Saving Innocence: Sara Elander and Jasmine McDonald on Fighting Human Trafficking With Compassion and Care

Transcript auto-generated from the episode audio; formatting has been cleaned up, but wording is verbatim.

Human trafficking is the exploitation of unmet needs. We all desire survival, affection, belonging, love. We talk about love. We all are truly desiring to be loved and known and seen in. A lot of our victims have this skewed version of what love, affection, attention, belonging is the trauma of human trafficking. It strips autonomy, it strips dignity. It strips your ability to have voice and choice. I always say, I came into this organization because I love my children so much, and hoping that I'm planting healthy, understanding seeds, that they can make really good choices as well.

If something doesn't feel right, it's probably not right. There is a way for you to say something, because it could be the only time someone said something on behalf of that girl. I'm Cynthia Marks and I head up the Holistic Psychoanalysis Foundation established by my late husband, Doctor Bernard Bail. Welcome to And Now Love. Here at And Now Love, we explore the depths of human connection, compassion, and the resilience of the human spirit. Today, we are shedding light on a dark reality and the relentless advocates fighting to bring hope and healing to those who need it most.

Human trafficking is a global crisis, but right here in Los Angeles, there is a powerful network working on the front lines to disrupt exploitation and restore lives. We are honored to sit down with Jasmine McDonald, clinical director and Sara Elander, director of programs and coordinator of victim services for the LA Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, both leading forces at Saving Innocence. They'll share the heartbreaking reality of this epidemic, the incredible work being done to help survivors rebuild, and how we can all be a part of the solution.

This is a conversation about true advocacy, trauma informed care, and the restorative power of love. Thank you for being here. We're all about love, and I know that what you're doing is tough work, and it has to come from a place of love. Yeah, truly. Absolutely. We're honored to. Be here. Thank you for taking a moment to share. And so first, tell us about saving Innocence. How long has it existed? What roles do you play and what does saving Innocence really attempt to do or just do without the attempt? Yeah, sure. So Saving Innocence has been around since 2010.

We were established by Kim Biddle. She was an advocate for human rights work all across the world. She got her master's in social work at USC, and then started to identify this kind of population of children and, and women who were experiencing commercial sexual exploitation and so started to engage with our, our systems here in LA. So LAPD's juvenile justice system, DCFS really seeing that there was this gap in services for children who were being exploited and were being kind of mislabeled as teen prostitutes and, you know, just troubled, troubled girls.

And so she established Saving Innocence in 2010. We provide crisis response, case management and advocacy, and then trauma informed workshops for survivors of all forms of human trafficking. And so that has kind of graduated all the way through kind of our existence. We primarily supported girls and children in the beginning, because that was really where the identification was in our systems in LA. And that is an enormous population that continues to exist here. But as we, you know, entered into the task force world, we've expanded to all forms of human trafficking.

So sex and labor and then all ages, so 0 to 99, really making sure that anyone who is experiencing commercial sexual exploitation, human trafficking, any kind of harm in that way, that they receive services and support from someone who truly understands what they've been through and the work to, you know, to recover. So you're spending some amount of time educating these agencies who are looking out for these individuals who are potentially being trafficked. Yeah, absolutely. I think one thing that we do at Saving Innocence is we are not gatekeepers of how to work and support these individuals that are impacted.

We understand that we would love to kind of interact with everybody that has been impacted with exploitation or trafficking, but they interact with so many other people and so many different organizations, departments, entities. We want to make sure that we share that information with them. So if they are not getting the trauma informed care for us, we can at least educate them so they can have a good interaction with a doctor, with a front office staff, with somebody in transportation, with somebody in the hotel systems. As long as they know and they know how to treat humans like humans.

And really, for the clients that we serve, treat somebody that has extraordinary trauma with care, then they have the ability to kind of do go to the next step to get help and support. Like with an organization like Saving Innocence. I see, and the individuals that you're able to assist, do they come with a typical set of circumstances, a particular trauma, or is it across the board? I mean, some of us might say that a person who is now being trafficked is falling into this situation because they're falsely being told that this is love and they're being cared for and taken care of, and maybe that was something that was missing in the environment that they were in prior to this.

Is that something you see or what do you see? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are there are definitely unmet needs. Human trafficking is the exploitation of unmet needs. And so the federal definition of human trafficking is there have to be three main components. It's force, fraud and coercion. And so that's what we see across the board when we look at any human trafficking case in terms of children, we don't have to prove force, fraud or coercion because when you're under 18, you cannot consent to sex. If you cannot consent to sex, then you are not a commercial sex worker.

You cannot consent to the exchange of sex for any kind of either monetary or some kind of need being met. And so it is automatically sex trafficking or human trafficking when it's a minor. But we see force, fraud and coercion that exists throughout all of the experiences of the clients that we're serving. And so we talk about the exploitation of unmet needs. And so that can be, you know, that there is a need of love, belonging, attention, affection. There's a need of housing, there's a need of mental health support, there's a need of family. There are like across the board.

There are so many different unmet needs that get exploited and that can be through, you know, force that can be through fraud where it was something that was they were tricked or they were misled to believe something. There's coercion, which looks like being kind of blindsided or like kind of slowly manipulated into a relationship where you thought there was security, you thought there was something, you know, he was your boyfriend or a protector of some sort. And then, you know, it slowly became exploitative, abusive, violent. And so we see a lot of those.

But when we do trainings, we talk about, like, if you look at the list of unmet needs or the desires that are are wanting to be met, it's that we all have those unmet needs. You know, we all desire survival, affection, belonging, love. And so history of trauma, just different circumstances that we see common in the, you know, kind of victimology of human trafficking. But if we look at like just the things that human that humans desire and how they can be very quickly and easily exploited, we recognize that we are all more alike than we believe, and that we have more in common with those who are victimized than we than we expect to, because we believe that it is like this demographic that doesn't exist that I could have nothing in common with.

When we all are truly, we talk about love. We all are truly desiring to be loved and known and seen. And that is the core of what we're seeing. A lot of the children and young adults, vulnerable adults experiencing. Well, I really appreciate that. And I think one of the things we talk about here, and I'm learning over the course of doing all these podcasts, is, is really just that, that we have ever so much in common and the people that we choose to, for whatever reasons, we choose to exclude or or shame or consider bad, are dealing with issues like we're dealing with issues.

