Counselors Against Sex Trafficking

Emily St. Amant:

Hello and welcome to The Voice of Counseling from the American Counseling Association. I'm Emily St. Amant from the ACA, and joining me today is Dr. Devon Romero, Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker, and Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath. They're here to talk about their research lab, Counselors Against Sex Trafficking, also called CAST, and what counselors need to know about this important topic.

Emily St. Amant:

Before we begin, we want to let our listeners know that today's conversation will be about sex trafficking and may be upsetting to some listeners.

Emily St. Amant:

Dr. Devon Romero is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has specialized experience in marriage and family counseling, child and adolescent counseling, neurofeedback and trauma counseling. She is the co-founder of the Counselors Against Sex Trafficking Research Lab and project director of a sex trafficking focused program funded by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.

Emily St. Amant:

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Antonio. She is a primary author for the Child Sex Trafficking Counseling Competencies published earlier this year by the Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Emily St. Amant:

Doctors Romero and Interiano-Shiverdecker have collaborated on numerous research projects focused on sex trafficking. They received a grant by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board to develop the clinical placement program, Counselors Against Sex Trafficking. The purpose of the grant is to increase clinical placements for counselors in training in medically underserved communities.

Emily St. Amant:

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She utilizes a positive psychological and strengths-oriented creative lens in researching factors promoting well-being and mental health among diverse populations, including clients who have experienced trauma. She serves as a collaborator in the CAST Research Lab and the grant received by Dr. Romero and Dr. Interiano where she spearheads the development of the specialized sex trafficking training program.

Emily St. Amant:

Thank you all so much again for joining us. How are y'all doing today?

Dr. Devon Romero:

Doing well. Happy to be here.

Emily St. Amant:

Great. We are so thankful to have you all here. So to hop right into it, can y'all tell us a little bit about, just what is sex trafficking?

Dr. Devon Romero:

Absolutely. So it's a good question and it's a very important question that you're asking. Though it often gets clumped together with other forms of trafficking, sex trafficking is arguably the most misunderstood and damaging forms of human trafficking. You might even hear it referred to as a form of modern day slavery.

Dr. Devon Romero:

To give a legal definition, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines sex trafficking as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act. So what that means is preying on individuals' vulnerabilities for profit and making money with their bodies at any cost.

Dr. Devon Romero:

And anyone under the age of 18 cannot consent to commercial sex and is considered a victim of sex trafficking. Also, initial consent or the exchange of money, service, or goods does not mean an individual's not being trafficked. If there is a presence of force, fraud, or coercion or the individual's a minor, it is likely the individual's being trafficked.

Dr. Devon Romero:

I do want to add that it's not always what you see on TV, it's not always what you see in the movies. It's not always a violent crime. And grooming tactics and the use of coercion and lying, defrauding and threats, it can manipulate individuals into entering the life, and sex trafficking can occur anywhere. It does not discriminate. We know that there are factors that can increase one's risk, but to be clear, anyone can be commercially exploited regardless of geographical location or demographic makeup.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay. So I think that's all incredibly important to know. And you said it happens everywhere, and I think a lot of people think that maybe in their community that could never happen. But how prevalent is sex trafficking in America?

Dr. Devon Romero:

There are a lot of misconceptions about sex trafficking, and the media does not always help with this understanding. Sex trafficking impacts millions of people around the world, and it is especially a large concern within our own communities.

Dr. Devon Romero:

One message we want to share is that there is an underground nature to sex trafficking, similar to other concerns we might see in the counseling room. Not all people present for counseling services. There's not always an outcry. Not all victims display signs. And not all counselors, not all first responders or individuals who interact with citizens in the community are educated enough to identify when there's signs, when there's vulnerabilities and red flags.

Dr. Devon Romero:

So a lack of clarity among professionals of what constitutes sex trafficking and the underground nature, the hidden nature of sex trafficking greatly impacts who is identified and our overall understanding of the prevalence in our community.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Now, I led in with this because what I call the real statistics are unknown, but from what we do know, just to give an example, a statistic from 2016 comes to mind that reported that there were 79,000 young adults and minor sex trafficking victims within Texas alone. And it said that Texas contains around 25% of all trafficked persons in the United States at any given time.

