Posts in 2022
Acceptance and Awareness of Sugaring Relationship in the VCU Community

Sugaring is marketed as a mutually beneficial financial relationship between a younger, more financially insecure individual and an older, wealthier individual for dating and companionship (Upadhyay, 2021). Sugaring is prevalent in university communities; however, there is limited research on public perception of this common phenomenon and its associated health risks. The two guiding research questions of this study were: (1) What is the level of acceptance of sugar relationships by students and faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)? and (2) What is the level of awareness among students and faculty of sugar relationships in the VCU community? A survey that measured acceptance and awareness of sugaring was distributed to students and faculty on both the undergraduate and graduate campuses of VCU. Survey responses were analyzed using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test and Fisher’s exact test to compare differences between the two groups. Faculty had a statistically significant lower acceptance of sugar relationships compared to students (6.0 median score compared to median 17.0 score respectively, p <0.001). Students demonstrated a significantly higher awareness of the prevalence of sugaring compared to faculty (p< 0.003). There was similar awareness of the unintended health risks of sugaring between students and faculty. Further research is warranted to elucidate the factors associated with levels of acceptance and awareness of sugaring. Educational efforts are needed to increase awareness of sugaring prevalence, especially on college campuses.

Presentation Objectives:

· Define the phenomenon of sugaring and establish the importance of research on this topic

· Explain the reasoning behind carrying out the study at VCU

· Illustrate the research methods and share results

· Discuss the impact of the study and areas of future research based on findings

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Sex Trafficking of Minors and Safe Harbor in Kentucky

There has been a growing push to pass state safe harbor laws to align governmental and community responses to the reframing of the issue of sex trafficking of minors (STM) that was ushered in with the passage of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA). Kentucky enacted a safe harbor law, the Human Trafficking Victims Rights Act (HTVRA), in 2013, which mandated a comprehensive protective system response (Shared Hope International, 2015). A research study was conducted to examine the effect of legislative change on system responses to sex trafficking of minors. The research question was “What changes in systems’ processes for identifying and responding to STM have occurred since the enactment of the law?” First, change from pre-implementation to post-implementation of the safe harbor law in awareness, knowledge, and practices for responding to STM was examined in key informant surveys (n = 365). Second, state administrative data was analyzed to examine several policy outcomes related to the immunity, protective, and rehabilitative provisions of the law. Findings include the need for increased awareness and training and adoption of protocols, including screenings, in systems that work with at-risk youth has occurred in the post-implementation period. Child welfare’s mandated role to accept reports and to investigate alleged trafficking of children has centralized a formal response. However, the increased screening and reporting of trafficking of children has not resulted in a meaningful increase in criminal charges. Positive impacts and challenging obstacles in Kentucky’s responses to sex trafficking of minors will be discussed.

Presentation Objectives:

· Summarize and evaluate the impact of a safe harbor law, with particular attention to positive impacts and recommendations for improvements

· Describe the varied ways children are trafficked in commercial sex in metropolitan and non-metropolitan communities across one state

· Share methods for evaluating the impact of safe harbor laws, including the use of secondary data

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Overcoming the Criminalization of Human Trafficking Survivors

This training will address the dynamic intersections of systemic discrimination of vulnerable populations and how these intersections connect to the criminalization of trafficking survivors. Marginalized communities are not sufficiently identified as victims and are disproportionately criminalized. Topics will cover cultural relationships with different trafficking survivors and the victim-offender intersectionality. Next, the training will discuss opportunities to overcome criminalization of survivors through: (1) policy work, (2) access to legal support, and (3) community education. Policy changes have shaped important relief for survivors in many states, and the presenters will provide some examples from California and New York. Likewise, they will discuss how trauma-informed lawyers representing survivors leads to more empowering legal interactions and case results. Lastly, they will discuss the importance of training legal stakeholders including prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, and probation.

