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How Human Trafficking Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know
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Speaker 1: from housetop Works dot Com. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
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Speaker 1: I'm Josh Clark. The cross from me is always as
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Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you
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Speaker 1: should know, not bush league. No, we've been doing this
0:26
Speaker 1: way too long. Not bush league. We're pioneers, man, are
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Speaker 1: we Probably we're like riding the coat tails of Adam Curry.
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Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, long supple doublety coat tails of Adam Curry.
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Speaker 1: I'm happy to be on them. Sure, he's great, man,
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Speaker 1: I'm not making fun of him at all. Well, don't
0:47
Speaker 1: make it sound like I am. You're not one of
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Speaker 1: those guys who just says something like uncool to be
0:51
Speaker 1: ironic and have it be cool. No, And I'm glad
0:54
Speaker 1: you brought that up because I posted a Kenny g
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Speaker 1: song on our Facebook page and I wasn't trying to
0:59
Speaker 1: be ironic. I wasn't trying to be cool. It's a
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Speaker 1: good song. Yeah, it's as simple as that. Like when
1:05
Speaker 1: you go see Dolly Parton, It's not to be ironic.
1:09
Speaker 1: It's because you like Dolly Parton exactly. All right, thank you,
1:13
Speaker 1: I just want to clear that up. The same goes
1:16
Speaker 1: for Ronnie Millsap by the way, he's class act um
1:20
Speaker 1: one of mine and Nami's friends. Adam was like, who's
1:23
Speaker 1: that cat that you listen to? He was always wearing
1:25
Speaker 1: the sunglasses his country, and Umi was like, Ronnie Millsap.
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Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, I was like, he's blind man, that's
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Speaker 1: why he's always wearing the sunglasses. Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: who was engaged. Congratulations Yes, congratulations to Adam and Serena.
1:43
Speaker 1: So human trafficking work. Yeah, we might as well have
1:47
Speaker 1: gotten the light stuff out of the way because this
1:49
Speaker 1: will be another joke free podcast. This is a I
1:52
Speaker 1: don't know about joke free. We don't pull off joke
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Speaker 1: free very well, but we um, this is heavy. It's
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Speaker 1: one of our heavier ones. Is up there with like homelessness,
2:01
Speaker 1: uh and um and off requested. Yeah, this one's been
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Speaker 1: asked for a lot. We're finally doing it. Um. And
2:08
Speaker 1: Human trafficking is not to be confused with the movie
2:11
Speaker 1: about raves from the nineties called Human Traffic has absolutely
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Speaker 1: nothing to do with one another. Human trafficking is basically
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Speaker 1: another term for modern slavery. Uh. And apparently I want
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Speaker 1: to bust out a an unquantified stat that's my forte Yes,
2:31
Speaker 1: they're supposedly more slaves in the world right now than
2:34
Speaker 1: there ever have been. That is true. I looked that
2:36
Speaker 1: up just to be sure, and I did not get
2:39
Speaker 1: a number, but they said there are more. Well, I
2:41
Speaker 1: think they said more than twelve million, is what the
2:44
Speaker 1: u N says. The State Department said, uh in two
2:47
Speaker 1: thousand and ten and their reported human trafficking they cited
2:51
Speaker 1: something like seventeen twelve point three towel point three. So
2:55
Speaker 1: the the U S and the u N and I
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Speaker 1: guess are using the same number. Looks like it. Um,
3:00
Speaker 1: that's a lot of slaves and sad very sad um.
3:04
Speaker 1: So let's okay. We I think everybody has a pretty
3:07
Speaker 1: good understanding of how um West Africa became the slave
3:11
Speaker 1: capital of the world and from about what the sixteenth
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Speaker 1: to the nineteenth century, I think into the twentieth century.
3:20
Speaker 1: They commonly cite it because I think some of Southern
3:23
Speaker 1: Europe was still using slaves after the US issue the
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Speaker 1: Emancipation Proclamation. And but you know here in the U
3:31
Speaker 1: s it's like, oh, well that must have ended slavery
3:33
Speaker 1: everywhere because it was issued by the US. UM. Not so.
3:37
Speaker 1: But we understand West African slavery. You know, it's been studied,
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Speaker 1: we we've we've discussed it before. UM. Modern slavery takes
3:46
Speaker 1: a it's just as insidious, but it takes different kinds
3:51
Speaker 1: of forms. Right, It's not just you know, being captured
3:55
Speaker 1: and then transported to work on a farm or a plantation,
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Speaker 1: although that it still happens, right, And it doesn't necessarily
4:02
Speaker 1: mean even being transported across any sort of a border. Uh.
4:07
Speaker 1: A lot of US human slaves or human trafficked people's
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Speaker 1: are Americans? Do you want to paint a story? A story?
4:17
Speaker 1: And the intro I thought this was pretty good illustration. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: this was written by Molly, our old friend from Sminty
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Speaker 1: who was gone on to uh, I hope greener pastors.
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Speaker 1: So Molly wrote this and it's a good one, and
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Speaker 1: she just she gives a little story here at the
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Speaker 1: beginning on how this might work. Eastern European country, a
4:35
Speaker 1: woman might see a billboard that says, ay, come to Paris,
4:38
Speaker 1: to New York City to work as a waitress. She
4:40
Speaker 1: doesn't make much money, she doesn't have a lot going on. Yeah, exactly,
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Speaker 1: let me go promises of something richer in another land.
