Child Sex Trafficking and Exploitation- What Every Parent Needs to Know

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Join us today in a profound conversation with Erin Williamson, the Chief Programs and strategy officer at Love146, as she shares her remarkable journey from working with homeless children in Kenya to championing the fight against child trafficking and exploitation. Discover the eye opening truth as we unravel common misconceptions and explore how technology reshapes the dynamics of trafficking. What skills can we develop to combat this heinous issue? How does trafficking impact society at large and why is a trauma informed community crucial? Join us for an episode that promises not only to inform but also to ignite the passion for change. Don't miss this opportunity to deepen your understanding and become part of the solution.

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Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren Nurturing Through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial and emotional support. I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care.

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We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you.

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Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your your experiences are valued and your journey is honored.

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Before diving into today's poignant episode on child trafficking and exploitation with erin Williamson from Love146, I want to share a personal revelation that reshaped my perspective. Much like the complexities of raising traumatized youth, I once believed that issues like child trafficking were distant from my home and my life. I'd never even heard of terms like sex tourism. It was a topic I thought didn't concern me personally, but this conversation opened my eyes to the urgent need for awareness and action. Together, we'll explore how technology influences trafficking dynamics and discuss how we can develop a critical skill set to combat this crisis. We'll also examine its broader societal impact and the importance of a trauma informed community. How can we create an environment where our family doesn't have secrets is not just an ideal, but a practiced reality? Join the conversation as we challenge these misconceptions and and strive for a safer future for our youth.

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Erin, you're a mother yourself? Of two children?

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I am. And their ages Again, tell me.

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I have a 13 year old and a 9 year old so we are in the thick of it. Yes, you are. We were just discussing how when a stranger comes up to a child that's struggling and tells them everything they want to hear, it's hard for them not to fall for these people that are abducting our children for sexual trafficking. Yeah. I mean, what we see, adolescence is a hard time, right. For many of us, we think back on our own adolescence, and it was a tough time. And, you know, for children growing up, I think in today's society, there's even more to compare yourself to. Right?

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There's the kids that you go to school with. There's what you see on TV or in YouTube on, you know, what you might see out in TV, you know, advertisements and social media. And so, you know, it can be really, really challenging. And a lot of times, especially girls, although I'm, you know, this also happens with boys as well, but can have a lot of concern around their image, around. Are they beautiful? Are they enough? Are they smart enough? And, you know, that's what predators use. They come. They come into their world and they say, you are beautiful and you're so, so smart and you're so special, and you're just. You're different than other girls your age. And, you know, and that's a message that every. Every young child wants to hear, that they're special, that they're different, that. That they're somebody that somebody else, you know, takes interest in. And predators really utilize that to form these bonds and these relationships with these children prior to exploitation. So I want to clarify something. Your passion for combating child trafficking and exploitation began in Kenya. It did. It did. With unhoused children. It did. So we're talking about an issue that crosses areas of poverty, areas of wealth.

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This is an issue that doesn't stem from just kids in Africa or. Or other countries, but it happens right here in America. Why don't you tell us what ignited your passion for this heartbreaking subject and how it brought you here today to love 146. Yeah. So I, you know, I did my study abroad over in Kenya, and as part of my program, you had to go off for a month and kind of do research, and you could pick what area.

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And I was really taken aback by the young kids that were living on the street. And we're talking about very young children living by themselves or in groups. Groups. I mean, as young as 3, 4, 5.

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And, you know, and in talking, especially with the girls, many of them described, you know, what is trafficking, right, where there was a group of girls and an older man who would sell them, or they were kind of a wife to a group of boys. And they said that this was the way for them to stay safest.

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Because at least back then when I was over there, you know, law enforcement was quite brutal and. And would demand a lot from them and oftentimes rape them and then continue to arrest them. And there was no kind of juvenile facility and adult facility. So they were. They were incarcerated with adults who would also just take advantage of them. And so I came back here, like many people who might be listening, thinking, well, this is something that happens kind of over there where. Wherever over there is. And I went to Mexico, I worked with street children there, and then came back and got my master's here. And as I was doing that, again, started looking at child sex tourism, which is actually where people will book tickets to go to another country specifically to engage in sexual acts with minors. Really?

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Yeah. And surprisingly, there was. There was a lot on the Internet about kind of this behavior and looking into it and the way in which individuals would justify it, saying, oh, it was culturally appropriate, or they were helping these families, and it was just quite upsetting. And then I became more and more aware that, yes, this too was happening in the United States. And that's really what I've committed myself to since then, realizing that, you know, this is happening in every community. And like you said, there are vulnerabilities. Poverty, for sure, is one. System involvement is one. But we have worked with kids who come from affluent homes who have two parents at home.