Presentation Objectives:

· Discuss the ways in which trafficking survivors are criminalized and how systemic discrimination of marginalized populations plays into the criminalization of survivors

· Describe the various changes to the applicable laws around the country

· Discuss the various legal needs and remedies available to survivors and how access to a lawyer is a critical component of accessing justice

· Explain the importance of educating legal system stakeholders as a means to create a more trauma-informed and victim-centered experience for survivors

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Learning from Women: Weather Knitting as an Arts-Informed Reflection on How We Fight for Equity

The instructor and several members of a class on disparities, diversity, and social justice in social work will discuss the results of their work over a semester using arts-informed inquiry to self-reflect and critically analyze theories of privilege and oppression. Weather knitting (also known as temperature blanket/scarf/project) is a folk-art form where women knit or crochet each day using the temperature to decide the color of yarn used. Most recently, weather knitting has been used as a science-art-community effort to better understand the impact of global warming. Dr. Sloane and her students use weather knitting as a way to considering how we make advocacy choices daily and better understand the limitations of concepts like cultural humility and cultural competence as they relate to social work education and social work practice. Students involved in this class chose their art medium - yarn, collage, or poetry. Art-informed research requires the artist/researcher to stop and reflect on their actions and become aware of the discrimination and privilege that surrounds them, much like paying attention to the weather. In this presentation, students will share excerpts from their journaling of their advocacy activities and representing their actions in artwork based on a color key of advocacy they created at the beginning of the semester (Myzelev, 2021; Shopa, 2021). Because the knowledge creation of women is often dismissed, this class uses traditions of women’s art inquiry as a legitimate method to better understand power/political dynamics and the environment of discrimination.

Presentation Objectives:

· Describe ways that art can be used for self-reflection and consciousness raising about discrimination

· Consider the ways in which knowledge creation by individuals on the margins of society are dismissed

· Demonstrate how art can be used as data collection and a legitimate form of inquiry

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Trafficking Prevention Through an Anti-Racist, Anti-Oppressive Lens

Although it is important to recognize that human trafficking can happen to anyone, it is necessary to have critical awareness about the intersections of racism, sexism, and systems of colonization which disproportionality increase the vulnerabilities for people of color. In a two-year review of all suspected human trafficking incidents across the United States, 94% of suspected sex trafficking victims were female with Black females accounting for 40% and Latinx females accounting for 24% (Rights4Girls, 2018). Furthermore, data shows 40% of women who were victims of sex trafficking identify as American Indian or Alaskan Native, despite representing only 10% of the general population (NCAI Policy Research Center, 2016). Oppression is the use of power to disempower, marginalize, and silence individuals who are often thought of as “others”, while continuing to uphold the power and privilege of those who oppress. The selling of Black and Indigenous women and children for sexual purposes has occurred for centuries and it’s time to call it out and dismantle the oppressive systems which continue to allow its manifestation. Attendees will learn more about how human trafficking connects to broader systems of structural oppression, explore how society’s values, ideas, and power relationships have normalized the violence experienced by people of color, and learn about our collective responsibility to eradicate and respond to human trafficking through an anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens.

Presentation Objectives:

· Evaluate the occurrence of trafficking through the lens of intersectionality

· Define anti-racism and anti-oppression

· Call out the structures of oppression and societal values that normalize violence against “others”

· Identify the individual and collective actions that can be used to apply an anti-racist, anti-oppression lens towards anti-human trafficking work

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Taking Action in The Media

The legacy news media reports primarily on the most attention-grabbing subjects of our current day. The legacy media is defined as veteran newspaper and television news outlets that have pre-dated their establishment before the information age (social mobilization of information). Alison Dagnes, a professor of political science at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, described some of the ways sensationalism is used: “Amplifying language, trying to use very big words that are exacerbating. Something that invokes ... a whole lot of emotion.” This can be anything ranging from celebrities, Hollywood, politics, foreign affairs, and more. The problem with awareness for sexual exploitation or human trafficking is that the subject matters only become headlines within a local city’s news media. With this, even some of the most egregious crimes in this section of sexual criminal activity essentially gets little to no airtime within the news-cycle, or even on social media. The intent of Natly’s presentation is to illustrate how, no matter what the legacy news media presents, in trend, human trafficking and modern-day slavery grows, and goes unnoticed. This is a compounding problem that, if ignored, will grow exponentially than ever before. Now in our information age, we have the incredible ability to notify our local communities of said dark horrors, as well as encompassing an element of education. The onus is on us as local residents to our native jurisdictions to make human trafficking detectable and accounted for. This also entails local action, once illustrated criminal data points trend. Cleaning up our own communities and ridding of human exploitation starts with us. Natly will demonstrate effective ways to quickly research and deploy local criminal headlines (of sexual exploitative nature), perform root-cause analysis on what local criminal justice systems should advocate for, and deploy this information to your local communities for taking civic action to combat human trafficking.

