NEW: Human Trafficking with Jerome Elam

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to the Mind Over Murder podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
My name is Bill Thomas. I'm a writer, consulting, producer,
and now podcaster. I am now trying to use my
experience as the brother of a murder victim to help
other victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book
on the unsolved Colonial Parkway murders and I'm the co
administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together with
Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
My name is Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 4 (00:27):
I'm a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate,
as well as the social media manager and co administrator
for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime.

Speaker 3 (00:38):
Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind Ever Murder. I'm Kristin Dilly.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
And I'm Bill Thomas.

Speaker 5 (00:45):
We're joined today by Jerome Ilam, the CEO of Trafficking
in America. Task for us here to talk to us
about a new topic for US, human trafficking.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Jerome, welcome and thank you so much for joining us today.

Speaker 6 (00:57):
Now, christ it is such an honor to be here today,
and thank you so than so much for having me on.
It's unfortunate that people will have about our understanding of
human trafficking, especially when it comes to kids. I was,
unfortunately a victim of child six trafficking from the age
of five to the age of twelve. A man a
romances way into my mother's life when she was when

(01:18):
she was very young and she was an alcoholic. Unfortunately,
he began to groom me and then trafficking after a
period of time. So if I can save the next
victim from going through all the pain and suffering I did,
My job is done.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
One of the things we were talking about just before
we started, Jerome is it's shocking I think to both
of us, and I think lots of other people, many
of them listen to this podcast. I don't think any
of us realize how much human trafficking there is out there.
Can you start by just giving us a working definition
when we talk about human trafficking, What exactly are we

(01:52):
talking about?

Speaker 6 (01:53):
Human trafficking is the exploitation of people through force, fraud,
a coersion for profit or personal gain. Let me add
a caveat when it comes to children and you're looking
to arrest a trafficker, you have to prove none of this.
If someone is actually selling a child, they're going to
get arrested, they're going to go to jail. But mainly

(02:13):
for adults, force for a or coercion applies, and it's
something that's unfortunately been around for a while, has become
unbridled and rampant.

Speaker 5 (02:23):
I'm curious, is there a difference between human trafficking and slavery?
What U is the distinction between human trafficking and slavery?

Speaker 6 (02:31):
Well, Christa, thank you for that question. Slavery is a broader,
older concept. It's what a person's controlled owner force a
work against their will with no freedom to leave. Human
trafficking is a crime and a process that often leaves
the slavery. It's when people are recruited, transported, or harbored
through force, fraud, a coercion for the person's exploitation. The

(02:51):
explotation could be labor, sexual expectation, or even organ removal.

Speaker 5 (02:56):
That's terrifying, the last part that you just said organ remove, Well,
actually people who traffic in that.

Speaker 6 (03:02):
Oh yeah, I actually did a conference a year ago
in New York and it's actually becoming very prolific in
this country because you think about it, people who need
a liver or heart or a kidney and they get
all on the Unices list and it's two or three years.
Somebody has the means if they're very wealthy, you can
just you can buy in order like that. Actually, one

(03:24):
of my friends from Eritrea in Africa, he was actually
grabbed by a group of traffickers put in an hotel
room and they were going to remove his organs to
sell them, but he escaped. So this is something that
that's unfortunately becoming more rampiant. Is just very lucrative, and
we've actually seen individuals actually be sex traffic and organ

(03:47):
traffic because they take up take one of the take
one of the kidneys out, they can still actually sell
them for sexual purposes. So this is just despicable and
there's actually no level they won't sink to to make
a profit.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
So how prevalent is human trafficking overall? I'm getting the
impression this is a much larger problem than most of
us ever think about.

Speaker 6 (04:10):
It is. The International Labor Organization estimates that human traffickers
victimized and estimated twenty six point seven million worldwide, and
seventy percent of these victims are enforced labor twenty two
percent and sex trafficking fifty seven percent of men and boys,
four to ThReD percent are women and girls, and it's
just something that's really grown. Unfortunately, in twenty twenty two,

(04:32):
three point three million children estimated to be exported through
sex trafficking and labor trafficking at any given moment.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Those are staggering numbers.

Speaker 5 (04:41):
Do you have any indication that maybe those are soft numbers,
that it's a bigger problem.

Speaker 6 (04:45):
Oh, you hit the nail eight. They are. Because Bill
and Christen, you have to think about this. The numbers
we get on human trafficking are from arrest or convictions.
When you look at human trafficking as a crime, it's
so incredly difficult to acute because the real lynchpin is
getting a victim to testify. In most cases, a victim

(05:06):
is so terrified that the traffic is going to seek
retribution against them, they won't testify. So there's so many
cases that get pled down to a simple assault or
something else and are never documented. So this is something
that has much bigger numbers, and it's just a matter
of getting more people to talk about it and also

(05:26):
helping law enforcement put these traffickers away.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
What you said right there about the fact that it
is hard to find victims who are willing to talk.
That reminds me a lot of some of the same
numbers that you hear around rape. That is hard to
find rape victims that are willing to report and willing
to talk. So it sounds like there's some similarities there
in reporting numbers.

