So You Got Arrested

Inside the Mind of a Top Prosecutor: A Deep Dive into Human Trafficking with Kirsta Melton

• BRCK Criminal Defense Attorneys

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Human trafficking is one of the most misunderstood crimes in the Texas justice system. In this episode of So You Got Arrested, hosts and BRCK Defense attorneys Jacob Lindberg and Steve Barrera sit down with Kirsten Melton, a leading authority on human trafficking, to dismantle the dangerous myths surrounding this pervasive issue.

From the quiet suburbs of San Antonio to rural Frio County, trafficking is happening in plain sight—often without a single border being crossed. Kirsten shares the chilling reality of how traffickers exploit core vulnerabilities like poverty, addiction, and lack of legal status to exert control through force, fraud, and coercion.

In this episode, we discuss:

  • The Definition: Why trafficking is about exploitation for profit, not necessarily travel or movement.
  • Labor vs. Sex Trafficking: Real-world examples of labor exploitation in industries you wouldn’t expect, including education and food processing.
  • The "Vulnerability" Model: How traffickers use "faux families" and emotional coercion to trap victims.
  • Texas Law & Penalties: The shift toward "prison-only" offenses and the severity of continuous trafficking charges.
  • How to Help: Identifying "red flags" and the critical role of the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Whether you are seeking to understand your rights or want to know how to spot the signs in your own community, this conversation provides a raw, expert look at the front lines of the fight against exploitation.

Why Texas Trafficking Matters

SPEAKER_01

The Texas justice system is messy. So let's break it down. You're listening to So You Got Arrested, the podcast that tells you what really happens after an arrest. Hosted by BRIC Criminal Defense Attorneys, we talk to the people who've lived it, worked in it, and been shaped by it. Whether you're facing charges or just want to understand your rights, your options, and the smart moves that could change everything, we've got your back.

SPEAKER_04

So, Jacob, we're very fortunate in that we have uh Kirsten Melton on the podcast today, and she is one of the, in my opinion, leading authorities on human trafficking here in the state of Texas. And a lot of people don't understand what that means. What is human trafficking?

SPEAKER_02

So human trafficking is the exploitation of men, women, and children for forced sex or forced labor by a third party for that third party's profit or gain. So when we think about human trafficking, it's always a focus on forced labor or forced sex. If you don't hear those things, then you may have a whole lot of other crimes, but you don't have trafficking.

How Big The Problem Is

SPEAKER_04

And just how pervasive is this problem here in the state of Texas?

SPEAKER_02

So it's a fairly significant issue. The most recent Texas-specific research was handled by the University of Texas Institute for Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. And that was back in 2017. So it's a little bit dated. But what they did was they took a picture of the state of Texas from up above. They they created what's called a prevalence rate. And if using that type of research, they indicated that we have at any given time about 313,000 victims of human trafficking in the state of Texas. Now, that includes youth and minor victims of sex trafficking and victims of labor trafficking. It did not include adult victims of sex trafficking. So that's a different population that they did not have enough research at that time.

SPEAKER_04

So it's an even bigger.

SPEAKER_02

To be part of that estimate, correct.

SPEAKER_04

Wow. So I it seems as if, and and this just may be me, that hearing that term human trafficking is something fairly recent within the last 15 or 20 years. I mean, um, is this something that we're just recently in the last couple of decades paying more attention to? Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02

I would say that. So the Federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act uh was enacted in 2000. And then the states began to create their own versions of trafficking laws in the years after that. So, yes, in terms of that term and uh criminal prosecution under that term, it is a fairly recent phenomenon.

SPEAKER_04

Aaron Powell So how would you prosecute so prior to passage of anti-trafficking laws, I mean, were you was the government, was the state able to prosecute the people that were carrying this type of exploitation out?

SPEAKER_02

Aaron Ross Powell I would say they would probably prosecute pieces of what they were doing, but not necessarily identifying the whole of that crime.

