SHOW NOTES

Visit the National Center on Sexual Exploitation’s website.

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Chat 24/7 with the National Sexual Assault Hotline.

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Elizabeth: You are listening to Smart Talks with the Elizabeth Smart Foundation.

[00:00:10] I'm your host, Elizabeth Smart. Smart Talks provides survivors and supporters with tools for healing, a sense of community, and empowerment so we can all heal and move forward together.

[00:00:22] Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Smart Talks by the Elizabeth Smart Foundation. I am Elizabeth, and today I am joined by Dawn Hawkins. Dawn is the CEO of the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. It is the leading organization exposing the connections between all forms of sexual exploitation, including sex trafficking, prostitution, pornography, and child sexual abuse.

[00:00:49] Dawn is incredible. She is energetic. She's full of creativity, and she works to build a world free from sexual violence and a world for freedom and human dignity for all. The National Center on Sexual Exploitation, or NCOSE, is incredible and they do such vital work, but Dawn is also at the front of the charge and she is a hero.

[00:01:16] She is everything you would want in someone leading the charge. So thank you so much, Dawn, for joining me today.

[00:01:26] Dawn: It's nice to be with you. Hello.

[00:01:29] Elizabeth: One of the things that I just wanted to start right off the bat with, is I wanted to ask you if you could, and I don't mean to put you on the spot, so I'm sorry, maybe in advance, but could you explain what the difference is between rape and sexual assault and violence versus sex, intimate, consensual, enthusiastic sex.

[00:01:53] Dawn: Oh, that is a good question. And one I love to talk about.

[00:01:57] I just believe that there has to be mutuality. There has to be respect and consent, consent is so key when it comes to these issues. Free of money, free of coercion for it to be sex, for it to be healthy intimacy and rape, image-based sexual abuse, sex trafficking, prostitution, even the creation of pornography is so far from that.

[00:02:23] Elizabeth: Perfect. Thank you so much. What can the average person do to help make a difference today in this field of sexual violence and sexual exploitation?

[00:02:35] Dawn: Well, I come from just a position of wherever we see exploitation and abuse taking place or being normalized, we oppose it. And I've found in my own advocacy that as we raise our voices to oppose the normalization of abuse and exploitation that we win, actually, most of the time.

[00:02:55] And it sounds kind of scary to speak up when you're at the supermarket and you see it, or when you're browsing Amazon and you see it. I can get into some specific examples, but as we raise our voices, we win most of the time. And that will change culture to one that prioritizes human dignity over the use and abuse of other people.

[00:03:17] Elizabeth: I think a lot of, at least in my experiences, I've gone out and I've interacted with lots of different people, I think one of the main concerns that I've come across is that people don't know what they're seeing or don't know what to look for. So when you say raise your voice when you see something that's wrong, what should people be looking for? What should stand out? You also said, as things become more normalized and we become more desensitized, and so how do we keep that sensitivity high to know what we're looking at?

[00:03:50] Dawn: Lemme just give you a few examples. I mentioned Amazon people might be like, what are you talking about?

[00:03:54] We found because of just individuals who were shopping on the website, they found that Amazon was selling childlike sex dolls. And as we looked more into this, we found that Amazon was selling like more than a thousand different types of sex dolls made to look like children. And because these people that brought this to our attention and their messages to Amazon, some pretty modest campaigns, Amazon stopped selling them.

[00:04:22] That's such an important message to send to the public. It normalized sex with children, the fact that they even sold it. And so stepping up to say, hey, stop it. And they did. Right. And so I would say, I can tell you some more examples where exploitation and I just saw like a headline on Instagram and talk of a video that was shared of someone's wedding, where the groom had filmed his bride having sex with someone else. And during the wedding, he shared this video. This video then of him sharing it has amassed like over 10 million views on TikTok. But what he's showing is abuse. He, somebody secretly recorded his wife and they have now played it for 10 million plus people. That's normalizing, it's making a mockery of this woman, whether she was right or wrong to engage in such an affair. Isn't exactly the question. The question is it okay to shame her in this way? Right. And that's just like a pop culture example of something that so many people are liking and watching and laughing about, but that's certainly destroying this woman's life.