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Their vulnerabilities just look different. It might be that the parents are working so hard that they're not able to be there emotionally for their children, or that their children are spending so much time online or gaming, and the parents really have no idea who they're engaging with and talking to through those devices.

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You spoke about the fact that people believe it's something that doesn't happen here at home. What are some of the other common myths or misunderstandings about child trafficking?

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Absolutely. So, you know, there's kind of the white van, you know, that a white van will pull up and kind of kidnap your kid, and that's how they'll end up in trafficking. And reality is that most of the youth that we work with aren't physically taken or even physically held. It really is an emotional bond that the traffickers create with their victims.

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And then, of course, also it's the cycle of abuse. Right. That once the exploitation, at least the initial exploitation has happened, it's the. What are People going to say about you, this is all your worth. I'm the only one who cares and loves you.

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Kind of, you're, you're tainted. This is all you're. You're available for. And, and sometimes that narrative actually gets reinforced, right. When kids home and depending on how their parents react to them, their, their peers react to them, even law enforcement and systems react to them, sometimes the narrative that the traffickers tell them about, nobody's going to believe you. They're going to blame you. This was your fault. You made choices. That does get reinforced, not necessarily from a position of, of wanting to do ill to the child, but I think a lot of parents and a lot of people want to understand how this happens and, and want to blame something or someone.

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And the person right in front of them sometimes becomes the target of their blame, even though, and sometimes it's simply because they don't understand the dynamic of human trafficking. Right. We don't. There's not a ton of information about that dynamic. And there's not a lot of service providers out there that are able and to walk alongside caregivers, whether they be parents or grandparents or foster parents or whoever is caring for that child to really explain to what does this dynamic work, because oftentimes what we'll see is, we'll see kids will be exploited and then they will run back to their exploiter a few times before they're really able to, you know, get themselves out of that situation. And that's even with a lot of support and caring adults in their lives. So awareness is a key component of combating trafficking. Absolutely.

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Awareness is awareness to prevent trafficking. And then if you do find yourself in a situation where your child is experiencing any kind of grooming or recruitment or even trafficking, really getting connected to a service provider that has worked with this population. Right. Not every therapist or every service provider works with trafficking. And the dynamics are just very, very different than other forms of sexual violence. I imagine also, with technology being such a prevalent part of children's lives these days, that that's another reason why we may be seeing more trafficking issues in today's world. Yeah. And I will say if you, you know, if you go to our website, love146.org on the top there's a banner and it's email, specifically for parents and caregivers with really practical tips about introducing technology and how to do it in a manner that's kind of age appropriate and also reduces their risk for trafficking victimization. You know, my, my oldest has a cell phone. The reality is that most children at some point are going to get a device, whether it's an iPad or a cell phone or a gaming system. And, you know, the idea that you, you're not going to at some point give a child that access is, I think, a little unrealistic in today's age. They're going to need to know technology for their jobs as they get older. So, you know, but, but there is a way to do it in a manner that kind of slowly increases their responsibility and their access. Right. We kind of utilize the analogy. You wouldn't drive your kid to New York City and drop them off on a corner and then leave and say, I'll be back in two hours. And yet we kind of do that when we just give a kid a device and we don't provide any guidance or any boundaries around that device or really restrictions. And oftentimes we see parents and caregivers, what they'll do is they'll kind of wait for the first thing to go wrong and then they'll be like, oh my gosh, now I'm going to implement these rules and restrictions. And that's developmentally, that's really backwards. We actually really need to implement harder kind of protective factors and boundaries and kind of ability to kind of monitor what they're doing on those devices. And then as kids develop and show that they can handle that level of, of freedom and responsibility, then slowly, as they grow in age, we release more and more access and we provide less and less monitoring because again, at some point they're going to leave your household. We want them to be able to fully function on their own. But the idea that a 12 or a 13 or an 11 year old could fully function on the Internet without kind of experiencing any form of ill, it's just unrealistic at this point. You know, you can do a report on Virginian and spell it wrong and get access to a lot of inappropriate stuff. Yes. Tell us about the survivor care program that you've built in Connecticut. Sure.

