- Good morning everyone.
- [Audience] Good morning.
- Who needs more coffee?
Good morning, everyone.
- [Audience] Good morning!
- Oh, thanks so much for coming today.
My name is Susan Madera.
I'm Academic Program Manager
for High Impact Practices
of Queensborough Community College,
and I'm also the coordinator
of the Common Read Initiative.
This year's book is The
Road of Lost Innocence
by Somali Mam.
There are many topics in this book
on which we can focus,
one of which is sexual trafficking,
one is human trafficking,
and overall, we're thinking
about human rights.
So, I would like to first thank NYPIRG,
the MALES Club, the Haitian Club,
College Discovery, the
Money/Legal Eagle Club,
and the students' Veterans
Center for sponsoring this event.
There are over 1,400
students at Queensborough
reading this book this semester.
There's also one class at
Thomas Edison High School
reading this book this semester.
We're reading this book at the same time
and offering co-curricular events
because our hope is that you will start
to make connections
between the disciplines.
Well, what does that mean?
That means that the students
who are reading this book
in the math class are looking at it
from a statistical point of view.
Those in the business
class are looking at it
from a business point of view.
Trafficking is a huge
money-making machine.
There are nurses who are
looking at the effects of STDs,
abortion, sterilization,
suicide, child abuse.
So, as you can see, we're looking at it
from many different angles.
These events are to help
you to connect those pieces.
Our goal as a place of higher learning
is to raise you up and to
have you think globally.
If any of you are
uncomfortable with the content
of this event, or of the
events, or the text itself,
please feel free to go
to our counseling center
in this building, the library, room 422.
All counselors have read the book
and are available to speak with you
if you feel that you would
like to speak to someone.
Please identify yourself as
someone who's participating
in the Common Read, and anything
that you speak to them about
will be held in complete confidentiality.
Our first speaker today is Megan Rhoad.
She is the U.S. researcher in
the Women's Rights Division
currently focusing on
violence against women.
Her work at Human Rights Watch
has included documentation
of abuses suffered by women
in U.S. Immigration detention,
research into sexual violence
affecting Somali women and
girls in Kenyan refugee camps,
and fact-finding in Haiti on the situation
of women and girls displaced
by the 2010 earthquake.
Rhoad was formerly a woman's
law and public policy fellow
at the National Women's Law
Center in Washington, DC
where she researched U.S.
Federal Judicial nominations
and analyzed policy developments
affecting the economic security
of low-income women and their families.
Her previous work includes
international advocacy projects
using the human rights framework
to address issues such
as reproductive health
and gender discrimination
in inheritance law.
Rhoad is a graduate of Harvard University
and Georgetown University Law Center.
Please join me in welcoming Megan Rhoad.
- Hi, everyone.
My apologies for being late.
I am actually leaving
for Tanzania this evening
and we're doing a research
mission there on child marriage,
and things have been a bit chaotic trying
to get ready for that.
Great.
So, as Susan said, my name's Megan
and I'm a Human Rights Watch researcher.
My job is to document
human Rhoad violations,
specifically women's Rhoad violations,
mostly in the U.S. and Canada.
I have sort of a geographic focus,
but also other place, like Tanzania,
where I'm going tonight.
So, what Human Rights Watch does
is we're a nonprofit organization.
We are not affiliated with any government.
We're completely independent,
and we work now,
we have people in a 150
locations around the world
documenting human rights abuses,
mostly by talking with people
who have experienced the
violations themselves
and putting that information together
into comprehensive, in-depth reports
that in addition to analyzing the dynamics
of whatever issue it is
that we're looking at,
also provide concrete
recommendations to the government
and often to the international community
about what we think should
be done about the issue.
We then release our
reports and try and make
as much of a media impact as possible
to generate the kind of pressure
that will push governments to take action.
So, the part that I was
going to talk about today
although I would be
more than happy to talk
about any facet of my job
was some of the work that I've
done in the United States.
I should say first of all that
as a women's rights division,
we've been around since about 1992.
Our work covers four
areas, or four focus areas,
and we call them home,
health, work, and war.
And essentially these
being the different spheres
in which we see some of the
most egregious violations
against women.
So, with the home, we're talking
about things like domestic violence,
even property rights,
the right to own property
as well as to inherit property.
Health, we've done a lot of
work on reproductive health
including maternal mortality,
which is a major cause
of death for women around the world.
Work, equal rights in the workplace
including the rights of migrant laborers.
A big piece of work for us has been
on migrant domestic workers,
particularly domestic workers
who come from parts of
Asia to the Middle East,
and in order to how to make money there
and send money back home but who often
are subject to abuses in the countries
that they work in.
And finally, war; we've
been a part of efforts
to address sexual violence in conflict
in terms of getting more
recognition of this issue
at the international level,
at the Security Council,
and also documenting where sexual violence
has been used in conflicts
extensively, as in the Congo.
So, for my work, however, as I said,
it's mostly focused on the
United States and Canada
and when I began, there was a question
of where do you begin documenting
women's rights violations
in the United States?
And certainly there would
be any number of options,
but the one that stood
out to us at the time
was looking at how women were treated
in the U.S. Immigration system.
So, in relation to what you're reading,
I think the information
I have to share with you
is sort of, it's on the back
end of some of the experiences
you may have read about.
What happens when women,
including women who have been trafficked,
including women who have
been subject to violence
on route to the United States,
what happens when they then intersect
with the U.S. Immigration
enforcement system?
You all may be aware that
the Obama Administration
has deported more people than
any other prior administration
and about 400,000 people were detained
in immigration detention last year.
For a long time, it's been considered
the fastest growing form of incarceration
in the United States.
Women make up roughly 10%
of the immigration detention population,
though that has has fluctuated a bit.
So, when we looked at
this, at first it was like,
well, they're only 10%,
so does this really have
that big of an impact?
But it does, and in fact
because women are only 10%
of the immigration detention population,
they often aren't thought about
and their particular needs
aren't thought about.
And the way immigration
detention in the U.S. works
is Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
the major federal agency involved,
ICE you may have heard of,
operates some of its own
immigration detention centers,
these large facilities
where they jail people,
sometimes for months at a time,
even in some cases, the
women we interviewed,
years at a time while their
immigration cases are pending.