[00:05:35] Elizabeth: I'm hoping the marriage didn't go through.

[00:05:38] Dawn: Yeah, I don't know about that. We're arguing with TikTok that they should take the video down.

[00:05:44] Elizabeth: Oh my goodness. I definitely was aware of the child sex dolls. I, yes, I was aware of those. I had not seen, nor do I want to see this video that's now been put up. How difficult do you feel like it is for the average person to speak up?

[00:06:03] Dawn: Mm-hmm. Well, it's scary. We all get nervous. We feel, I think like we're alone in feeling this way. We don't wanna be seen as like prude. So it's hard. It's not easy. But what I found is that as we do speak up against, for human dignity, we realize that so many others are with us and they're joining with us.

[00:06:23] And that even these corporations that have normalized, maybe even profited from it, are quick to make changes.

[00:06:30] Elizabeth: Do you ever feel like it's getting harder to tell the difference? Maybe I'm speaking from a bubble, maybe I'm speaking from under a dark rock. I don't know, but I feel like as a kid growing up, thinking back on my childhood, yes, there were sexual innuendos in many things, but today, I almost feel like to some degree sex and religion are, they're not the same, but they can be treated almost the same. Because if you're accused of something and you say "it's part of my religion" that usually ends it, or there's your reason for it.

[00:07:05] Do you find that abuse is taking that name, but in the same... am I doing very, am I making this very clear? Where people's like, "I'm just attracted this way" or "I, this is just who I am." Do people like basically blaspheme this platform. By saying this is just how I was made.

[00:07:23] Dawn: Elizabeth, that's exactly what we're seeing now.

[00:07:25] Instances, for example of choking in teen dating has skyrocketed there's overwhelming research, like coming out just now of young people in their twenties and their teens who are engaging in extremely violent behavior that they're modeling from pornography because they viewed it. And then the argument is just, well, this is like our fetish. This is just how we are, this is how we find arousal." The problem is that our young people, especially, their sexual templates have been altered based on the hardcore violent pornography they've watched since young ages.

[00:08:00] And that's not healthy intimacy. That's not healthy sexuality, and yet they're, a lot of these young people, especially are struggling to understand what it does mean to have healthy intimacy and sexuality, because they've been inundated with these porn images and the jokes that come along with it in pop culture.

[00:08:21] Elizabeth: Is there a way to deprogram a person from that? Or is that just something that you need to take individually through like intensive therapy?

[00:08:30] Dawn: Well a lot are, is finding that they need to go through intensive therapy, but one there's, so, oh, I just wanna talk about there's so much we can talk about, please go, go for it. Some the encouraging news, I would say on this front, especially when with young people and their exposure to pornography, is that their sexual templates are altered, but also as they come to understand how it impacts them, how it impacts their partners, how it's impacting culture, how their brain has changed, it can be changed back. And I'm sure that with, and what we're seeing in the research is with like education and learning more about what it does mean to have mutuality and respect and love, and all those feelings that should be there in a healthy, intimate setting, then they change.

[00:09:14] But only after they've gone through, who knows how long for each of them of a struggle to find that human connection with other humans. People they love

[00:09:25] Elizabeth: Are these conversations that we should be having with our children? How early should we start talking to them about how dangerous pornography is, or, how, what is sex versus exploitation and abuse and rape?

[00:09:42] It's hard. I get asked this question. So now I'm asking you because it's a hard question to, to always have the right answer for. So I'm wondering if you don't necessarily even know on general, what do you plan on telling your kids? Or if maybe you do know on just general rule of thumb.

[00:10:03] Dawn: We should talk about it. We should talk about sex all the time with our families, with our children, with those in our congregations, even in our neighbors. I think that the less we add the stigma and the secretive nature, like the more we can have healthy relationships with others, the harder it is for abuse to hide.

[00:10:23] I have a bunch of kids. Number five is on the way. I think we should start these conversations as early as possible. Even like age two and three, we should be talking about like the mutuality aspect of like, does that person want you to touch them? Do you want that person to touch you?

[00:10:39] Here are your boundaries. What are your boundaries? Do we call these parts of our bodies? Like all of that does start young. And as we start young and our kids feel more comfortable talking about it.

