Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitiz, Director of the Office of Sex Trafficking at Arizona State University, discusses the ways she is and has been involved in anti-trafficking work with victims and prostituted women in jails, in groups, in a drop-in center, and in the community. One of her current projects is working with many others to bring "pop up" services to prostituted and trafficked women in Phoenix. Every six months collaborators, made up of various social service agency representatives along with university students and survivors volunteer to set up in an area in the community to offer housing services, substance abuse services, counseling, basic needs and other services and supports to vulnerable others. They don't wait for someone to find them. They bring the application process and help to the people that need it most. The projects is now occuring in a few other cities across the U.S. and has been very successful. Dr. Roe-Sepowitz welcomes anti-trafficking advocates from other communities to learn how to implement the project in their cities.
Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitiz, Director of the Office of Sex Trafficking at Arizona State University, discusses the ways she is and has been involved in anti-trafficking work with victims and prostituted women in jails, in groups, in a drop-in center, and in the community. One of her current projects is working with many others to bring "pop up" services to prostituted and trafficked women in Phoenix. Every six months collaborators, made up of various social service agency representatives along with university students and survivors volunteer to set up in an area in the community to offer housing services, substance abuse services, counseling, basic needs and other services and supports to vulnerable others. They don't wait for someone to find them. They bring the application process and help to the people that need it most. The projects is now occuring in a few other cities across the U.S. and has been very successful. Dr. Roe-Sepowitz welcomes anti-trafficking advocates from other communities to learn how to implement the project in their cities.
Welcome back to the emancipation nation. On the line today we have Dr Dominque Roe-Sepowitz, and she's one of the few social work PhD's that has been working on anti-trafficking practice advocacy research. She does it all, and so I had the pleasure of meeting her several years ago. She has been on fire for several years doing meaningful, meaningful work. Her research doesn't just collect dust in a library somewhere. All of her work is action oriented. So welcome Dominique.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. Hi Celia.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So you are now a tenured professor at Arizona State, but you very much keep your foot in the practice area. So tell us some of the things you've been doing in terms of practice and then we'll talk about your research.
Speaker 2:Sure. So one of the great things about being a professor is that I can teach practice in a very special population area. So my focus is working with sex trafficked women and children was that particular focus. So my practice has started working with women in prison during my phd in Florida. And we, I was working with some incredible leaders there on how to reach women who were incarcerated and really helped them understand the language of their own experiences, giving them resources but also a level of self awareness. So when I moved to Arizona, I started working at an exiting program for prostituted women called Dignity House, which closed a few years ago. And I ran a group about abuse and trauma every Wednesday night or six years there. And then we moved it to the prostitution diversion program, which is for adults who are arrested for prostitution in the city of Phoenix. So that group has been running since 2006. What happens with that group? Dominate. So the group has a curriculum, it's 11 weeks. We bring apprentices who are MSW students. So if any of you are interested in getting your MSW and really focusing on working with sex or labor trafficking survivors, this is one of the things that my office does is we have like a practicum, an internship. It's just a couple of hours a week and you can help run this group, which has a written curriculum which we follow with CBT based. And it really talks about learning the language of your own experience. But what we tried to do is infused topics that include trafficking. So I recently ran this group in a local jail in Phoenix and there just isn't another opportunity for the survivors to talk about their sexual exploitation. So we talk about things like anger and family violence, domestic violence, child abuse, self-harm, drug addiction. But we infuse it with how does that interact with your exploitation? Who were the people who did these things? How did they control you? How does that look similar or different from domestic violence? So we're on our 30th apprentice for the star group, sex trafficking awareness and recovery. So that's one kind of practice that we do. Other kinds of practice that we do is we have a pop up drop in center every six months on our biggest track where people are prostituted outside and we get about 70 volunteers. So some of those, probably about 50 of those are agency providers. And they see the people that come into the drop in center who are medical providers, drug and alcohol treatment. They can go to rehab that day. There's housing, there's all these amazing resources and about 20 of them are students from ASU or former students. And they volunteer and help coordinate. And then we work with a great group of survivors who walk. The clients who come in, who drop in, they walk them through. So the students learn a lot, the different agencies learn about each other. And it's really the collaborative. I think Celia Williamson, who is a great interviewer, but she's also a great leader in our work with collaboration. So none of the work that we do in the anti-trafficking field is alone. And that drop in center is a great example. That's amazing. Thank you. And how long have you guys been doing the pop up? So we've been doing it for four years, so we've served 320 individuals, all adults. We really help steer people towards resources. So it's a little bit like a social service fair, but we really