Speaker 6 (05:49):
Oh absolutely, And we really like to talk about sexual
trauma in the sense that you've got someone who really
has had there since reality ripped out from under them,
and the reeling from this experience. And again, one of
the things that we really work very hard to accomplish
in my organization is create resources because we don't have

(06:10):
enough trained people out there, even for rape victims. People
look at all the rape kits that go untested in
this country and it's just unbelievable. So we're not being
aggressive enough, support enough to make sure that individuals get
put away because what happens is, as we all know,
they keep committing these crimes and they get worse and
they get more bolder. So it's a matter of getting

(06:32):
and I do work with Congress quite often. I just
actually did a bill on Artificial intelligence and child sexibicet
material which are using AI to generate child sexybiesce material
and the law hasn't caught up with that. So I
work with Congress to create laws that make sure these
traffickers don't fall through these loopholes and get away with it.

(06:55):
But again, it's all a matter of getting awareness out
to the public so they can report if they see something,
and they can shut these people down.

Speaker 2 (07:04):
I think a lot of us, naively Jerome, think, oh,
this will never have any impact in my life. What
groups of people are most at risk for being trafficked?

Speaker 6 (07:16):
Oh wow, we could talk about socioeconomic factors and minorities.
Bill Realistically, everybody. One of my friends works in Atlanta
with victims, and she actually spoke to a quote unquote
reformed trafficker and she asked him what do you look
for in a victim, and he said that they're breathing.
He said that she could point to and this was

(07:36):
actually in like a mall, and he said she could
point to any young girl walking by and he'd have
her on the street in an hour. So there's nobody
that's immune. They One of my good friends, her father
was one of the executives at one of the big
three automakers in Detroit, and she had a boy in
high school that she liked. One day, this boy offered

(07:58):
to give her a ride home and she said, okay, sure.
Then he said, all of the got stopped by my house.
Now she assumed that his parents were going to be home,
but they were not, so his house, he gave her
a soda laced with drugs, so she passed out, and
then he and his friends proceeded to sexually assault her
and photographic and they used this to blackmail her into

(08:20):
being trapped. And she said she had her own phone
in her room. They would call her at three in
the morning, and she'd kept to crawl out her window
and go and be traffic. Now on the way she
got away from these people was she'd moved from Detroit
all the way across the country. So nobody is really
immune to it. But we know that people from low
synomic status are more vulnerable. We know that people with

(08:43):
lower education levels are more vulnerable. Again and again, one
of the most despicable things is that they go after
the development disabled and disabled people and traffic them as well.
So nobody's really immune to this, and no one's really safe.
And all of my friends is the son of President
Reagan Michael Reagan, and he was actually molested and used

(09:06):
for shop pornography when he was an elementary school by
high school counselor and it took him like twenty years
to talk about it. So again, no one's immune Wall
Street to Main Street. Everybody's vulnerable.

Speaker 5 (09:17):
It's interesting we know that nobody wakes up one day
intending to be a victim of human trafficking. Obviously, I
am curious though, for somebody who wants to get into
the business, like, how does that even happen? You certainly
don't go walking around and saying, hey, I'm interested in
getting into human trafficking?

Speaker 3 (09:35):
How do I do that?

Speaker 5 (09:36):
I'm really curious, like, how does somebody even begin the
process of learning how to traffic and grab human beings?

Speaker 3 (09:43):
That just sounds so yeah, that sounds so odd. How
does that even happen?

Speaker 6 (09:47):
It's a great question. And I'm going to tell you
we have fought with Amazon and Barnes and Noble because
they have books. Actually Amazon was letting pedophile self published
band on how to target molested kids, and they both
have books. I could tell you the books, this one

(10:07):
called Pimpology on Amazon and Barnes and Noble by a
pimp talking about how to traffic people. So we're always
after them to take this stuff down. So again, I
think it's something that's very lucrative. If you go on Facebook,
there are traffics on Facebook, and there's this lifestyle that

(10:28):
they represent. It's money, it's having fancy cars and getting
all these things into life by exploiting people. And I
think some individuals just feel like they're owed a life
of luxury and so they don't care what they do
how to do to get it. This is something that
I think is just perpetuated bodies. Individuals represent themselves as

(10:51):
living this really extracting it lifestyle and doing it by
selling people because we all know that, or the traffic people,
you have to reduce them from human beings to objects.
And so they are essentially taught how to do this
by other people. And I talk very briefly the largest
child trafficking ring in the US was run out of Minneapolis,

(11:13):
Minnesota by three generations of the same family, multi million dollars,
the Evans family. It was only brought down because, and
this is where one person makes a difference comes into play.
A police officer pulled over our two young girls and
he noticed that fake IDs. Now fake id's are something
that's very prevalent in trafficking because I don't want you
to try to trace back, and so he noticed the

(11:35):
fake IDs and from that traffic stop, this whole organization,
which was trafficking kids as young as fourteen in twenty
first States including Canada, was brought down. So this is
something that can actually be generational as well. And it's
just one of the things where we've got to shadow
that stereotype of making money by any means necessary is

(11:57):
not going to help you sleep at night. It's not
going to really do society any good. So we have
to discourage these people by having harshal penalties against people
who traffic human beings.

