Shobukai Shift

The Unbreakable: Jerome Elam on Surviving Child Trafficking, Healing Through Purpose, Becoming a Global Advocate and CEO for Change (Part 1)

• Mary Schaub • Season 1 • Episode 19

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"They say the truth will set you free. But first, it will break you open."

In this deeply moving episode, Mary speaks with Jerome Elam—USMC vet, child trafficking survivor, and CEO of America's Trafficking in America Task Force. From surviving unspeakable abuse to testifying before Congress and training law enforcement across the world, Jerome’s story is a powerful journey of resilience, transformation, and radical purpose. Part 1 dives into Jerome’s early life, the trauma he endured, the systemic failures, and the importance of trauma-informed leadership. 🎧 Part 2 coming next Wednesday. 

⚠️ Content Warning: This episode discusses child abuse, and self harm. Listener discretion is advised.

🔑 Key Takeaways:

  • Trauma doesn’t end when it’s over—it echoes until it's witnessed, processed, and healed.
  • Vulnerability is not weakness—it's the foundation of true leadership.
  • Every survivor needs a lifeline 
  • Reclaiming your story is a radical act of power.
  • Breaking intergenerational trauma requires therapy, accountability, and immense courage.
  • Public perception of trafficking is still catching up to its modern realities 
  • Every person has a role to play in protecting the vulnerable 

🎤 Compelling Quotes:

  • “I’ve turned my trauma into something beautiful.” – Jerome Elam
  • “You don’t heal in spite of your trauma. You lead through it.” — Mary Schaub
  • “It only takes one person to make a difference.” – Jerome Elam
  • “We underestimate how a single act of kindness might be someone’s lifeline.” – Mary Schaub

💡Keywords: child trafficking survivor, male survivor of abuse, breaking generational trauma, trauma-informed leadership, trauma healing podcast, podcast on trauma, healing from abuse, leadership after trauma, trauma-informed coaching

#JeromeElam #TraumaInformedLeadership #HumanTraffickingAwareness #MaleSurvivor #TraumaHealing #PodcastOnTrauma #SurvivorVoices 

🔗Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Disclaimer:

***The information, opinions, and recommendations presented in this Podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided in this Podcast is done at your own risk. This Podcast should not be considered professional advice.***

Credits: Written, produced and hosted by: Mary Schaub. Theme song written by: Mary Schaub. Mixing Engineer: Dylan Yauch

Contact: Tell us how your transformation is going. Email us at Shobukai_Shift@mschaubadvisory.com or leave us a voicemail at ‪(631) 371-3240‬ and we may play it on a future episode.

Website: M. Schaub Advisory (MSA)

** Shobukai Shift is a MSA Production **

Mary Schaub (01:46)

good morning and welcome Jerome Jerome I want to jump right in by reading some of your many credentials. You are the president and CEO of the trafficking in America task force, a nonprofit organization dedicated to combating human trafficking through education, advocacy and survivor support.

 

Jerome Elam (01:47)

Thank you.

 

Mary Schaub (02:05)

The task force works with state, local, and congressional lawmakers and trains law enforcement, medical and mental health professionals to bring an end to human trafficking. You're the recipient of the award for courage presented by the National Council of Jewish Women and received the U.S. Attorney General's Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award. You are a staff writer and columnist for the community's digital news and a special advisor to the Utah Attorney General. You have also been chosen as one of New York's new abolitionists.

 

You are a US Marine Corps veteran. Thank you for your service. But before all of that, between the ages of five and 12, you were a remarkably resilient and courageous young boy, a boy who survived a childhood that can only be described as horrific. Your personal journey from victim to survivor to warrior advocate has been featured in numerous platforms, including the Discovery Channel's documentary series, The Clown and the Candyman.

 

which explores the stories of serial killers and pedophile rings in the 1970s. You are a regular speaker around the world. Your influence extends not just to the general public, but legislators, political organizations, and the media. You have been instrumental in raising awareness on human trafficking and helping to get legislation passed in the US and internationally. Jerome, you have been immensely generous in sharing your story on numerous outlets.

 

including podcasts such as this one. Thank you for being here with me today.

 

Jerome Elam (03:38)

thank you for having me. I'm truly honored to be here today.