SPEAKER_04

Aaron Powell So maybe as like prostitution or kidnapping.

SPEAKER_02

Trevor Burrus Unlawful restraint. Correct. So there may be like pieces of that or aggravated sexual assault of a child when in fact there's this much broader level of commercial sexual exploitation going on.

SPEAKER_04

Aaron Powell Wow. Okay. And so these cases that we see here in Texas, um, you know, I I don't have a lot of experience with human trafficking. Um sometimes you see this stuff in the movies and it's these large organizations that are moving people from one place to another. How true is that? Is it is it normally like small little individual groups or is it organizations?

SPEAKER_02

Well, let me stop you right there, right? So one of the biggest myths about trafficking is that it has something to do with travel. Okay. Um trafficking doesn't require travel of any kind. You can be trafficked in your own home. So I'll give you an example here in San Antonio. Six-year-old girl, her mom decides she wants to start making more money, starts bringing sex buyers to the home. The buyer pays the mom a fee, takes the girl in the back room, and rapes that child. Uh, buyer leaves, girl stays, another buyer comes. Mom addicts that child to heroin at the age of six to make and keep her compliance.

SPEAKER_04

I hope you're not telling us about a real case.

SPEAKER_02

This is a real case. Sells her daughter uh to her first husband at the age of 12. By the time this woman is in her 30s, she has multiple teenage children from whom she is estranged. She is a lifelong heroin addict, and she ends up in our drug court here in San Antonio. And that's when she begins to process through and work through these issues surrounding her trafficking. And I was in the room when she very first spoke publicly about that trafficking, and what she said has stuck with me ever since. And she said, I used to wonder why at eight and nine and ten, no one was looking for me. I wasn't at school, I wasn't at the park, I wasn't at the HEV, I wasn't at the doctor's office, I was nowhere that a kid should be because I was in the back room of my house servicing sex buyers, essentially. And so that's a case that reminds us, right, that trafficking is a crime against the person, like aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, like murder, like aggravated sexual assault. It's not a crime that requires movement. It's not a crime that requires crossing of a border. A lot of times it's confused with the crime of smuggling. Right. And because we're in such an elevated political kind of struggly time when it comes to immigration, that's what's on everybody's minds.

SPEAKER_04

Right.

SPEAKER_02

And trafficking itself doesn't require a party from outside the United States, right? You can be an American citizen trafficked on American soil by an American citizen. We do find that people who are immigrants, um, and particularly those who don't have status, are at extremely high risk of trafficking.

SPEAKER_04

Is that because they're more vulnerable? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02

You know, they're here in the country, they don't feel that they can access law enforcement, they don't feel that they can turn to anyone for help. And what what they're learning right now, of course, is that to have that lack of status is something that's gonna have you immediately removed from the country. Right.

SPEAKER_04

So it's almost leverage that somebody has over them to say, hey, if you go anywhere, if you tell anyone, you're you're gonna get reported. You're out of here. You're gone.

SPEAKER_02

Right? You're gone. So instead, you're gonna continue to work in my farm, in my dry cleaner shop, in my brothel, in whatever capacity, I'm going to continue to have you to work.

SPEAKER_03

Aaron Powell And how are these cases getting to law enforcement? Because we talked about how these victims don't feel safe to come out. There is no real possibility sometimes. How are they getting to law enforcement more often than not?

SPEAKER_02

It's a great question. So there is a small percentage of people who actually come forward and self-identify, but that is a small percentage. A lot of times these cases come in through calls to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. They from members of the public who see something and say something. There are also networks, for instance, if you have missing children, they're gonna go through the National Center for Missing and Exploited Kids. They do a whole lot of work up, gather information. Oftentimes they find that these kids are being advertised for sale for sex on internet sex sites. And so that's gonna be a trigger to send that information to law enforcement so that they can uh remove that child and begin an investigation into the underlying trafficking. We also will see reports from victim serving agencies. So while a victim may not be willing to come forward to law enforcement, they may take help from a victim serving agency. Um, and then that agency may be able to help them kind of work through hey, this is something that should be reported to law enforcement. And we have trusted law enforcement that we work with.

