>> Sneha Upadhyay: I'm going to go ahead and introduce myself. 
My name is Sneha Upadhyay. I'm the Training and Technical Assistance Specialist with NHTTAC. 
Today's presenters are Jae Jin Pak, Joan Reid, and Martina Vandenberg, and today's webinar will be moderated by Ashley Garrett, who's the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center Director. 

>> Ashley Garrett: Okay, let's try this again. 
Can everyone hear me? 
This is Ashley Garrett with NHTTAC. 
Okay, I'm getting some -- yes, that I can be heard. 
I'm going to go ahead and we are still troubleshooting some of our other speakers. 
Specifically Joan and Jae Jin being able to get on. 
So why don't I go ahead and Ophelia, are you able to be heard?

>> Ophelia McLain: I hope so.

>> Ashley Garrett: I hope so too. 
Did everyone hear Ophelia? 
Great. 
Okay. 
We're going to keep moving while our technical folks troubleshoot with Jae Jin and with Joan and we'll introduce them then. 
But I'd like to first introduce Ophelia McLain from ACL to provide some introductory remarks. 
She is with the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Administration for Community Living. 
So, Ophelia, I will turn it to you.

>> Ophelia McLain: Good afternoon, everyone. 
I am the Director of the Office of Program Support at the Administration on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and I find this to be a wonderful collaborative effort with ACF and we’re certainly pleased to be a part. 
I am representing the Administration for Community Living with a mission to maximize the independence, well-being, and health of older adults, people with disabilities across the lifespan, and their families and caregivers. 
Within ACL is the Administration on Disabilities where our main goal is to equip individuals of disabilities to lead lives of their choice in their communities.
AoD funds a national network of programs that work at the state and local level and in the territories to improve opportunities for people with disabilities to access quality services and support, achieve economic self-sufficiency and experience equality and inclusion in all facets of community life. 
And these reflect the shared principles that are on the screen of independence and self-determination, rights and responsibilities, community integration and active participation, and productivity and economic well-being. 
Briefly I wanted to share a few instances where our stakeholders including our grantees have been working in the area of human trafficking. 
They have been training on issues in this area as well. 
The protection and advocacy systems in California, Illinois, Idaho, Montana, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin as well as the centers for independent living in Vermont and Oregon, and the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities in Illinois and members of the national human trafficking and disabilities work group. 
Additionally the Illinois protection and advocacy system provided training to facilities and programs to ensure that children and adults do not become victims of sex trafficking or sexual abuse and this P and A also provided advocacy services to prevent abuse, neglect and exploitation.
In Delaware, I'm not sure if we have Delaware represented today, the P and A assisted with the request for the disabilities waiver for an adult foreign national who arrived in the US as a child human trafficking victim and who was attempting to complete the naturalization examination but had difficulty doing so. 
The effort was successful and the client was ultimately granted citizenship.
And last year the National Disabilities Rights Network signed a collaborative memorandum of understanding with the Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center to work more closely to prevent the human trafficking of people with disabilities. 
We certainly understand that traffickers target vulnerable population such as people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
The AoD programs can provide subject matter expertise, technical assistance and training on supporting victims of human trafficking with disabilities.
AoD programs can be a resource in states and territories on issues relating to supporting people with disabilities and we appreciate the active engagement in this area such as with this webinar as it is greatly needed.
I'll turn it over.

>> Ashley Garrett:  So one of the things we really wanted to talk through is talk a little bit about what human trafficking is. 
Actually before we do that, I'd like to get to our learning objectives for the day. 
So what we're hoping to accomplish this day and hopefully our technology will get itself resolved quite quickly, is that we are looking to investigate bias, stigmas, and risk factors that may lead to victimization of individuals with disabilities. 
We will also examine perspectives from researchers, service providers, and leaders to understand contributing factors to susceptibility for sex and labor trafficking and also discuss prevention from each of these lenses. 
And we will be identifying promising practices and service responses that address underlying issues that can put individuals with disabilities at risk for sex and labor trafficking. 
So when we look at what we mean by human trafficking, there are two major forms of exploitation. 
We look at sex trafficking, which is considered the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion. 
Or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. 
So one of the things to think about in looking at sex trafficking is that we're really looking at compelled commercial sex or in the instances of children anyone under the age of 18, we don't need to actually prove any sort of compelled aspect to it and really what we have to just show is that the person is involved in a commercial sex act.
For labor trafficking, we're looking at the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.
Bottom line human trafficking occurs when a trafficker exploits a vulnerable victim by using force, fraud and coercion and we often can also see these intersect, where there is labor trafficking and sex trafficking combined or there is sexual violence in a labor trafficking situation. 
So as we go through you're going to hear our different speakers talk a bit differently about the particular ways that they see human trafficking interplay with individuals with physical and cognitive disabilities. 
In addition, there are other populations that we won't be going into great detail on that are also at higher risk of human trafficking, which would include refugees and asylees, LGBTQI individuals, immigrants and migrant workers, runaway and homeless youth, and survivors of other crimes. 
While we are not going to go through a detailed human trafficking 101 on this particular webinar, we encourage you to take the SOAR online training which we'll provide you with a link, and you will be able to learn more in-depth on some of those definitions and aspects for response but we really wanted to use this to focus in on individuals with disabilities. 
So we're going to start off with a poll. 
One of the things that we want to make sure we know is a little bit more about who each of you are on the session. 
So if you could please respond, are you an organization that works primarily on human trafficking, one that works primarily on disabilities -- with people with disabilities or some combination of both?
And it's great to see the diversity here. 
I love that we're bringing in people that have a primary focus on individuals with disabilities and really helping to show you how to better serve your patients and clients by understanding more about their vulnerabilities to human trafficking and likewise for trafficking professionals who are needing more expertise in how to work with their patients and clients that are working with individuals with disabilities. 
So a really wonderful combination of expertise and we're excited to learn from all of you as well as our presenters. 
One thing to note as we move forward, please go ahead and use the chatbox to share any information that you are wanting to share with everyone else on the call.
You can also go ahead and put questions in there. We will have time for questions at the end but I will also be reviewing the chatbox to flag and make sure we don't lose track of questions as you go.
So on that note, have we published our poll? 
I believe we have.
So let's go ahead and I'm going to turn it over to Martina.