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Speaker 1: So she calls this number. She's told hey for just
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Speaker 1: like three grand, which we may even front you. You
4:55
Speaker 1: can pay it back when you get here. We'll bring
4:58
Speaker 1: you over and you can get this great job and
5:00
Speaker 1: and started a new fantastic life. Once she gets here, however, Uh,
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Speaker 1: she's not taken to a restaurant, but she may be
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Speaker 1: taken to like a brothel. Let's say, a lot of
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Speaker 1: times women and young girls are it's sex trafficking as
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Speaker 1: opposed to labor trafficking. Yes, we should point out. Actually,
5:18
Speaker 1: the FBI says, I think the majority of girls and
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Speaker 1: women are from Central America and Asia, and most boys
5:26
Speaker 1: and men are forcing to labor, but an increasing number
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Speaker 1: of boys and men are working in the commercial sex industry.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Molly kind of made it sound like I
5:35
Speaker 1: think she used the pronouns she almost exclusively when she
5:38
Speaker 1: talked about sex trafficking. But there are plenty of men
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Speaker 1: and boys in that too. So anyway she comes over,
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Speaker 1: she's forced to work in a brothel as a prostitute
5:48
Speaker 1: or in the in porn or some other kind of
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Speaker 1: sex industry, and basically is either blackmailed or coerced or
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Speaker 1: beaten or drugged or all of the above, never is
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Speaker 1: paid back or I'm sorry, she's never she's never working
6:04
Speaker 1: off the money, right, Basically, she's just there forever. And
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Speaker 1: also even if she is working off the money, she
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Speaker 1: may also be charged room and board in the brothel,
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Speaker 1: which is probably about the biggest insult you could ever
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Speaker 1: lay on somebody. Hey, we kidnapped you unfortune to prostitution,
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Speaker 1: and we're charging you for this room that we're making
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Speaker 1: you perform sex taxing, and the prices just go up
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Speaker 1: and up on the room and board, so you're really
6:27
Speaker 1: not paying down your your loan right to get over here,
6:31
Speaker 1: and we have your passport, so good luck getting back anywhere, right. Um.
6:34
Speaker 1: She may also be funneled, I guess into um labor trafficking.
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Speaker 1: There's two kinds of of human trafficking. There's sex trafficking
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Speaker 1: and labor trafficking. And obviously, sex trafficking gets the most
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Speaker 1: headlines because you know, the idea of sex slaves is
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Speaker 1: just mind boggling. Labor trafficking is far more prevalent though, Um,
6:58
Speaker 1: it's somebody who you know entered the same situation may
7:01
Speaker 1: end up in a restaurant in Parison, New York, but
7:04
Speaker 1: as like a lion cook who's not really getting paid.
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Speaker 1: Apparently the restaurant industry is rife with human trafficking as well.
7:11
Speaker 1: Atlanta is Did you know that? No, I didn't. Atlanta
7:14
Speaker 1: is one of the most major hubs in the United
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Speaker 1: States were human trafficking. Did you get an idea of why? Uh?
7:21
Speaker 1: I don't know why, but I know that Grady Hospital
7:24
Speaker 1: here in town has UH recently stepped up efforts to
7:28
Speaker 1: recognize UH victims when they come in as patients, because
7:32
Speaker 1: one of the biggest issues, Molly points out, is is
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Speaker 1: recognizing them even though they're in plain view. Like, we
7:39
Speaker 1: have probably come into contact with somebody at some point
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Speaker 1: in Atlanta, whether it was you know, the bus boy
7:45
Speaker 1: or the you know, the quote unquote migrant worker you
7:49
Speaker 1: see working on a farm. Are you trying to tell
7:52
Speaker 1: me that you're being trafficked right now? Blink once if
7:56
Speaker 1: Jerry has a gun to my head, right and we'll
7:58
Speaker 1: get into the problems of why this isn't just an
8:00
Speaker 1: obvious problem. Um, but let's talk a little more about
8:05
Speaker 1: the two different types of trafficking. You talked about sex trafficking,
8:08
Speaker 1: which can be very lucrative. Um for the trafficker. The
8:13
Speaker 1: traffic key where the trafficked is not making any money whatsoever,
8:18
Speaker 1: is being fed whatever. Is a slave the trafficker. Uh.