SPEAKER_04

What's an example of serving agency?

Vulnerabilities Traffickers Target

SPEAKER_02

Oh, great, great question. So um a victim serving agency could do anything from like victim advocacy or accompaniment. They may help with food or shelter, housing. Uh, they may help connect people who who have immigration issues with legal services. So victim serving agencies can really cover this broad gamut of different services that they provide for victims of trafficking.

SPEAKER_04

And with regard to trafficking, I mean, is there a obviously, you know, based on what you said, anybody can be a trafficker and anybody can be be a victim, but is there kind of a typical profile that you might see of a victim or a typical profile of somebody who would be trafficking?

SPEAKER_02

So my response to that would be that really traffickers are looking to exploit vulnerabilities. So there are certain core vulnerabilities that are easy for a trafficker to identify and then to suss out. So one of them might be lack of immigration status. One of those could easily be uh poverty or some sort of crisis situation that's occurred in your life where you are in need of something. It may be lack of relationship. Uh, traffickers are quick to pick up on that and quick to establish kind of a faux family around people who need that, with the trafficker being the person who's in charge of that, right? So you've seen enough movies or things on television to know that the term daddy is sometimes associated with a pimp, right? Or a trafficker. That that framework is actually real in the sense that there's this establishment of a fake family relationship with the trafficker in the lead. Um, you will see people who are uh struggling with addiction, struggling with disability. Uh, particularly you've got kids that are in the foster care system that lack that relationship and really kind of core base of foundation, kids that are truant and running away. So that running away piece makes children extremely vulnerable to exploitation from traffickers because they need basic needs met. Right. And those traffickers are happy to supply that.

SPEAKER_04

So is that how they get drawn in? Like basically they're living out on the streets and somebody offers them, you know, food and a place to stay.

SPEAKER_02

Shelter, somewhere to stay, and then all of a sudden you owe that person. Right. Um, or that person has control, let's say, of your younger sibling. Um, and it's a real, it's it becomes a very quickly coercive relationship. Now, when it comes to children under the age of 18 uh and sex trafficking, we don't have to prove force fraud or coercion. Um, and we don't have to prove it when you have a disabled individual who's forced into prostitution. In all the other types of trafficking, adult labor trafficking, adult sex trafficking, uh, child labor trafficking, and labor trafficking of a disabled adult, we do have to prove the application of force fraud or coercion. Okay. Because that's what changes your job, your labor, your work and makes it force labor, right? Is this person outside of you applying force, fraud, or coercion to make you do that work? It also doesn't matter whether your work is legal work or it's work that's illegal. So let's say you're being forced into prostitution. That's illegal here in the state of Texas. But if someone outside of you is forcing you to do that through force, fraud, or coercion, then you become a victim of sex trafficking.

Proving Coercion To A Jury

SPEAKER_03

Right. And so we talked about the complexities of cases. So is that one of those elemental things as a prosecutor that becomes really difficult to prove at the trial, one of those hurdles that really prove with the jury? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, you've got to help jurors understand that it's not just physical force that puts victims in this situation, it is the exploitation of these vulnerabilities and then the application of what is coercive to that individual. So one of the cases I tried here in San Antonio when I was at the AG's office and the and the DA's office here had recused itself, involved a guy named Steve Sumlin. And Steve Sumlin was not someone who was beating people, right? He wasn't tying them up, he wasn't threatening them with guns or knives. He ended up being convicted of trafficking for two reasons. One, he trafficked an underage child for purposes of sex. And then the second reason was he was trafficking an adult. And the coercion that he had used against her was that he knew that she had engaged in prostitution before she ended up um engaged and then married, and then pregnant with a baby. And so he used the threat to destroy her life, ruin her marriage, put her and her child potentially out into the world with no support as a way to continue to keep her in a position where she was forced to engage in prostitution for him. So that coercion might not be powerful to you or to you, but to her, it was a vice, right? It was something that threatened the core of her existence. So traffickers are really excellent at reading people, figuring out that vulnerability, sometimes installing a vulnerability and then exploiting that, right? So think of your cases that involved significant domestic violence, many of the same tactics, isolation, um, removing you from people that might help you in some way, information that might help you in some way, moving you from place to place, um threats of force and violence, using force and violence. But then once you've used it, you don't have to necessarily use it again, right? You you've already exerted your control. And so now it's simply a reminder of that control that keeps this person in line, complying and engaging in either the forced sex or the forced labor.