try to capture that idea that today might be the day for change. And so if someone says, today's the day that I'm ready to stop being homeless and I'm ready to move into a shelter, which you know isn't for everyone, we really capture that day and make sure we get transportation and they're taking that day. We've worked with some really interesting people. About 15% of our clients are men, homeless men, people who've been exploited, lots and lots and lots of drug addiction and homelessness and mental health issues. And it's really challenging but really exciting work and it's almost completely cost free. All of those agencies come on their own dime. All we need a space, some food, and we get donations for clothes and hygiene kits. So it's pretty amazing. That's really cool. So you guys are doing not only anti-trafficking work, but it seems like prevention, early intervention, like cutting across all the risk factors and people that are basically vulnerable who could be trafficked, maybe are being trafficked or exploited. Does this pop up, move around or is it in the same place every six months or so? Actually do it in the same place. We've tried it in a couple of other cities, so Macy's done it twice in their own community and then we've had it replicated in Rhode Island and a couple places in California. But we hold it in the same place. We want to be used. Sort of the skills and the reputation that we've built. So people know, oh, I was here six months ago where my cousin came six months ago and she told me about this. I got this tear off at the bus stop. I know you guys are good people and that you're not going to arrest me, so could you help me today? Oh, excellent. So you guys have good street credibility a little bit. It's nice that the survivor community is so rich and really helped develop it and really steer it. We have a, a really quite amazing survivor who stands out front and we sort of call her our garbage detector, right? So if people say, Hey, I'm hungry, we give them a sandwich. But if they've never been trafficked or exploited, they don't come in. We don't, we don't do look, you lose. So it's a completely no barrier project except for the requirement that they have been sexually exploited or prostituted in their lifetime while, so if this is happen in any other city, so we've had lots of people from around the country come and observe it and I know it has been replicated in Las Vegas, in Rhode Island and a couple of places in California. Tucson has tried to do it in there. They're still working out the kinks, but we're willing. Our next one is December 7th we'd be happy to have anyone come and stay in Phoenix for that day and observe how we do it. I'll share all of our paperwork, our intake, our research data collection tools, how we recruit not only the clients but also the participants who are other agencies. We have everyone from the public defender's office all the way to a Mary Kay, a distributor who comes and does facials and hands and it's quite amazing. That is, and we're going to share your information toward the end, but how did this even get started? Well, we realized that the only way that people were being identified in our community was that the police were making contact and that seems a little bit late and it also seems to be too much responsibility for law enforcement to be everywhere all the time to identify victims of trafficking. So we tried to create a place where if people were ready to change, they were ready to get away. They were ready for resources or even just to start thinking about resources that there was a steady, a regular group of people that met at a certain period of time. Six months seems to work with our community and it has been quite amazing and the relationships between the agencies that meet during the drop in center are really some of the most valuable. Working with the clients is incredible and really as great value, but those relationships between maybe an HIV or STI testing organization and the public defender or free legal services or a housing program or a shelter, those relationships are the ones that I think are really critical because when we don't have a drop in center, they have each other's business cards, they know how to contact and they really know how to build the capacity in our to serve victims of exploitation
Speaker 1:well, and I know that takes a lot of work to have everybody moving in the same direction and also trying to work and play well together. That's really a testament to your work and the collaboration because I know that's hard work to get everybody to move in the same direction.
Speaker 2:It absolutely is and I think one of the unique pieces of the anti-trafficking field as well as domestic islands and sexual violence fields is you just really have to try to be as ego free as you can and really move forward with the goal in mind. And I share credit as often as I can and as as much as I can. Credit is really free thinking the people that got you where you are or got the program where you are and all the contributions are are so easy to do. I think I've always joked that if I thought I did it all, I would be standing out on our track, waving my hand saying like, does anyone want help? And the reality is there's nothing I could do all by myself that everything that we do takes all these partnerships in these great big hearts and minds of, of really smart people. And we, when we create a new project like that, we meet with the survivor community. And do focus groups. We meet with our service organizations to say, what is your capacity? We can't do it in our community every three months. We just don't have the capacity and time for each agency. So we try not to be so demanding, but also making sure that each time we do it it's really meaningful that we do it really well, that we do it too. It's fast that people are really informed to come, that people don't just miss out on it cause they don't know. So we really make a hard push on marketing to make sure that we have people who need this, that they know where to come. That is so awesome. Now what do you do in the results.
Speaker 1:search realm? I mean doing that project could probably eat up all your time, but I know every time I see you, you have doctoral students following you. You have master degrees, students following you. I mean if you stop too fast they would probably bump.
