Megan W 

So thanks everybody for joining. We're so excited to have Dr McDonald presenting for us today. So she's going to be talking about the vulnerable and the unseen today, exploring youth homelessness and sexual exploitation. So Dr McDonald is a registered psychologist whose approach to assessment and therapy is very integrative and family centered. She's previously attended Trent University and completed her PhD in Psychological Science at Toronto metropolitan then Ryerson before completing her second PhD, and at York University in clinical developmental psychology, she worked under the supervision of Dr Jennifer Connelly there in the teen relationships lab, conducting research with youth who are at risk of sexual exploitation. And her pre doctoral residency was completed at CAMH and the youth justice assessment clinic and mood anxiety services for children and youth in the fall of 2022. She's completed clinical training at various interprofessional settings across the GTA, including Lake Ridge health and the eating disorders program, the Hospital for Sick Children, CAMH Holland Bloorview and the York University psychology clinic, and has conducted neuropsychological, psycho educational and psycho diagnostic assessments with individuals who have learning difficulties, serious mental health conditions and behavioral challenges and various neurological conditions. So we're very, very excited to hear from her today. She's also done so much research in this area, so we're very lucky to hear from you today, Kyla, and I'll let you take it away.

Dr. McDonald 

Thank you so much. Feel like imposter syndrome, and then when you speak, I'm like, Oh, wow, cool. This is that was quite the journey. So thank you so much. Good afternoon everyone. It is a pleasure to be here today. I'm very, very excited about what Marie has put together with this clinical health exchange at flourish. It's very exciting to hear everyone's talks each week, and I'm excited to contribute in a small way. So as a researcher, I've presented some of this research to individuals at conferences, hospitals. So you might have heard some of this stuff before when I've talked, but it's truly a gift to be able to present to some of the people and clinicians colleagues who I work with, but also the people that we're doing this research for which are individuals and mental health organizations who work with youth who are at risk of exploitation or who are dealing with issues related to homelessness or transitioning at homelessness, and it's really the point of all this research, it's not just to get publications. I know that's what we think about sometimes, but it's really about bridging that gap between research and practice so that we can better protect these youth and support them. I'll show my slides in a second, but I just thought it'd be nice if I could see some of you if no worries if I if I don't, that's okay too. I know you're probably eating your lunch. My hope, really, for this from this presentation, is that you might learn something that will spark some discussion or add to your knowledge about this issue. Again, Megan gave an introduction of just some of my journey here, but I thought it would be helpful to give a little bit of more insight into a bit of my pathway towards this research. And I want to do this because I know that there's a lot of individuals listening who are interested in going to grad school or have an interest in research and that kind of thing. So I thought I would briefly start there. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna go back and forth between sharing my slides, which is like something that I shouldn't do because technology gives me anxiety, but I'm going to go for it, so I will start here. And okay, so that's probably going to be my full screen now, which means that I've lost my notes, so I'm so thankful that I've printed them out as well. Hopefully everyone can see me. I can't see you. Yep,

