Transcriber: Fanya Balabanova Reviewer: Robert Tucker
Thank you so much.
So I'd like to start my story in 1997 when I first came to the US.
I was originally working with adult women.
I came originally to work with adult women coming out of the sex industry.
And so in that first literally few days, few weeks, few months,
I began to go to Rikers Island Prison and up to Hunts Point,
which has been the subject of numerous pseudodocumentaries on HBO,
and began to meet really young girls.
I was going into an adult correctional facility
and yet meeting 12, 13, 14-year-old girls
who'd been told by their pimp to say that they were 17, 18, 19.
It was incredibly obvious that they were nowhere close to that age.
I was going out on to the streets,
and for any of you who've seen any of those HBO type docs,
you know that for many, many years,
there's been areas in New York and in Chicago and all over the country
where there's a very, very clear kind of prostitution track.
And so there would be cars literally lined up on the street,
and I would meet yet again 12, 13, 14-year-old girls
who were out there being sold.
And so, I was 22 when I first came to the States,
and as a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation myself
as a teenager -- I'd gotten out when I was 19 years old --
I've realized that I had a lot in common with these girls
and young women that I was meeting.
And the 40-year-old women at that point were like:
What's this little girl going to tell me?
Whereas the 19-year-olds were a little bit more receptive
to this very bright-eyed 22-year-old.
So I realized though, that even though we were from different continents,
and the girls would be like: Where's your accent, miss?
You sound like Sporty Spice --
that we had very, very similar stories,
and that cultural difference was kind of overridden
by the similarities of the commercial sex industry globally.
And so our stories of growing up in poverty,
our stories of growing up in traumatic homes
where there was lots of domestic violence and substance abuse,
our stories of craving attention and love
from our families and generally not getting that,
our stories of kind of getting introduced into the commercial sex industry
through a man or through kind of this moment of desperation
and feeling like: OK, this is just something I'll do for the moment,
and I'll figure out my way to get out. And then getting stuck.
And our stories of being treated like "we were less than"
by everyone in the community: our families, by law enforcement,
by social workers, by hospital staff.
They kind of rang the same, whether it was my experience,
or the experiences of the girls that I was serving.
And so, in 1998, I decided to start GEMS,
which is Girls Educational and Mentoring Services,
kind of based on my own experiences.
And at that point, I had absolutely no money,
I had no idea even how to write...
I think I was just beginning to learn how to write a proposal.
And so, I started GEMS literally on my kitchen table,
and girls would sleep on my couch, and eat my food,
and wear my clothes, and not bring my clothes back.
And so that was about as grass roots as you can kind of get
in terms of starting a non-profit.
And I was 23, so I had no idea
what starting a non-profit would look like,
which was really, really good.
So, I began to work with girls and young women who were being trafficked.
And at that point though, we weren't using that terminology "trafficking".
And so "trafficking" kind of came into or lexicon,
really it began to come in in 2000, when the Trafficking Victims Protection Act,
federal legislation, was passed.
And so, the handful of us that were working
with domestic trafficking victims were really excited and thought:
OK, this is the moment where our girls, and young women, and adult women
begin to be treated as victims, not as criminals.
And then we realized very quickly that there was this kind of two-tiered system.
And so, in terms of how the funding was structured,
in terms of how the training for law enforcement and service providers,
in terms of how kind of the media and the public
began to view this issue over the years,
it was like: Well, there's those real trafficking victims,
there are those girls from Mexico, or from Asia, or from the Ukraine,
and you know there's those teen prostitutes from America,
who just kind of want to do this and they like doing this.
And so the battle over the last really kind of decade,
and change for us, has been about really trying to educate people
that the sexual exploitation and trafficking
of girls, and young women, and adult women
in this country looks the same as it does for girls and women globally,
and that you don't have to be from another country
to feel like you don't have options in this country, right?
We're very good at doing the Horatio,
how to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, kind of myth,
but if we're being honest, opportunities aren't equal in this country,
and there are entire segments of our young people
for whom opportunities are frequently denied.
And so, that's what we've continuously found.
And I will say that I think if this issue
had affected the number of low-income girls of color
that we've seen over the last 15 years,
both in New York and all over the country,
if it had affected white middle-class girls in that same way,
we would've seen a very, very different social and political response by now.
We had to educate people to that.
Just because you weren't undocumented didn't mean you trusted law enforcement
and went running to law enforcement and said, "Hi, Mr Police Officer,
please rescue me." Right?
We understand that for women and men who are trafficked globally
whether for sex or labor,
their experiences with law enforcement in their own countries
haven't been particularly warm,
and so they may not feel like this is someone that they can go to.
That's true for young people in our country too,
particularly, young people who've grown up in communities of color,
that historically don't have good reason to trust law enforcement.
And we also had to teach people
that you don't have to be chained physically
to a bed or to a wall in order to think that you can't leave.
And with the domestic violence movement,
we've begun to really work over the last 30 years
stopping folks from saying, "Well, why doesn't she just leave?"
