Podcast on Crimes Against Women
The Conference on Crimes Against Women (CCAW) is thrilled the announce the Podcast on Crimes Against Women (PCAW). Continuing with our fourth season, the PCAW releases new episodes every Monday. The PCAW serves as an extension of the information and topics presented at the annual Conference, providing in-depth dialogue, fresh perspectives, and relevant updates by experts in the fields of victim advocacy, criminal justice, medicine, and more. This podcast’s format hopes to create a space for topical conversations aimed to engage and educate community members on the issue of violence against women, how it impacts our daily lives, and how we can work together to create lasting cultural and systemic change.
Podcast on Crimes Against Women
After the Storm: How Disasters Fuel Human Trafficking and How Emergency Management Can Stop It
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Crises don’t just knock out power—they unravel the safeguards that keep predators at bay. We dig into how traffickers exploit natural disasters, pandemics, and even major events by stepping into system failures with promises of food, shelter, and work that morph into coercion and control. From labor trafficking in post-hurricane rebuilds to targeted online recruitment of displaced single mothers, we connect the dots between vulnerability, policy loopholes, and criminal opportunity.
Our guest, Benjamin Greer, a trafficking subject-matter expert who trains law enforcement and advises a state threat assessment center, breaks down real-world case studies and the modalities behind them: forced labor disguised as reconstruction, illicit adoption pipelines after the Haiti earthquake, and the way suspended wage protections can trigger a “gold rush” of poorly monitored contracts. We talk frankly about data gaps around big sporting events, why preparedness still matters, and how to turn these high-attention moments into training, service mapping, and smarter plans.
We also shift to a public health lens. Pandemic closures revealed new disruption tools—like utility shutoffs and health code enforcement—that pushed illicit businesses out of the shadows. Then we widen the circle: code enforcement, utility workers, delivery drivers, rideshare drivers, shelter intake teams, and building inspectors can all be first identifiers with the right signals and anonymous reporting paths. In court, we unpack why expert witnesses on trauma and coercive control help juries make sense of texts, timelines, and victim behavior that seem contradictory but align with science.
Finally, we go after the motive: money. Stronger fines, meaningful restitution, and modern asset forfeiture that targets the instrumentalities of coercion—homes, vehicles, farms, business premises—can make exploitation a losing proposition. Pair that with multidisciplinary task forces, shared intel platforms, and survivor-centered services, and communities can close the space traffickers rely on.
Setting The Stakes And Warnings
SPEAKER_03The subject matter of this podcast will address difficult topics, multiple forms of violence, and identity-based discrimination and harassment. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and have listed specific content warnings in each episode description to help create a positive, safe experience for all listeners.
SPEAKER_01In this country, 31 million crimes. 31 million crimes are reported every year. That is one every second. Out of that, every 24 minutes, there is a murder. Every five minutes, there is a rape, every two to five minutes, there is a sexual assault. Every nine seconds in this country, a woman is assaulted by someone who told her that he loved her, by someone who told her it was her fault, by someone who tries to tell the rest of us it's none of our business. And I am proud to stand here today with each of you to call that perpetrator a liar.
SPEAKER_03Specifically instructing and developing human trafficking courses for law enforcement and emergency management personnel. He is also a lecturer at California State University, Sacramento. Ben, welcome to the podcast.
Why Disasters Invite Exploitation
SPEAKER_02Awesome. I'm very thankful for being here.
SPEAKER_03We're lucky to have you. This is a really important topic we're going to talk about today, involving human trafficking during natural disasters. And when we think about natural disasters, things like tornadoes or earthquakes, we're most often considering emergency response plans that bring people to safety, rescue operations, and the like. What does not immediately come to mind, at least not for me, is human trafficking. Moreover, the destruction following disaster events is multi-layered. People see the physical devastation of property damage, loss of electricity, food shortages, displacement, and other things. But victimization is not as prominently seen, likely as the situation can be chaotic or at a minimum severely disruptive. Can you help us understand why natural disasters are so advantageous for predators and so dangerous for unsuspecting persons?