Megan W 

it looks good. Kyla,

Dr. McDonald 

thank you. Oh, that's a big picture of me, but okay, so well, I'll just start with Yes, I completed my PhD in developmental science. At TMU, and during that time, I was experimental research looking at the development of trust in children. And I started to do work at hospitals, so at the Hospital for Sick Children in different places, Holland Bloorview, I knew that I wanted to become a clinical psychologist throughout this journey, and that's what led me to Dr Connolly's lab at York University, where I got to work with an amazing team. So always like to give credit to my team. I don't know if any of them are here today, but I will speak specifically about Dr Kyla Baird's research, and Melody's research as well. I'm sure she's close to finishing, if not already done, as well, and the individuals that have supported, specifically Dr Jennifer Conley as well, she's a big part of this research. So from here, I went on to to work at flourish and with my amazing colleagues here, and I was able to be supported to continue my my research journey as well through a post doctoral fellowship at the CAMH, under the supervision of Dr Sean Kidd. In the project that I am involved in is the housing Outreach Project collaborative. So that's that HOP C one that you see right there. And what this is, is it's a CIHR funded clinical trial. It's a research initiative that follows young people's trajectories out of homelessness. It considers youth leadership, collaboration and a team approach. It's a really beautiful program in that I'm involved in the research, and I also work as a clinician, therapist involved in this project, as well supporting these youth with their transition. All of these individuals you see here are individual are collaborators, whether I did that this collaboration through my research with Dr Conley, or through HOP C. So very, very fortunate to have worked with these individuals, and I would just want to acknowledge them, because this research is obviously not possible without them. So in terms of this overlap that we that I've talked about, so the intersection between homelessness and sexual exploitation, this is something that this is something that I've sort of it came together through my previous research and through where I am now, and I think I was a little bit optimistic. That's the word, in thinking where I would be at with with this work, and looking at this intersection. So I'm not going to speak to as much about youth homelessness, I will touch on the risks associated with sexual exploitation, and I'll talk about some of the early work that I've done, but I've started to work with Dr Amanda Noble on a SSHRC funded grant through - She's at the Covenant House, and there's lots of exciting things to come there, so I'll bring that up at the end, when, when I sort of touch on that, but I'll start really with exploring sexual exploitation in in vulnerable youth. And really, you know, obviously it's going to be hard for me to read the chat and things like that, but I encourage you, if you'd like to reach out to me after you are welcome to and we can talk more following this talk. So I'll start before I go into my slides again, just about the topic of sex trafficking. So I'll use sexual exploitation, sex trafficking a little bit interchangeably, but it's really gained a lot of traction by the government and media over the past several years. It's always been around, but it's just become just more open in the media. And so I'm certain that many of you know what it is. But I am going to begin this talk before we get into some of the learning objectives, just by going over some of the basic definitions, so that everybody is on the same page.  As well most of the research that I've been involved in has largely been centered on young people and youth, though I know that in this broader audience that some of you work with adults, and I want to just make a note that many of the individuals, given the nature of this research, it has been done sort of retrospectively in that I have worked with adult survivors. As well, and I think it's really important that we're taking that developmental lens and really understanding what those early risk factors are so that we can prevent some of the pathways into sex trafficking. Not that it isn't important to understand how to best support those adults, I'm just taking more of a developmental lens in this in this talk. One more thing before I get started is just a comment about terminology. It's very important to me as a clinician that I'm using appropriate words I learn all the time from my colleagues at flourish about you know the proper, proper wording and things to say. So I am going to make a note on that, that in the literature of sex trafficking, terminology is a contentious issue. The words victim and survivor are sometimes used. They're two of the words that are often used to describe individuals that have been trafficked. And the term victim is often used when we're referring to an individual who is in the process of the process of being recruited, or who has been trafficked or exploited, while survivor is often used when referring to somebody who's no longer being trafficked. But this is just some of the terms that come up in the literature, and many individuals are not okay with either of them. So I've worked with survivors that are like, do not call me sorry - I've worked with individuals there you go, that have said, do not call me a survivor. And I've worked with some that say, do not call me a victim. And they're not, you know, it goes back and forth. So I want to just say this at the beginning, in that it's not meant to offend anyone in any way, just that this is a really personal decision and of how to be referred to. And I think as a clinician, I'm always checking in and just letting individuals that I'm working with know. You know, how would you like me to refer to? This is, do you have something in mind? And I think that if we keep that conversation going, we'll make sure to be able to connect with our clients, just in a more appropriate manner. Um, so without further ado, okay, oh, I can go to the next one. Oh, I can. Okay, so the title of my presentation is vulnerable and unseen. As mentioned, I'm going to start with definitions. So definitions are important. Human trafficking involves the recruitment, transportation, harboring, exercising control or influence over the person. A key component is the presence of a third party exploiter. So I think that that's an important piece to know. And there's no specific legal definition for minors under 18, but there is a specific criminal charge for trafficking A minor. Okay? Sex trafficking is not prostitution, escorting or sex work. The use of the word prostitute puts victims of sex trafficking in the same category as voluntary sex trade workers, rather than reflecting the coercive, non consensual and exploitive nature of sex trafficking. And victims of sex trafficking often present with a complex set of psychological symptoms related to the abuse, endured while being trafficked. So most common are anxiety, PTSD, depression,