And if we can all just discover sort of the trauma that we're carrying, what it is that we use to protect ourselves, the systems we put in place and figure out how to get back to what we really are, which is, you know, just this good little bundle of love. Then I think we can really figure out how to to look people in the eye with compassion instead of this, you know, major judgment. Yeah. I think you really hit the nail on the head there. We have such a commonality. But due to circumstances, maybe the commonality looks different to different people.

Access to resources, different environments, different upbringings, different understandings of what love looks like. We're all trying to find that same thing, and we have no control over what or who we're born to or what we're born in. And so you can only play the cards that you're dealt. And so if people can kind of look at it like that and saying, like, yeah, I seek love, attention, affection, belonging, community for the people that we serve. And we see sometimes the access to the community that they have are gangs. Sometimes the axes that they have to the community are family members that are also involved in exploitation and trafficking.

Sometimes the example or the role models are the people that are involved in some of these things, and that's what they strive for because that's what they see in their community. So just kind of seeing it like that, you look up to your cousins, uncles, fathers, mothers. Same thing for the clients that we see, but they're just in different circumstances. So seeing it like that, it's just like, oh, okay, I can relate to that. I may not relate to the same traumas that you have experienced, but I can relate to the need for growth, the need for finding out who I am, the need for belonging community in the same sense that a lot of the people that we see that are impacted by exploitation and trafficking.

Yeah, yeah, we're all searching for the same thing. Yeah. We spoke with a gentleman who was involved with Homeboy Industries, and we also spoke with Father Greg Boyle. That was awesome. That's a. Bucket list item right there. Yeah, yeah. So this gentleman out and I was his name lived in a community much like you're describing. He didn't have love at home. Going home was scary. And he discovered a gang and that became love. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, he put himself in a position where he was willing to do anything for that new family and ended up committing murder and was in prison for about 30 years and came and spoke to us about his, his life and what he discovered about who he truly was.

You know, even that he was not that murder he committed. He has just the most fabulous life where he is giving back to the community and helping people who are in similar situations. Tell me about this. I think that some of the best advocates are those who have come from the experience that they're now helping with. Do you find that any of the individuals that you're assisting come back and say, how can I now help this community? Because I realize this is not my path and I don't want it to be anybody else's path. We have had several people with lived experience on staff and offer that support to younger people, or some of our younger clients that as a role model of like, this is what I've experienced.

There's a shared experience here. And so kind of offering that support in mentorship, working through that trauma. We currently have a lived experience advisor on staff with us. Her name is Talia and she's wonderful, and she was one of our clients maybe ten years ago. And then she became one of our leadership students, and now she's been on staff with us for about a year. And so really getting to kind of watch her experience, her healing journey. And then she has basically built a life Herning around and offering that support in different capacities.

I think that everyone who has lived experience in, you know, human trafficking or exploitation or whatever wants to offer that support in different ways. And so really being able to offer her an opportunity to give back. We just hosted a huge a youth conference last weekend where we had 50 youth come back and participate in this day of leadership that Talia led, and so she got to lead it with like five other people with lived experience to offer that back to their peers, to their friends, to people who are maybe 5 to 10 years behind them. The tagline of the conference was becoming the leader of your own life.

And so what does it look like to become the leader of your own heart and your own finances and your own emotions, where you get to now be in charge? The trauma of human trafficking. It strips autonomy. It strips dignity. It strips your ability to have voice and choice. And so everything that we do, our whole careers have been marked by voice and choice. You get to decide. And so really getting to Talia lead this day of what does it look like to become the leader of your own life, alongside other survivors who are leading their own lives in different ways and struggling and thriving and celebrating?

And it was just an absolutely perfect day. And so there is so much significance in survivor leadership and people with lived experience contributing and giving back in a way that we never will be able to. And so getting to walk alongside that and support it and breathe life into it and saying, you are the you are the leader of this has been a huge gift. Absolutely. Yeah. That's that's so great. So how did this come about? Is this something you do annually? It was our first one. The first one. So it was so in 2018, I developed a leadership program called Slay the Survivor Leadership Academy for youth.

And so it was a 25 week course. We met weekly. And, you know, it was kind of set up where the first third of it was a lot about identity. We did a lot of personality tests. And just who are you like the mechanics of who you are? We talked about trauma. We talked about human trafficking. Like when you can understand what what happened to you, it makes it a little bit easier to understand what healing might look like, if you can understand some of them, even the mechanics of human trafficking. And to separate who you are from that happening. Exactly.

And sometimes, like even the terms feel unfamiliar, because what happened to you feels very different than the federal definition of what it is. And then all the systems that you've been funneled into, especially when you've experienced foster care, you know, there are all these terms that you get labeled and they're not bad, but you don't really understand what they mean. And maybe they don't feel like they fit sometimes. Because you get othered, it's just another system where you feel othered anyways. And so it was this 25 week course of leadership and emotional regulation and professional development.

And so we ran it for five years, 2018 to 2023. And it was just it was like the honor of my whole life. I mean, it was incredible. We took a little bit of a break. It was a huge undertaking. And so this year we decided to kind of cram 25 weeks of content into one full day. And so it was our first one. It was super successful. We had a ton of positive feedback. For me, it was like the perfect kind of finale to slay because moving forward, I probably won't lead it in the same way that I did then. And so it was just like this perfect culmination, and we hope to do it again because it was so successful.

So. And who is participating? So it was kind of a mix. We had a lot of clients return. It was funny, as I was watching the registrations roll in, I was like. Oh, these. Guys, I haven't seen her in years. And so they're all still connected in a lot of ways. And so we had a lot of former clients. A lot of new people that just heard about the conference and felt related. We had some clients that I met there that were not our clients, but were people that were somewhat system involved and just heard it through the grapevine and was just like, I don't know if I had the greatest experience with maybe service providers before, but let me try this out and let me see what they're about.

And I think it was just like a great introduction of the community that we try to build within saving innocence. They were able to build community with each other. The space allowed them to have and sit and have conversations and take pictures with each other, without workers or providers, like constantly over their shoulders and saying, what are you doing? But they also had the opportunity to sit in workshops that were co-led by people that have lived, experience and professionals to talk about some of the things that maybe a little bit uncomfortable or taboo to talk about with in their own communities, because their own communities may not be aware of some of their pasts or some of their past trauma.

But being in that space, knowing that everybody has some kind of commonality and feeling comfortable and safe to talk about those things without judgment, without shame, without hesitation seems really good. Seeing really fun. Again, it's a heavy topic, so sometimes we don't like to bring heaviness around the topic. We don't have to remind them of their trauma, but we're here to help and support them as they walk through their journey to get out of their trauma. And I think slay kind of like culminated a lot of that. And it was just it was just so nice.