[00:10:49] But the short answer I would say is you just start now. Like, it doesn't matter how old they are. You start now. I start these conversations in age appropriate ways of like young as three, but the truth is that most of our kids have been exposed to pornography by age nine. And so if you're not having those conversations with your kids, then they're left to try to make sense of it by themselves.

[00:11:12] They turn to Google. Do you want them to look up on Google what they're seeing? Imagine what they would see then what do you want them asking their other friends? Or do you wanna be the one helping to guide them through this experience? And so the answer is just start now with wherever they are, even if that means your child is 30 years old, because the truth is that they probably need help with their kids and how to talk about these issues with their kids.

[00:11:37] Elizabeth: I think you bring up such a good point. And as I mentioned, I do get asked that question all the time and I talk about what's okay, what's not okay. No one else can touch their body and, know, if you're ever scared you do have options, you can scream, you can yell, you can fight, you can bite, you can scratch, always tell me.

[00:11:56] And definitely now we're at the beginning of school year again, and we're going through these same conversations again. I feel like last year, last school year, my oldest was in first grade and I felt like I had this conversation with her so much that anytime I started talking to her about it, she rolled her eyes.

[00:12:17] My seven year old rolled her eyes at me, but I don't regret it. I'm so glad that I do it. And honestly, I find that I have to keep on doing it because she knows in that specific situation, but as soon as she's in a different scenario or a different circumstances, and I bring it up again, it's almost like a new question or a new conversation, even though by the end, she's once again, rolling her eyes at me.

[00:12:46] Dawn: We just have to embrace that the awkwardness, it's awkward and we can tell our kids, we feel a little awkward talking about this, but we love you so much. The problem is once our kids are online, the likelihood of them seeing high, like extremely sexualized, even pornographic images, if they're online is so high, we can't protect them from it.

[00:13:04] It's like the wallpaper of social media. If they're on Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, they're seeing extremely sexualized, often pornographic content. Another reason why you wanna have these conversations pretty frequently with them.

[00:13:19] Elizabeth: Are there things that you, specifically, would want parents to be aware of as we are entering another school year? Or things that, even just generally that parents should pay extra attention.

[00:13:35] Dawn: I'm trying, I, I don't see something necessarily extra than the usual, but the usual for me is this material. This behavior is just so prevalent and it's part of your kids' lives.

[00:13:47] And so , if you want them to be safe, just like you want them to learn how to cross the road safely, you have to give them the tools to be able to do so. And it's especially important online. I think it's critical to have conversations with your principals, your teachers, to make sure that the devices that are being used in schools are safe and that the teachers themselves are taking precautions to both teach your kids how to be safe online.

[00:14:10] But that also that proactively, filters are turned on and so forth. And you think probably all of you listening are like, of course my school, kid's school has it on, but surprisingly many do not.

[00:14:21] Elizabeth: And where, and that's just in settings, to go and put filters on.

[00:14:26] Dawn: Yeah, there's so many. So a lot of our schools get federal specific funding to provide like safety settings and filters on devices.

[00:14:33] But even if the school doesn't have that yet, there's all these built in controls on the Apple and Chromebook devices, the Google devices that help to make them safe. I guess that's something important for you as parents to know is there's some really great resources for you to learn how to like almost all of our platform, the platform that our kids are frequenting now have, thanks to lots of advocacy from us and partners, have implemented parental control.

[00:15:00] Snapchat just rolled out some good parental controls last week for the first time. Very good news. So just encouraging you to go check those out and, and turn them on. And I know it might feel overwhelming, but the best resource is called Protect Young Eyes. And they have like howtos on every device or platform that your kids are probably using and they give you step by step instruction.

[00:15:24] So that's Protect Young Eyes.

[00:15:27] Elizabeth: Oh, that's probably something I need to check out.

[00:15:29] Dawn: Yeah.

[00:15:30] Elizabeth: It's like, I'm a millennial, but sometimes when people ask me to do stuff on the computer, I feel like I should know how to do it or on my phone or whatever. I feel like I should know how to do it, but I actually don't.

[00:15:44] And then I feel like an idiot.