Speaker 2:So what are the other things that you're doing in terms of research? Because I know you're helping to prepare all these new minds that are entering the field. So what are you doing in the area of research? So I think that's our responsibility is academics that we have to really prepare our next generation of scholars. So we have about 13 funded research projects. Two of them are task forces with law enforcement and social service agencies that serve human trafficking in two different communities. One is in Las Vegas and one is in Phoenix, and we do their data support. So we collect data on the cases that they work. We can look at trends and changes within their their service provision. So there are a things that we can account for. For example, if a law changes, we'll be able to recognize the, the changes in it. Maybe a bunch of new cases will come, our cases will dry up or we'll see some changes using trend analysis and so on. One of the wonderful things that's coming out of the last Vegas research is an intelligence brief. We realize that as a nation we don't have a device between vice units and how to track information or new language. So that's something that we realized is missing and that's from our research. When people say, look, I don't know what this word means in a text, in one police department, but another police department knows we really need to be able to share that data and going to training and participating in training is really important. But that's just not very feasible for all the vice units in the country. So we're really trying to find ways to share research and knowledge in ways that are very action oriented, very feasible. So those are some of the studies. We have a housing program for sex traffic women and their children called Phoenix starfish place and we are evaluating the therapeutic programs that we provide there and the case management and really trying to understand what the active ingredients are, what are the things that work. We are doing analysis of a really large residential treatment program for girls and looking at the kids that have been trafficked versus the kids who have not. And again, looking at their menu of services and trying to figure out what are the things that are working, what are the active ingredients? We do have some new projects on labor trafficking. We have a national analysis of arrests that we do, we update every year. So I think we have seven years of data and we have the same study for sex traffickers of children. So we're trying to look at both national data and local data, mostly to build knowledge for action. So police action research, data-driven policing, social service driven by research is sort of my goals. Wow. That 13 funded projects I couldn't even imagine. And that's all through the office of sex trafficking and Arizona State, right? Yep. And how many students do you have involved as Grad assistants or volunteers? So I have four full time staff. All of them have been former students. Three of them have been master students at ASU and one as a recent vista, but she's a recent graduate of ASU. And then I have between 10 and 15 students this semester. Up to five of them might be an intern at scenic starfish place. And the rest of them are anywhere from a business student who is helping us with data. We've had gis graduate students, we've really, I have some criminology students that do the crossover. Our office has a forensic social worker. Slant can, our goal is to get people prepared to go into the world and they may not focus on on sexual exploitation but as long as they have the skills and a person comes along, they will be able to provide the best possible services to them. Yes, absolutely. So what about some of the, I know you've done a lot of work online and you've been one of the key people in the country letting the police know and investigators know how to look online and understand those key words to understand if somebody is traffic. Talk a little bit about that. Sure. Some of our studies really looked at, um, we really focused on back cause that was the sort of the center point a long time. And the data from our research has gone to that federal indictment of the two owners of that organization. So what we did was we were actually placing our own sex ads, trying to figure out how big the market was, how many buyers were out there. So we would place an ad that did not insinuate that we were a child and then we would get hundreds and hundreds of calls and we placed those ads all over the country. We were working with demand abolition and different groups around the country trying to understand what demand looks like. And what we did was we were looking through the other ads and we realized, you know, trying to make our ad pretty normative. And we realized that there were some ads there that look like kids to us and we didn't really know what that meant. Did that mean they looked young? Did it mean the language looked like John's? So what we decided to do was to collect a true set. So we worked with nine different police departments around the U S and we said, we are going to scan ads in your area and we're going to flag the ones that we think are children. And we're going to tell you why we think that and we want to know what you think about that. And could you, if you interact with that victim, will you let us know if that is an adult or a child? And Amazingly we work with the Phoenix police department. My Buddy Jim Gallagher, who's now the commander over the vice unit helped get those law enforcement partnerships and they said yes. So we now have about 570 ads that are of known children. So they were confirmed by law enforcement there was contact. So they either had had previous contact with that person and knew their age or they made contact that day if they were able to and told us. And so that data actually went to DARPA for their mimics project and they use that data at went to two thorn and helped build spotlights. So the data is not just the photo, it's the language, it's the headlines, it's all of the pieces. Tell us what those two organizations are for people