Presentation Objectives:

· Demonstrate how to sift through the media headlines to identify local sexual exploitation, or human trafficking reporting

· Identify the faults in the criminal justice system that could forecast ease on the criminal or detect faults on any further criminal justice downstream processes that present opportunities of reform

· Offer ideas that would mobilize this information within your communities to garner local civic action for change

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Financial Abuse and Coerced Debt in the Lives of Sex Trafficking Survivors

Sex trafficking is an inherently coercive and exploitive act with direct and indirect financial implications. Survivors are often left with financial consequences directly related to the financial abuse endured during their trafficking situation. “Coerced debt” is a type of financial abuse that is defined as all non-consensual, credit-related transactions that occur in an intimate relationship where one partner uses coercive control to dominate the other partner (Littwin, 2012). Much of the extant literature on coerced debt has been conducted with service-connected women who have experienced domestic violence. However, little research has been conducted on the impact of coerced debt in the lives of people who have experienced abusive relationships in the context of sex trafficking. This presentation will discuss findings from a study conducted with thirty-four individuals who experienced sex trafficking in the United States. Individuals were invited to participate in qualitative interviews through convenience and respondent-driven sampling of an online anti-trafficking listserv. Thematic analysis of interview transcripts was done to answer the following research questions: “Did survivors experience coerced debt as part of their trafficking situation?” and, if so, “What types of coerced debt did they experience?” Descriptive findings about the frequency and nature of financial abuse and / or coerced debt in the lives of trafficking survivors will be presented. This presentation will conclude with a discussion on the current state of practical and legal remedies for addressing coerced debt and recommendations for future research and policy to address this issue.

Presentation Objectives:

· Provide an overview of “coerced debt” in the context of abusive relationships

· Present findings from a qualitative study conducted with survivors of sex trafficking about their experiences of financial abuse and/or coerced debt during and after their time in the sex industry

· Discuss the implications of this study for practitioners, policy makers, and future research

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Human Trafficking and Individuals with Developmental Disability

The goal of this presentation is to assist with awareness and understanding human trafficking when working with individuals with Developmental Disabilities (DD). The session will cover DD individuals’ risk factors and why they are so vulnerable. The presenters will share stories about experiences with this population who have been trafficked, how to report, how to recognize the signs, and how to support individuals and families if they experienced human trafficking. The session will also cover some labor trafficking stories in order to protect the DD population from employers who have immoral practices. Attendees will take away how DD individuals’ vulnerabilities have made them targets in the United States and abroad. Finally, the presenters will share resources to assist the DD individuals and the general population about human trafficking.

Presentation Objectives:

· Discuss the risk factors and vulnerabilities for the DD population

· Describe how DD systems need to work together for positive outcomes of the victim

· Explain the importance of why the Developmental and Learning Disabled population need to learn about trafficking in order to prevent victimization

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PEARR: Five Steps to Victim Assistance in Health Care Settings

CommonSpirit Health, one of the largest Catholic health care systems and the second largest nonprofit hospital system in the nation, implemented a system-wide Abuse, Neglect, and Violence policy/procedure. A key component of this policy/procedure is the PEARR Tool, which guides health professionals on how to offer victim assistance to patients in a trauma-informed, healing-centered manner. In this presentation, attendees will learn more about the PEARR Tool and recent research to evaluate its effectiveness. The PEARR steps are based on an approach in which patients are empowered with information about violence and resources before further screening is conducted. The goal is to have an informative conversation with patients to promote health, safety, and well-being and to create a safe environment for affected patients to naturally share their own experiences and possibly accept further services. PEARR stands for Provide privacy, Educate, Ask, Respect & Respond. The PEARR Tool, a three-page handout that summarizes the PEARR steps, is based on learnings gathered from CommonSpirit physicians and staff who have had experience in identifying and assisting patients affected by abuse, neglect, and violence, and on learnings shared by national subject matter experts and organizations. This includes learnings from the “CUES model”, an evidence-based intervention from Futures Without Violence, in which health professionals are encouraged to use safety cards to talk with all patients about the health effects of domestic and sexual violence. The presenters include a clinician and survivor of human trafficking, both representatives of CommonSpirit Health and its system-wide Human Trafficking Response Program.

