Human Trafficking Awareness Month w/ Stefany Ovalles, Esq.

you the date so you get some relevance. It is the seventh of January twenty twenty six, the first time I got to say that, as this is the first program of the new year. You know, every month of the year is designated to raise awareness of a cause or a situation that deserves our attention. January has been declared Human Trafficking Awareness Month, and when you hear the most recent statistics were regarding this deplorable act, you will

realize why our attention is so desperately needed. Here they are according to the most recent statistics that were compiled in twenty twenty four. It is estimated that twenty four thousand Americans fell victim to this heinous crime in twenty twenty four. Seventy five percent of the victims were female, forty percent were miners. Two thousand cases, probably a low estimate, have been reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. All

fifty states were affected. Ten thousand arrests were made. The global profit of one hundred and fifty billion dollars was reported from human trafficking. It's extraordinary, and unfortunately, the bad news about this abomination is increasing. However, there is also light at the end of the tunnel. It has been estimated that about five hundred nonprofit organizations are actively working

to address the scourge. Organizations like the Center for Safety and Change in Rockland County, New York and representing for our second visit here at Being Franks. Stephanie Ovallez Esquire the Deputy Program Officer at the Center for Safety and Change, Inc. Where she works with survivors of human trafficking, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Prior to that, she was the director of Immigration and Human Trafficking Services. She is also the

chair of the Rockland County Anti Trafficking Task Force. In addition, she is a Wonder Girls, mentor and supporter. She's a graduate of Rutger's School of Law in Newark, where I went to school, not to the law school, but undergraduate there, so we got that in government, where she participated in the Immigrant Rights Clinic, was a student teacher for Street Law, and was the vice president of the Association of Latin American Law Students before joining the Center in twenty eighteen.

Extensive experience but representing both private and public clients. She's currently a member of both the New Jersey and New York Bar Stephaniel Vaulis, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome back. This is a serious and important topic. So we'll get to you.

So a person can come to the Center for Safety and Change and say, I need shelter, I need legal intervention, I need therapy, and I need supportive counseling when I want to report this crime, and we literally have people in the center that help with all of that. So we have a shelter where we can help people stay for a period of time when they're escaping a situation.

We have therapeutic services for both adults and children. We have legal services to help victims get in order protection, obtain a humanitarian visa, you know, any type of legal get a divorce from your abuser, And we also have a plethora of other programs that help on the prevention, intervention, and healing side of a journey of a survivor.

the education, the housing, all those other things. So I think it's important that you deal with it from a total aspect, if you speak a little to that, how important that is to save people that way.

And so if you're not addressing trauma, if you're not addressing well, I was a victim of past sexual abuse, which made me then more susceptible to X, Y and Z or I am undocumented and therefore I'm always going to be vulnerable in this way because the threat of deportation is something that can be used against me continuously.

Then you're not really sort of meeting people where they're at, and you're also not really serving them in the way that they need because if the threats of everything else still persist and still continue, then you're putting a band

aida over a situation. Whereas we try to really sort of mend the wound and empower people so that they feel like they have the agency the autonomy to be able to say, you know what I deserve better and I'm not going to look for this in the next partner, or I'm not going to, you know, try and repeat maybe the same patterns that I was repeating, because now I have I'm in therapy, Now I have more knowledge. Now I'm able to sort of get past the situation that I was in.

someone else's game. And so we see that most commonly on the sex trafficking front, through sex trafficking through sex work and sometimes forced sex work through lover boy pimping, which is oftentimes a man will coerce a female and to thing that they're in a romantic relationship and then will inevitably pimp that girl out so that she has to do sex sexual things with other men for his

own gain, whether that be money or otherwise. And then on the labor trafficking front, we see so many industries where people are exploited because they have they fall into a particular marginalized group, and whether it's agriculture, construction, nail salon, spas, they a trafficker can use that to then keep someone in a indebtured servitude situation, a debt bondage situation, or trapped in a situation through threats of violence where they have to work for free or under for little money,

but with terrible underlying circumstances.

put in a situation by force. But in like ninety something percent of trafficking cases, you are trafficked by someone that you know and someone that you trust.

