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- When they created Uprising in 2019, Terry Markham and Alexandra Stevenson didn't know what to expect from their new grassroots effort to combat human trafficking.

But Uprising has grown to become a US regional leader in addressing a trafficking problem that could be called a crime wave even in Wyoming.

We'll meet the people of Uprising.

I'm Steve Peck of Wyoming PBS, and this is Wyoming Chronicle.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities.

thinkwhy.org and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.

- We're joined today by Terry Markham and Alexandra Stevenson of Uprising.

Terry, tell us what Uprising is.

- So Uprising is a shared and based anti-trafficking nonprofit, and we are committed to confronting human trafficking through awareness and education.

- You're using the term trafficked and traffic, and trafficking.

For those who don't understand what it means in this context, explain.

- So trafficking, I like to describe it sort of as a formula.

There's really just a few things you need for something to be considered a trafficking case.

The first thing that you need is any sex act.

And I think where a lot of misconception comes in with trafficking is they automatically assume it's like what you would traditionally think of as having sex with someone.

But sometimes that sex act is something like pornography, or exotic dancing, or webcaming, or escort services.

All of those things we sort of consider a sex act.

The second piece that you need is an item of value that's exchanged for that sex act.

And again, that's where another common misconception comes in because a lot of people assume it's always a cash transaction for something to be trafficking, but a lot of times that item that's traded is drugs, or a place to sleep for the night, a meal, a ride home, it can really be anything.

When you have those two pieces, that's what we'd consider commercial sex.

Where it really becomes trafficking is when we add in that third piece, which is a third party that's profiting off of the exchange.

So I like to explain it like that, because just the word, trafficking, I mean it kind of, it implies movement, right?

You think of like cars on a highway or something, but people can really be trafficked like just in their own town or in their homes and never be moved at all.

And so I kind of like to bust that myth.

- And it's a crime in -- - Yes.

- Many cases or all?

- If it is an adult, an adult can legally consent to a commercial sex act, so it's only a crime for them if we can prove that there's force, fraud, or coercion present.

So basically they're not doing this by choice.

When it comes to a minor, if they are engaged in commercial sex at all, it's a crime.

- By law, they cannot consent.

- Yes, they cannot consent to commercial sex.

- And -- - So therefore -- - In Wyoming, a minor is what age in this context?

- 17 and under.

- We're in Sheridan on the eve of a regional conference that Uprising is hosting.

- Conference is called GRIT, Greater Rocky's Immersive Training.

And the immersive part is the part I think we're most excited about.

- There's an element of awareness to it which is interesting, particularly because of children who can be involved, but not always.

And Alexandra, something that helped draw you to this, and has sharpened your knowledge of it, relates to that, and I was surprised to hear, I guess, that someone, even of your level of interest, of commitment, of knowledge didn't know yourself necessarily that you've been trafficked.

And I'd like to ask you for people who are saying, "Well, how can that be?"

How can that be?

What happened?

- Whew, well first of all, trafficking is a really big word, in that people think of it as this big crime that happens over there.

It's not a community crime, it's this big thing that happens either in big cities, or with organized crime, or it sort of has this Hollywood feel to it like the movie Taken.

And that's certainly what I had thought of it as.

In fact, I really hadn't given trafficking much thought at all.

My story, I was trafficked in 2007, and when I escaped my trafficker, I ended up going into post-secondary education.

Over the next many, many, many years, I have achieved three degrees, almost four now in the helping field, including criminology, victimology, and soon a Master's in psychology.

I've worked in the field in shelters for domestic violence, I've worked with offenders with male youth in conflict with the law, I actually went to court against my trafficker, and even with all of this knowledge, I never considered myself to be a trafficking victim.

And it wasn't even that I didn't consider myself, like I thought about it and decided that it wasn't a thing, the thought never even entered my mind, as far as I was concerned, I was a victim of domestic violence, and poor decisions on my own part really.

And when I moved to Sheridan and I found out that, you know, a woman named Terry was doing some anti-human trafficking work, I was like, "Well that's a similar to domestic violence, "and helping people that I really wanna do", and I contacted her and said, "Hey, can we meet?