Dr. Devon Romero:

So generally speaking, another statistic is it's estimated that one in every six runaways are reported as probable victims of sex trafficking. When we think about states, the leading states in sex trafficking cases are commonly cited as California and Texas, Florida and New York.

Dr. Devon Romero:

If interested, anyone who's listening, if you want to keep up to date with reported cases of sex trafficking, I highly suggest exploring resources such as humantraffickinghotline.org and polarisproject.org

Emily St. Amant:

Okay, those are some great resources. I'm so glad that you shared those with us and these stats. And again, I think you said the unknown number is just highly alarming, and so I think that just highlights how important it is for us all to be aware of these things and to know the subtle signs and to pick up on those things, especially if you're working with young people that we all need to be on the lookout to see who might need our support.

Emily St. Amant:

So again, that's why this conversation is so important and especially for counselors to be aware of. And we'll hop more into that in a minute, but I think there are so many misconceptions about sex work and sex trafficking. What you've already shared makes me think there might be some overlap there. So if you can talk about the overlap, but then also the difference between voluntary sex work and sex trafficking.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

I think it all boils down to choice and really understanding who really has a choice. When we look at the definition, when a person willingly takes part in the sale of sex, it is consensual, it doesn't affect their human rights, then it is called sex work. But when a person takes part in the sale of sex through threat, abduction, or other means of coercion, then it is considered sex trafficking.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

But even though we have these definitions, it's really hard sometimes to differentiate sex trafficking from sex work for different reasons. One of them is that many times traffickers utilize force, fraud, coercion that can sometimes lead the victim to believe that they are willingly participating in the sex work industry. The sex trafficker identifies the needs of the potential victim and offers to fulfill that gap in order to gain their trust. So let me give you an example.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

If you have someone who is homeless, they are vulnerable. And so the trafficker builds that trust, builds that relationship and says, "I have a home that you can stay in." But while they're there, they engage in some sex acts. But then the person feels threatened that if they don't engage in that sex act, they can lose their home. And so we have to ask ourselves, do they really have a choice?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And other times also, the victim may feel like they are falling in love with the trafficker. They build a relationship and they're returning their affection. The trafficker attempts to separate the victim from their support system so they become even more isolated. And then the only person that they have is this trafficker. So the goal of all of this is to really get the victim to a point where they will do anything to support the trafficker, anything for them.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

We also see more direct forms of coercion and threat where they threaten to take away or hurt something or someone that they love, that they care about. The trafficker uses affection, affirmation, but then they also combine that with manipulative control or violence to maintain control.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

But at the end of the day, just like Dr. Romero said, what is important to understand is that no matter what anyone says, even sometimes the minor itself, minors cannot legally consent to anything. So they cannot consent to sex work. Any involvement of a minor in a sex act can be considered sex trafficking.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay. I think that that's such an important distinction to be made. Thank you, Claudia. And then, like you said, Devon, you both highlighted how a lot of times it's not so obvious. It is very manipulative and it ends up being the person maybe doesn't even realize what's happening to them. So I think that it's important to recognize those differences.

Emily St. Amant:

So when people are experiencing sex trafficking, I can only imagine the impact that this has on their health, their life. I think about if this happens to a minor, their developmental progress, getting to be a kid and getting to reach all those really important developmental milestones. So can y'all share what impact this has on people that experience these things?

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

Yeah. So what we find is that there are many short-term effects and there are chronic, prolonged, life altering, long-term effects that sex trafficking survivors experience as a result of going through what we can only imagine, such a debilitating traumatic experience.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

So when we look at the impacts, we can see them in three different groups, classify the effects in three areas. So first one are the physical consequences. Many suffer from prolonged effects of physical injuries, sexual injuries, and many deal with HIV infections and other STDs. Many experience gynecological issues, especially unintended pregnancies. Those are very commonly found.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

And the other consequences are psychological in nature, the mental and emotional consequences. So due to the traumatic nature of these experiences, many develop an array of psychopathological symptoms. So those could look like depression, anxiety, eating disorders, dissociative disorders, suicidal ideations, and PTSD. So many of these descriptions may sound very close to complex trauma that we were just talking about.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