>> Martina Vadenberg: Hi, thank you so much, Ashley.
This is Martina Vadenberg from the Human Trafficking Legal Center.
It's an honor to be included in this webinar today, I have to shout out to my colleague Sara who is staff attorney at the Human Trafficking Legal Center who is both a member of the Human Trafficking Disability Working Group and real expert on this in our office.
So I'm delighted to be here.
The main thing that I think we need to emphasize is that the Human Trafficking Legal Center is a data driven organization. 
We have databases of every criminal case since 2009 and every civil case brought since 2003 in the federal courts. 
What we've learned is that people with disabilities are trafficked into all sectors.
Adults and children are trafficked into the sex industry. 
People are trafficked into forced labor in restaurants. 
They're trafficked into forced labor in poultry processing plants, in agricultural work, even on dairy farms.
So it's wide variety of cases we are seeing in the database.
I wanted to talk about the specific cases because I think there's a lot of theoretical discussion of trafficking of persons with disabilities.
But I think it’s important to see the concrete cases that have ended up in the federal courts.
The first case I want to talk about predates the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and it’s the case that actually drove the passage of the Trafficking Victim Protection Act of 2000.
It’s a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. 
Two men were working on a dairy farm. They both had intellectual disabilities. They were trapped on this farm. Both men were in their 60s. They were in poor health. They were living in substandard housing conditions. They were completely isolated from others. They had little medical care. They had worked on this dairy farm 13 to 16 years, 7 days a week, up to 17 hours a day. Initially they were paid $15 a week and then they received nothing. 
They were physically and verbally abused both by the defendants and herdsmen that were working with the cattle. One of the victims was threatened with institutionalization. So he was told he would be placed in an institution if he could not do the work. Finally one of the herdsmen called county officials. 
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court because it was prosecuted under statue for involuntary servitude. Unfortunately the Supreme Court ruled that the psychological coercion that these individuals with disabilities faced were not sufficient for a conviction under involuntary servitude. So this is a case that went all the way up to the Supreme Court and the criminal case was reversed. The conviction reversed. As a result, Congress passed a forced labor statute. 
So I think it’s important to know that the very law we rely on today with forced labor is actually the product of a case that involved persons with disabilities. 
Another early case that predated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, again brought under the involuntarily servitude statute, but involving people with disabilities was a case of 55 Mexican nationals brought to the United States and held in forced begging. The case was recognized as one of the very first human trafficking cases.
The ringleaders pled guilty and they were sentenced to prison terms. 
The important details to know about this case is that some of the victims worked up to 70 hours a week. They were forced to turn over all of their proceeds from this forced begging scheme on the subways in New York and if they failed to meet their quotas they were beaten. Many of the victims who tried to escape were beaten. Some were shocked with an electric stun gun.
The victims were forced to live in overcrowded housing, given a meager amount of food, and the traffickers would call relatives back home and ensure family members were doing fine. The traffickers used what's called happy victim pictures and they would take pictures of these individuals who were deaf and show them to people at deaf schools in Mexico and say look you can also come to America and have a wonderful life.
And you can work in the United States.
So the defendants were convicted.
One point that's important to know here is that the survivors of the case, the trafficking victims of this case, did not use American Sign Language.
They didn't use Mexican sign language, they could only understand one another. So an FBI agent spent hours acting out the facts. 
This was a very difficult case because of the disabilities aspect and difficulty of communicating with the victims.
Another case important to highlight is a more recent case, a case out of Pennsylvania, that was brought in 2013, U.S. versus Linda Weston. The defendants did something that we are seeing more and more frequently, which is they targeted the victims based on the fact those victims were receiving Social Security income, they were receiving benefits because they were disabled.
They forced them to bear children, they collected welfare for those children, two were trafficked into forced prostitution, they locked the victims in closets, cabinets, basements, and attics, and two died of malnutrition.
Linda Weston was sentenced to life in prison plus 80 years.
The important thing we are worried about this case is that in trafficking cases restitution for victims is mandatory.
Restitution for victims is mandatory but in this particular case the court awarded restitution, but to the Social Security administration and not directly to the victims.  This is not a trend we want to see, we want to see restitution awarded directly to victims and not government agencies.
In a case literally, sadly, ripped from the headlines. This is a case from July 27, 2018 reported by the Associated Press and Fox.
It’s a case of a family holding a young autistic woman in a cage, the details are troubling but the important thing to know from the trafficking aspect is the victim was trafficked into forced cleaning in the home, so she was doing forced cleaning of bathrooms and kitchen, paid nothing.
In addition the allegations, as in the Weston case and others we'll discuss, victims' Social Security income was stolen to be indictment here also covers theft of $8,700 in Federal benefits Social Security income stolen by the alleged traffickers.  In another case very recent, June 6, 2018, an indication prosecutors paying more and more attention to these cases and more attention to people with disabilities particularly intellectual disabilities being trafficked.
A case in South Carolina, originally brought as a civil case, brought on behalf of a man with disabilities who had worked almost his entire life in a restaurant in South Carolina.
Under the first owner of the restaurant, the first manager, it seems things were fine.
But a new manager came on board, he pled guilty to using violence, threats, isolation and intimidation to compel a victim to work seven day a week without pay.
The acting assistant Attorney General John Gore about this case said human trafficking through forced labor can happen on farms, in homes and as today’s case shows in public places such as restaurants.
Edwards, the defendant, abused an African American man by coercing him to work long hours in restaurant without pay.
In addition one fact to keep in mind, this victim was forced to live in a housing unit in substandard housing with cockroaches, rats and the like.
Very close to the place of work in an apartment owned by the traffickers.
So in this particular case, there was a civil case before there was a criminal case.
So the U.S. attorney's office had the benefit of work that had already been done on the civil case before they brought the criminal indictment. This is an excellent criminal indictment to see and the U.S. Attorney's Office in South Carolina should be congratulated for it.
As I mentioned, though we're only recently talking about it, trafficking of people with disabilities has gone on for decades.
It's not always identified as such.
One case that I wanted to flag is EEOC versus Hill Country Farms.
The EEOC brought this case under the Americans with Disabilities Act, this case was not brought under the trafficking law.
32 men with disabilities were forced to work in a turkey evisceration plant.
They worked in a little town in Iowa for 30 years, they were paid approximately 41 cents an hour, $65 a month, they lived in complete squalor with cockroaches and open bathrooms.
They were physically and verbally abused by their supervisor. As punishment one victim was forced to hold heavy blocks for an extended period of time. Others were beaten. One tried to run away and died after freezing in the snow. They received no bathroom breaks.  
There’s a book about this based on a New York Times series written by Dan Barry, a very accomplished New York Times reporter. It was published in 2016 and it’s an excellent expose on how trafficking can look when the victims are US citizens and people with disabilities. 
