- Sex trafficking is an enormous global problem.

And the United States is one of the top three nations of origin for human trafficking along with Mexico and the Philippines, that according to the state department.

And Texas ranks number two in the country.

More than half of human trafficking victims in the US were sex trafficking cases involving children.

There's a lot we don't know about sex trafficking in the us but there are things that we do know.

99% of sex trafficking victims are women and girls.

One in seven runaways in the US is a likely victim according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.

Girls in foster care are particularly vulnerable.

And we know the internet is by far the most dominant business model sex traffickers use to solicit buyers of commercial sex and also the most common tool for luring victims.

All of this made us wonder about the pervasiveness of the problem in West Texas.

So tonight we ask, is sex trafficking an issue in West Texas?

I'm Becky Ferguson and this is One Question.

(whooshing sound) (intense music) Is sex trafficking an issue in West Texas?

This evening we talk to three women with direct knowledge of the problem.

To learn the scope of the problem in the Permian basin, what's being done to tackle the issue and what help is available to victims of sex trafficking.

We're interviewing Laura Nordolf, the district attorney in Midland County and thank you so much for taking some time with us.

Today we're talking about human trafficking and sex trafficking.

And if you will tell us the difference.

- So when we talk about human trafficking, we talk about whenever somebody is moved, abducted or whether they are secluded to a certain location for the purposes of engaging in labor.

Not particularly sexual labor, but it could be forced labor whether it be in a field or at a restaurant or a variety of other locations.

Sex trafficking can include, forcing somebody to engage in sexual activity, but even with holding food.

By, you know, keeping them in a house, same kind of concept.

And so, while a lot of people believe that the person who is sex trafficked is the one who's abducted.

That's really not our common scenario.

Another great misconception about trafficking victims centers around the fact that they want out.

So when it comes to trying to enforce the laws and when we have somebody who's been, let's say arrested for prostitution, to try and get their cooperation with law enforcement so that we can ultimately find out who their trafficker is, is very difficult.

It takes a very different approach.

And that's what makes the cases whether it be a human trafficking or sex trafficking case, they're difficult to prosecute because we're just dealing with essentially individuals who've been brainwashed or are terrified to speak out against her trafficker.

- How predominant is the problem of sex trafficking in Midland, in the Permian basin?

- In reality, sex trafficking and human trafficking is a substantial issue in the Permian basin.

I've participated in multiple sustaining operations with law enforcement over the past 10 years.

One where we went, worked for three weeks straight trying to identify individuals who are online trying to solicit minors for sex.

And these are individuals that are coming to Midland to engage in sexual intercourse with what they believe to be a 13-year old.

We arrested 37 people out of that one sting.

We are well-known on the national level for being part of the corridor where traffickers move or pimps move prostitutes from motel to motel to motel.

And they typically runs from about the Midland Odessa area over to Atlanta, Georgia.

- Have you had success in prosecuting traffickers in the past?

- We have had an opportunity to prosecute traffickers in the past.

We've had traffickers who have come as far as Brazil to bring ladies here, especially during Oil Show.

That is normally a very, very active time for traffickers.

We have a lot of individuals who bring girls down from Lubbock.

And so we have had successful prosecution.

It normally centers around an operation that we're working at the time, some type of sting operation.

- I know that you're involved in sort of the preventative side of it as well.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- So on the preventative side, one of the best things that we can do is educate the public.

And we can let people know it's truly okay to say I want out and we will help you get out.

And we have means to get you out of that scenario.

And so many are just so scared.

So the education side is huge.

And also when we prosecute the cases, we want it to be well-known.

If you come here, we catch you, we're going to prosecute you, and we're going to make sure that you don't come back.

- How big a problem do you think sex trafficking is with children?

- I think that it is probably one of the most under reported, underrepresented offenses that occur.

Because a lot of times the children that are being trafficked are being trafficked by their parents.

Or they are children who are runaways and their parents haven't ever reported them as runaways.

And so these are the absolute most vulnerable group of children that we are dealing with.

And a lot of them, they don't even know how do they begin to get away from their trafficker?

- Are you at all hopeful that things will get better or are you discouraged?

- In this job one can't let the crimes that are occurring in our community get you down.

Because if I get down, if I was discouraged, then I wouldn't be doing my job.

I firmly believe that we can continue to combat this.

And we will.

Do I think that it's going to be a problem that we're gonna solve overnight?