substance use,

Dr. McDonald 

poor nutrition, unsafe living conditions, homelessness, financial stress and lots of stigma involved. So really devastating effects for for these individuals. With regards to sex trafficking in Canada, 90% of individuals are female, although young men are trafficked too. And recent work, and again, this is talking about the literature. So there's only who has been involved in these studies. We are noticing that there are many individuals who self identify as LGBTQ2S+, they are also two times more vulnerable to be involved in to be involved in sex trafficking. Indigenous women and girls also make up 50% of traffic individuals. And really shockingly the age 12 to 14 is the most common recruitment age. I'll talk to you more about what recruitment means soon, but that's quite young. 93% of trafficked individuals are domestic. What I mean by this, you might have seen the movie, taken. I'm not talking about taken. I'm talking about our highways are in Ontario, this is happening, and there's a huge profit, as you can see here, which is why it's extremely difficult to stop. All youth are vulnerable and at risk of being sex trafficking. Sorry, being involved in sex trafficking. This is due to many different reasons. There are a lot of strengths too, and I don't want this whole presentation to be doom and gloom. Youth have many strengths, so many strengths. And at this time, there's a there's a huge need for belonging. There is that desire for autonomy. There is a desire for involvement in romantic relationships. And at times, youth can be impulsive, as can many, as many of us can be as well, but it can struggle with aspects of problem solving. So it's so important when we talk about sex trafficking, to apply this developmental lens and think about it that way, in order to understand the way traffickers or pimps, I'll use those words to target and exploit these individuals when they're recruiting youth. They are really good at it, so we need to also be good at sort of understanding why and how they do this. So what are the risk factors for exploitation more generally? there's many individual factors. Homelessness is one of them, and this is, you know, as part of the talk, as well as individuals in care. And a lot of my research has involved this group of individuals. There are many other individual risk factors as well, along with systemic factors to inequality, neighborhood, those type of things. Perhaps, though, as I mentioned, the most prominent risk factor, I would say, would be involvement in child welfare. They're over represented in the child welfare system, and this is the this relationship is really twofold, though. I talk about this because there's different ways. It's not just because they're in CAS and that's, that's how they get involved. It's, it's really that there's different ways that trafficking can be involved, and they can already be involved in care related to early, adverse childhood experiences limited family support, things like that, history of trauma. On the other hand, youth with other risk factors can end up becoming running away. They can experience homelessness, and they might become involved in sex trafficking and then be referred to child welfare. So I think there's, like, a bit of a misconception of, like, how they become involved, but, but we do see that there's huge overlap. The Child and Youth and Family Services Act, Bill 251, I think, is an important one. I'm not going to go into it right now, just in the just in the interest of time, but I think that this is an important one for clinicians and people working with young people. But just just a side note, that what this means is that in October 2021 child protection workers could bring a child below the age of 17, including those that are 16 or 17, to another location or placement, including foster care, to provide services if they have reasonable grounds that the child has been sexually exploited, exploited. So this was a really contentious bill that came up, but I want to bring it up so that you have sort of some knowledge on this, and just really the importance of us supporting these youth and for them, either way, more knowledge is needed, and that's really what a lot of my research has been involved in. I want to talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, because it's a huge part of this whole understanding what's going on here. Traffickers are acutely aware of the vulnerabilities of youth. They act to assess the needs of youth that they want to exploit, and then they find a way to meet those needs in recruiting them. So if you're in this field, you know Maslow's is something we talk about. It's just a way we can conceptualize what's what's been happening. But traffickers often target two basic needs in