SPEAKER_02Well, if you think about it, in an instant, no matter what the disaster is, earthquakes, fires, floods, pandemics, the population has ultimate vulnerability. You have multiple system failures, which leaves people susceptible to exploitation. And so you have exploiters and traffickers that are willing to seize upon that opportunity of those people that are in desperate need of those basic food, water, shelter, those basic needs. And uh the exploiter, the trafficker, is willing to enter that space, provide those basic needs, but then again, it comes at a exploitative cost.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. Can you help us understand the different types of victimization that occurred after some of the very severe and better-known disasters that our listeners might be familiar with, such as Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Matthew, while also describing trafficking modalities?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. The body of this research really started about five or six years ago. Post Hurricane Katrina, what we saw was that some of the labor contractors that would come in during the recovery and the rebuild of the New Orleans area used forced and exploited labor. That obviously was a cost benefit to them and how they could delay or offset some of the costs of employment, of gainfully employing their workers. They leveraged, they exploited the worker visa program to bring in cheaper labor from overseas in order to effectuate this trafficking scheme. So after Katrina, we saw forced and exploited labor as one of the modalities of trafficking. Post-Hurricane Harvey in Houston, we saw traffickers specifically targeting displaced singled mothers. And young mothers or mothers that no longer had a home, didn't know where the next meal for their children would come from. The traffickers had online ads targeting those individuals, saying, Hey, I'll help you, I'll help feed your child, I'll give you a place to stay, but I need you to send you send me a picture of what you. And so they were targeting, again, the most vulnerable moments of that person's life.
SPEAKER_03Now that you mentioned that about Hurricane Katrina, I do remember when many people were displaced and many moved into the Houston area in Texas, and there was a significant amount of crime that occurred during that temporary housing situation. May not have been trafficking per se, but there was a lot of sexual exploitation that occurred.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, a lot of our emergency management agencies, they do have a history of understanding that in a void, in a vacuum, that a criminal element can come in. So for instance, if we evacuate a neighborhood, often law enforcement will be posted to ensure that looting and other things don't occur in that neighborhood. So we already know the concept of lack of systemic structure and in a void, that criminal element will seek to exploit that. But this concept around exploitation of the displaced peoples, that is yet another dynamic that we're still trying to learn and research and learn about. And then, of course, the next step is how do we design a response system or a framework that either tries to mitigate the exploitation or ultimately tries to prevent it from even occurring in the first place?
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. So I would think identifying the types of individuals or the mindset of these folks is important to being able to identify who they might be. Because to me, when I read about this topic and hope to learn from you about it, I think of perhaps people who are have a pre-existing deviant mindset and they're looking to capitalize on the misfortune of other people, whether that be on a regular day when they're trying to traffic someone into forced labor or sex trafficking just because they're vulnerable, maybe they're a runaway or other circumstances. But then when there is a disaster and we all become vulnerable and we all become exposed, where we see devastation, they see opportunity. Would you agree with that?
System Gaps And Criminal Opportunity
SPEAKER_02100%. In fact, that's I've done some trainings for our some of our disaster responders here in California. And one of the implicit bias tools that I use in the training is I'll put up pictures of disasters, major wildfires, the flooding in Katrina and Houston. And I asked the class, you know, what do they see? And these are disaster responders. So they, you know, they they talk about the devastation and the displacement. And then I ask the class, well, what does the trafficker see? And the trafficker sees opportunity, exactly like you said. The challenge is as we look deeper, especially at different types of disasters in different regions of the world, we have seen all different types of modalities of trafficking. Another example the earthquakes in 2010 in Haiti were devastating. And you had a large number of fatalities, which left hundreds and thousands of children orphaned. And you had traffickers willing to, in essence, scoop up the children and sell them on the international adoption market.
SPEAKER_03Oh my gosh.
SPEAKER_02Um now, the the adopting families they come with a good heart because they want to help the orphaned children, but they may not know the circumstances of how that child got into the adoption system. And depending on country, depending on circumstances, an adoption can be anywhere between$30,000 to$50,000. So it can be extremely lucrative if you are willing to exploit people to that extent.