"I'd love to share with you, I wanna help."

And it was actually at that meeting where I kind of said, "Well, I'm not really, I don't know much about trafficking.

"That's not my story, "but let me share a bit of my story with you, "and you can tell me how I can help."

And it was Terry who turned to me and said, "What do you mean you weren't traffic?

"That what you're describing to me is trafficking."

And it was life changing to hear that, because as someone who had spent the last 15 years thinking of my experience as my own poor choices, to have someone say "That wasn't your fault."

Not just the domestic violence, I knew the domestic violence wasn't my fault, but the exploitation that I experienced, the sexual exploitation I experienced wasn't my fault.

And there's a name for what happens, and how it happens, and it's so insidious, and for me, it was just "How did I not know?

"And if I don't know in my position of education "and career, and knowledge, "there's no way other people have this information."

- What brought you to this field?

- I'm from Texas and back home about nine or so years ago, there was a lady in my community who was working with women in the sex industry and it intrigued me, and so I ended up getting involved, and I saw trafficking right in front of my face.

Things weren't adding up, and so I started doing more just education on my own part, and research, and realized what I was seeing was actually trafficking, and it's just, it was kind of a pivotal time for me, because once you see that, you can't unsee it.

And so I just felt this urge that I wanted to do more, and eventually I started a chapter of anti-trafficking non-profit in Texas, and I did that until I moved to Wyoming.

And when I moved to Wyoming, I was like, "Okay, let me find out "who's doing anti-trafficking work here, "and get involved."

- And what did you find out, was Wyoming missing something at the time?

- Yeah, we were missing people doing anti-trafficking work.

I really, I couldn't find anywhere to really plug in, and so I was like, "Okay, I guess we need to do this."

And I also realized no one was really even having conversations about trafficking here.

There weren't a lot of people looking at the problem, especially from a public community perspective, so I'm like, "We need to create a base knowledge "and a base awareness so the community understands "this is something that actually happens in Wyoming, "and then we need to start training professionals", and that's when we together really developed kind of how we were gonna tackle this issue in Wyoming, 'cause it can seem a little daunting when you're first starting.

- The Uprising mission and level of activity, I think, has grown certainly as fast as you could have hoped and maybe even faster.

Is that right?

- Yeah, I'd say we probably didn't realize that it would be, just take off this much.

- What does that tell you?

- There was a need for this service.

And I knew from the beginning, like I had told Alexandra just from previous work that I've done, I'm like, you know, "We're gonna do this for a couple years, "and then victims are gonna start coming forward", and we're now in August, it'll be three years that we've had Uprising, and the amount of victims within probably the past six to eight months who've come forward and wanted to be involved with Uprising, it's been a little staggering, it's happening just how we thought it would.

What we didn't expect was that we would be so busy, and have so many people asking for training all over the state, and we never expected we would get to do a regional conference this soon into our inception, and that was really just meeting the right people at the right time.

- [Steve] Chris McDonald of the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation focuses almost exclusively on enforcing the state's child trafficking laws.

Speaking from his office in Cheyenne, McDonald said the problem in Wyoming is growing and growing fast.

- It's an almost exponential increase.

I became the commander in 2019, and just for an example for numbers, in 2018, we had a total of 199 cyber tips, which are basically tips that come from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

So 199 total in 2018.

2019 we had 262, in 2020 where it's really the first COVID year, we had about 530-some tips, last year we had 617 tips.

So we have actually about 10% less manpower work in these cases, so it is literally a deluge, I guess is the best way I can explain.

- I spoke earlier with a Division of Criminal Investigation agent in Cheyenne, and he said that it could be considered to be almost a crime wave.

Would you agree?

- It feels like it.

I don't, I feel like also though we weren't looking as closely at the problem years back, I think it was always there.

I think now we just have a higher level of awareness, and understanding, but certainly it is evolving.

I mean with technology, you know, traffickers don't have to go to a mall to find a victim anymore.

They just log on Facebook.

- This type of crime has been made so much easier by the internet.