recruitment, and that's love and belonging and physiological needs. So love is actually the most powerful tool for a trafficker. Reflecting back on some of the youth in care and in young people experiencing homelessness, it is possible that their trust in others has been that it's been broken in the past, and their need for love and belonging has truly been intensified. Traffickers fulfill, artificially fulfill, this attachment, need for safety, security, love and belonging through what's called a grooming process where the trafficker takes on a superficial role of a caring, available, attentive partner, family member or friend. And some individuals are recruited on the basis of their physiological needs being met. And this makes sense for individuals experiencing homelessness, especially youth, including shelter, food, clothing, money. I mean, I have somewhere for you to stay. You know, come with me. It's it really, it seems it makes sense. Adolescents are particularly vulnerable when these needs are not met. If they've run away or living without a home, and they can't access these material goods for themselves, and they're still dependent on adults, right? So now that you've kind of have some background on this, I'm going to talk a bit about some research, and that some of this background is important for understanding this issues. I'm going to tackle some of these learning objectives. I don't know how far I'll get into it, but we'll do our best. I'll start with recruitment and entrapment pathways into sex trafficking, prevention and intervention of at risk youth, screening for vulnerability, risks and warning signs, and then I want to touch on some of my early research in understanding the overlap between homelessness and sex trafficking. Okay, so I'm going to stop sharing again for a second, because I want to present a case for you. Obviously, everything has been de identified, but this is a real case that has came, that came up in my research, that's just there to illustrate the potential pathways into sex trafficking for one specific youth. Again, it's all been de identified. I don't even want to include it in the slides so that I can just, you know, keep that youth respect that as well. So if anything feels, you know, difficult to listen to or hard, know that you can always reach out to me for resources or any of the flourish team, you can stop listening as well. I know sometimes this stuff is really difficult to listen to. I'm going to talk from the parents perspective. Okay, so I'll start now. One day we followed her about 10 kilometers as she stormed out of the house because we asked her to clean her room, and so I followed her about 10k before I called the police, she continued to have difficulties and was moved out of our house. We stayed in contact. Eventually, she was settled in a group home. I was visiting her maybe twice, maybe three times a week, driving up there to see her. She was constantly calling me, but while at the group home, she got involved with an older guy. She was 13 or 14 at the time. The older guy, I believe, was 24. Eventually, she was running so much from that house, child welfare determined that she would return to my house, but by then, I knew she had some sort of relationship with this older guy, and that's the first time that trafficking kind of became an issue. I don't think she was being trafficked at this point, it looked like she was being groomed. There were a lot of expensive gifts. The guy was substantially older. She would come home with expensive coats, type of thing. So with this in mind, I want to describe some of the recruitment and pathways into sex trafficking. So I'm going to share here again my colleague, I will always consider her my colleague, Dr Kyla Baird, though she's gone on and she's she does clinical work now, she did a lot of work on this, and she conducted a systematic review to understand, oh, just want to make sure I can get to that side. She conducted a systematic review to understand the pathways into sex trafficking, which has been a helpful way for a framework to understand this. So the synthesis of these articles really supports the notion of exploitation occurring along a continuum involving trafficker entrapment and enmeshment tactics to recruit youth and prolong this exploitation. More specifically, this framework has three distinct three distinct phases, but they're not mutually exclusive. So there's the recruitment context, which we might have just heard a little bit about in the case that I explained entrapment strategies utilized by the trafficker and then enmeshment tactics. So this incorporates the understanding that exploitation occurs in a sequence from targeting individuals and then to the entrapment, and that's how they sort of remain in the sex trade.