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So, no, our survivor care program in Connecticut is really for kids who have been identified as suspected and confirmed survivors of trafficking or are at very high risk and they're in the process of being groomed and recruited. And it really was because we looked around and we didn't see any sort of program that existed for this specific population. We go out into the community. It's not a program where kids have to come to us. We go out there and that's in part so that we can work with parents and caregivers Some of our youth, our system involved, are involved in the child welfare system. For anyone who's, you know, familiar with that system, if you're an adolescent in child welfare and you run, you actually risk losing that foster placement so that sometimes our youth will come back and they will be moved around the state.

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So we wanted to make sure that the same service provider could follow them, and they're all licensed and social workers, but could follow them no matter where they were placed so that they had continuity of care. Because oftentimes what we found, especially with those that were system involved, is, you know, by the third or the fourth placement or the third or the fourth, you know, therapist asking the exact same questions, the kids kind of become like, I don't want to answer these questions anymore. Right?

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And they can be seen as not compliant. They can be labeled, when in reality, you know, that can be really traumatizing for kids to have be asked to repeat that over and over and over.

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And so we journey alongside them as they go through other services. We work with the foster parents to try to provide them support so that the foster parents have somebody that they can call if they're struggling. We really do a lot of proactive safety planning. So again, if, you know, if we have a kiddo, for example, that we know is a frequent flyer, we call frequent flyer. If they run a lot, we'll say, like, are you a planner or are you an impulse runner? Right. If you're a planner, then why don't you find either a friend, you can always tell where you're going, or write it down and hide it in the same place in your room and tell that friend, if I'm ever missing for more than 24 hours, I want you to be able to tell, you know, my foster parent or a teacher at school that I hide a note in this book that says where I am, so that if something, God forbid, happens to you, at least people know where to start looking for you. If you're an impulse runner, you know, work with your parent or your caregiver to say, here's the three places I'm going to run to. I'm going to run to my aunt's house. I'm going to run to my best friend's house, and I'm going to run to, you know, the person down the street that I sometimes hang out with, and I'm going to try to go there first before I run anywhere else. But let's make a deal. If I go there and you call and I'm there, you'll Let me stay there the night. Right. So we kind of like pre plan for what's going to happen and then we also preplan consequences because a lot of our kids who are on the run will say they didn't want to come back because they didn't know what was going to happen to them.

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So pre planning for consequences is really important, especially around adolescents and teenagers who, you know, part of their job is testing boundaries, is breaking rules. That's actually like totally developmentally appropriate. So as parents and caregivers, it behooves us to have proactive conversations with them about, look, I'm going to tell you, this is your curfew. I'm going to tell you these are the rules. And I'm also going to let you know that I was once someone your age and I understand that you part of an adolescent's job is to push boundaries. I'm not saying I want you to break the rules, but I want you to know if you do that the most important thing when that happens is your safety.

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So you can always call me, you can always come home. We'll figure it out together. I'm not saying you won't. There won't be any consequences. But the most important thing right in that moment is for you to know that you can come home and be safe and we'll figure it out together. Now, this program that you're speaking about, this is something, someone that's listening.

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If they don't have a program in their area, can they contact you and get support? They can contact us and, and they can get. We can either talk them through it or help connect them to another program in their, in their area. There's also a wonderful one, 800 number. It's the National Human Trafficking Hotline. That number is 888-373-7888.

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And they are connected to all of the service providers nationwide. So that's also a great resource to reach out to, to see if there's support.

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We'll be sure to post that information in the show notes.

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Wonderful. Tell us some success stories. Give us some hope for where programs like this are helping our country and our kids. I love that question because you're right so far, so many times this issue, people kind of think of all the horrible things that kids have gone through and it can really make you feel like, oh my gosh, so sad about what, what can happen in children's lives. But the reality is, I mean, first of all, so many of our kids are so funny. They are have such resilience and, and they're just so boisterous and wonderful to work with and, and they really do have so many talents and so many skills and so many desires for their future. And so one of the things that we are really committed to is only about half of the youth who come to us are regularly attending school.