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Speaker 1: Molly used the UM use Bulgaria as an example. In Bulgaria,
8:29
Speaker 1: the average annual salaries about twenty dollars us UM in
8:35
Speaker 1: a year. That same year, Uh, a sex slave can
8:38
Speaker 1: make about three thousand, five hundred for a trafficker. Yeah. Um. Also,
8:45
Speaker 1: if you're diverted over to labor trafficking, you may end up,
8:49
Speaker 1: like we said, in a restaurant a mine. Agriculture is
8:53
Speaker 1: a big one matter of fact. Um, there's this group
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Speaker 1: called sweat Free dot org, and a lot of the
9:00
Speaker 1: like anti sweat shop groups, pro union groups, and UM
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Speaker 1: anti human trafficking groups all kind of form this ven
9:09
Speaker 1: diagram in the middle that has to do with sweat labor,
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Speaker 1: forced labor and UM there's this group called sweat Free
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Speaker 1: dot org. And if you ever want to shop with
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Speaker 1: somebody that you a company that you know doesn't use
9:22
Speaker 1: sweat labor, so you can't possibly be using by buying
9:25
Speaker 1: a product that is made up with forced labor. You
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Speaker 1: can um look up their shopping guide. But they also
9:31
Speaker 1: released a hall of Shame every year, and their two
9:34
Speaker 1: thou ten hall of Shame shamed um ll Bean, Jim
9:37
Speaker 1: Boree and Haynes for using use back cotton and uh
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Speaker 1: apparently the Usbeki is stand government mandates that children as
9:47
Speaker 1: young as seven have to be forced to harvest the
9:49
Speaker 1: cotton in the fall rather than go to school. And
9:52
Speaker 1: a lot of these kids are like shuffled off to
9:55
Speaker 1: remote areas away from their homes. That's human trafficking, that's
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Speaker 1: govern mandated. You know what really shocked me is that
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Speaker 1: sometimes these people are sold two wealthy individuals. Yeah this
10:08
Speaker 1: one was awful who actually just used them as as
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Speaker 1: house housemaids and housekeepers and cooks. I was just quote
10:16
Speaker 1: unquote respectable people. That's probably where sex trafficking and labor
10:21
Speaker 1: trafficking like collide. You know, yeah, I'm sure depending on
10:25
Speaker 1: the house you end up in, but yes, I'm sure
10:27
Speaker 1: did you see taking the lead obviously and that I'm
10:32
Speaker 1: sure that happens. But in that movie, it was very
10:34
Speaker 1: high end uh operation going on. It was but where
10:38
Speaker 1: the girl ended up was like a mind camp or
10:41
Speaker 1: something like that. Remember like the place like there was
10:43
Speaker 1: just ropes with like sheets hanging over that made this
10:46
Speaker 1: one room into smaller rooms or whatever. But Liam Neeson
10:50
Speaker 1: had a very particular set of skills. Luckily he's able
10:53
Speaker 1: to rescue his daughter. When did he become an action hero? UHW?
10:59
Speaker 1: What was the first one? Was it the Clone War one? Um?
11:05
Speaker 1: But I agree like all the suddenly a Neeson well
11:07
Speaker 1: dark man. Many years ago he was a but that
11:10
Speaker 1: that didn't like launch him into action movie guy. But
11:13
Speaker 1: now yeah he's a he's an a one butt kicker
11:15
Speaker 1: at this point. Good for him. Yeah, I like that
11:18
Speaker 1: movie actually taken. Yeah it was. This was good, pretty enjoyable.
11:22
Speaker 1: It was just I couldn't get past the fact that
11:24
Speaker 1: we were watching Liam Needson do this stuff. Give me,
11:28
Speaker 1: Daniel Craig, I can I can believe him? All right,
11:31
Speaker 1: let's get back to it, shall we? Uh we'd we'd.
11:34
Speaker 1: And obviously, if you're a sex slave, aside from just
11:37
Speaker 1: the trauma of being forced to perform sex acts like
11:42
Speaker 1: a dozen times a day on strangers, uh, they're obviously
11:45
Speaker 1: at risk for STDs violence from their johns or pimps. Uh, pregnancy,
11:51
Speaker 1: forced abortions, sterilization, for sterilization, all like a host of
11:57
Speaker 1: awful things which all add up to immense emotional trauma.
12:01
Speaker 1: And if you are in a labor slave, you are
12:06
Speaker 1: basically facing probably the worst um labor conditions that the
12:11
Speaker 1: person can come up with. Your they're not protected at
12:13
Speaker 1: all because you're not going to stand up and say anything.
12:17
Speaker 1: And why, Chuck, why would somebody endure this kind of
12:22
Speaker 1: life quietly? Because that's a big there's a big discussion
12:25
Speaker 1: about how many slaves, how many traffic people there are
12:28
Speaker 1: in the world, Um, because we really don't know, and
12:32
Speaker 1: a lot of people think that they're hiding in plain sight.
12:34
Speaker 1: Why well, because they could be drugged Like a lot
12:39
Speaker 1: of times in the in the sex industry, I read
12:43
Speaker 1: cases in like Oregon, in Seattle where they were they
12:45
Speaker 1: would get them addicted to crack cocaine. Remember in the
12:49
Speaker 1: Homelessness podcast we talked about that Florida labor camp that
12:52
Speaker 1: had a little company store that crack and like these
12:55
Speaker 1: these homeless people were in living lives of basically a
12:59
Speaker 1: ventured servitude. Right. Uh, blackmail might be another one, like hey,
13:03
Speaker 1: look we've got these pictures of you. Now we're gonna
13:05
Speaker 1: send them to your family, and that particularly insidious forcing
13:09
Speaker 1: of a woman into prostitution, taking pictures and then using
13:11
Speaker 1: those pictures to blackmailer. Yeah, and Molly points out a
13:15
Speaker 1: lot of times they may be from a country where
13:17
Speaker 1: I mean, it's never like that's a great thing for
13:20
Speaker 1: your family, But they may be from a country where it's,
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, all of a sudden, the family is you know,
13:25
Speaker 1: outcasts from their village and like great shame is brought
13:28
Speaker 1: upon their family name and they don't want that. Or
13:31
Speaker 1: like we said, they may not have if they had
13:33
Speaker 1: travel documents to begin with, they snatch those. They may
13:36
Speaker 1: not speak the language, so what are you gonna do?
