Strategy Officer at Love 1 46, where she spent over a decade fighting child trafficking through trauma-informed care prevention, education, and survivor advocacy. With 20 plus years in the field, Aaron brings deep insight into protecting vulnerable youth.

And driving policy change while balancing her role as a parent and education advocate. Erin holds a master of public administration from American University and is also a licensed clinical social worker. Thank you so much, Erin, for being here with us. Thank you so much for having me. Yes, I've been excited to have you on, so thank you.

Yeah. Yes. You know, this is one of those topics that can be, uh, difficult to know where to start. Right. And, and I think it's also one of those topics that, uh, many of us assume is not happening here in, in the United States, is not happening in our backyards. It's not happening in our communities.

And so, you know, it is really important that we talk about it because it is happening. Uh, more often than not it just goes under the radar and undetected and sometimes because we don't talk about it, even the youth we work with are kind of unaware of what is happening to them or mislabeling it as intimate partner violence or an unhealthy relationship, um, when in fact it's trafficking.

Yeah, I remember going to the domestic violence advocacy training that I received and I remember them saying, and we even had like a special guest speaker come in and he was like, oh yeah, I, so I am helping fight this. And he said I was showing somebody, I looked up on my phone, I wanna call a girl over right now.

I live in the suburbs. Took me five minutes. No big deal. Absolutely, this happens all the time. And I was like, what? Like I was so naive and I didn't know. And so yeah, people need to know more about that. And you think it happens in other countries and other, you know, maybe just Las Vegas or something, right?

No, no, no, no. It happens in your neighborhood. 

Yeah. In fact, you know, the majority of youth that we work with are still living at home, right? Yes. And, and many of them, they may, you know, run away for a weekend. They may go away for an evening. Um, but sometimes, you know, it's, the parents think they know where they are.

We had one youth we were working with, her parents thought she was doing an afterschool. And what was happening was the trafficker was picking her up at school. 

Yeah. Taking 

her, trafficking her and having her back in time for the late bus. 

Yep. And 

so again, you know, I think we, we really do need to kind of uncover, and when we talk about trafficking, it's really important to think about, you know, we're really talking about kind of the ex, any kind of sexual act in exchange for anything of value, right?

Yeah. So sometimes that is a monetary exchange. Sometimes it's. Food. Um, we do see children with high food and housing insecurities are especially vulnerable to being trafficked, but we've also seen, you know, kids trafficked from what you would consider well-resourced families. Really what traffickers look like or look for, is they look for the vulnerable, and sometimes that is a, you know, basic need vulnerability, but sometimes it's an emotional vulnerability, right?

Yes. It's love, it's care, it's, yep. It's the parent, uh, that may be absent in your life, right? Mm-hmm. It's, it's all of that. And, and then they promise to fill those voids. 

Exactly. 

And, and we also do see, you know, familial trafficking, Sometimes that's, um, you know, involves very young kids.

Sometimes that is related to drug addictions or again, uh, socioeconomic, uh, insecurity. Um, and, and sometimes it's not. And, but oftentimes it goes misidentified, um, as you know, a familial sexual abuse. Yes or yes. Or you know, a rape and, and people don't realize that there is a commodification of that abuse Exactly.

That is occurring. 

There's mon, there's, yeah, like you just said, there's a commodity, um, money. Or whatever. Yeah, I remember also at that training, um, we had another speaker come in and she said that she had been trafficked by her uncle, and so she was still attending high school, but she was really tired all the time and she, you know, she was sharing with us the signs and it was just super gnarly.

Yeah. And many times these signs, you know, when people see them, when it's advocates or family members, they think, oh, maybe they're involved in drugs, especially if it's an adolescent age, right? Right. Maybe they're getting involved in drugs or maybe they're hanging with bad crowd and, and they don't, um, they don't really ever think about trafficking.

So again, that's why it is important to talk about it. Because sometimes those signs that we talk about when we're thinking about bullying or when we're thinking about drug use, they do mirror the signs of Of being trafficked. Right. Becoming more tired, more secretive, not wanting to share as much. And some of this is, to be honest, just adolescents.