Speaker 5 (12:06):
Does the FBI currently have task force? Does the Justice
Department have a task to sun human trafficking?

Speaker 6 (12:12):
Or actually FBI Operation Innocence Lost And they've actually rescued
thousands of kids again, some youngess twelve in these raids
that they do. They are definitely on top of it
because I work with them. But again, Christina Bill, the
thing that hinders them is that these traffickers and predators

(12:34):
and pedophiles are incredibly wealthy, with a lot of resources,
so they can they can drop, they can call a
six fear lawyer to come in and defend them. And
also again it's so difficult to get someone, especially in
a child, to testify because one of the things that
these people do is that they're not only groomed the child,
they groom the adult around the child. Jerry Sandusky's first

(12:58):
victim to come forward to a prince went to his
spirncipal and said, Jerry said, Dusky's molested me. The principal said,
what do you want to get Jerry and tumble for
he's a great guy. So there's this facade that's generated. Again,
these traffickers aren't don't look like Charles Manson. It looked
like the three piece suits, the people that are sitting
in church next to you, through your taxes whatever. So

(13:20):
they have a very respectable camouflage. They used to go
after kids, and they really are difficult to go after.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
They look like Jeffrey Epstein over.

Speaker 6 (13:30):
I do a former cab driver who wormed his way
into this particular position where he could exploit young women.

Speaker 5 (13:39):
Would you say that the Internet and like the rise
of the digital age, has made it easier to traffic human.

Speaker 6 (13:46):
Beings Oh, absolutely, anonymity that you can have on the Internet.
You can just be, you can be see avatar. I
was part of a coalition of congressmen and women, Ango's
survivors and areanizations that helped take down the world's largest brothel,
Backpage dot com. Oh yeah. At their heyday they were

(14:08):
making one hundred and seventy two million dollars a year. Now.
They started out as the advert section of the Village Voice,
and they began to sell individuals, the traffic people in
the Village Voice until they kicked them out. They moved
to Dallas, got some new funders, and then people went
after them still and they moved to the Netherlands. So
we fought for three years because there's something called the

(14:32):
Communications Decency Act, Section two thirty, which says that Internet
providers are not responsible for third party content. We found
out was what we proved was Backpage was helping traffickers
craft their advertisements to get around law enforcement. That also
helped that Backpage was laundering money for organized crime. So

(14:53):
the FBI got them on both counts. So we got
an amendment pass to section two thirty. Other Communications di
This is the act that helps shut Backpage dot Com
down thought that battle along and hard, and we got
a lot of pushback from their funeral of speech people,
but we said no, when it comes to kids, we've
got to do everything in our power to help stop
them from being victimized.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
I think a lot of people that listen to the
podcast are adults and our parents, although we have lots
of young listeners and it's a full range. What can
parents and families do to head off this really scary
prospect of their kids who were, let's face it, on

(15:38):
the internet pretty much all day. Every day a phone
becomes practically attached to your hand. What can parents and
other responsible adults do to head this off so that
their family members are not getting drawn into this horrible exploitation.

Speaker 6 (15:58):
No, that's a great question, and full disclosure, I'm a
parent of teenagers, so I have a lot of experience.
Now this is something I was talking about earlier today.
My number one mantra when it comes to kids is
love them unconditionally. Make sure they know their love unconditionally.
I spent twenty five years of trauma therapist and one
of the things that I kept bringing up was why

(16:18):
am I here right now and so many kids that
were traffed alongside me didn't make it. We came down
to the fact that I had one person in my life,
a great aunt, who loved me unconditionally, and that became
the tether that battled me to this humanity and really
helped me get through the darkest time. So first and foremost,
love your kids unconditionally. Secondly, talk to your kids. And

(16:40):
I'm talking about smartphone down. Yeah, and talk to your kids,
but find something that your kids love. Now. One of
the things that I and I think Manaers were shocked
by is that kids spend hours looking at other people
playing video games on YouTube. It's a big deal. So
I made sure I got involved and watched these understood

(17:00):
what was going on. So I spoke the same language
as my kids. I even play video games with my kids.
They say I'm very bad at it. That's because you're
a dad, But I don't care. I'm pac Man and
Galaga that that's my generation. So I think it's keeping
that connection with your kids and just talking to them,
because what I always say is that if you can

(17:22):
keep that door open for communication and let them know
that you're listening, then you can always have the chance
of been telling you something that's really bothering them. Because
one of the things that I had to learn, which
I was surprised, is that one of my kids said, Dad,
I didn't tell you. I thought you'd get mad at me.
I said, look, if you don't tell me, I'll get mad.