13:38
Speaker 1: Plus also you've got the threat of violence almost always
13:43
Speaker 1: um or actual violence. Uh so, Yeah, there's three three
13:48
Speaker 1: terms that basically um legal definitions almost always used to
13:52
Speaker 1: describe human trafficking and how it's carried out. It's forced
13:56
Speaker 1: fraud and coercion and forces the like you said, ugs,
14:00
Speaker 1: the use of drugs. Well maybe they're kidnapped out right, right,
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Speaker 1: sleep deprivation, food deprivation, physical abuse, rape, um and then
14:10
Speaker 1: even having guards guard you. Um, I guess that that intimidates,
14:17
Speaker 1: but it also implies the threat of violence as well,
14:21
Speaker 1: So let's force. There's um coercion. Yeah, we kind of
14:26
Speaker 1: already covered fraud, which was getting someone here under false pretense, right,
14:30
Speaker 1: but I think probably a lot um one of the
14:32
Speaker 1: ways you talked about the billboard, right, and the girl
14:35
Speaker 1: calls herself. There's also a lot of human traffickers that
14:38
Speaker 1: will go to poor families and be like, hey, you
14:40
Speaker 1: love your kid, right, we can get your kid over
14:43
Speaker 1: to America where they're going to get an education. And
14:46
Speaker 1: there's like this, there's people over there that like sponsored
14:49
Speaker 1: kids and like, your kid can go live with them
14:51
Speaker 1: families really nice. Your kid will be educated, come back
14:54
Speaker 1: and take care of you in your older years. Don't
14:56
Speaker 1: you want your kids to do that? We'll take them
14:58
Speaker 1: for free. Right. The family doesn't realize that that once
15:04
Speaker 1: they find out that this was all fraudulent, they already
15:08
Speaker 1: agreed to letting their their the person take their kid.
15:11
Speaker 1: They don't realize that under any law, it's that's invalid
15:15
Speaker 1: immediately because it was that agreement was reached under fraud
15:19
Speaker 1: or deception. Well, and they're probably not any where where
15:22
Speaker 1: they can legitimately get in touch with them anyway. I
15:24
Speaker 1: doubt if they do that then give them like the
15:26
Speaker 1: real address while they'd be staying exactly so that basically
15:31
Speaker 1: the kid is not technically kidnapped, but virtually kidnapped. Yeah, um,
15:37
Speaker 1: And yeah coercion was also blackmail. Um Yeah, I get
15:42
Speaker 1: the idea too that a lot of this these threats
15:45
Speaker 1: are empty threats, but the traffic e doesn't understand that,
15:52
Speaker 1: Like I doubt a lot of times I doubt if
15:54
Speaker 1: they would take the time to send their family a
15:57
Speaker 1: photo and their village back home. It's just an threat
16:00
Speaker 1: that that you know, they don't know that they're not
16:02
Speaker 1: gonna follow through on it, right, or they might politro
16:04
Speaker 1: on it. Um. Because of all of these things though, coercion,
16:09
Speaker 1: physical abuse, drugs, shame, guilt, like all this stuff comes together,
16:14
Speaker 1: like you said, to form some like serious emotional and
16:18
Speaker 1: psychological problems for the person who's been kidnapped enforcing into
16:22
Speaker 1: this life and is held in this life. They got
16:25
Speaker 1: like no power, right, and they were probably not very
16:28
Speaker 1: empowered to begin with, or they wouldn't have been coercion
16:31
Speaker 1: in that kind of situation. Right. Well, that's that's a
16:33
Speaker 1: big debate that's going on It's like, how can you
16:36
Speaker 1: ever eradicate human trafficking if you don't first eradicate poverty.
16:40
Speaker 1: Poverty that's so, I mean, that's a big question too,
16:44
Speaker 1: which will probably never happen. But so you have these people,
16:47
Speaker 1: you have just people who are um not in a
16:51
Speaker 1: great state, and when we encounter them, normals, people who
16:57
Speaker 1: are not being enslaved encounter them, we might just look
17:02
Speaker 1: right past a lot of really obvious signs because number
17:04
Speaker 1: when they're keeping their mouth shut, which is probably the
17:06
Speaker 1: biggest problem of all um. But number two, we may
17:10
Speaker 1: also see them a victim as a criminal because they're
17:14
Speaker 1: involved in criminal acts. It wouldn't really dawn on us
17:17
Speaker 1: to think, well, wait a minute, Rember, they're being forced
17:20
Speaker 1: into these criminal acts. Well, and Molly's examples were great,
17:24
Speaker 1: Like you see the teenage girl in the street that's obviously,
17:28
Speaker 1: you know, a prostitute, and you may turn your nose
17:30
Speaker 1: up and say, I mean, you know, look at that girl,
17:32
Speaker 1: she's trouble. Or look at that migrant worker in the
17:35
Speaker 1: field of you know, I bet he's an illegal, shouldn't
17:37
Speaker 1: even be in this country working. You might be looking
17:40
Speaker 1: at victims instead of criminals, um, and not just society
17:44
Speaker 1: at large, but apparently law enforcement is not very well
17:47
Speaker 1: trained to recognize um, the human traffic. That is true.