[00:15:46] Dawn: No, but actually it was, I'd love to get into that because the reality is these tech companies have made it so hard for us to figure it out. Apple, to turn on the built-in parental controls on the iPhone or the iPad takes 31 steps. 31 steps! And they're not even in the same place.

[00:16:02] So that's the next thing I wanna say is like, currently the burden to protect our kids online is on our kids. We just expect them to be able to withstand the tricky people that are coming at them, the porn, and the hypersexualized images. And then we want parents to try to help kids, but tech has made it so difficult to keep up.

[00:16:25] The fact that you have all these different platforms with so many different settings, they're not easy or intuitive, so you should not feel bad, or if you're dumb, because you are an awesome tech connected manual. The problem is that these tech companies have not prioritized child safety.

[00:16:42] And that's what our organization is really trying to do is shift the script there. So that tech in the first place designs, safe places with kids in mind, they know kids are gonna be on all of these platforms, so help make it easier for parents to put up those guardrails. And so I ask all of you listening to join with us and asking tech to change in this way.

[00:17:05] Elizabeth: Absolutely. And how can we do that? Do we just go to ncose.org? Or how do we join that?

[00:17:12] Dawn: Exactly. Our website is endsexualexploitation.org. We have, we probably have 40 campaigns right now. With this there's legislation, Elizabeth, there's legislation right now pending before Congress that is so groundbreaking. It's called the Kids Online Safety Act. And it just passed out of committee unanimously, like total bipartisan support and in time.

[00:17:33] Elizabeth: Miracles happen!

[00:17:36] Dawn: Because Congress, it's not like about being Republican or Democrat. It's about protecting our kids online. And this legislation in particular, there's so much about it, but one thing is it creates like a safety by design, a duty of care that these tech companies have to ascribe to where there's like minimum standards that will be met in order to help make sure that kids are safer on these platforms. It's like so common sense and simple, and we need help passing this through Congress.

[00:18:08] Elizabeth: And these are things that once again, we can just go to your website and find out ways to get involved. Ways to help.

[00:18:15] Dawn: Yes. At endsexualexploitation.org.

[00:18:19] Elizabeth: And to annoy our congressmen and our senators and say, we need this.

[00:18:24] Dawn: Yeah. It's not that annoying. I think they, they agree. This is actually something that they're all in agreement on, they just wanna hear from you that, you also want this and then they'll be quicker to move it through.

[00:18:36] Elizabeth: Well, when I say annoy, I would like there to be such a strong response that they've seen it so many times that they are annoyed. Yes, I should be a little bit clear.

[00:18:48] Dawn: 5,000 emails from someone in the district.

[00:18:52] Elizabeth: Yes, exactly. So tell me about some of the other work that NCOSE is currently working on.

[00:18:58] Dawn: Well, we really believe that, for example, I just talked about how we need the tech companies to be responsible for creating safer spaces online. In addition to passing legislation at the state and federal level, we also started suing these companies. We started a law center about three years ago. We have a pretty groundbreaking lawsuit right now that's moving forward in the courts against Twitter, because the truth is that so many youth are groomed on these platforms. They're targeted by predators. They are extorted, they self produce abuse images. And then a lot of these images are then shared on these platforms again and again, and these platforms are making tons of money.

[00:19:44] So in the case of Twitter, we have two young boys who were sex trafficked, images of their abuse were taken and uploaded to Twitter and amassed hundreds of thousands of views. These young boys went to Twitter themselves and said, we are kids, and this is rape, and we want this material taken down. And Twitter said it didn't violate their community standards. These boys even sent photos of their ID showing that they were just teenagers when this happened, they were just 13 when it happened.

[00:20:17] And so we're suing Twitter for sex trafficking these young boys, we have some pretty major lawsuits against PornHub for also profiting from Child Sexual Abuse Material that was uploaded to their websites and they allowed it to continue to proliferate. The reason why we filed these lawsuits is because the corporate advocacy, like grassroots campaigns we were launching for the last 10 years, we were seeing progress, but it's too slow when, you know, thousands and thousands of kids are being abused and groomed on these sites.

[00:20:47] We need the tech companies to step up and make changes. And so in addition to the policy, we're just hitting them where it hurts and that's the pocketbook.