SPEAKER_04

And so is it more prevalent to see an individual engaged in trafficking, or is it uh you know more prevalent to see it in terms of like groups? Because I've seen cases where it's like maybe a group of three or four. You know, and then sometimes you know there'll be females in the group who are you know trafficking these women for you know sexual.

SPEAKER_02

Traffickers are um criminals of opportunity, right? So they are people who are willing to treat others as things, and that does not uh discriminate versus on gender, right? Right? So you can have, yes, definitely female traffickers, male traffickers, female and male victims. You can have peer-aged trafficking. It doesn't always have to be someone older who's engaging in the trafficking. You can have multiple layers and large groups, and then you can have very, very tiny single person trafficking, even within a domestic relationship.

SPEAKER_04

The situation you described earlier with the mother and her daughter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

Correct. She took what was available to her and she used it. The only thing you need to succeed in trafficking is a vulnerable population, willing buyers, and inconsistent enforcement.

SPEAKER_04

Well, we're up against our break. So uh we're gonna come back from the break and continue our conversation with Kirsten Melton on human trafficking.

SPEAKER_00

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SPEAKER_04

So we're back. We're talking about human trafficking. Um, with regards to human trafficking, you know, I think primarily when people hear about it, they think about sex trafficking. But you mentioned something about labor exploitation. Uh, can you kind of tell us about that?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, so traffickers are excellent at just figuring out what's available to them now. How can I make money now? How can I benefit and profit now? So if you are a company that wants to bring in, let's say, workers from another country, you want to pay them at a below market wage, you want to work them extra hours, um, then your pitch to them, right, is really going to be hey, we're gonna offer you this wonderful job, you're gonna get a green card, you're gonna be able to bring your family, we're going to give you X number of hours and X number of payment, and you're gonna have housing and all of these things. And that's a very different uh kind of dynamic than if you're talking about someone who wants to place a 16-year-old girl on an internet sex website for sale to buyers. So labor trafficking exists and can exist in pretty much any industry you can imagine. Uh, when I was in at the Attorney General's office, I was involved with our civil team that was part of my human trafficking group on a case where it was a woman who was using her bilingual Spanish schools to traffic uh teachers, to traffic teachers. And people are like, teachers, teachers are victims of trafficking. Yeah, teachers can be victims of trafficking. I think we have in our mind it's just runaway children, right? For sex. But no, these were women who were educators who were being labor trafficked in in very high dollar bilingual pre-K schools. Um so it it helps us to start thinking outside of the cliches, right? And the television pictures that often inform our views of law generally, um, but certainly of trafficking as well.

SPEAKER_04

Aaron Powell Well, and I I saw a story, you know, maybe about a year ago where there was this restaurant chain, which I won't name, uh, but they were uh under investigation and they had been raided uh because they were allegedly bringing people in uh to pay them less than minimum wage to work at the restaurant. So I mean, you know, I that's definitely something that exists.

SPEAKER_03

Aaron Powell And we talked about the coercion part of it. I'm assuming that's that part of it, and that they come and they bring their families and there's that support that they may not have had. And so is that kind of the part of it that does turn it to that trafficking level?