17:54
Speaker 1: I went to the FBI site and they said, that's
17:55
Speaker 1: one of the biggest things that they're working on is
17:58
Speaker 1: educating local law enforcement officers, like when they bust a
18:03
Speaker 1: prostitution ring, don't just throw them all in jail, like,
18:06
Speaker 1: investigate it on a case by case basis. Right. So
18:09
Speaker 1: you've got victims who are too scared to talk, you
18:13
Speaker 1: have um society that as society, and law enforcement that
18:17
Speaker 1: immediately deems some criminals. So you have this idea that
18:21
Speaker 1: there's a really big problem out there, but no real
18:24
Speaker 1: idea of exactly how big it is. Right. So here's
18:29
Speaker 1: where the numbers kind of come in. Like we said,
18:30
Speaker 1: the U S and the U N say that there's
18:33
Speaker 1: about twelve point three million adults and children worldwide, right
18:39
Speaker 1: and around the world. Yeah, but the problem is is
18:42
Speaker 1: that in two thousand nine, there were only um like
18:45
Speaker 1: forty three hundred, forty and sixty six successful trafficking prosecution prosecutions. Yeah.
18:54
Speaker 1: I went to the FBI site and they have they
18:56
Speaker 1: started the Human Smuggling Trafficking Center and two thousand four. Yeah,
19:00
Speaker 1: and they were touting. I'm not saying they're not doing
19:03
Speaker 1: a good job, but they were touting, get touting. In
19:05
Speaker 1: two thousand four, they had eighty six investigations going on,
19:09
Speaker 1: and they doubled that by two thousand nine to a
19:11
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty seven. That's a hundred and sixty seven investigations.
19:15
Speaker 1: If you've got what they say about like fifteen thousand
19:18
Speaker 1: in the U. S. Alone, well, that's another number that's
19:20
Speaker 1: hotly contested. So apparently Congress heard that there was fifty
19:25
Speaker 1: thousand slaves that were brought into the US every year
19:29
Speaker 1: and apparently that came from CIA estimates. Um, that really
19:34
Speaker 1: kind of got the charge going against human trafficking, Like
19:37
Speaker 1: that number is just incredible, right, especially just coming into
19:42
Speaker 1: the U. S. Alone. So that guy at everybody on board,
19:46
Speaker 1: including George W. Bush Um got some some laws enacted.
19:50
Speaker 1: There's the UM oh which one is it, chuck, The
19:54
Speaker 1: one we passed in two thousand um the Trafficking Victim
20:00
Speaker 1: Protection Act. And then that same year the UN past
20:03
Speaker 1: the Palermo Protocols. So that was like a big moment
20:06
Speaker 1: for human trafficking, right, um or I should say combating
20:11
Speaker 1: human trafficking UM. And then the numbers were downgraded in
20:16
Speaker 1: two thousand four to something like UM fourteen thousand, five
20:20
Speaker 1: hundred and seven to seventeen thousand, five hundred and then
20:23
Speaker 1: people think even those numbers are high. Right. Then a
20:28
Speaker 1: New York Times magazine writer named Peter Landerman Landisman, he
20:34
Speaker 1: wrote an article called UM, I Think the sex Slaves
20:38
Speaker 1: next Door for the Girl's next Door. I can't remember
20:40
Speaker 1: which what it was called, but UM. In his article,
20:45
Speaker 1: it just created this huge firestorm. It was like one
20:49
Speaker 1: of those twelve page long articles and like he was
20:53
Speaker 1: doing a lot of really good investigative journalism. There was
20:57
Speaker 1: this interview with this one girl who had been sold
20:59
Speaker 1: for from Mexico at like age four, UM, and I've
21:04
Speaker 1: been living as a sex slave ever since. And like UM.
21:07
Speaker 1: People started digging into the article and we're like, wait
21:11
Speaker 1: a minute, this sounds a lot like you know, urban legend.
21:15
Speaker 1: Some of like the details about you know, how people
21:18
Speaker 1: are coming from Mexico into the US or kind of spotty,
21:22
Speaker 1: like if they're going by boat, there's really no good
21:24
Speaker 1: place to land in the US. UM. There is a
21:28
Speaker 1: lot of problems with it. And he even said ten
21:32
Speaker 1: thousand so he had the lowest number so far, and
21:34
Speaker 1: even that has been torn apart. And part of the
21:37
Speaker 1: problem that was raised by Peter Landisman's UM article and
21:42
Speaker 1: its reception is that if you conflate inflate the numbers
21:49
Speaker 1: the figures too much and then it's shown that you're
21:52
Speaker 1: off big time, then it comes across a hysterical and alarmist.