Now there are other consequences too that's important for us to remember, which are I think often neglected or we don't think about that in relation to sex trafficking. So survivors often are impacted by rejection and abandonment from their family and their friends. So losing such intimate, close relationships leads to loneliness and homelessness and financial issues, and therefore also has an effect on their career and vocational choices.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

Subsequently, what happens, we find that they end up becoming dependent on drugs and alcohol and sometimes also in need of involuntary psychiatric hospitalizations. So the substance abuse issue is not something that is just a consequence, but also something that might have started when they were trafficked. So it could have very well been something that was developed earlier.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

Many of these struggles also lead these survivors into ongoing legal issues. Here I would like to point that out because due to the experiences with traffickers, they often are mistrustful of their caregivers and the system overall, in general. So this could also be some of the reasons why it's hard for them to voluntarily seek help. It's something I think for all of us counselors to keep in mind.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, absolutely. Because it does sound like maybe they end up in the counselor's office because of the legal issues and no one really knows what actually led them there in the first place because it does look like something else. It could be very easy to perhaps blame the victim for their behaviors.

Emily St. Amant:

Reactive abuse is a very real thing where someone is mistreated or abused and then their response is labeled the problem. So it does sound like that might be something that's pretty common with these things and that might have even more consequences. And this just gets all more complicated and traumatic for the survivor.

Emily St. Amant:

So again, these are all very important things for us to be able to recognize and to know the difference between what's a standalone mental health or substance use disorder versus what's developed as a result of their experiences.

Emily St. Amant:

So talking about y'all's path in working with, specializing, advocating for people who've experienced sex trafficking, how did y'all start that process? What led you to this point?

Dr. Devon Romero:

Yeah, sure. So I would actually say that we're still working on this. There's always more to learn. There's always more to understand. My journey began as a master's student in Alabama working with young children in a residential treatment facility where most of my kiddos, who among other things had experienced physical abuse, sexual abuse, and some of these children that were on my caseload experienced a familial form of sex trafficking at a very young age.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Fast-forward four years and you find us in 2019 where I am at the University of Texas San Antonio, working with Dr. Interiano-Shiverdecker on a grant focused on evaluating a community program that was developed to identify and assist child sex trafficking victims.

Dr. Devon Romero:

At the time, I think we would both describe ourselves as trauma-informed counselors with a strong interest in trauma-focused research. But ultimately, it was this first grant that essentially guided us down a more specialized path of exploring more of the existing literature on the topic of sex trafficking.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Since neither of us had exclusively focused on sex trafficking before this point in time, we were surprised to find that at the time there were only, if my memory serves me right, two articles that specifically addressed sex trafficking within ACA division journals.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Although this is not our only vein of research, I do feel like this was a pivotal moment when we identified sex trafficking as essentially part of our calling and started to focus much of our scholarly work in this area.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Now your question asked about our path towards specializing and working with survivors of sex trafficking. Our path may have started with clinical experiences and trauma related trainings, but we attribute much of our growth and specialization to engaging with the literature, intentionally designing research projects to expand our understanding, and ultimately increase awareness, turning to professionals with expertise and then to survivors themselves.

Dr. Devon Romero:

And I'm actually excited to share that since 2019, we've published several articles, some that focused on screening and identification tools, another on competencies, and we've engaged in a number of projects, some of which include developing a sex trafficking specific training curriculum based on our empirical work, the revision and validation of one of our child sex trafficking competency scales. We're adapting it for mental health professionals more broadly speaking.

Dr. Devon Romero:

And we have qualitative research projects that are in the works or under review that explore the experiences of counselors working with sex trafficked clients, the mental health experiences of sex trafficking survivors, social determinants of health with sex trafficking survivors in the United States, and post-traumatic growth among sex trafficking survivors in the United States, which is being led by our friend and colleague, Dr. Prasath, who's with us today.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Dr. Prasath actually joined us when we were first developing the Counselors Against Sex Trafficking Research Lab. She's considered an affiliate faculty member of the research lab and a collaborator on our current grant-funded program that we have at UTSA. Her research centers around promoting wellbeing and mental health using positive psychology and creative strengths development approaches. But it was her background in training program and curriculum development that really led to her involvement with us in the development of that sex trafficking training program that I mentioned.