Marginalized groups, people of color, Indigenous women, if you are marginalized in any other facet of life, that is something that can be used to exploit you in order to traffic you something. Another special consideration is LGBTQ plus youth oftentimes if they're not accepted at home based on their sexual orientation or gender expression or gender identity, and they

run away. Right, you look at runaway youth and what vulnerabilities they have, one for basic necessities, but also just for love and acceptance, and if someone will give that to them and also exploit that, then that creates sort of a perfect storm for human trafficking. So I think that you know, there is a heavy focus on young women and girls, and there should be, because they do

make up the most of the statistics. But I think that there's also one like an intersectionality of like, okay, well, if it's an indigenous young girl, if it's a African American young girl, if it's a Latina undocumented young girl, those vulnerabilities obviously increase. But also we shouldn't shy away from talking about young boys and men and how they are also exploited this way.

on the person. I think that it's not something that you know you'll be at a restaurant and be like, there's trafficking right there, right like, and it's I think it's naive to think that you're going to spot it in that way unless you're seeing someone being forcibly kidnapped, like you see in the movie Taken as an example.

But I think that if you're a service provider, if you're not just in the Center for Safety and Change, but if you do any type of trauma informed work at all, you know, maybe having some screening questions to ask someone what's your living situation, like where do you work? Do you feel like you're free to leave? Do you feel like you're free to come and go as you wish?

You know, if someone is has tattoos and bruises that they can't explain or can't quite sort of give an answer to you for that's something to look out for. It's not so much that like one particular thing will immediately make something human trafficking, but it's oftentimes the totality of the circumstances. And so something that I always tell people is, you know, someone could be withdrawn, but that can be human trafficking. That could be they're shy, that

could be you know. So it's important to also sort of see other things to create a more holistic picture, but also be a place where or a person where people feel like they can trust you with disclosing because oftentimes people don't self identify as a victim or a survivor of human trafficking. It's usually when they're talking to someone, usually a service provider, and we're able to say, do you know that everything that you're describing sounds like this?

Do you feel like that's what happened to you?

I can actually bring up a case example where a client that I was working with was a victim of sex trafficking and although she was moved around a lot, her main hub was Corona, Queens And while in Corona Queens, the one thing that she was able to do as part of the trafficking scheme was send money back home to her mom who was taking care of her children. And it was like a Western Union type of money sending place. And so she was oftentimes, you know, taken

there by the traffickers who would wait outside. She would go inside and do whatever, and then they would escort her out the person working at this Western Union type place said, you know, I don't know what's going on with you. I see strange men with you every single time. You seem a little, you know, nervous all the time. My brother is a detective with the Bring Valley Police Department. Here's his business card, and if you ever feel the

need to do whatever, you hold onto it. And she held onto this card for seven months before she decided to call the police and decided that that was the time for her to be able to get out and escape. And I think that what I want to highlight with that story in particular is it takes very little right to be able to at least spark the seed of hope in a victim of or survivor in order to

get out. This guy wasn't trying to save her quote unquote, right, He's not going around being like, you know, for you whatever, But he is offering this gesture, and she took it upon herself, however, many months later, when she felt ready

to be able to get out of her situation. And so I think that that's important to really sort of recognize that people are in control of when it is that they want to get out well, they're not necessarily control, but they should be the ones in control of when it is that they feel like it's safe to get out.

to self identify. So it's also important to note that if you're somewhere, if you're in North Dakota and it's and you're seeing something happening that's off, there is the human trafficking hotline that people can call, and so that the human trafficking hotline is great, which you mentioned in your statistics earlier based on how many calls and tips that they got. But that's great because it connects people to the most local of this provider that can help them.

And so that's why you know, it's something I always plug in addition to the Center for Safety and Change as a resource, because you could be in a situation where you're in you know, the middle of nowhere, but you're seeing something that's off and you're like, well, I can't give them the Central for Safety and Changes number, what are they going to do with that from here? But you can give them this National Trafficking hotline and they'll be able to connect them to resources.

sex stortion. And you had a particular example of something that happened right here where where our broadcast m and from here in Rockland County. So in stages if you will a little bit about how social media has changed everything, how sextortion plays a role within that and the story itself as an example of how dangerous it can be and harmful.