21:58
Speaker 1: But if the numbers are too low, then you risk
22:00
Speaker 1: not being able to generate enough interest to really do
22:03
Speaker 1: something about the people who are in slave right. And
22:05
Speaker 1: it's hard to pinpoint at period because if they knew,
22:09
Speaker 1: then they would be doing something about it. Only twenty
22:12
Speaker 1: seven states and that's the latest number I have. Uh,
22:16
Speaker 1: it maybe more, but I saw twenty seven states have
22:18
Speaker 1: anti trafficking legislation. Is that it Yeah, that's crazy. So
22:23
Speaker 1: I mean the rest it's technically legal or surely there's
22:27
Speaker 1: laws that you're breaking. Yeah, I don't think it's legal,
22:29
Speaker 1: but it's not just trafficking specific legislation. Yeah, So we're
22:34
Speaker 1: kind of it seems like we're at a period where
22:36
Speaker 1: we realized that there's a real problem, but we don't
22:38
Speaker 1: know how big it is and we don't know what
22:39
Speaker 1: to do about it. Yet one guy, Nicholas Kristoff. You
22:43
Speaker 1: read New York Times, So kristof smart guy. He did
22:47
Speaker 1: something in two thousand four that was pretty amazing. Yeah,
22:50
Speaker 1: he decided to purchase the freedom of to Cambodian prostitutes. Yeah,
22:55
Speaker 1: he went to Cambodian did it, which is very controversial because,
22:59
Speaker 1: as Molly points out, it still perpetuates the idea that
23:02
Speaker 1: you can buy and sell a human life, even though
23:05
Speaker 1: he was doing it for the good, still sort of
23:07
Speaker 1: playing ball in a way, And a lot of people
23:11
Speaker 1: say it didn't do a lot of good anyway, because
23:12
Speaker 1: these people aren't prepared for the quote unquote real world.
23:15
Speaker 1: So one of them did kind of escape that life,
23:18
Speaker 1: and the other went right back to it. Yeah. Um,
23:20
Speaker 1: the one that he paid more for two three dollars. Um,
23:25
Speaker 1: she went back to it, and she was very reluctant
23:28
Speaker 1: to come out in the first place. Um, she kind
23:31
Speaker 1: of dragged her feet. And even her owner, I guess,
23:35
Speaker 1: the madam that ran them brothel and literally owned this woman, Um,
23:39
Speaker 1: was like, you should really take this man's offer and
23:42
Speaker 1: leave right now because this is never gonna happen again.
23:46
Speaker 1: She went back. Wow, because she was institutionalized as the
23:49
Speaker 1: way to put it. She didn't know if her village
23:51
Speaker 1: would accept her. Um, she didn't know if her family
23:54
Speaker 1: would take her back. She's very shamed, and this is
23:56
Speaker 1: the life that she was used to. It's like red
23:58
Speaker 1: in uh yeah, or Brooks. Yeah, Brooks was institutionalized. Yeah,
24:05
Speaker 1: he's the one who hung himself right, and Red thought
24:08
Speaker 1: he was until he found all that money. Yeah, and
24:10
Speaker 1: he's likes had to go buy some milkshakes. So yeah,
24:15
Speaker 1: he paid two hundred three dollars and a hundred and
24:17
Speaker 1: fifty dollars for those two women. But yeah, and I
24:20
Speaker 1: mean it makes sense, like pay money to free somebody,
24:25
Speaker 1: then yeah, you're putting a value on that, and you're saying, yes,
24:27
Speaker 1: what you're doing is legitimate to some degree. Well maybe
24:32
Speaker 1: if nothing else. This move was got a lot of
24:36
Speaker 1: attention because he did this. But the question is this,
24:41
Speaker 1: like but that Peter Landisman article was all about how
24:44
Speaker 1: you know there's there's all these sex slaves in the US,
24:47
Speaker 1: but almost all of the action that he describes takes
24:50
Speaker 1: place in Mexico. Nicholas Kristof to free sex slaves, he
24:54
Speaker 1: didn't go into New Jersey or Portland's. He went to Cambodia.
25:00
Speaker 1: So the question is how big is this in the
25:04
Speaker 1: US and elsewhere? Is it a big problem in the US.
25:07
Speaker 1: We have no idea, but there's UM we're starting to
25:11
Speaker 1: kind of shape how to take this on thanks to
25:15
Speaker 1: two groups like UM Anti Slavery International and Free the
25:18
Speaker 1: Slaves Right, Yes, and the Polaris Project, who is another
25:22
Speaker 1: big one. UM. The State Department says they have what's
25:26
Speaker 1: called a three P approach prevention, prosecution, and protection. Uh.
25:32
Speaker 1: Prosecution is a big one because until they start really
25:37
Speaker 1: hanging these dudes up by their toes as an example,
25:41
Speaker 1: then they're not going to be dissuaded so much from
25:44
Speaker 1: trying to traffic these girls and boys and men and women.
25:48
Speaker 1: So you got to prosecute these people, let it be known,
25:51
Speaker 1: plastered all over the newspapers to kind of dissuade folks. UM.
25:56
Speaker 1: Protecting the victims is a problem, especially when there you know,
26:01
Speaker 1: like a cop just looks at them and sees a
26:03
Speaker 1: hooker rather than you know, a victim. Yeah, exactly. UM. So,
26:08
Speaker 1: like you said, I guess the FBI is figuring out
26:10
Speaker 1: how to train local law enforcement to recognize signs UM.
26:15
Speaker 1: And there are some pretty easy signs if you can,
26:18
Speaker 1: I guess, gain the trust of of somebody's suspect as
26:21
Speaker 1: being trafficked. UM. There's just a few questions that you
26:24
Speaker 1: can ask and if you can get honest answers out
26:26
Speaker 1: of them and you're like, oh, you are a modern slave.