No, but I believe that persistent and consistent prosecution of these cases will send a clear message that if you come here and you commit this crime, there will be consequences for it.

- I'm visiting with Addi Reyes who is a special agent with the FBI office in El Paso.

Thank you so much for joining us agent Reyes.

I understand the FBI office in El Paso covers the Midland Odessa area.

Can you give me an idea of the scope of the problem of sex trafficking in the West Texas area?

- Sure.

So the Bureau does a lot of work in this category specifically.

Throughout the Bureau we have about maybe a little bit over 10,500 cases that involve these type of crimes.

Now in Texas, it's about, in the FBI field office, it's a little bit over a 100 cases in that specific area in the El Paso, Midland and Alpine office.

- And we're talking about the traffickers who are arrested and charged and eventually convicted.

Who are traffickers?

- Well, traffickers tend to be, you know, any, I think when there's a vulnerability, and when there's an exploit and there's money to be made, anybody essentially could be a perpetrator or a trafficker.

- Is it difficult to get sex trafficking victims to testify?

- In many cases, it is difficult.

And I mean, it is a traumatic event.

It is something that they, a lot of them tend to block and don't wanna revisit again.

So yeah, it is in many cases.

They don't report it until, you know, many years after the event has occurred.

But we do have fortunately some victims that do come forward and we have individuals that are specifically trained to address their experience.

And some of them do come back and testify and that's great 'cause most of the time there's more than one victim that has been exploited.

- Do you think pornography has any influence on child sex trafficking?

- I think it does.

I think it does.

I mean, a lot of the ads definitely do play into pornography and unfortunately our children are the ones that are most of the time online.

So it's important to make sure that as caretakers or parents we're addressing that particular danger that comes with being online.

- Is there anything you'd like to add?

- I think one of the things that I would like to add is that anybody can be a victim.

I think most of the time we think of undocumented foreign nationals as being victims of either labor trafficking or sex trafficking or most of the time think that it's only women or girls that are trafficked, although it is definitely a large portion but there's men that are forced into labor trafficking.

And there's also boys that are also, play into this.

I think one of the things that I would like to emphasize is just the importance of having, if we have young underage kids on the internet, just make sure that the parents or the caretakers are making sure that they're looking and making sure that they're browsing through their history and see who they're involved with and what they're doing and have those conversations with the children and abort a potential disaster or a potential harm to these kids.

- Thank you so much agent Reyes for visiting with us today.

I appreciate you.

- You're welcome.

- Now we're talking to Lisa bounds, who is the founder and CEO of Reflections.

And why don't we start out with you telling us what is Reflections.

- Reflection Ministries is an organization that was equipped and really established to identify victims of human trafficking and then equip cities through education and provide extensive avenues of restoration for human trafficking victims.

We began at the moment of crisis and we have programs that will last and equip them up till the four years with us.

- Let's talk about the ladies that you have here and how they come and then what happens once they get here.

- Most of ours are from agencies, law enforcement across the United States.

We've had them as far as Wisconsin, Florida, Idaho, New Mexico, Colorado, some in Texas.

And then some right here from the Permian basin.

Once they arrive at our doorstep, we start, the first 10 days we provide crisis care.

We take them to the doctor.

We go to the eye doctor, we go to the dentist.

We make sure that we handle the nutritional aspects of what needs to happen, allow them to rest and really just kind of settle in for a few days.

We have to handle the basic necessities before we can do anything else.

And then we just move through.

We have three different phases.

We move into the next phase and we start the education process.

So maybe they have the ability to get their high school diploma or their GED.

Maybe they have their GED but they would like to do something in a trade school or they would like to take college classes.

We try to make sure that we handle the education aspect.

Sometimes we have to deal with probation.

We deal with legal issues.

We step in and we acquire their birth certificate, their social security.

We have a young lady right now that is with us under an assumed name.

We're recreating her identity.

A new name, a new social, a new birth certificate, everything.

Because she is not safe if her traffickers found her in multiple locations.

And the only way that we can get away from him until he's prosecuted, is to change who she is.

So really stepping into a role that allows them to work in the community, we have a young lady right now that will begin working in the next couple of weeks with one of our stakeholders.

We're so excited about that community partnership.

That she can be in the community, work in a safe place and learn a skill.

And then be able to create her own community of support once she graduates all the way and we will support her up to four years - Who is vulnerable to being sex trafficked.

- I don't think anyone ever thought it would happen to me.

They didn't notice me or think I would fit the mold.