Right. I know. That's what makes it tricky. Gosh. Yeah. And so it's, it can be really hard to differentiate, which is why. You know, it's so important that we start having really open on and honest dialogue with kids constantly, like Right. Regularly, not just when we think there's a problem. Right. Yeah. You know, I have a, I have a teenage son, right.

I, I get this right. I'm going through it. And, um, you know, when we had conversations about, uh, giving him a phone. You know, we had to have really honest conversations. And one of the things I said to him was, you know, look, part of adolescence is that I'm gonna tell you what the rules are in the house me and your father are, and you are going to push back against those rules and you're gonna bend them and you might even break them.

Mm-hmm. And before any of that happens, one of the things I want you to hear from me is that. When that happens, not if that happens, but when that happens, right? The most important thing to me is your safety, 

right? Oh my gosh, so good. 

It's not that you broke the rule. We'll figure that out together as a family, but the most important thing in that moment.

Is that you are safe and we will figure everything else out. And you know, I think preemptively making some assumptions as parents that our kids are not always gonna follow our rules. That, that, that's normative development. That's actually kind of what we want. We want kids to push the boundaries while they are in our home.

And while they kind of, we have our arms around them, right? Right. So that they can do it in a safe environment before they're completely out on their own in the world. And a lot of times what we hear from kids. Especially when they start to have this instinct, like something's going awry in this relationship is, well, you know, my parents told me I shouldn't have gone to that party.

Or, you know, oh, they told me never to send photos, and I did, and they were gonna be. So mad at me because I broke a rule that I then didn't tell them and things just snowballed and got worse. So we Exactly. We have to preemptively say, you know, even when you break rules, please come and talk to us and we'll figure it out together.

Exactly. I remember telling my son too, Hey. It's important that you always talk to somebody. If it's not me, that's okay. You know, find a trusted adult, a teacher, um, you know, whoever that is. And then I always tell people too, if you go to them and you don't get help or resolution, go to the next trusted adult.

You know, don't just give up if that person is not helping you. 

And I love that message, right? Like as parents, I think the instinct is we want our kids to come to us. Of course. Right? And of course, they, we all think that we are the open parent that our kids will come to. I mean, we all think that that's our dream.

Right? Exactly. And even the parents whose kids didn't go to them. Had that thought. And so I love the message that you sent, which is, even if it's not me, go to someone, right? You permissioned your son that you're not gonna be mad at him if he goes to somebody else. That in fact, that's okay with you. Yeah.

You want that. And again, that, that pre permissioning, I think. So important that preemptive, you know, you know you are gonna, I said, I remember saying to my son, you're gonna come across material on the internet. That is scary. That is dangerous. And that is inappropriate. Exactly. And what I'll tell you now is that you can never unsee something.

Yes. 

So if you're not sure, swipe. Yes. Don't pause and think, should I swipe, should I not? And then figure 

it out. 

Yeah, exactly. We just 

had, yeah, we just had last week's episode was all about that, like cyber trauma and just that fact and it's 

real. It is. 

It's, 

it's absolutely real. And you know, and it's very, kids don't know what to do in that moment and they don't, and we know that there is a, a large handful that will just freeze.

Yes. I will not know what to do. Yeah. And there's a handful that will watch and so if we can preemptively kind of guide their brain towards, there's another option. You just swipe as quick as you, as quick as you think it. Exactly. 

And then we don't want them to think like they were a bad person because they saw that like it's not, we need to let them know that.

Yeah, 

absolutely. And it's hard, you know, many times introducing technology is. Such a, you know, it's one of those things where everyone has an opinion, right? And everyone has an opinion, everyone has a lot of shoulds. You know, any parent, any, anyone who's been around kids knows that from the minute you get pregnant, you hear a lot of shoulds, yeah, this is what you should do, this is how you should, right?

And the reality is, is that, you know, there's different circumstances, right? Um, whether, whether you're raising a kid as a single parent or whether you're raising it in a divorced family or whether. There's a lot of reasons that, that people give kids technology at varying ages. Yeah. But what I always equate it to is, you know, we, we never drop off a kid in New York City and say, we'll be back in an hour.

Right. And with the internet, if we don't have any parameters around the apps or the internet, when we give that device over to our kid. That's kind of what we're doing. And, you know, we, we have this great, if you go onto our website, it's love one four six.org. On the top. You can sign up for, um, emails for parents and caregivers.