26:29
Speaker 1: Well that's the tough part is getting the answers, but
26:31
Speaker 1: asking them where they work, maybe what they're getting paid,
26:34
Speaker 1: who they live with, are they free to come and
26:36
Speaker 1: go as they please? UM? How what did you say?
26:40
Speaker 1: How much they get paid? Where they sleep? What kind
26:43
Speaker 1: of sleeping conditions are? What they ate last or the
26:46
Speaker 1: day before is another good one. There's a great questions.
26:49
Speaker 1: And then if you come up with some UM suspicions,
26:51
Speaker 1: there's actually groups that you can call. There's the National
26:55
Speaker 1: Human Trafficking Resource Center UM that has a hotline that's
27:00
Speaker 1: open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. UM.
27:02
Speaker 1: That's one eight A D eight three seven three seven
27:05
Speaker 1: eight eight eight and UM. They start to get the
27:08
Speaker 1: ball rolling, and apparently the State Department, especially under Hillary Clinton,
27:12
Speaker 1: has really taken the ball and run with it. UM
27:15
Speaker 1: to combat human trafficking and the US issues UM travel
27:20
Speaker 1: visas T visas to people who are who are found
27:26
Speaker 1: to be trafficked. So they're saying, hey, we won't even
27:30
Speaker 1: deport you. Yeah, you're not gonna arrested them. Or if
27:32
Speaker 1: you are arrested and we find out you you've been
27:34
Speaker 1: trafficked here like we're gonna you'll be okay after that. Well,
27:38
Speaker 1: the d o J has a hotline to UM four
27:42
Speaker 1: to eight s one and Polaris Project dot org is
27:47
Speaker 1: a great place to visit. And you mentioned them in
27:50
Speaker 1: the UM how the Underground Railroad worked. Yeah. Remember they're
27:54
Speaker 1: named after the north Star that that UM the free
27:58
Speaker 1: escaped slaves used to follow. Benjamin Skinner, an author, wrote
28:02
Speaker 1: a book called a Crime So Manstras Monstrous in two
28:04
Speaker 1: thousand eight, and he said educate yourself. So hopefully we're
28:09
Speaker 1: helping a little bit right there. Secondly, UM, right, your congressman,
28:13
Speaker 1: your local elected official, be the guy that stands up
28:16
Speaker 1: at the town hall. Yeah and says, yeah, I get
28:19
Speaker 1: what you're saying about the electromagnetic pulse, but what do
28:22
Speaker 1: you want to do about human trafficking right exactly? Or
28:26
Speaker 1: you know, find out if you're one of the seven
28:28
Speaker 1: states or one of the what's twenty three states that
28:35
Speaker 1: does not have legislation on the books and get in
28:39
Speaker 1: touch with your congressman, who probably won't be in office
28:42
Speaker 1: by the time the next election rolls around. Yeah, wait
28:44
Speaker 1: till after November. Get in touch with your new congressman
28:47
Speaker 1: and say, hey, why don't we have legislation on the books.
28:51
Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. Uh. And so educating yourself figuring out
28:57
Speaker 1: what I guess, harassing your local politicians then um supporting
29:01
Speaker 1: advocacy groups like sweat free dot org, Free the Slaves,
29:04
Speaker 1: Anti Slavery International, that's right, Yeah, that's what you can do. Yeah,
29:09
Speaker 1: or just keep your eye out. Don't be so judgmental
29:12
Speaker 1: when you when you see, uh, that person who you
29:14
Speaker 1: might think is a nefarious criminal. You never know. Yeah,
29:18
Speaker 1: And I'm sure there's people out there who are going
29:21
Speaker 1: to be like, well, I mean, if we make a
29:23
Speaker 1: big deal of this, then everybody's gonna say I'm I'm
29:26
Speaker 1: a slave when they're really a criminal. I think that's unlikely.
29:30
Speaker 1: I think so too. And if you start doing something
29:33
Speaker 1: about human trafficking or you already are, we want to
29:35
Speaker 1: know about it. So I'll call out again if you'll
29:38
Speaker 1: remind me, Chuck, because sometimes I forget, but for for
29:42
Speaker 1: listener mail call out. How about we say, let us
29:44
Speaker 1: know what you're doing to fight human trafficking? Okay, yeah,
29:47
Speaker 1: or if you were one of the people that requested
29:49
Speaker 1: this over the years, and then you probably had a
29:51
Speaker 1: good reason to let's hear it, okay, aside from the
29:54
Speaker 1: fact that it's a good cause. Uh So, if you
29:57
Speaker 1: want to learn more about human trafficking and read of
30:00
Speaker 1: very good article by Molly Edmonds, you can type in
30:03
Speaker 1: human trafficking t R A F F I, C K
30:06
Speaker 1: I n G in the search bar how stuff works
30:09
Speaker 1: dot com and that will bring this article up. And
30:11
Speaker 1: I said how stuff works? No, I said search bar
30:14
Speaker 1: and that brings up listener. Now, Josh, I'm gonna call this,
30:19
Speaker 1: uh Josh's choice. You picked this one out because I
30:24
Speaker 1: didn't have a computer all day. I did my research
30:27
Speaker 1: on my iPhone. So thank you Apple for allowing me
30:30
Speaker 1: to do my job. Do you shill? Hey? Did you
30:33
Speaker 1: see me over there? I had to get at least
30:35
Speaker 1: like an iPhone cover case or something. I don't need it.