We were kind of still coming off that high. Was not going to lie. It really was. So yeah, that's so awesome. And it was fun because we got to, you know, a lot of a lot of specialized services for survivors of human trafficking in our county really kind of cap around 24. A lot of the county services are based around foster care, juvenile justice. We don't have any specialized programing through our county systems or city systems for adults. So it was fun to be able to increase the age. And so there were survivors that were coming who were, you know, 30, 35 saying, oh, I these services weren't even really around when I was a teenager.

So it's really it feels really impactful to enter into a community of other people with lived experience that I've never really experienced before. And so really getting to kind of open up this world of whether they're in a room with 18 year olds or 35 year olds, like there is this shared experience. Yeah, it was really fun to see even 36 or 16, in some of the ajar moments that they can still have. And even for some of the older participants like them, really like getting involved in some of the workshop activities. We had a parenting workshop where they were able to like, build a bear and just have like a little keepsake.

And we think about stuffed animals and things of childhood, of how sometimes that's forgotten. But for some of the older clients, it's not that it was forgotten, but it was just missed. And so they were able to kind of have that child like experience in a safe space where they now got to keep, have a keepsake for their family, for their kids, where they got to kind of be involved in making and creating and now like sharing that with their family. Yeah. And just another little smidgen of a healing. Yeah. Yeah, that's really lovely. So is it typically younger people that are being trafficked because they're more susceptible, more vulnerable, say under the age of 18?

I mean, there's a really significant population of children who are being trafficked specifically in LA. There is the the obvious vulnerability of childhood. We have a significant foster care system, foster population in LA, which creates an additional world of vulnerabilities. And then there's also the love, belonging, attention, affection. There's just a lot of that that gets interrupted through foster care. And then there's a lot of just skill development that's interrupted through foster care. So we see a significant population of children and then vulnerable adults and young adults, especially in the transition into adult life.

They're not in foster care or having a nexus to foster care. There's not a lot of soft skill development to be able to be successful as an adult. Foster care will, you know, they have services up to 24. So there are a lot of transitional services through our LA County DCFS system. But there are just natural soft skills and life skills that are missing, which make it a really vulnerable place for 18, 21, 24 year olds as they're trying to navigate the world. And then, you know, we also see a lot of adult women. So we've been going out on operations with law enforcement where they're encountering women who are commercial sex workers.

And so they're not identifying as victims of human trafficking. They're saying, I'm a I'm a commercial sex worker. And in like a 15 minute conversation, we can have, you know, just start to identify. When did you start participating in commercial sex? Well, when I was 16. Okay. And so or when I was 14. And, you know, we start to see even if their first encounter with a service provider is at 35, we're still seeing that the average age of entry for human trafficking or for sex trafficking is 11 to 13, 12 to 14, like so, even if the first interaction, or even if they've never identified as a victim of human trafficking, we're still seeing that there is this nexus to human trafficking that that was never named or identified.

It was always this was my choice. It was a boyfriend. It was a survival tactic. It was a generational, familial dynamic. And so on. These operations, we're getting to see having we're getting to have conversations with women where they're starting to put pieces together. And it's like, oh, I didn't want to do this originally. This is the only thing I felt like I've known how to do. This is something that I'm just doing to survive. And isn't that a cognitive thought? Yes, I'm I can do this. This is a way that I can put food on the table. I don't know that I have a lot of other skills, but I'm good at this point.

I can accomplish this, and this is something that I have that I don't have to learn. I don't have to acquire something else, and I can get my basic needs met. Women in in particular that have families, a lot of their focus is taking care of their families, taking care of their children. I'm a mom. I will do anything for my kids, right? And if you think about that, they have the same mindset. Like, I will do anything to take care of my kids, to make sure my kids have their basic needs, tangible basic needs, food, water, shelter. And if somebody is offering me this, even though I don't want to do it, I'm not comfortable doing it.

This is not something that I've dreamt of or when I was a kid. When I grew up, I didn't say, I want to grow up to do X, but this is something that's going to get this basic need met. And for my kids, this is going to get us through the next day. This is going to get us through the next point in life. And looking at it like that, it's just kind of like, okay, well, you have to make a decision between something hard and something harder. And how do you kind of judge or kind of point fingers that somebody that has to make those hard decisions. So the point of going out like you do is to show the people that are on the street that they have some options.

It's an offer. And so we go out and we provide them an opportunity to receive services. And so it is again, it is all voice and choice. It is saying this is what we do. This is the population that we serve and explaining who we are. We're not saying this is what you are because you get to decide how you identify. We're never going to say you're a victim of human trafficking because that's that's not going to be helpful. They've been told what they are their whole lives, whether it's you are a prostitute or you are X, Y, z, whatever. They've been told over and over again what their identity is.

So we get to say, I'm Sarah, I work for Saving innocence. Saving innocence provides this, this and this for survivors of human trafficking. Human trafficking looks like this. Is this something that you ever feel like you've experienced or that you identify with or whatever? And a lot of times they're willing to talk to us, even if it's in a lot of times we're bringing snacks or bringing hygiene items because they have basic needs and they have things that need to be met and, and making sure that and we'll get them a ride home wherever they want to go after they've been, after they've been picked up.

And so and, you know, a lot of law enforcement, they're not interested in citing women over and over again. And that's why we're there, is that they want to provide services. They want to offer opportunities and options to women when they're when they're being picked up by law enforcement. And so, you know, that's it's an opportunity. And a lot of times they'll say no. And we have a 24 hour crisis hotline, and we have a card that just says the phone number. And we'll say, if you ever need anything, give us a call. And we hear from them often, because it sometimes takes a little bit of time to process and to decide, is this something that feels safe?

Maybe at one point they disclosed and they weren't believed, or they disclosed and their trafficker found out. They you know, there are all these things that feel very scary in that process. So they're hesitant and they should be. It's a complete protective mechanism, and we do not judge them or blame them or pressure them to identify or to accept anything. It's like take it on your own terms, on your own timeline. We are here when you're ready. Everything that we do is you determine what your goals are. How can we help you get there? Okay. So let's talk about that.

So one of these lovely people says, you know what. Yeah I think I'm going to call what happens then. They will either call in or crisis line and get one of our 24 hour advocates. And they're going to say, hey, what do you need in this moment? What do you need to feel safe? And if they are currently in a trafficking situation, they're just like, I just need to get out of here. I need to get out of here. And and I'm exhausted and I'm probably hungry, right? We say, okay, if it's something that we can coordinate, where our advocate can meet them at an appropriate time with appropriate safety measures, then we will do that.