SPEAKER_03That is a really horrific example of people at their worst, you know, kind of exploiting people in the some of the worst moments of their night their lives. But I appreciate you pointing that out because I wasn't f very familiar with that situation in Haiti or the this adoption scheme that you mentioned. Now, are there specific types of disasters, locations, situations that traffickers or these criminal minds gravitate toward?
SPEAKER_02I don't know. I think that might be an intel gap for us. That might be an area where we need further research to better understand how different types of traffickers, I guess you could say for lack of a better term, seek to exploit different types of disasters or different parts of our community. Like I said, you know, you in the example of Hurricane Harvey in Houston, you had the trafficker targeting displaced people. In the example of Hurricane Katrina, you had the trafficker exploiting the system. Exploiting the system in that a common practice after major disasters is some of the federal procedural safeguards are suspended in order to get aid at a faster rate to the impacted area. So there's a specific law called the Davis Bacon Act that was passed in the 1930s. And the goal of that law was to require any federal contract must be the workers of that federal contract must be paid a prevailing union wage or a collective bargaining wage. Obviously, that comes with a little higher cost. And so, what is common across the United States is for the first 30 or 60 days, the Davis Bacon Act is suspended when handing out or filling government contracts for rebuild. And so many researchers have started to be concerned that this becomes a gold rush. Get all your government contracts in in the first 30 days because there's going to be no procedural oversight of who you're hiring and what their wage rates are. So the traffickers in that instance were exploiting the system. And then again, in Haiti, again, you have the traffickers with a different type of exploitation, uh, exploiting both the people, the orphaned children, but then also the unsuspecting adopting families around the world. So there's so many different nuances to this. It's it's going to be challenging. I'm up for the challenge. I want people to be up for the challenge, but it's going to be challenging to try to zero in into the specific areas where we could hopefully build resiliency and find those mitigating factors.
Global Case Study: Haiti Adoptions
SPEAKER_03This this sounds to me like a situation that needs a coordinated community response and maybe a high-risk team. A lot, a lot like domestic violence. Why are we laughing? But a lot like domestic violence or gender-based crimes. Like it's going to take all of us to look at this from all sides doing what we each do best. And clearly your expertise, I uh, as I understand it, is training, right?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, primarily training, but I also serve as the subject matter expert on trafficking for California's State Threat Assessment Center. So kind of our criminal Intel Fusion Center. I kind of bring my knowledge and background and help the Intel analysts kind of contextualize the threat trafficking poses to the state of California.
SPEAKER_03And is that in advance of a disaster or at the time of?
SPEAKER_02Uh all of the above. So, for instance, like right now, we're working on Intel products and community partnerships in advance of all the major sporting events that are coming to California. We have FIFA, we have the Summer Olympics in 28, we have the Super Bowl. And while I think the research is still building on whether these events are technically a magnet to trafficking, at a minimum, it gives us an opportunity to spread awareness and to examine our systems and how we can, again, build better resilience in our youth, in the school systems. And kind of back to your point, how do we integrate all these different professions, all this different knowledge into that multidisciplinary task force model that we've seen work in the past 25 years in the anti-trafficking space?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we've had other guests on the show talk about the phenomenon, if you will, of sex trafficking during major sporting events, specifically the Super Bowl, the World Series, and how there is always a team put together in advance to really understand this landscape. And I've also heard people describe those events as a potential sex tourism events for people traveling to the city, not just to participate in the Super Bowl or whatever the sporting event is, but also to find these types of partners.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Absolutely. I've seen anecdotal evidence and I've heard stories of that occurring in multiple states across the U.S. For me, in order to make an ultimate determination. I mean, obviously, when you have a large influx of population to any one area, everything's going to go up, right? Just statistically, the ratios are going to go up. So for me to come to the conclusion that somehow there is an abnormal amount of increase that's beyond the population increase ratio. That's what I'm looking at from kind of a data analysis. But again, at a minimum, these are great opportunities for us to spread the awareness to the population, to better train our law enforcement and our community partners to reassess whether our local community plans are suitable. If and when we do identify victims, do we have those services available in that area? So it gives us an opportunity to reassess where we are.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think that's a very important point. And, you know, kind of a moment in time when we can kind of see how each one of them plays out, what we can do differently in the future, who else needs to be involved, who's being impacted, and so on. Let's talk about this as potentially a public health crisis. It is maintained by experts that trafficking is a public health crisis and requires specialized services. So you also spoke about systems, systems victimization. What are the areas that crises responders rely on and operate in when we have a public health crisis?