 

Mary Schaub (03:40)

I wanna quote something you said to explain the horror you survived. You wrote, quote, I was born into a world of dysfunction. My mother Marie was an alcoholic, pregnant at 17, and her life was held firmly in the grip of chaos. When you were only five, your mother brought home a man. It started well, but then he began molesting you, and then he used you for child pornography, and ultimately,

 

sexually trafficked you through the pedophile ring he belonged to. You have written, and again I quote, the first time I was given drugs and alcohol, handcuffed and raped for hours by doctors, lawyers, accountants, and anyone who would pay to ravage my innocence. Even though you were so little at the time, you were still trying to get out of the situation. And you go on to say, I had tried to tell at least 10 people that I was being trafficked.

 

and my reward for this was having three of my ribs broken. Jerome, I know you share unflinchingly about your history, but as I was preparing for this show, I felt conflicted about how much detail I wanted to go into. And on the one hand, I wanted to be above all else, respectful and thoughtful about what we discussed, but I was also aware of wanting to avoid any kind of sensationalism. But while I was...

 

pouring over your many interviews and your writing, it occurred to me that telling your story honestly has not just been a pivotal part of your healing, but also in the advocacy work that you do. And I was just wondering if you could share your thoughts on this.

 

Jerome Elam (05:22)

I think you're exactly right. think that, you know, I've really turned my trauma into something beautiful. And I've been, you I've been really struck by how impactful I've been able to be, in advocating, speaking. I did a week of training in Ukraine in 2020. I trained judges, prosecutors and law enforcement in Ukraine for a week.

 

And during that time period, there was legislation that was being proposed to protect children online and had been stalled in getting approval. I came in for a week and educated them about online safety and about how kids are at risk. And I was able through putting my heart on my sleeve to get them to understand just how at risk kids were.

 

and to be able to get that legislation passed through. as my supervisor told me at the time, she said, you were so affected because you're a man, a veteran and a survivor. So as a man and a veteran, you're directly mirror those who were in power in Eastern Europe. And so was able to really break through that wall and get them to understand just how anybody could be at risk. It doesn't matter who you are.

 

you can still be at risk of being exploited and trafficked.

 

Mary Schaub (06:43)

I'm so inspired by everything in your story, which we're gonna get into, but right off the bat, as I'm hearing you talk, is that this is what leadership looks like. Is you're using a part of your vulnerability and your experience, not just your functional experience, obviously you're very smart person, but you have the wisdom to understand how to use those aspects of yourself to influence people, to bring people along. And that's true leadership. And I think it's makes you so effective in your role.

 

Jerome Elam (07:11)

Thank you. And you know, I just want to say, I love that you mentioned vulnerability because I have to say, as I often do that I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for a female survivor that taught me that as a man, I could be vulnerable and powerless as a child and still be a man. Because one of the things that we see is that, male survivors or male victims of sexual violence or sexual abuse, they have

 

14 times or 32 times the suicide rate of the norm. They have, know, 50 % the rate of incarceration of the norm. So for males in particular, we just have a very hard time, you know, getting away from that, being controlled by our egos and being able to talk about, things that have happened to us. And, again, what, what kind of spurred me to be here and be an advocate was

 

Jerry Sandusky and his trial. And I think that, you know, there was something that just kind of struck a chord with me that said, you really need to go public with this and talk about it. you know, I was very fortunate that, you know, I wrote an article that I sent out to the news outlets and it was picked up in the Washington Times and they said, well, we can publish this on a one-time basis. And I said, great, we can't pay you. said, no problem. So an article did so well, they offered me a column.

 

I think my initial motivation was anger. Anger at how many children were being abused and trafficked and how it was still happening every single day. So I got angry and wrote this article. And then when you put yourself out there publicly, you're like, what did I just do?

 

Mary Schaub (08:49)

Yeah.

 

Jerome Elam (08:49)

But

 

I found that it was the best thing that I ever done in my life because I began to get contacted by people from the UK, men and women in UK, from the Middle East, from Africa, India, all over saying, just told my story. So that for me was a real godsend and I was really grateful to be able to have that kind of outreach.

 

I think the important thing for us as survivors is to understand our value in this world and that we have to overcome that feeling of worthlessness that we are subjected to when we're trafficked and begin to understand our value. I really find that it doesn't matter where you are in the world,

 

that we all suffer trauma in the same way and our hearts all feel pain in the same way. I've just been grateful to stand in the gap for victims and survivors who feel like they can't speak out.