30:39
Speaker 1: All right. This is about earthworms from Susan in Northern Minnesota.
30:43
Speaker 1: I just listen to your podcast on earthworms. I must
30:45
Speaker 1: say I was disappointed that you minimize the damage that
30:48
Speaker 1: earthworms are doing to our northern forest. We did point
30:51
Speaker 1: out damage, but I guess she didn't think we did
30:53
Speaker 1: a good enough job, right, Yeah, I was that's I
30:58
Speaker 1: actually didn't mean to pick this one out. It was
31:00
Speaker 1: between this and the dental in fact, but we'll go
31:02
Speaker 1: with this. I'm volunteering for the University of Minnesota go
31:06
Speaker 1: Gophers on monitoring the super I'm sorry, Superior National Forests
31:11
Speaker 1: and have come across large sections of the forests that
31:13
Speaker 1: are heavily damaged due to the worms. The forest duff
31:17
Speaker 1: that you mentioned as several other uses other than the
31:19
Speaker 1: host seedlings, that also acts as mulch, which keeps earth cooler,
31:23
Speaker 1: holds in moisture, and decomposes and creates soil. Yeah, when
31:26
Speaker 1: she mentioned that, it reminded me that drying the soil
31:29
Speaker 1: out is a big problem because of the eating duff.
31:33
Speaker 1: Eating of the leaf litter, not drinking duff, because that's great. Yeah.
31:39
Speaker 1: I've seen the roots of the large trees exposed, which
31:42
Speaker 1: is called girdling. Uh. This stresses the trees and puts
31:45
Speaker 1: them in jeopardy, but it's also really pretty. A person
31:48
Speaker 1: can view large sections of the forest that are completely
31:50
Speaker 1: bare as there is no vegetation at all. The worms
31:54
Speaker 1: can move about three miles per year, which leaves a
31:58
Speaker 1: large path of destruction. Today, there's no successful method to
32:02
Speaker 1: rectify or reclaim those areas of our forests. I am
32:05
Speaker 1: from northern Minnesota, which is a large tourist area. Three
32:08
Speaker 1: miles per year is way way longer farther than I've
32:15
Speaker 1: run across in any other resource. I think about it,
32:20
Speaker 1: that glacier, that ice sheet that killed all those worms
32:23
Speaker 1: right and basically drove him south. They've had ten thousand
32:26
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand years to make their way up. If
32:28
Speaker 1: they can move three miles a year, they'd be all
32:31
Speaker 1: over the place that we wouldn't be seeing this invasive
32:34
Speaker 1: species problem right now. That way they kids, Well, maybe
32:37
Speaker 1: the Minnesota worms are lightning path. Yea, they have a
32:40
Speaker 1: little jump in their giddy up. She finalizes this email
32:45
Speaker 1: Josh by saying the slow destruction of her forest is
32:47
Speaker 1: putting her whole economy at risk. That is Susan C.
32:51
Speaker 1: From Minnesota. So sorry if we uh minimized it, we
32:55
Speaker 1: didn't certainly didn't mean to. I didn't think we did,
32:58
Speaker 1: but apparently we didn't. Like really really yeah, Like we
33:02
Speaker 1: didn't dissect a live earthworm during the podcast to show it.
33:06
Speaker 1: We didn't show its friends what would happen to it? Well,
33:09
Speaker 1: thank you Susan C for that one, um, And thank
33:12
Speaker 1: you to the other guy whose email I was going
33:15
Speaker 1: to choose but printed the wrong one. Yeah. I think
33:18
Speaker 1: he had a fellow toothless guy. Yeah. These want to
33:23
Speaker 1: give you props for coming out, coming out and taking
33:26
Speaker 1: the tooth out of ny. If you don't know what
33:29
Speaker 1: we're talking about, you have to see this. We have
33:31
Speaker 1: a video podcast now too, um that you can subscribe
33:34
Speaker 1: to indeed, UM, and we do like we have one
33:37
Speaker 1: of the things that we do is a little game
33:38
Speaker 1: show where we teach one another something in sixty seconds.
33:41
Speaker 1: And Chuck taught me about dental implants and showed me
33:46
Speaker 1: his toothless grim showed the world, which is Yeah, it's
33:49
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. So if you if you want to see that,
33:52
Speaker 1: you should type in stuff you should know dental implant
33:56
Speaker 1: uh into your favorite search engine or in the search
33:58
Speaker 1: bar how stuff works dot com to bring up that video. Um,
34:02
Speaker 1: And if you want to tweet to us, you can
34:06
Speaker 1: at s y s K podcast. If you want to
34:09
Speaker 1: join us on Facebook. Go to Facebook dot com slash
34:12
Speaker 1: stuff You should know and remember, we want your emails
34:14
Speaker 1: on human trafficking. You can send those two stuff podcast
34:18
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
34:25
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
34:27
Speaker 1: dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on
34:30
Speaker 1: the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage.
34:33
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