Policy Loopholes And Labor Abuse
SPEAKER_02It it changes the dynamic of your partnerships. It expands the partners that are needed to respond. Let me give uh an example during COVID. So when we talk about natural disasters, you know, we usually think of whatever the big five, the big six, right? Fires, floods, earthquakes, tornadoes, depending on what part of the country you're in. But pandemic had kind of been at the back of the book. It was like the last chapter in the book because we hadn't had a pandemic in almost 100 years. And so in the spring of 2020, when the whole world was in the grip of COVID, a lot of our very forward-leaning creative human trafficking task forces started to look at our public health laws. And it was really an area that had not been examined thoroughly on how it could be leveraged and impact anti-trafficking efforts. So especially here in California, when we had hard lockdowns for 30 or 60 days, where most people were not allowed or requested to stay at home, the illicit businesses still operated. Crime still operates, and crime hides in the shadows of everyday business. So when the pandemic hit, normal legitimate business was asked to stop. And so all a lot of what you saw was illicit business because it lost its shadow. And so when we had massage parlors in certain parts of cities that continued to be open, maybe law enforcement didn't have enough probable cause for a search warrant, but they had the public health laws that said it wasn't supposed to be open, period. And so one of the things that I try to instill in a lot of my courses is yes, arrests are great, but don't discount disruption. And so disruption knocks the trafficker off of their desired path. It causes them to change whatever they're doing, and they may make mistakes, which allows us more opportunities to catch and arrest them. So in the instance of the pandemic and the public health laws, we had human trafficking task forces turning off the utilities to certain locations because they weren't supposed to be open.
SPEAKER_03Oh, that's one strategy, right?
SPEAKER_02And I know that doesn't fit all communities, and uh hopefully that scenario never happens again. But what it did is it opened up, we used phrases like whole community or use all the tools in the toolbox. We never knew that that was even a tool in the toolbox until the pandemic hit. So it starts to get me thinking what other tools are out there that we don't even know are at our disposal? And, you know, given the right set of circumstances, all of a sudden we have these new tools available.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it sounds like a very out-of-the-box type of approach, right? You have to consider all sides, all angles. And clearly these more deviant minds are considering uh methods and tactics that you know try to keep us on our toes, if you will. Oh, 100%.
SPEAKER_02100%. The bad actors, the threat actors, absolutely can take the shape of water and they can react and evolve and adapt much quicker than our legal systems or our governmental systems can. So uh, you know, we need to, by the nature of law enforcement, we are reactionary. We wait until a call comes to 911 and then we respond for the most part. You know, some agencies have really robust community-based policing where they try to get ahead of problems. But for the most part, we are reactionary by nature. Our goal is to close that gap, that reactionary gap the best we can.
SPEAKER_03Let's take a quick pause and share a message from the podcast Women Beyond Walls that we found interesting and think you might want to listen to.
SPEAKER_00Bad girls. That's the label so many women in prison are given. But what if that label is a lie? I'm Sabrina Mittani. In season two of Women Beyond Walls, we go beyond the stereotype and behind prison walls. We speak to women around the world who've lived through incarceration and those reimagining what justice could look like. Subscribe to Women Beyond Walls wherever you get your podcasts.