So we also learned more about recruitment, specifically in York Region, through our chart review, which was a collaboration with the police there and child welfare, where we reviewed information from police notes, including investigative summaries from victims, where we learn more specifically about both the recruitment and entrapment process. Okay, so with regards to the location of the recruitment context, youth are often recruited from bus stops, shelters, outside juvenile justice centers, outside schools. Sounds like anywhere and everywhere, including their own home. However, initial contact is often through the internet, and internet facilitated recruitment occurs when traffickers access youth by frequenting online platforms popular with youth and using strategies such as initiating relationships or even deceptively posing as an old friends. Specific internet, internet based applications, this work was done a couple years ago include Facebook, Snapchat, Tinder and online multiplayer video games. And in our chart review with the individuals from York Region, 36% of the sample were recruited through websites such as Kijiji or Craigslist. Again, this was a few years ago that that this happened. With regards to entrapment. So again, this is recruitment, and then there's the entrapment process, how the youth sort of gets and gets involved. Traffickers often use, as I mentioned, relation relational tactics, most commonly being the trafficker as the boyfriend, Romancing the individual. This is often referred to in in like police work as Romeo Pimping. Other methods include befriending the youth into sex trafficking and then tasking other girls who are involved to recruit and train the youth. Both of these tactics are really drawing on the youth need for love and belonging that I spoke about earlier. In some cases aversive tactics are also used. This is called gorilla pimping, which involves like torture and abuse. Stop Sharing again, I'm going to continue back to our case study with this youth to further explore what kind of happened next in this use pathway, again, from the perspective of the parent. So she came back, and within the first couple of days, I got a hold of her phone, and there was texting on the phone between her and the guy, referencing to sexual acts. And that's when I got involved with the police. They came and spoke with her, and the guy was eventually charged. She stayed around for about three weeks and then ran again for about maybe a week or two. She was found on a police raid and ran again, and so I tracked her down. I eventually found her, but she wasn't happy to see me. Eventually, she moved to a group home far away from us, and then went missing again. I. Okay, so now we're in the process of enmeshment and sex trafficking. So now it's not entrapment. Now the youth is actively involved, and it's hard to get out. So after methods of entrapment, this ensues where the youth may lose all control become dependent on the trafficker, or have other inherent factors that really prevent them from leaving. So we can kind of see that this enmeshment process has occurred with this youth based off the case study that that I talked about here. And I am going to just end with end of this case study, not this whole presentation, but I will end with the end of this case study, and then we'll move on to something a little bit lighter. So again, from the perspective of the parent. She was in and out of foster homes for almost a year, and it just became apparent she was likely with another older guy. Child Welfare was getting reports as to where she was, so in the spring, I went there, and I found her with her boyfriend on his group, and sorry and his group, and spoke to her for a bit. She was pretty high, but that's when the police had told us that these guys control these girls with coke. She acted like she was happy to see us, and then she went back to her boyfriend, and we called the police. She knew I'd call the police, because this is by the 11th or time, 12th time I've tracked her down and called the police, and I've always had the police in tow. So she knew this would happen, but she didn't move. So the police picked her up. She spent the night in prison or in detainment or whatever, waited in court. The next day, they released her before her workers got there, and she walked straight away back to the guy. So the story obviously does not end well, and this is not the reason that I brought it up, but I wanted to really explain to you the process of how this occurs, and emphasize why prevention initiatives are so important. Because once involved and this, this process has occurred, it can be quite difficult to come out, come out of that. So I am going to, I am going to turn over and talk about, you know, something a little bit more optimistic and hopeful, and that is prevention and and how we can do that. So during some of my research, I was very fortunate to be able to interview individuals from the vice and human trafficking, human trafficking unit detectives to understand their thoughts child welfare staff and mostly the young people involved, who have Who are who consider themselves survivors or still consider themselves victims, but they provided some amazing suggestions. I mean, talking about education, just explaining this, a lot of people don't know what's going on. I tell people all the time, and they're like, really, it's happening here? Does it just happen overseas? And I'm like, no, it's actually everywhere. It's it's everywhere. And just, you know that placement in group homes, it can be a little bit of a breeding ground for these youth, because the traffickers know where to find these youth, and the importance of targeting high risk youth and building care for them that's specialized and supportive. So one survivor said the parents need to be educated. Say they are getting a kid that is coming from the game, the game, meaning sex trafficking. They need to be educated on what kind of person that child might be and what might be triggering for them, what not to bring up, how to support them, how to ask, what kind of supports they need. So I think this is really, you know, the crux of it, is understanding what they need. So part of my research, part of my dissertation research, was to build a model of care to support these youth with the collaboration of amazing individuals in child well, child welfare and survivors. So part of that related to that, we did a lot of different things, such as developing systematic review and interviews with experts by experience and evaluating some of this model of care, which really is supporting youth fully, and not just supporting youth, but also supporting their caregivers. And. Doing this in an individualized way, so that we can first of all understand what they need and then provide them with those services at home. So kind of wrapping them around with services some of you might have heard of, like specialized foster care. This is this is similar in that domain. A big thing that also came up is assessing for risk factors. So Child Welfare individual said, I think developing almost some sort of criteria that looks at what makes a youth more vulnerable to being recruited like a checklist, in terms of early life, trauma, attachment, current age of child, and any indicators who they're grabbing gravitating toward. So this is, again, really made us think, okay, we need some type of screener. So this is what we we did. This was our next thing. And this is Melody's research, but I needed to come up with a prototype for my own work as well. So what we did was survey the literature for tools, risk factors, and we created a measure, screening measure that could be used to support these youth. It's in the process right now. It's called the York screening tool of a pilot study throughout child children's welfare, and it really breaks down that pathway we talked about, and I won't get into that all now, but just that, there's like gray zone indicators, which include like relationships, and then there's like clear warning signs