 

Mary Schaub (09:40)

I say on this show a lot that we're both the writer and the main character of our lives. And that by reclaiming our story, we empower the part of ourselves that didn't have power when we were younger and typically when things have been done to us. Your story, I see as a hero's journey, except that you weren't just fighting one dragon, you were fighting many dragons and the odds were against you, you're defenseless and outnumbered, but you couldn't be broken.

 

And though you would have been too little to give yourself credit at the time, your inner warrior was just growing and becoming stronger and stronger. And then of course, at the age of 12, after seven years of unspeakable abuse, you came to feel your life was, I think you quoted, an abyss of worthlessness and pain, and you had tried to take your own life. Luckily, you woke up in an emergency room to the sound of a nurse arguing with doctors.

 

and she could clearly see that you had been a victim of abuse and needed immediate intervention. I'm wondering what it felt like to have someone stand up for you after so many years of being let down and ignored by probably every adult that had seen you. Do you recall what that felt like?

 

Jerome Elam (10:55)

honestly, it was like a dream because I think that, you know, when you come from a situation where you're being exploited or trafficked, know, you have, mean, hope is the only thing you have. And I held on to hope the entire time. But I think that that trust is the other issue that becomes very difficult. So I kind of held my breath

 

I've been praying for this for so long It was kind of like a dream. over time I began to accept that I had fully escaped this. I think even as adults survivors of exploitation and abuse, you can really look over your shoulder and feel like, am I really free of this?

 

Mary Schaub (11:30)

Mm-hmm.

 

Jerome Elam (11:32)

you're still in fear that you're gonna get pulled back into it, at that particular moment that God had really spoken to me and said, this is it. This is where your life begins over again and you begin to live my purpose.

 

And so I just had this unshakable direction and confidence in my life that I knew what I had to do. it just seems like, sometimes it seems like it was yesterday and sometimes it like was like a long time ago. for me, as long as I'm still doing the work and being a voice, I feel like I'm fulfilling my purpose.

 

there's so much suffering out there I wanna go back to something that you briefly mentioned as well. I spent 25 years with a trauma therapist working through what happened to me. And one of the things that,

 

I did was I would often sit in that chair and say, why am I here? And so many kids or children around me didn't make it. it came down to, I had one person in my life who was a great aunt who showed me unconditional love for a period of time. And so that became the tether that bound me to, want to survive, want to live, want to go on.

 

what we see, Mary, when we look at victims and survivors, the ones who have this, vacuum of love that tend to struggle the most. And so I was very fortunate to have that one person. thank God, you know, for my wife and my kids, because they shown me uncountable love. that's the one thing that

 

we strive for in this work, in anti-trafficking work, is to get these victims and survivors to look in the mirror and love who they see. teach them how valuable they are in this world. We just keep going until they really understand that they're going to have happiness and peace.

 

and that the past is the past and today is a new day, it's a blank page and you start over again.

 

Mary Schaub (13:29)

Wow, I didn't know that about that, that Anne. It makes me think, as I often do, as I'm kind of going both sides of what it feels like to be in a certain situation and then what it feels like to be a safe other is that we underestimate sometimes the impact that we can have on others. And I do want to talk to you a little bit about what we can all do, but it occurs to me that the kindness

 

that that person showed you, even though it was minimal in scope of everything else that you were feeling, being that you were so strong, you really held onto it. It was so special that I could imagine, you know, each one of us, when we encounter people in the world, and it could be a stranger, just being an act of kindness, or maybe volunteering or getting involved with people who are in trouble directly, we can't imagine

 

how valuable that could be for someone else, how that could be a lifeline, how that could be a thread that is a major asset in their healing later on down the line.

 

Jerome Elam (14:30)

Absolutely. And one thing that we have to understand, Mary, is that, you know, familiar trafficking, people trafficked by their families, that's about, that can be about 30 % of victims because there are cases documented of three generations of a family trafficking kids. And that can be a very difficult form of trauma to overcome because, in essence, I had to divorce my family. had to just walk away from them.