[00:20:56] Elizabeth: I'd say that's probably the most, and maybe only effective way of getting it these days, of getting them to change these days, because, you're right, it is hard to, sometimes it does feel like a losing battle, when you're trying to do...

[00:21:11] Dawn: It's not a losing battle though!

[00:21:12] Elizabeth: No, you're you're right. It's not, but when you're just trying, like grassroots only, it does kind of feel like it's a battle.

[00:21:22] Dawn: So, but yeah, I felt that way too, But the thing again, that I just keep seeing again, over and over is as we raise our voices together in opposition to sexual abuse and exploitation, we win most of the time. So even at that grassroots level, it's scary to start though.

[00:21:39] Elizabeth: That is very encouraging. I have to admit that is encouraging to keep going when actually, I don't know if you've ever felt this way, but I know for me, there are times when I feel like I just don't know how long I can keep doing this, or this is like really heavy. Like every time I try to do something, I hear about 10 new bad things.

[00:22:00] Wow, like, I don't know if you ever feel that way, but I admit that I'm human and I do feel like that sometimes. But then, hearing you talk about this and being excited about it and having so much passion and energy and listening to other organizations and learning what they're doing and hearing other survivors talking, I have to say that is very motivating for me because sometimes it just feels like nothing wants to change or move.

[00:22:27] So I, I'm so happy that you're doing everything that you're doing.

[00:22:31] Dawn: Oh my gosh. I feel the same, often. I feel like if you talked to me Friday, I was, I would've been like, oh, Elizabeth. There's no hope. That's the reality of working on these issues. It's so heavy. It's so dark. But when we lean on each other, I think listening to podcasts like this and those that you're interviewing, it's easy to remember you're not alone. And that helps to keep going in many ways.

[00:22:56] Elizabeth: And it is just crazy to think that there are other people, who are made of the same things I am like, bone and hair and flesh. And they have the same organs that I have and everything. And yet they're able to make such starkly different decisions and doing, I mean, sometimes it does just blow my mind a little bit.

[00:23:16] I'm curious, are you seeing any trending themes these days in, in the realm of exploitation and trafficking that are new, that aren't the same ones we've seen forever. Or do you feel like the same ones we've seen forever are still the ones we see?

[00:23:34] Dawn: Yeah, well, I have one negative and one positive.

[00:23:37] So I'll share the negative first. I would say one that I'm just seeing explode is image-based sexual abuse. So yeah, having the abuse that is happening in real life, either filmed, or photographs and then shared again and again, that has just skyrocketed. I think the trauma that those who are abused is experiencing, it's so different than when it was in person abuse. Time that ended and moving on because we're finding that these images are circulating, the videos are circulating and you're re-traumatized every time. So everything has to shift the way that we serve survivors who have experienced this kind of abuse has to shift because the trauma response is different, but so is the advocacy and the policy side.

[00:24:25] Policy has not caught up with this. The fact that increasingly abuse is being filmed and then distributed further, what does that mean for the kids whose entire schools are seeing images of their abuse or for the young woman who 10 years from now has like made it through years of therapy and college and suddenly abuse is circulating again, as she starts, a dream job. Like this is having lifelong impacts and it's, it's so many and, types of abuse now are being filmed and recorded. And then people are watching this thinking that it's consensual when it's so far from consensual. Do you wanna comment on that? And then I can share a positive side?

[00:25:06] Elizabeth: Sure. I think you're absolutely right.

[00:25:09] And actually, as I've met survivors and I've heard their stories many times, a lot of the reasons why they didn't report sooner or they didn't report at all was because their perpetrators did record them and took pictures of them and threatened them that if they reported anything, that they would be released on the internet it just blows my mind when I think of the worst things that happened to me, and I try to imagine other people watching and deriving enjoyment out of it. I mean, that makes me wanna throw up, even just thinking about it. I know that is a very real problem in today's culture.

[00:25:52] And I'm so glad that you brought that up, because I think it's easy to, you're right, to write it off and be like, it looks like it's consensual. She looks like she's of age. It's fine. I think it is easy to just wave it off or be like, I don't think that's a kid. No one would do that to a kid.