Dr. McDonald 

that you know, our engagement In certain behaviors or having personal belongings, money, goods? Why it's important? We need something that's universal, that can be used anywhere. There are some tools that have been developed, but they require, like, days of training in certain agencies. And we need something that, like our family doctors can be using, or our psychologists, or anyone. So I think that something like this is it's coming soon, and I know that melody is working really hard to get this completed. Now moving on to homelessness and sex trafficking again, just touching on this today, but there really is that bi directional relationship between youth homelessness and sex trafficking and mostly youth presenting at places like the Covenant House Toronto, they have experiences with both, and there's really a knowledge gap that exists on how to best support these youth. I did a early study, just just by looking at a case example drawn from the intervention research currently underway with the HOP C group, and looking at some of the literature to look to examine maybe some emerging best practices here, and what came out of that was really best practices are housing and homelessness, support, aftercare hours, ensuring awareness and education of sexual exploitation, which we talked about before. One at a time therapy or individualized psychological assessments in collaboration and support through a team approach. So if you've never heard of one at a time therapy, it's really something to look into, because, you know, in my experience with these youth, sometimes they show up for one session, and then you don't see them for a couple months, and then they come back again. But we are so structured and in psychology to be like, Okay, we're going to have like eight sessions, and this is what we're going to do, and we have a treatment plan and but this is not the case for these individuals, usually anyways. So there can be a bit of a stepped care approach, and there is some research on that. So also really excited that I'm going to be working with, continuing to work with Amanda Noble and to identify a range of services to accompany the provision of housing for youth transitioning from experiences of both sex trafficking and youth homelessness. So this approach is going we're going to do a scoping review and then develop a framework with lived experts to identify the necessary services, service and support components and any adoptions of this project to meet this population. So the goal of this project is to really propose a framework to support individuals who have experiences of both homelessness and sex trafficking. So thank you so much for listening to me today, and you're welcome to reach out to me for resources or questions, and I'm just really grateful first of all, to Flourish for allowing me to speak to you today through everyone involved in this research, mostly to the young people that were willing to share their story. And that means the world to us. All of this research is very participatory and involves that collaboration. So thank you so much for coming today. And I think I have a few minutes for questions, if anybody has any.

Megan W 

Thanks so much. Kyla, that was, like, so informative. And I think if people, if you want to, like, put your questions in the chat too. If that's easier, don't feel the need to, like, turn your mic on. If you don't want to, you can always just type it out.

Have a question that's okay, yeah. Thanks so much, Kyla, for that presentation. I still remember you presenting at one of our classes in my history of psych like you and the other Kyla going over all this and like, there's so much from that that I still teach people. Like, I'm the you showed, like, that Romeo pimp video, and it's available. Like, there's a news article too, and I like, pass those resources along, like, even outside of work, just to inform people. So it's just really amazing work that you guys are doing. It's like, so exciting to see how it developed, and really actionable change about practical next steps. And so my question is around when you look at things like risk factors, and that screening tool do areas around like and this is kind of based on some things I heard from the scan clinic at Sick Kids, as well as some research with homelessness and TBI. I'm wondering about like cognitive abilities or or TBI, and then TBI could also be from adverse circumstances. So obviously, there's quite a bit of a relationship there. But I've heard of some some, yeah, I guess you know the notion that there's that there's youth who are also particularly vulnerable, vulnerable because of their cognitive profiles and the lack of like resources to get assessments. So when you kind of talk about that problem solving piece, it's solving piece, it's, you know, beyond the team problem solving, it's like youth really needed some cognitive support, and how that might fit in with any sort of intervention or prevention efforts. Yeah,

