ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS
Dr. Art announced we will have another weed pulling day. He will send out details in e-mail.
Craig Matthews today received his blue badge.
William Gray received his Paul Harris-plus-Four pin today. Congratulations Bill!
We received our DDF award today! Approximately half of the money will go to Rotacare and half to Rising International. This is a cooperative project and you will hear more about our contributions of time and labor in the future.
Next week (December 27th) is dark! See you in two weeks (Jan 3rd). Happy holidays to all!
Carmel Judd spoke to us today about Rising International (on the right above with supportive club member Kendra Cleary). It began 20 years ago focusing internationally on human trafficking , then tackled human trafficking here in our own community.
She cited some statistics. Seventy four percent of the victims have been in foster care. Runaways are especially at risk; one in five are likely to be trafficked. California has the highest number of human trafficking cases in the country. A pimp can earn $150,000 per girl per year. Fewer than 100 beds are available internationally for underage victims.
Most of the recruitment of victims and customers occurs on line. Serial killers frequent the same sites and one survivor escaped from a serial killer. The worst site is called “back page”. The code word is “new in town”.
One of the programs they currently operate is “safe schools”. This program is in middle schools. Students learn what trafficking is and how to recognize it. Most of the women in the program had someone pretend that it was a romance. Some have focused on single moms. “Trauma bonding” is one of the strategies that works. Isolation is another technique. In many cases the trafficking happens in the family, with parents selling their children. One important change in the law is that that minors can no longer be charged with prostitution
She spoke also about the characteristic of perpetrators. They often have unresolved sexual trauma themselves, are narcissistic and grandiose and are very charismatic and are good liars.
There is a national human trafficking hotline. It is 888-373-7888 or text 233-733. You can call to report an incident or just for advice.