hi i'm joseph berardo. at magnacare, we believe that all citizens need to be informed about the healthcare issues that affect their lives. that's why we're proud to support the programming produced by the caucus educational corporation and their partners in public television. combating human trafficking next on caucus new jersey. funding for this edition of caucus new jersey has been provided by holy name medical center in teaneck, new jersey. healing begins here. tdbank fedway associates, the fidelco group, cohn reznick, providing accounting, tax and advisory services for more than ninety years. the ollendorff center and by the russell berrie foundation. promotional support provided by commerce magazine and by the record, north jersey's trusted source and northjersey.com. [music playing]

[music playing] welcome to caucus new jersey, i'm steve adubato. y'know human trafficking is a massive and complex problem that affects the lives of many innocent and powerless victims. here in the studio to discuss what we must do to combat this very serious situation we have dr. mary norton, associate dean for global academic initiatives at felician college; tracy thompson, assistant new jersey attorney general; reverend michael bethune, who is a pastoral minister at covenant house; and finally, patricia devine-harms, community activist, excuse me, community advocate with the new jersey coalition against human trafficking. i want to thank all of you for joining us. throughout this program, you're going to see websites, resources, places you can turn to help yourself, help others in need when it comes to this amazingly complex and serious issue that we call human trafficking. let me ask you,

tracy, human trafficking, eople talk about it. what is it? why is it important? t its very core, it's modern-day lavery, it's slavery, we need to abolish it. it's the luring recruitment or receipt of persons by any means, and now i'm getting into the statutory definition for the purposes of providing labor or services including commercial sex services by force, fraud or coersion. and let's be clear: you don't need to kidnap the person, you don't need to smuggle the person, you can birth the person, actually, into your family. what do you mean? mothers have children and fathers fathers, men father children and that child is sometimes trafficked from the family from the home, made to do things, made to engage in sex, made to engage in pornography, sold, made to work for other people. reverend, you understand and appreciate this less from a legal point of view and more from a human perspective and i don't mean in that the legal community doesn't look at that or government doens't. sure. but covenant house is what and

then we'll connect it back to human trafficking. what is covenant house? covenant house is the premier social service agency internationally that helps homeless young people, 18-21, move from homeless to independence, now in the process of that, covenant house services obviously, one of the most vulnerable segments of society, young people who are aging out of foster care, who have been in and out of the system, group homes, et cetera, and the perception is that they're not connected to any kind of a family, so they become easy pickings, if you will, y'know, especially, for instance, our atlantic city site, i'm at the newark location, but at our atlantic city site, you have all the casinos down there, i mean, so that's just a breeding ground for our young people that are at the covenant house atlantic city site, to be drawn into the casinos. and it's happened on a repeated basis we've had issues down there with that and so, this is something that's high on our radar right now. doctor, let me ask you, at felician is the high priority dealing with this issue, working with the united nations, which

we'll talk about, why is this issue so important for felician, and what are you doing about it? well, for felician it's very important because it goes to the heart of the mission of the college and of the felician sisters as well, which of course, st. francis is the care for all of humanity, and human dignity and this issue is certainly an enormous affront against human dignity. so what we are doing about it is trying to raise people's awareness of he problem, which i think is the role of all educators. okay, raise awareness, now we're doing this program, again, the websites are up, but say someone says, oh wow, there's a new law in new jersey called "the human trafficking treatment prevention and protection act" which does... which increases benefits and rights for human trafficking victims, it takes the victim- centered approach, it increases penalties for the prostitution offenders, and also penalties

for the traffickers. ok, so someone says, oh well, ok, so the government dealing with that, covenant house is dealing with that, felician college is ved in that, but i as a citizen, i don't really have a responsibility to be that involved or concerned about human trafficking, you say...? i say that we all have an obligation and an opportunity to get involved because often times it's a bystander, it's someone in the community that sees something is wrong. what are you seeing? be clear now because right now people are saying what do want me to be looking for here? you might see a hair salon, such as a hair brading salon, where there are people coming and going all times of the day and evening and you think why are they braiding hair at 10:30 at night or why does that nail salon have lots of men going into it, or why are there barbed wires around a business that's doing business with something that's not of a criminal nature or you might be