who don't know. The DARPA is our federal organization that created the Internet and creates technology and research using technology. And they had a a mimics program that was I think about$20 million and invested in the top technology companies in the United States and gave them this as their problem, how to solve sexual exploitation in the United States using technology. So that was DARPA. We worked with them for a year as consultants and gave them our truth data. And then we worked with some Warren, which is the dummy Ashton and nip to me, to me, more national cooker foundation that is really doing cutting edge work on sexual exploitation and now elicit child's material. They have some incredible programs. And so our data was just truth. So they just fed that into their computers and it taught the computers what to do. So it's called machine learning. So as a social worker, I've really had to learn all of that language, which has been quite exciting. So the research transcends just how should we treat clients, it's how can we find victims, how can we prevent victims, how can we look at how to get victims to more involved in the prosecution of traffickers? Because if not, those traffickers don't become plumbers, they continue to be traffickers. So can our research give us more information on how to support that. All of that work is amazing and really is moving the knowledge base forward in terms of becoming a more progressive understanding civil society that can really make a difference. I think the work you're doing is just amazing. And so when somebody is sitting back and they say, I would really like to get involved, what advice would you give them on how they can get started? So I think so do you mean involved in the field or involved in the work that we do at ASU? Stir? Well, let's say both. Let's say they want to get involved in ASU or they're beginning researcher and they want to do some meaningful work or they want to get involved in practice. Yeah, I mean research is really complicated. This is a by and large a hidden problem. So learning to look in the crevices, learning to look in places that aren't really logical like big national databases. You're not going to find trafficking data. So being creative but also having really strong relationships with your community partners who will share data if you are ethical, if you say what you're going to do when you do it, if you provide them with benefits for them. Right. Shared credit. So for ASU stir, we spend a lot of time on relationship building and community access to knowledge. So everything that we do at ASU stirs free. All of our materials is for the purpose of the community and that means any community Canada, any place in the world that could use what we learn, it is available to them. What it doesn't do as an academic is it doesn't give you hundreds and hundreds of peer reviewed reports and manuscripts. So most of our data goes into reports because we're very time oriented. We want to be timely in the way that we give the information and we don't want to wait two years for something to be published. So that's a real struggle between the, the practical and the practice in the academic using the research in different ways. So I think we've had to really stand in front and say, listen, reports are going to be the way that we get information on the ground and we think there is valid. The research design is good. We have institutional review support, our research is astrical but we need to give this to this police department today so they can help these kids as opposed to waiting two years and saying let's look at these trends. That's right. That's right. And I think that's a struggle with scholars, particularly someone with a social work perspective that knows their mission is to make a difference. And you know, you have to get tenured, you have to try to publish articles in peer reviewed journals and those types of things. But when people need that information to engage in their practice, they need it today. They don't need it. Like you said two years from now. That's ridiculous. And what's nice about the anti-trafficking of men and Celia is really a leader in the scholarship on it, is there so much for us to learn. There's almost nothing we really know yet. We really don't know how to do prevention. So we created a website called project starfish, all one word, and then.education, the whole word. And it's a beautiful website and it has lots of information and lots of activities for high schools. So we do seventh grade and above all these core competency, great you can get certified as a sex trafficking aware person. The problem is is evaluating prevention historically is really difficult. So a lot of times you do things and you hope it has good efficacy, but there's so little done. You know, there are probably less than 500 research articles on sex trafficking that there's so much room to learn that we have so many things to continue to explore. I feel very lucky that this, this is my interest and this is my area. And again, Celia is part of the reason that those of us who sort of follow behind like little docs. But you are the one who said, we've got to explore this, we've got to dig into this and we've got to really understand that this is something unique. This is different from domestic violence and sexual violence. This is its own problem and we have to really understand it before we can do too much to stop it.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, true. But today I think I'm following you and I would like to come in, you know, just hang out with you after I retire and just watch you do all of these things and see how you get it done. Because I'm amazed that you're able to do all these wonderful things and all of these things are so meaningful and so important. I could see why you can't really drop one of them. All of them seem like it's so critical and this is the time that you know, we should be looking into those issues. So if somebody is passionate and interested, how can they get involved in perhaps even coming to ASU or being involved in the officers' sex trafficking?