Dr. Devon Romero:

Now with the support of a grant that we have from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, we're actually training UTSA clinical mental health counseling students to work with sex trafficking clients, and we're placing them in the medically underserved communities in and around San Antonio for their internship experience.

Dr. Devon Romero:

And our next step is to do some traveling to better understand the concern, prevention and intervention efforts and just overall efforts, I would say, within other communities in the United States. And we're hoping to write a book soon to help counselors who are preparing to or who are already working with this population.

Dr. Devon Romero:

And although we're focusing on the United States, I do want to say this is an international issue and we want to also explore sex trafficking and what it looks like beyond our borders. So it's a journey and we're still on it.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, absolutely. And y'all have done some incredible work so far, and we'll definitely share some of those resources that you mentioned with our audience. And it's great to hear that you took initiative to identify there's this gap in what we know about working with this population, what actually helps them. There's this gap here and we need to do something about it, and so you have.

Emily St. Amant:

So you've turned to research, but then also, I love to hear that you were also working with the people who have experienced these things because I think their voice and centering their experiences throughout is so critical to be able to actually truly help. So the work you are all doing is absolutely incredible and just, I can't thank you enough for that.

Emily St. Amant:

So for counselors who are thinking about working with someone who, or maybe they come across someone who's experienced sex trafficking, where would they even start about the considerations and knowledge about experiencing these things for counselors? What are some of those things that we need to be cognizant of and why is that so important?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

We actually asked ourselves this exact question because we wanted to know, okay, what do we need to know as counselors? And so as part of our Counselors Against Sex Trafficking Research Lab, we began a project that focused on interviewing counselors that had experience working with sex trafficking survivors, and we interviewed 10 across the nation.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And what they expressed is that unlike working with any other population, there seems to be a specific set of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and actions that we really need to take into consideration when working with this population and those at risk, because it's not just those who've experienced it, but those populations that are also vulnerable to sex trafficking.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

So in terms of knowledge, what many of them talked about was that despite knowing how to work with trauma, they were like, "I've worked with trauma for 20 years," but then when it came to working with sex trafficking, they all realized there's certain specific information that I also need to know, what is really sex trafficking, who is at risk?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

We've been talking a lot about misconceptions, so understanding those misconceptions. Knowing specific terms that clients would use, knowing risk factors, understanding recruitment and coercion tactics, understanding how this specific kind of trauma affected clients' mindset and overall behavior, kind of like Dr. Prasath talked about. So being able to just know that in terms of knowledge.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

In terms of skills, they emphasized that it's really important to assess safety before diving into trauma work. We actually recently met with an organization here in San Antonio that specifically works with sex trafficking survivors, and they emphasized how many of their clients were abused at a very early age affecting just their ability to learn basic skills, learn how to cope, learn how to self-regulate, learn how to build relationships, learn how to have boundaries.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And so it's really important for counselors to start the work on developing safety both physically and emotionally, and teach this to clients before they dive into processing trauma. Of course, processing trauma is important, and I know it's not so easy stage one and then stage two, but just making sure that we're also focusing on that while we're processing trauma.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And then another thing that they mentioned a lot was, we've talked about this when it comes to individuals who have experienced sex trafficking, regaining a sense of safety, dignity, control is critical to support individuals who have been trafficked and really helping them build that path to recovery and healing.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

It's really important for care to be supportive, to avoid judgemental statements or actions. It's really critical for counselors to treat the survivor as a whole person, to engage in holistic treatment, empowering the client, ensuring that they have a right to information, to privacy, that they are participating in decision making.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

So counselors talked a lot about attitudes. So it's not just the skills and the knowledge, but what are the attitudes that we're also bringing to the counseling session that facilitates that type of recovery?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And the last thing that we found really interesting was that it's really important for counselors to engage in work that advocates for clients within and outside of the session. And we've heard that not just for counselors, but also professionals outside of the field.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

So much of what ails sex trafficking survivors falls on systemic or external forces, poverty, employment, legal issues, racism, discrimination. So although that exists outside of the counselor's role, it seems that clients may struggle to succeed in recovery if they do not receive help in these areas. So counselors really need to work on ensuring that clients are connected to those resources and get that help too.