 

because even at the periphery, you know, it's either you, you know, ascribe to this kind of narrative they were giving that everything was normal or you're a persona non grata, they do anything to do with you. So I really had to walk away. So in that case, you know, I really like to emphasize with victims and survivors that family doesn't have to be biological, can be operational.

 

you can choose who you have in your life and you can choose those who are healthy and are looking out for you and your well-being as opposed to those related by blood because you know when you come from these dysfunctional settings especially you know it can be very hard to break free from that and i think you know and unfortunately you know i describe myself you know as a young man as a chaos junkie because there's this really

 

a great book that helped me, it's called Getting the Love You Want by Harald Hendricks. And it teaches you how to get into relationships. But one of the things that it talks about is the concept of an amago. And what that means is that the people you encounter as a child shape your choices as an adult. And so unless you break that cycle, you're really going to be just doomed to never find happiness. So I knew I had to break that cycle.

 

And thankfully through therapy, I kind of broke that cycle and kind of moved on. And because for victims especially, it can sometimes be the devil you know versus the ones you don't know. So you can just get into these chaotic situations over and over again until you break that cycle. You're never really gonna find that, be self-actualized and know what happiness is. So I just was so grateful that I was able to kind of break free of that.

 

and really just end that cycle that had been perpetuated for so long in my family.

 

Mary Schaub (16:56)

And I think this is a great call out again, just to continue to emphasize the courage and all trauma survivors are courageous and that's what they have to carry every day, but to step forward and break the intergenerational trauma as you're describing and just saying it stops with me and I'm gonna do the work. I didn't ask for this, I now carry the burden of this and I'm gonna be the one that stops it and I'm gonna do it through therapy and work.

 

holding myself accountable and not using any of that past as an excuse. If anything, you've even raised the bar even higher for yourself. I think I've said sometimes the familiar bad is often more appealing than unfamiliar good. And just because it just seems like this is normal, we gravitate to certain people or situations that feel like home.

 

Jerome Elam (17:31)

Yeah.

 

Mary Schaub (17:46)

and people won't understand it and we can reenact a certain dynamic or a certain challenge over and over again until we break through and understand it. In some ways we're still hoping, I think in some ways of fixing the original situation. And there is a part of wisdom that comes with, can't change those people, but I can't settle, as you're saying, to accept their narrative or to accept certain conditions.

 

I tend to have pretty high expectations in my relationships these days. There was a time where I had profoundly low expectations and it took a long time to realize that what good was, what even healthy was, no less the subconscious belief that I deserve better and this is what it should look and feel like. And calling out a plug for trauma therapy as well.

 

people who have experienced trauma really need a very special, type of therapy. to help navigate many of the things that you're discussing here.

 

Jerome Elam (18:41)

Yeah, it's like an onion. You peel back the layers as you go along. And one of the things I'll share with you and people watching this podcast is that there were many, many times in therapy over those 25 years, I would say, can't you make this go faster? Because I think that you really want to overcome this, but I think your mind, especially when you're victimized as a child, it just takes your mind a long time to process.

 

Mary Schaub (18:55)

Yes.

 

Jerome Elam (19:09)

I will share that, one of the biggest healing experience of my life was when my kids reached the age I was, when I was exploited and trafficked because, I mean, traffickers are very good and predators are very good at making you feel like it's your fault. they always say, why did you make me do this to you? Which is just sickening, but yeah. But you begin to realize at that point when your kids get that age that as a child,

 

you were not physically able to do anything to stop what was happening to you. But I think until that point, you can really have that self-blame. So that really allowed me to get past and transcend that. it's always a work in progress. Like I tell people, mean, there's still days that I feel the pain, I struggle. through therapy with the tools and the support system, I'm able to get through that really quickly.

 

I can't overstate the value of trauma therapy. we're gratefully progressing and learning more about how to help victims exploit some trafficking. But at that point, I was pretty much teaching my therapist, how to deal with, someone who had been exploited and trafficked. And so, those 25 years were a lot of hard work, but I was very grateful.

 

Mary Schaub (20:12)

Yeah.

 

Jerome Elam (20:22)

to be able to get past all this. And I think those triggers can be pretty unforgiving I always advocate for mental health and mental health professionals because we don't pay them enough, we don't give enough support for people who need to get that therapy. You can't medicate a lot of this stuff away. You've got to work through it.