And it, it makes this analogy that, you know. Introducing technology to your kid is like teaching them to cross the street, right. At first you hold their hand, you explain it, you, you practice looking both ways. As they get older, eventually you're gonna drop their hand, right? You might remind them to look both ways.

At first, you're probably crossing streets that aren't hugely busy. You're making sure to cross at the intersections and, you know, eventually you're not gonna, you're gonna let them cross the street alone. You won't be there. Right? Right. You might not even be in, in, in eyesight of them. And the goal is by the time they're 18, they could navigate even New York City, but it was a process to get them there.

Right? And the same thing is true of technology, right? My kids play video games. My kids do, uh, my kids are doing. But we had long conversations about, you know, who do you talk to when you're playing those video games? Not everyone who is vouched for by your friends is also a kid, right? Mm-hmm. If you don't know them personally.

You actually can't guarantee you who they are. They could really be anybody. And so, you know, kids don't think that there are bad people out there trying to trick them. 

They're pretty naive. 

Right, right. Yeah. And we don't have to explain it in a way where it's like, oh, everybody out there so. Scary or the, or the world is a big, big, scary place.

You know, my kids go on sleepovers, my kids do all these things, but we've had conversations and, and we have ongoing conversations about if anything ever happens to you, the number one thing you know is it's not your fault. Right? Sometimes bad thing happen, you know, it's, it's nobody. We just, we figure it out together and that normal, ongoing conversation.

Allows for when you have an inkling that something might be going awry, or when your kid, or some youth you're working with has that inkling for them to say, remember how you talked to me about X? Well, this weird thing is happening, and for them to share. Mm-hmm. And you know, and then the important thing is for us to remember not to overreact.

Right. Which is, yes, of course. So hard for so many, you know, many parents, right? Because you wanna like swoop in and, but you, you've made a promise to that kid that you will have open discussions, that you will talk to them and, and really asking questions like, well, what do you think of that? How are you feeling about that?

What can I do to help you? You can even use those very difficult moments as. An opportunity to help build their own resiliency and their own skills. Walking alongside them. 

Yes. Giving them agency. Yeah. They need that. So when they're not under our roof and they go away to college, let's say they need to know, what can I do for myself?

What kind of questions can I ask? You know, having those choices and the ability to advocate for yourself eventually. 

Right. Right. And even like things with healthy relationships, you just said how, you know, what kind of questions can I ask? A lot of people don't know what they kind of, and I, I say allow in quotes, but are it's okay to ask or not okay to ask if they're getting into a relationship with somebody, right?

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And you know, not every kid comes from a home where healthy relationships. Have been modeled. Right, exactly. Yeah. 

Mm-hmm. 

And so, you know, those kids, if you're working with them, if they're, you know, friends with your kids, you know your kid, they are their sense of kind of a healthy or normal relationship.

Is is impacted by what they've seen. And so it's really important for, you know, even if you're raising kids in a healthy relationship, for you to talk about what is healthy about your relationship so that they know, oh, not all relationships have this true because they so true. They may assume that they all do.

That's so true, and I remember in my own crazy story of being married to somebody who is abusive and became wanted by the FBI. I had no idea any of that stuff happened because in my family, I grew up in. We didn't have, you know, abuse. And so that was so foreign to me. I didn't know what I was looking at.

What was I experiencing? You know? And then absolutely you start to feel like you did something wrong, or maybe it's me, or, and especially when you're with like a narcissist, they do make you feel like it's you. Absolutely. Yeah. So you're right. It's important too. Bring that up and then talk about why is that healthy?

And I know nowadays we didn't have this back when I was a teenager, but we have this now we're doing a better job talking about red flags and green flags and even yellow flags, which is great. But like when I go out and speak, I like to talk about the deeper issue and that's being able to trust our intuition because.

Yes, I did see a red flag, but I didn't know what to do with that. I didn't have the life skills. I didn't know I could trust myself. I didn't know, you know, all of those things. So it's really important to, to address that with our youth. 

Absolutely.

Did you know through my company, women Aware and Prepared, I share keynotes and workshops focused on prevention and healing. Helping people live safer with more peace. I've been invited to speak at universities, school counselor conferences, the Institute on Violence, abuse and Trauma Crisis Centers, social work conferences, junior high and high schools, and women's gatherings, and many more.