[00:26:07] It's just a small person.

[00:26:09] Dawn: Exactly, exactly. That this is also a place where we need like policy and the tech world to catch up. Right now, if you're a victim of image based sexual abuse, there's like almost nowhere for you to go. These images can be uploaded across like countless platforms. We have a campaign right now against Google because we represent survivors and these lawsuits, and we try to help many more to get this film, the recordings of their abuse removed. Like Google said to us, we had one woman who was a survivor of sex trafficking. She was trafficked by her husband. He's in prison. Like there's so much proof that she's a trafficking survivor. And when we go to when to Google, to demand her images be removed from Google images and Google video, they said to us, "we don't see any signs of coercion,"

[00:27:00] Like who, who are these big tech companies to say, "we don't believe you, survivor. We don't see it ourselves. So we're not gonna do anything about it." We have to change the culture to listen to survivors, to hear them, to prioritize their feelings over the perpetrators, abusers and the, those making tons of money.

[00:27:21] Elizabeth: It's close. I mean, it is crazy because even just another example. My dad and I, we were working on a piece of legislation years ago. This isn't even recent, this is years ago, and it was involving child sexual abuse material, formerly known as child pornography. And we were trying to fight against it. We were trying to push some legislation through and as we were working on it, we got some comments made, "this is just a victimless crime. Who is it hurting right now? It's not hurting anyone right now." And I felt like my head was about to fall off my shoulders, cuz I was like, "who is it hurting? Are, are you like, you're watching someone being hurt? Like, are you kidding me?"

[00:28:03] Dawn: I know I was in a meeting a couple weeks ago, Elizabeth, where I can't say the name of the company. This is a really big tech company that we all love and their executive said to us, "these kids just have to recognize that bad things just happen to them. Like they, that's, what, pictures are just taken. That's what happens. And it's not hurting anyone any further," like, how do we shift that culture and help people understand it's not victimless?

[00:28:30] Elizabeth: I don't know. It just floors me every time I hear a comment or a story like that, because I just think, are you for real? And it makes, honestly, it makes me so glad that social media wasn't really a thing when I was young. Not that, I was not wild by any stretch of the imagination or crazy.

[00:28:50] I, I'm just, honestly, I'm a pretty mellow person, but, and I always have, but I think even back then, like there are definitely pictures that I would not want circulating today and it's not even of me doing anything bad. It's just pictures I wouldn't want out there. And then I fast forward into today's society where you think, wow, everyone is always on their phones.

[00:29:16] Everyone's always recording or taking pictures. And you didn't really experience it unless you posted it on Instagram or Facebook or whatever social media platform you're on. And sometimes I just think, oh, like I get like some people that's their thing and like good job to them. Like if that's what they really love, like great.

[00:29:34] But I don't know, feels like it's a pretty, very sharp double edged sword.

[00:29:41] Dawn: Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And helping our kids to understand that. And it doesn't always include sex, right. It doesn't always include nudity, helping them understand that what goes online, stays online. It's exactly goes back to our earlier conversation of helping our kids not to be healthy and safe in this digital world. Okay. Let me tell you about a positive trend I see.

[00:30:03] Elizabeth: Yes. Please tell me a positive trend. I could use that.

[00:30:06] Dawn: For so many years, the movement to fight sex trafficking is relatively new, it's only been around really about 20 years. But for the majority of that time efforts have focused really on trying to disrupt the systems, like the traffickers, specifically, or to help with rescue and rehabilitation of those who are being abuse. Which is so key.

[00:30:29] But I think what's changing now is there's an increased focus on going after the sex buyers, the third kind of party in this problem of sex trafficking and prostitution. And this is so key because, because really, when you think about it, it's like simple economics, supply and demand. There would be no sex trafficking at all. There would be no prostitution, sexual exploitation, if there wasn't demand for it, from those who believe that they can purchase people for sex. And never before have efforts really, truly been geared at trying to stop people from buying sex.

[00:31:04] There have been smaller efforts community by community. But today, I just, I think I'm so optimistic because there's a growing national response and a lot happening internationally that focuses on curbing sex buying behavior. And that's the way that we really truly will solve this problem. Because as long as there's demand from buyers, people will always step in to find a way to make that money.