If it's not, then we can coordinate for them to get to a safe place. Rather, it's a hotel. We can make sure that they can check into a hotel with an alias with nothing that's identifiable. We can send them a DoorDash gift card to give them something to eat, provide them with clothes, do it all virtually, and let them sleep it off for a little bit. Right? And then if that's the case, we can come in the next morning or the next afternoon, and then we can chat to see about what is needed. One thing that we have learned over the years is that when your body is in crisis, you stay in that heightened sense of crisis for at least 72 hours.

So for us to come in the night of being like, what do you need? What do you need? What what kind of service do you need? It's going to be hard for them to process, for anybody to process while you're in that kind of survival mode. So we give them time to sleep, to rest, to kind of like process and to come down to baseline to say like, hey, how can our services help? And sometimes our services are I was trafficked and I was taken from a different state, and I just want to go back home to my family and we're just like, okay, that's something that we can do.

Let's get you on a plane. Let's call your hometown and make sure you have somewhere safe to go, or you're connected to another organization like us in your hometown. So we know that we're just not sending you back into a situation without any resources. Right? But for some of our LA based individuals that are being trafficked, we're here to help and support. One thing about saving sense is we go all over Los Angeles County. I like to say we go from Long Beach to Pomona to Lancaster to Santa Monica all over, and we are very familiar with the layout.

If not, we have technology that will tell us how to get around, and we make sure that we travel and we support them wherever they go. How many are you? We have five crisis case managers. We're a little team, a small but mighty. We have five crisis case managers. We have a lived experience advisor. And then we have a law enforcement liaison who helps us kind of navigate some of our law enforcement dynamics. He's a retired detective. And me and. Sarah and then us. Yeah. And how are you funded? We have kind of a diverse set of funding. And so we have a grant through the Office of Victims of Crime through the Department of Justice.

And so that is our task force grant. So that funds the LA Regional Human Trafficking Task Force that we co-lead with the LA County Sheriff's Department. And so that's one of our larger funding sources. And then we have a handful of different, like family foundations and, you know, grants that will kind of run on like 2 or 3 year periods and then a lot of private, a lot of private donations. And so a lot of it is diversifying. This is a crazy landscape for funding right now with our instability and and other things. And so trying to diversify as much as possible because things that were promised before are no longer promised.

And so we're fighting the same fight a lot of nonprofits are. You are. But that's such a huge task, just being able to wrangle enough funding so that you can manage to do what you do. Know it is we've been doing this work really consistently, probably for the last 13 or 14 years. We've 2010 was when it was established. But really like in the in the work for the last 13 or 14 years, and we have developed a really positive reputation and relationship with a really diverse group of, of agencies and entities. I was telling a colleague the other day is that we we sit in this very unique position where we recognize the value of law enforcement in this space.

Human trafficking is a crime. It needs a criminal justice response. We want to hold perpetrators accountable, and we want justice for victims and survivors of human trafficking. We recognize the value we need. We need their their support in this. And they are supportive. And they are supportive. They are absolutely. And that is, you know, the unique relationship that we have with our task force is co-leading with the L.A. County Sheriff's Department. They have a unique, highly trained, highly specialized team of human trafficking investigators and sergeants and lieutenants and captains, like the entire human trafficking team is highly specialized to be able to address human trafficking in L.A.

County. And then it is partnered with Homeland Security Investigations, their human trafficking unit, and then the Department of Justice with the U.S. Attorney's office. So all of the OVC grants have to have a federal partner. And so we have our C partners who are wonderful. The C investigators for human trafficking are wonderful. And then our U.S. attorney team and they're prosecuting at the federal level. Well, it's really good. Very good to hear that. There's so much attention being paid to this. I think it's really not on the radar for most of us.

I know, and there are 55 agencies that are partnered with our task force. So that's. That's like that's the State Department, that's LA County probation, there's LA Unified School District. So there are representatives from 55 agencies that are partnered with our task force. So we're co-led and we've got our official team, but we have partners, the FBI, maybe 25 NGOs, different state California Highway Patrol, just their representatives from 55 agencies that are saying that they're committed to the LA Regional Human Trafficking Task Force. They have a designated representative that comes to our meetings and provides updates.

There's someone that we can always call if we need something. So it is a very it's been it was established in 2015. It is a very well established, very well received. Even nationally. Our task force, it's the largest co-located human trafficking task force in the nation. Well, it sounds like all the parts and pieces are pretty well coming together to create a well-oiled machine. That is that is the goal. Which isn't always the case with our various organizations. You know, they're trying to all support one sort of desperate cause. It's sometimes hard to be coordinated.

So that's really lovely to hear. I mean, it's difficult, but it is, you know, it is a lot of moving parts. It's a lot of commitment from different agencies to give a designated person in a time where everything is under funded in our city and our county is in a budget crisis. And so being able to give one investigator from, from some agency is a cost. We're very, very thankful. It is. You know, we're there working overtime, trying to address the issue. And, you know, we're honored to get to partner with them and and also get to kind of share the trauma informed, victim centered kind of the public health approach, recognizing that we have to swim upstream to be able to not just address the crisis response and the intervention of human trafficking, but to look at the the systems that create vulnerabilities for people who are victims and people who are victimized.

And do you find that this is the trafficking issue? Is it growing in our county? I think so, yes. Talking to an officer from la PD the other day, and he was talking about how the age that they're finding girls in South LA is getting younger. They were talking about how human trafficking is getting younger. And I was like, I'm not sure it's getting younger. I think we're identifying them earlier because I think that our our education, our training, our understanding, our like, their expertise and being able to identify is getting better. I think also like.

We have the language of of what it is. I think we're. Not mislabeling. We're not mislabeling people as sexual abuse victims or as child abuse victims. Now we have information, definitions of what human trafficking looks like. And they have the education to say like, yes, it's child abuse, but it's also human trafficking or yes, it's sexual abuse or rape, but it's also human trafficking. And so how do we make sure that we address not just the trauma that we expect, but the underlining trauma that's happening as well? So maybe it's not a growing population, but a growing awareness of the population.