These were men who were going into an occupational therapy program. Their families believed they would be working and earning money. The case was only identified because a sister went to visit her brother and to take him home, thinking that he should retire now and that he would have retirement income in his bank account. He had earned essentially no money working in this turkey evisceration plant. She raised the alarm, but again, this was a scheme that went on with people with disabilities for three decades.
The EEOC brought the case. They won a $240 million dollar judgement against Henry’s Turkeys, the corporation where these men were allegedly forced to work. 
As mentioned in the South Carolina case, some of these cases actually are forced labor cases that start as civil cases, not criminal cases.
Lisa Frankenfield and Guy Gotthardt, a married couple, both of them had intellectual disabilities. This case was brought by their Conservator against the prior Conservator. Walter Strong was the Conservator appointed for these two married adults with cognitive abilities. A Conservator is supposed to be a guardian or a protector appointed by a judge to manage the financial affairs or daily life of another due to a physical or mental limitation or old age. 
Instead of protecting the rights of these particular trafficking victims, he stole their benefits, again, a familiar story.
He stole their other funds as well.
He bought himself a gas grill, bought himself a tractor, bought himself a mobile home and refrigerator.
He forced the victims to work on his farm doing manual labor.
In addition, he forced the female victim to provide sexual services in order to release her own money.
There was a state prosecution of the defendant, the defendant pled guilty to a theft charge and charge of sexual battery. He was sentenced to 2 years in state prison. Ordered to pay $105,000 in restitution.
In the civil case which was brought in federal court, the court ordered that the defendant pay the plaintiff again, this married adult couple with cognitive disabilities ordered the defendant pay them $690,962.24.
This again shows how criminal cases and civil cases can interrelate but also how important it is for trafficking survivors, those with disabilities and those without disabilities to have lawyers.
One of the questions that we try to identify in the case database is how people escape, how they manage to get away.
U.S. versus Callahan, a case brought in 2013 as a federal criminal case, illustrates one example of how trafficking survivors manage to escape.
The defendants held a woman who had cognitive disabilities as well as her small child, a toddler, captive for 2 years, they stole her Social Security income, her disability benefits, became her representative payee, they forced her into domestic servitude, she was forced to clean the house, she was also forced to take care of the exotic pets that these particular defendants held.
The defendants subjected both mother with cognitive disabilities as well as the child to physical violence, restricted food intake, and threatened them with attack by the exotic pets like pit bulls and the snakes.
They forced the victim to beat her child on video and threatened to report her to family services.
What's interesting about this case, this woman engineered her own escape.
She had been in the emergency room multiple times, the defendants were actually purposefully injuring her in order to get opioids.
They were purposefully injuring her with physical violence in order to get prescriptions for Percocet and other restricted prescriptions they used for their own work and use.
The other thing that they did was steal her food stamps so they would send her to the store and force her to get their food.
At one of those forced trips to the store, the victim purposefully stole a candy bar, right under the eyes of a guard and she was arrested.
And when she was arrested, she begged the police not to take her back to the house where she was being held.
That was how she and her daughter escaped.
So I think it's important to note that the people often talk about rescues, it's much more important to talk about escape.
This is a trafficking survivor, a woman with a disability who managed to engineer her own escape.
The defendants in this case were sentenced to 30 years in prison and 32 years in prison.
We talked a lot about Social Security income and for those who do work with people with disabilities and you're familiar with Social Security income, you can understand why it might be a magnet for traffickers who are greedy and essentially attracted to making a quick dollar.
And then in addition, place victims in forced prostitution or forced labor.
So the traffickers will identify victims who receive Social Security income, we have also heard of cases where victims are actually recruited at the Social Security administration.
These victims are perceived as vulnerable, less likely to report the abuse.
It is easy enough to become the representative payee.
So the first steps that we see sometimes is the theft of business.
The theft of these particular benefits.
Others are going to talk about the biases against people with disabilities but this SSI link is something that we need to be very careful about and that we also need to be investigating more carefully.
I talked about how people escape, I just briefly want to talk about various ways people get away.
These are all actual cases that we have discerned from research that we have done in our databases.
So the Smith versus Edwards case is a concerned citizen case, the U.S. versus Edwards criminal case that I talked about, U.S. versus Edwards, was the criminal case, Smith versus Edwards was the civil case on behalf of the man in the restaurant in South Carolina.
A client in the restaurant, a patron actually heard the victim being abused by the employer back in the kitchen, they called the South Carolina governor's office, the report went to Department of Social Services, who together with local police officers managed to free Mr. Smith.
In the Weston case, the picture of the third party, a janitor in the apartment building was doing a routine check of the boiler and found individuals with disabilities literally chained to the boiler.
We don't see that fact pattern very often, often times the coercion we see in trafficking cases is much more subtle and more psychological.
But I think what Sara, our resident expert, and I concluded is in the trafficking cases involving people with disabilities, in particular with those with cognitive disabilities, the level of violence can be much higher.
Another way that people escape is medical intervention, in a case called U.S. versus Bagley, a case in west Missouri in 2010, an adult woman with disabilities was hospitalized for emergency medical treatment.
She was in cardiac arrest.
She had been electrocuted by her captor and showed signs of extreme physical violence.
U.S. versus Callahan, the case we talked about where the adult woman managed her own rescue by begging police officers who arrested her not to take her back to the place the traffickers were holding her, she did ask them to go rescue her daughter.
Another case, law enforcement arrests for something else, in U.S. versus Laguna-Guerrero, another 2010 case in middle district of Florida, the defendant was initially arrested on sexual battery charges but it was discovered he forced his underage girlfriend who had intellectual disabilities into prostitution.
Finally family and relatives. 
Again the EEOC versus hill country farms case, it was a low balance in a bank account that alerted the sister that these men who had been toiling and working for decades and thought they were earning money had actually earned nothing.
So I'm going to move now to a polling question.
I hope everyone can see the slide.
The polling question is, which of the following questions is appropriate to assess coercive tactics a trafficker may use.
I'll give a couple of minutes for people to answer.
One is does this particular individual manage your access to medication or Social Security benefits?
How does this person relate to your disability in private?
Do you have concerns with care?
Or all of the above.
I'm looking at the polling results, looks like all are right because the answer is all of the above.
Any one of these questions can definitely give an indication that someone may be trafficked.
I think all of us are committed to helping this trafficking identifying this trafficking and preventing the trafficking.
So with that, I'm going to hand the baton to Joan.
I hope Joan can now be heard.
Thank you for attending, looks like more than 750 people on the line, it is so heartening to see so many people interest in this important issue.
Joan, are you there?