[00:31:29] The traffickers will, we can, take down home networks, but more will pop up. And no matter how much we save and rescue and rehabilitate those who have been abused and harmed. For every one rescued, three more will take her place to keep up with the demand. And so I'm encouraged by this really big shift we're seeing in the national and international responses to human trafficking.

[00:31:52] Elizabeth: That is really exciting. When you'd say that behaviors are being curbed, is that because they are being pursued legally, like they're getting in trouble for it? Like they're getting sentenced for it? Or is it something that we're starting to teach differently in schools as children are growing up?

[00:32:08] Or how is that behavior being curbed? Do you know?

[00:32:11] Dawn: Well, in lots of ways and it all has to happen at the same time. The prevention side of the movement is trying to help raise young men, young women who don't agree that buying people for sex is an option. So that's one thing that's happening.

[00:32:26] But our organization is really involved in the policy side of things. So passing legislation that has increased accountability for sex buyers. And training law enforcement to treat women who are being prostituted, it's predominantly women, not only women, but those who are being prostituted as survivors, as those who have been harmed and who need help and resources and getting them exit services while conversely treating those who do the harm, the sex buyers, with increased penalties.

[00:32:58] So just a couple examples. Legislation has passed recently in, I think six states now, like Texas has made it a felony to purchase someone for sex the very first time you're caught. It's like, the prostitution marketplace has shrunk significantly in major cities. But who,

[00:33:15] Elizabeth: Good for Texas.

[00:33:18] Dawn: Utah passed legislation. We wish it was stronger, but there's increased fines and penalties for those caught, unfortunately after three times, we think it should be the first time.

[00:33:29] Elizabeth: I agree. I agree. But, and I knew about that bill. I suppose it's something. Yeah, but it's a step.

[00:33:36] Dawn: Yeah, we're, we have seen in the research all around the world, whenever there's especially the threat of jail time or, or fines that are actually more, right, that make it more expensive and harder on bank account than it would've been to pay for sex that night, those things actually deter men from going out and buying sex. And so one thing we're advocating for is if income based fines could be deployed, somebody making a hundred thousand dollars, which is the average sex-buyer salary, they, we don't see this in the media, but the average sex buyer is from the suburbs, making over a hundred grand, is married, with kids. But if they have to pay more based on their income, it suddenly becomes a bigger deterrent to buy.

[00:34:23] Elizabeth: All that money should go straight back into supporting survivors after.

[00:34:28] Dawn: Exactly. And then that money goes to helping serve survivors and their needs and creating more robust exit services for them.

[00:34:37] Elizabeth: Yeah. Yes. Well, Dawn, I have to say thank you so much for sharing your time with me. And honestly, for being such a beacon of hope, even for me, and knowing that you guys are out there and that you're doing everything that you're doing, because I feel like in this world, in this field, we need all the help that we can get.

[00:34:58] And to know that there's such a strong presence with NCOSE and you at the helm, that is very reassuring and encouraging, especially to me. So thank you so much.

[00:35:10] Dawn: You're kind, I feel that way about you. I'm always like I'm not alone, there's another mom working hard across the country, so..

[00:35:18] Elizabeth: Well, thanks. Thank you.

[00:35:20] I hope that everyone who has listened today, I know throughout my podcast, we have some stories that are more hopeful, and there are some that just, break your heart and just wanna reach through the, your listening device or your computer and hug the person on the other end, because they're so heartbreaking.

[00:35:39] But I hope today that you feel that there is change that is being made, that you feel encouraged and that you can believe in the future that what is happening right now won't always be the norm. That we are fighting against it, that we are working, that we are doing everything that we can to prevent this from happening at the level that it isn't, prevent it at all, but hopefully we will begin to see statistics changing.

[00:36:06] Wouldn't that be incredible? So I hope you feel encouraged after listening to today's episode, make sure you go and check out the National Center on Sexual Exploitation. Please be sure to go check them out and get involved and sign up for their campaigns and for what they're supporting, because they are, as I mentioned, the leading organization in the country on this topic. So please go and support them. And thank you for joining me today. And I will see you next week on our next episode. Thanks so much bye-bye.