Honoring a Survivor’s Unique Human Trafficking Experience is Vital to Providing Appropriate Services

Bob Davis

Welcome to Patchwork, the podcast from the Office on Violence Against Women at the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington.

Hi, I'm Bob Davis with OVW. Today. We're joined by Savanah Sanders. She's with the International Organization for Adolescents. That group supports of grantees in many ways, including training about human trafficking. She's the author of Sex Trafficking Prevention: A Trauma-informed Approach for Parents and Professionals, she has expertise in human trafficking and child abuse prevention, trauma, informed care, harm reduction, intergenerational abuse, and she's a strong advocate for Survivor leadership.

For more than 11 years, she's worked with communities across the country to provide trauma, informed training, consulting and curriculum development that impacts the way survivors of abuse receive good services. She's a social worker. She's a parent. She's a foster parent. And she's a survivor leader herself. She understands human trafficking from every angle. We'll put her bio on the webpage for this episode, but in a nutshell, she has integrated human trafficking services, developed protocols to increase response and training to better serve survivors in rural communities and she's trained hospitality staff how to spot and report human trafficking.

Most recently, she's developed the Conquer method – it’s a psycho-educational program that provides individuals who have experienced various forms of trauma, the tools they need to navigate their own healing journey through education and online communities.

I want to start by sharing a couple of resource numbers because the conversation we're going to get into today may be triggering and it may also educate people on how to spot human trafficking so let me start with that. There's a National Human Trafficking Hotline, and that is 888-373-7888. In terms of sexual assault or victim services, we always point folks towards RAINN.org and their hotline number is 800-656-HOPE(4673). Help's available twenty four hours a day from those and other places, so please reach out and avail yourself of any help that you need and encourage others to do the same.

As we begin, Savannah, I have to confess that the image that I get in my mind of human trafficking has changed over time. When I first joined OVW, I had a certain image that came in my mind when I heard human trafficking and it included borders and just all kinds of stuff. Just like the big image, it's evolved over time. It keeps evolving through educators like yourself and others who teach me about the nuances of human trafficking. Start if you if you would tell me when your current image of human trafficking really developed or came into focus.

Savannah Sanders

That's actually a really great question. So one of the things that I  never realized that trafficking was it was a thing until probably about 13 years ago and it actually is what started my healing journey. I had a friend post something on Facebook that had the definition of trafficking and it said anybody forced or coerced into having sex for the monetary gain of another individual. And that was the very first time in my life that I had recognized that there was a name for what I had gone through when I was a teenager. So I was about 25 at this point and I was already a mom and taking kids to soccer games and joining the PTA, like I had already been out of that situation for a long time, but I never saw it as human trafficking. So I went to the website and I immediately called them the next day and I was like, I want to volunteer for your organization. And I had never told anybody about my trafficking experiences at that point or anything and when I called the when I called that organization and told them I wanted to volunteer, the guy asked me, “sure, tell me a little bit about yourself” and I just like old my whole story to this random stranger on the other end of the phone. 

I also have a baby that might pop into our conversation a little bit with that. Yeah, those are friends…babies and puppies and cats galore.

Bob Davis

Absolutely.

Savannah Sanders

So I told him my whole life story basically. Well, not my whole life story about my experiences with exploitation. And it was actually a very life changing moment for me because I kept saying, “well, I shouldn't have went out that night, you know, I shouldn't have been wearing what I was wearing, I should have been in school, I shouldn't have dropped out. I shouldn't have been using. I shouldn't have…” I shouldn't be all of these things that made it my fault, you know, and teeth, which obviously it wasn't my fault. But he stopped me and he said, “honey, I don't know your story and I don't know you, but I know that none of that was your fault.” And it was the first time in my life that I had heard that none of the abuse that I experienced as a kid was my fault. It felt like a huge weight just lifted off my shoulders in that moment. And it was the first time that I had something to call what I had went through.

The struggle with that, though, the caveat to that is that it also caused a lot of harm in some ways, too, because at that time in the movement, the only kind of imagery that we were showing people about human trafficking besides borders and stuff was young girls getting kidnaped from malls kind of mentality. And I did not match that description at all. But I knew that had traded sex for the monetary gain of another individual right. Like I knew I met the definition, but I did not meet that imagery in the media sensationalism and all of that and it put me in this place of understanding my own experiences to feel like I had to put myself in a box or to not disclose some of the other parts of my story because I didn't fit this victimology that was being presented to the media and to service providers and that kind of thing. So I kind of had this story like, oh, I you know, I was a straight-A student, so I felt like I had to really take on this role of, like, I had a good upbringing and then I just got randomly… and that's not true. And by telling that story, it actually was doing a lot of harm anyways because it wasn't taking into account the vulnerabilities that I had experienced in my life that also led to the experiences of trafficking that made me more vulnerable to being picked up by a trafficker that, you know, it didn't take into account the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the mental and emotional abuse that I had experienced that he was looking for to put me in that position.