>> Joan Reid: Hello, this is Joan Reid.
It is -- is everyone else able to hear me?

>> Ashley Garrett: Yes.

>> Joan Reid: So some people are hearing me.
That's awesome.
So (inaudible).
I'm from the University of South Florida, Saint Petersburg, and I'm primarily in the role as researcher focusing on human trafficking abuse in the United States.
And I'll be presenting some of that research today.
But I'm also a practitioner with ten years of clinical experience providing mental health treatment to survivors of human trafficking and other forms of trauma.
In the next few slides I want us to focus on preventing human trafficking for those with disabilities.
My research on human trafficking abusing in the United States

>> Ashley Garrett: Can you speak louder?
Folks, are having a hard time hearing you.
We need to hear every word you say.

>> Joan Reid: Is this better?
Are we still not hearing me?
You can hear me?
Okay.
In my research on human trafficking abuse, I found a really disturbing statistic that once exploited in human trafficking, 70% of boys and 90% of girls are repeatedly exploited.
So once I saw that statistic I realized how important prevention is.
So that's really what we want to focus on as we go through these slides.
So the first slide that I have up is something that we all know that vulnerability is the first phase in human trafficking entrapment.
To understand the challenge of preventing human trafficking of individuals with disabilities we have to talk about the vulnerabilities that exist at each level.
The individual level, interpersonal level or with their peers and family, in the community and societal levels.
So when we start to talk about vulnerabilities that exist at the individual level, we -- I like -- I'll repeat this statement a few times but human traffickers seek out individual whose are easy to manipulate and who have no one looking out for them.
Individuals from another culture, speaking a different language are easier to isolate and exploit.
Also due to inexperience minors are susceptible to coercion and entrapment, a convicted sex offender was quoted, he said with young girls you promise them heaven and they'll follow you to hell.
And these vulnerabilities are almost assuredly compounded by emotional and cognitive disabilities.
My research in Florida I found that 30% of trafficked girls had a cognitive or intellectual disability.
One of these girls with this disability was reportedly sexually exploited by over 400 men, due to her disability she wasn't able to understand there was a difference between a boyfriend and a John.
Also the majority of trafficked youth in my research samples have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder and many of them were diagnosed with more than one disorder. As was already mentioned, alcohol and substance use increases vulnerability to exploitation, and addiction to drugs create a need and opens up avenues for exploitation by human traffickers.
Hopelessness and running away, I'm going to stop and try to turn up my speaker because I'm getting notices that you can't hear me.
Homelessness and running away and unsupervised access to social media, also create vulnerability by giving traffickers easy access to vulnerable persons.
So then I want to move on to family and relationship vulnerabilities.
Majority of trafficked youth used in my samples experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, many experienced all types of abuse.
And we often think about sexual abuse in terms of girls but in a recent study that first childhood experiences in human trafficking I found that boys with a history of sexual abuse were eight times as likely to be exploited in human trafficking when we compared them to similar boys.
All right.
So researchers found LGBTQ youth and in foster care or living in group homes are at risk for exploitation, it bears repeating human traffickers seek out those that have no one looking for them, children in foster care or group homes where there's high adult to child ratio.
So when I tried to look specifically at those with cognitive disability and to try to understand what caused them to be at the greatest risk.
And these girls were often described as chronic runaways and they ran away from home, from school and other places and activities.
And the details provided in their case records linked running away directly to their initial exploitation and sex trafficking, also the case indicated it didn't take long for girls with intellectual disabilities to encounter sex offenders or traffickers almost immediately for example one case said they met the -- their trafficker on their first or second run away episodes.
And running away was often linked to the second most commonly exploited endangering activities that led to exploitation that was chatting on Internet.
So there were many cases where the girls ran away, and they ran away to someone that they were chatting with on the Internet.
And also there were cases that showed a direct link between drug abuse and their initial exploitation in trafficking.
I know this looks a little scary, this next slide but in my recent research I actually had a sample of 900 boys and girls in Florida who had been reported to the child abuse hotline for human trafficking.
So and my -- the purpose of the project was to identify vulnerability profile based on individual and interpersonal risk. 
I'm using a larger sample in order to inform our prevention efforts.
So if we can figure out the profile of risk we can better direct prevention.
This was recently published and hopefully you can get a copy of it.
So as you can see, we were able to identify six vulnerability profiles.
I'm going to break them down for you.
So the first set of profiles were the most common for youth with intellectual disabilities so you can see the blue line made up 25% of the samples. 
And it resembles the current predominant risk profile of highly vulnerable runaway adolescents with extensive history of child maltreatment, involvement in foster care and entrapment in high risk behaviors such as drug and alcohol abuse and the take away message from that profile is that we should target prevention on maltreated youth in foster care. 
But if you add the two other profiles here, they also comprise 25% of the sample and had a similar risk profile but one had no involvement in foster care or little involvement in foster care and the other, the red line, they were maltreated youth but had little or no substance use so the message is to expand prevention efforts to maltreated boys and girls to those in foster care, out of foster care, using substances and who are not using substances.
If I move to the last three profiles, which made up half of the trafficked youth in my sample, we see these profiles were consisted of youth without history of physical or sexual abuse, some had high probability of drug use, some didn't.
It tells us the message is more youth are vulnerable to human trafficking than we originally conceptualized and many at risk are not being detected, being ignored and not warned about the possible danger so it is a strong indicator that prevention needs to go broader from than we originally thought.
So again looking at those with cognitive vulnerabilities and how that's linked to human trafficking, those in my sample, some of the girls in the sample were not capable of protecting themselves and didn't understand being exploited, that they were being exploited at all.
They had limited understanding of sexual or romantic relationships.
Again, as I said before they weren't able to distinguish a boyfriend from a sex trafficker.
Also there were girls who had less severe disability and they seem to understand they were being exploited but they didn't know how to escape the situation.
They didn't grasp they had the right to say no.
And the traffickers, as Martina mentioned, the traffickers took an authoritative role, they used violence and threats and abuse to maintain victim compliance and decrease likelihood of detection and prevented the victims from leaving.
Also as was mentioned by Martina, the UK and Australia, they have done quite a bit of research on what they are calling mate crime, among those with disabilities.
So exploitation of people with learning disabilities by claiming to be their friend.
The person who is being exploited is totally convinced the exploiter is their friend.
And trafficking is often mentioned as type of mate crime.
So that was true in my samples, the girls who were being exploited by traffickers always -- almost always were convinced that these traffickers were their boyfriend.
So they were experiencing isolation and they -- friendlessness and made them easy targets for sex traffickers to befriend and exploit them and it reflects this common phenomenon among victims compared to trauma bonding and it also occurs in other types of exploited and violent relationships.
There was prevention materials specific to what is being called mate crime, that we have -- I provided a link that's currently available, it's for both providers, caregivers and for individuals themselves.
There's some really good training materials available.
Another form of mate crime that has been researching in the UK -- researching in the UK and Australia is cuckooing, when a drug dealer befriends a vulnerable individual that lives on their own.
The drug dealer moves in, takes over the property and makes it a drug den and forces them to collaborate with them and criminal activities so these are important to be aware of and be watching for.
So the next level of vulnerability that I wanted to discuss is community vulnerability.
So often there's inadequate training of police officers and that often way of escape is through police officers or other criminal justice professionals who are aware of the issues so being unaware leads to the victims who are being arrested while traffickers are ignored and able the find new victims to exploit.
Often there's also limited prosecution of human trafficking cases according to research by the Urban Institute, often when a human trafficking case is identified and referred for prosecution, referred for prosecution, few are under the human trafficking laws, instead dismissed and prosecuted as lesser crimes like pandering or promoting prostitution.
This hides prevalence of human trafficking from the public and it sends a message to victims and offenders that these cases are not that serious.
Again, there's evidence but there's lack of training for service providers such as medical professionals, child protective workers and school personnel.
As one of the cases that Martina talked about illustrates, human trafficking victims almost always report that they have had interactions with medical professionals during exploitation.
So it shows the importance of training for these health providers and for social service providers.
Another issue with our communities is social safety net.
So often there's lack of services -- the least amount of services are provided to the most vulnerable, young mothers, undocumented persons and youth with disabilities.
The only thing on this slide I want to mention is location of group homes which are often housing our most vulnerable populations.
They're often located in high crime areas where traffickers are operating.
My next slide I have some actual information on how traffickers use this to exploit the system.
So after placement, youth would continue to roam the streets and be picked up and come in contact with traffickers almost immediately.
There was a case where it said trafficker found her walking near the group home, they were known to case group homes and look for vulnerable victims.
In prior research has shown that girls and boys placed in group homes are much more likely to run away than boys and girls placed in any other type of placement.
So based on this research it should be assumed most youth will run away at some point if they're placed in a group home.
So placing these vulnerable individuals in high crime areas seems very negligent and group homes, if they are located in high crime areas they should be relocated.
Also staff are often underprepared for this population.
There was a case in Miami where the staff actually caught men coming in and out of the home in order to exploit the girls living in the home.
This finding points to the need to provide sufficient resource and training to group home staff and supervisors to ensure these caregivers are adequately equipped for their task.
So as we move forward, the last level of vulnerability that I wanted to talk about is societal tolerance and there's certain societal beliefs that make us more tolerant of human trafficking.
One of them is demand for cheap goods and to purchase sex.
And people in businesses are really unaware usually of how their purchases are -- human trafficking so encouraging businesses and consumers to consult, there's two websites links that I will provide.
One is slaveryfootprint.org.
These websites provide awareness of where different goods are coming from and help companies and consumers to monitor and address slavery and human trafficking in their supply chain.
Also in the same way that a rape victim may be blamed for drinking at party or wearing a short skirt, trafficking victims are often blamed when we ask things like was he legal or did she ever use drugs?
And victim blaming perpetuates the myth that a victim needs to be perfect in order to be worthy of protection and care.
Human traffickers as I have said exploit individuals who have no one looking out for them and so when we devalue people and exclude people from our circles, certain groups such as women, children, undocumented persons, or persons with disabilities, as if they were not worthy of protection from exploitation, it increases the vulnerability to human traffickers and being exploited.
Prevention needs to begin with deciding that no form of human trafficking is tolerable and all of us, all humans deserve protection.
So at this point I think we're turning it over for another polling question.