Correct?

- Yeah.

The reach predators can have, you know, even just message blasting anyone who says they attend a particular school.

- So how would that start, for example, hypothetically?

- Hypothetically, I mean ...

So say you start with that message blast, you have a predator who's like, "I am on the hunt for someone of the age, you know, "13 to 15 maybe.

"So I'm gonna message blast anyone in this area "or whatever area they're working in", and all the students who have on their Facebook profile attend, you know, whatever the high school is.

And then out of that, say they message blast 500, you know, 300 may never respond.

They're like, "I don't know you, I'm not answering you."

And a bunch may respond with "Do I know you?"

And they're already suspicious, so you know, but then some of them are just like, "Oh, I get to add to my friends list, "so I'm gonna add them."

And then what happens is somebody else goes on and goes, "Well I don't know this guy but so and so and so and so and so and so are friends with him on Facebook.

"So maybe I do know him."

And out of that message blast of say 500 students, they may narrow it down to and find one person who is one child who is vulnerable, and who engages in the conversation, and engages in building of that relationship intimacy.

- And that conversation could be something very benign at the beginning.

- 100%, most of the time, you know, a stranger doesn't message you and say, "I'm on your front lawn, run out of your house, "I'm taking you somewhere."

That's not how you build a relationship.

That kind of feeds into that idea of stranger danger, which is something we try and push away from, though this person might start out as a stranger, they spend time cultivating a relationship, and learning the person's vulnerabilities.

That's the whole grooming that happens.

So they come in as a friend, they feel the need of what this child, a need they find that this child has.

- They're also experts in manipulation, so they look for kids that are missing something in their lives or feel like they are.

They'll try to provide that and then start that process.

So they count on the fact that kids won't tell or don't wanna tell because they're ashamed, they think they'll be in trouble or they think no one will believe them, and the biggest thing is they'll try to convince children that, you know, it's partially their fault.

- So maybe it's for intimacy, they wanna have a boyfriend or girlfriend, or maybe their parental figure isn't a strong person in their life so they fill that, or maybe they really wish they could afford the things the other kids can, so they buy them presents, as they fill this need, then the victim becomes indebted to them, and then once they flip the script and say, "Okay, I'm gonna need you to do this", that bond, that trauma bond is already built, and that's how they're able to traffic someone.

- I've heard that video games often is an entry point for someone.

"Do you like to play this game or would you like to try it?

"And we could play it together", part of the relationship building, which then can lead -- - Yes.

- Sinister directions.

- And sometimes they're on these games that are very young children are playing, you know, like the ROBLOX and the Minecraft.

Anything that has a messaging feature, like you need to be really cautious of.

And I've met several parents, we work with several parents in fact, who their kids were being groomed, and it started on a video game like that, and then oftentimes that predator will eventually be like, "Let's move this conversation to Kik", or some other sort of messaging app, where they can more freely, easily message back and forth.

- When I first started we were targeting, like the eighth, seventh, eighth, ninth grade age group -- - but we -- - Now it's younger.

- Yeah.

We found that our victim ages have decreased, so we really started to go into, all right, we made a concerted effort to go.

We kinda looked at that fifth and sixth grade levels really a critical time.

- With younger and younger kids getting a cell phone, or getting an iPad or simply just being allowed, and becoming so knowledgeable so quickly about what to do, it must complicate your situation immeasurably.

- One of the most complicated things is the belief that social media is only evil or only full of predators, and the idea that if we just don't let them use it, we protect them from it.

And that is so problematic, because technology is not going away, right?

So it's no longer this idea that like maybe if we just ignore it, it'll disappear.

Not teaching your child how to use technology and social media safely is the same thing these days as not teaching them how to cross the street safely.

So using that metaphor, you know, when you're working with a small child, you're not gonna let them just cross the street.

You're gonna, well at first carry them across, then they're gonna get to walk, but holding your hand, and then maybe you'll teach them, "Look both ways, Mommy's gonna watch you cross the street."

There's those steps so you ensure their safety, and you know that before you give them a little more freedom, they have the tools to handle that freedom.