Emily St. Amant:

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important to not just see the person in their individual circumstances, but to see the system as a whole. And by addressing those upstream factors, that public health approach to this issue, it could have a downstream impact. If housing is secure, things like that, people may not be as likely to experience these things.

Emily St. Amant:

So I think that was important to add, but we'll talk more about advocacy as well today, but to assess our own attitudes and to know the best practices for how to approach working with people. So if someone does want to have a specialty in maybe working with survivors of sex trafficking, where would they even start with that?

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

So going back to what Dr. Interiano was alluding to and building off of that, we find that counselors who are interested in working with this population can begin on developing their sex trafficking competencies. That's a good start.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

So first, as she alluded to, that becoming empowered with relevant knowledge, that's what we call the psychoeducational component. So what we mean by that is educating yourself on risk factors, warning signs, psychopathological symptoms, the common vocabulary, the slangs, and the terms that are used in this world of sex trafficking. And also, it's helpful to know the relevant laws and policies that are related to sex trafficking in your state and the nation.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

And within competencies, I'd also say sharpening your relevant clinical therapeutic skills are important. So where do we begin? Becoming trained in providing trauma-informed care is, again, a good start with regards to skills.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

So sex trafficking clients often report a history of childhood complex trauma, and they show signs and symptoms associated with trauma or PTSD. So skills that show as being effective, the empirically validated techniques and tools, the screening tools, the assessments that are effective with working with trauma clients and at-risk clients oftentimes could be good foundational skills for specializing in working with sex-trafficking clients.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

Another step I would say that counselors can start to take is to strive to build on their multicultural competencies. So what that'll look like, it'll be where you can begin by be being willing to identify and to check your own implicit biases and your prejudiced misconceptions that are particularly related to sex trafficking. So once we realize that, I think it's important that we also challenge them and take steps towards countering our discriminatory attitudes and take actions towards it.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

And personally, I find that once we build a personal relationship or take time to understand and listen to the personal stories of survivors, I think those are also a really good start to developing and specializing in this area. So in our everyday work, striving to create a safe and trusting relationship with our clients is something that I would say is also important.

Dr. Priscilla Rose Prasath:

Finally, counselors who are interested in serving this population, we recommend that you connect with local community and state level initiatives. So we find there are a lot of grassroot level initiatives through nonprofit organizations, and recently we also see a lot of funded projects that are a great place and avenues that counselors can partner and volunteer in, and that can help with their awareness overall. And that could be a good start.

Emily St. Amant:

And I think those are some fantastic ideas, to get logged into the community that's also working to address these things, and then, like you said, knowing the laws of your state about these things. And then sometimes our basics are not so basic like multicultural competency. That's a journey, not a destination. We need to stay on top of those things.

Emily St. Amant:

And you mentioned that there are some specific competencies, and in your research you all have identified some of those. So can you maybe provide ... I know that it's probably not the easiest thing to do because it's your specialty, but for those that might be curious about the competencies that you all have developed for counselors, can you provide a summary of those?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

Absolutely. So just like Dr. Romero talked about, this all started when we started working on this topic. We looked at the literature and realized that although we were having conversations with a lot of people in the communities, particularly counselors that talked that this work is different, there were no guidelines on how to work with this population. So we said, "Let's get to work." And we wanted it to be empirically based. We wanted the competencies to be empirically based.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

So through a Delphi study, we intentionally recruited counselors and non-counseling professionals from the United States and internationally. We did this primarily because conversations with counseling experts in the community recommended the inclusion of professionals outside of the counseling profession to have just a really holistic and comprehensive understanding of the identification and long-term care of child sex trafficking.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

So through our research efforts, we identified 19 experts that included counselors, counselor educators, other mental health professionals, survivors of sex trafficking, experts in law enforcement, coordinators and executive directors of organizations that worked with sex trafficking survivors. So we were really happy to get a really heterogeneous sample of individuals who could talk about sex trafficking and could give different perspectives.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