Speaker 2:So we have a wonderful doctoral program, which requires, in general an MSW. So we have doctoral support. I have a 32 hour work position that I do doctoral support. I don't have a doctoral line, which I can explain at any time. And then I employee hourly, many, many, many master's students. So they have, you know, 20 hours with me. They have their internships, they have their classes, but they're really immersed in the area of human trafficking. We now have a whole labor trafficking unit if you're kind of locationally constrained, there are lots of ways that you can work in the anti-trafficking fields. You can volunteer, you can donate money. But the most important is that you become aware that any client that you serve has the chances of being trafficked. We are doing research in Hawaii and social services agencies. We're working with incarcerated women and we're seeing these huge percentages up to 27% as people that we're surveying have been trafficked. In those or in help seeking situations. So homeless, runaway kids consistently are about a quarter. The population we survey every year. So if one of every four clients that walk in the door of whatever agency that you're working in probably had some sexual exploitation in their lifetime. Maybe that should be in your screening. Maybe that should be in your assessment. And for you as a practitioner that something perhaps that you need to get more comfortable talking about and more educated on so that you're a better, more targeted provider. Do you have any advice for somebody who is a professional, is a practitioner in their field to advocate to get some questions or get their agency to start looking into this issue? I feel like we have spent a lot of time hoping people are passionate, you know, waiting for that one clinician in an agency to get passionate about this and that'll make change. And I think we're going to have to be a little bit more aggressive in that we're going to have to mandate some of these in child welfare, in probation, in settings where we know that the population is big and we've really faced a lot of hesitation because once you ask a question, does that agency then become responsible for the services? So I do think getting trained, going online, there's lots of good trainings or experts in each community, but really coming to the conference, the Toledo conferences, September is my favorite of the year. I meet the most interesting people. I learned the most of any other conference I've ever been to. I feel like this is my 12th fear calling. You're like, you're an o g now, but we have some great stuff to present, but I always leave with much, much more than I've given, so I can't, I can't recommend that enough in, there are lots of jobs available around the country, but it's really in those pockets where people really care about this issue and going to Toledo and learning about where those pockets are is has been really helpful. Yeah. Thank you for that. That's the human trafficking and social justice conference that we do every September. Dominique is is always there presenting new and wonderful and valuable research. She always brings students with her and you know they network and so it's been a great partnership I think. Thanks. So yeah, this year I'm bringing the head of the Housing Department and Phoenix of the fifth largest city in the u s who in partnership with our office. We've opened the first HUD funded housing program for traffic women and their children. That is a direct referral. So we also try to get her excited about this. And she, her name is Cindy styler, she's amazing, but the power of her becoming interested in this has sort of endless opportunities. So the people that come together for your conference, our professionals, practitioners, students, researchers. It's such a great mix because we see things from such different lenses and oftentimes I don't even think of that Lens. I just haven't had the moment to think about it at all. And then I leave thinking, oh my gosh, we've got to really look at it from this other perspective. What can we do and how can we do it better? Yeah. Wow. The HUD, that is amazing because transportation and housing as know has been
Speaker 1:the major barriers across the country. So getting somebody from HUD in your community excited about doing the work. That is something that I really want to do in my community as well. So don't come to our session. We'll teach you how to do it. Yes, most definitely. Well if people are interested in learning more about you, your work, your research or a potential funder that's interested in a, in a project that you talked about, how can people get Ahold of you? You can email me at Dominique,
Speaker 2:dom, I n I Q u e. Dot. Row r o e@asu.edu can go on our website, which is at ASU stirs who just type it in and it'll come up. Arizona State University, s. T. I. R. We also have websites which is sex trafficking, health.com and a project's starfish. Dot Education. All have lots of resources, lots of information. Um, and feel free to contact me with any questions. You're all of that information is available for free, printed out. Put it on your website, enjoy it. Please use it.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much Dominique. I appreciate your time. I know you're a busy, busy woman and your family, so thank you so much for taking the time to share some of the work that you're doing.
Speaker 2:Thanks Celia. You're amazing. I feel so lucky to know you and to be part of this community.
Speaker 1:That was Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz. She's a pioneer, a maverick, somebody who cuts down the weeds and clears the path for others in human trafficking advocacy to follow. She creates new knowledge and that knowledge is placed immediately in the hands of legislators, law enforcement, social workers and therapists. She's in the ring fighting with both strength and grace. She reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt's famous speech about the man in the arena. He said is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly. Who Errs, who comes up short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming, but who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at worst if he fails at least fails while daring greatly so that his place, so never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. Dominique is in the ring and she's winning her bouts and we're grateful. 13 projects, 13 bouts, 13 wins. I'm sure you have that spirit inside you join us as an advocate, as long as you have the passion, the knowledge and skills can be gained by listening to this podcast and seeking further training. On that note, we have an annual international conference each year called the human trafficking and social justice conference held this year at the University of Toledo. We have over 80 presenters, so check it out@traffickingconference.com so you can get in the arena and fight on behalf of others. If you like this episode of emancipation nation, please subscribe and I'll send you the weekly podcast. Until then, the fight continues.