(Amber Renee Dixon) Should human trafficking prevention be taught in Nevada schools, plus... (Christina Vela) And that's a tough place to start when somebody says, I'm not a victim; I don't need the help.

I don't need it.

I don't need to be here.

-A groundbreaking program specifically for child sex trafficking victims, the Healing Center at St.

Jude's Ranch for Children reflects on its struggles and successes one year in, this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪ -Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and other supporters.

-Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Human trafficking education in public schools and specialized training for emergency responders are some of the ideas Nevada lawmakers are debating.

That discussion is ahead, but we begin with St.

Jude's Ranch for Children.

Last year, the Boulder City nonprofit known for helping and housing abused and neglected children expanded its services to include a first of its kind Healing Center for child victims of sex trafficking.

When Nevada Week spoke with its CEO, Christina Vela, she said, Before the center existed, children suspected of being trafficked were sometimes placed in juvenile justice settings, not trauma-informed care.

-So law enforcement would recover a child wherever in our community and take them to the juvenile detention facility and book them in with other young people that are there for crimes that they committed.

So, yeah, that's where girls were ending up.

And maybe for a long time people thought that was the right solution.

-What have you experienced in this year?

-Lots of incredible wins with children one-on-one, these little moments, these little glimmers of hope where you see them start to think different or start to go to our beautiful on-site school and believe that maybe they could graduate from high school or start dreaming about a life free from abuse and neglect.

That's an incredible win.

Some challenges, right?

This first year has not been, you know, beautiful without any problems.

There's been challenges to operationalize a program.

There's challenges to figure out which kids are the right fit for this program.

None of them really want to be here, and we understand.

That's not the standard of success.

We know they would rather be somewhere else.

There's rules here and expectations here.

And if they're used to not living that in their adolescent life, it can sometimes be tough for them.

And yet the wins have been incredible.

We see kids just start to blossom.

-The youngest child you've had here has been how old?

-Thirteen.

-Thirteen.

-Yeah, 13.

-We had talked off camera ahead of this about an article that was written about the grand opening of the center, and some of the children here read that article and took issue with the fact that they were called sex trafficking victims.

-Yep.

-What did they say?

-Yeah.

They said, I'm not a victim.

They don't see themselves as a victim.

They don't believe they're a victim.

Because at some point in their-- In many of them, in their thought process, they believed that the trafficker was somebody who cared about them, that it was my boyfriend or a family member.

And so when you start to rationalize this, you don't see yourself as a victim, and that's a tough place to start when somebody says, I'm not a victim; I don't need the help.

I don't need it.

I don't need to be here.

And we say, Well, okay.

So then we started realizing, like we always knew, they're survivors more than anything.

They're resilient human beings.

That term "victim" threw them off.

And so it reinforced to us how important youth empowerment model is for them to have choice, not necessarily choice to live here because somebody has said they need to live here.

Somebody, an official, has said they need to live here.

But a lot of other built-in choice is what we are very proud of, giving them choice on things that start to empower them, that they can take control.

And little by little or sometimes all at once, they start to admit that they are a victim.

They start to tell us the stories, not by labeling, yes, I'm a victim, but they start to open up and tell us some really painful stories about their lives and their experiences.

And it's in those moments that myself or others get to say, It's incredible that you have survived all that you have.

Some would say you are a victim of abuse or neglect.

And try to help them understand the definition, and then the little light bulb goes off at times like, Oh, okay, yeah, maybe I was a victim and I didn't realize it.

-Just getting to that point is, what, half the battle?

-Yes.

-And then all the healing that comes after that, you would think that some of these children may have to be here for years.

Yeah.

I mean, the journey of recovery is a year.

It's a whole lifetime of recovery.

We think this program does best if they're here for about nine months to a year, and then we want to transition them back into the world.

Now, we have to help make some decisions about what's best for them.

Can they go to a family member?

Can they go somewhere, or do they still need our foster care support services, which is on our other side of our campus, where then they can start to get reintegrated, because we've got to teach them how to live in the world and protect themselves.

If we kept them isolated too long, then maybe we're not preparing them for the future where they have to be out in the real world.

-Is this happening anywhere else in the United States?

-Specifically for the Healing Center?

Not this way.

There are certainly a lot of programs serving trafficking victims, yes.

There are places that have repurposed a home, absolutely, but nothing as comprehensive as what we have created.

We haven't seen anything like it.

And to have a public high school on our campus seems pretty unheard of.