It's similar with social media.

You don't just hand a kid a cell phone and an Instagram account and say "Go nuts", you teach them that this is a platform that has good things on it, you can meet people and friends, and learn about other interests, but there's also dangers to it.

So at first, when your child first has a social media account, you may want to have in the description parent-monitored, and actually monitor the account, so you tell your child, "Yes you have this piece of technology, "but you have to earn the trust around it, "and you have to earn the privilege to have it.

"So for now, I'm gonna be taking it every night, "and I will be going through all of your DMs, "and looking at everything you're doing on there, "and anything that comes up that makes, "you know that I wanna talk to you about, "we're gonna have a conversation about.

"Once I feel like you have earned a little bit more freedom, "maybe, you know, I'm going to release some of that, "I'm gonna let you cross the street by yourself, you know, "I'm not gonna be checking your cell phone every night, "but if I start seeing some odd behaviors, "or something makes me uncomfortable, "then I still will have access to it.

- I am in the same boat.

I don't know that any of us are as good with technology as our kids are, but it is so important to have that conversation early, and everyone's parenting is their own business, but if we do have devices to make sure we have access to those devices, and I tell all parents, "If your child has that application, be it Snapchat, "be it Instagram, be it whatever, "you should have that application, "and not only have it but know how to use it."

So there are so many, you know, tech, like I said, technology advances so quickly now we have applications that have, each one has their own the possibility of their own secure login on every app, so we really wanna know those things.

And I always also tell parents, there are parental control applications out there that you can put on your kid's phone that really, really help.

- And it'll work differently for different families, but the idea behind this is you can't just say "Social media is dangerous, "therefore my child cannot have a cell phone "until they're 16 or 18 or something", because then you're sending a naive child out into a world with dangers, with no tools on how to face those dangers.

You have to teach them.

- Do you find resistance among anyone when you explain this stuff?

Or do people, is it a light bulb that goes on, and people know - I think parents - To work with you - are relieved.

- They are.

- We work with a lot of parents and caregivers, and the internet is scary, you know, like especially these generations that didn't grow up with phones their whole life.

And so it gets a little daunting.

So what we try to do a lot is really break it back down to root causes.

Like again, it's not just this big, capital T trafficking problem, let's just talk about these really simple things, like the ideas of setting healthy boundaries and consent, and when we talk about all these little things, and how to have those simpler, smaller conversations along the way, what you're really doing is lowering their risk of ever experiencing exploitation at the same time.

And we find, I think most parents are a lot more relieved.

They realize there is a way to tackle this, and to try to lower my kids risk and keep them safe, that isn't this big huge scary thing, and I don't have to like take away all their devices, and everything, it's really just learning it with them.

- Yeah, that all or nothing mentality, I think, is it's dangerous and it's overwhelming to parents.

Like you were just saying this like, "Well if I don't know how to keep them safe", you know, you have some parents who like I said will just say, "Well don't give 'em a cell phone" or like, "They know more than me anyway, so just hope for the best."

And when we break it down to say "There's other steps you can take, "and there's other ways you can lower their risk "and up their protective factors, "and help create platforms for conversation "between you and your child "that doesn't have to be this big scary sit down talk, "that neither of you really wanna participate in, "because it's uncomfortable, "you can break it down into these much more manageable bites "that everybody gets a moment to teach, "to learn and then time to digest it, "and then talk about it and keep moving on", and I think when you teach that, parents feel far more empowered in a space that before frightened them.

- I think with many parents on any number of topics, haven't always known, "Well how do I talk to 'em about this?"

Especially if a younger and younger child.

It strikes me that this could be in a time when there isn't a lot of, we have fewer things that unite us, we can all sort of agree about that this might be one that young and old and political persuasion and urban and rural and male and female might have find some common ground that this is something that's important, and we've gotta deal with it.

- Like she said, it's not going away, and it's not the same as it was years ago.

You know, even for us, we've talked about like some of the things we advocate for these conversations for parents to have were like, our parents didn't even have those conversations with us.