>> Ashley Garrett: So why don't everyone go ahead and Jae Jin while they are starting to respond, introduce yourself.
And hopefully your audio is now working too.

>> Jae Jin: Hi, everybody, can you hear me?

>> Yes.

>> Thank you.

>> Jae Jin Pak: Lovely.
Love technology when it works.
So I too want to thank everyone for making the time to join us for this webinar.
I'm very grateful to all of you and to see the number of folks in our session.
My name is Jae Jin Pak, I am a steering committee member for the National Human Trafficking and Disabilities Working Group that Martina mentioned, and Sara is also a member.
And we -- our working group came about because of some of the work I was doing with the International Organization for Adolescents here in Chicago or here in the Illinois area.
Just in conversation with their ED and their staff, Jody and Allie, they really wanted to address the connection and build a bridge between the human trafficking community and the service providers and disability community because of this -- as we have been talking about throughout, people with disabilities are a marginalized community.
People with disabilities are because of disability and a lot of the social stigma and stereotypes surrounding disability have a greater risk of being taken advantage of and have been taken advantage of, both for human trafficking and other types of crime.
So the trafficking -- we work to learn from each other, from the disability community, to sharing information about disability culture and disability issues and understanding disability needs and then from the human trafficking service provider community, to educate and inform on trauma informed services and how human trafficking works and then collaboratively as we're doing today, talking about how we can pull our resources together to make systems, improve systems and services so those of us in the disability community can get the information we need to lower the risk of trafficking and other types of crime as well.
Just another thing to share about myself is I am a member of the disability community.
I have multiple disabilities.
I'm low vision, as well as with seizures.
Professionally I have worked over 25 years in mental health and trauma, around gender based violence issues, and because of my connection with being disabled myself, and also having very close friends and -- friends of mine and colleagues of mine who have been affected by everything from domestic violence to sexual violence, these are things that are very personal to me.
And I feel -- again, I'm very grateful for opportunities to connect with folks.
It looks like from the poll response, I am also – it’s great to see how the -- great to see how the different providers, and you all have already are working on building connections, with the disability community, and from the disability community to build connections to the human trafficking community.
In the next slide, I will highlight some of the ways that we can continue to bridge bridges and what I have found in doing this presentation for years, there are a lot of specifics, a lot of specifics are dependent on the organizational atmosphere that you have.
Those are things you can figure out for yourselves but there are some key concepts that are important keeping kind of work into your thought processes.
And the three concepts that I want to really put out there are the ideas of person-centered approach, the importance of inclusion, and the idea of empowerment.
And these are concepts and ideas and philosophies that are both very strong in the trauma informed mental health perspective as well as disability community.
The idea of person-centered is for those of you that have worked in trauma and working with survivors of trauma, the idea of trauma informed is the idea of putting the survivor in the middle.
It's their life, their experience, respect their authority as their lives.
Those of us in the disability community, the idea of person-centered is a similar principle.
We are not just our disability limitations.
We are a person.
We have another person with disabilities, we're a human being and with a full range of spectrum of wants, desires, interests, ideas, and we want to be seen as people.
And when we seek out services or even social interactions, it's important that the people we interact with see us as people and not just my vision loss or my mobility need or my communication disorder or my physical therapy diagnoses.
Yes more the idea of person centered is seeing the whole person and approaching and using that premise that holistic of the person is very complex and encompasses a lot of different things and finding ways of respecting that in options ids and suggestions that we do in service delivery.
Using that as a guiding principle leads to the idea of inclusion.
People with disabilities we want to be included in all aspects.
In terms of service delivery when we come to -- when people with disabilities come to service providers, we want to be part of the decision making process.
Instead of – one of the frustrations, one of the biggest frustrations in the disability perspective is this idea that people see us as oh, here is your diagnoses, here is your prescription of treatments or things to make it better or fix it.
That's not an inclusive model, the idea of inclusion is ask us what do we want, what are our wants, our ideas in developing our service model or for those of you working in providing services for trafficking survivors, as you are working with a survivor with a disability, just as you include able bodied survivors in various steps of their service plan development, include survival disability in every step of their service plan development.
Be willing to adapt to your approach, your language.
To make your information accessible to them, and I will go over that a little bit in the next slide but keeping the idea of person centeredness, inclusion, ties into the idea of empowerment.
If you create a service model that is person centered, that is inclusive, it will naturally make it easier to create an atmosphere where that is very empowerment, where survivor with disability is going to feel like oh, my wants, my choices, my opinions are being valued, I have some authority.
My lived experience of my disability lived experience, you are viewing it as me as an expert.
That's an empowering feeling.
For many of us in the disability community have lived years with this feeling like we're just a patient or a client and being an expert to give us treatment or give us direction and to have a professional and address this as your lived experience is important, is valuable, is expertise, I want to help -- I want to work with what you give me to tailor my responses and work with you to create a service model.
In terms of some tips and -- some basic tips to keeping it in the back of your mind when working with supporting survivor of disabilities, if you look through the list a lot of this is very common sense but I think in what I have learned over the 50 years of my life and many years of social service work, is sometimes in the cryptic work of looking at needs and developing plans for and service plans for survivors and clients and patients, sometimes common sense and simple steps can sometimes fall through the cracks.
These are some simple reminders.
Those that don't have strong connections to the disability community, realize in the society we live in, we have consumed a lot of stereotypes about disability.
That people with disabilities there's stereotype, people with disabilities are needy, that maybe they can't live independently, they can't have full time jobs or they can't achieve higher education.
Or that you have to dumb down language so they understand you.
Which is completely inaccurate.
These are very strong stereotypes just like stereotypes and myths around survivors of trafficking and gender based violence and other types of marginalized communities, it's important to acknowledge that and make an active choice to put them aside so that you make a little switch in your mind, I acknowledge it, and I’m going to put it aside because that doesn't belong here, the person that's in front of me is who is important and what they are telling me is what's important.
In working with survivors, may sound simple but make eye contact.
Even survivors are visually impaired.
Being visually impaired myself I can tell when people are not look at me or looking someplace else.
It can be a simple gesture but again, it's gesture of acknowledgment.
And of respect.
Interacting with someone who is deaf or hard of hearing or using a phone interpreter.
It's important to really focus your attention on a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, not the interpreter.
I have -- not the interpreter.
I have made the mistake since I don't regularly interact with people who are deaf or hard of hearing and interpreters, we're all hard wired to instinctively make comments and direct our gaze towards the person talking to us -- I made the mistake of saying can you interpret or can you sign.
Even with best of intentions.
So only not saying mistakes don't happen, it's just that when those types of mistakes happen, just acknowledge it, apologize and refocus.
When you're with someone who is blind or visually impaired, it's important to acknowledge yourself, introduce yourself. When I interact with friends and colleagues of mine who are totally blind, I do try to make a point of saying I'm going to step away and grab something so they know I'm stepping away.
I have been in situations where my blind friends and colleagues of mine shared stories, they have been sitting with somebody, having a conversation and they after a while notice there's no conversation and they realize this person had left without saying goodbye or letting them know.
So for those of us again who can't see you leave, make an audible note that I need to step away, I will be right back.
So again, you're letting them know what's going on.
In terms of people who use equipment, whether or not a cane, wheelchair, computer, it's important to respect their equipment as part of who they are.
If you don't use a wheelchair, it's just a piece of metal to you.
Someone who uses that wheelchair as their mode of mobility, it's just important as their actual legs.
The cane that I use is very important to me.
And it's important that you -- that when we interact with survivors that we respect our equipment.
It can be as simple as just asking is it okay if I move your chair, is it okay to move your cane so I can show you something or give you access to something.
And those simple gestures acknowledges respect of their person hood and their choices.
And their ownership of their equipment.