But because the federal government
doesn't have enough capacity
to jail that many people
for immigration reasons,
as the population that
they're detaining has exploded
and reached this 400,000 level,
they've contracted out more and more space
from either local county jails
or for-profit detention facilities,
which means that oversight
and making sure that people's human rights
are respected when they're in detention
has become even more unwieldy.
So, our work on this issue
meant we went to nine different facilities
of different kinds, some
operated completely by ICE,
some local county jails, the whole gamut.
We interviewed about four dozen women
who were either in detention at the time
or had recently been released
and they told us about a
range of medical care problems
that they had while in detention.
In particular, we spoke with women
who had been raped crossing
the Mexico/U.S. border
by smugglers who then were unable
to get adequate medical care
once they arrived in
immigration detention.
So, sort of the standard
care you would expect
if you went to an emergency
room after a sexual assault
was not available to them.
They also weren't able
to access counseling
at a time that was
really a period of crisis
in their lives.
In addition, there were women
who had been living in the community,
because I think there's
also this misperception
that the only people being
held in immigration detention
are people who just
came across the border,
or just were stopped on the way in,
and you all may know better than that,
that actually a lot of people
who end up detained are people
who had lived here,
sometimes with documents,
for an extended period of time
and then due to some kind
of criminal infraction
may end up in immigration detention
pending deportation procedures.
So, some of the women we talked to
had been seeing their doctor regularly
and had found out that they
had signs of cervical cancer,
and so had gone into immigration detention
with this ongoing health need
and then found that they
couldn't get checked properly,
that it was going to
take months for a request
for follow-up care to be delivered.
And often, in the midst of all of it,
they would be transferred
to another immigration detention center,
and the process would
start all over again.
So, we were very concerned,
same thing with breast cancer, too.
Women had signs of breast cancer
that went unaddressed for months,
one case like seven months at a time.
And in some cases, the lack of access
to adequate medical
care actually made women
decide not to fight their
immigration case anymore
and agree to be deported,
which, of course, is never something
that should be held in the balance
when we're thinking about
immigration matters,
which are, in general,
civil matters, but...
We also heard about the
shackling of pregnant women
and this has become a major human rights,
civil rights issue.
In the country, generally when talking
about women in prison,
women in county jails,
that it is, actually it's
been found by federal courts
to be a constitutional rights violation
to shackle someone, to handcuff them
or shackle their ankles
during the process of labor.
And what we found with
immigration detention was that,
as one detention official told me,
"I don't like people dying on my watch.
"I don't like people
being born on my watch."
So, they often would deport women
before they were about to,
before they were ready to give birth
or they would otherwise
find a way to release them
into the community on some
kind of supervised program,
but that didn't stop
them from shackling women
on route to prenatal appointments.
And some of the women we talked to
talked about being,
having their hands bound
in these trucks that had no restraints,
no seat belts or anything like that,
and being very concerned
about their pregnancy.
And that was only, of course,
if they were even able
to get access to a prenatal appointment,
which, in some high-risk
cases, did not happen.
So, there's been a lot of movement
since we published our report in 2009,
and at the time, there was
only a single reference
to women's health in
the detention standards
for immigration detention,
and it said that women
would get pregnancy testing
and adequate care.
Now there's a full
detention standard dedicated
to women's health and
it prohibits shackling.
And that would be the good news,
except one, policy is just policy,
and you always have to look
to see how it's implemented,
but also because of the
increasing involvement
of local law enforcement
like local police officers
in immigration matters,
it takes this out of the realm
of just the federal government
and into county policies as well.
You all may have heard of
the case of Juana Villegas.
In July, I believe it was July,
in 2008, she was arrested
on a traffic violation,
and it's normally something
that she would have been
released the same day.
It was relatively minor,
but she had an immigration hold on her,
so when they checked her into jail,
they saw that ICE had asked for there
to be a hold on her.
So, they held her over the weekend,
and she was pregnant,
and ended up giving birth
during that time when she
was on this immigration hold,
and it was the policy of the jail
to shackle inmates during labor,
so they did shackle her.
So, even though she wasn't technically
in immigration custody,
there was this major uproar
that she had been subject to this.
Anyway, the good part about this story
is that it brought so much
attention to the issue
that the county changed its policy,
and through a lawsuit, Juana Villegas
got a half a million
dollar settlement last year
after fighting the case for five years.
So, those are
some of the issues
that arose as we were
first doing the research.
At the same time, as we
started to do the advocacy
and we started to hear from more people
about their experiences
because it was out there
that we had done this research
and we were in touch with more folks,
a healthcare worker at an
immigration detention center
in Texas got in touch with me,
first on an anonymous basis,
but then she felt more and more
prepared to speak publicly.
I'm just gonna check on my time.
Okay.
And she had witnessed deplorable care
in this particular
detention center in Texas.
At the time, it was the biggest
detention center in the U.S.
It was called Willacy
County Detention Center
and we visited there,
and it was sort of this
space-age-like equipment
that they had built with Kevlar tents,
out in the Texas heat.
It was quite a thing to behold,
but so, this huge detention center,
and she had seen awful conditions,
and it was through her that we connected
with some other folks working
in the detention system
and found out that there
was also a problem of rape.
And so, we ended up
issuing a second report
on immigration detention
that looked specifically
at the issue of sexual assault of women
who are being held in
immigration detention.
It's one of those issues that is difficult
to substantiate because the
victims are so often deported.
And in the meantime, while they're here,
have difficulty accessing
the kind of remedies
that a U.S. citizen or a
permanent resident might,
for example, being in a detention center,
being isolated from the world,
perhaps having a language
barrier to contend with as well,
and fear, very real fear of retaliation.
So, we documented a number of cases
and in the process of dialoguing
with Immigration and Customs
Enforcement about this issue,
we found out that they do
not consider themselves
bound by the major piece
of federal legislation
that addresses prison rape.
In 2003, Congress passed a bipartisan bill
called the Prison Rape Elimination
Act, or PREA for short,
that was meant to take
aim at at this epidemic
of rape in custodial settings.
Part of that was there was a commission
that studied the issue
and then they proposed
all these different rules
that jails and prisons
would have to abide by,
but the difficulty was
even though the people
who wrote the law clearly
intended for immigration detention
to be covered as well,
at about the same time
that PREA was passed,
the Department of Homeland
Security was created.
So, whereas immigration
detention had previously
been under the Department of Justice,
it was now under this new entity,
which actually was not
referenced in the law.