driving in your own town in newark or atlantic city, in new york, if you see what looks to be like commercial sex workers on the street, and they look young, by federal and new jersey law, you are automatically a victim of human trafficking if you're under the age of 18. what are you looking for, you say someone looks like a sex worker, i mean in all seriousness, what does that, 'm not being naive here, but i'm really seriously, what does that look like and what is someone supposed to do, call the cops? well, if you see someone working in the go-go parlor that looks very young, that's a trafficking victim. if you see someone that's solicitating for commercial sex, and they're very young, that's a trafficking victim. how do we know that's a trafficking victim? if you're under 18, you're automatically victim. you are? yes. by federal and by new jersey law. because the law says if you're under 18, ou are, you are being, you can't do that, so therefore,

someone's forcing you to do that. well they may not be actually forcing you, but you don't have the capacity to consent to engage in sex for money. ok, let's understand something. who are the people that are most susceptible and what would be the reasons why they would find themselves so susceptible? reverend? yeah, well i'll go back to the covenant house population. i mean, the perfect example. we have young people there that in 80% of the cases, don't have family that we can reunify them th, and if they do, the family's not in the position to really bring them back into a healthy, nurturing environment. and so, the covenant house becomes the next best case. well, local pimps know what the covenant house is about. local pimps? ocal pimps, yeah, they're still, they still exist. they just operate in a more covert way. describe how they work. well, they blend into society and look like businessmen. they may be suited, like you and i, and drive nice cars, and they may present themselves as a professional business professional, but y'know in a very careful and calculated way, they'll drive up pearl

street or washington street, where our location is, they'll see a young guy or a young girl off to themselves, kind of like the one sheep that's separated from the fold, and they'll y'know, go into their tactics which is sometimes to offer them, y'know, trinkets, they'll offer them a new pocketbook, they'll offer them a pair of 150 dollar sneakers. how do they work them emotionally? well, they present themselves as if they love them, as if they re about them, as if...they just want to be your friend...from a parental figure, yeah, from a parental perspective, y'know, 'm going to help you out, i know you don't have much, i'm gonna ive you this, that and the other nd before long, the kid's in the car and the kid's gone off. what do they do? they take their identity, do they take their, their, what do they do, how do they, what do they do so that all of a sudden that kid now has no recourse and can't get out? what do they do? they have soft ways of intimidating them. in other words, now you have been trafficked, so anything you do while you're trafficked you're going to be held accountable under the law, and they're afraid, they're really

afraid to leave that person, then. hold on, because, hold on that pimp has taken this younger person in, the younger person now has already broken the law, and the pimp tells the young person i've now, i've got you. is that how? they lure them into thinking that they're, nobody wants you, that you're a throw- away child, that there's no help for you. and that you have broken the law, and so you can't go tell. plus, you have no family to watch you. exactly. or they're not going to believe you. they may have, this may be drug-induced. they may have now have them addicted to drugs. and so there are a number of ways that depending on the person. they groom them they find out what their weakness and vulnerability is, and they take advantage of it, and exploit it. why is new jersey, well, from what i understand, new jersey seems to be place that is more susceptible to the problem, more or, it's more focused here,

correct, doctor? our very location, we're a corridor state we have several major airports, international airports, we have the seaport, so it's very easy. is there something about new jersey? we're also the most densely-populated state. and so, there's an opportunity for criminals to hide literally in plain sight. like you said, the pimps can be dressed in suits. there can be traffickers... there was a case in east orange and newark of the hair braiding that went on a for years. victims were lured over from west africa, their documents were taken, they were from an area...documents? yes, their id, their travel documents, they were threatened that if they disclosed, harm would come to their families, also they... oh, wait a minute, they take their documents and then they say, if you try to escape, we know where your family is back home, and? absolutely. we will