SPEAKER_02

Aaron Powell Well, on the labor trafficking side, if they're coming from somewhere else, oftentimes they're promise that they're gonna be able to bring their families. When reality they're brought here on a temporary visa that can be terminated at any time at the employer's will. And so it's a lot of times false promises in recruiting that are really the fraud piece for international victims of trafficking. The labor trafficking cases that I've worked on here involving domestic uh victims, I've I've had um personally worked on a case for many years involving the child labor trafficking of kids in a group home for like troubled teens who were then forced into labor. Uh, one of the biggest labor trafficking cases that was not prosecuted criminally was Henry's Turkey Service, which were disabled men from the Texas state schools who were worked for decades doing turkey gutting and processing in Adalyssa, Iowa. And when I, when you tell that story and you think about the fact that in the heart of our country, right, 30 disabled men from Texas were there, woken up every morning at 3 a.m., dressed out, sent to a to a turkey processing plant, gutting and eviscerating turkeys, supposed to be being paid$60 a month for that work, were getting$5 a week to use at the local convenience store on their way back. Uh, fungus growing up their legs when they're found, several of the men needing to go into nursing homes, people who were struck uh as they would work, marched with weights over their heads, handcuffed to bunks when they tried to leave, not given health care. This is the lunch meat that is sliced up and that we put on sandwiches and some of our kids to school. So labor trafficking is one of those things that impacts us at a level of one we put on our table, what we wear, what we purchase, right? And it's it's at uh much closer to us level in many ways than the sex trafficking that's occurring if we are not people who are purchasers ourselves.

SPEAKER_04

And and I would imagine the labor trafficking cases may be a little difficult in the sense that I would imagine a lot of those relationships start voluntarily or with consent.

SPEAKER_02

Oh, sure. Well, you think, right, that you are agreeing to this whole wonderful set of things. It's just like a DV relationship, right? People don't enter into a domestic violence relationship thinking. They're going to get beat. They get involved with this person thinking that they're wonderful and amazing and that they're in love and that they're happy and they're going to be happy. And then that person gets a commitment, and then that person changes their tactics and wants their needs met above everyone else's. Same thing that's happening in a trafficking relationship. There's the promise of something better. Tiny percentage of victims are truly kidnapped into trafficking. Far, far, far greater percentage are invited in with false promises, with allure, essentially. And then once the trafficker has that commitment or that control, then those tactics switch to get compliance from you and to keep that compliance as you're moving forward.

SPEAKER_04

And that was going to be one of my questions, whether we had any statistics showing like how many of these trafficking victims uh begin that kind of, I don't want to call it a relationship, but being placed in that situation through kidnapping. Because those are those are the stories that you can do.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah. The stories that you hear. Now I have had, I have had a tr a kidnapping case, so it does happen. Um, but it is a very small percentage.

SPEAKER_03

Okay.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I think it's often tied in with the human smuggling, like we talked about, where you know that's just not a part of it, right? We have human smuggling and trafficking, which are just kind of two separate things.

SPEAKER_02

People do get smuggled into the United States, and then their smuggler may say, Guess what? You owe me a whole new set of money. And if you don't pay that, I'm turning you over to immigration. And so if you don't have that money, then yes, you're gonna work it off for me. It's a vulnerability in my absolutely, it's a vulnerability. So it's a way to exploit you and kind of keep you under your thumb.

Texas Law Changes And Tougher Penalties

SPEAKER_04

It's a vulnerability to exploit for that trafficker. Correct. Since the time that you've been prosecuting, um, you talked about, you know, in the federal system, they passed a law in 2000. And and um what changes has the state of Texas made to the law in order to address some of these issues?