Events, Data, And Preparedness
SPEAKER_03Now, there are other community actions that are taken to try to prevent or intervene in trafficking and even domestic violence situations. For example, if you go into a restaurant in many areas, you will find phone numbers on the back of a bathroom door, especially in the women's room, that give you information about a number you can call if you're being trafficked or if you're involved in an intimate partner relationship that's abusive. And these appear to be proactive. So these would be, these would not be responsive as much as they are proactive to your point. But then there are other tactics that the predator might use, like taking a phone away. So she goes to the restroom, she sees the number, she really wants to call, but he's taken her phone, he monitors her phone, he pays for her phone. She's also monitored by this trafficker and compromised in so many ways. And then we compound on that a natural disaster. What do we do? What does she do?
SPEAKER_02That's a good question. Statistically, we know that a vast majority of victims do not self-identify. I am all for maximizing avenues to report and identify either victims or suspicious behavior. Part of my main focus in my day-to-day work is trying to get people in the systems, people in the task forces to understand the dynamics so that we're not only relying on the self-reporting. Phone calls that come in from I've seen phone call or um like numbers listed on lipstick tubes or shoe cards, or there's lots of very creative ways to get that number out, and I'm all for that. But I also want code enforcement. First identifiers, not just first responders. A lot of times if we say first responders, people think fire, police, EMS. And if they hear first responder, they go, Oh, well, that's not me. I'm something else, so I don't really have to pay attention. Well, if if we change our words in my mind, if we change our words to first identifier, anybody can be a first identifier. It can be the Amazon delivery package person, it can be your Uber or Lyft driver, it can be your meter reader that comes around to check your electricity usage every month. If if we all have a basic level of awareness of suspicious activity or signs or symptoms of exploitation, then I think I think that will also greatly increase reports to law enforcement for further follow-up.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, for maybe suspici suspicious activity or things of concern in the community. And just to follow up on that point, I think in addition to community education about those topics, like PSAs and other easy ways to broadcast, or this podcast, if you will, to broadcast to a very broad audience. There need to be ways to report that information that people feel comfortable with. So I've seen apps for many police departments where you can report something anonymously. You don't need a follow-up call, you don't have to give your name, you can just say, I saw this, or and explain the situation. Or if you're comfortable, you can call the non-emergency line at your police department.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yeah. In California, and I assume it's the same in Texas and other states, you can submit a suspicious activity report to your fusion center. And then they can look into it or follow up as well. So yeah, there's numerous ways. I always encourage multiple reporting. Don't worry, like I already called that number. And it's like, no, I would rather have more calls in the system than someone thinking that the report got in and somehow it didn't get fully into the system. So absolutely, whether it is the National Human Trafficking Resource Center's tip line, or whether your local PD or your local task force, you know, put it in as multiple areas as you know exist.
SPEAKER_03For sure. And so hopefully this episode will get people to start thinking about standing up when they see suspicious activity, reporting it, even if it is anonymously. That I would really love to encourage that. Now, in speaking about task forces, agencies, and organizations designed to fight human trafficking, there are many of them out there, from grassroots all the way to the federal level. But they seem to lack a real standardization of practices. Could you tell us what some of the existing challenges are and why many unit variations may interfere with incorporating emergency management or making overall significant strides in trafficking prevention?
Public Health Lens And Disruption
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. No, you are absolutely correct. So I'll use California as an example because that's probably the state that I know best. We have approximately 35 specialty units across the state. California, Texas, Florida, New York are probably the states that have the largest anti-trafficking footprint. We also have a significant chunk of the population of the United States, if that makes sense.
