Why Knowing More About Human Trafficking is Important to Us.....in the Carlisle Community

   Kim Flagor and I attended a workshop on Human Trafficking at our annual counseling conference back in November. We were really moved by the terrible and sad information we learned. It stuck with us. Just this week, I had the chance to go to another presentation on Human Trafficking by a local group that works to help young women get their lives back after being rescued from trafficking. Again....I was deeply moved. Soon, our counseling staff will hear from a third group, this time a group that helps get the message out to our teens and students as to what Human Trafficking is and why it matters to them. In other words, Human Trafficking is a big deal. But why? And why in little ol' Carlisle? Well, here are a few main reasons (in no particular order...they are all important!)



First of all, what is Human Trafficking?
 Human trafficking is modern-day slavery and involves the use of force, fraud, or coercion to obtain some type of labor or commercial sex act. It also happens to be the 2nd most profitable crime in the world, only trailing drug trafficking (although it could someday overtake that based on the rate it is growing)

 So, now that we know what it is, why does it matter to us?

 1. Iowa has the 5th highest rate of human trafficking in the country. That means only 4 states have a larger trafficking issue than us. This is likely due to the intersection of I35 and I80...too interstate systems that criss-cross the entire country. Our mental health facilities (or lack of) is another key reason. And a final reason is drug trafficking in our state which typically goes hand in hand with human trafficking. Dorothy's House presentation noted that heroin is on a major rise in our state because it is cheap and addictive and this is one of the drugs key to the trafficking issue.

 2. But we are not just talking about our young girls (and often boys as well) being stolen or abducted and taken out of state. Up to 80% of human trafficking is "Familial Trafficking". This means a majority of trafficking of our young people is done by their own family. Their mothers, fathers, step-parents, foster parents, older siblings, etc. They are selling their own child's body multiple times a day for money to pay rent or for a drug habit.

 3. According to Dorothy's House, guess who is the most popular victim to traffic? A 12-14 year old girl that is tall, skinny, and blond and right from the Des Moines area. We aren't talking 18 year olds and 20 year olds. We aren't talking kids from Chicago or LA. We are talking our kids. Our pre-teens and teenagers. As a father of 5....that matters to me!

 4. 1 in 3 teens on the street will be lured by a trafficker within 48 hours. We have runaways in our school district from time to time. It is scary to think of several of these students being approached by a trafficker. Many of these young people who are approached will accept the "help" they get and soon be into a trafficking situation they cannot escape from.

 5. The average age of a child victim in human trafficking and prostitution is 13-14 years old. In our district, we have roughly 300 students at that age level.

 6. Speaking of the average victim....the average victim may be forced to have sex up to 20-48 times a day. Young girls and women who happen to survive and make it out of these situations many times need reconstructive surgery, immediate and long-term mental health therapy, and addiction treatment. Even if everything works extremely well, it is tough for these girls and boys to live a normal life due to the intense and long-term trauma they were surviving through.

 7. Most common way a girl gets into trafficking? They are "boyfriended" in. In other words, a "nice" boy slowly gets to know a girl in that age 11-15 range (sometimes older) and grooms the girl. This is many times done online. The girl thinks the boy is her age or thinks he is really wanting to be a boyfriend. Many times the boy is much older, usually a man well past his teenage years. They arrange a meeting and the rest is a very sad, sad situation. The girls typically never see it coming......

 .....But her friends do. Her family does. Her teachers do. Her neighbors do. If.....if they are involved in her life and being supportive and caring and not letting her get down this path. This is why it matters to us here in little ol' Carlisle. We have a chance to not let our girls and boys be a part of these sick statistics. We have a chance to save the lives of some of our young people. But we must be willing to ask questions and not accept "fine" or "okay" for an answer. We must be on social media and checking on our kids. We must know our kids' friends and who our kids think are their friends. We must get in their business....because their business matters to us because we love them. And we must educate ourselves on this issue which has been around forever, but is rapidly increasing due to social media making it easier to "buy and sell" young people, our transportation system making it easier to traffic young people quickly and easily, and our drug and mental health issues on the rise making young girls and boys more vulnerable to being lured into the world of trafficking. We cannot look the other way because this topic is too gruesome, too ugly, too tough to read and hear about. We must turn towards it and towards the solutions because of these things.