A little bit technical,
but the point being
that there was this sort of legal loophole
that they were using to say
that they did not have to
comply with these basic,
basic human rights standards.
So, that became a focus for our advocacy,
not just ours but many groups,
and we worked very closely
with the ACLU on this.
And you all may be aware of
the Violence Against Women Act.
Well, it was that law
first passed in 1994,
a landmark piece of legislation
for women in the United States.
It was reauthorized last
year, so it was renewed.
There was a new law, and
as part of that piece
of legislation, Congress demanded
that the Department of Homeland Security
issue regulations that would
provide comparable protection
for immigration detainees
as any other prisoner
in the United States when it comes
to sexual assault and rape.
So, that's just a, I guess,
an overview of my work,
and I'd be happy to answer
questions now or later.
Susan, did you decide whether we do Q & A?
- [Susan] Does anyone have any questions
for Megan at this time?
- [Audience] No.
- [Susan] No more questions at this time.
Well, thank you very much.
- My pleasure.
(audience applauding)
- I'm gonna switch them.
We're just gonna switch mics.
At this time, I'd like
to introduce Sister Mary Katharine Hamm.
Mary Katharine Hamm is a Sister of Charity
who grew up in Suffolk County, Long Island
and has worked most of her life
in New York and New Jersey.
Currently, she serves as
coordinator of education
for LifeWay Network, a
nonprofit whose vision
is a world without slavery.
She began her connection
with LifeWay in 2007.
Throughout her ministries in
education and pastoral work,
Katie has integrated advocacy
for peace and justice.
She appreciates being at LifeWay Network
because her work in schools,
parishes, and civic groups
has allowed her to meet so many people
who are passionate about a better future
and ending the scourge
of modern day slavery.
Please join me in welcoming Sister Kate.
- I love media and I hate media.
I'm never sure I can count on it,
so I'm hoping that maybe your generation
is a generation that actually believes
that when you put something in,
it'll turn out all right.
I can't tell you how many times
I've brought a PowerPoint
and nothing happens
and I'm like, okay, let's
just go with talking.
That's good.
So, I'm really glad to be here
and I'm glad to see that you're here
because I consider it an act of courage
to come to any kind of talk
about human trafficking
because when you hear it,
you can never unhear it.
Once you know it, there's a
call inside to do something.
And I'm here to tell you I
don't know what you can do,
but I know you can do something.
So, at the end of this talk,
that's what I'm hoping,
that you'll say, ah, I learned something
and I know that I can do something,
because we are the solution.
This is a huge, huge I wanna
say problem, but challenge.
If you consider that we
live in a world in 2014
that has 30 million slaves worldwide.
30 million worldwide is
the population of Canada.
So, if you said, all the
Canadians are enslaved,
look at the gifts that are lost.
Look at the futures that aren't happening.
Look at the discoveries, all the pieces
of 30 million people,
because each of us, I'm
sure, have been taught
to value the life of one person.
So, even if I told you, it's only 10,
you'd say that's too many.
In 2014?
In this world that can
send people to the moon?
You know, we are going to
do something about it today.
And so, when you leave here,
I don't want anybody to feel guilty.
I don't want anybody to feel hopeless.
I want you, leave here
with hope, with an idea,
and with people you can
talk to about it, okay?
All right, so you know that I come
from a generation that
was called Baby Boomers.
So, we're crossing over the line here.
So, I'm really hoping
to hand it on to you.
I'm handing on the torch
because I don't know
if it'll happen in my lifetime,
but I'm sure that it
can happen if everyone
that hears about it does one thing.
Okay, so this is,
I was invited to talk
about the organization
that I belong to, and it's
a great little organization.
It's called LifeWay Network,
and then images is a dove
with chains down there,
and the Collaborating to
Combat Human Trafficking.
So, you know that it's not just us.
There's many, many organizations.
You just heard about Human Rights Watch.
You know that lots and lots of people
are taking different tactics to try
to address this problem, right?
Our nonprofit was founded in 2007.
So, 2007 isn't that long ago, right?
Seven years, and it
was founded by somebody
just about my age,
and I thought maybe, you know
a lot comes out of the name,
so you know that the idea
of life, it's not just
about surviving, it's about thriving.
So, when Sister Joan
Dawber, who is the founder
thought about this name, she said,
"I'm gonna call it LifeWay," okay?
Now somebody just last year pointed out
that when people are talking about women
who are sometimes in
prostitution, they say,
it's the life.
It's the life, but that's
not really the life
that allows you to thrive.
So, this idea of LifeWay,
which is a life where you are independent,
where you have connections,
where you are free,
that's the kind of life
we want for everyone
that we are involved with.
So, you know, I'm sure,
that Sister Joan was
just an ordinary person
working in a ordinary parish
in St. Michaels in Flushing.
Okay?
So, she's working there,
doing parish work,
and it was maybe 2005
when it first came out
that there was a call
to all of the sisters
in the global network to say,
let's look at this issue
and see if there's anything
that we can do to address it.
Now the one thing good about
being in the global network
is you have feet on the ground everywhere.
So, they have this annual meeting in Rome
and people that are in
different countries can say,
you don't know what's happening here,
you don't know what's happening here,
and so on, and so on, and so on.
And so, the call came out and Sister Joan
heard the call and she said, "No, not me.
"Not me, that's too much.
"It's too violent.
"It's too big."
Okay, so she said that a couple times,
and then, I guess it finally came to her.
She says, "Well, if I don't
do it who will do it?"
Nobody wants to start an organization.
In a way, it's like, not a goal,
because you know that it's
gonna cost you, right?
Starting anything costs you.
So, she couldn't resist it any longer
because she said, "If not me, who?"
All right?
And so she took the step.
I mean, and that's the way
it is with any organization,
Even Somali Mam.
You take one step,
you take one step and then it leads you
to the next step, then it
leads you to the next step.
You don't think Somali Mam
thought in the beginning,
I'm gonna write a book.
No, no.
It's like let me do the first
thing that comes in my way,
and that'll leave me to the second thing.
So, the idea was that's
what happened here.
So, Sister Joan Dawber took the first step
and she started a nonprofit.
Sounds like an easy thing to do.
Lemme just start a nonprofit,
but something like that takes
a year or two, you know?
Nothing goes fast.
Nothing goes fast.
