The Daily Signal - #385: How to Curb Sex Trafficking in the US

Episode Date: January 28, 2019

Around 2 p.m. every day, some men will use their corporate computers to make an appointment to have sex with a minor--and many of those appointments will occur on corporate property. Businesses, says Geoff Rogers, CEO and co-founder of U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, are among the organizations that may seem to have no connection to sex trafficking--but can play a role in ending it in the United States, where thousands of children, many originally in the foster care system, are now victims of sex trafficking. Plus: We discuss President Trump's push for Bible literacy classes in public schools.We also cover these stories:•The Congressional Budget Office reports the shutdown cost a total of $3 billion in foregone economic activity that won’t be recovered.•Sens. Chuck Grassley, R- Iowa, and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., introduced a bill would require Congress and the public receive a report when a special counsel investigation is over or if the special counsel is fired or resigns. •The Midwest is about to be hit with a record-breaking cold snap. The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get you and your crew to the big shows with Go Transit. Go connects to all the main concert venues like TD Coliseum in Hamilton and Scotia Bank Arena in Toronto. And Go makes it affordable with special e-ticket fares. A one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel across the network on any weekend day or holiday for just $10. And a weekday group pass offers the same weekday travel flexibility from $30 for two people and up to $60 for five. Buy yours at gotransit.com slash tickets. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, January 29th. I'm Kate Trinco.

And I'm Daniel Davis. Slavery is arguably the darkest part of our nation's past, but it turns out slavery isn't dead. Around the world, human trafficking persists, and even in America, traffickers in slave women and young children. Today we'll talk with Jeff Rogers, who leads a nonprofit group that works to end human trafficking in America. Plus, President Trump is backing state efforts to teach the Bible in public. schools we'll discuss. But first, we'll cover a few of the top headlines. The government shutdown is over, and White House Director of Strategic Communications, Mercedes-Flap appeared on Fox News Monday to outline the White House's plans in the next three weeks. We're talking about this February

15th deadline now. What does the president think can get done by then? Look, the president has perfectly set the table now for the negotiations with Congress. This is obviously we're trying to see if we can get this legislative fix and ensuring that we're able to fund the border. And he also has perfectly set the table for other options as well if we need to look into other options in order to fund the border. So again, we feel we're in a good position. I think at this point it's a matter of seeing if Congress can deliver. What do those other options include, executive order? Well, again, we are looking at all options on the table. Obviously, he has discussed in the past about declaring a national emergency.

Our goal right now is to ensure that Congress can come up with a plan of action. You have these conferees coming together this Wednesday. They need are going to be meeting with experts to talk about what resources our Border Patrol agents need. The president has been one to listen to our Border Patrol agents, and they have recognized the need of having funding for physical barriers. And that was why we came up with a $5.7 billion figure because of the fact that that it allows to build over 200 miles of the wall

in the top priorities that the Border Patrol agents have identified to ensure that our border is protected and we're able to decrease the amount of illegal immigrants who are crossing the border. President Trump, meanwhile, told the Wall Street Journal in an interview Sunday, he wasn't too optimistic about the 17-person group of lawmakers coming up with an immigration deal in three weeks.

He said, quote, I personally think it's less than 50-50, but you have a lot of very good people on that board, end quote. He also wouldn't rule out a second shutdown. Well, if the recent shutdown was any indication, the next one will cost taxpayers a good deal of money. Congressional Budget Office reported the five-week shutdown cost a total of $3 billion in foregone economic activity that won't be recovered. And since the IRS was affected by the shutdown, it had to slow down compliance work. As a result, tax revenue is estimated to drop by about $2 billion this tax season, although some would say that's not such a bad thing. Senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut want the country to know what special counsels find out in the course of their investigations.

And so the bipartisan duo introduced a new bill Monday. The bill would require that both Congress and the public receive a report when a special counsel investigation is over, or if the special counsel is fired or resign. Quote, Congress and the American people have a right to know how their government conducts business and spends tax dollars. Special counsel investigations are no different, said Grassley in a statement. Well, the state of Texas is cracking down on illegal voting. On Friday, the Secretary of State announced that nearly 95,000 non-citizens in Texas are registered to vote. Out of that number, about 58,000 were found to have voted in one or more.

Texas elections since 1996. Those findings were the result of an 11-month investigation into illegal voting. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said he plans to open up a new and sprawling investigation. In a statement released Monday, he said, Every single instance of illegal voting threatens democracy in our state and deprives individual Texans of their voice. He went on to say, quote, My election fraud unit stands ready to investigate and prosecute crimes against the democratic process when needed.