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And I think it's also helpful for us to talk to our kids about looking out for their friend group, right. And, and coming to us as, as parents and caregivers, even when they see things happening within their friend group. Right. 

Right. 

Because, you know, again, and I, I, I hate to say this, but not every kid has a safe home, right?

No, they 

don't. 

So not every kid is going home to an environment where they can disclose something to their parent Yeah. Or a caregiver, and so, mm-hmm. I think one of the things you can do if is also say to your, you know, your kids' friends when they're over, and you can say it very casually, like. Hey guys, you know, I just want you to know you go, come into my home.

Like you guys are great. You've been friends with my kid for so long. If you EI just, I know you all have parents. I know. But if you ever need anything, I just want you to know I'm another adult in your life you can come to and that's 

cool. 

Right. You just kind of lay it out casually and you just let them know because the kid whose home is not safe will, will tuck that piece of information in.

You know, and, and they might not come to you, but there will be something special that that lands in their heart. Knowing that you cared enough about them to even say that. 

That's true. Huh? 

Yeah. Yeah. And, and so I think it, it's kind, it does take this communal approach. We need to look out for our own kids.

We need to look out for the kids that, that we are working with and, and you know, we need to look out for all the kids 

in our community. Exactly. And I always say too, I just said, I was giving a keynote last week and I was sharing with them, Hey, you know what? We're the guardians, they're the kids. Yeah. So we're ultimately responsible.

For them, like you're, you're saying you're modeling exactly what we're supposed to be doing and what we can do. The best thing really for them is helping them be able to, you know, navigate through their life with that feeling of safety or knowing where they can go to safety. There's just so much about that, but I love that you brought that up.

Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I, I do think it's important for our kids to generally feel like, you know, the world people are good, the world is good. Yes. The world is safe. Right, right, right. You can go to the other extreme and, and I see this, you know, where we can think, you know, everyone is kind of the boogeyman and, and the reality is, is, you know.

Uh, perpetrators are gonna get the, are, are going to find a way to get themselves close to kids. Right. Right. Yeah. Most people don't have a record. Right. Right. You hear about who they are and, and many of them were within good standing with their communities. Right. And so that's why it's just really important for us to say, you know.

We do our best to protect you and, um, I can't be with you all the time. 

Exactly. 

You know, and, and as parents, you know, I think so many times we work with parents and there's such a feeling of guilt when they have found out that something has happened to their child. Right? Sure. Right, right. Like. How could I have allowed this to happen?

Right, exactly. Yep. Um, and sometimes we're dealing with parents where it's multi-generational, right? Yeah. Where something happened to them and they swore nothing ever happened to their child. 

Yep. 

And, and I think again. Sometimes bad things happen in the world, no matter what steps we take to 

right 

guard against it 

and we can't shelter them from everything.

And that's really not really maybe doing them as greatest service. 

Right, right. We don't want them to be terrified of, of meeting people or being out in the world. And I think, you know, trafficking, one of the things that I often say when I'm talking to people, they'll say, oh, it's so hard. How do you work with these, these kids?

And I'll, I'll remind them like. These are still very resilient kids, right? They're, they're funny, they're, they're energetic. They have ideas about their future and who they wanna be. And yes, this horrible, horrific thing happened to them, but it does not define who they are, and it does not define who they will be become in their life.

And I think that for, for many of us, we hear the term trafficking and we become kind of frozen or overwhelmed, and. You know, and one of the things I really wanna emphasize is like, even for trafficked kids, right? Even for kids who've experienced this. This is a moment that when we come with them, this moment feels really big in their lives.

And one of our goals is to help them realize that while it feels really big in your life right now, with, with some hard work and you know, some, some good supports around you. Each year, our goal is to get that moment to feel a little smaller and a little smaller. And a little smaller. And it takes time.

Yeah. But the goal is that, you know, when you're out there 10 years, 5, 10, 20, that you, you say, yeah, that happened to me and that was, that really sucked. And, and yeah, it had long-term impact maybe, but. From that I was able to do so much and become so much, and now my life is so much more than what I ever imagined.