And so, the idea of a nonprofit
is nobody makes money.
It's not about making money.
The idea of a nonprofit, that
it's really about common good.
What can I do to increase
the welfare of people
who need help?
And so that's what this nonprofit does.
It has two purposes, really.
One of the purposes is
to provide safe housing,
and the second purpose
is to provide education
and public awareness, 'cause
they go hand-in-hand, okay?
Now...
So, I told you that the
worldwide statistic is,
we say 29.6 million, from the
Global Slavery Index people.
But you say, well, that's far away.
That's overseas.
That's not here.
Well, actually, it is here.
It is here.
They have statistics.
and again, the statistics are
always nebulous, you know?
How can you be sure that's the number?
So, they say between 15,000
and 17,000 foreign nationals
cross over our borders for
the purpose of trafficking.
15,000 to 17,000 cross into our borders
for the purpose of trafficking.
Similarly, they say between
200,000 and 300,000 youth
are at risk.
At risk, so who are the at risk youth?
You'll probably know some, okay?
You've probably seen them.
They probably been in
your high school, right?
People who have homelessness,
have abuse at home, who have
maybe mental health issues,
you know, people who are vulnerable.
Those who are at risk.
So, just to say it's a big problem.
It's something that does
touch our our shores,
does touch our towns,
does touch our Main Street.
And that's why you're
part of the solution.
because that's where you are.
You have the eyes.
You have the ears.
You have the will.
You can make a call.
You can make it a judgment.
You can move something
forward, because you're there.
So, I like to think of you
as the feet on the ground.
You're the abolitionists of this time.
The abolitionists are the ones
who want to get rid of slavery.
So, that's who you are now,
because I'm sure, if I said,
who wants to get rid of slavery,
every hand would go up,
because we know that the world is richer
when people are free, okay?
So, anyway.
I thought I'd just say something.
It'll kind of cross back again,
but maybe just about the vulnerable youth.
We are currently in partnership
with Covenant House.
How many have heard of Covenant House?
Everybody, right?
I mean Covenant House
is for runaway youth.
It's known,
and every year, they see 3,000 runaways
coming through the doors in New York.
3,000 runaways a year.
And of those 3,000, they had determined,
there's a study out by Fordham University
that one-quarter have been trafficked.
So, that's 800 people
coming through the doors.
If you are homeless, don't have a place,
you know that somebody will
do anything to survive, right?
Right, survival.
Survival is the key.
I drive down the Union Turnpike
and I see this little bus shelter,
and the bus shelter has
a picture of a girl.
She looks kinda sad,
and it says, I asked him
if I could stay the night,
and he said go out and make some money.
So, these things are all around us.
This is something that is
not far away but close.
So, I've been telling
you about big numbers
and I hope you heard me say
a research study done by Fordham,
and you heard about the research done.
If anybody here wants to go into research,
I mean I never knew
what the importance was
until this comes along,
because if you don't have data,
then you can't ask for money for grants.
So, having data, having information,
really concrete information,
not just guesses,
this is important.
So, anybody who is a
person who likes research
and wants to get something on this,
this is a direction to go.
Okay, so how many beds
are particularly targeted
for human trafficking
victims in the United States?
2,138 nationwide.
I told you there are 200
to 300 thousand people
at risk, youth, more than that
if you're going above that.
So, just to say there is
nowhere near the number of beds.
Okay, so if someone is
rescued, where do they go?
Well, sometimes they get to go
to domestic violence shelters.
Sometimes they just put up in a motel room
until the Brooklyn
District Attorney's Office
can get a case going.
But just to say there are not enough beds.
So, LifeWay Network did meet a need there.
Okay so, one of the things that,
special about LifeWay
Network is that it has a idea
that there's a welcome environment
where women can heal and find a new life
in safe and secure housing.
The welcome environment uses
the phrase, like a community.
A community base is there.
So, in our house, right
now, there are sisters
similar to myself who have used,
this is their base place where they stay.
So, they are in the house,
everyday, making meals,
doing whatever it takes to be like
kind of a family welcoming community.
And we found out that
this is where people heal.
So, I'll give you just
two stories of survivors.
Okay.
- Excuse me, Kate.
Some of these students have
to go to another class.
- Okay.
- [Susan] So, there'll be a little--
- This, movement.
So, these are two stories.
The names, of course, are changed
but the situation is true.
So, one of our young women who came
actually came because she was lured
by the offer of a job by
somebody in her town in Africa.
Okay, so it wasn't like this,
that she was going and she was hoping
that she could be in trafficking.
She was actually coming
to better her life.
That's why people respond.
They're lured by, come,
you'll get an education.
Come, you'll have some money.
You can send it home again.
I mean, it's always a positive reason
why they fall into these traps, okay?
So, this young woman came
and she was gonna be a nanny
and meanwhile, besides being a nanny,
she would also be able
to get her education.
When she came, the situation
was really different
and what she ended up being
was being enslaved domestic servant.
That amount of time was six years.
I think when you think about six years
of a person's life, if
you think of six years,
that's a long time.
A lot happens in six years.
Part of the enslavement includes abuse,
whether it's physical, mental, emotional,
it's like you are less than I am.
You don't deserve respect.
One of the ways in which
this particular person
was shamed was she was the
one who prepared the meals,
yet she had to sit on
the floor to eat hers.
Now you tell,
that's the United States of America.
That's the United States of America, here.
So, when I met this woman,
she was in the safe house,
and the way that she had
eluded her enslavers,
her perpetrators, was that she actually
was assisted by a neighbor
who noticed that this
woman never left the yard,
never got out of this small
neighborhood territory.
And so she sent the woman,
you know, she got in contact with her.
During the day, the woman was on her own
when the child was at school,
but I guess she got a message to her
and they, together,
contacted Safe Horizon.
And that's how she got,
eventually, to safety.
So, when I met her, it was a day when,
the weekends they like
to cook their own foods
because they're coming
from different countries.
So, this particular woman was from Africa.
There was a special greens
that she was making, preparing,
and I'm sitting in the living room
because volunteers go there
to be like doorkeepers,
and to protect, so that nobody gets in
that shouldn't get in.
So, this particular day,
she's cooking her food
and she's singing.
And I, it just made my heart stop
because I said, you know
the resilience of a person
who for six years was made to feel less,
was made to feel like
she was worth nothing,
was coming back to herself,
was coming back to knowing
that she had a future.