So at the end we did four rounds of data collection and analysis, and they agreed on 128 child sex trafficking competencies. And through a lot of work, we organize them in five domains, which we can think of as intervention strategies and the helping relationship, how to build that therapeutic relationship, trauma and sex trafficking and their connection to one another, assessment for risk factors and indicators, the ethical practice that you have to take into consideration for sex trafficking and then cultural and diversity and human growth and development. Just like Dr. Prasath, multicultural considerations are critical.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And then we divided each domain to demonstrate the knowledge, skills, and attitudes for that section because based on previous research, we realized that understanding knowledge, skills and attitudes was really important. So we're really happy to say that that manuscript was recently accepted and published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence. So it's available for people to read.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And we believe these competencies can assist in identifying standards of practice in the United States that are necessary to detect, prevent, assist with sex trafficked youth. We are using these competencies as a foundation for future endeavors in training for counselors to work with sex trafficking survivors. So we're hoping to build upon these.

Emily St. Amant:

That's wonderful. And we're almost out of time, but I want to make sure that we do touch on that advocacy piece. So how can counselors, even if they don't work with this population, how can we all advocate for people that have experienced sex trafficking?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

I think it's really starting with creating awareness of a definition of sex trafficking. We've talked about the misconceptions. Making sure that you're doing the research to understand that, what is the dynamic that exists between trafficker and the victim. Sex trafficking does not imply always moving a person to a different country. It happens to US citizens as well. It's not what we think of. So it's really important to understand those misconceptions and to do that research.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

Educate yourself about the signs to look for sex trafficking. What are the physical and emotional consequences that you may encounter when you work with someone who has been trafficked? And I think all of that is going to reduce the stigma on the issue of sex trafficking.

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

Again, we really have to check our attitudes and our biases towards this idea of choice and really consider is there really choice when you need to engage this in order to survive, in order to have your needs met one way or the other?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

At the end of the day, when we're talking about advocacy, we have to think about public policy and anything that affects sex trafficking survivors. When we think of the overturn of Roe versus Wade, one has to ask oneself, how does this impact sex trafficking survivors? We also know that the LGBTQ plus community, undocumented immigrants are vulnerable populations. We also tend to see that woman of color present higher rates of victimization and neglect by supportive services. So what are public policies that are affecting these populations and what can we do about it?

Dr. Claudia Interiano-Shiverdecker:

And like we talked about, reconsidering your role as a counselor. Sometimes when you work with this population, you're just going to have to engage in work that resembles that of a social worker, and that's important. And so just something for us to really consider.

Emily St. Amant:

Thank you all so much for joining us today. We could probably could keep going for an hour or so because I think this is such important information. So we'll definitely have some resources listed in the description, but if people do want to learn more, how can they find the Counselors Against Sex Trafficking?

Dr. Devon Romero:

So anyone interested in communicating with us can find contact information for each of us on the UTSA Department of Counseling faculty page, but they can also follow our work on our Counselors Against Sex Trafficking Research Lab Facebook page, or on our Instagram account using our handle, @castresearch, and our website, castrl.com, where we provide updates on our projects and we provide access to resources, one of them being our competency scales that we mentioned earlier.

Emily St. Amant:

Okay, wonderful. Thank you again so much for joining us today. Thank you to our listeners for joining us today as well.

Emily St. Amant:

To join the ACA and get exclusive access to all the member benefits, including our monthly magazine, Counseling Today that often features articles about trauma and working with survivors, check out our website at counseling.org. For more information about the work of the Counselors Against Sex Trafficking, check out their website at www.castrl.com.

Emily St. Amant:

If you or someone you know is experiencing sex trafficking, we recommend contacting the National Human Trafficking Hotline. They can be reached by phone at 1-888-373-7888, or you can text them at 233733. Their website, www.humantraffickinghotline.org also offers a live chat feature and additional resources.

Emily St. Amant:

Be sure to subscribe to The Voice of Counseling on Apple and Google Podcasts, and you can follow the ACA on social media for all the updates about what we're up to and upcoming episode releases. Thank you again for joining us today, and we hope everyone has a great rest of your day.

Announcer:

ACA provides these podcasts solely for informational and educational purposes. Opinions expressed in these podcasts do not necessarily reflect the view of ACA. ACA is not responsible for the consequences of any decisions or actions taken and reliance upon or as a result of the information and resources provided in this program. This program is copyright 2023 by the American Counseling Association. All rights reserved.