(17:43):
I said, there's nothing you can say to me that's
going to make me mad. I said, it's important that
we talk about these things and get them out in
the open, because there's, like may Angelo said, there's no
greater agney than bearing a secret inside you. You've got
to break that silence and talk about it. Sommunicate with
your kids, give them your undivided attention, and when they

(18:04):
ask you to do something with them, please take the
time to do it because it makes them feel like
they're important. Because what we know from the research is
that the bulk of the kids who are victimized groom
recruited on the internet are in chat rooms where they
feel like I have no one to talk to, look
to their peers, their parents. So these traffickers, these predators,

(18:25):
these violentdividuals go in these chat rooms and then just
what to say. So they talk to the kids and
they'll just bait them along and get to the point
where they either use extortion or lure them out. And
we've really got to make sure that our kids are
always important in our lives, that we talk to them,
they never feel like they're down the list in our lives.

(18:47):
That's my big record that the next one is education.
You can go to our website, Trafficking Record Task Force.
You can go to the Justice Department's website, you can
go to Player's Project. All these websites have information I'll
how to educate yourself about uma trafficking. Also, you can
call the National Human Trafficking Hotline twenty four to seven

(19:10):
forty forty plus languages, and they will help you. You
can also call the National Center for Misisplayed Children. You
can even text them or email them if you feel
like you have a concern and they will get back
to you. Because I know I've worked with we call
it neck MEC National Center of Mixployed Children. I'll end
up for a long time. They've always told me, because

(19:33):
we've had some jurisdictions where parents' kids have gone missing
and they called law enforcement. They said, oh, give it
twenty four hours. No, no, But they do that a lot.
It and they said, call us. I said, if somebody
told us that, you call us and will act swiftly
to deal with this. So again, you knowing what the
signs are, knowing who to notified, called nine to one

(19:55):
one if you can't think of anything else, and report it.
But again, it's always good to be educated and know
what to expect when you're in public. And one of
the areas that are really troubling our theme parks, because
theme parks are a huge hunting ground for sexual predators
and human traffickers. And I've actually been an unnamed theme

(20:18):
park and I've seen because the work in pairs, and
I've seen them working in pairs that I have a
learned security that these two guys are after kids, and
they're watching for a kid to get loose from their
parents and go after them. So theme parks are a
really big area. But in general, you have to be careful.
We tell kids that if you don't know someone in

(20:39):
real life, don't be friends with them on social media
unless you can shake their hand and your parents and
have met them, don't be friends with them on social
media because that's where the whole thing begins, and it's
a silppery slope for them to actually begin to groom
you and isolate you from your parents.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
But short of monitoring your kids internet usage, how are
you supposed to know that your thirteen year old is
up in their room and he or she is on
a chat when they should be asleep and should have
completed their homework and gone to bed. Failing monitoring their

(21:17):
internet usage, how do you know you know what they're
up to in the middle of the night.

Speaker 6 (21:23):
Well, that's a great question. I always say, number what,
trust your gut your kids. If your kids start behaving differently,
then I would have a conversation with them trying to
see what's going on. Typically, you know what we say
as some of the signs of someone being trafficked is
they have what we call a burner phone, which is
a cheap cell phone you can buy hotel card keys.

(21:45):
Absent from school. Again, I was traffic while I was
in school. He pulled out a school traffic after school.
People would pick me up, clients would pick them up
after school and do what they want, ripe and molest me.
And so just be aware your kids. Trust your gut again,
and it's having that conversation with your kid and telling
them look, you said I And this is because I

(22:07):
teach human trafficking in high school. So I tried to
tell teenagers. Look, I said, I know you guys are
aware of things. You're very smart, very capable, but you
don't know what these people can do. These people are devious,
they're criminals. So if someone is telling you things that
you want to hear to make you feel good and

(22:27):
you're just not you know who this person is, then
you need to talk about this with someone. Doesn't it
be your parents, It can be your teacher, it can
be the school resource officer, anybody. But I encourage them
to have a discussion. But again, like Bill said, you
can't go into your kids social media and your computers.
You can you know, know when something's off with them.

(22:49):
But again, having a discussion with them about human trafficking
and exploitation and about what happens. And again, don't candy
code it. Research has shown that the age of pro
but don't candy code it for your kids. Tell them
exactly what goes on and how it can happen very
quickly and they can be victimized. And again, if you

(23:10):
talk to your kids and they listen to you, they
know the risk, and that's all you can really do.
Having their teachers educated, having other people in their lives
educated to supplement your watch over them is really key too.
Because I just did I'm going to be training teachers
in New Jersey, and so I educate in schools and

(23:31):
teachers and parents all the time, as many eyes and
ears as we can get on this issue. It's important janitors,
bus drivers, uber drivers, cable installers, male men and women.
So we try to get everybody involved in this. And
so again Bill and Kristen doesn't have to be your
burden alone. We're going to spread that out amongst everybody

(23:54):
so we can help make sure our kids are protected.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
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Speaker 5 (24:08):
As an educator who works with teenagers, I think this
is a fantastic idea, but we also know, because you're
the dat of teenagers, you can't really tell a teenagers
something and assume that they're going to listen or take
it seriously the first time, the second time, or even
the third or fourth or fifth time.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Even when the education component is there.