harm them. we will harm them. that happens with both domestic victims which means a us citizen or someone with appropriate documentation, that also happens with ternational victims, that's one, that's part of the use of force fraud or coersion is to say i know where your family is and i ll kill them or to say i've made movies of you engaging in sex d i'm going to give this to your family and shame your family and and your family will lose their elihood. let's talk a little bit about the concept of prevention. how much of this is preventable? i think a good deal of it is, through education. leading up to the super bowl we held two weeks worth of assemblies geared to middle and high school students, students as young as 10 and up to the 12th grade. saying what to them? well we talked to them about this, we said, if you see something, say something. travel in pairs, be home at a

ertain time. parents, if you see your child with a gucci bag, or if another student sees your, one of your student friends, your co-students with a very expensive item, ask, where did you get that from? you know they can't afford it. they don't have a job, they're in middle school, they're in high school. so just ask the question. if you see bruises on their body, if they've become distant and sullen, if their grades are slipping, we need to pay attention. i try to give this example. prostitution involves two people. it's an agreement between the prostitution offender, and the person offering the sex services. rafficking, some people say it's between 3, i say it's between 4. that 4th person is the bystander who says nothing. who doesn't even ask a question about what is going on. so hold on, reverend, someone says, it's a victimless crime, prostitution. you say? absolutely not. absolutely not. often times the victims are not

even aware that what they are a part of is now exploitation. 's not victimless at all. y'know the perception is that is it's ctimless and that it's complicit but not at all. and some of the victims don't even know they're victims because... because they're victims. they don't know they're victims. they think, they think they're doing something, number 1, they're doing something to gain some kind of resources for themselves because they don't have much else and this person who brought them into this has painted the picture that we're here to help you. y'know, we're doing more for you than your family's ever done for you, so so, they comply with it. and so a lot of these young people that you deal with, one of our producers was telling me that you took 15 kids to, was it the beach, one time? yeah. and how many of them had actually been out of the city of newark? two of them had been out of newark out of 15. we took them down to sandy hook right, and newark, they have to use their defense mechanisms, their survival mechanisms, so they're gangsters and they're hard and all of the rest of this, we took them to the beach and we had opposite gang rivals making sand castles

together. you know why? because they were finally for once exposed to an opportunity where all of their facades are stripped away and they could be them. a safe space with no repercussions and that's what covenant house also endeavors to do, put them in places where they layers of bondage and the layers of trauma can be peeled back and that spark in them that really wants a good life like any other kid can become ignited. a lot of what the reverend's talking about seems to involve not just camaraderie but also mentorship. so my question is, what's the connection between mentoring and mentorship, and protecting young people from becoming victims of the kind of human trafficking we're talking about here? i've heard from survivors that if they had a mentor in their life, that they would not have been lured away. talk about hat. it's so important for us to engage students in their agency, in letting them know hat they're heard. in talking to them about all the choices available to them, but also in

talking to them, as tracy was mentioning, don't be lured away. on't be lured by false promises. and what do you mean by false promises. if someone sees you at a mall and says you've got beautiful eyes, you could be a model, but don't tell your parents. that should be, huge red bells going off saying, why n't i tell my parents if this is a great opportunity? and someone having a mentor would have what do to with that kid having a greater likelihood that kid would push back and say, what do you mean i can' t tell my parents? that one more layer of a trusted adult that they can turn to and it's all about turning to trusted adults. jump back in, doctor. and it's part of education too. you have to educate the young people to these things and what's out there. talk about the u.n. initiative. the u.n. has a convention and they, the idea of the convention was to have some universal document, legal document, that they could