>> Jae Jing Pak: The other thing that's important is in supporting survivors is just acknowledging and realizing it may take longer, your interaction your meeting your appointment your conversation may just take longer than what typically may have -- your experience with a -- someone who is not disabled by nature of their accommodations.
Whether learning from the survivor to have them teach you what their communication style is or learning and get used to how they can communicate and how you can communicate with them.
Or just if they have a different speech pattern, getting used to and learning each other's speech patterns.
Again, all that takes time.
So again, the idea of being patient and if you know in advance, you have an appointment with a survivor, with a disability, planning that appointment to be longer than what you might normally have.
Last couple of things is the idea of in U.S. society, the idea of person first language or people first language is important.
That those of us in the U.S., historically, when people have talked about us or the disability community has been mentioned in mass media, there's been -- because of the negative stereotypes and the historical focus on our disability conditions and the forgetting we're people, in the last few years, last several years, and decades, there's been a big push of people first language.
We are people first, our disabilities, our differences, we do think differently.
Doesn't mean we're any less than anybody else.
So the idea of person first language is the idea that when you use that you say a person who is blind, a person who uses a wheelchair, a person who is -- who has autism, a person who has a mental illness, you're acknowledging their humanity.
And again can be a simple gesture but can be a very meaningful gesture to someone who is living in the community -- in the disability community for the most part gets the message we're different.
We're abnormal.
Because you're abnormal, you're different or you're broken because of your disability, you're somewhat less that.
And to have service provider make it the intentional effort to see us as people, and to acknowledge our humanity and our dignity, and show us the respect is -- it's a big way of showing of building rapport and building the foundations for growing trust.
In terms of disability –

>>: Ashley Garrett: I'm just going to give you the five minute warning.
For everyone on the call we got a late start so we didn't want to cut back on any of the speakers.
We know we're coming to a conclusion at 2:30 but we all agreed to stay on for discussion afterwards if you all want to.
But understand that some of you may have to drop off at 2:30.
And really appreciate your understanding in our technology issues.
Meantime, let's continue to listen to Jae Jin.

>> Jae Jin Pak: Thank you for that.
I'll wrap up with quick comments.
The idea of disability questions, those are okay.
If you have questions, those are questions about providers asking me what my vision capacity is.
Those large held help, those kinds of questions, if those are relevant to help frame your service delivery, those are reasonable questions.
And as long as -- as long as you present them in respectful ways, that's important to ask.
Last couple of things in terms of -- in terms of organizational ways to make your organization more accessible or organizational systems, is if -- those of you doing services for human trafficking and vice versa, those in the disability community, connect with each other.
Do a search for organizations in your hometown, your cities, your regions, that if you're providing survivors for trafficking survivors then do a search for disability organizations.
Reach out, connect with them.
Find out what they do, let them know you want to build a working relationship and ongoing connection.
And you're willing to provide training, and you want them to find ways of bringing their expertise to make your agency more accessible.
Three really big organizations that would help you do this is I would encourage you to reach out to your local centers for independent living or CILs.
Every state has and has several centers for independent living throughout every state.
These organizations provide information referrals, provide living training, and advocacy services.
And they are a great resource for you as a trafficking provider who gets information and connect your service -- survivor disability to those organizations.
Another really important and strong group organization is your local protection and advocacy center or P & A.
Every state in the U.S. and territory has a protection and advocacy center that services that territory or state.
And they are a organization that provides everything from non-legal to legal representation for individual disabilities on a variety of issues.
They can actually do things from -- they are involved in investigations for abuse and neglect.
And in some cases have the ability to access records or can be a connection to help you actually speak to and connect with a survivor with a disability to get them some assistance, if that's a possible barrier as well.
If you're interested in finding out who your local human and center for independent living are, in an accompanying PDF there's a list of resource and websites, there's a website you can do a directory research for those.
The last organization would be the ADA regional ADA centers.
So the ADA centers are a great resource to provide you information on technical assistance and information on how to make your organization both physically and culturally accessible.
Everything from ramps to doors to language and timing and all those things as well.
And again, there's a website that can -- you can put in your location and you can come up with closest regional center, you can get in touch with them and all those resources.
So thank you.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great.
Thank you so much, Jae Jin.
Thank you to all.
I'm going to flip through some of the slides that we didn't spend as much time on as we had intended.
But again, for everyone still on, we will be providing a link and ability to download Powerpoint as well as resource today at the end of this, looks like it's getting posted, hopefully as we speak and hopefully it does not mess up with our technology.
Also want to say a huge thank you to all of you for your patience and our technology issues and in particular to our three speakers who had to juggle and shift with us on the fly.
I really appreciate that.
So we're going to stay on for a little bit longer for those of you that are interested and having some further discussion.
I have also been taking some notes around some of the questions that were coming up in the chat box and I would actually go ahead and start with those.
One of the questions, Jae Jin, I thought maybe you could start with, and then if anyone else had questions or other ideas about, for students aged 18-21, I will love some resources to share with schools, families and students how to identify credible opportunities and look for that may indicate a less than credible opportunity.