 

you know, in a chair talking about it. So I'm really grateful to have in my own work, we always put therapy out there as a choice, because we don't want to force it upon people, but we tell people it's a choice that they can take. And I just always say how much has benefited me. But, you have to get that point where you want to get past it. You've got to choose.

 

that you want to take that first step on the healing path. And I will say unequivocally that that first step is the hardest, the rest are so much easier.

 

Mary Schaub (21:15)

Well, yeah, I'm just, I'm shaking my head. Everything you said, yes, a thousand percent. And I'm the same way having always wanted things to go faster. And of course my coping mechanism, I love to intellectualize. That's my, use my brain cause I don't want to feel things. I try to think my way and I'll read, I've, all these books, I'll just read, I'll read my way through it. And that's not the way through it. And I have, I've been very, very lucky to have a brilliant.

 

a trauma therapist and he would often say, the slower you go, the faster you get there. And that might even mean slow in the progression of even choosing to enter therapy as you're saying, is that this is about you participating, certainly people who've had things happen to them against their will, you don't wanna force anything, that's just a re-traumatizing. I wanna shift gears and talk about...

 

trafficking a little bit and you know so much about this. I learned a lot preparing for this episode. Even the term trafficking has evolved significantly, both legally and socially in the last 20 years. It's used more precisely, but also more publicly, which might lead to some confusion or even dilution of its meaning in the media. So the official definition,

 

of trafficking is the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act in which the commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person is under the age of 18. And so just very simply, you're an adult, you've been forced, coerced, defrauded, or you're a minor, in which case you don't need to prove

 

force or coercion. And you kind of hinted to this earlier, and I think it's a really important part of the story is that minors cannot make informed decisions about some of these things. was riveted, Jerome, I watched the documentary you were involved in, The Clown and the Candyman, and I think we could just spend the next two hours discussing it. But certainly one of the things that really stood out to me, and I think it speaks to how far we've come since the 70s when

 

we were both young children, is I think the first is just, wow, the lack of infrastructure and systemic protections for children. Back then, there's no registry for sex offenders. There's really not an organized training of teachers and medical personnel. But the other thing that really struck me is that even when predators were caught, they received shockingly low convictions, or it was like a slap and back into the world.

 

And then there was this very disturbing subtext, which was, well, know, was, there were 15, it was consensual. I think even the monster John Gacy had spoken that his experiences were consensual and whether that means you're 15 and not five or a boy and not a girl, you know, all of those things are really just excuses and ways of grifting victims and trying to.

 

to almost make people feel more comfortable that this isn't as horrible as it actually is.

 

Jerome Elam (24:25)

exactly right. mean, it doesn't matter. You know, if you're a day from 18, you're still a minor. And so you can still be, you don't have, the experience, the knowledge, the confidence to understand what's happening to you. So, irregardless, as long as you're a minor, you're still considered to be vulnerable in that way. I'm

 

an expert witness in the state of Florida in trafficking and grooming. And I testified in a murder trial in South Florida for a young man who was in the process of being raped and sexually assaulted. just the guy was twice his size, couldn't get him off of them and defended himself and ended up actually killing the guy. But then he unfortunately ran and was in jail for three years.

 

before, he came to trial I was called in to testify and he was set free. So I was grateful to be able to come in and share that perspective because, we know that, anyone can be groomed. we talk about adults, being catfished, which is something that happens quite a bit. adults are, ashamed of, of, talking about it.

 

Mary Schaub (25:18)

Wow.

 

Jerome Elam (25:32)

But if you're a minor, you're still vulnerable. You're still by law able to exert your rights and not be exploited. And we have to really make sure that those narratives don't persist because we also see a lot of saying, I thought they were 18, which is just ridiculous. But we've been able to, over time, improve the law.

 

It used to be that there had to be forced fraud and coercion for children. We got that taken out. And so we're just continuing to work. when you talk about the low conviction rates, unfortunately, we look at the numbers that exist today. we see a lot of cases of exploration trafficking

 

where they plead out to a lesser crime because in the majority of human trafficking cases, the one element that stops them from being prosecuted is victim testimony. And the victim is usually terrified for their lives, their family's lives, and so there's a difficult task for them. So we advocate strongly on a global scale.