You're one of our Midwest listeners. We hope you're staying warm. The polar vortex is hitting much of the country beginning today, and the Washington Post reports, quote, more than 87 million people in those regions will experience temperatures at or below zero degrees and wind chills far colder. There's even talk that Chicago could have the coldest day

since the 1980s. The National Weather Service in Chicago warned of the likelihood of life-threatening extreme cold Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. So please bundle up if you're there. The coldest I have been in is below 40 windchill, and it was horrible. Oh, goodness. Where was that?

Providence, Rhode Island. Wow. Well, that kind of reminds me. I went to college, Illinois, and we had some pretty cold weather, but I don't think I ever saw 40 below. That's crazy. I would just recommend not going to Rhode Island on President's Day weekend, no matter how much you want to see the mantons. Well, up next, we're going to talk to Jeff Rogers, who leads an organization that fights human trafficking in America. Want to get up to speed about the Supreme Court?

Then subscribe to SCOTUS 101, a podcast about everything that's happening at the Supreme Court and what the justices are up to. Well, now we're joined by Jeff Rogers. He's the CEO and co-founder of the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking. He joins us by phone. Jeff, thanks for calling in. Thank you, Daniel. Pleasure to be here. So, you know, Jeff, when we think of slavery, we really remember it as an ugly thing of our past institutionally in America.

and we often hear about modern-day slavery and other countries, human trafficking, but it's also here in America, and you run an organization that addresses that. Just tell us exactly what is the state of human trafficking in America. Well, I appreciate that, and honestly, it's hard to say exactly what that state is. What we do know is globally, for example, the International Labor Organization says there's over 40 million slaves today more than any other time in really the history of humankind. And then we can translate that to the United States as well. So the numbers are hard to come by, but when we look at the child sex slavery in America,

if we extrapolate from regions of the country where we work, whether it be Los Angeles County or working with folks up in King County, Washington, or in the state of Florida, or up in D.C., certain places across the country, we can extrapolate numbers from there and say that we do have a high level of confidence that there are over 100,000 kids in America that are trafficked for sex every single day. So it's definitely a problem of a great magnitude at this point. That's just incredibly horrible. What does this look like and how does this come about?

Are these kids coming from other countries and brought here either legally or illegally? Are they stuck in homes? Are they going out and about but due to Stockholm syndrome like symptoms, you know, not being able to speak up for themselves? or how can it be that there are this many kids in this situation in the United States? Yeah, Kate, that's a great question. So the first thing I would say is certain statistics would show that 50 to 60, maybe 70% of all kids that are trafficked in America are coming out of the foster care system. So these are U.S. born kids. They are U.S. citizens and they are trafficked by U.S. citizens and they are purchased for sex by U.S.

citizens. So it's a U.S. problem, and that's where our organization, the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, that's where we are focused, is on the magnitude of the problem here inside the United States. So when you ask, you know, how are they trafficked? What's that look like? We know the number one way that these kids are lured into this world of sex trafficking is through what we call a Romeo trafficker. And essentially, this is an older individual, most times a man, who identifies most times a girl, a younger child, average age around maybe 13 to 14 to 15 years old, and identifies these kids that have low self-esteem

and have really never felt a significant level of love at home from parents or what have you. And so that individual engages with that younger child and begins to act like her boyfriend. And so for the first time in her life, she feels like she's being loved and courted, et cetera. And so that trafficker, very savvy and very educated on how to go about doing this, will lure that child and groom them for maybe six to nine months to a year and really get them hooked. And so at some point, however, they'll flip the switch and essentially say, okay, you work for me now and here's what you're going to do for me.

And at that point, the child is almost past the point in no return. Well, it certainly seems like something that is, I mean, really underreported in the media. given the prevalence of it. You know, I mean, has there been increased success, any success in busting some of these organizations in recent years?

I mean, clearly it seems like we know how it happens. You mentioned the Romeo figure. Are police learning the ways and learning how to crack into these groups? I'd say definitely. I mean, the,

I'll call it the model, and focus on human trafficking? Because the issue isn't new, but I'd say probably around 15 plus years ago, we had a renewed focus or a new kind of focus on the topic calling in human trafficking here in the United States. And since that time, there's been a tremendous amount of focus on it. There's significant organizations that focus on this nationally, great organizations like Polaris Project or Shared Hope International that focus at the national level. And in addition to those, there are thousands and thousands of small nonprofits that have popped up across the country trying to figure out how do you fight this within the local community.