And so imagine being an impressionable child with quite literally all of the information of the world in the palm of your hands that you can search, and having Instagram, snap Chat, every TikTok, on every single gaming app you

can imagine. And while that's great for their sense of community building and entertaining and all of that, and obviously social media has its its benefits, the dangerous side of social media is that now predators know that kids are on Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, these gaming apps, and they will use that to exploit them.

sister plays volleyball. And if you don't send us insert request here, whether it's oftentimes it's sexually explicit material in the form of pictures and videos. But if you don't send us this, then we'll go after your sister. Well you know, we'll harass your mom, your dad, will put your information up on the school website. And so children, being naturally afraid, will submit and give the person or

the people this sexually explicit material. And then now they can use that to not just get more sexually explicit material, but continue on with threats and then keep a hold of these children who don't know that there is a way out and that there's help. And we saw that most recently at a local middle school where a fellow student was doing that to his classmates.

trafficker includes past sexual abuse, trauma, et cetera. So it can lead to a more dangerous trafficking scheme. And it's already, you know, on the rise among our youth ever since the pandemic.

hours and don't get paid what they're worth. Because this event needs to move forward. And so while the World Cup is happening in New Jersey, it's important to note

that there will be some overflowing rock And County. By all accounts, Piermont, you know, touches Bergen County in New Jersey very closely, and so to think that there won't be an overflow of people staying in our hotels locally who may want to travel to games, or that there won't be watch parties at different local businesses where that

can also happen, I think would be naive. And so I think that as a county, we need to prepare for what that may look like, right, And I think that for the center of saighteen change in particular, we started our entire sort of practice in working with human trafficking victims years ago when the Super Bowl came to New Jersey and that was the Super Bowl. You know, it's one day, it's a week long event of like

free events, et cetera leading up to it. The World Cup is like months, like weeks of not just preparation the games, you know, the aftermath. The players are staying locally as well. And so to think that that might not ever touch Rock and County, or or that it's happening in New Jersey, so it's going to stay in New Jersey, I think it would be naive of service providers, and I think we need to as a community come to terms with what that can look like locally.

feel very fearful of how they may be affected. We're also looking at things like climate change and what that does for mass migrations of people from other countries who are experiencing drought and the coffee rust and you know, things like that, and so, you know, while it ebbs and flows like everything else does, I think there's something to be said about human trafficking in particular, where people that were maybe you know, in the drug industry, before

you sell a drug and it's gone and it's in the but you can continue to sell a person over and over and over again and continue to exploit them. And so that's what makes it the lucrative business that it is. And I think that that's why we're seeing an increase in people using this industry to further exploit others.

And so that's significant, right if we understand and as you mentioned earlier, human trafficking touches all fifty states, but obviously some states are more effective than others, and if we're number four of fifty, then that means that it's happening quite literally in our own backyards. And so I think informing ourselves looking for information is so important. Raising

awareness through public platforms like this is so important. So I very much appreciate the invitation to speak about this very important topic, and I think just staying informed.

So my very special guest is Stephanie Ofvalis from the Center for Safety and Change here in Rockland County. We're talking about human trafficking, how it happens, why it happens, and what we can do about it. We've got so much more coming up on Being Frank. I'm your host, Frank Lebono, will be right back right after these brief commercial messages. Don't go anywhere yet, Hudson River.

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All right, let's get back to our guest Stephaniel Vaalis from the Center for Safety and Change here in Rocklean County, and we're discussing human trafficking, what it's about, how to recognize it, when we do, what we can do about it, and also an effort to raise awareness. We mentioned before the break, we tease that there are a few events coming up. One of them, in particular is a movie

that's coming up at the NIAC Center this Sunday. Let me check my county the eleventh, So if you're watching us before then, highly recommended, please tell us a little bit more about the film.