I grew up in a great home.

I have wonderful parents, very protective.

And I went to church every time the doors were open, but I wasn't educated for what was to happen to me within the first two weeks of being on a college campus.

At barely the age of 18 in Denton, Texas.

I wasn't doing anything wrong.

I wasn't at a bar, I wasn't inappropriately dressed.

I wasn't drinking.

I wasn't doing drugs.

I was walking home from class one day, doing just what everyone else does.

A guy meets a girl and he said, "Hey, you wanna go out?"

And we got to visiting.

And the next thing I know it wasn't long before he was drugging me and selling me.

But it can happen to anyone and I think that's the challenge as most people think, oh, this is just a snatching grab in a white van in the Walmart or target parking lot.

We've had that.

We've had a young lady that has been picked up in a white van, instantly being injected with heroin and horse tranquilizers.

All of that does happen.

But Hollywood makes it sound like this is the 90 to 99%.

And most of it happens with through grooming in our schools and in our churches.

- Why do you think the sex trafficking is such a problem here?

Because we are accessible to I-10 and I-20.

We are a thoroughfare from the East coast to the West coast and we have a lot of money.

And when you look at 67% of buyers are white educated men.

That's a really hard thing for me because I'm gonna say I'm married to a white educated man.

And it's hard for people to understand that 75% of buyers are recurring buyers with disposable income of over $120,000 a year.

In our world we might go, that's really not a lot of money.

In the grand scheme of things, when you live in the Permian basin and you know what rent and everything else costs, but 75% are men that make over $120,000 a year that continue to buy people.

And so it's not always what you think is cross the tracks or sleazy motels but it's people that have the ability to have people deliver to your door.

You can have a person delivered to your door in 15 minutes if you have access to the internet anywhere in the United States.

And because of 46% of trafficking individuals are sold by their families, it really changes what it looks like here in the Permian basin.

We had a dad a couple of years ago that was selling his two daughters in Andrews and all the main camps.

Because he had a job on one of the rigs and then he got addicted to meth.

And so to fulfill his meth habit in order for his job, he was selling his daughters at the main camps, but nobody's paying attention.

Everybody's looking the other.

We only have trafficking because we have a demand.

If we did not have a demand, if there were not people wanting to have sex with 14-year old girls and 11-year old boys, it wouldn't exist.

It's just like everything else.

There is a supply and demand.

Those individuals come from all walks of life.

They can be preachers.

They can be youth ministers.

There was a youth minister and a pastor in the Denton area that were just shut down.

They were, started pornography in the church with the youth girls and then were selling the girls out of the back of the church.

There was a youth minister and ER doctor in North Dakota and they were doing the same thing.

Where do we put our trust?

That's the hard thing.

I'm not saying every youth minister and every pastor and every medical doctor are bad people or every coach.

I'm just saying that there are people that are selling individuals that we as community people put our trust in because we wouldn't question it.

Why would we question that our youth minister is accessible to our kids 24 seven?

Because we just wanna think, oh, well that just doesn't happen.

It doesn't happen in our community.

But we have two grandmothers.

They look just like grandmothers.

Couple of years ago running girls up and down the East coast and West coast up and down I-20.

Nobody was ever the wiser because they look just like grandmothers.

I think that's where we have to understand.

We need to do the whole trust and verify as who is not great source and who is not a trustworthy person in our life because trafficking comes in and slips in so easily.

And I think that's the hard part when people go, well, how do you know they're a trafficker?

I think for us we look at what is their demeanor towards our victims.

When we are in public and we look at a victim and we go, are your answers scripted?

Are they inappropriately dressed?

Are they tattooed?

Are they branded?

In the state of Texas if you have a tattoo under the age of 18 without parental consent, it's against the law.

Most of our trafficking victims, I'm gonna say all but one have been branded.

Branded with barcodes, branded with traffickers names or some way to identify them as you are only here to make me money because you are a commodity that can be repurposed over and over.

You are not a person.

And so we try really hard to make sure what are we looking at?

Do those traffickers promise our victims nice things?

The next thing you know, they have new bags, new shoes, they have their nails done.

They have their hair done.

They have the eyelashes.

And so I think it's really, how do we put it in perspective of who we're looking for.

- And what drives the demand?

Is it the internet?

- Pornography is the number one thing that drives sex trafficking.

The demand of course.

But when you look at pornography and you go 75% of pornography for kids comes through gaming devices.