 

for an advocate to be with that particular victim throughout that process, provide mental health services, provide support for their families, make sure it's longitudinal. It doesn't just happen during the trial. It's there for long-term, job training. So we're getting better rates of victims testifying,

 

Mary Schaub (27:00)

The work you're doing, and I think watching that documentary maybe highlighted just how far we've come. And I think we need to keep celebrating some successes, right? Because this is difficult long-term work and it can be overwhelmingly difficult to stay hopeful. And so I think what you're shining a light on is through great work like yours, you are actually moving the needle. And that documentary certainly showed me just where we've been coming from.

 

I think when I was growing up, or some of the old terms which used to be used before trafficking. And by the way, don't know when it happened, but over the last couple of years, I started to notice in the news the term trafficking being used more frequently. I think I had once imagined that that meant people being shipped in a container overseas. I had the term, I wasn't even familiar with that shift, but my understanding is,

 

that through some of this work and the evolution of the advocacy is shifting from blaming victims and using terms that might make this seem maybe not what it is, which is systemic exploitation. And this is really important because of the work you're talking about you're doing, the victims' rights that you're advocating for and you're getting passed, but also now that we're seeing more high profile cases than maybe we did in the past.

 

even stuff that we're hearing about in modern times, you know, the Epstein's and the Diddy's, is that this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. There are other people involved and in the case of, you know, elite networks, maybe it's the guys of parties or modeling or business deals, but even I'm thinking,

 

way back in the 70s and 80s, somebody's, know, someone's going to that gas station bathroom, that door has been locked for an hour or someone's going to a motel, someone handed someone the keys. So this is not what I grew up, which was, you know, the proverbial, there's a white van going around playgrounds and stuff. Now it's actually happening in plain sight. And I wanna talk about the, you know, social media and the internet in a second, but I'm just,

 

I'm just curious in terms of these more high profile cases that we've been hearing about, what is your sense of how this is shaping or distorting the public's grasp of this issue?

 

Jerome Elam (29:17)

Well, you know, Mary, back when Jerry Sandusky was arrested, you know, I wrote an article because I really felt that people thought that, you know, Jerry Sandusky being arrested took all sexual predators off the street. And I really wanted to make sure the public understood. So I an article. said, well, what if this one victim of Jerry Sandusky's never came forward and Jerry Sandusky moved next door to you and started hanging around your kids?

 

How would you know this guy, I mean, is he assistant coach? know, Penn State reputation? How would you know this guy was a predator? So I really wanted to let people know that this was something that was not isolated. This is very prolific. And I always say that, know, Epstein and Sandusky are garden variety sexual predators. And, there are people out there who are much, worse, especially, when you talk about the dark web,

 

on the dark web, there are pedophile shopping sites where the price of admission is a video of yourself molesting a child. And then once you get into that website, it's like a Walmart of depravity. they self-publish manuals on how to molest kids. I mean, we've had to go after Amazon and others because let people self-publish these pedophile manuals.

 

who go after Amazon, Barnes and Noble because they're traffickers who have books on those sites. So this is very widely practiced. Europool a year or two ago took down a website that had 90,000 subscribers and this was a Pentafile website. So this is real prolific. going back to that Pentafile shopping site, the youngest aid requested for boys was one,

 

The youngest age of Christopher Grylls was zero. So there are people out there who are molesting infants, And the FBI and others are playing whack-a-mole when it comes to the dark web, because as soon as one site goes down, another one pops up. So we have to give law enforcement credit and support for going after these people. But this is something that is very prolific on a global scale.

 

And our best protection is education and understanding how to protect your kids because unfortunately with the internet, that really gave these predators and traffickers direct access to kids.

 

Mary Schaub (31:37)

And this is difficult, this is difficult content and we're living in a world where we're overwhelmed by information and we're overwhelmed by distressing information. so the advocacy and the education that you're doing is so important because sometimes we just feel like I can't hear something, I can't hear something this upsetting. It's just too much,

 

And just for some context and to grasp the criticality and the enormity of what you're talking about, Jerome, is I think it's estimated 4.8 million people, that's all people, adults, are trafficked globally. And about one to two million of these are children. And it's very hard to even get more precise numbers on that. But to your point about sexual exploitation and grooming online, just last year, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received

 

something like 30 million reports of online sexual exploitation and grooming. And then since generative AI, they're seeing surges up 1300%. And as overwhelmed as I feel by these numbers, I just feel that we have to pay attention because as you say, the cards are stacked against us. We're not talking about the white van and the milk carton anymore.