Presentation Objectives:

· Educate attendees about human trafficking using the PEARR approach

· Describe how to assist patients with referrals to community agencies using the PEARR approach

· Explain how to access resources and tools that can assist with this process

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Part I: The Interface Between Sex Trafficking, Ritual Abuse, and Mind Control Programming

This panel consists of four survivors of child sex trafficking, ritual abuse (RA), and mind control (MC) programming. As survivor leaders, they know many others who have endured similar mixed forms of abuse. Those working with sex trafficking victims often focus on exploitation through prostitution or pornography, missing signs of other forms of extreme abuse. Panelists range in age from 58 to 85 and collectively have 121 years of healing. They will discuss how they were introduced to sex trafficking by their families and how their experiences ranged from being exploited by a local group of pedophiles to global elite child sex trafficking rings. Panelists will describe their mind control experiences. MC is a torture-based method of fragmenting a person's self to use them as sex slaves, spies, or assassins. Those abused in cults and/or subjected to MC are easy prey for further manipulation and abuse by sex rings. If the victims escape, they are often coerced back into the rings, despite the best efforts of their helpers to keep them safe. RA is the repetitive ritualistic abuse of children and non-consenting adults in a group setting in the name of an ideology. Panelists will discuss how they were abused by Satanists, Nazis, and dark occultists in the United States and Europe. Ritual abuse and mind control are seen in a subgroup of sex trafficking victims. Awareness of this kind of trauma is vital to helping survivors in their escape and healing. In Part II, panelists will describe their escape and entry into healing. They will also discuss personal examples and signs and symptoms of RA/MC. Resources for working with RA/MC survivors will be provided.

Presentation Objectives:

· Describe each survivor's mind control, ritual abuse, and child sex trafficking experiences

· Describe the effects of the abuse and signs exhibited of being a survivor

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Mapping the Intersections of Substance Use and Human Trafficking in Minnesota

To increase understanding of the intersections between substance use and human trafficking (sex and labor), this presentation describes a project focused on creating a coordinated plan between the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) Safe Harbor Human Trafficking Prevention and Overdose Prevention programs that are currently underway and will be completed in fall 2022. The project includes a literature review, environmental scan, engagement with program grantees, stakeholders, and persons with lived experience in different regions of the state, all culminating in a report providing qualitative data and interpretation to inform future state-level and community-based efforts based in health equity and designed to raise awareness while also supporting multidisciplinary prevention, harm reduction, and intervention initiatives. Of specific interest is the role substances play in survival sex and in tactics by traffickers, as well as challenges and opportunities for cross-informed, trauma-responsive care within both trafficking prevention and substance use treatment services. This project is conducted as part of Safe Harbor Director Caroline Palmer's Master of Public Health program practicum at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health where she is a Bloomberg American Health Initiative Fellow in the Violence Cohort.

Presentation Objectives:

· Provide an overview of how state-based programs in human trafficking and substance use/overdose prevention can work together to support services responses

· Explain the findings of the literature review, community engagement, and final report

· Describe recommendations for next steps in terms of prevention, harm reduction, and intervention responses on the state level and in partnership with service providers and persons with lived experience

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Seeing the Forest Through the Trees: Using Big Data to Combat Violence and Injustice

Now more than ever, decisions that have widespread impact on our world are made based on data collected on a nationwide and/or multinational scale (i.e., big data). This data can come from many sources including governmental efforts (e.g., census), academic pursuits (e.g., ABCD) and/or the efforts of community and/or national organizations (e.g., Transpop). Though much of this data is available to the public, it’s potential remains often unknown and/or underutilized by community experts, activists, and researchers. This presentation will focus on how community members, and researchers can find and use big data ethically to examine, understand, and combat violence and injustice on a national scale. The presenter will first discuss how even those without advanced statistical knowledge might find out about, access, and utilize big data for their cause. Dr. Stenersen will then present a recent effort that used big data to unearth the extent of police harassment and violence towards transgender and gender diverse people involved in sex trade in the United States. The presentation will then include a brief demonstration on how to use a free software (JASP) to conduct analyses using publicly available data. Finally, the presentation will conclude with a discussion in which audience members can share their own topics of interest and brainstorm how big data can be used to support their cause.