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And we really work to re engage youth in the education system, whether that is going back to the high school that they were at or completing a GED or doing a credit recovery program. But we want them to be able to achieve their dreams and we also want them to understand how to take those steps. And so we spend a lot of time with them talking about what their future might look like. And for many of our youth, this is the first time they've ever thought about that. A lot of them have assumed either futures that had violence in them or they assumed they were going to unfortunately pass away at a young age. And so we really try to empower them to envision a future that they can create for themselves and really help to show them that they have power just internally and intrinsically and being a human being to help create a different path and different future for them. And so we work with them on resume building and job applications. And we don't just stop at like, okay, they got an entry level job, we then talk to them about, okay, that's great for a paycheck, but let's talk about a career, right? Let's get you on a path so that you can get promotions, so that you can get higher wages, so that you can, you have more options if you find that, you know, this place of work isn't working for you so you can find another job somewhere else. And we really had a lot of success both with our employment education program as well as getting kid into, kids into post secondary education. So a lot of our kids, some of them go on to get two and four year degrees, some of them go on to get certificates, right? There's a lot of wonderful jobs where, you know, you can become a cna, you can become, there's a lot of medical jobs right now that are in high demand where a certificate can really put you on the path to a successful career. And so we really want to start with that kids at what they're interested in and then set them on a path towards success. Do you have a particular story of a child that you've worked with that comes to mind? Yeah, you know, so we don't tell necessarily specific stories because we never want our kids to feel like we are you know, utilizing their story specifically. But what I can tell you, and this, I can tell you this very clearly because this is the story of many, many of our youth. But we have many youth who when they're first kind of referred to us, they're at a younger age. Right. We tend to get 13, 14, many of them.

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The first thing we do is we come and do what we call a rapid response where we provide kind of an infusion of information and safety planning. And it is not uncommon for a youth to open up the door to us and say, I told them not to send you, I am not going to talk to you. So we've had youth who have done our rapid responses hiding under their covers of their, their room or timed us and said, you have five minutes to prove yourself and if you don't, you know, prove yourself worthy, I'm going to kick you out. We have kids that, that have said, I'm like turned their back to us while we've, we've started this. And really what we do is we just talk to them. We say there's no judgment, we're going to share things that have happened to other youth. We're not saying they have or will happen to you. And so many times we have had youth disclose kind of what they're going through. What do you think is the key component of those conversations that you're having with the kids that makes them turn? Is it sentence or particular type of connection?

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How we phrase it is we work with youth that have found themselves in really difficult situations and had to make really difficult, difficult choices. And there's no judgment in the choices that you or any of the youth that we've had to work with have made. And a lot of times those choices are made for survival and you have survived. So if you have a child that has been selling themselves or probably many of them don't get paid, they're just cared for. Yeah, we have all different kinds of situations with their traffickers. If there's usually they don't see a lot of the funding or the money that is profited off of them.

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They might be showered with gifts, makeup or hairdo or nails. But again, when you think about it, that's oftentimes to make them look more attractive to the individuals who are purchasing them for sex. And so it's this cyclical nature where they're kind of given, given these gifts or taken for food. But it's always with the, the long term thought of this is going to help me make more money off of this.

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Child, what do you say to these kids that helps get through to them, that breaks that bond that they have with their perpetrator? You know, it really depends on who their perpetrators are. We do sometimes work with youth where their perpetrators are their parents. And that's really hard because, you know, you can get a new boyfriend, you can get a new friend, but you're not going to get a new mom. And so, you know, when it is a parent or a caregiver or even any other kind of family relative, you know, we've had aunts and uncles and sisters even, and brothers really talking about what. First of all, obviously, that should never have happened, and that's not what that relationship is meant to be.

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And also kind of, what is that relationship?

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What is the loss that you. That you have experienced? And really validating that. That is a loss, right? That is a loss. When you have a relationship that's supposed to be an important bond in your life, and that bond ends up being used as a weapon. Sometimes when we're talking about romantic partners or friends, sometimes we have couples that will traffic the kids that we work with. We're able to really, really walk them through of were you making choices or were these people kind of what we call grooming and recruiting you? Right. First, kind of telling, giving you all the flattery and saying everything to make you feel special, and then slowly pulling you away from your parents, your grandparents, your caregivers, and then really flipping the switch at some point and saying, if you really loved me, or taking photos and then saying, I'm going to blackmail you, I'm going to send these to you, or what would your grandparents think of this? What would your friends at school think if I sent this out, I'm going to do this? We do see a lot of that blackmail. So again, as you're working with kids and raising kids, talking to them about that grooming and recruitment process, because oftentimes we send this message of like, don't talk to strangers. But what our youth will say is, by the time they were exploiting me, they weren't a stranger. They were this really important person in my life. Right. That I didn't want to leave, I didn't want to lose. Very important. Yeah. And that brings us back to realizing that the most important thing that we can do is plant the seeds early on, make them aware of things. Maybe these are issues that we don't really want to speak about to our children but are essential in today's world.

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Do you help us? Can you help us find. Is There a pleasant way of addressing this with kids that doesn't frighten them too much. Yeah, and we do talk about that in that email series that I was sharing, but we really talk about it. The analogy I often use is, is it's like crossing a street, right? The first time when a kid is really young, you're going to hold their hand, you're going to pause, you're going to show them how to look both ways.