 

Technology has made this evil efficient and difficult to capture, but it also feels, I don't know, it feels as though almost there's this shift about making some of this normal. And now certainly the dark web is another layer, another depth of depravity that is clearly outside the norm, but those numbers of subscribers just tell you how...

 

how it's shockingly not as underground as you think. That's a lot of people that are going there. But even things like OnlyFans, right? or some of the pornography sites When the internet first came out, that you needed a credit card, there's no age gating.

 

And that material, that content is now accessible to everyone, including, I see, you know, I go to dinner and there's like an eight-year-old with an iPad at the table next door, because they want to keep them quiet. If that has internet access and there aren't adult filter controls on that machine,

 

that child can access this content, which now exposes children. You know I mean? The lines are blurred. Yes, the dark web. And also, it's almost becoming more normal in the regular web.

 

Jerome Elam (34:00)

And we can't let that happen. We have to keep pushing back against that narrative. And, you know, I'm actively involved in the fight against Pornhub and MindGeek who just have done these horrific things where... Right. with Pornhub...

 

Mary Schaub (34:09)

Can you say more about that? like this is, there's some important stuff happening right now in that.

 

Jerome Elam (34:14)

you know, there was no vetting whatsoever of, people who were being exploited in these videos. And so this was a deep well of depravity where people could go and access just about any kind of, despicable stuff they wanted to look at. my colleagues and I began to push back against this and began to hold them accountable. And they've reduced some of the content on their stream, but we're still

 

working on getting age verification enforced on these websites. I'm also part of a coalition that is working on making sure that these app stores are accountable for the apps that are put on their sites. it's called the App Store Accountability Act. we're working on getting that passed nationally, making sure that these apps don't put kids at risk.

 

So it's all about holding them accountable. I had the advantage of working with a coalition many years ago to shut down Backpage.com, which was the world's biggest online brothel. I think they were making $172 million a year allowing traffickers to sell adults and kids on their website. And we found that they were complicit in helping these traffickers craft language.

 

to circumvent law enforcement. we spent a couple of years because the reason they were getting away with it was there is something called the Communications Decency Act, Section 230, which said that providers weren't liable for third-party content. So we went to Congress. It was a coalition of survivors, NGOs, congressmen and women, Oracle and other companies and we finally got this amendment through.

 

that allowed back page to be shut down. these companies think they can get away with exploiting adults and kids. So Pornhub, we've got their number. This isn't our first rodeo, so we know exactly what to do. So

 

Mary Schaub (36:03)

Yeah.

 

Jerome Elam (36:05)

I did an article I can send you where they actually had this video of a woman that works at Pornhub talking about how

 

13 year old boy being molested on camera was okay. And so I had to speak out.

 

we just have to make sure we push back and say, we're not gonna accept this as a standard. This is something that we're not gonna let happen and be vocal, you know, with our congressmen and women and our communities and our churches and synagogues and make sure that we don't allow this to keep going forward.

 

Mary Schaub (36:32)

The line is definitely moving. I mean, in all type of content, I went to see, this is gonna show what a geek I am, but Empire Strikes Back. There was an old show of Empire Strikes Back at the New York Philharmonic I went to this week. And I think it was 1980. It was put out. And all you have to do is go back to watch an old film in the 80s or even 90s, just to see how, like to your point, the line has changed. What we've become desensitized to.

 

Jerome Elam (36:41)

Yeah

 

Mary Schaub (37:00)

sex violence, sorts of extreme behavior. That desensitization is allowing the shift in norms I think that you're describing. And as I'm listening to you and thinking about how someone like me can get involved, it occurs to me that paying attention to this shifting norm and being aware of these

 

these laws and that you're trying to get past. we all have a responsibility here. And I think being informed citizens and paying attention to this stuff is really, important. This is kind of random, but a couple months ago there was an earthquake in San Diego and I think the camera in the San Diego Zoo had captured the moment.

 

the earthquake hit and they have a video of the herd of elephants running to form a circle around the babies. And it just struck me, I mean, I love animals, but it just struck me as in the animal world, there's this instinctual behavior for the adults, not just the parents, but the adults in the community, or in this case, the herd, to protect the vulnerable.