And you've got kiddos that are on gaming systems at the age of nine, 10, 11, 12.

Well, by the time they're able to buy their first person, the average age of buying a person for sex is about the age of 21.

Well, you already have a lot of things in your mind about what you think sex is all about and relationships.

And so, when we look at pornography in the United States, it fuels pornography in the world.

We far surpass any other country when it comes to viewing pornography.

On average, Pornhub put out statistics last year, almost 220,000 videos are viewed every single minute of a 24-hour day in the United States.

200 or 115 million people dial into that one site.

And pornography after the pandemic, the first 90 days of the pandemic was probably elevated about 30% because kids were at home, people were at home.

You can't fulfill your need out in the community but you're gonna fulfill it somewhere.

We have to figure out how do we provide restorative care for individuals across not only Texas but the United States that are not a band-aid treatment.

We have a young lady right now that's 18.

She started being sold by her dad at the age of two.

Her grandmother knows, her mom knows, her siblings know.

This is a family deal.

And now we have her.

And now we have the ability to walk through that process of helping with a high school diploma and helping her understand who Christ is at her life and what a real restorative avenue and home looks like.

For her to sleep in a bedroom that's just hers with clean sheets has been life changing for her.

And we have to figure out as a community and as a city and as a nation, where do we put our resources for restorative care and get out of the way for our egos and somebody is doing it better.

There's not gonna be enough money to go around, but how can we really step into the lives and walk a pattern of healing with them for years?

Because it's not a quick fix.

And I think that's been the biggest challenge for people is, they go, oh, we wanna volunteer with you, oh, we wanna volunteer with you.

When you look at life expectancy for a trafficking victim is about seven years on the street.

But recovery sometimes can be eight to nine years because they're dealing with triggers, they're dealing with things that happen over and over.

Let's take the psychological aspect out of it.

Let's just deal with the physical.

Let's deal with the forced abortion that we just had two weeks ago.

Let's deal with the STDs.

We have a young lady that her trafficker shattered her pelvis and both of her legs, but put her back in bed for 17 months and continued to sell her without medical care.

So he still continued to allow people to come in and get on top of her every single day, multiple times a day, without medical care, with a fractured pelvis and shattered legs.

It's a money-making industry.

But it's only driven because we have a demand.

And until we decide as a community that we want to do something different and provide real restorative care and be a voice for those, we're gonna keep doing band-aid treatments.

I sit here because I can say there is life after trafficking.

I have incredible survivor leaders across the United States that are doing the same thing, that are bringing awareness, that are stepping into that role.

And we see it on a daily basis.

We see them move from phase one to phase two.

We see them go to class.

We see them get their GED, get their high school diploma, get a job, be in the community and work, and graduate and be able to go back and live and do whatever they wanna do.

And so absolutely there is hope.

As long as they are still breathing, I always go, we have a win.

- The Permian basin is in the top five regions in the United States for trafficking, mainly due to our proximity to Interstate 20 and Interstate 10.

There are currently fewer than 2,000 beds in the USA with a trauma-informed care staff for sex trafficking victims.

Thanks to Reflection Ministry of Texas, some of those beds are here in the basin.

There is hope for restoration for victims of sex trafficking.

There's a national hotline seen here.

Reflection ministry provides avenues of restoration.

Beginning at the crisis entry level with aftercare programs covering up to four years.

Victims may contact Reflection Ministries anonymously at the number seen below.

Our painting today is by Fred Troller, a Swiss American who lived from 1930 to 2002.

Troller was an artist and designer who helped popularize a minimalist type of graphic style known as Swiss new typography in the United States in the 1960s.

This style was in contrast to the decorative and ornamental graphic design trends at the time.

The Swiss aesthetic was influenced by the Bauhaus school of the 1920s and focused on stark, bold typefaces in primary colors.

It was a logical practical style which was popular among multinational corporations who wanted uniform graphic identities that were clearly understood by their clients.

Troller's personal interpretation of the style was characterized by manipulated geographic forms, juxtapositions of large and small lettering and visual pens formed by the fonts themselves.

This painting is from the Baker Schorr Fine Art Gallery in Midland.

Finally, thank you for joining us for One Question.

We will be back each Saturday at 4:30 where we will get answers to the questions you want to know from the people who know.

Otherwise to watch One Question include Basin PBS, Facebook, Passport and YouTube.

If you have a question send it to us at OneQuestion@basinpbs.org.

I'm Becky Ferguson.

Good night.

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