Presentation Objectives:

· Discuss how to find, access, and use big data to combat injustice

· Provide an example in real time about how to use big data to answer community- and researcher- generated questions

· Discuss how audience members can integrate big data into their own work

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The Power of Community Groups in Educating and Raising Awareness About Sex Trafficking

The National Council of Jewish Women Canada (NCJWC) is committed to enhancing the lives of individuals within communities through education, service, and social action. It seeks to create positive change by empowering women, assisting the vulnerable, educating the public, and advocating for others. In 2013, after hearing an account from a survivor of sex trafficking at its national conference, the NCJWC Board unanimously passed a resolution to take on sex trafficking awareness as a key project. Given the reality that sex trafficking victims have become younger, NCJWC began its focus upon educating parents, grandparents, and caregivers about this risk to children. NCJWC recognizes that educating parents is key to averting victimization and critical to healing children who have become victims. NCJWC has created an educational power point presentation (NOT IN MY FAMILY) that engages audiences to better understand the risks posed to children and how to help children if they have become victims. NCJWC has also developed partnerships and coalitions and successfully advocated to governments to raise awareness about sex trafficking, culminating in the Government of Canada declaring February 22 as Human Trafficking Awareness Day. As a women’s organization where many members are mothers and grandmothers, NCJWC has created a powerful collective voice to address this critical issue. This work is relevant and serves as a model to other community organizations, women’s organizations, and ethnocultural groups who wish to mobilize and educate members about the dangers of human sex trafficking.

Presentation Objectives:

· Explore and emphasize the responsibility and power of community groups in addressing the issue of sex trafficking

· Share a resource that has been developed for parents

· Share the approach that has been taken in building partnerships and coalitions to raise awareness

· Identify risk factors and ways of prevention sex trafficking

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Beyond Inclusion: A Strength-Based Model for Survivor Leadership and Empowerment

When it comes to finding solutions to end sex trafficking and exploitation, researchers have found survivors are uniquely equipped to help develop policies, advocate, engage with the public, or collaborate with governments to improve legislation and programming (Lockyer, 2020). Further research notes that through the adoption of survivor-led initiatives, organizations can better support survivors of trafficking (Deer & Baumgartner, 2019). However, despite this knowledge, research, policy, and services within the anti-trafficking movement continue to be led primarily by non-profit organizations and other stakeholders, leaving out those with lived experience (Lockyer, 2020). This may explain why despite all levels of government allocating millions of dollars to “fight human trafficking,” efforts so far have been largely ineffective at combating trafficking. Recognizing the need for greater survivor leadership within the anti-trafficking movement, this presentation will provide an overview of a survivor-led vocational skills program developed by Project iRISE. The iRISE Survivor Leadership program was designed and administered by survivors of trafficking. The psychosocial program model uses a strength-based approach to provide trauma-informed skill training that combines experiential education, socio-emotional learning, leadership development, and upskilling for employment. This presentation will provide an in-depth overview of the Survivor Leadership program, including the challenges faced by the survivor team, findings from the program evaluation, earlier success, the final impact of the program in the community, and considerations for survivor-led programming.

Presentation Objectives:

· Discuss the problematic nature of current survivor engagement in the anti-trafficking movement

· Provide an overview of the Project iRISE Survivor Leadership program

· Discuss the benefits and challenges of the iRISE program and outline some of the lessons learned

· Provide recommendations for how organizations can implement their own survivor leadership training

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Developmental Disabilities and Sex Trafficking: How They Coincide

Children with developmental disabilities are ostracized from peer groups at early stages of childhood development. "Normal" children will single out those viewed as different. Brenna Wallace was bullied in elementary school all the way to high school. Brenna was expelled from high school by a principal who also bullied students. All throughout school, Brenna was viewed as different, leading to a variety of concerning behaviors: violence, excessive use of imagination ("lying" others would say), and an obsessive need to feel loved and accepted. During this period, due to Brenna's disability, her mother wound up abusing her physically, mentally, and emotionally. Brenna, angry, frustrated, and alone at the age of 17, sought out relationships that made her feel accepted. Due to Brenna's vulnerabilities, she wound up in a personal sex slave relationship at the age of 19. Brenna was pimped, used, and was to be sold at the time of her escape. Brenna met her trafficker, through another disabled youth. Brenna's trafficker used the promise of a true family, love, and acceptance in order to expand Brenna's boundaries. Brenna would have sex for money, be used to bring in other females, and do whatever was asked of her. Brenna's life of trafficking ended by her own self-awakening through a real friendship. She has been free for 10 years. At the end of this presentation, attendee’s will be able to identify signs of abuse in neurodivergent populations, know what questions to ask and how to ask them, and how to help these people.