Speaker 5 (24:26):
What are some other things that organizations like yours or
God willing, the federal government can do or should be
doing to help protect the digital landscape because we know
that's where teenagers like to spend most of their time.
You already talked about like shutting down back Page. What
else needs to be done to help make the Internet
a little bit safer or is not a lost cause?

Speaker 6 (24:47):
That's a great no, that's a great, great question, Kristen I.
My organization Track or Macro task Force is part of
what's called the Digital Childhood Alliance. Now, what we're doing
is we're going after Android and Apple because they're allowing
apps in their stores that can be used to exploit kids.
So we're holding these companies accountable for what they're letting

(25:10):
out there and letting kids have access to. Again, we'll
also we also continue to work with YouTube, Facebook, all
these other social media platforms to make sure that they're
protecting kids and that they actually give away for people
to report when they see things that aren't right. They
know kid that no kids are being exploited. We figure

(25:32):
education is the olive brands. We do. Let's let me
show you how to help protect kids, but we do
really go after them when they're not doing what they
need to do to make sure kids are protected, because again,
it's just so easy for someone to go and create
a fake name, fake avatar, and just go and start
grooming kids.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
How of these major companies, well, let's be honest, they
facilitate and to some extent, control the Internet. How have
they responded to the Alliance and other groups who want
them to make changes and build in some parameters here
to avoid this kind of exploitation.

Speaker 6 (26:12):
We're getting a good traction. I think that. Unfortunately, with
Epstein and others in the news, it really does highlight
the risk involved in this, and so we're really beginning
to get through to them and get them to understand
that this is bad pr If they're not protecting children,
that's not good for anybody. So they're really beginning to
listen to us, but we're still hammering away to just

(26:34):
make sure that they're doing that. The moderators especially, are
doing everything they can to stop kids from being exployed. Now.
I'm also currently working with organization that's going after Pornhub.
I don't if you guys know about porn hub, but
it's a really vile website that allows you to upload videos,
and people are uploading videos of kids being exploited and

(26:57):
molested sick. And there was actually a a clip of
some of the porn hub executives and unfortunately a woman
talking about how a thirteen year old boy being raped
and molested was okay, And I did an interview when
I have to say about this and how despicable this was.
We're going after websites like porn Hub and others who

(27:17):
continue to exploit kids. But there's a lot of litigation
against porn hub bits victims, which is really gang a
lot of momentum. So we're really just making sure no
stones left unturned. Now. One of the things that I
encourage people and what my organization does is as a parent,
I always practice what we call positive discipline, and so

(27:39):
that means that you reward. So I really advocate for
rewarding organizations when they take a positive step forward that
kind of shames the other ones. Yeah, Actually, so we
try and praise when Facebook or other platforms really do
something meaningful to help protect kids and that and I
think that works very well when you just highlight what

(28:02):
good acts mean and how what they can accomplish.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Now, some of these websites though they maintain that all
their models are eighteen years old and older, and they
make all these claims that they're running things with adult
entertainment for adults by adults. Is that just complete garbage.

Speaker 6 (28:22):
You know what, Bill, That's a great question, because one
of the things we're also doing is what's called age verification.
We've actually got the law has been passed in several
states that someone is not allowed to access or post
any of this material unless their age has been verified.
And we hear a lot from the porn industry about
what they're doing without doing enough, and so they've got

(28:45):
to do better about making sure that the material that
they're allowing to be posted is not of a minor
because a lot of times they'll say, oh, they look
like they're eighteen, or they said they were eighteen. Verify that, yeah,
But also just be careful, use your eyes, help moderators
recognize when there are photos or videos being posted that

(29:10):
are obviously not people of age. Because I've read transcripts
from port Hub and others where the moderators were basically
told that if they're unsure, just let it go, and
that's just unacceptable. We can't allow that to happen.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
You'd think that these companies would find a way to
clean up their act. It's just it's so cringe that
they would be putting out this content and just saying
blithely looking the other way when it's content that's little kids.
It just it makes me want to wash my hands
at the end of this conversation.

Speaker 6 (29:45):
No, absolutely, Again, it's all about profit. They're making so
much money, you know, off of these videos and photos
that you essentially have to drag them into court and
arrest them for them to do anything. It's just it's
just I mean we're talking. I think the porno industry
is billions of dollars and profits they generate from what
they do. So again, it's about this applies to these

(30:08):
websites and the traffickers, and I will tell people the
way to hurt them as a graph of their money,
because I have seen a human trafficker cry over a
thousand dollars repair bill on Mercedes, but not shit a
tear over a child being murdered. It's all about the
bank account, all about the bank account. If you go
after them and penalize them financially, that's where you get

(30:31):
real change, because it less you do that, they're not
going to make any effort.

Speaker 5 (30:35):
Something that was said on one of the documentaries that
I was watching on your website the other night in
preparation for this episode. I can't quote it exactly, but
I will paraphrase it. It was someone who said, we
have to make people understand that this is not so
much a criminal issue as it is a human rights issue.
And boy, did that resonate with me really a lot,
because it had not occurred to me that this is

(30:57):
essentially fundamentally an issue of human rights. No.