To be quite candid, people across this community, in our own community in Southern Nevada thought, Really?

Do you think you're going to be able to get the school district to build a school on site?

And we thought, well, when there's a will, there's a way.

And I'm so grateful for that partnership.

It has really proven to be an incredible partnership.

-Also when we spoke on the phone, you mentioned, I think, California has reached out to ask whether you can take some of their children.

-Yes, yeah.

-Why?

-There aren't a lot of residential places for child victims.

And when people find us and they realize the holistic, that whole person approach that we have with the school and therapy and homes, I think people are really impressed, because those of us working with this population know it takes a lot of services.

And having them all in one place is really, really helpful.

-Ideally, you would have how many children here at one time?

-Ideally, we'd like to see between 45 and 50 kids at any given time.

-But...?

-But fundraising, we've had a lack of operational funding come in at maybe the rate that we hoped and expected.

We're certainly grateful.

I mean, people have been so incredibly generous to build this place.

This was not an inexpensive project.

This was a $30 million project.

We have not seen, though, the same kind of support on the programmatic side, and that's to be expected.

You know, people want to help build it and then say, okay, now you run it.

It's just been a bit more of a delay than we expected, so we're really proud of the two houses that we have open currently and our investment in getting those houses open, but we need more help.

We're looking for help.

We need help.

-Does that mean you have a wait list of children who could come here?

-We do.

There is a wait list.

We receive referrals on a regular basis.

We get calls from law enforcement.

You know, there's people out every day doing recovery work.

They're out there doing undercover work, trying to find missing and exploited children.

And so we're getting the calls that says, We think we're going to have a 15-year-old come in.

And it's pretty hard right now sometimes to say we don't have the room.

We have the space, we just don't have it in a licensed home because I don't have enough staff yet.

-Last question.

Will you share with our viewers a success story that stands out to you.

-Yeah.

Right now we have a young person who's been here, probably one of the longest.

Maybe not the first resident.

She is doing so good in school.

Her grades are really awesome.

And she was ready for a part-time job, and she actually works on our campus in our job training program earning a paycheck, $15 an hour.

She's receiving job training skills.

So when she's not in school, like in the afternoons or on the weekends, she's working in our job training program.

-Job training programs, okay.

-Here on campus.

She rides her bike.

So right over in front of the house, there's a couple of bikes, and she gets on her bike, she rides to her job.

And her-- The first paycheck she ever received, she said, Take a picture of this-- to the person, her staff that was with her.

She said, I want everybody to know how proud I am of myself.

And that was just absolutely incredible.

-Vela says, so far, the Healing Center has taken in 19 young people.

And in recognition of Human Trafficking Prevention Month, St.

Jude's Ranch for Children joined Clark County to light the iconic Welcome to Las Vegas sign in blue.

Methods of preventing human trafficking and helping victims were up for debate last legislative session.

And here to break down what passed and what could come back, our State Senator Carrie Ann Buck; Rhonda Sciortino, co-founder of Prevent Child Trafficking Nevada; and Tina DeCola, an instructor at the Denise Amber Lee Foundation.

Thank you all for joining Nevada Week.

So I want to start off with curriculum for human trafficking prevention in schools.

There are forms of it in several states across the country.

It's not yet in Nevada.

Senator, you wanted that implemented in what form?

For what age group?

How would it happen?

(Senator Carrie Ann Buck) Well, I think I wanted it to be available to families, to parents, to children, if necessary, teens in particular, just to make them aware of sexual predators that are online, sometimes on video games, sometimes disguised as the neighbor next door.

And so making that available would have educated them.

-And what do you mean by "available"?

In the classroom or a separate resource?

-Making sure that the Department of Education had it up online so that way educators could access it at any time.

And after-school care, wherever, they could actually bring it into classrooms or parents could access it.

-Right.

Okay, so not actually mandated to be taught in the school setting, but available as a resource.

Rhonda, this is your area of expertise, teaching this in the school setting.

What is the best form of it in your opinion?

(Rhonda Sciortino) The one I like the best is called Power Over Predators, and it's an age-appropriate, five-module curriculum that focuses on healthy relationships, not scary, you know, looking at trafficking and make kids afraid that a trafficker is behind every bush.

But if they understand what healthy relationships feel like and look like and, more importantly, know how to exit when they're not comfortable, know about healthy boundaries and just how to avoid toxic and dangerous people, they're empowered.

And that's what Power Over Predators does.