SPEAKER_03And they're the coastline, right? They're kind of in the four corners, if you will.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And so in California, we have 35 specialty units. Some of them are federally funded, some of them are state funded, some of them are funded by the county, and some of them are funded by the city. There is no common nomenclature across these task force formations. If in the nomenclature, what you call yourself, whether you're a task force or a community collaborative or a working group or whatever, is usually tied to your funding source. And then the funding source usually also tells you or directs you on the composition, whether it's housed in the sheriff's office or a police department or the district attorney's office. And so there's not this common format. And so we kind of see the menagerie of different types of task forces designed. Some of them may only look at commercial sexual exploitation. They're not designed to investigate or prosecute forced labor at all. And so when we look at our data, our statistics, we have to take all this into consideration when you know uh 80% of your cases are commercial sex, and someone goes, wow, we have a really bad sex trafficking problem. And it's like, well, eight or nine of eight out of nine of our task forces were only paid to look at this specific type. So, you know, I'm always on the guard against prevalence. That is the ultimate question that everyone asks. And there's so many dynamics that go into data to try to estimate prevalence. So we have 35 units in California, and we have no standardized intel sharing platform for those 35 units. And I think this is pretty common across the United States. Task forces in a region may have partners that they've worked with, so they kind of have like the buddy system. Hey, I know my friend works over at that task force, so we can pick up the phone call and call, but the information sharing system, the environment is lacking. And I think that was one of the goals of the fusion post-September 11th, was a better information sharing network. So we've we've taken strides in other types of criminal activity. I think that is a gap that a challenge that we have right now is how do we bring, we have all these communities and all these counties and agencies wanting to help. How do we bring them into the fold in a cohesive manner so that they're not working the same case, so that they're not duplicating efforts, so that we can be more effective both with the money that we're spending, but then also maximizing the impact when it comes to convictions and victims identified.
SPEAKER_03What would you say are the approaches that could be effective to doing that?
SPEAKER_02First and foremost, I think bringing all those groups together at a single event, and then I guarantee you in any one state, if you were to reach out and bring people together, they'd be like, Oh, hey, I didn't know that city had a task force. Wait, you mean that there's two task forces in Houston? I didn't know there's two, or whatever, right? Or or there's one in Dallas and there's one in Houston, and there's one in you know San Antonio or whatever, because I've seen that here in California. And especially with states that are very large geographically, it's hard to know what one end of the state is doing at the other end of the state. And so I think just first and foremost, bringing them all together, providing a venue to bring them together, they will start recognizing that they didn't know each other existed, and that's step one. And then step two is figuring out well, is there some type of Intel sharing platform that we can leverage to share operational or case-specific information? And again, I'm talking from a law enforcement perspective.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then, of course, then you can grow out from there to victim service providers and all the other partners that branch off of the law enforcement framework.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that coordination sounds critical. I can think of no better place to bring all of those teams together than at the Conference on Crimes Against Women, May 2026 in Dallas, Texas.
SPEAKER_02I teed that up for you.
SPEAKER_03You you really did, and I took the bait, didn't I? Um so what we've talked about so far is this really huge problem of human trafficking and during natural disasters, and the many, many solutions and agencies and people trying to work toward responding to it. And that can seem like way too big of a task for some smaller agencies or people just getting started to take that on. Are there any first-step examples that agencies or organizations or prosecutors can creatively consider to get the ball rolling towards addressing these issues?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, first and foremost, no one person is going to solve this. Otherwise, it would have been solved by now. And so the challenge that I usually give to the people in my trainings and when I talk to community partners is whatever you do best, whatever that may be, figure out how that piece to the puzzle fits into the larger anti-trafficking framework. And if you can bring the best of you to the framework, then we have all the pieces on the table. So for instance, I might be a family counselor or a kids counselor at school, and I don't know anything about investigating and prosecuting cases, but maybe I am really good at understanding how to question and talk with children. And so maybe there's a way that I can share my expertise in that aspect to the larger group, to law enforcement when they are interviewing children or to other groups that may interact with people of very young ages. Again, maybe I work for the Red Cross. I'm really good at setting up shelters in times of disaster. Maybe I need to re-examine our intake forms. Maybe there's a couple questions that we can tweak on the intake forms in disaster sheltering that maybe gives us a better insight or peek into suspicious behavior. So I'm not asking any one person to tackle the whole problem. Just find the piece that you're really good at, and that's the piece that we should all bring to the table.
SPEAKER_03I agree with that advice. And to your point, I really loved what you said, and and I I believe it is do what you do best. Do what you can do and join together with the rest of the community to try to work on and resolve these issues. Now, we talked very briefly just now about prosecutors, and I wanted to also talk about to those other points about doing what you do, expert witnesses. What are your thoughts about bringing in expert witness testimony in human trafficking cases?