Presentation Objectives:

· Expose how vulnerable people with developmental disabilities are to trafficking

· Show through personal experience how people with autism are affected by trafficking

· Demonstrate how traffickers can target people with developmental disabilities

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Complex Rights and Wrongs: The Stories We Deny in Mainstream Understandings of Prostitution and Trafficking in the Sex Industry

Current prostitution and anti-trafficking legislation in the U.S. does not account for the complexities faced by the majority of people in the sex industry (McCracken, 2019). Force and coercion exist, and yet placing individuals in the boxes created by prostitution and trafficking legislation (i.e., victim, criminal, trafficker, prostitute) exacerbates violence against individuals and subverts justice (Weitzer, 2010). The researchers ask how current prostitution and anti-trafficking laws impact consenting sex workers and victims of trafficking. In this session, they will present their analysis of interviews with 60 individuals who have engaged in adult consensual sex work and identity as victims of trafficking and/or have been convicted of trafficking. Centering their voices, they explore how their experiences confront and contradict the legal, political, and medial representations of trafficking and prostitution. The researchers find the majority of people involved in this study faced arrest for prostitution and trafficking when they were not exploiting others but rather victims of exploitation and/or were working with other consenting sex workers to keep themselves safe and free from exploitation and violence. The presenters show how the criminalization of prostitution impacts both individuals engaged in consensual sex work and victims of trafficking. They conclude that city, court, and state legislators must introduce legislation that creates amnesty for sex workers so they can report violence, coercion, exploitation, and/or trafficking against themselves or others without fear of arrest. Finally, the presenters recommend adult consensual prostitution be decriminalized so that consenting sex workers and victims of trafficking are not made more vulnerable due to prostitution arrests and convictions.

Presentation Objectives:

· Explain the differences between adult consensual sex work and exploitation/ trafficking in the sex industry

· Provide an in-depth understanding of how victims of sex trafficking can be caught in the criminalization net of sex trafficking charges and convictions

· Discuss how the intersections of violence, exploitation, and the criminal legal system impact the lives of individuals in the sex industry (both by choice and force)

· Describe the various aspects of carceral and punitive prostitution legislation

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Developing an Evidence-Informed Police Response Tool for Missing Person Reports Linked to Human Trafficking

Concerns surrounding the Toronto Police Services (TPS) handling of missing persons occasioned the 2021 Independent Civilian Review into Missing Persons Investigations. This published 151 recommendations for improving police response to missing persons. Accordingly, the TPS Missing and Missed Implementation Team (MMIT) emerged to address these recommendations. One recommendation was establishing partnerships with researchers to generate evidence-informed practice and policy. While such partnerships are not new, they have not always generated anticipated outcomes. Historically, they have failed at the point of trust—the key to any successful collaboration. Nevertheless, MMIT formed valuable partnerships with academics, Elliott and Ferguson, specializing in missing persons and victimology. Together, the team led a study exploring the connection between missing persons and victimization to enhance police risk assessment. Informed by the study findings, the Review, and victimological theory, the team then developed a Response Assessment Tool that, monumentally, comprises evidence-informed vulnerability factors linked to missing persons, including human trafficking, 2SLGBTQIA+ identities, sex work, and beyond. This presentation outlines this Tool, detailing how it induces consistent and equitable policing, especially for vulnerable and marginalized groups. It focuses explicitly on how this Tool improves police response and case outcomes for missing persons linked to human trafficking, including the alliance between the MMIT and TPS Human Trafficking Unit’s Children at Risk of Exploitation (CARE). Attendees will leave this presentation armed with insights to improve policing with evidence-informed strategies, forge police-academic partnerships considering this positive representation, and advance scholarship on the areas needing attention regarding missing persons and human trafficking.