And I think that's the thing.
When you are enslaved
and you see no way out,
no future, the thing that I guess,
what I would hope they would feel
would be our loving presence,
our desire to not let
them stay one day extra.
So, that's what,
so now if you were going to say,
well, what could I do?
Well, if you're a nurse,
you never know who's gonna
cross through your pathway
in the emergency room.
You never know.
I have given lots of
talks at different places
and after I've given the talks, the women,
one woman came up to me, says,
"I worked in the emergency
room over in Coney Island.
"I think if I had known
then what I know now,
"I would have reported it."
You know, "If I had known
then what I know now,"
but you, you know, you never know
who's gonna cross your path.
Another thing, I just heard this recently
so I just wanna tell you.
I talk in parishes sometimes,
and so I was talking to this priest
and he says, "We want you to come
"because there's a woman in our group
"that when she heard about trafficking,
"she said, 'That's what happened to me.'"
See, it's a place, had Croatia,
it had different nationalities there,
but she didn't know the name of it.
And that's what happens
because sometimes people
can't identify it.
So, you just have to,
I mean, even if you call
up a friend, a neighbor
and say, guess what I learned today.
This is what human trafficking looks like
when somebody is not in
control of their own documents
and somebody can't go out of the yard,
when somebody has to have
somebody else speak for them.
You know, that's called
trafficking, and it's a crime,
and the person who is trafficked
is a victim, not a criminal.
So, that's part of the information
that as you learn more about trafficking,
you'll be the one that says,
everybody should know this
because you never know.
You never know where your information
could make a difference.
Okay, just one more story.
This next picture here,
well, you know about the cranes, right?
The cranes?
Well, some of the women make the cranes
and we actually use them as
like a fundraiser type of thing
because we believe that that idea
of peace eventually coming,
and freedom eventually coming
is something that we all want together.
So, the community is one of caring,
acceptance, listening,
trusting, safety, stability.
How do we know that?
Well, at the end of last year,
some of the women wrote thank
you letters to our donors
and one of the letters that they,
one letter from one woman said,
I thank you for LifeWay House
because I can sleep deeply.
Now, I take sleep for granted.
I love to sleep (chortling).
I mean, I hit the pillow
and I'm out in five minutes.
People are jealous of me,
but if you can imagine
someone who's trafficked,
that they can never sleep.
They always have to be on their guard.
They always have to say,
you know at any moment,
they're vulnerable, okay?
So, the idea of sleeping deeply
was one thing the women were grateful for.
Another thing a woman was grateful for
was she said, "Thank
you for caring about me
"without even knowing me."
because they do get gifts,
and I understand somebody
collected things today.
We really appreciate it.
So, the idea of people giving them things
is just like beyond what they can imagine
could be happening to them.
And then the last one is,
thank you for listening,
because when they go home
to their caring community
where the sisters are,
they can know that they will be listen to.
So, listening, and we take
it for granted, right?
People are gonna listen to us.
We have friends, we have,
but this is like a new reality.
So, people who are survivors come back
and they have to relearn trust,
relearn community interactions,
and it's a challenge,
but our goal is that they
have independent living.
So, places like Safe Horizon,
Sanctuary for Families,
we have lots of partners
that provide the social
services that this, women need.
There's a picture here of a garden,
it's not the women at the
garden, but we do have a garden.
So, gardening is one thing
that brings healing and hope,
and then the food that they value,
the food that's their kind
of food that they like,
and they cook for themselves.
So, you have to learn
what you need to learn
to make you able to be independent again.
The women at LifeWay
are all different ages
but they could be as old as 40.
We have one that's 40,
and then between 18 and 40.
And one woman celebrated her
21st birthday at the house,
and this particular woman was very touched
because she had never had
a birthday cake before.
21, never had a birthday cake before.
And I mean, the things
that we take for granted,
you know, the things that
we say, this is owed me,
everybody should celebrate my birthday,
it was a new thing,
so everybody was crying.
So, just to say, you know,
little things change lives
little by little, by little.
I mean, I think when
you read the Somali Mam,
I did, from the very beginning,
you know, how she had
that poor self-image:
I'm not pretty.
I'm dark.
I'm not this way.
I'm not that way.
And then, bit by bit, by bit,
she learned her own true self,
and she could help others.
Well, that's what I think.
I mean, with little things like birthdays
and Christmas, and listening, and dinners.
This particular woman,
I think another one actually, was from,
we have people from
Africa, from Latin America,
and we also have some
from the United States
that come to our house.
One particular woman,
to celebrate her birthday,
she wanted to do the cooking,
'cause that was something
that made her happy,
to make the food for the
family that was there,
the gathered community.
Other people, when part of their slavery
was to make the meals
and to sit on the floor,
don't want to cook and they can't cook.
It wouldn't be right.
So, just to say that everyone's different.
So, success.
I mean, they have one year in our house.
That's about it, one year.
You know, you say, what?
If somebody's been enslaved for six years,
will one year make a difference?
It does make a difference, okay?
So, but there is a
continuous, I'll say, outreach
to keep an eye, to invite
them back to make sure.
So, by the end of a year,
it's our hope that they will
be able to support themselves,
to be in some kind of a living situation
that meets their needs,
and that they will have had the training
and all that they need to move forward.
I would think you probably
would need therapy
for the rest of your life,
you know, if you could,
but during the year they
are able to have services
from the social service
agencies that work with us.
These are some of the
partners, these people are.
You know, when you say,
who's working against human trafficking?
They're here, they're here.
They're people out there that are working
to try to address a particularly need
that they know is around.
So, these people will
recommend people to come to us,
and if we have room, we will.
I wanted to say something
about the partnership.
You know that the government,
I think Megan mentioned,
when there's legislation, that's good,
but then you need, legislation
needs to have money
because if you make the laws,
you have to have the money
to do whatever the services are, right?
So, the money that government provides
for trafficking victim goes
to the social service agencies,
and that's why, when I
talk about LifeWay Network,
it's based on donations, really.
That's how we run ourselves.
We're not making money
from the government.
Financial support comes from
this group here, the New
York CRC-STOP trafficking,
is religious congregations
in New York State,
and there are 38 that belong to this,
38th congregations, and
they come from Albany
as well as Long Island,
and they provide some money to us
to run LifeWay House.
Grants, we have a full-time grant writer.