Any time that we're putting imagery out there of what it can look like or what it should look like, we are diminishing the unique and broad experiences of each individual because all of everybody's story is so unique to themselves.

Bob Davis

That's a great point and it makes it so difficult to talk about, right? So I will ask you to stop me, correct me, you know, challenge me as I as we talk about this and I'm struck by this whole topic requires some reframing and almost from the way you're describing that, almost reframing with each encounter, each individual - there's so many different aspects to it.

I'm a former paramedic and I am used to rushing in to help people. That can be counterproductive with survivors of human trafficking don't often respond well to being rescued. Can you talk a little bit about that and how especially youth see themselves in these situations?

Savannah Sanders

Yeah, I think I want to stay away from saying how they see themselves because it's such a unique experience for everybody, but I do think that one of the things that we have been doing for a while is staying in this position of rescuing and the victimization.

So I'll speak for myself, for me and for many youth that I've worked with. One of the struggles is that when I was receiving services prior to being trafficked in after being trafficked, I actually really knew what I needed, except the systems and the processes of youth serving organizations at that time couldn't didn't actually accommodate what my needs were and for me at that time, I really I can't you know, sometimes I've heard like, well, it's “I feel safer on the streets than I do at home” and like, different things like that. And all of those things are very relevant. Doesn't mean that the violence on the street wasn't higher than it was at home or anything like that but emotionally safety, where I felt like I actually had some control or semblance over of control over my life was on the streets. I was constantly trying to just navigate life at that time. And if somebody would have came in and, you know, quote unquote rescued me from any of those situations, which one time I was I wasn't rescued from a trafficker, but technically I was rescued from being held in a I was held in a shed for three, three days by an police picked me up and they took me to jail and had my mom come pick me up. There was and there was an opportunity there for some sort of intervention. But the intervention was just calling basically calling my mom.

So I think in a lot of ways when we have those opportunities for intervention, it's not a rescue, but it's an opportunity for an intervention, it's an opportunity for connection, it's an opportunity for choice. Though while I was technically rescued from an abusive situation by being removed from it, my autonomy, my choices, my experience, none of that was taken into account in that situation. And I use that as an example, because I think it's so important that the training that we're doing, that it's at least in a we're at least in a position to do better with connection, to build relationship, to build opportunities for choice and autonomy and deeper conversations when because, you know, that was the one time that the police were involved with me. Now, they should have probably been involved about a hundred other times. Right? So they had that one chance to connect with me and they didn't and it could have prevented further exploitation. It could have given at least connected me to resources or support or gotten my mom some type of intervention connection. I just feel like that's what we're missing are those opportunities. And we're doing so much better than we were doing 20 years ago, obviously. I don't think it's about rescuing. I think it's about creating opportunities through awareness, education and information sharing and training to provide the people that have the opportunities to connect in those moments with individuals to provide connection, choice and support.

Bob Davis

What advice do you give providers to kind of be aware of that, to look for that, where do you start with providers and coaching them on how to be there for that person?

Savannah Sanders

So first and foremost, I just assume that there's no experience that they've had had or have not had honestly. And through just engaging, talking, connecting, building relationship, a lot of that stuff comes out. And then if there's things that come up like they say that they were in a certain situation, then I'll dig a little deeper with them if that's my role. But when I'm working with providers, the thing that I want them to understand the most is that we can train all day on red flags. We can train all day on like what to look for and if somebody has the same tattoos or two cell phones or, you know, any of that kind of any of those red flags that are out there. But at the end of the day, the best way for us to identify exploitation and really support people on the journey of healing and becoming is going to be through relationship and through seeing them through the lens of this unique individual who has had traumatic experiences. I think one of the I'm so proud of the anti-trafficking movement for so much of the work that we've been able to do and how it's grown and how it's constantly developing. But I do think that hyper focusing only on this experiences of exploitation does negate a lot of the other experiences that people have and that we need to be looking at people as a whole. And just because we've identified somebody that has experienced trafficking doesn't mean that trafficking is the thing that needs to be addressed in that moment, it might be something else. So it's really about understanding what immediate needs are and building relationship and not getting hyper focused on the trafficking experiences and needing to know, like all of the details and not unpacking trauma with people unless you're your capable and trained to pack it back in before they leave. We don't need all of the details in order to support somebody where they're at.

Bob Davis

That's an excellent point. Sometimes some of these standard questions that we ask people invite that unpacking, don't they? Um, where do you start with providers? Do you have top tips? Do you have anything that helps them kind of get focused into this reframing in a in a healthy way?