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You know, the first time they cross the street on their own, it's not going to be a massive highway, Right. It's going to be a smaller road, maybe a road that's not very busy with cars. And then, you know, the, the goal is, is that by the time they reach adolescence, they know how to cross streets safely. And at some point, they're crossing streets, you know, and, and maybe even in New York City and navigating what that looks like. And the. Absolutely the same is true for introducing these topics. Right. So initially, when they're young, we. We oftentimes with our children would use the phrase, our family doesn't have secrets. Right. Because a lot of times predators, especially for younger children, they will say things to kids to see if they're susceptible, like, do you know how to keep a secret? Can I tell you a secret? And so one of the great things for kids to say back is my family doesn't have secrets because that tells that predator. This is not. This is going to be somebody that goes and tells an adult, right? So it's starting really young with just things like that, like my body, my space, right? It's your body, it's your space. And the same way as a parent, it's my body, it's my space. And we kind of practice working on those boundary settings, just even within our own family. And then as we get older, you know, having that conversation of, you know, not every family is a safe family for everybody, and not every person is a safe person. And, you know, there may be somebody who seems safe to you, but at some point they might not become safe. Right. And, and I'll give you an example of, of just daily things that can happen in your kid's life that can be moments for these conversations. I remember when my child was about five or six years old, she was riding home on the bus, and she was sitting with an older kid that had sat down next to her, and she said, that's my bus stop. And the older kid said, just didn't move. And she goes, that's my bus stop. I need to get Out. And the older kid again didn't move. And the older kid said, well, what are you going to say? And she said, I need to get out now. That's my bus stop. And again, the older kid continued to not move. So she ended up, you know, hitting the older kid's legs and pushing her way out. And my two kids came home running off the bus. And my older one, you know, it was like, oh, my gosh.

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You know, my. You know, this. Your. Your daughter ended up hitting this person. And my younger one is crying and explaining the situation. I looked at her and I go, if you ever feel like you are stuck in a situation and you need to get out, you do whatever it takes to get out. I am happy to have that conversation. If the principal calls me or someone calls me, I said, obviously, we talk about not hitting and we talk about, you know, not hurting, but this was different. You felt trapped and stuck and unsafe. And when you feel unsafe, you can do whatever you need. And so there's these moments of permissioning, right, when things are okay.

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Because if we just teach our kids to be nice and kind and don't ever talk back to our teachers, don't ever question, you know, the reality is, is that sometimes those individuals are not safe individuals. And so helping your kid navigate, I want you to trust your gut, right, and follow your gut. And if you're doing that, I will support you. Now, your gut might not always be right, and we'll talk about when your gut's not right and. And we'll navigate that. But I want you to ultimately learn that. And then I will say, finally, before we got. We gave our.

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Our child that his. Our oldest, a cell phone. I said, if you're old enough to have this, you're old enough to have a really hard conversation about what you might come across. And I said, great point. You know, And I said, you know, you're. Let me explain something. You can never unsee something. So if you're swiping and you come across something and you're not sure, you swipe because you can never not unsee it. And. And really talk to him about, you know, what he might come across on the Internet and what talking to individuals means, and who's a stranger and who's somebody they know, and how predators really position themselves as somebody who is safe, but they do that in order to kind of form these relationships. And again, my feeling is, and our feeling as a family is if you're old enough to have a cell phone, then you're old enough to have some more difficult and challenging situation conversations. Absolutely.

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The Prevention Education Initiative. Yes. So we have a curriculum called Not a Number. And we have done that in schools, in after school programs. We've done that in juvenile justice sittings. Really anywhere that kids congregate, we can implement that program. And it's a five module program, five hours. And it really walks kids through what is a healthy relationship, what is an unhealthy relationship. Let's practice refusal skills. Let's talk about consent. And it's based on the idea that it's, you know, we tell kids not to do drugs and they still do drugs. Right. Really what we need to do is we need to develop their skill set so they know what to do if they're in an uncomfortable situation. And so it's a lot about skill building, practicing those skills, identifying your own vulnerabilities as an individual and how you might respond if somebody's trying to take away those or take advantage of those vulnerabilities. And that's not in any way to do victim blaming. But we all have vulnerabilities around things. Right. We all are self conscious around certain things or, you know, wish certain things in our life would be different. And that is exactly what predators take advantage of. And so being aware of our own vulnerabilities is really important, not just for trafficking, but for kind of any sort of individual that wants to take advantage of you, even if it's like a financial scam later on in life. Right. That these are really important things to know about yourself.