Again, you might be the kind of person
who likes to write grants.
Grants are a wonderful resource
if you can actually tap into it,
but some grants are like
hundreds of pages long.
I mean, I thought they
were like two pages long.
No, they're long,
and because the grantee,
you know, the grantors want to make sure
that you have something worthwhile
they're putting the money into.
And we have fundraisers,
direct-mail appeals.
So.
So, I said, we have a safe house
and we have an educational component.
Ta-da!
I'm the educational component leader,
and so I'm always looking.
Are there people here that
like to give presentations,
that like to talk to groups?
Do you like to go to a library?
Would you like to speak?
You all belong to groups.
Would you like to lead
a book club discussion?
I'm your man, as far as resources.
If I can help you, I will.
If you want training, I'll help you.
You know, you have, as I say,
it's like we're reaching
out, reaching out.
So, my particular connections are mostly
with Catholic Church stuff, right?
Catholic schools, Catholic parishes,
but there's a million people
who need to hear this message,
and it's not a particular
religious message.
It's a human rights message.
So, anybody who wants to be an educator,
and I don't mean you have to
be talking to 2,000 people.
You can talk in a small group,
and it you'd just (snaps) be surprised
about the sparks that go.
Okay, so you wanna talk at
a round table somewhere?
I'll give you the stuff
if you don't have it.
I mean, I'll help you any way I can.
So, just to say, I'm leaving cards
and I'm leaving materials,
even like giveaway sheets,
just to give you information.
And you can call me up and we can talk
if you want to do more than that.
I have helpers from the
age of high school to 75,
so anywhere in between there,
if you're not the one, maybe
you can get your mother,
or your sister, or your
brother, or your whatever
to get involved.
And when I see young men here,
I'm gonna say that some
important population
that we want to get involved in this
because people say, oh,
let the the women do it,
let the women do it.
You can't do it, it's a human issue.
Young women, you know,
the average age of entry
into the life is between 12 and 14.
12 and 14, if you think about that age
in the United States,
I'm not talking some other place,
I'm talking the United States,
and young men, 11 to 13.
So, to get the information out,
to let them know that there are predators,
there are predators, okay?
They're online,
which wasn't a problem when I was a kid,
'cause I didn't even know what online was,
but online, you know, making contact,
and there's lots of stories
like that to tell you.
You've got to be careful.
You've got to be careful.
Okay, who can help?
Anyone who wants to.
I like to give you a variety.
These are the two nun from Albany.
And I mean, they work,
Because of the Albany state capital,
they can do lobbying and
stuff like that really easily.
This man over here,
if you look in the website,
New York State Abolitionist,
you will see about 40 people.
And the 40 people include Joan Dawber,
but they include this man here,
who's got a men's
organization that he's running
to combat human trafficking.
Because, I mean, there are
judges, there are lawyers,
there's dance troupes.
There's all kinds of people
that are the New York new abolitionists.
If I were able to do this myself,
I would take your pictures.
I would say you're the New
York new abolitionists,
and all I have to do is
put you in black and white,
and you could be on that website,
because I'm sure that you could say,
this is why I don't want
human trafficking in my world,
and this is what I'm
willing to do about it.
So, just to say, that's that's the truth.
And then, the Public Outreach.
This young woman is from the
College of Mount Saint Vincent.
She said I could take her
picture and put it there.
If anybody...
You know, she came for some trainings.
She has given talks, particularly
about Internet safety.
So, just to say that there
can be a particular focus
that you wanna say, I actually wanna work
on this particular angle of it,
and of course I put Somali Mam,
because her story has
touched so many hearts.
And you know Harriet
Tubman, Sojourner Truth.
Okay, this is a picture
called The Torn Woman,
and it was done by Doris Klein.
And I don't know, does
anybody do art here?
Well, if you do art, the thing was,
she made a mistake,
and I guess you try to erase the mistake,
and the paper got scraped away.
And then from the torn
person, she made a picture.
And the picture expresses
somewhat what happens
when everything is ripped away,
when your freedom is taken,
when your self-esteem is made low,
when you are exploited and used,
you're broken, you know?
And so, but the Torn Woman
here carries that scar
and she's looking forward.
She's moving ahead.
And I think that's the thing,
that what we see about the survivors
is they are strong.
I mean, the ones that come out
are actually the best advocates,
'cause when they speak,
you know they know what
they're talking about.
And so, this is the idea,
is that, you know, we are never able
to be advocates alone.
We're always with the women.
I brought pictures because
we do have some pictures,
and one of the women said we
could have her picture shown,
but these are just
pictures about our house
and we know that when we're talking,
it's for them, not for ourselves,
and that one woman's
life makes a difference.
Our Pope is really big
on human trafficking.
I'm wondering if that's because
he comes from Latin America.
I mean, as soon as he
came, let's say in June
he was made Pontiff,
and then all of a sudden,
he's having a trafficking
convention worldwide in November.
But the line that he says is
"Human person ought never
to be sold or bought
"as if she were a commodity."
And that's the thing,
people are people, not things.
There's no price tag on a person.
You can't put a price tag on a person,
so anybody that does that,
we know that they are
looking at an object.
So, "Whoever uses human
persons in this way
"and exploits them, even if
indirectly, is an accomplice."
So, we, on the other
hand, are the advocates.
We are not the accomplices.
We are trying continually
to raise the spotlight,
to expose it to the sunlight
and that will destroy the evil.
And President Obama also made this pledge
about human trafficking,
and so, what they have is
they have a government,
and faith-based communities working on it.
They have the civic community.
They have the UN community.
All communities are working on it.
The college community is working on it.
You're part of a community of people
that are looking at this same issue today.
The thing about the Pope,
'cause I like this one,
and he says something like,
I worry about it.
And I said, I never heard a pope say,
I worry about something, you know?
But I guess he does,
and he worries about human trafficking,
and I think that's because
he's seen it first-hand
in Latin America, and that's
why he worries about it.
This is Nelson Mandela's quote:
"Everyone says it's
impossible until it's done."
Okay?
If you think about all of creation,
all of humanity and
creation moving forward,
we all say human trafficking has to end.
Is it possible?
It is.
It is.
If we don't have that hope,
if we don't have that hope,
then we're lost.
So, you know, I work with
people who provide housing.
Is it for a lot of people?
No.
This one holds five people.