I think it's probably both. Yeah. A little bit of both. With the increase in social media, it is large and just the increase of online activity. There's so much human trafficking that happens on the dark web and in underground, you know, an underground online communities that we didn't have ten years ago. What is that look like? Is it so? One of the things that we talk about a lot in training is that there is a new trend where children are being targeted on the game called Roblox. It's a kids game. It's targeted for like 5 to 10 year olds. It's where they go into this world and they build their own little communities out of building blocks.

And if you're of a person of an older age, think of Sims, the game Sims, but a newer version of it. Yeah. And so children go on these apps and there's a chat feature. They can talk to anyone in that world. It's a little virtual reality world where they can engage. It's not their face, but it is, you know, these kind of and it's. Seemingly. Healthy, seemingly. Yeah. I mean, you know, there are parents that let their kids on Roblox all the time. The FBI has been doing a lot of investigations because they've seen an increase in children who are targeted for different nihilistic extremist groups and different trafficking communities where they are engaging with children on Roblox, and then they are pulling them off of Roblox onto discord.

And so then they are engaging with them off the app. But there's often even an exchange on Roblox. So for parents, you're not really closely monitoring their roadblocks. Bank what? How many coins or dollars or whatever points they have in their systems. But there is often an exchange. And so then they start to kind of build a relationship, and then they move on to another chat platform, one with a high level of encryption like discord. And then they start to build a relationship with, with children, with young, with young people to engage. And then there's, you know, some of the nihilistic, violent extremist groups, they are moving towards harm and self-harm and then harm of others with ultimate death.

But there's also sexual exploitation, sextortion, sex trafficking that happens on these apps that is harder to track because of encryption, because of de-identified. But, you know, one of the things that the FBI has told us is that the average age of a Roblox user is is a 45 year old male, which means that when we are letting our children go on these apps, they're they're more than likely engaging with older men than they are other seven, eight, nine year olds. And so we see that there is this under ground world that, you know, this is one platform, one game, one form of victimization.

But I tell parents all the time, I'm like, pick this fight. Yeah. Pick the fight with your kids. This is a good fight to pick. You're going to have to die on a hill. Die on this one. Do not let your kids go on Roblox. Monitor everything they do on the internet because there are predators everywhere. And and it's and it's one of those things that when we talk about the growing issue of exploitation, the growing issue of trafficking, you know, it might not be that there are, you know, five women who are walking along Figueroa Street in Los Angeles.

And then the next weekend there are ten, and we see this obvious multiplication. But there is so much that we don't know, that we don't see. There are so many ways that our, you know, our clients, our survivors of human trafficking are being exploited and victimized in underground, completely hidden ways. It is a crime that is almost impossible to track. And so we'll just never know. I would also say the increase is not just on kind of some of the underground websites, but even some of the known ones. If you think of like Instagram, Snapchat, Cash App, TikTok, TikTok, all these things that are really meant for social interaction and social excitement are also being used for an exchange of X, an exchange of pictures for money and exchange for a way to meet up with people, a way to provide or offer sex trafficking for buyers, whatever that looks like.

And it's really hard because there's also like dating sites that people meet on some of these things and having it being posed as one thing, but actually another. It's becoming really hard to kind of understand and kind of pinpoint and identify, is this actual sex trafficking or is this something else? Oh my gosh, there's so much to wrangle, so much to wrangle. Can it be fairly blatant on a platform like TikTok or Instagram? I mean, a little me would probably not see it at all, but could it be pretty? A pretty obvious thing that's going on? Yeah.

It is in absolute plain sight. The thing about the internet is that it is a really big place. And so if you type in the right things, if you look for the right things, it's blatant and obvious. It might not be on your algorithm or my algorithm, but if you look for it, you will find it. It's blatant. It's you know, abuse is blatant. Violence is blatant. The the like outward judgment of people who are experiencing commercial sexual exploitation, blatant. And so we see it in different ways. We'll have clients show us, you know, videos of them being dragged by their hair down the street that are posted on TikTok.

And so it's like, you know, this isn't just something that happened to me. It's not something that lives on the internet forever. And so it is a tool that is used to recruit and to exploit. It's also a tool to humiliate and to hold people emotionally captive. And it's also a tool for others to chime in on something that is now harmful to them. Right? Comments. We think about comments. We think about internet bullying. We're doing that on top of a trauma, on top of other things that are happening to them. And now they're trying to navigate this new system that in I guess in our time, we didn't have to navigate all that stuff.

And so they're navigating this new thing with these old traumas and kind of trying to figure out what's right and what's wrong. And a lot of our victims have this skewed version of what love, affection, attention, belonging is. And sometimes as we're talking to them and as we're having these relationships, as teaching them about what healthy looks like, there's a lot to untangle. There's a lot to there's a lot of wrong truths that we have to kind of help them discover on their own. That's tough, isn't it? Yeah, it's. I mean, it's we're all so imprinted, you know, we just know this is this is the truth.

Because this has always been my truth. It's a lot to give that away or give it up, you know? Yeah. And if you think about kids, like you want them to grow up with this sense of understanding of who they are. Oh, right. You want them to be strong. At least for my children. I want them to be strong in knowing who they are, being able to speak up for themselves, being able to believe what they know is true. And for some individuals that have a history of trauma, their truth is something unhealthy for some. Some people like us, like providers are coming in and we're just like, hey, let me let me show you something new, right?

Or I'm just here to give you a crisis bag. I need nothing in return. And that is something unfamiliar to them. Because everything's a transaction. Because everything's a transaction. And I think for them, they think like, oh, well, now I have to tell you all of my story because you cared about, I see. And the last person that cared about me was a trafficker, because he sat and listened to me and he sat and listened to me. And then he became a caring figure in my life. And then everything switched when I now had to do something from him. That's how the transaction happened, right?

And we are teaching them that everything doesn't have to be transactional. There are unconditional relationships that you can also have. Do you think that because you're a terrific mom, any do you think that any of what you've learned through your association with saving innocence has helped you understand more what being a good mom is like? Being able to give your kids real agency? Or did you just come prepackaged? No. No, no, totally. The package is still being created right now, I think. Yes, yes. And it also has took me into some of the really darkest places of the world.

That makes me so nervous for some of my how my children are being brought up. Right. I always say I came into this organization because I love my children so much. If I was going to spend time away from them, it had to be something worthwhile. It had to be something that was improving the world that they were going to be living in as adults. Right when I first started this job, I came home and I was like, okay, Bailey, let's talk about this. My daughter's name is Bailey, and she was just like, whoa, mom. Like what? What are you talking about? Right.