And the best part is it's free.

It's already been funded, so any mom, grandma, auntie, uncle, educator right now today can go to poweroverpredators.org.

Tens of thousands of kids have already been educated.

It's in every school in the state of Arizona, and 13 other states are also utilizing it.

And so I'd love to see it used here in Nevada.

-I want to bring you in now, Tina.

You are a retired communications specialist supervisor at Las Vegas Fire and Rescue, but currently an instructor at the Denise Amber Lee Foundation.

What do you do there?

(Tina DeCola) I am an instructor for this amazing not-for-profit that educates telecommunicators, communication specialists, all over the country.

This-- Denise was, as we spoke about, a victim of a random act of violence in Florida about 18 years ago.

Since then, her husband, Nathan Lee, created the Denise Amber Lee Foundation solely to educate communication specialists across the country.

In 2008, they actually passed the Denise Amber Lee law to make sure that telecommunicators in Florida receive 232 hours of mandated standardized training every single year, which is, which is amazing--it's huge--because we are the first responders.

So my job is now to educate them on human trafficking awareness: what to listen for on the phones, how to communicate that to our field responders.

So I am honored to do that for the foundation.

-I forget how you are referring to them, but we're talking about 911 operators, correct?

-Correct, 911 operators, telecommunicators, dispatchers.

-You had a personal experience with this as a 911 operator.

What happened?

-I did.

About eight years ago, I actually took a 911 call from a victim of human trafficking that was kidnapped and brought here.

She had called 911, she'd asked for medical, and that's how the call came to me at Las Vegas Fire and Rescue.

In all the years I had been on the phones, I've never heard anyone so frightened in my life, and I was not prepared.

Excuse me.

-Ever?

-I was not prepared, even as a human being, as a mother, to hear someone so frightened.

And that's when I had done some research and found out that there was no training for dispatchers and very, very minimal training for Fire and EMS.

And that compelled me to start working with the Southern Nevada Human Trafficking Task Force, Homeland Security, and all these amazing agencies to put together the training that we now have as a standard operating procedure in Southern Nevada.

-And so you brought this idea to the Senator, and it became something different.

Can you explain that process?

Making that training mandatory is what you sought, but what ended up happening, Senator?

-Well, we wanted, of course, to arm all of our paramedics, first responders, with the knowledge of when they enter a scene to look out for the different signs.

And so that was in the bill to make it mandatory.

Unfortunately, it didn't pass as is, but it was placed in another bill.

And we were able to add paramedics.

So paramedics will receive that, because oftentimes traffickers could be armed and the scenes could be harmful to them.

They're walking into these scenes and being able to see that, hey, there's no family photos anywhere in this site.

This could be a house for traffickers.

-Do you want to add to that?

-I do.

Also our victims are not afraid to call 911 and ask for an ambulance.

So we wanted to prepare them, not only what to look for, for the victim's safety, but as the Senator stated, but for their safety as well.

Working closely with Las Vegas Metro, we now have created a protocol where we communicate with each other to not highlight attention to the scene, but to create a safe environment for a-- for our victims.

Also, we want to make sure that our paramedics are educated on a trauma-informed approach also, how to interact with the victims to make sure that they are comfortable talking to the paramedics, because sometimes that one-on-one that they have with them can make a huge difference.

-And if they do suspect that someone is a victim of trafficking, what happens then?

-They will contact their dispatcher and our-- There is a communication that we've enabled for them to speak to each other without highlighting attention to the scene.

We then, in turn, at dispatch will contact Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.

They'll either meet us at the scene or at the hospital to make sure that we're getting the victim the help that they need, but we're also going after the trafficker as well.

-Okay.

And so, Rhonda, I want to bring you back in, because the idea is, let's never allow a person to get to that point where they become a victim.

What kind of education you can arm them with so that they avoid getting involved in that situation, and how easy is that currently to happen with technology, modern day?

-Oh, my goodness.

You know, traffickers are not like what we think of from the movies, right?

They're not this scary guy in the, in the white cargo van.

The FBI tells us that it's actually less than 1% of the kids who are being trafficked were abducted.

More likely than not, kids are lured in by traffickers who approach them with compliments and gifts, and they gain their trust emotionally, and then they exploit that and they try to separate the young person from friends and family until it gets to a point where they're fully controlling that young person.

More often than not, the control happens with drugs.

Just a few drops of an odorless, tasteless drug in their bottle of water, and they're awake but they're fully compliant.