SPEAKER_02

Aaron Ross Powell We've made a lot of changes. So starting in about 2009, Texas created the human statewide human trafficking task force, and they began having an omnibus bill each session to work on changes in the law. So in 2011, we shifted to the current statute structure uh overall. We did we did not have uh disabled individuals distinguished out at that time. They were lumped in with non-disabled adults uh and non-disabled children. Um but the the core structure of the statute was changed in 2011. And we aligned it then with, for instance, all of the parts of the code of criminal procedure that uh that help with child sexual abuse. Right. Those things didn't apply to trafficking before. Trafficking became a um And what which parts are you talking about?

SPEAKER_04

Like what's the case?

SPEAKER_02

So the parts that allow for additional evidence to come in. Things like like 3837, um lifetime registration when it comes to to adult or child sexual uh trafficking. Trafficking became a a prison-only offense. Um it had deferred as a possibility for a period of time, deferred is no longer available.

SPEAKER_04

So that's where you could get probation, even if you were convicted. Or you could get probation from a judge on a point.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, correct. So it over time we've stiffened penalties. We have created more resources for victims, but I will tell you talk to the victim service providers around this state. We still don't have enough. There are still waiting lists of victims trying to get into programs, trying to access resources. Um, and we still need more breadth and depth in our victim services. So, again, that's something that when you think about all of the issues related to cutting grants that have been occurring over the past year in the new Trump administration, a lot of that money goes to serve nonprofits who are serving victims of trafficking. Um we certainly have issues there. But Texas has made massive strides in terms of its code and in terms of creating efforts to serve victims. I don't know that we can ever do enough, um, but we have certainly made a massive effort over the past decade.

SPEAKER_04

I know you know some of the penalties have gotten pretty severe. Oh, they are? I know, for example, I think continuous trafficking is uh no parole.

SPEAKER_02

It is a 25-to-life uh no parole offense for anything involving sex trafficking of a child or a disabled individual. The same thing is true of trafficking itself. So now, as of this last legislative session, trafficking, adults, all categories of trafficking are now first-degree felonies, five to ninety nine, uh, prison-only offenses, and no parole for child sex trafficking or the sex trafficking of a disabled individual.

SPEAKER_04

Yeah. So very stiff penalties. Very stiff penalties that the state has stepped in with.

SPEAKER_02

Correct.

SPEAKER_04

So you were talking uh in our last podcast about the organization that you had started to help prosecute some of these cases.

Rural Prosecution Challenges And Training

SPEAKER_02

Um when you do that, you're going out to, I guess, rural areas that maybe don't have the resources to Yeah, I'm available to any uh any district attorney's office that is looking for someone who has experience trying trafficking cases and um and and wants that experience. Again, lawyers learn through practice. So my view of that is that I can come in, I can help you in whatever stage that you're looking for. So if you want help crafting your indictment, yes, I can help do that. If you want help thinking through your travel trial strategy, yes, I could come alongside you there. If you want to help trying your case all the way through, can do that too, right? So that's it's like having kind of your sister court, your your big sister who knows how to try these cases, sit with you. Then you've learned it, you've done it, and you move on to start doing those things yourself.

SPEAKER_04

What are some of the complications that maybe a smaller office might have in prosecuting these types of cases in smaller areas?

SPEAKER_02

I think part of it is just one, it's going to be training your law enforcement to recognize this crime. Many victims of trafficking have criminal histories. Many victims of trafficking have uh a mistrust of law enforcement and are running from law enforcement. Again, similar to defending vulnerability. Correct. Um, many of them struggle with uh addiction or underlying mental health issues. All of that means, right, that typically they're pushing law enforcement away, not drawing law enforcement in. And so that's one of the big things is oftentimes law enforcement will see victims of trafficking, not recognize them as victims of trafficking and not work up those cases. So in smaller jurisdictions, I've heard many times around the state of Texas people say, Well, we don't have trafficking here. And my response is, indeed, you do have trafficking here. And when I train, I have a slide that starts with Corpus Christi, right, which is one of our mid-sized cities and goes all the way down to a tiny town in Frio County that's got about 200 people. Um, they all have trafficking, right? And how do I know? Because I've tried those cases over the course of time. So 313,000 down to about 287 people. You got trafficking. Right. Okay. Right. Because trafficking is do you have a vulnerable population? Do you have someone who's willing to exploit it? And do you have someone who will purchase the goods, service, or person as a result of that? The answer is, yeah, you got that. Yeah. Um, you don't need an international port. You don't need uh NASCAR being held in your city, you don't need the Super Bowl. Uh, all you need are those three pieces.