But now it's almost like, not only is it teaching me about human trafficking and the things that are happening in the world, like Sarah said, it's also teaching me about voice and choice, right? And I have to give autonomy to my kids and hoping that I'm planting healthy, understanding seeds, that they can make really good choices as well. Right? And some of those seeds are education about what their mom does. Some of the seeds are about education about how and who to talk to if something doesn't feel right. Some of those seeds are really just trusting your inner like person that says like, hey, this doesn't feel comfortable and I need to say something, right?

But I'm hopefully using some of the information and relationships that I've built with saving innocence to instill into them of like what healthy looks like. So if you have a relationship, let's say, with someone in the highway patrol system, what is that relationship do they call you when they've seen that someone is struggling, perhaps with a trafficking issue? Yeah. So we have a 24 over seven crisis line, and law enforcement knows how to get Ahold of us no matter what. So. So could your phone ring at three in the morning? It sure does. Or does.

And so, you know, we have a crisis case manager who's on call. You know, we have it's Monday to Monday, so they'll be on call for a week every five weeks right now because we have five advocates. And then Jasmine and I flip back and forth between supervisor on call. So there's always a there's always a supervisor who's available for that advocate to make sure that if there's any weird situation, if there's a big expense that needs to be made, if there's a safety concern that we can consult or go out if needed. And so, you know, with California Highway Patrol, if there, they pull someone over and they suspect trafficking because they have been extensively trained and they have a way to interrupt and to intervene, they will call us and say, hey, we've got, you know, a survivor, someone that's interested in services.

One of the things we always tell people is do not call us if they don't want services, like if they're saying, I don't want it, you can call us. I mean, they can always call us, but like, we are not going to force services on them. You're not going out there to assist. You know, but and not even just because we don't want to, but because we want to listen to them. And if they're saying I don't want services because there is someone in Aisha earshot that would retaliate if they said anything, one of our team members rolling out would just make it worse for her.

And so we want, you know, law enforcement knows to understanding consent and consensual services, voluntary services. And so but if in the case where they're able to arrest the trafficker or separate her and offer her services and she says, yeah, I would love that, we will either do kind of what Jasmine talked about, a virtual response where it's, well, let's just get her to a hotel and we'll meet her there. Or if it's like, hey, you know, they brought her to a station, let's go and meet her there and let's have a conversation. Assess where she's at.

There is a physiological response to trauma where it just takes them a long time to regulate. And so we'll roll out. But law enforcement on every level knows how to get Ahold of us through our hotline, through Jasmine and I, to make sure that any survivor that wants services has access to them. Wow. And you're just two little people. It's amazing. It's amazing what you've created. Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's an incredible system. Honestly. We talk about it all the time that like, it is such a privilege that we get to do this and like, it is a, a world, a career that we didn't know existed before we got the job.

Yeah. It wasn't like, oh, I always dreamed about doing this. Like maybe there are, you know, MSW graduates who are thinking about it now and they're like, I really want to go into anti-trafficking work. But in 2013, 2014. Less than a year. Not on our radar. And so when we started training and onboarding for our roles was very limited. So survivors and our clients taught us everything that we know, which I don't recommend for any agency. It's not it's not survivors responsibility to train us. But we really did get this like overwhelming reception from the clients that we were serving at the time of really growing up with them and learning what they need from them and learning what they don't need from them, and learning what works and what doesn't work and what boundaries are, and how to engage voluntary services.

How do you engage voice and choice? When we're talking about children, voice and choice is very different, and autonomy is very different for children because there is mandated reporting, there are child abuse laws. There are things that have to get kind of woven into the fabric of, you know, commercial sexual exploitation is a severe form of child abuse. So all of a sudden when we're identifying a child, all of a sudden that enters into the world of foster care, and now that now DCFS is involved and that's its own trauma, and there are all these things that kind of get unpacked that we just never really knew about.

And so getting to do this work and building this little team, you know, we will start it as crisis case managers. And now getting to lead this team of the world's most incredible advocates that we're so proud of and so proud to work with. It feels kind of like a dream. And it's a hard it's a hard field. It is. It is, you know, very dark. We get to see really like the ugliest parts of society. But this is a gift. How do you not skew your vision and look at all of us and say we're just all rotten? The thing is, is that no one is exclusively one or the other.

The resilience of the human spirit is profound. And so as much as we have experienced pain and loss and trauma, or have witnessed pain and loss and trauma, we have also witnessed resilience and strength and hope, not just because we've offered it, but because they intrinsically carry it. And so no one is exclusively one or the other. And you also, when you look at kind of with the nuance and a little bit of compassion at traffickers and a lot of, you know, with with DCFS, our partners with DCFS, as traffickers are identified, they're starting to look them up in the foster care system.

A lot of their histories mirror the histories and the vulnerabilities of victims. They. Have that they have. That of 86% of traffickers have had some form of child abuse. It's like domestic violence in the home, commercial sex in the home. Sexual abuse. Sexual childhood sexual abuse. Gang, their mother being abused. By witnessing some violence against mom. But a lot of the same vulnerabilities that we're seeing in victims. I appreciate that you brought up the fact that the trafficker is also a human and and, you know, it falls into the same world with us in that we really are a product of generations past, a product of what we've been exposed to, a product of what we know.

And a product of what success looks like in whatever your community lives. Right. If the trafficker and the members of the gang are the people that are also buying the groceries for my family. Why would I not be looking up to them if I'm in a community? In the safest people are the people that are a part of this organization are part of this trafficking situation or gang situation. I want to feel protected on with my family, to feel protected. I'm going to make sure that I'm in a protected space. So they're putting themselves in situations that allows them to survive in the environments.

And those are the ones who are successful. Those are the ones that. Are successful and they're they're the ones that are there who they're looking up to. It's the it's the model. And whether they know what we have deemed right and wrong, I mean, it is criminally wrong. So no one's going to say that. Like, well, it's it's subjective. It's not. And it's and it doesn't dismiss the criminality of it and the, the evil nature of it at all, but addressing vulnerabilities that contribute to victimization, we can also address vulnerabilities that contribute to the development of traffickers and abusers.

If we can provide services to boys in foster care who have experienced childhood sexual abuse or have their parents have experienced domestic violence, we can maybe begin to interrupt some of the trajectories. Yeah, instead of just letting them kind of run their course, which is right now what we're doing. Yeah. I think one thing, even in our our mission, we really strive to like break generational. Disrupt cycles of abuse. Disrupt cycles of abuse. And within that, if you think about cycles of abuse that can go on the victim side, the criminal side, the way that we the way that we disrupted is a lot of the times we we focus a lot on the victims.