And we began to recognize that it was a lot more complex than that, right?
And that here were many psychological and sociological factors
that would stop an adult woman from leaving an abuser.
And so when we're talking about particularly children,
when we're talking about girls who are under the control of somebody
whose entire job is to make them loyal and compliant,
we have to be able to apply those same kind of ideas
that we've come up with with domestic violence
and recognize that the physical chains may not be there,
but psychological chains are much, much stronger.
And when we think about someone like Elizabeth Smart or Shawn Hornbeck,
who is the little boy, who was found in Missouri,
several years after his kidnapping,
or Jaycee Dugard, we generally don't ask: Why didn't they just leave?
We recognize Stockholm's syndrome and trauma bonding.
We recognize whatever was done to those young people
in the first few days, first few hours,
was enough to keep them psychologically trapped and bonded,
and for them to believe that they couldn't leave.
So, that's kind of been the work over the last 15 years,
and slowly we're beginning in the last maybe year, 18 months,
we're beginning to see kind of some level of change,
and this slow shift in public perception,
where we're beginning to see more media stuff,
and where we're beginning to see kind of folks shifting their perception
of who these girls are, who these women are.
And so, I mean, I think, one of the most critical things
that we've been able to do, and that we did in New York,
was be able to change, not just kind of in concept,
but actually in policy this idea
that young people were victims, not criminals.
And so, for many years, as I was working in juvenile detention,
and like I said on the streets and up on Rikers Island,
I was seeing 12 and 13, 14, 15, 16-year-old girls
who were being arrested and charged with an act of prostitution,
that under New York State law,
they couldn't legally consent to, because they couldn't legally
consent to sex until they were 17.
And so, in any other case,
they would've been a victim of statutory rape.
And yet because money was exchanged,
the 40-year-old, the 30-year-old, the adult man who was buying them,
was no longer seen as a statutory rapist, he was seen just as a "John",
and he was generally let go with a little pat,
same way we used to treat domestic violence abusers
for many, many years.
And the girl, the child who was being bought,
the child who was being sold by adult men to adult men,
was the one who was arrested, incarcerated
and generally sentenced to a year.
We had one case, and this is the case that kind of started the whole thing off,
where we had a 12-year-old who was arrested,
she was sentenced upstate to a juvenile detention center for a year,
she had been in the foster care system, she had been totally abandoned by family,
she had a massive history of trauma and abuse
and had met an adult man who became her "daddy", who became her pimp.
And the judge said, "She needed to learn proper moral principles."
And so, that was the case that kind of...
we said, "Hmm, something's wrong with this legislation,
something's wrong with a law that doesn't protect victims
but sees them, children, as criminals,
and isn't addressing this as a human rights issue."
And yet we've got federal law
that recognizes children from other countries as victims,
and technically does recognize children from our country as victims,
but it's not happening at a state level.
And so for about 4.5 years, the young women at GEMS and I
trekked up to Albany, we worked very closely
with the legal aid Juvenile Rights Division,
and in the beginning we would go in a room, and it would be 4 legislators,
and they were totally bored and apathetic.
And we would go back and we would go back again,
and the girls would say, "It's all white men in suits."
And say, "Yes, let's have a conversation
about power and privileged and what that looks like".
And so it became kind of a civic participation lesson in action
over the course of about 4.5, 5 years.
And eventually we were able to make New York State
the first state in the country to protect, not prosecute, children
who have been sexually exploited and trafficked.
That happened in 2008.
We were very conscious of kind of what could happen nationally with that law,
And since then 9 of the states
have passed similar, what they're calling "safe harbor", legislation.
So we are now 10 states down, 40 to go.
I would like to believe in 5 years we will look back,
like we look back on many other issues, and think,
"Did we really send 12-year-olds to jail!?
Did we really let the adult men who were doing the buying and selling go?
That seems ludicrous. We don't live in that kind of country."
So, I believe that we have the ability to get there,
but I think what's critical and what we need to kind of...
the next layer of where we're going in the anti-trafficking movement,
ending commercial sexual exploitation movement,
is really about kind of making sure that we're tying these issues,
the issue of sexual exploitation into like these larger systemic issues,
because oftentimes what we're finding now with the media focus on this issue,
for anybody who's seeing MSNBC special or something in the newspaper,
it tends to be very sensationalized and very kind of,
"Rescue little girls, bad men -- arrest them!"
It tends to be that kind of paradigm,
and yet we're not addressing the social factors
that make young people so incredibly vulnerable in the first place.
Like I said, predominantly, what we are seeing
are low-income girls, girls of color,
girls who've been in the child welfare system,
over 70% of the girls that GEMS serves
have been in the child welfare system at some point,
girls who have been victims of childhood sexual abuse and trauma.
We know that anywhere from 70% to 90% of both children and adult women
who end up in the sex industry,
were victims of child sexual abuse prior to recruitment.
There is no other industry in the world that targets folks
who have been victims of childhood sexual abuse,
one of the most traumatic things that you can experience, in such a way, right?