Savannah Sanders

The best way for us to develop transformational relationships with those that we serve is to have transformational relationships in our own life, right? So really doing our own work. You know, having our own therapists, having our own coaches, continuous training mentors, that kind of thing, keeping us grounded while doing this work. 90 percent of the stuff that I do in the field comes from most of my own healing and a lot less from training and that kind of thing. So I would say that's one of the top things, you know, trauma, informed care is not just a four hour training. I think we're in a space where we're moving out of just trauma, like out of trauma stories and into healing centered longevity, like those kinds of things that recognize that in the moment when we have clients in front of us like that, that's the moment that they're with us. But these are lifelong things that people work with and through and recognized, and it impacts their families, their communities. It's just so much more broad than, you know, sitting with a caseworker for three months and working on goals.

Bob Davis

I'm going back to thinking about your encounter. And it seems like if the person who's there to try and help you is more aware and receiving more, that they may be more help.

Savannah Sanders

Yeah, absolutely. I think that one of the things that. You know, it's about being able to listen and connect with people and also being able to provide psycho education and information within the context of the conversations. So just giving people understanding of the dynamics of situations without telling them what to do. I think harm reduction and information and safety planning are all really important. In every conversation.

I try to make the conversations that I'm having productive. And I don't mean that as like I'm trying to get information out of them kind of thing, but more like if we're talking about somebody being scared to visit their family or something like that, then I use that as an opportunity to provide information and safety plan and support with them at the forefront of what they're wanting to do. Everything is about choice. And one of the in the reason I'm like that is because I've had a lot of services over the years with people with really who were phenomenal and amazing and had the best of intentions, but the way that the information was provided to me - I always saw them as the expert because they had degrees and they had all of this kind of thing. And, you know, it's been about… it was probably about seven or eight years of trauma work before I started to recognize that I was actually the expert in my own life, you know, and that some of these broad topics that we talk about, like when somebody else tells you what gaslighting is, then I saw everything as gaslighting at that time, you know? It wasn't until I was, like, doing my own work that I started to recognize, like, OK, so this situation, this person might actually be doing some gaslighting, but they're also not they're coming from a place of confusion. But for me, the problem was, as basically people were telling me how to think and what it should look like when I was healed versus what I needed it what I wanted or taking into consideration the strengths of the relationships and friendships and community that I had already built outside of my experiences and within, I had somebody I had a friend that was a drug dealer at the time that I was being trafficked that was my safest person. He would be like, if I, I wouldn't call the police, I wouldn't call my mom, but I would call him and he would come pick me up and get me out of situations. And I felt a lot of shame about him being a safe person for me. But he never abused me. He never hurt me. But just because he sold drugs, he was a bad person. So basically, if I would if I would have identified him as a safe person, people would say, well, was he really safe because he was providing you with drugs and that was feeding into your addiction? It made a lot of assumptions because what people didn't know was that, one, my addiction had very little to do with addiction and my drug use actually had a lot more to do with self-medicating because of my undiagnosed ADHD. And that person was the most likely to get me out of a really bad situation and by shaming his part in my life, then took away one of my outs.

So I'm really cautious of that when working with people and listening to who their people are, like being told that you're in an abusive situation when you're learning about abuse, when people tell… it's why we do what we do with DV, right? Like pulling somebody that they're in an abusive relationship instead of providing them with the information just causes you to question yourself even more like who's right? Because I have this person sitting in front of me that's telling me this thing. And then I have this expert in the field over here telling me this thing. And for me, when I was receiving services that created a constant sense of confusion. And really what I needed was the tools to get to my own truth.

Bob Davis

You know, it speaks right to that, you know, your own truth, so you there may be resources in things that you're not aware of that would be helpful to you, but you're the one who knows your truth. And that seems to be what the with the Conquer method is about, really giving people the tools they need to navigate. Is that right?

Savannah Sanders

Yeah. I developed the Conquer method as a way to give people the tools to navigate their own healing journey. So one of the things that I recognize that while I was going through a lot of my trauma work and trauma healing, I was also going to school for social work. So I was learning about a lot of different modalities. And I realized when I was talking to people, working with people, that they just didn't have some of that knowledge or experience that I was getting from my degree but I didn't think that people should have to get a social work degree to be able to do their own work and become their own healer. So the Conquer Method is really seven different types of stages or pieces of a healing centered approach that gives people the tools to identify their own healing processes and what works for them. So, there I I've done a lot of healing and therapy, but I've also done a ton of healing in a taco shop, sharing a burrito with a friend. So really what the Conquer Method is giving people the tools to identify the aspects of how they can integrate healing into their life, recognize it, notice when it's working, when it's not working, and how to advocate for other things.