 

And what can we learn from this and what can we reflect on whether we're doing a good enough job for that? And so I'm not a parent, so I'm not gonna be at children's parties. I'm not a teacher or anything like that. And so I think one of the questions I was gonna ask you and I'm sort of answering part of it is like the role someone like me or any other person can play in just being an informed, supportive citizen. Do you have any thoughts?

 

Jerome Elam (38:32)

I do. mean, we always say that as a baseline, if you can go and learn the signs of human trafficking, National Human Trafficking Hotline, if go to their website or our Trafficking America Task Force website, learn the signs of someone being trafficked and make that call to National Human Trafficking Hotline because there are 24-7 multiple languages and there's no wrong call. You can also call or actually you can text or email

 

the National Center for Mexican-Influenced Children and let them know when you find content that's questionable or when you have concerns about a child's safety. So there's a lot of ways that you can start and you can move on from there to volunteering with the organization, you're writing an op-ed, you check in with your local state representative, local representative, your congressional representative.

 

Find out what they're working on, make sure they understand how important this subject is to you as a voter, and encourage them to pass more legislation. And I'll go back real quickly. I just worked on a bill, Congress with Congress, on artificial intelligence and what we call CSAM, which is child sex abuse material. Artificial intelligence being used to generate child sex abuse material, that's kind of circumventing the law.

 

because it's not an actual person, but it's still generated, you know, sex abuse. So we're trying to shut that down. You know, also, you know, with cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, all these things, that's commonly being used to pay for human trafficking and exploitation. So it's a matter of keeping up with law, you know, know, letting your congressman or woman know that you're concerned about this issue, you know, you can Google what legislation.

 

is out there or being proposed at your state or national level and get involved with that. And then again, can volunteer with an organization, just become more knowledgeable. And again, that one call can make a huge difference because what I have to understand is that it may not be one person that's being trafficked, it may be 10 or 20. So if you call in a tip for a person you suspect is being trafficked,

 

then you can bring down a ring that's charging 10 or 20 people. Now I just did training in Kazakhstan for the four largest airports, four personnel there on human trafficking, and I've trained the TSA and others. So it's unfortunate that airports are one of the biggest hubs. Atlanta Hartsfield is one of the biggest hubs in the country, and Delta's done a really good job of...

 

running education awareness, have signs in all the restrooms around the airport. So it's just a matter of learning what it looks like to have somebody traffic, especially children, because so many, including myself, were taken through airports while they're being trafficked. So again, there's no wrong call, and it's good to get it checked out. And I really give the example of how that one call can make a difference. The largest sex trafficking ring in the US

 

was run on the Minneapolis, Minnesota, 24 states including Canada. There was one routine traffic stop where an officer pulled over two young girls in a car, realized they had fake IDs, which is part of the stock and trade in human trafficking. And from that one traffic stop, these three generations that have trafficked young girls was taken down, know, multi-million dollars. And so just that one call can really begin to unravel these organizations.

 

because a lot of them are just hiding in plain sight. And it's matter of us recognizing what's going on and just letting someone know you can look into this and stop it from going forwards.

 

Mary Schaub (42:17)

it's such an important point and maybe can we use technology? We've just talked about all the ways technology can enable some of this bad behavior. I'm also hearing like, hey, there's some opportunities for us to use our general connected awareness and technology in a positive way to combat this.

 

it fair, Jerome, that it used to be you guys would train, obviously, law enforcement, medical personnel, but now, as you're saying, Delta and airports it's expanded quite a bit into hospitality, which is great. More eyes and ears on the ground looking out for this stuff.

 

Jerome Elam (42:51)

cable workers, people that work for the cable company, know, UPS, FedEx, your local mail person, bus drivers, anybody that comes in contact with a child or is out, in public and has, the ability to look and see, you know, I train anybody and everybody who is, a potential

 

spotter for human trafficking. I have that special place in my heart for nurses because a nurse saved me. So I was honored to be the keynote speaker for the International Association of Forensic Nurses one of the best conferences I've ever spoken at. And they all just totally got what I was saying. But anybody and everybody, has the ability to make a difference.

 

Mary Schaub (43:16)

Yeah.

 

Jerome Elam (43:29)

above all else, trust your gut.

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