Speaker 6 (31:00):
Absolutely, And also just to piggyback off that, I also
say that this is not male or a female problem.
This is a human problem. Happens to everybody. This is
a violation of human rights. To force somebody to be
traffic sexually, to be exploited, to be labor traffic, to
be organ trafficked, you're stripping away their humanity. And so

(31:21):
this is unconscionable that it goes on. And one of
the things that we advocate for globally, especially when it
comes to victims, is restoring their human rights because that's
been taken away. Because I will tell you that when
we talk about victim recovery. I have seen a victim
take a half hour to decide between a hamburger and
a hot dog because they've never had that choice in

(31:44):
their lives. They've never been able to decide when they
go to the bathroom, when they sleep, when they eat,
and so this is their human rights being totally stripped
and obliterated. So we try and restore that and begin
to empower them by showing them they have choices and
they can overcome this. They can triumph the human spirit

(32:06):
stronger than anything else, And we just kindled that light
inside inside them until it becomes a flame and show
them that they can overcome this and be the person
that always wanted to be.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
You talked about recovery from being trafficked. Obviously everybody's path
to recovery is a little bit different. Some people are
way down with therapy and other people are like, no,
thank you, I don't want anything to do with that.
Are there like suppert groups out there for people who
have recovered from trafficking? Are there therapists that specialize in trafficking?

Speaker 3 (32:39):
Like?

Speaker 5 (32:40):
What pathway is there forward for somebody who's recovering from
this trauma?

Speaker 6 (32:44):
Christen, there's a lot of resources out there, But again,
what we really advocate for is survivor leaders like myself
advocate for them and help guide them through the process,
especially when they're going through the court system. One of
the things that we all know is that at someone
has to decide that they need help. They have to

(33:05):
decide that they're willing to go into therapy. Now, unfortunately,
we see some cases where people want to just ignore
it with their lives. Actually can never happen because that
fear and shame is so overwhelming. I do training for
mental health professionals, for doctors, nurses, to give them the
tools to try to help victims begin to recover from
what happen to them. We unfortunately don't have enough resources

(33:28):
right now. We need to actually create more. We need
to do more training in medical schools and schools of
social work and other places to make sure that these
professionals have the tools they need to help individuals. The
bottom line is that we have to make sure that
victims feel like they matter because they've been told they
don't matter for so long. So it's a very long

(33:51):
process and I'm very fortunate that I was able to
find someone who was a trauma therapist sex therapists trained
by masters, and Johnson was a social worker for twenty years,
so I had this amazing toolbox to work with that
still had a lot to learn in terms of helping
someone who had been trafficked, especially a male. It's about
giving people the tools they need. The biggest thing is

(34:14):
that for a victim of feel like they're safe and
they're protected, that they have a place to sleep, they
have food, and you start with the basics and you
build from there. You have to allow victims to want
to go into therapy and deal with this issue. So
we just try to be supported, get them job training,
whatever they need, and then when they're ready to actually

(34:36):
start talking about this, we make sure that there's a
professional there trying to help them. But it's something called
a SECT, which is the as ECT, which is the
Association of Sex Educators and Teachers, and they have a
very phomental website that you can actually go to and
no matter where you are in this country, you can
plug in what you're looking for and it'll come up

(34:58):
with a therapist and it'll tell you if they were
pro bono or if they'll do a sliding scale with you.
So we try and put resources excuse me out like
that to help make sure individuals have access and really
can begin to heal. But I think what I found
in my role is that having someone who understands what

(35:20):
you went through is just so critical and I can
It's like I say, I can be in the room
with another victim or survivor. It's just comforting to be
around someone who understands and has been do that same
thing right. That's really been beneficial. I've had so many
people around the world. When I was in Africa and
I had a thirty five year old man in Africa
tell me for the first time he was molested at

(35:41):
ten years old. I've been in India, had people disclosed
to me. I've been I had a seventy six year
old woman in Maryland tell me for the first time
that she had been abused in traffic. So I think
it's a matter of opening that door up where there's
no judgment. Now unfortunate when it comes to males. A
lot of men who contact me, but they say I'll

(36:04):
talk to you and nobody else because that fear and
shame for men especially is overwhelming. Because as men, we
have fourteen times a suicide rate of the norm and
thirty two times the rate of drug overdose as victims
of sexual violence. So men have particularly big problems called ego.

(36:25):
They can't get past that male ego, which says that
you should be able to handle anything. And again, I'll
just say that for the record, I'm only here because
a female survivor who took me and taught me that
could be a man. I could be a victim and
I could still be a man because it doesn't impinge
upon your manhood. And I will tell you that I

(36:46):
learned the hard way that being able to show your
emotions is a special kind of courage that we're fortunate
that women can teach us to do that. I'm very grateful.
I'm very grateful for that.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
Well, as usual, the women are than that. We know
that you participated in the HBO documentary series on the
Serial Killers Apprentice with doctor Catherine Ramsland, who is a
friend of the podcast. Talk to us a little bit
about your participation in the documentary and why you felt
that was important.