That preys upon the most vulnerable people in our society,
some of the most marginalized folks in our entire community.
And so we have to be able to address some of these root causes,
we have to be able to address opportunities for all of our young people,
and make sure that we are not predicating
what your future looks like as a young person,
based on the ZIP code that you are born into.
We need to make sure that we are addressing
kind of some of these larger systemic issues,
particularly, gender-based violence.
And I will say that, you know,
for the last couple of years, there was a point
where you couldn't get like 3 people in a room to talk about this.
And then there was a point when you began to get folks showing up
but now, right, you do an anti-trafficking workshop
and there's a ton of people showing up.
And yet we can't get folks now to come to a domestic violence presentation,
because we think we've solved it, we think we've addressed that,
we think it's one of those things we don't really need to focus on right now,
and yet, we know that domestic violence is happening... now.
And if I waited another few seconds... again, and again, in our country.
And so, we have to be able to address kind of the continuum of gender-based violence,
of which commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking is just one component.
We have to be able to address race
and the impact of racism on young people in this country,
and particularly how that plays out in the commercial sex industry.
I will tell you that, and this isn't a talk about pornography,
but I will tell you that pornography is one of the few industries anywhere
that you can still be blatantly racist.
And I encourage you to look at some of the links between race and pornography,
and how that plays out in our culture,
and how we're still really comfortable in that world,
in terms of addressing people through race
and very racialized, sexualized stereotypes.
We have to be able to think,
where do we want to be in 5 to 10 years on this issue,
because sometimes we can go,
and I think this is true of all social justice movements,
we can address kind of the very exciting sexy topics,
and not really dig deeper,
and go long term for the long-term gains.
And so, every issue has its moment in the sun,
and right now trafficking is having its moment.
The domestic violence movement had its moment.
The environment kind of had its moment.
HIV/AIDS had its moment.
And that's not to say that work isn't still being done,
but there is a very particular point in time,
for every social justice issue where the focus is on it,
and there's a lot of momentum, and a lot of excitement,
and the media is all over it.
And we're kind of hitting that point and we're very close
to hitting that point in the trafficking movement right now,
but we have to think about: What do we want to see
kind of 5, 10, 15, 20 years out?
And so some of those things might not be
the most sexiest things that we can address.
Arresting men and saving girls sounds like a good concept,
but rescue isn't a long-term sustainable method
of addressing folks' needs.
We have to be looking from an empowerment perspective.
I will say that just looking at the "Kony 2012" video,
if you didn't see it, you were living under a rock,
it just picked up this massive level of momentum.
But I'll say there are some things that the anti-trafficking movement
could kind of learn from that.
It's critical that we are highlighting voices that are on the ground,
and we are highlighting the voices of survivors,
and not in a get-up-and-tell-your-story way.
As a survivor and somebody who's been in a leadership role for many years,
I'm still in positions where, you know, the focus becomes
kind of "The sensational aspects of my story,"
and "What did you go through?" and "What did you experience?"
As opposed to the fact, [that] as an executive director for last 14 years,
I actually have some ideas, about policy, and programming, and development,
and there is some of that stuff that I bring to the table.
And while my story is critical in terms of informing the work that I do,
it's one part of me.
And if we're really serious about addressing victims
and supporting victims into becoming survivors,
and then ultimately leaders,
we have to think about: How do we move
from that very kind of, on some levels, voyeuristic,
kind of: "I want to know all the ins and outs of all the violence,
and trauma and all the bad stuff that happened to you"?
And I could've gotten up here today and done that piece,
But [it would have been] less helpful
in terms of how we're thinking about this issue as a community, as a movement.
We can learn from "Kony"
the things that are sensational may get the attention,
but they don't necessarily provide the most nuanced view
of what's happening on the ground,
and that the things that may seem to make the most sense initially
and appeal to our good, evil...
This is an incredibly complex issue.
And we have to be able to address economic empowerment,
we have to be able to address education and employment for girls and women,
globally, and in this country too.
We've gotten much better about talking about the need
for economic empowerment for girls globally.
But we're doing a pretty crappy job about recognizing
that some of those same issues exist right here,
right down the block from us, right in our own backyards.
And so, that desire to address "the other"
when it comes to particularly any issue, but particularly sex trafficking,
and having empathy for brown and black children in other countries,
but not so much in our country,
being able to address services and support in other countries,
but again not in our own country,
is somewhere that we have to move away from.
And so I encourage you
to really just think about... in the next...
you've got a lot to think about, right?
You've heard a lot of different talks today,
but I encourage you on this issue to really think about
how can you tie this issue in with the work that you're doing.
The next speaker's going to talk about economics, right?
Sex trafficking and exploitation is totally connected to that.
The amazing presentation today on PTSD and memory, that's connected.
All of these issues are connected, and when we silo stuff off,
and make it kind of its own little issue,
we do ourselves a disservice.
So, I'm going wrap here, but thank you very much.
(Applause)