And so there is more focus. I'd say there's also more awareness. So I don't have any stats in my head on it, but I'd say clearly more than half of Americans probably know at this point that there's this thing called human trafficking, but maybe not so many of them understanding that the problem exists here inside the United States. And when you talk about busting these crime rings or identifying the bad guys and engaging with them.

Police are doing a much better job now about understanding who the victim is, understanding who the perpetrator is, and yet really more education needs to be done with law enforcement to get them to better understand from our perspective how we really stop this is to begin to focus on that demand. So just an all-out assault on identifying who are these buyers and going after that. because at the end of the day, it's really a business equation. You have supply and demand, and the only reason that there is supply is because there is a demand. And so we've got to go after eradicating that demand.

So how do you go about going after the demand? I mean, besides, you know, shaming people, hopefully urging people, I mean, do we have reason to believe that on the demand side that they are aware that these children are underage? Yeah, how do you fight that? Great question. So the first thing I'll say we did is we didn't sit around a table and try to figure that out. Instead, what we did as an organization, we looked across the entire country. So for myself, I've been involved in this now for five, close to six years. My co-partner in this business co-founder, Kevin Malone, who's in Las Vegas,

he's been involved now in the fight for nine plus years. And so we've been traveling the country for years, engaging with hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals who are involved in. this fight. And so we scoured the country looking for really who's done it best. And we found the community or communities that were doing it best and other organizations that had some proven practices. And so we identified what are those proven practices. And I'll tell you that Seattle, Washington is really bubbled to the surface as far as a community in the United States that's probably done it best when it comes to fighting demand. And what we learned from

them that I would consider almost profound is when they engaged all the, you know, the different sectors of society at the same time going after demand is when they saw the greatest benefit. So they had law enforcement going after it, the local government, businesses, the education sector, using technology, the healthcare sector, engaging the church, etc. And so when all these different sectors of society were firing away at demand at the same time, that's when they began to see bottom drop out. And I'll say over three years, I think their statistic is, and it's hard to measure demand, but the one measure that they have used is that over the three-year period of time that they had done it when we engaged with them,

they saw over a 30% reduction in demand by that measure that they were using over that period of time. So it truly is a practice that we are working now to replicate, and we know that if we can continue replicating this across the country, as a society, we can take a huge bite out of the demand. And just to follow up on that, you mentioned people working across sectors on this. I would assume, you know, in the business and church side, it mean, you know, please don't do this. Please be aware of this. You also mentioned law enforcement.

Did that mean more arrests or something along the lines of someone seeking prostitution? Well, for example, with law enforcement, it's really an education process to get them to better understand what human trafficking looks like. And in this case, specifically what sex trafficking looks like. And then to better identify who those buyers are. And not only who the buyers are, but also then to better identify. who the victims are so they can get the help that they need. And so our organization, we've developed online law enforcement training that we make available to law enforcement agencies across the country to help them with that.

And then you also mention businesses or churches, for example. So a couple of interesting stats on this. We've learned that 2 p.m. is the time of day when most sex buyers are online lining up their sex date for after work. And so to an employer of any size, it's recognition that there's an exposure there for your employees for your company because your employees are online doing this, some of them. And then an understanding that they had done a survey up in Seattle, Washington, of women involved in prostitution and found that 68% of those women actually saw their client on company premises.

And so that's an extraordinary number to understand and the exposure there for businesses to really get a hold of. And so for businesses or churches or other organizations, it's really the first step to identify their organization as a trafficking free zone. So really putting in place a zero-tolerance policy so that everybody in the organization knows. And then it's about education. So educating those employees on what sex trafficking is and knowing that you're reaching a certain proportion of your employee population that may in fact be engaged in buying. So getting them to better understand what sex trafficking is and that if they're involved in purchasing and prostitution, than likely they are purchasing individuals who don't want to be there.