That right there, what you just said, one of my good friends, they were going through a really, really hard time. Um, somebody in their family was basically dying of cancer, and so it was hard to be involved with the kids and all of that while all of that was happening. And so, um, the daughter. Ended up being in her room a lot with her phone and sure enough, um, somebody trafficked her for photos and you know, that just crashed her life.

Crashed her life. It was just really hard for her to navigate. And yes, she got counseling and that really helped. But she leads a normal life now and she still has counseling, just not 'cause of that because she's a young adult.

Yep. But you know, it wasn't the end of her world even though it felt like that at the time. So I wanna point that out. 

Yes. Yeah. And it's so important that we kind of share that message because in, in the worst situations, we don't. We don't see kids pause. Yes. And in the worst situations we see kids think this is the end of their life.

Right. And sometimes they make irreversible decisions, even taking their own lives. Right? And so, again, you know, adolescence is a time where your, you know, prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, right? You don't have that long-term perspective. And so building into our conversations with our kids. I mean, even just talking about, you know, you failed a test, right?

My, you know, oh my, this, I know. This feels horrible. I know. It feels like this is the end all be all, but. This is one test and you will have other tests and you will have other oppor. You know, you can build in these concepts of this is something bad that happened. We're gonna sit with the really hard emotions that, that go along with this important, yep.

We're gonna, we're not gonna gloss over. Right? We're not gonna gloss over. I think one of the things that we. We struggle with and that our adolescents struggle with is, is being okay with feeling really difficult and hard emotions. 

Thank you. Yep. 

Yeah, and I think that that, that is a skillset, right? It is a skillset that we need to be teaching our kids at a young age.

I know we want to protect them and we wanna shelter them, but I actually think we oftentimes do a real disservice by not. Sitting with them in those hard feelings, you know? Right. We just had a family member who was, um, diagnosed with cancer and my young daughter, you know, when we shared that with her gut.

Quite emotionally upset, understandably. Sure. She's nine. Here's a family member who has cancer. And she said to me, what's gonna happen? And I said, you know, honey, I don't know. And that was the truth. And I, I, you know, there was this look on my husband's face of like, uh, is that the right? And I said, you know, it's, and I looked at her and I said.

It's okay to feel sad. It's okay to be worried. Right, right. That these are all really normal feelings. And I think, again, when, when we normalize, you know, being upset about things, being scared about things, feeling like. I made a mistake. I regret that. I'm embarrassed. Right, sure. Right. Helping kids to sit with emotions, to label them correctly and to not try to gloss over or patch everything up or make it better, you know?

That is really, it's something that I think is a skillset we need to be building up amongst our, our kids more than we are doing now. Agree. And I think that will serve them for the rest of their life 

very much. Yeah, exactly. And so I know that. We probably have parents or teachers or advocates on here going, okay, wait, but what are, what should I be looking for?

Right, right. Absolutely. And then also teenagers who say, oh my gosh, like I think my friend, this might be my friend. What do I do? So those are two questions. 

Absolutely. So, you know, in the, in the most immediate thing, I would say, you know. Your best friend is asking questions, right? And, and, and expressing that you're concerned and that you're available, right?

Uh, most of the time trafficking is identified because a child has decided that they are going to disclose some piece of information to someone they believe they can trust with that information, who they believe might be able to help them, right? Mm-hmm. And so the most important thing, whether you're a doctor, whether you're a social worker, whether you're a friend, a parent, no matter what.

Is just to kind of reinforce and if you start seeing things like kids are spending a lot of time in their room with their phones right? Or aren't willing to share information about the apps that they're on or are seem like, you know, when they go outside of your, your house, they're no longer to willing to turn left and go down that path.

They go down other paths. Just things that are are concerning. They're, you know, they're coming back with their nails done and you don't know. You know, you know, this is a kid that whose family can't afford that. Right. Asking questions, you know. Oh wow. How did you get, you know, those are really pretty nails.

Where'd you get them done? Oh, you know, I've noticed, like, is there a reason we're not going left anymore when we, we leave out of our house and I'm a little concerned about you and it's very typical for an adolescent or for a kid to. To deny. Right, of course. Or to say nothing's going on. Yeah. And you just at that moment reinforce, okay, if something is going on, I just want you to know I'm here.