 Please click on some of the links below to learn more. I did not know much about this issue 6-12 months ago, but I am glad I am learning now. As a counselor, I have dealt with many students "talking" to a stranger online and many times the conversations have stopped before it got too far. My worry is what if it didn't. What would happen. I want to educate myself and others so we can all help each other and all watch over each other

The Polaris Project

Recognize the Signs

Iowa Networkd Against Human Trafficking

Nutshell and Utah Education Network's Short Internet Safety Videos are Pretty Good!

   Through a blog I recently read, I learned about the website called Nutshell. It has lots of short animated videos about things people don't understand. In other words, they explain a concept or idea in a "nutshell". Well, the blog I read focused on a portion of the site that schools, counselors, and parents may appreciate. The Utah Education Network has produced and is still producing Internet safety, etiquette, and proper usage videos. I just watched a couple and thought they were pretty good, even for the high school age. If you have kids at home and don't understand something about the Internet, you could watch these videos and then have your kids watch them. Or watch them together. They are not very detailed, but the get the general idea across, in a "nutshell". Lots of other videos on the site that could be of interest, but I am posting the link directly to the Internet safety videos as well as the link to the Nutshell homepage. Enjoy

Utah Education Network Internet Safety Videos click here!

Nutshell home page click here!

Planet Nutshell | Web Videos | Explainer Videos | Educational Videos: NetSafe Episode 1: What is the Internet? (Grades K-3)

Warren County Health and Safety Fair Thursday, September 13th!

If you read the weekly Carlisle District information in the Wildcat Weekly, you might have noticed this. But it was buried pretty deep, so I wanted to repost it on this blog for those who missed it. Please note the information below. If you can make it, it looks like a great event for families. Spread the word!



WARREN COUNTY HEALTH AND SAFETY FAIR
The Warren County Health and Safety Fair will be held on Thursday, September 13th
from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on the Indianola Courthouse Lawn.  Please join us for the following:  

*Fire Safe house presented by Indianola Fire Dept.
*Face Painting
*Free giveaways
*Various health and safety vendors
*Fun activities for kids

*The Iowa State Patrol will sponsor a bike safety rodeo at this time.  Your child(ren) can bring their bicycle and take advanatage of the following:
--Bike safety check
--Skills test on a bike-safety obstacle course
--Free t-shirt 

Water/Pool Safety Resource

Finally getting back to "school work" and catching up on my blog reading and blog posting and wanted to pass along a "Water Safety" resource for parents and kids out there as our community, like most, really, really likes water related activities in our hot Iowa summers. This website was set up by a family who lost their own child to a drowning incident several years back. Their hope is that this website and their charity can help others avoid an accident like this. Notice that you can click on the "Red Cross" link after reading the facts about water-related accidents if you want to learn safety tips before hitting the pools and water parks/lakes this summer. Stay safe!

Stew Leonard III Children's Charities click here (see Red Cross link for water safety tips when you get to this site)

Bullying vs. Teasing vs. Hazing vs. Harrassment

Wow....that is a lot of different words with lots of different meanings. The reason I bring these words up is because they have all been used in our local news this past week, specifically in reference to several schools' wrestling teams and incidents that have happened. But these words have been used before and sadly will be used again. So, what do they actually mean? Well, here are some quick definitions I found....

Bullying: : 1. to treat abusively 2: to affect by means of force or

Teasing: 1 : to disturb or annoy by persistent irritating or provoking especially in a petty or mischievous way 2 : to annoy with petty persistent requests : 3 : to make fun of :

Hazing: : 1. the action of hazing; especially : an initiation process involving harassment

Harrassing: 1. to annoy persistently 2. to create an unpleasant or hostile situation for especially by uninvited and unwelcome verbal or physical conduct