SPEAKER_04

And I guess if you're sitting around waiting for somebody to say help on being trafficked, a lot of times that's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02

That's not gonna happen. So you've got to be looking for it, you've got to be able to identify it, then you've got to know how to work with those victims to try to have them partner with you, right, in the development of that case and the development of that evidence. And then your prosecutors need to be working with your investigators from the beginning so that when you hit brick wall after brick wall, which you will, you can pivot and find a way to look for information somewhere else. And you'll find it most of the time. There's other sources, and then it's a matter of taking what pieces you have and putting together a successful prosecution. So part of that is teaching prosecutors and teaching investigators to look for everyone involved in the trafficking scheme. Everyone, not just a single person. Like I had a case out of San Marcos that had two separate recruiters, that had the actual main trafficker, that had a woman who had involved who was involved in the sexual assault of the underage victim as well. And then there were, then there was a buyer. Ultimately, we wrapped up all of those people and a driver for the trafficker. Ultimately, we wrapped up all of those people in the course of the investigation. So then when our victim became uncooperative and was not going to work with us, we were able to work with defense counsel, bring in defendants, flip people, tell the be able to tell the victim's story by the people who were there and participating in the conduct, and ultimately send our trafficker to prison while still having accountability for all of these other people who were willing to work with us in the process.

SPEAKER_04

So if there's a prosecutor out there who's watching our podcast and says, hey, I may have an issue in my county, I might need some help, how would they get in touch with you?

What To Do If You Suspect Trafficking

SPEAKER_02

They can they can call me, they can email me. Um so you can reach me through kirsta.melton at justice startsnow.org. Uh, you can go to my website at justicestartsnow.org. Um, and I'm happy to take calls and emails I do from law enforcement, from prosecutors, and from victim service providers all over the state.

SPEAKER_04

And if there are people out there listening who worry that, you know, maybe they saw something, maybe they're aware of something, what should they be doing?

SPEAKER_02

Sure. So if it is an emergency, you want to call 911 and you want to tell them that you think this is trafficking. And if you're wrong, then what should happen is a trafficking detective should go out there and they should be able to assess the situation. And maybe there's a different type of crime that's occurring, or maybe it is trafficking. So tell them what you think. Two, if it's not an emergency, but you want to report it, you can call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1888-3737-888. And that will take a report. They will also connect, for instance, if a victim calls that number, they can be connected to resources in their area. Um, but that should also send information down to local law enforcement so that there can be an actual investigation. But here's what I would tell you: don't wait. If you see something, right, try to get actionable information. What kind of car? How many people? What do they look like? Don't wait on that information. Call it in so that that victim isn't gone, right? And so that that victim actually is able to get the help that they need in that moment at that time. It is calls like that that literally have saved the lives of victims, that have removed them from exploitation that otherwise they would have remained in for significant periods of time. The public is critical on this. Um, it's important for you to kind of know enough about trafficking to distinguish that. And again, if you'll go to justice startsnow.org on the resource page, there are lists of red flags for sex trafficking, for labor trafficking, uh, for illicit massage, all of those are there and they are a free resource available to the public.

SPEAKER_04

Well, I want to thank you for your time. Uh, time goes by fast. I think we went a little bit over, but this was a fascinating discussion. Thank you for being on, Miss Melton. My pleasure. Uh, this is Jacob Lindbergh and Steve Barrera for So You Got Arrested.

SPEAKER_01

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