But even disrupting an individual's ability to be a trafficker, and it can be male or female. We've seen female traffickers that have been groomed in different ways. From victim to term. Victim to trafficker, because that is the trajectory of success in their in their lives. It's survival. It's hey, I don't want to get beat anymore. And because I don't want to get beaten anymore, and now I'm going to do the best that I can to move up in this company. Tell me how that's different from a teenager working at McDonald's and trying to move up to a manager position.

They have that same mindset, but it's just a different space that they're in. Not to disregard some of the really hard and evil things that they do, but if that's all they know, if that's the communities that they are in. But you can't be what you can't see. And the things that they see are, I need to survive this trauma to get to a place of success. That's why even within Saving innocence, we try to expose them things like our slay conference. We try to expose them to different schools, different colleges. We try to expose them to different career paths.

We bring in people from so many different backgrounds, from lawyers to doctors to attorneys to doulas. These people are not just leading workshops, but we find these people within their community. So once we are gone, we like to say we work ourselves out of a job. They still have the connections to different people within their community, so they don't have to reach out to Jasmine and Sarah anymore. They can reach out to the doula that they found at the Black Women Wellness Center. Yeah, that's a terrific idea because they can't just rely on the two of you.

As much as. We don't want to create dependance. No, the whole the whole point is to create independent, self-sufficient and thriving people and just giving them opportunities, connections, resources, all of the things that contributed to their vulnerability. Because even if they get out of their trafficking experience, they are still vulnerable to revitalization. The cycles of abuse are the same for domestic violence is that often it takes up to seven times for they, you know, kind of either formally leave or feel like they have they are strong enough.

They have the resources, the foundation. When an individual does come to you and they've had their moment to breathe and rest and sort of gather their wits, then their next steps with you would be figuring out how to really separate themselves from the experience that they no longer wish to engage in. Is it health care? What would the like the first few months of service look like? So we do advocacy case plans and so we use, you know, we allow them to kind of identify what they want to do. What are the most important things to focus on. Usually those are the priority needs, whether it's safety, housing, health care, like what are the things that are most important.

And then we set those goals every 90 days. And so we, you know, make sure that our advocates are kind of engaging in realistic they're Smart goals. So specific achievable time sensitive you know goals so that we are moving them through exactly what they need. And that is individualized entirely. You know, if they have criminal charges because there's a lot of forced criminality in human trafficking where they're forced to commit crimes on behalf of their trafficker, whether it's robbing a buyer or robbing a store, assaulting someone, stealing a car, you know, and so they have criminal charges that we can help them navigate.

You know, what that looks like, seeing if we can advocate for some kind of dismissal. All of that is really individualized every 90 days where reestablishing, okay, what goals did we get done? What do we carry over to the next? And then how do we what's the next phase of services. And where are they typically living, or is there no typical. There's no. Typical typical. There are some some of them are at home, some of them are unhoused. And a lot of their service services are coordinating shelters. Transitional housing, section eight. What does it look like to establish housing?

We can't apply for jobs until you're housed. There's no stability in being able to get to a job on time if if you're unhoused. And so working through that. Some of them are in care facilities. If they are minors working with the DFS system, some of them are just kind of like couchsurfing. That is a form of being unhoused, but just trying to figure out where they're where they can land and just trying to figure out what that first ability of getting them housed and then kind of moving on to like, what are you dreaming of? Like, what are some things that you really want to get involved in?

We've had clients go to college. We've had clients go to technical schools. Start businesses, businesses. But that is after we kind of establish that baseline. Our individuals that are in the foster care system particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Absolutely. They say a youth that runs away will encounter a trafficker within 72 hours when they live in an urban community. And if you think about it, if you were a kid and you have run away, you don't really think about all the things that you need when you run away. And traffickers are not stupid.

They go in vulnerable areas. They go to where people are in need of something. They go to bus stations, government buildings, to neighborhoods that may be low income and they can ride around. And if they see somebody walking on the street, maybe with nothing, they're not going to say, hey, I'm a trafficker, can you get in my car? They're going to say, hey, are you hungry? Do you want me to take you to McDonald's? And they sit and they talk, and they sit and listen and they listen to their story. They relate to them to their story. Because sometimes, again, traffickers have their own trauma, and now they're connected to them in ways that maybe somebody didn't have the time to sit down and listen to them.

And so now it's just like, hey, you sat and listen to me. You care about me, and now I'm going to care about you. I want to do anything that makes you feel cared about. And then that's where trafficking can happen. And there's a sense of belonging. Once you've once you've made that, establish that relationship. Youth in foster care, there is an interruption of belonging intrinsically. That's the definition. They've been separated from their families. And is foster care in Los Angeles, typically in a home with a family, or is it in a facility that houses a lot of individuals in the same circumstance?

It depends on the level of what the case is. And so there's, you know, family maintenance, which is just supervision of a family because there have been there is some kind of red flag, you know, there's something that happened. Some of it is complete separation from their family, their guardian. So it means that they're removed and they're in a care facility or a foster home and then some. There was no parental guardian at all, you know, that was that happened early on. And so they're bouncing from facility to facility. Or family member to Fleming Limber.

But again, it's the instability of not really being able to stay in one place or based on how you react to something will depend on where you live that day. And if you think about yourself as a teenager, at least myself as a teenager, my attitude went up and down and I would assume the same would be for some of our clients or even some clients that may have had extraordinary traumas when they were a kid and trying to regulate that. Experiencing mental health concerns and anxiety and. And then having a foster family saying, I can't deal with this.

And now, based on your reaction, you are now bounced to somewhere else. And you say, this is a very prominent issue in terms of the amount of people that are being trafficked. So is there any way to, like, quantify that? How many of us are being trafficked? I mean, in the world, there's a stat that was released, I think, last year that there are 50 million people who are experiencing some form of human trafficking in the world at any given point. And that number is wild, is likely wildly underrepresented because that's known. It jumped up quite a bit when they started to include forced marriage as.

A. Big jump, identifying that that is a form of human trafficking and exploitation. That number. Yeah, that number jumped it up. I think it was like 30 million. It was a big jump. Well, then I'm sure the same would hold true in Los Angeles that the number that we'd be presented wouldn't really represent. And there's and that's why it's, it's human trafficking is a very unique crime in the way that, you know, every single bank robbery that happens, you know exactly what was taken. You know exactly where it happened. It is documented in explicit detail.