Speaker 6 (37:18):
Well, that's a great question. Katherine Ramsey, what an awesome person.
I'm so in awe of her whenever I talked to her.
She has some amazing insights. Now, my background, unfortunately, is
that I was trafficked a little bit after this is
all going on with Elma Wayne Henley. What happened to
me was tied into this whole network. Now there's a

(37:41):
documentary that I did with Discovery prior to this called
The Clown The Candyman, which is a more comprehensive view
on Dean Coral and John Wayne Gacy. So that gets
into a little more detail at the overall picture. So
I was unfortunately tied in this. Now there's a very
vilele you would mean, called John Norman who ran an

(38:04):
in national pedophile ring that was tied into the one
that trafficked me, and he had a box of index
cards that they found and one of them was for Florida.
But those index cards mysteriously disappeared, as you'll see the documentary,
and they can't find them. My story ties into this
because I was trafficked within the same circles, and I

(38:26):
understood how grooming worked at that time on young boys,
and so I was able to talk about how emwhen
Henley was groomed and over time was trapped and forced
it in the situation where he had to make a
choice and unfortunately he made the choice to get involved

(38:47):
in these murders, which is heartbreaking, but again it's all
about highlighting how these predators are able to groom people.
And Dean Coral was violent, as you probably know from
watching the documentary, and he told Emrwayne Henley that these
boys that they were going after were getting a better life.
They're going to be houseboys, and so he kind of

(39:09):
sold them both line of things that got him involved
in it. It starts out slow, where if you see
the documentary, he had Elmaren Haley doing brick and entering
in houses. Then he said, oh, you've broke in this
person's house. I'm going to turn you over to the police.
Began to gain control over him slowly over time, until

(39:30):
he had him virtually trapped and there's nothing he could do.
I was really happy to just give my insights into
how that process unfolded, how prolific it was even back then,
and we've not yet begun to pull in the depths
of the patophile rings in this country, which are unfortunately
very rampant. And Epstein was just he was a part

(39:53):
of this, but he's not responsible for all the child
stakes trafficking in this country right. Again, it was great
to give my insight and talk about, especially as a child,
how was groomed and exploited. And again I was written
and molested by doctors, lawyers, judges, politicians, you name it,
just people that were very respectable and had that cloak

(40:14):
of respectability. It's about breaking open and breaking that silence
and letting people know that this goes on. And again
we know in the news that with PDDY and others,
we know this goes on with people, and you're asking,
what the heck are they doing trafficking people when they're
these millionaires and it's all about greed. But again, in
the sixties and the seventies, this was something that was

(40:39):
very low tech and very sophisticated. Nonetheless, and again, living
with that knowledge or living with that fear as I
tell people that you might not see the next morning
of the next hour, is just unbearable. And I think
that that kind of just terror is something few people understand.

(41:00):
I was happy to just pull a curtain back and
just show people who wants a documentary exactly how someone
could go from being what people said was a very
likable young man to someone who was actually engaging in Murders.

Speaker 5 (41:15):
It was an absolutely shocking book to read, and of
course I'm so glad it got made into a documentary.
But boy, it really does hit you somewhere between your
heart and your gut when you realize what this poor
guy was going through and the choice that he ultimately
had to make. I was so happy, though, to see
that you had participated, which is why, of course we

(41:36):
reached out to you.

Speaker 6 (41:37):
I was telling Catherine Ramslin, I've seen this behavior and
when it comes to child soldiers. This essentially when you
look at child soldiers in Africa and how they're pretty
much just programmed to go out and actually take lives,
it's a similar process. But I've also seen it in
my own experience, how they can really just obliterate somebody's

(42:00):
sense of self and just make them who they want
them to be because the need for Again, as a child,
I was desperate for affection, like a drowning man's desperate
for oxygen. So my trafficker came and showed me some
attention and he had me. Basically, I was so hungry

(42:20):
for someone to care about me. That's what he used.
And again and Elm in thet cases, others that's what happens.
I mean, you have the absence of a father and
other factors. They really just hone in on that and
they're so surgical in how they go after you.

Speaker 5 (42:36):
Would it be fair to say that most people who
are engaging in trafficking other humans? Would you agree that
the mantle of sociopath really.

Speaker 6 (42:43):
Falls for them? And also there's something called the dark triad.
It is something really and that to me, I called
that because I saw people ain't like that when I
would try, and I called that evil. The dark triad
is a is three different diagnosed along with psychopathy that
discreates someone who is just a monster. And so when

(43:06):
you have people who are the Dark Triad, it is
just unstoppable and it's just horrific what they are able
to accomplish, what they're able to do.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Can you define the dark triad for us?

Speaker 6 (43:20):
I can look up it's narcissism, psychopathy, and I think sociopathy.
I think it's all three of them rolled up in
the one Wow. But it's just these three different diagnoses
that really lend themselves and we just begin to study
that and what's what they mean? Narcissism machiavellianism and subclinical psychopathy,

(43:45):
so that that's what it is. And these people are
just they're just pure evil, pure darkness, and you just
want to stay away from. I Again, I was very
fortunate in my own experience that I became too valuable.
I saw these individuals and they were like a lawnmower
going over people. They would just eradicate anything in their path.