So in the navigating process of Conquer, we teach how to find a therapist because a lot of times people will say, oh, you need to go to therapy. That's great. But what most people do is just go to Google and search therapists, but they don't know that there's like 30 different types of therapies. So I teach like, what is EMDR, what is brain spotting, what is somatic experience. Instead of sharing trauma stories,  a lot of the Conquer Method is about sharing healing stories and like how people have healed and what has worked for them and what hasn't, and let people hear those stories and then make decisions for themselves about the things that might actually connect with them. I've had huge healing moments in meditation and in therapy and in isolation and in community. Right. There's no there's no one size fits all. So that's what the Conquer Method is about, it’s giving people the tools to identify their own process so that they can navigate their journey without being told how to heal or what healing should look like.

Bob Davis

And it goes back to what you said, where we all have a journey to make, right? I wonder, as you look back at your journey and how far you've come, what do you think of when you think of people who are in the same position that you were in? What do you what do you tell them as soon as they're starting out on their on their long road?

Savannah Sanders

I think at this point, I used to see it as two very separate things, like my trauma history and then my getting out story, but I actually very much see… I think I'm at a point in my life now where I actually don't see those things as separate. And I think that I actually had a lot more control in those situations than I actually thought I did at the time. And a big part of me reclaiming my power has been recognizing how much power I actually did have in those situations and how I did survive and how smart and resilient I was to be able to navigate horrific situations like that. But as I've healed, I've gotten to a place where I just recognize this whole thing has been my journey and that there have been good and bad across while I was a kid and while I was healing, there were people that came into my life that supported my healing, that made my healing somewhat harder, that I needed to go back and redo and all sorts of different things. And so I don't really see it as a before and after. I kind of see it all is like my experiences. And I've been able to do enough work and work on enough of that deep trauma that I'm finally, in a place where I'm not triggered by it and now I appreciate the triggers that I had, because every time I trigger came up, that was something that I recognized that I needed to work on. And part of my healing journey has been deeply recognizing those triggers and I'm in and I'm in a safe enough space, in a safe enough point in my life that when I do have a trigger, I have the honor of being able to dig deep into that trigger and figure out where it's coming from without it impacting the rest of my life and so there's just so many nuances. And nobody told me that when people told me what it would look like when I felt like I was healing, this is not what I thought it would look like. I thought that I would be a new person that was detached from the trauma and actually, for me, it's been embracing all of the experiences I've had.

Also, I want to just clarify, when I was speaking about my healing journey and embracing my path, I really want to clarify that what I mean in that is that I have gotten to the point where I am able to embrace who I was within those experiences and the strength that I had in those experiences and not the experiences themselves, because I don't want to have it misconstrued that the abuse was ever OK, or that those experiences were OK. My journey and my healing has been about embracing who I actually was, because I think that in a lot of my early healing stages, I felt like the abuse took away who I am and as I've continued on that journey, I've recognized that it didn't take away who I am. And I don't know what my life would have been like if I didn't experience all of those things, but I really mean looking at the strength I had through those experiences, not necessarily that the experiences themselves were what I am embracing, but more embracing who I was in those moments.

Bob Davis

Yeah, that makes total sense. And some of the praise I heard from some of the providers who attended the training session that you led really spoke to that vulnerability, right? Your willingness to lean in and lead from a place of vulnerability and awareness. Talk a little bit about where do you get that courage and where do you get that instinct?

Savannah Sanders

 I think the best way for us to create transformational relationships is through authentic communication, and I have done enough to be in a place where I can speak to those experiences and the healing process and what worked and what didn't work without fear of perception or anything like that and so I and I don't think that we can really create real change without that vulnerability and without speaking to the ways that different people feel. I think it's really important to know that AA works for people. But I also think it's really important to know that AA doesn't work for people. And I think it's really important to know that sometimes nothing worked, like no programs work for people, and sometimes therapy is really awesome for people and sometimes therapy is really traumatic for people. I think it's important that we listen to all of the experiences and have lots of different minds coming together. And as I'm sharing about embracing who I was in those experiences, I also think that it's really important to listen to people who completely have separated themselves from those experiences. Like I don't think that there's a one-size-fits-all way for us to do this and only by sharing vulnerably and authentically our own truth can we really get to the bottom of what's going to happen. If people connect with my story and it helps them on their healing journey, that's awesome, but I also want them to hear 50 other stories, too, because I don't want to assume that I know what's best for them.

Bob Davis

Savannah, thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us today.

Savannah Sanders

Thank you. And thanks for having my little guy in the background.

Bob Davis

Wonderful energy he's picking up on your energy and it's wonderful that we got to get a little dose of that.

Thank you.

Savannah Sanders

Thank you.

Bob Davis

And thank you for listening to Patchwork. Thanks to Minh Ha who’s working the buttons behind the scene here and everyone else at OVW.

If you like this episode, we'd love to get your feedback either through the app or email us at patchwork@usdoj.gov.

Thanks for listening.