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Absolutely. Oh, great conversation. What do you think are some of the broad impacts on our society of child trafficking?

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Yeah, I think, you know, this is one of those unfortunate topics where once you start to become aware of it, you realize how prevalent it is. And not just trafficking of children, but the sexual abuse of children. And, and that. Do you see it improving or getting worse?

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It's really hard to measure that. I think we're seeing, we did see during COVID for example, the national center for Missing and Exploited Children saw an increase of online exploitation happening. Right.

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People were spending time on their computers and really searching and looking for inappropriate images of children. And early childhood trauma is something that oftentimes comes back later in life during adolescence again, you know, when kids reach their 20s and oftentimes we'll see even as adults. Right. It reemerge. And I think one of the things that we make a mistake as a society of thinking is, well, it happened in childhood, they've gotten over it, or it can't come back or they should have gotten over it by now. And I think really we need to permission ourselves to know that, you know, seeking support, it's not a linear thing. Right. You might be, you might get therapy right after you experience trauma. And then it might reemerge in a different form. And then especially for those of us who are parents and caregivers, it might re. Emerge because our kids are going through something and it's triggering something in us about I promise something like this would never happen to my child or my, my grandchild or I thought I could protect them and I couldn't. Right.

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There's a level of guilt, a level of. And so I think we really need to normalize the fact that, you know, one in four women has been sexually abused by the time of 18 and one in six boys. And that is going to impact. And that's just by 18, that's going to impact them for the rest of their lives. And so we need to normalize when we enter a room and we're talking about something that. But there are probably people who have experienced trauma alongside us and majority of people have experienced something really difficult in their life. Even if it wasn't sexual abuse, it might have loss of a parent or a significant illness in their family. And yet we shun talking about trauma.

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And I just, I wish that we normalized acknowledgement of it and normalized that it can come up and reemerge at different points in our life, throughout our life.

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Right. 20 years from now, in the role that you're in, what would you like to see? Just dream for a minute. That's a great question. Our executive director is currently asking me that question as well.

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You know, I feel very, very strongly that some of the most, some of the kids that are at the highest risk are those in our child welfare system.

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And oftentimes we focus on, you know, what parents should do or what grandparents who are raising kids should do. And yet we never put that level of onus on the child welfare system, which is responsible for being the legal guardian for so many kids. And so in my world, what we're building towards is a system in which they feel that onus, and especially as it relates to prevention, they feel a sense of we are working with some of the most vulnerable kids and we have to do everything we can to prevent the trafficking of children. Because we see so many of our kids, even if they're not actively in the system, when they come to us, they have histories of system involvement, they have histories of child welfare coming in and saying your home life is not a safe place. So they might now be living with somebody else in their family or maybe their parents have worked on creating a safer home for them. But that connection between system involvement and trafficking is so strong that I really feel passionately that there needs to be a higher onus of prevention education put available for those kids. And the onus to ensure that that happens really needs to be on the system. Well, thank you, Erin. Thank you for your passion and your honesty and your vision. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for having me and for kind of elevating this issue and acknowledging that, right, there are certain kids that might be more at more risk, but really all kids need to know about this information and also need to know what to do and where to go if something like this happens. Absolutely. And so we need to create a safe community for them.

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Absolutely. Thank you, Erin. Yeah, thank you. If you have a child that you think may be at risk, or if you know of someone else that does, we hope you'll get this information from this podcast to them. You can contact Erin Williamsonove146.org or call the National Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888.

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And again, those links will also be in the show Notes.

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Next week, we're diving into a poignant and powerful topic that deeply resonates with resilience and love.

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Join us as we sit down with Laura Walton, a licensed mental health therapist, clinic coach, and founder of Grief on Purpose. Discover the untold stories of grandparents who step into their caregiving role under challenging circumstances, often carrying their own unseen burdens of past trauma and grief. Laura will guide us through understanding how unresolved trauma from earlier life stages in our own lives can impact our parenting and caregiving roles. Today, we'll explore compassionate strategies to process and acknowledge grief, transforming it from a silent shadow into a powerful force for healing and growth. Thank you for tuning in to grandparents, raising grandchildren, nurturing through adversity. Remember, you are not alone. Together we can find strength and hope in the face of adversity. Peace be with you. And I pray that you find some time this week to listen to your inner wisdom amongst the noise and the pandemonium of this world.