Reporting Paths And Fusion Centers
SPEAKER_02Depending on the facts of the case, it may be critical to the success of the case. Coercion is incredibly difficult. It can be very nuanced, and it's very difficult for the average person, a jury, a juror, to understand. It's very subjective, so it's unique to the person. Something that may be coercive to you, Maria, may not be coercive to me. And so it's very difficult for the jury to try to relate to the victim. Really good example that we just saw on a high publicity case was the Sean Combs case. And he was acquitted of a number of the charges around trafficking, and specifically, I believe, due to the inability of the prosecutor to really drill down on the coercive nature of the relationship. And so in those cases, it may be critical that you bring in an expert in trafficking or a forensic traumatologist or other types of experts to try to give that jury kind of that mental insight into the victim. You know, as as prosecutors, they may work months or years on a case. And so they have thousands of hours trying to internalize the facts of the relationship, the dynamic of the relationship. And they're trying to they're trying to instill that feeling, that knowledge into the jury within like 24 hours. So you're trying to do this meta transformation of a deep understanding of the dynamics of two humans into the jury in a very short period of time. And so whatever tools may be needed, and again, sometimes you may need to reach out to experts in the field to help short or help ease that information transfer from the prosecutor into the jury.
SPEAKER_03So I'm not familiar with all the details of the Sean Combs trial. Of course, I'm aware of it. In that particular case, was it that the prosecutor didn't know how?
SPEAKER_02I don't want to judge the quality or quantity of the prosecutor's abilities. That's not what I'm looking at. What I'm trying to say is I know that there were like text messages that went back and forth between the victim and combs. And I think some of the messages, like the victim would send a smiley face, and then that's often confusing to a jury. Why, if you're being forced and exploited and coerced, why are you giving the smiley face and the I love you text messages? And so the deeper, more nuanced dynamics of coercion are very difficult to impart in to that trier of fact, be it a judge or a jury. So sometimes it may take an expert witness to talk more about the science of trauma, how prolonged and especially severe trauma physically changes your brain. Your brain shrinks, it releases chemicals that dissolve synapses and parts of your brain where your memory seems scattered. And it's not necessarily because you don't remember, it's because you're witnessing the symptoms of the trauma. And so maybe sometimes that helps a jury understand why the victim acted or reacted the way that they did in certain circumstances.
SPEAKER_03That's a great point. I mean, it it certainly helps if we look at victims as a whole person and all the different things that impact them when they have these traumatic experiences. I also think we're watching some of this continue to unfold with the Epstein case or the Epstein files, I should say. As they release those files and more and more gets revealed, we really get a deep understanding, not just of who the who all the perpetrators were or could be in this situation, but the experiences of the women who were trafficked by all of these people.
SPEAKER_02They often I will hear from time to time, you know, well, I asked her what happened, and then the second time I asked her the story changed, or she couldn't remember something, and maybe that there's a concern that she's making up the story or she's being recalcitrant and doesn't want to cooperate with law enforcement. That could be true, but have you even considered that maybe you're actually just witnessing part of her trauma and her brain no longer functions properly because of the trauma? Because of the damage to her brain and her memory file system, she remembers it differently every time. It's not that she's changing the story, she remembers it differently every time.
Fragmented Task Forces And Data
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. With the work that we do at Genesis Women's Shelter and Support, we know that. We witness it every day with the clients that we serve. And I also wanted to just go back to the high-profile cases again and mention that we do realize and acknowledge, as you said, these are high-profile situations, ones that we've heard about. There are millions more happening on a regular basis that we may never hear about or have the opportunity to learn about. But we can take away the lessons from some of these more high-profile situations and really build a plan of prevention and intervention for human trafficking, sex trafficking, and the like. And I think that's, you know, in the final minutes of this conversation, I'd really like us to focus on some tangible ways that local agencies, even national agencies, individuals can focus on what they can do to help prevent and intervene in the tragedy that is human trafficking.