And the cameras are rolling.

And so once that video evidence exists, the trafficker has that over them, right?

I'll show your mom.

I'll put it on Instagram.

All your friends will know.

And so they feel trapped.

-What can a parent do today to start making sure this does not happen to their own children?

-Oh, thank you so much for asking that.

The most important thing that parents, grandparents, extended family, neighbors, teachers, coaches, youth pastors, everybody can do is really listen to kids, because kids will talk about their new friend, the cool girl who invited them to a party Saturday night.

They'll talk about whatever gift, you know, this new friend gave them.

And these are clues.

And if parents understand--we call them the tricks of traffickers.

We don't talk about scary people; we talk about tricky people, and we talk about the four most common signs of a child being trafficked.

But prevention, being on the front end of it is the most important thing, right?

None of us wants to have to rescue our child.

I mean, of course, we want all the children who are trafficked to be rescued.

We want them to be restored at St.

Jude's Children's Ranch, the Healing Center.

It's wonderful, but we would much rather have kids empowered to protect themselves.

-You had told me off camera that a huge difference maker is just having a trusted adult in a child's life; however, there are a lot of these situations in which family members are actively trafficking.

-Familial trafficking is a real thing.

-What can be done?

-Well, that's why it's so important for educators.

And not just the educators.

It's the teachers' aides.

It's the lady in the cafeteria.

It's everybody who has a child within their influence.

It's the lady next door.

It's the gal who babysits.

It can be a 14-year-old kid who is the trusted person in that child's life, where they can say, You know, there's this guy and he makes me really uncomfortable, or there's this cute guy who's interested in me.

Oh, my gosh, isn't that the best thing?

And for the other teenager or whoever it is to be, to have a healthy skepticism can be lifesaving.

-You mentioned even a cafeteria worker or someone within the school setting.

That was part of this legislation that you proposed, that someone would have to be trained on human trafficking prevention.

It didn't get through.

What are your goals for a future version of this?

-Well, oftentimes it's just exposure, right?

So I want to make it readily available and get the word out.

So I'd love for this to go up on the DOE website, Department of Education website, and make it readily available.

Rhonda does such amazing work in this space.

And when I became involved, it was like I couldn't unsee what was happening here in our community.

Oftentimes we go about our daily business.

We don't realize until we start talking to the vice police officers and that this is actually happening here in our communities.

-We are running out of time, so I do want to bring Tina back in.

What is actually happening as well is this training has already been utilized by some of the local agencies, correct?

And I'm talking about the 911 operators.

How effective has that been locally?

-It's been extremely effective.

Actually, Clark County Fire utilizes it, and one of their fire station members received an accommodation for a successful recovery of a juvenile victim.

Henderson Fire, who also has the training, has also had a few successful recoveries, along with Las Vegas Fire and Rescue.

So it's been extremely effective because we're communicating better together.

We're all aware.

We're all looking at the same things and listening for the same things so we can get our ears and our eyes on these victims and get them the help that they absolutely deserve.

-Last topic.

There was Assembly Bill 209 this past session, which, if passed, would have given immunity to sex workers who were calling 911, seeking medical assistance.

It passed on party lines but was vetoed by the governor.

What do you think about that idea, in general?

-Well, actually, it is standard practice for if a victim calls 911 that we do not go after them if they are a sex worker, correct?

So that's already standard practice.

I think the reason that the governor vetoed the bill is we need to be careful about bills such as this.

We need to be aware that the trafficker is very aware of the bills, just like we are.

So if the victim of sex, of sex trafficking is given all inclusive immunity, then the trafficker can manipulate them into doing crimes and that then they're immune from.

-It can be taken advantage of?

-Exactly.

So I agree with the governor vetoing the bill, but it already is.

Just to reassure everyone, it already is standard practice.

If a victim calls 911 for help, we are not going to give them the help and then arrest them.

-And it's just so hard to determine who is a victim sometimes and who is a sex worker.

And you voted against that bill, Senator.

Anything you want to add to what you thought about it?

-I agree it was a little vague.

I think if the trafficker talks them into going and doing murder, we definitely-- there needs to be some guardrails around it.

And so I agree with the governor.

-And to the extent of what crimes can be committed and you get immunity from.

Okay.

Thank you all for joining Nevada Week.

We really appreciate your time.

-Thank you.

-And thank you for watching.

For more information on any of the important resources discussed on this show, go to vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek, and I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