With that said, we are screening a frontline PBS investigative documentary on a Ohio egg farm and how it exploited young Guatemalan youth back in twenty fourteen, and you know how it started, how they were brought into the scheme, what happened during, and it kind of really gives you a nice ark of how this begins, what the scheme looks like, and the deplorable conditions that they were in, and what healing looks like after and what justice can look like after. And so it's going to be a

great film. It's at the Nayac Center. Doors open at three pm. The event is free, and after the event, I will be moderating a panel discussion. We have someone from the FBI, we have someone from the Department of Labor, and we have someone from the Naiak School District. And so the hope is to give a really sort of holistic view of what that looks like from people that are on the front lines dealing with this day in and day out.

How does the whole idea of deportation, the policies involved with the administration and ice you mentioned it somewhat, but get into it a little bit more detail. How difficult it can be for these people than to even for their own health, safety and well being, which is then if you extrapolate us for everybody's health and safe well being. I don't understand how they don't get the connection. When everyone is safe and healthy, then every.

there are otherwise upstanding citizens. They're a single mom with three US citizen kids. They're this, They're that are finding themselves in a situation where you know, other people who know their situation can more easily manipulate and exploit and use that threat of deportation against them. There's also something to be said about people who are losing their temporary protected status. And so while this is you know, it's

not just an attack on what's illegal immigration. And I'm saying that in quotes for the viewers because by all accounts, you know, it's a civil offense, it's not a criminal offense. But that's neither here nor there. I won't get too much into that. But for people that have temporary protected status like Venezuelans and everything that's going on with Venezuela Aezuela currently, obviously you know, will shift that conversation moving forward.

But they lost their temporary protected status back, you know, last year, and so what that meant for people was that people who previously had employment authorization documents or were parolled into the country were finding themselves in situations where now employers didn't want to hire them because they were afraid of again the ice rays enforcement, et cetera, et cetera.

And so we even had a recent case coming out of Rockham County where you know, people were that was used against someone to sexually exploit them.

particular highlights because it is an Ohio egg farm. And I think that the other important things I think in the world of human trafficking, sex trafficking is what gets a lot more attention, and it gets a lot more

sensationalized than labor trafficking does. And I also wanted to highlight the fact that it's young men that are victimized in this scheme because the focus is so often young women and girls and sex traffic men, sometimes young young boys don't get the help and the attention that they need in this realm.

national hotline as well. If you give us that information, please.

human trafficking as well. And so if someone is a victim or a survivor. If other service providers identify victims and survivors, they can always refer to the Center for Safety and Change. The hotline for the Center for Safety and Change is twenty four hours and the number to call is A four five six three four three three four four. Once again, the number is eight four five six three four three three four four, and I will emphasize again that it is a twenty four hour hotline.

In the event that you don't feel like it is safe to call and instead it's much safer two texts or if that's what you're able to do, then you can call that hotline and have or go on our website and click a chat now button to be able to talk to an advocate. If you find yourself listening to this podcast North Dakota, like you know.

three seven eight eight eight. And they are great because they will connect you to whatever local service provider is nearest to you to be able to get services.

happens everywhere. And while there is estimated that most of the victims are young women and girls, you know, when we talk about what that looks like, the average age of a child exploited in the US is like twelve to fourteen years old. And so we want people to know that there is help in that there are people who are fighting the good fights and want to help them.

And so, you know, we talk about the exploitation of children in the age, you know, children still represent like one in five people enforced labor all over the world, which is three point three million people estimated, and that's

just from what's reported. The reason why I, you know, I will talk about this topic till I run out of breath is because there are for every victim that we help and that we serve, there are so many victims and survivors that have not come forward, and so we want to make sure all platforms, all sort of social media that they know that there is help available to them.

And I always try to pick something that I think is appropriate to our conversation, and I usually get pretty lucky, especially if you can't get one from Oscar Wilde, because he's just got so many. And I think this is very appropriate for our discussion today. I think you'll appreciate this, Stephanie. He said, everyone may not be good, but there's always something good in everyone. Never judge anyone shortly, because every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. Yes,

it's my good stuff. I wish I made that up, but I can't steal his. Sorry way, all right, guys, don't believe You's some great music from our good friend always rocking mister Bobby Deblasio with God Don't get no rest. There's your title, okay For our engineer Neil Richter the Mailman, I'm your host, Frank Lebono. We hope to have you join us. And next being Frank, We're the only way to be is Frank, stay safe everyone.