Our second house that we're working on
with Covenant House could hold 10.
That's 15.
But I'm one person and
there's lots of people working
on this issue.
So, what we are hoping is that
by the time that you're in power,
in places of influence,
you'll be able to say,
human trafficking is something
that we are determined
to see end in our time.
And where do you look?
What do you do?
I mean, that maybe the thing you say.
Well, what could I do?
There's so much.
Well, I can't tell you what you can do.
I can tell you some places
you can find some help.
So, I made some handouts,
and you can take them at the end.
I don't have to tell you them,
but I'll just tell you what's here,
'cause I think sometimes, if
I just give you the paper,
it might go in the garbage.
So, don't take it unless you want it,
but here's, like, it's two sides.
I am the biggest Google fan in the world.
I am so glad I'm alive
in the time of Google.
When I was a kid, we had
the Encyclopedia Britannica,
great big, fat books (chuckling).
And they weren't easy to access,
whereas this Google thing,
type in anything and it
pops up back to you, right?
So, I put on here,
titles of books.
I put in here, websites,
and I put in here, movies, okay?
So, there should be something
there for everybody.
If you're the type that likes websites,
I can't say enough about Polaris Project.
I hope that you know that
one and you look it up
because that's like the bottom
line of getting information,
the Polaris Project.
I brought pens.
You can tell I'm used to working
with kids littler than you,
but if you want a pen, they're great,
and the thing that's good about it,
it has the human trafficking
hotline number on it.
Have you heard about the hotline number
from Polaris Project?
'Cause I think you should
have it in your phone already,
so I'm gonna tell you
this number, all right?
This number comes out of the
website, Polaris Project,
which is in New Jersey,
which isn't that far.
If anybody wants to do an internship,
think about New Jersey
and the Polaris Project,
and this is the hotline number.
So, it has three eights in the beginning,
and three eights at the end, okay?
And in the middle is 3737.
So, here is the number:
888
3737
888.
So, well, say that after me.
- [All] 888-3737-888.
- One more time, if you want
to put it in your phone, okay,
if your memory's not good.
Okay.
- [All] 888-3737-888.
- Now that number, if
you suspect something,
not if you know it, if you suspected it,
is the number that you call, okay?
And they'll take care of it.
You're not supposed to go
and confront the evil yourself, okay?
You're supposed to call
this number and say,
you know, I notice a van
that comes back and forth,
back and forth, everyday.
The people look like they're being forced.
You know, whatever, okay?
Now, you know the places
we're talking about
where they have found
human trafficking victims
are like nail salons.
How many go to nail salons?
Okay, nail salons, okay.
Massage parlors,
I live across the street
from a 24/7 massage parlor.
I'd like to know how
many people need it 24/7.
Okay, so I'm just saying,
there's a person from one
of the churches near us
who says there, they have a parishioner,
and the parishioner said,
she's a receptionist there,
and this is what they say.
If somebody like me comes in,
they say, "Okay, want a massage?
"Okay."
If a guy comes in, they
say, "Want a massage?
"Anything else?"
You know, so, I'm just saying
they know it's going on,
but when unregulated places, sometimes,
this is what happens.
Now, the idea is that number is important,
so the Polaris Project thing is important.
I don't wanna take up too much time,
'cause you have questions
or enough stuff like that,
but I would just recommend
if you to take this paper home,
then you'll have, actually a
page where you can go further.
But if you Google anything,
I'm sure that you will find,
there's the CNN Freedom Project,
so media is trying to do something,
and they're little short videos,
like three minutes, four minutes.
You can find that.
I didn't talk really too much
about labor trafficking per se,
but you can find a lot about
labor trafficking worldwide,
and you can find about your
global slavery footprint.
You know how they have an
ecologically footprint?
Well, there's also a slavery footprint
and that's, one of the
websites here has it on.
So, I would just recommend
that you do whatever you can
to expand your knowledge.
Well, maybe you say, oh,
I'm gonna give myself
a half an hour a week,
'cause I know you got a lot to do
with studying and stuff like that,
but a half an hour a week,
you say, this is my human
trafficking learning time,
or maybe I'll just watch a movie
and then there's a movie
down here, and talk about it.
So, I'll just say that's a
piece of information for you,
plus the pens.
Plus, if anybody wants to call me up
I have cards.
I'm always happy to take a phone call,
and this is about,
you know that the New York
Attorney General's Office
has a bunch of stuff
about human trafficking,
and that New York is, lemme see, one, two,
I forget what number it is,
but in the top 20, let's say cities
or metro areas, it's about,
I think about five or six,
and it says New York,
and then it says Long Island.
Anybody here from Long Island?
Me, okay, so I'm there.
Did you hear about the
7-Eleven stores last year?
Well, I say, everybody goes to 7-Eleven.
That might have been my store, who knows,
but I'm just saying,
things are going on in front of our eyes
and we don't even know it.
There's a great writer on this.
His name is Kevin Bales,
and he loves Indian food.
He's from San Francisco,
and he loves Indian food,
he takes all his friends
that come to visit him
to a restaurant.
He took them to a restaurant,
said, "Isn't this great?"
And then two weeks later,
he sees that that
particular restaurant owner
was picked up for traffic because people
that he had employed
in the back place there
were victims.
So, just to say, he's a
guy who writes about it,
gone all over the world,
and he didn't know about it.
So, just to say that we can
all keep learning about it.
Okay, and when I go to places
sometimes there are
people who have a place
where they can hang up a
piece of information, okay?
This is from the government,
the Administration of
Child and Family Services,
and you can write and get all kinds
of free materials for them,
in all different languages,
and you can get brochures,
and these are just like posters,
and the theme is called
look beneath the surface.
So, if you have a dorm or store,
or any place where you can get somebody
to hang up something,
and you can get it in any
language you want it in,
but I mostly have English and Spanish.
And you know, we don't
talk about it too much,
but farm workers, and all
different kinds of people
are being featured on here.
Look, this one is a farm situation.
Because wherever things are unregulated,
that's where there can be trouble.
Okay, and even when they are regulated,
as we saw, sometimes,
(chuckles) there can be trouble.
All right I think if
you have any questions,
for either Megan or myself,
we'd be happy to throw some...
Yes, Margaret?
- [Margaret] I have a
question about the number.
- Mm-hmm?
- [Margaret] Can people
report things anonymously
at that number?