But then also around HR policies, and this is a real key for us as well, to help a business or church or other organization understand their influence that they have over their sphere of influence. And so what we provide them are HR policies. So we have sample HR policies that they can implement, which makes sex buying something that you can't do if you're going to work there. So just like with drug policies, for example, if you do drugs, you can't work in this organization.

but we offer them sample HR policies that do the same thing that basically say if you purchase sex, and it doesn't matter if it's on business time or on your own time, if you purchase sex and get busted, you can't work here. And so it's really helping those organizations exert significant influence over their sphere. Now, I also understand that it's not just girls who are tied up in trafficking, but also boys. And if I'm correct, I understand that you actually, your group helped to found a safe home for boys? Tell us about that. Yeah, that's correct. I'll tell you that it's interesting because even with more and more

people becoming aware of the problem of sex trafficking and kids being tied up in sex trafficking today in America, very few people are aware of the number of boys that are trafficked. And so for me, I've got three young boys. And as I was traveling in the country, learning the truth of boys being trafficked, it just, man, it really hits home. And so conservative estimates, say maybe 10 to 15% of all kids that are trafficked are boys, and there are some studies actually showing maybe up to 50%. So the truth is we don't really know for sure, but what we do know is there's a significant proportion of them that are boys. And so, as I said, we were traveling the country and learning about services all across the nation, and yet learning about boys being trafficked,

we couldn't find services for boys. And so our first program that we launched when we started the U.S. Institute Against Human Trafficking, was to open from what we understand, the very first safe home for boys in the entire country. So it's a safe home for young boys that have been trafficked for sex, located in Florida, which is where I'm at, and it's for boys between the ages of 10 and 17 that have been trafficked for sex. So if you're an individual who's listening to this interview and you want to do something about human trafficking in the U.S., is there any steps an individual can take to help? There certainly are, and I'll tell you, first thing I'll point to is around,

this topic of sphere of influence. So we all have a sphere of influence. I mean, some of ours are smaller than other people's, but we all have that influence. And so whether it's using social media or many of us have jobs, and so we work for an employer, or many of us go to church, and so we're part of that church, or we have kids and the kids go to school. So it's really understanding where is our sphere of people that we can influence and then engaging with them on this topic. So for example, as an individual, we have what we call our 30-day abolitionist campaign, which is 30 days of activities that an individual can take in order to raise awareness and combat sex trafficking within their community. So it's really heavily centric around social media.

But also, like I said, if people have a job, it's engaging your employer to say, you know what, I heard about trafficking free zone. I want to help to fight sex trafficking within our sphere of influence of our business. Or, for example, with the church, it's going to the church leadership saying, you know what, I go to church here. I'd like to see our church doing more to combat human trafficking and to look into what that means to be a trafficking free zone or same thing with the kids schooling, et cetera. So just understanding, we all have so many touch points within our community and it's a matter of standing up and getting the community to really come together and say, you know what, of all the social problems that our society faces, we are not going to tolerate this one.

We are no longer going to tolerate the mass organized rape of our nation's kids for profit. We're not going to allow that one here. Well, I think that's a good place for us to end it. Jeff, thanks so much for your work and thanks for coming on and sharing with us. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate the time. Do you own an Alexa? You can now get the Daily Signal podcast every day as part of your daily flash briefing.

It's easy to do. Just open up your Alexa app, go to settings, and select Flash Briefing. From there, you can search for the Daily Signal podcast and add it to your Flash briefing so you can stay up to date with the top news of the day that the liberal media isn't covering. On Monday, President Trump tweeted, numerous states introducing Bible literacy classes giving students the option of studying the Bible, starting to make a turn back, great, end tweet. Apparently, several states are considering allowing students to students to study. study the Bible. USA Today reported last week, quote, proposals from lawmakers in at least six states would require or encourage public schools to offer elective classes on the Bible's literary and historical significance. The Bible is an integral part of our society and deserves a place in the classroom, said Republican State Representative Aaron McWilliams of North Dakota, a co-sponsor of a bill that would require the state's public high schools to offer an elective on Bible studies.

End quote. Joining us today is Thalia Ramprasad, who, I don't know, reads the Bible, went to a Christian college, basically informed, but most importantly for our purposes, has strong opinions on this topic. So Thalia, should public schools offer Bible literacy classes? Well, so first of all,

I want to thank you for just including me in all various types of topics that comes up on the Daily Signal podcast. You're a, you know, audience. You know, audience favorite. I enjoy it. I always enjoy it. It's always a fun time.