have. one of the protocols of that is the palermo protocol, which was started in the year 2000, implemented in 2003, and that is to bring all of the nations to be aware of what the problem is and what they can do in their own countries. however only 117 countries have signed onto that. what does that tell you? one thing, well, it's very complicated because some of the people who sign onto these documents also are perpetrators themselves. signing the document doesn't mean all that much. some of the countries...you took some of you took your students...? to the u.n. yes, we go there every week. and when you take your students over to the u.n., i understand you take them on a egular basis. i do, yes. what is the purpose? the purpose is

to help them understand what the problems of the world are, first of all, and the difficulty in negotiating them. and when you have 183 nations sitting together, trying to discuss a problem, everyone comes from a different perspective. if we had 183 people, we couldn't get consensus. so to try and get the various nations with various cultures and languages. language is another very important thing, how we use words, too. so it's a marvelous education for them. hat impact do you think it's had on some of these students and their view of not just human trafficking, but of human... the whole idea of the way we treat each other and what their ultimately their sponsibility is in this? well we had one student who was from japan and she sat in on a conference about forgiveness

and this was a new concept to her. forgiveness? forgiveness. right. so she made up her mind that she was going to change her major from business to education so she could go back home and educate other people to this concept. wow. so that's pretty powerful, really. that's interesting. as the different websites continue to be put up on the screen, i want to go back again to our responsibility. so, first of all, you talk about ' multiple people involved, ok. say, could you talk about prostitution in one way, but then i'm thinking, y'know what, that's not the only place, or the only act involved, but because there are going to be a lot of people right now who are going to get uncomfortable with me saying his, but i want to say it anyway because it's important. you mention nail salons. there are an awful lot of people

watching this show who go to nail salons. do you think that if a significant number of folks who go into nail salons, if they really had their eyes open and were really thinking about it, wouldn't be all that shocked to know that there are some people working in those nail salons who weren't working there because that was their choice? absolutely. i mean, am i making too much of this? no, no. and i think we have... because they're working 12-14 hours a ay, 7 days a week, and there are mattresses in the back and they're sleeping, i mean, y'know what i'm talking about. and what is the responsibility of that person going there? not to go? o call the police, what are they upposed to do? i think the first hing is just to question, not to the person or not to the salon but question to appreciate your gut, saying, wait a second, i've heard about an issue called human trafficking that labor

or sex trafficking, that's slavery. something doesn't sit right with me and then call either the new jersey hotline or text to the national hotline or call the national hotline and not to say that in each business there is human afficking... i'm not saying that t all, by the way... but there's an opportunity for human trafficking in every business. so say they call your hotline and then you call the local authorities... or we will go. right. what do you mean? or we will contact the person who's called our hotline, we'll engage in a discussion. the state of new jersey and the division of criminalustice has a human trafficking unit. so either we will go to the establishment or get further information about it, maybe contact consumer affairs, licensing or something to see if we have a reason to go in. and by the way, our texting number that we're going to put up right now, what about that? about texting? they can text you and communicate as well? well, not text to the state of new jersey. text is the national

resource hotline. they can text "be free" to the national resource hotline. and who is that? can the victim text? absolutely. absolutely. i just want to be clear, go back to what you were saying. the victim can call the state hotline, or text the national hotline, or call the national hotline. all ight, but say now you go in, you go in to that particular place, what happens? well we would begin conducting interviews, either on site or ask the person o come back to our office. and i mean it would really depend on what kind of information we have. we may start out just going in undercover and getting our nails, or a pedicure done and engaging the particular person. uh, how old are you? how are you? and it may take a couple of times to get the information because we really need to see. if this person asn't been to a movie in four to six months and they're in that age cohort that goes to the movies, does that mean that they're being trafficked and orced to do this? no. but it may be an indicator that some of thr freedom and liberty is being infringed upon. and the