Presentation Objectives:

· Provide an overview of current international research on missing persons and human trafficking

· Explain the team members’ research project that explored the connection between missing persons and human trafficking in Canada and its key findings

· Demonstrate how the police-academic partnerships led to the translation of research findings into police practice and policy

· Outline how the police-academic partnerships led to the development of a police response tool that streamlines, enhances, and standardizes police handling of these cases and improves case outcomes

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Occupational Therapy & Human Trafficking: A Course Development Plan

Occupational therapy emerged amid war and trauma, establishing itself as a credible healthcare profession by providing effective mental health treatment to those in need (AOTA, 2017; Goodwin University, 2021). Today, occupational therapy has grown to expand its reach to virtually any setting in which people occupy their time. The effects of human trafficking on physical, emotional, psychological, and cognitive functioning result in an array of dysfunction that can be addressed through interdisciplinary care, including occupational therapy. However, human trafficking education and training for occupational therapists is sparce. This course has been developed to bridge the gap between human trafficking education and training, and occupational therapy theory and practice. This presentation will cover aspects of the development of this course, course content in relation to occupational therapy and human trafficking, the future of occupational therapy in combatting human trafficking, and more. This course provides those within the occupational therapy profession discipline-specific content concerning human trafficking. This course is intensive; however, has been designed for occupational therapy personnel of all levels (students, practitioners, educators, researchers, etc.), as well as those who may be interested in a career in occupational therapy. Attendees of this presentation will gain insight into the various roles the profession has in combatting human trafficking, with a focus on the education and training of current and future occupational therapy personnel.

Presentation Objectives:

· Discuss occupational therapy’s role in combatting human trafficking

· Promote the importance of human trafficking education and training for occupational therapists

· Provide an overview of a course development plan for human trafficking education and training at the collegiate level

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Creating Trauma-Sensitive Social Media Campaigns as a Victim Serving Nonprofit

As a victim-serving nonprofit, it is important that victim-centered best practices carry over to our social media awareness efforts. In this workshop, participants will learn how to create trauma-sensitive social media campaigns that respect ethical storytelling and victim-informed best practices and how sensualized social media campaigns can lead to inaccurate education of juvenile sex trafficking. As a result, community members and multidisciplinary partners can misinterpret the realities of juvenile sex trafficking which can lead to prolonged victimization of youth. This workshop provides accessible creation tools, teaches collaborative social media campaigns, and incorporates examples from modalities such as nonprofit organizations and nonprofit leaders. The best practices described in this session elevate lived experience(s) through evidence-based research and survivor-informed studies including Rebecca Bender and Jessa Dillow Crisp.

Presentation Objectives:

· Explain how to create trauma-sensitive social media campaigns that respect ethical storytelling and victim-informed best practices

· Explain how to incorporate trauma sensitivity and victim-informed care into your nonprofit’s social media strategy by eliminating sensualized social media campaigns

· Increase accountability with attendees through trauma-sensitive, victim-informed social media awareness efforts

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Assessing the Impact of Israel's Prostitution Law on Prostitution Consumption and Consumers

In 2020, Israel adopted the Nordic model to reduce prostitution by criminalizing the purchase of sex, expanding services for wo/men in prostitution, and educating the public on prostitution's harms. The main objective of this research is to assess the impact of the law on sex buyers' behavior and attitudes. A 2021 panel survey targeted 5,437 men in Israel. The data will serve as a baseline for a 2023 survey, assessing the impact of the law. 506 men (9%) reported paying for sex during the last 5 years. 7% reported paying for sex in 2019, and only 5% in 2020, the year the law went into effect. This decrease was also caused by COVID-19 lockdowns. Among men who bought sex in the last 5 years, 45% reported not being affected by the law, 21% had not heard of it, 9% had stopped buying sex due to the law and 25% were doing so less, more discreetly or abroad. 40% of sex buyers reported having quit buying sex, 37% are considering quitting or undecided. Only 23% intend to continue. Half of all sex buyers had not told another person that they had bought sex. Findings indicate that the law is beginning to reduce use of prostitution. Increased efforts to raise awareness of the law among sex buyers are necessary. High rates of ambivalence and shame among sex buyers indicate the high potential of the law and education to reduce the use of prostitution.

Presentation Objectives:

· Provide a brief background on the Israeli law based on the Nordic model of criminalizing prostitution consumption

· Provide an overview of the study purpose and methodology

· Present selected findings, particularly those relevant to assessing impact of the law

· Describe the implications and recommendations for increasing the law's impact

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