(44:09):
And there's a lot more out there than we really
know about. But again, sosiopathy, I think is a baseline.
Like Christen, you build from there because you look at
Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer was going after young men and
just twisted psychopath. I think you've tried the dark triad.
So there are a lot of people out there who

(44:31):
are just plain evil. There's a guy, he's dead now
in the UK called Jimmy Saville, and he actually worked
for the BBC and he actually had his own show
where he had economically challenged kids on his show, and
he molested thousands of kids and he actually volunteered in
children's hospitals. So there are people like this out there

(44:53):
right now, and again that's where educational awareness is so
key to begin to stop these individuals their tracks, because
when Jerry Sandusky was arrested, it got upset because I
think people assumed that because Jerry Sanduski was arrested, all
those sexual predators were off the streets. And so I
wrote a column for the Washington Times for several years,

(45:15):
and one of my articles was I wrote, what if
Jerry Sandusky had never been arrested and they moved next
door to you, how would you know what's going on
and what the risk was from him. You have to
understand that there are thousands of these people out there.
Only through education and awareness and really understanding what grooming

(45:36):
looks like that we can stop them. We talk about
saving one shell, it's probably not going to be one shell.
We talk about these rings and there can be ten
twenty thirty kids being trafficked in this ring. They took
down a website Europool, which is the pulling of the
FBI in Europe. Just got a website that had a pedophole.
Was had ninety thousand subscribers. You probably know this even

(45:59):
more just spable is that BusinessWeek magazine found a pedophile
shopping seat shopping site on the dark web and the
youngest age requested for boys was one, and the youngest
age for girls with zero. Because these individuals are go
after infants too, So it's really crazy what kind of
stuff on the dark web especially, and it's all whack

(46:21):
a mole and these pedophile websites on the dark Web.
The entry fee is a video of yourself blesting a child.
That's the boat of fetist to get into and law
enforcement knows this so to get into, but once you're in,
it's like a costco of depravity. They have manuals on
how to bless kids. Gillian Maxwell was a procureur. They

(46:45):
have people on the dark Web on these websites that
you tell them what age, what hair color, what you're
looking for, and they'll go find a kid for you.
So these websites on the dark Web, and again it's
all whack a mole with the FBI and Department of
Justice because it's all encrypted. So they take one down,
another one pops up. So again it's about law enforcement

(47:06):
and they're working with all these amazing universities developed these
digital tools be able to go after Now there's a
really amazing tool and it's called a I think it's
a fingerprint where the actually will they'll digitally fingerprint child
abuse images and track where they go, and that when
they go after the people who access these images and

(47:26):
really just them down. But again, it's this very prolific
and unfortunately solucrative. I told somebody article that in the UK,
boys we're going for five thousand a night, and that's
just gotten worse over time. It's the kind of money
that people will pay. The other problem is cryptocurrency, is
that a lot of traffickers and predators are using cryptocurrency

(47:50):
to conduct transactions. So we're trying to have law enforcement
get better at following these individuals and stop them from
actually just buying and selling human beings.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
Kids with all of this sort of depravity and the
sort of whack them all mentality here, do you ever
have days where you feel like, man, we're just trying
to sweep up the ocean one wave at a time
as it washed us onto the shore. Do you ever
have days where you just feel like this is never
going to get better.

Speaker 6 (48:17):
There's something called compassion burnout, which is when when you
let your health slide from going after and trying to
make a difference. And I learned very early on how
to control that. But again, our big mantra is one
victim at a time. We don't look at the expanse
of it. We just try to focus on one victim
at a time. But again, people like you and Bill,

(48:38):
Katherine Ramslin and others who are really making a difference
in getting the word out there about this, they really
inspire me. You guys inspire me. And I have so
many wonderful people who are so supportive. And again with
the shoer Kills Apprentice, I've been contacted. I just got
a message from Brazil from someone. People are just incredibly supportive.

(48:59):
But no, so I have to say that you really
feel like God gave me a purpose in going after
this darkness, and he gave me a wonderful life, a
beautiful wife, two beautiful kids, and gave me a happiness
that I could never have dreamed of. And so I
have to pay him back by fighting this fight and
going after this darkness. And again, I think all of

(49:20):
us together can be a firewall against that darkness, because
hope can be like a loss and a car keys.
You may be able to find it right away, look around,
you'll come up with it. You can find that hope
inside yourself and you can cultivate that and really go
it on to it because hope can overcome anything and
love can overcome anything.

Speaker 5 (49:39):
And I can't think of a better note for us
to end on. Jerome, thank you so much for joining
us today. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (49:45):
It's been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much.

Speaker 5 (49:48):
That is going to do it for this episode of
mind Ever Murder. Thank you so much for listening. We'll
see you next time.

Speaker 1 (50:03):
Mind Over Murder is a production of Absolute Zero and
Another Dog Productions.

Speaker 2 (50:09):
Our executive producers are Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
Our theme music is by Kevin McLoud.

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with crawl Space Media.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.

Speaker 1 (50:26):
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway
Murders on Facebook.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
And finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at
Bill Thomas five six.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder.

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