person who gave that information, is their confidentiality protected? if hey want it to be, they can give that tip totally anonymously. do we have a responsibility, reverend, may i ask you, as, just as human beings? absolutely. do you really believe we have that responsibility to step up and tep in? in the core of my soul i lieve that. i have children. you know, i think about it from the perspective of that, what if it was my children, to what length would i go? what if it was somebody else in my family? would my awareness be intentionally heightened then? a person doesn't have to be a counselor in order to see some things are wrong. you could, the eyes are the windows to the soul. you can look in a person's eye and see that their spirit is dead and that they're in a osition unwillingly, you can see that sometimes. as opposed to a person who's gainfully employed and who loves to be there doing their job, you can see the opposite, the direct ontrast. i want to point out one more thing steve... a couple minutes left, go ahead... that sometimes flies below the radar. i know this is not a

conversation about gangs, but in covenant house, the majority of our young people are affiliated in one way or another with gang culture, and in particular, our young women. right, in order for them to get into a gang, they have to be "sexed" into a gang, which means to have sex with multiple gang members. and so that's another orm of trafficking in my opinion that flies beneath the radar because it's against their will, it's against their will. but they're getting some perks out of the deal so they continue to stay caught in that vortex, if you will. but that's, that's something else that needs to be ed at. steve i'm sorry, if i can add...go ahead, there is a link between the gangs and afficking, but i'm just going to extend what the reverend said, s not the sexed in, the sexed in may be a rape, may be a sexual assault. it's making them engage in sex, somebody controlling them and having them engage in sex with other people, and the gangs are getting away from drugs and getting away from uns. trafficking is a 32 billion dollar industry. $32 billion?

yes. it is high profit and low risk. and so having these young women who are sexed into these gangs, who are jumped into these gangs perform these other services, that is the form f trafficking. doctor, we, we... it's interesting, as an academic institution, you're committed you're involved. but, you do believe, that's just not your ssion as a catholic institution, it's our mission? definitely. we're all human beings, we all deserve respect, so we have to respect other people at the same time. someone says, not my responsibility, you say? it is. it is your responsibility to do whatever is in your power to do. everybody has different ways that they can work on problems d issues and i think that has to come into play as well. and i

think people need to know that they shouldn't get directly involved, either, because it can be very, very dangerous. go to the authorities. go to the authorities. and folks, that is, that is why, throughout this program you've seen the information, you may see our information up there right now, just our incorporation information, but more importantly, throughout this program you've seen information about where you can turn. i want to thank all of you for being with us. you've done an important public service. the rest is up to folks out there. thank you very much. thank you, thank you. the preceding program has been a production of the caucus educational corporation, celebrating 25 years of broadcast excellence; and thirteen for wnet, nj-tv, and hyy. funding for this edition of caucus new jersey has been provided by holy name medical center in teaneck, new jersey; td bank; fedway associates; the fidelco group; cohn/reznick;

the ollendorff center; and by the russell berrie foundation. transportation provided by airbrook limousine, serving the metropolitan new york/new jersey area. caucus new jersey has been produced in partnership with tristar studios. my name is doctor john rundback, i'm actually the medical director of the interventional institute here at holy name medical center. peripheral arterial disease, actually, is extremely common. it's one of the forms of hardening of the arteries. as interventional radiologists, we perform minimally invasive image-guided procedures. generally, the prodedures we do are alternatives to what would otherwise be major surgery. almost 80% of those patients can avoid amputation if they are referred to us for these procedures. holy name medical center in teaneck, new jersey. 1-877-holy-name. healing begins here. [captioning

captioning sponsored by macneil/lehrer productions >> woodruff: hopes for a move toward unity in iraq were dashed as the parliament failed to form a new government, while insurgents claim an "islamist state" stretching across the border into syria. good evening, i'm judy woodruff. gwen ifill is away. also ahead this tuesday, with a shortage of brides in china, vietnamese women are increasingly being trafficked into the nation next door and forced into marriage or prostitution. >> the girls that we see, they are given a choice. do you want to marry somebody or do you want to work in the brothels. >> woodruff: plus, we look back at the supreme court's major decisions this term.