>> Jae Jin Pak: In terms of credible opportunities for volunteering?

>> Ashley Garrett: I think that might actually have something to do with for folks I'm going to interpret so I could be wrong if the person that asked this is still on, please clarify.
My understanding from it is I think you were asking about credible opportunities for work and employment or individuals with disabilities.
At that age level.

>> Jae Jin Pak: I would say in terms of credible opportunities, I remember when I was young and friends and colleagues of mine with disabilities, when they were young, we did our own outreach and scan help wanted as well as our neighborhood stores and businesses they were hiring.
Outside of that, you can also contact like centers for independent living that I mentioned as well as other disabilities, service providers that have an employment program you can reach out to them to get assistance in job placement or leads for work as well.
The best opportunities ideas for employment seeking that are credible is establishing finding established disability providers that do employment services are a good start.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great.
Thank you so much.
Do either Martina or Joan, do you have any other ideas around that question?

>> Martina Vandenberg: The only thing that I would flag is I think that there is a myth about human trafficking in the United States that it's only about sex trafficking.
And one of the thing we have learned from the cases is that people with disabilities are vulnerable to labor trafficking as well as sex trafficking.
So when people are looking for red flags in terms of opportunities that are not real, please keep in mind forced labor is also a danger.
I think the safest thing, the biggest protectives factors that we see is the support of family, the support of a community.
So it takes, no joke, it takes a village on this, it's very important for a lot of eyes to be on the kind of work people are asked to do.

>> Ashley Garrett: Such good perspective, the cases you shared in particular really highlight the nexus with labor trafficking and for those of you interested in understanding more about how that can manifest as well as what some of the red flags are, specific to labor trafficking, I would encourage you all to take the health and wellness online training you can find at our website where we go into more detail on some of those dynamics.
Joan, there were a lot of requests for citations for the research that you were citing.
I want to let everyone know that we are going to have an updated version of the slide back with some of those citations added so we will work with Joan to get that taken care of.
But in the meantime, Joan, I wondered if you might be able to talk a little bit about some of the programs that you have worked with or done research around that have been effective at preventing trafficking and reducing some of the risk factors and increasing some of the perspective factors for individuals with disabilities.

>> Joan Reid: Thank you for asking that, I did put into the chat box -- can you hear me?
Okay.
Thank you.
I did put into the chat box a couple of the key pieces of literature that I quoted.
You can always look up my research.
There's a -- like Google scholar, a lot are posted online, a lot of these studies that I have done.
I also wanted -- there was a link I sent earlier, I will post it now.
There was about ten of us that got together and put together a human trafficking prevention brief.
You will find it very helpful, it talks about different strategies that -- prevention strategies that unfortunately not many have been tested, evaluated, but at least it's a brief that kind of mentions what everyone is trying around the country.
So I just posted that link and hopefully you will be able to get it and it will be helpful to you guys as you think about prevention.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great.
So what -- when we talk about SSI, are there things that systematically we should be looking at in how individuals are able to access it and receive support through that.
Martina, did you have any thoughts on that?

>> Martina Vandenberg: Yes, Social Security insurance, SSI received by people with disability is a target of traffickers but it's also a place where we can find the potential red flags for trafficking.
So one red flag that I think we should look at is an individual, someone like Linda Weston, the defendant in the case in Philadelphia, who is receiving SSI benefits for multiple individual who are not related to one another.
So David Hutt is very expert on this, on SSI benefits and SSI benefit theft.
But I do think in the screening questions that we ask, and the investigations that we do, we need to see where SSI benefits are being paid and ask whether or not the beneficiaries of are receiving funds, I think it’s a real risk factor because for traffickers, it's just free money.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great way to both look at risk and then also get in front of when trying to investigate and reduce harm before it comes, really good ways to address that.
There was a question about the nexus between housing and trafficking of adults with disabilities.
Joan, do you want to talk a little bit about that connection.
And maybe ideas how to potentially mitigate the risks that housing and security may offer to individuals with disabilities.

>> Joan Reid: That is a great question.
I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for but there is a link between being homeless, being on -- living on the streets, running away, and being trafficked.
So I don't know if -- if that's what you're referring to or more this idea of mate crime, people are taken advantage of those with housing.
So they were befriending them, pretending to be their friend, and then using their homes for criminal activity.

>> Martina Vandenberg: Could I jump in as well, there's a very important case, U.S. versus Kaufman, it was a housing and residential treatment facility for people with mental illness.
We talked about people with all sorts of disabilities.
Some of the commentators mention people with mental illness issues.
It specifically housed people who had mental health issues.
And those victims found it very hard to be believed.
It wasn't until the sheriff's department drove by a field and saw the house residents harvesting vegetables in a field completely naked and people started asking questions, so this was again a housing facility but it is a site for significant abuse because Mr. And Mrs. Kauffman who ran the facility funded by government funding, they were forcing the victims to engage in sexual acts on one another and then videotaping it.
So I think housing is a significant problem as Joan said, some of these residential facilities are dangerous, residential facility in Florida where there was a so-called mentor and staff member who were trafficking teenage girls out of the facility into local hotels for forced prostitution.
So housing is a need of people with disabilities, it's also a vulnerability because traffickers say come live with us, you'll be happy, you'll be a member of our family.
(overlapping speakers)
>> Jae Jin Pak: He want to -- the idea that one way that could be helpful is for those that that doing trafficking outreach and advocacy is to connect with -- when you do outreach to disability providers and if those providers or authorities that may fund or oversee living facilities to reach out and see the possibility of sharing information during the training or finding ways to get information out so if there's ways we can work together to potentially identify facilities that maybe not the best or safest living environments so they’re not existing in a silo of disability issues or disability policy.
If that makes sense.

>> Ashley Garrett: That's great.
I wonder too if you can -- so I think about several -- many folks on the call were professionals working specifically with trafficking survivors but they're not as familiar working with individuals with disabilities.
What are the key local resources that would help find those residential facilities and the folks that oversee them to make sure they are good in terms of providing appropriate residential care?
Or support?
Any places for people to go to find the good ones?

>> Jae Jin Pak: I don't want to sound like a broken record but if you reach out, if the organization reached out to local centers for independent living, the centers for independent living really are part of their core work is to address issues from housing to unemployment to other types of needs.
And so they have staff that go out and work on housing issue, employment issues, healthcare access.
Independent living as well as advocacy and policy information.
So if they're not -- they would -- they may have groups or staff are aware of concerns or issues or if they're not, it would be a great resource to connect with other organizations or other individuals that or groups that would be able to provide assistance as well.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great.
Thank you.