I'm here if you wanna talk about anything. Right, right. You know, the other thing that I think is really important is. To have these conversations. Right? And listening to this podcast is such a great opening. You can say, I, here you go. Listened to this podcast the other day, and they were mentioning trafficking.

Do you guys ever talk about that in your school? Have you ever heard anything about that? What do you think about that? What do you know about? Have you ever had any concerns about, like anybody you know about that? I mean, this just just is such a great opener to a conversation. About that type of stuff.

And again, maybe they'll roll their eyes, but more and more kids are hearing about trafficking in their schools. You know, we have a, a prevention education program called Not a Number. There's a nu it's a wonderful program. It's five modules, it's for middle and high school youth. It focuses on. Healthy relationships, uh, kids learning their boundaries and, and skill building around.

What do you do when you start to see someone stepping into those boundaries or pressuring you or when you start to have those red flags or, or you are in a not so great situation? I mean, the reality is if most of us as adults look back on our life and adolescents listening to this, we've all been in situations where in that moment we thought.

This could go south. This is not the best situation for me to be in. Or I did not anticipate that this was gonna happen. Yeah. Right. So we need to, to practice those skills. Um, but, but really, again, opening those doors of communication. Be saying, you know, I am, I'm, I'm not here to judge you. I'm not here to, you know, I, I'm here to support you.

I also wanna let people know there's a wonderful app from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children called Take It Down. It is a relatively new app. It's just wonderful. It's for the exact situation you were saying where a, a young girl exchanged photos. So any, anyone under the age of 18 where they believe images of them, explicit images of themselves are out there on the internet.

They can go to this, um, they just have to type, take it down if they want it. They can put in National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and they will walk you through the steps of how to give that information over so that, um, they can comb the internet and take those images offline. And they do it consistently.

So if they reappear ever, they'll take them down. And if you, you struggle with. Doing it online, there's a great, um, one 800 number you can call and, you know, you can even call ncm Mix one 800, the Lost right for Missing and Exploited Children. And they will walk you through the steps. So, you know, again, adolescents, you, you don't even necessarily.

Have to tell an adult, you can do this on your own. I would encourage you to tell an adult for other reasons. I do think that there's, there are times where going to an adult and getting support is really important, but share this app out. Tell people about it. Post it on your own social media feeds. Hey, did you know about this?

You never know who might see it, that might know someone who needs it or might need it themselves. 

Yeah, right, exactly. So maybe that's a good solution for. When you have a friend that comes to you and says, Hey, or if you're noticing, Hey, my best friend is like, has all this money, all of a sudden and she's always gone and she's tired and Right.

Right. So they could even share that with them, 

right. It opens up a conversation. Right. Maybe they haven't shared it. Explicit online images. But, you know, one of the, we go out and we do these, um, short-term interventions with kind of anyone in the in who's been identified as, you know, suspected or confirmed survivor of trafficking.

And we do get a lot of disclosures. And I mean, to the point that I have to remind law enforcement, we're not there to do an assessment where they're provide information and do safety planning. But a lot of kids disclosed to us, and one of the reasons they say that they disclosed to us is they say, I felt like you would understand.

Mm. Right. I felt like you would get it. Right. Right. So sometimes we have to send the message that we get, we will get whatever it is they may or may not want to share with us. Sure. That we will understand it. Right. Right. And, and again, as a reminder, sometimes kids are gonna give you inklings of what's happened to them.

To see how you react. Right. Or say like, I have a friend 

who 

100% right. And so it's again, really important for us to hold tight. Any kind of initial reaction, don't freak out, have. Right. Exactly. And, and sit. Um, in our own emotions, right? And, and be present for that youth in a, in a, in much of a nonjudgmental manner as we're able and really support them in, you know, in again, in figuring out a solution together and figuring out next steps together.

Yeah, for sure. 

All right. Sorry to cut this short, but there was so much goodness in there that we have split this into two episodes, erin had so much to share

so we're gonna do part two next week. So stay tuned. Make sure you're following the show. Top right in Apple drag down and you'll see. Follow the show or subscribe. 

Thanks for tuning in to the Aware and Prepared Podcast. Curious how tuned in your intuition really is. Take the free quiz at Aware and Prepared Life and get your score. See how sharp your inner guide is. You are worthy of a safe and peaceful life. Talk with you next week and please share this episode with someone who came to mind while you were listening.

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