So, not sure if that helps, but at least now we have the official definitions. Through life skills, we talk about these words often and even started talking about "hazing" with the 8th grade students in light of the recent news. The first thing we talk about is the difference between bullying and teasing. Teasing is pretty typical and is either usually between friends or between people having fun. Even if it is towards someone a student does not like, it is usually stopped when the other person gets angry or it stops naturally after a short term. Bullying on the other hand usually does not stop and many times gets worse when the student gets angry or shows emotion. That is why ignoring a bully or bullying behavior directed towards you tends to work in many cases because the bully gets bored due to not getting any reaction. Hazing is a version of teasing and bullying, most often found in group initiation to something such as a sport. Hazing many times takes place between friends or teammates, but crosses the line pretty quickly to bullying and harrassment (even assault) even among friends and teammates. And harrassment is another term for bullying, but more of a legal or law term, but if a person is bullying another student, they are basically harrassing them. You can see how students, teachers, and adults can get confused with all these terms and situations. I even struggle with these terms depending on which hat I wear: counseling, coach, or parent of 2 school-age kids....I am all 3 and struggle to look objectively at each situation.

So what are our counselors doing to continue to try to help our students learn in a safe and non-threatening environment? Well, we try to remain vigilant and keep our eyes open for teasing, bullying, and harrassment situations and help educate those involved when they happen. We help students understand the difference between teasing and bullying. We review data from state-wide surveys that contained questions on bullying and are currently creating a survey to give to students later this month to get more current bullying and harrassment data. We then share this data with staff and community in order to educate others and have them join us in our efforts to create a safe and supportive learning environment. And a few of the counselors are even taking a graduate level course at Drake this Spring titled "Anti-Bullying". This will help us increase our efforts in this area as we learn research-based strategies, as well as network with other central Iowa (and possibly even more since the course is on-line) counselors in order to see what they are doing in their schools. We are excited about this opportunity to learn more as bullying and student harrassment is high on our list of priorities this year even though our data continues to show that our school and students feel safer, less bullied, and more connected than other schools our size across the state. We may never be able to put a stop to bullying, but we can continue to educate ourselves and work to reduce the bullying issues that we do hear about. Stay tuned for more information as we go through our Drake class and collect data. We are all in this together!

Bullying resources and tips:

Stop Bullying Gov

How to avoid being a Bully Victim

Bystanders: The Key to Stopping Bullying

Six Things Not to Post on Your Facebook Account

Although geared more for adults, I still wanted to post a link to some great advice. Each of the six items could relate to young people and young people might be the least understanding of these rules and make the most mistakes, so I think they could use this information. However, all the parents, adults, and even I could use this information. I love the reasons they give on why not to post these six things...makes sense and is kind of scary. Anyway, click on the link and see how many of these you do. I have to admit...I do some of these!

Six Things You Should Never Reveal on Facebook by Kathy Kristof

So your Child Wants a "Facebook", What to Do?

First off, in order to have a Facebook account, a child has to be 13 years of age. But, millions of kids under the age of 13 already have a Facebook, so that rule doesn't seem to really be working. So, what does a parent do when their child begs to start up a Facebook account. Or maybe they already started one somehow without you knowing?? Either way, the next step might be keeping them safe and teaching them digital citizenship, how to be responsible online, and internet and social network safety.

I did a poll in my 6th grade Life Skills last year involving technology and here some interesting stats that I found:

*92.2% of Carlisle 6th graders have a computer at their house they can use (this does not count hand-held devices that can go online)

*57.5% belong to a Social networking site such as Facebook, MySpace, and Ning, with nearly all of those students saying Facebook was where their account was.

*26% admitting to being an "online friend" of a person they did not know, did not talk to outside of school, or did not like.

*26% admitted to being bullied by someone using technology through IM, social network sites, chat functions, or through text messages.

*Only 38.1% said their parents review or would review their social networking posts or text messages.

*Only 34.7% said they tell or would tell their parents if they were being bullied or harrassed.

So, what does this all mean? It means your 11-year old is likely to on Facebook or wanting to be on it. Your 13 or 14-year old is VERY LIKELY to be on Facebook or wanting to be on it. And when using Facebook, they are very possibly "friending" people they don't know or only their friends know and it is also very likely parents are not checking in on their facebook to see how they are using it or what they are saying on it. All this can lead to some dangerous outcomes down the road and since these social networking sites are fairly new, very few people know the short-term and long-term risks of putting your life out for others to see.

The following link seemed to answer about every question I had, even questions my own mother has about Facebook. Give it a read and see if it answers your questions. Feel free to leave comments about your experiences or questions about this very important topic.

http://www.surfnetkids.com/safety/facebook/