- Yes, I'm pretty sure.
- [Margaret] So, they don't
have to be identified?
- Yes, you don't have to identify.
Really, and what they have
is a network of people,
so that, I mean, 'cause somebody said,
"Well, what are they gonna do,
"send somebody out from New Jersey there?"
No, I mean, this is a big
group that has networks
with the FBI, all the
different Homeland Security.
They're all connected now,
and so the idea is that
it's worth making the call
if you suspect something.
I work with a woman who is
my age who has a secretary,
and the secretary does
volunteer work for us
because when she was young, she believes
that she was next door to a
person who was trafficked,
and she went to every place
that she could, you know?
She thought.
She went to the police.
She went, and the woman
was actually hungry.
She was digging food out from her garbage,
so to help her out, the person
made sandwiches for her.
Now, this is, I'm saying
a few years ago, when,
and now the woman says,
"I believe that that
woman was trafficked."
If there was the same
support system available now
than then, that woman wouldn't have had
to go through this for so long.
- [Susan] I just want to emphasize
that the person doing the
reporting is not identified.
- Right.
Okay?
And it's suspicions.
Remember, it's suspicious.
It's not, oh, I know this is for a fact,
but they'll ask you
questions to follow up on it.
Anything else?
Or for Megan, because I mean, I took notes
when she was talking, all right?
Yes.
- [Audience] You mentioned
that LifeWay has safe housing
and there's a one-year maximum.
What happens if there's some
who needs more than one year?
- Yeah.
Yeah, that's a thing.
I shouldn't say it's like hard and fast,
but that's the goal.
And there are places.
There's a place in, I think it's in,
I'll say Tennessee,
but it's Thistle Farms.
Thistle Farms is another kind of place
where they have two years maximum.
You say, well, how long will it take?
We have no idea how long it
will take, but who can help?
I mean if people have, this
is what I was trying to think,
when you are a certain
age, and you can say,
well, I would like to take
somebody who need housing in,
for a room,
just to say, how can you help people
to make it on their own afterwards.
One of the hardest places
is to find a place to live,
and the next thing, as you all know,
how to find a job.
Most of them, when they're,
I'll say the three people
that I've talked to,
it was really with that
home health aide training
is what they have.
This has got to do with immigration,
but I don't really understand it too much.
If a person comes in
and they have a status,
or these are two statuses
that I heard about:
continued presence and the T visa.
Okay, the continued presences means
that they're involved
in testifying, I guess,
against the trafficker,
and so they police department
can say they have a legal
status, continued presence.
If they have that legal status,
then they can have work, okay?
If they don't have it,
they can't have work.
The T visa is really the
best, I guess, situation.
Do you want, I don't know if you--
- No.
- Okay.
So, the T visa is, this is for people
who are coming from
another country, right?
And when they come in, then they,
if they have the T visa,
then they have lots
of access, almost like a refugee.
So, they have better status.
I mean, it gets better.
But, what about if we have a woman
that doesn't have anything,
even though she could be 30?
What does she do all day long?
How does she feel better about herself,
because part of it is feeling
better about yourself.
You have to have, you have
to say, I have a future.
And so, you could be waiting
months and months, and months
to get to step one, continued presence,
and then to the next one.
When the women come to us,
there was a big raid some time ago.
I remember it had like 105 people,
and so we were told,
"Be ready, be ready!
"There's gonna be lots of people."
But actually, there were some,
and some of those people
then came for a little bit of time,
but actually they wanted to
go back to their country,
if they were from Mexico in particular.
That was the particular place
they wanted to go back to.
So, sometimes, just to know that
if they're brought here,
and they're lured here,
and they actually have
no support system here,
they may wanna go back to their own place.
'Kay, anything else?
- [Audience] How do folk come here?
Do they get visas so easily?
Is it so easy to get a visa and come here?
- The people that are trafficked?
- Traffic, yeah.
- Yeah.
Gee, well.
Megan, any time.
(both laughing)
My theory is that they
are brought in with false papers, right?
And even if they have real papers,
what happens, and this is,
these are the letters that I read,
these are signs to look for,
and one of them is even if
they have the documents,
if the person who is their
controller takes the documents,
it's like that's how
they control them, okay?
Gimme your papers, then
you don't have legal proof
that you're here.
So, it's a way of control.
So, it's like controlling, it's C-A-D.
These are the signs.
If you see somebody that's
controlling another person,
okay, that person, you know,
the person that's controlled
could be the victim.
If you see abuse, physical, emotional,
that could be a sign.
If you see the documents
are in the other person's possession,
that could be a sign.
This is a story that was told to me
about a person going through Customs,
you know, in the air traffic.
And there was an older
man with two young girls.
And the person who questioning said,
"Who are these young women?"
And the man said, "They're my nieces."
And the man said, "Well,
what's their names?"
And he had to take out the passports.
- [Audience] Oh!
- So, they caught him.
Okay, they caught him,
but, you know, the guy
took one extra step.
"What's their names?"
And the man couldn't even say their names,
so that's an example of,
so that's C-A-D, controlling,
abuse, documents.
And then, communication,
you know, communication.
C-F-E is the next one.
So, communication, who's speaking?
Does she have to look and see
what he's telling her to say?
Can she freely communicate
or is there something going on there?
Fear, right?
Because the fear could be,
I'm gonna report you to the authorities.
I'm gonna hurt your family.
You know, the fear,
they're not gonna believe you,
they're gonna believe the controller.
Fear, and then mobility.
Do they have to stay in a very close space
like that woman who had
to stay in the same spot,
and couldn't go off the grounds?
So, it's not easy.
It's really, if you think
about vulnerable people,
like I heard this person,
Rachel Lloyd, speak.
Rachel Lloyd is from GEMS,
which is for underage domestic minors.
And what she said was you can connect
with groups like ourselves,
GEMS, Polaris Project,
connect with them,
but if you have young women
that you can influence and
have positive self-images
and let them know that nobody
can treat them like a thing,
let them know that love
doesn't look like exploitation,
you're doing a good thing.
So, working with young
women to develop leadership
and self-identity is an important role
in preventing trafficking.
Working with young men to
tell them what respect is,
to tell them why it's important
that they are part of the solution
to stop the demand,
to know what is really important
in life is that everyone
has dignity and respect,
you're doing a good thing.
Okay, thanks.
- [Susan] Thank you.