>> Martina Vandenberg: Can I just jump in quickly.
I want to -- jump in quickly another plug in addition to what Jae Jin said another plug to national disability rights network.
They have in every state protection and advocacy center and there's one assigned to make sure that facilities for people with disabilities are safe.
The other thing I would say, I think it is incumbent upon us as advocates in the anti-trafficking movement to learn, so one thing we have tried to do in the trafficking center is read memoirs of people who are survivors of trafficking.
So one book I recommend is The Girl Who Cried "Wolf!”, a book written by Nancy Jensen, written by one of the survivors of the Kauffman house.
Similar, The Boys in the Bunker written by Dan Barry, a 300 page book about 32 men with intellectual disabilities held at the turkey evisceration plant.
There's a lot of research and reading that we can do and the Jensen book is a good example how we can learn directly from survivors.

>> Ashley Garrett: That's such an important point, I know.
For all the work that we do it's critical that it is always informed by individuals with lived experience because they're the best teachers at helping us know what we can do better.
And give us constructive criticism and feedback but also letting us know how to be what we would have done that more with more successful so I can't put enough of a plug into becoming survivor informed and actually we have got some great tools again on our website to look at how your organization can be assessed as to whether they are survivor informed and where to look for additional technical assistance if you need help in figuring how to do that better.
There were several questions coming through specifically about engagement with families with persons with disability.
Engagement and assessment.
What do folks, do any of the three of you have thoughts specifically around engagement and assessment of families?

>> Jae Jing Pak: I would say family support and family and friend support is a good thing.
The one caution I would say is one suggestion I would say is when looking -- when interacting with family is really, again, keeping the person -- keeping survivor or person with the disability -- keep them in middle and keep them the focus, and when talking with the family, and getting information from the family, kind of taking it in with that perspective.
Sometimes family even with the best of intentions because they have been socialized and raised in a -- with negative message around disability, get overly protective or may fall into a trap of thinking access -- people with disability has limited capacity or limited access to different life activities in terms of work or education or independent living.
And if there's ways of sharing those aspects, and countering some of those messages, to educate the family and encourage family to see beyond limitations, that's important.
And then when -- then when or if the family is super supportive and super empowerment of the survivor and acknowledging that as well.
I think that's really important in keeping the person with disability in the middle of it all, and not allowing them to fall on the background of the conversation.

>> Martina Vandenberg: Jae Jin, can I ask one question that think --
One of the things that I fear happens particularly interacting with family, there's -- there can be a sense that attorney client privilege is suspended.
And that it -- client privilege is suspended and it doesn't matter if others are in the room.
This is a normal lawyer client relationship and the person with the disability is your client.
And they don't need to have an appearance of another individual even family member in the room.
Have you seen that scenario where people sort of make exceptions or think there's some exception?
And don't treat people -- the attorney's client?

>> Jae Jin Pak: That's happened up in -- I have seen that a lot in healthcare delivery too, the idea like the person -- the patient has a disability even though the individual with the disability is a full grown adult, and is entitled to all the rights and privacy and of afforded a adult patient, that doctors and nurses or other healthcare providers even with best intentions make the error of breaking confidentiality or not respecting privacy.
That's important.
Is that the person -- think of it -- doesn't mean they don't have the rights of confidentiality with an attorney or with a mental health provider or a anti-trafficking provider, if you provide full confidentiality then you respect that with all your clients including clients with disabilities.
Vice versa.
If you're a disability service provider and afford full confidentiality to people with disabilities that you serve, and you happen to be someone who is disabled who has -- is a survivor of trafficking, then you still afford them the full confidentiality that you provided everybody else and you work with, signed releases and negotiating all those as any situation that comes up.

>> Ashley Garrett: Thank you so much.
Okay.
Here is the question about do any of you have recommendations for asking about accommodations in a way that the person-centered and appropriate?

>> Jae Jin Pak: Asking what works best for you?
It doesn't have to be super complicated.
It can be simple questions of what's the best way for me to give you information?
How do you -- what's the best way for us for me to communicate questions or what's the best way for you to talk to me or give me information.
If someone has a mobility impairment with limited movement, be willing to make -- limited movement, you can signal one way or the other.
Or if the person wants to write, just ask what is -- kind of asking in a polite way what is the best means -- what's the best way for us to work together and let them teach you.
And again, I don't want -- I know I can get pushy because I'm passionate about this issue.
It's really important that you just ask, and not really again not to make any assumptions or judgments just because you work with someone who is blind or deaf or using wheelchair or has a speech impediment last week and you meet someone with a similar disability today, those are two different people and how they process information, take in information, share information, and the techniques and the equipment used can be vastly different.
So it's really important to not make assumptions and really ask the questions you need to.
And explain.
You can also frame it in the sense of I'm not coming off as being nosey but reason I'm asking these questions is to help me be a better counselor, better advocate for you.
I think if – if you raise it that way that also helps.

>> Ashley Garrett: I'm always stressed by that how it's not that complicated, that I think we get nervous about sometimes offending or not knowing the right way to ask something that keeping it just really simple, and that this is not unique to individuals with disabilities but we have to maybe ask a few different kinds of questions to make sure that we're not making those assumptions.
But when working with anyone, in a service and human service response capacity that those are all really important things to keep the person center, don't make assumptions, and let them drive where they want to step in.
And step up.
It looks like folks are starting to drop off, so I'm going to ask one other question that came in.
Then we will again remind everyone that you can download from the pod right now in the resource section a PDF of the webinar slides as well as a resource list.
We will also be updating both of those and sending those out.
And the entire webinar has been recorded and will be posted along with a transcript on to the website and if you're signed up for our listserv you will get an email letting you know as soon as it's there.
A great last question is, if you, if each of the speakers can respond with one thing, which would be, in your work with survivors with disabilities, what do you think is one critical piece that maybe we haven't talked about yet but what they want from providers to be effective?

>> Martina Vandenberg: This is Martina and I can just jump in.
I think Jae Jin mentioned this but survivors really want patience.
They need time and sometimes we’re in a hurry. 
So I would end with that.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great.
Again, not that sometimes we can overcomplicate things.
And just some of the simple things, good human interaction are also really helpful.
Joan or Jae Jin, anything you haven't already said or your counter parts haven't said that you want to make sure is emphasized before we wind this up?

>> Joan Reid: I feel like everything has been -- a really great presentation.
Each person's individual, each person is different and to not make assumptions when you meet someone or talk with them but to treat them as the individual person.

>> Ashley Garrett: Great.

>> Jae Jin Pak: That's about it.
Thank you so much.

>> Ashley Garrett: Okay.
I want to just thank you again for all of your patience as we troubleshooted some of our technology issues and a huge thank you to Jae Jin, Joan, Martina and Ophelia who had to jump off to get to another meeting for the patience and the critical contribution you each are doing for individuals with disabilities for survivors of human trafficking and all of us sharing your experiences and expertise.
Thank you so much, for those that sign off you will receive a link to a quick survey we love to get your feedback about how to continue to make these kinds of webinars meaningful and engaging.
So thank you so much, have a great afternoon.
Take care.

>> Jae Jing Pak: Thank you all.