And when you talk to our parents, they sure weren't having conversations about some of the topics that we advocate for, having conversations with, but now access to information is so easy, and you know, if a kid is curious about something -- - And he's gonna be.

She's gonna be.

- They're gonna go on Google and what they find, or if they ask their friends what they learn from their friends or from the internet is not always safe and not always healthy, so we've kind of reached this point where, as parents, we need to have these conversations, and we need to talk about these topics, because it's too easy for them to find out about it in really unhealthy ways.

- It's reminded me in a way of flying a kite, where you've let out so much line, by the time you realize it's time to come in for dinner, you can reel and reel and reel, and that's not gonna be the answer anymore.

- I think one of the things that we say that hits home for parents is, "If you're not willing to talk about a subject, "that doesn't mean your child isn't gonna learn about it, "it means they're not gonna learn about it from you.

"So do you want to have that influence, "especially for a teenager, who is, you know, "pulling away and more influenced by peers, as it should be, "that's the natural progression, "but if you have these conversations, "you are being able to still have influence "over some of these more difficult topics."

And I think that's so critical, and you actually brought up something just before Terry mentioned that about younger children engaging in this.

And that's the other thing is when you're talking to younger children, you're not talking to a four-year-old about how not to get trafficked.

You're talking to them about what feels good in your body, what doesn't feel good, what can you do if something doesn't feel good?

Are you allowed to say "No, stop, don't", what will that look like?

What would it sound like?

I practice consent, my son is not yet three, and I practice consent with him if I'm tickling him, and you know, as any little kid is like, "Oh that's overwhelming, no, Mom, stop", and I go, "Okay, you told me "to stop touching your body, bud.

"So I stopped."

And he's like, "No, we're tickling."

"Okay, I'll keep tickling you."

But these conversations don't have to be about these big scary words like sex, and trafficking, and trauma, they can start so young, and just start building those protective factors from such a young age that you're setting them up for more and more success as they grow older, and are exposed to more dangerous things.

- You're about to embark on a big regional multi-state conference here.

Is it difficult to find the resources to support the work you're doing, or do you find that -- - It can be, yes, we find that there's actually a lot of like federal grants and money out there to combat trafficking, but the vast majority of it, almost all of it, it feels like is usually based for programs who are serving identified victims.

But for us, we wanna, like I said, get way upstream of that.

And it feels like the nation hasn't quite come around to realizing the importance of prevention.

And so we find it difficult to find some of those same funding streams that a lot of other people in the anti-trafficking field take advantage of, and for Uprising, most of our funding primarily comes from private foundations within the state, for example, the GRIT Conference is primarily funded by the Hughes Charitable Foundation.

We were very fortunate to be the recipient of a call about a year ago from the Hughes Foundation saying "We really wanna do something to combat trafficking, "and we hear you're the ones in the state "doing boots on the ground work, what can we do for you?"

So that was, I almost thought I was getting spammed to be honest, 'cause that doesn't happen in the granting world.

But most of our funding is from private state foundations, some from private donors, and then a lot of boots on the ground fundraising that we do.

- We've talked about the growth, you're ready for it, you can handle it, it's within your capabilities, and you're finding that you can expand to meet the need and are committed to it.

- It feels like it's getting a little tight right now.

I think we're at that precipice where we're about to have another big level of growth, and that next level of growth is going to have to include being able to expand our capacity by bringing on more staff.

That's what we're gonna need at this point, 'cause we won't be able to take on much more than we have on our plates now at this level, until we can have more capacity to do so.

And another key to that is empowering people in their communities who wanna do this work.

So we just launched a volunteer onboarding and training protocol, that can all be done via our website online, and now we are equipped to actually be able to train people in their communities who are passionate, and are telling us "We wanna do something to help."

Now we can help train them so they can do some of the more awareness and community level stuff, and we can put more of our effort into continuing to train professionals, and look at the statewide lens of how to get more widespread prevention education.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is made possible in part by the Wyoming Humanities Council, helping Wyoming take a closer look at life through the humanities, thinkwhy.org and by the members of the Wyoming PBS Foundation.

Thank you for your support.