But anyway, I wholeheartedly agree that Bible literacy classes should be taught in public schools. I think it's something that has been lacking and the erasing of it has personally been sad to see. And, yeah, I would, I mean, I would love to see it come back. So I think that one of the stumbling blocks people have over this is they think it's an establishment of religion. But there's several ways that this is different from what used to be in America back in the old, days prior to like the 60s, just, you know, you had, you had school prayer and you had Bible readings, mandatory Bible readings in some states, and the Bible was treated as like the normative text treated as authoritative, which as a Christian I also appreciate, but understandably

some folks wouldn't be okay with that. So the way this is different is it's optional. These are, this is basically states saying that public schools should be able to offer optional courses for kids to just learn, learn what the Bible says. And, and, It's not being treated in a normative way as authoritative. It's just this is an important book that's been extremely influential in history in our country and around the world. And so we should learn about it. So it's really just kind of like a world religion class minus all the non-Christian religions, if that makes any sense. Yeah.

And I largely think it sounds fine to me. I mean, I agree certainly if it's an elective class. You can't argue it's an establishment of religion. I think the one thing that I have a hesitation from is almost coming from the other side. And that is seeing it as the word of God, it almost feels a little bit disrespectful to teach it as like here's, you know, the most influential book of the Western canon. But, I mean, largely, I sort of feel like the Bible can defend itself. And, you know, if students get more out of it than their instructor gives them. Great.

Yeah. So, I mean, I guess I would just ask, is this going to now open up the discussion for teachers to have the conversation of, well, we should be teaching Judaism or Mormonism or all of these. different other religions. Yeah, I mean, I actually, I'm not an expert on public schools. I already thought that there were world religion classes in schools. Maybe I'm wrong about that. I would generally be in favor of that. I mean, I think religion is one of the biggest motivating factors in people's lives. It is one of the biggest forces, if not the biggest force in history. And I think it's good to understand where people are coming from, whether it's Jews or Mormons or you know, Buddhists. I think you mentioned Muslims as well.

I mean, I would say that maybe schools need to slightly look at the effect that a religion has had on history in the public order. I mean, if a group has 30 followers, maybe not make them a priority to put them in the curriculum. But, yeah, I think we often, Molly Hemingway at the Federalist, and even before she was at the Federalist, used to track how the media doesn't understand religion at all. I think there was a notable example last year when someone misunderstood what Easter was, but I can't remember who that was. But anyway, I think in general, more religious literacy would be good in this country. I think this would also be good because I think taking like the Bible and religious texts out of the public school has kind of trained kids to think that religion is just irrational. It doesn't have a place in society.

It doesn't have a place in the public arena at all that it's just totally privatized. So I think it kind of it trains them to think that way. And so bringing, you know, the Bible back into schools and educational setting. and, you know, if you live in an area that has a lot of, you know, people of other religions, you know, Islam or Mormons, you know, maybe have locally based policy decisions that say, hey, we're going to offer a class that teaches these other religious texts. I just think it would really help with awareness. You know, if you talk about the Bible to folks who aren't really familiar with it at all in America,

there's a lot of misunderstanding that can happen, and I just think this kind of thing would help bridge a gap there that's been created. Also, we've talked a lot about the historical ignorance of Americans' youth. And, you know, one thing that struck me is this week, one of the Catholic gospel readings in the Mass is, I think it's Mark, but it's a house divided against itself cannot stand, that line from obviously Jesus. And, you know, it's interesting to hear that line read out loud at Mass in Washington, D.C. and think about the Civil War and Lincoln and, of course, the huge urgency that that phrase had for Americans. And I don't think it's really possible to understand the Civil War without understanding, you know, the Bible.

And all of that, not to say that you have to agree with the Bible or believe that the Bible is the Word of God, but you really can't understand the motivations of so much of America and so many other historical figures without at least trying to grasp it. Yeah, I mean, you're cutting yourself off from, really your own history, even understanding your own history. I think too, almost at its basic level, just hearing the Bible being taught in public schools allows for the opportunity for students like Daniel was saying who have maybe you've never even read or picked up a Bible at all to get a basic working knowledge. I know personally having been a graduate of Liberty University and going through so many

different courses in Bible literacy, I was always seeking after the desire to almost learn more about other religions so I could be stronger in my faith to debate other religions and have a working knowledge of what they believe. And so I think teaching Bible literacy in public schools allows for not an open debate to start, essentially, for students who maybe have no idea. Dahlia, thanks for being on again and talking about this wonderful topic. Thank you for having me. And we're going to leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast, brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, and please.

please leave us a review or rating on iTunes to give us any feedback. And be sure to listen every weekday by adding the Daily Signal podcast as part of your Alexa Flash briefing. We'll see you again tomorrow. You've been listening to the Daily Signal podcast, executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Michael Gooden, Lauren Evans, and Thalia Ramprasad. For more information, visit DailySignal.com.