SPEAKER_02I encourage all of our specialty units, and I know it's challenging because working with multiple agencies is always challenging, but try to bring in as many disciplines as you possibly can into your specialty unit or task force. That may include code enforcement, I mentioned earlier, that may include fire and EMS, that may include emergency management agencies or public safety, Department of Public Safety, those types of agencies. So the broader the multidisciplinary kind of net that we can cast, the more likelihood, the higher the likelihood that we are going to spot suspicious behavior. And it gives us greater skill set in order to respond.
SPEAKER_03What else might we do in kind of a different vein to deter people from even considering trafficking?
SPEAKER_02So I'm a big proponent. It really is greed. Yes, there are absolutely power and control dynamics that factor into this, but ultimately the outcome is for financial or pecuniary gain. I would love our prosecutors and law enforcement to re-examine some of our laws around asset forfeiture, to re-examine how we calculate rest victim restitution. We need to make this crime financially untenable for the perpetrator. If the financial penalty is too close to actually what I can gain, it becomes a business decision. And I'm willing to roll the dice. But if the financial penalty is significantly greater than what I could gain from the crime, bad people are going to do bad stuff. We know that. Just go do something else, leave these people alone, and I'll try to catch you over there too.
SPEAKER_03That sounds like a promise. And the one of the best ways to deter even an abusive partner from re from committing those types of offenses again is to find them. So if you hit them in the wallet, they tend to really get the message.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and so a number of states have done statutory fines and increased statutory fines. There are some other areas, like I'd mentioned asset forfeiture. Again, I'm speaking from a California perspective. We have numerous areas in the law where asset forfeiture applies right now. So, for instance, if we catch a burglar and they used a set of lock picks to get into the house, law enforcement takes the lock picks. You forfeit the right to own those lock picks because they were a tool that was used in the instrumentality of your crime. Okay. So let me ask you this. If I have a false job application and I entice someone to come to my house, and then once they're here, I force them to clean my house seven days a week, ten hours a day. They have to watch my kids, they can't leave, they wash my car, they wash my clothes, they do all the dishes, and they get paid very little or don't get paid at all. What are the tools and instrumentalities that I used in that subjugation?
SPEAKER_03Well, first of all, that sounds like a lot of abusive marriages right there.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03I don't know the answer to the question.
SPEAKER_02So you know, I I gave uh an example that could be classified as domestic servitude a form of forced labor.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, which is actually what it's like to be in an abusive marriage, by the way.
Building Intel Sharing And Standards
SPEAKER_02And so in in that scenario, the house was used as a tool for subjugation, the car, the clothes, the dishes. And so if the trafficker is forcing or is facing, excuse me, is facing forfeiture of their home and their car and their dishes and everything that was used, all of a sudden the money that they saved by not hiring a lawful housekeeper or maid, it's no longer worth it. If saving$20,000,$30,000 puts at risk my$2 million home, all of a sudden the cost is substantially more. Other countries are trying this. Canada is trying this right now. Now you have other legal issues that you have to address in or when you're drafting some of these statutes. But these are some of the areas. If you're a farmer and you are, and I'm not talking about hiring undocumented people, I'm talking about human trafficking forcement exploited labor. If I force someone to drive my tractor and harvest all my crops and bail the hay and tend to the barn, I've used the farm as a tool, as a part of my subjugation of that person. If it's just a$50,000 or$100,000 fine that's in the statute, my concern is that the trafficker just that that's just a cost of doing business, and then they factor that into the price of whatever their commodity is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but then having to give up the farm would be a really severe punishment for a person like that. That's a great example. Those are all great examples. I appreciate your work in this area and the information you were able to share with us today, and thank you for talking with me.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_03Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. The 21st Annual Conference on Crimes Against Women will be held May 18th through the 21st, 2026, in Dallas, Texas. Learn more at conferencecaw.org and be the first to know about all conference details, as well as the latest on the Institute for Coordinated Community Response, Annual Conference Summit, Beyond the Bounds, and the National Training Center on Crimes Against Women. When you follow us on social media at NationalCCAWC.