You don't know every time there is a trafficking encounter, you don't know every time that there is some form of exploitation. Jasmine is talking about the nuances of human trafficking versus domestic violence versus sexual abuse versus sexual assault. There is like a nuance that makes it hard to understand what is reported, how it's reported, if it's reported. So there's there is an enormous gap that we're never going to be able to fully capture on what the landscape of human trafficking looks like in Los Angeles. And that's why boys and men are wildly underrepresented.

But they're not under exploited. They're just under identified and underrepresented in statistics. Because the disclosure rate for boys and men is so low, because of social stigma of what it implies, we don't actually know a whole lot about a lot of the more nuanced populations LGBTQ community, unhoused and transient communities. We know that it's happening. We know that there's so much human trafficking in encampments. They're working really hard to start to integrate human trafficking services into encampment enforcement. Yeah, I can see how all that slips through the cracks.

It's kind of fascinating because we know so much about so many things. And what we know is, you know, growing day by day by day and it's beyond. And yet this very, very tender, tragic thing that's occurring is so hard to really wrap our arms around. And, and that you're doing this is just unbelievable, helping the people that need help and finding funding and sitting here with me and raising families. And are you real? It's really. Something of one brain. That's what we how we describe ourselves is that we are, you know, we in working together, as long as we have it is it is a gift to be able to have someone that fully gets it.

It's really hard to do this work and. To have each other. Yes. And so I think that that that really helps. That's helped the longevity, the sustainability of having someone that gets it because it's hard on some days it's really great. On other days it can change really fast. We've both lost clients, you know, to just an assortment of tragic deaths and, you know, being able to kind of navigate the nuance of this job is really hard. And it's a world that we should just typically never see. But it's also like it makes you want to do it even more.

Once you see it, you can't unsee. Exactly. But you're right. It's a world that shouldn't exist. But it does. It's under our noses. How do you then manage yourselves? I mean, that's so much to know and carry and feel. How do you how do you stay healthy? I think for me that is something that is really near and dear to me, because we've been in this for so long, I truly care for our staff to make sure that they are cared for. As a clinical director, I think I check on people to make sure that they are healthy. They are taking PTO, they have somebody to talk to.

If something heavy happens within their day, like how are we processing it and making sure that it is being processed? And we process on a weekly basis with our team to make sure and just to get a temperature of where we're at as a team, where we're at individually, how we can make sure we can put in any help in supports that are needed. I think saving Innocence as an organization has really vested in us by assisting with some of the costs of personal therapy, making sure that we have PTO, making sure that we have team days. So we have days within our organization or at least time.

That is work time. That has nothing to do with some of the traumas that we have to experience on a day to day basis. So you you're so inspiring. As you said in the beginning, it's a tough topic. What I hope is happening here is that we've shed some light on the fact that this exists in a big way, and I hope that people will want to open their eyes, or perhaps figure out a way to help this cause. What are some ways that the general public can do something to make a difference, whatever that is. One of the things, as we've been working for the last six months, to really prepare our city for the major sporting events that have come up is, you know, investing in learning what human trafficking is, what the indicators are.

We see it all the time. And so there are things that we can notice in our world that if we don't know what human trafficking is and we don't know what the red flags are, we don't know how to identify it. We'll miss it. You know what we've asked in this kind of the lead up to these major events is, you know, understanding what human trafficking is, provided trainings. And we're going to continue to provide trainings of what human trafficking is, what the identifiers are, and then doing something about it, saying something. And so whether that's calling 911 because there is a violent exchange happening that normally when we see a violent exchange, we just we're like, oh, it's none of my business.

That looks like domestic violence. And that's something that's none of my business. And so, you know, calling 911 when we see a child in danger or when we see a violent exchange happening, because oftentimes human trafficking is violent in public and no one does anything. There are girls that are being dragged down the street by their hair. They're being abused in motel and hotel lobbies. There are things that people don't want to have anything to do with because you're on vacation. You're trying to mind your own business, like you just don't want to know.

What we ask is that if you see something, that you say something. So if it's violent, you call 911. If it's not violent and you feel like you are encountering someone that has experienced human trafficking. Calling the National Hotline, there's a national human trafficking hotline that is accessible through text or through phone, where you can call and consult and say, this is what I saw. This is where I saw it. Is this something that was human trafficking? Can I report this? And then they'll give you the opportunity to report it. So we're not going to ask people to endanger themselves or to be a superhero because that's not the ask.

But if we all know a little bit and we're all willing to step a little bit outside of our comfort zone, to say something, to write something down, license plate, the make and model, or she was in a pink hoodie or whatever it is, and then to report it somewhere. I was telling a friend the other day, he was at a soccer game with his son, and there was an adult couple that was filming four year old playing soccer, and he didn't know what it was, but he felt uneasy. And we all have that gut instinct that's like, something's wrong here. And so I was like, elevated, just like, bring it up everywhere.

Call the local PD, you know, elevate it to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, call the FBI tip line, everything that you know about it. Report it because it's not going to come back and negatively impact you. But if enough people are reporting this couple filming four year olds playing soccer, or 11 year old girls down the street playing soccer, if enough people do it, law enforcement is going to start to pay attention, but they don't know if they don't know. And we all have the opportunity when something doesn't feel or look quite right, because those are the opportunities that could truly save somebody's life.

If one person or enough people are willing to step outside their comfort zone and say, you know what? She didn't. She looked scared. This interaction didn't feel right. We did a training with SoFi Stadium staff, front of house staff. If something doesn't feel right, it's probably not right. And so there is a way for you to say something, because it could be the only time someone said something on behalf of that girl. There are trainings everywhere about what what human trafficking is, so. That's easy enough to just. The internet. Has. Tons of human trafficking resources.

Quick, easy. YouTube. What is human trafficking? The National Human Trafficking Hotline has resources, what to look for, etc. so. I think so too. And that applies to everything we do. Really? Of course. Thank you. Thank you both so much. It's just been a treasure. I could sit here and talk to you for several more hours. Same. Yeah. If someone's interested in finding out more about you or, say, funding you, is there a website that you would like to share? Yes. It is savinginnoncence.org. There are there are ways to get involved. There are ways to learn about our programs and then how to donate and participate in funding our programs.

Yeah. That's great. Well thank you. Thank you. And I learned a lot today. So thank you for joining us. Hope you did too. Please follow, rate and share this podcast and pass this episode along to someone who might need it. This is and now live. Listen to your dreams and live from your heart.