Dr. McDonald 

that's a really great question. And actually, so if you're interested in learning more about this, think her name is Joan, but I know her last name is Reed she's looked at the overlap between intellectual disabilities and involvement in sexual exploitation, and there's a huge overlap. And I think it's twofold, though, at this rate, in this in that that you know traffickers are targeting these individuals due to vulnerabilities, you know, including, you know, beyond lack of problem solving and things like that, but they're targeting these youth due to that vulnerability. And then also, from the the TBI side of it, we do see that when aversive tactics are used in that like gorilla pimping, a lot of these individuals end up with TBIs and cognitive decline, even associated with the mental health that they're enduring, and then they're more vulnerable to that eventually that enmeshment process. So it's almost like it can happen both ways. But I do think this is like a huge area, and I think actually, Marie could probably speak to this a little bit too, especially in autistic individuals, and some of the vulnerabilities around involvement in sexual exploitation from that lens as well.

Marie 

Thank you. I was just going to say, I speak to this with parents. In our parent group that we're running, we've been spending a lot of time talking about these vulnerabilities, the catfishing, the online pieces, not necessarily understanding the social cues, or, you know, being very desperate or socially motivated to make for to make friends. So this is very in line with kind of what we've been talking about. Kyla, I have a question for you. And you know, having a tween daughter, you know, and I you know, What should parents or clinicians be looking for that are more subtle, sort of presentations or traits or symptoms, or, you know what, what kind of changes that would be more subtle that parents can we can kind of give parents some guidance on, yeah,

Dr. McDonald 

so I'll go back. I'll start with a little bit of a prevention there too is that, I think years ago, it was like, okay, we can only talk to teens about this because it's like when it's happening. But I don't know if you recall, the most common age of recruitment is 12 to 14. So we have 10, we have 11 year olds. We have younger people being recruited. So I think first and foremost, there is a hesitance in the school system to talk about these issues in elementary school, and this is when they need to be talked about, because by the time we get to high school, this has already happened. So I think just those early conversations are so important with regards to, you know, different sort of signs, I would say it would be, you know, directly observable signs would be those expensive gifts, you know, any type of changes like that, huge changes in affect, too. Not, of course, this isn't every child that develops changes in their mood or anxiety or things like that, are not involved in this. But if you see those changes, that's an important thing to kind of look at as well. And those can be more subtle changes in friend groups. This can be quite sneaky. It might be, you know, hanging out with older individuals, dressing differently. Some more obvious signs. Of course, this is quite obvious, but it can be hidden is branding. A lot of the individuals involved get have tattoos and but yeah, I would say that the expensive gifts and things like that are a big one.

Kyla,

Sara 

you mentioned having experience with law enforcement, having done a lot of research and work with law enforcement during your research, I wonder where is law enforcement now on the issue of sex trafficking, and where do you see room for improvement from a law enforcement perspective?

Dr. McDonald 

Yeah, so I think right now, it's that I think there's been a lot of initiatives that have come a long way when I'll say when I first started working or doing these interviews, the approach had been, there had been a shift, a huge shift, from viewing these individuals as as criminals to now viewing them as as actual children who need support and whenever there's coercion involved, we could have went into all the ethics today, which I really enjoy talking about. But there's the the you know, if an individual is, if a 14 year old recruits a 13 year old in and, you know, they're still only a year apart. It really doesn't matter if it's exploitive, it's it's wrong, and it doesn't matter that they're only a year apart. So I think there's been a big shift from that lens, and in seeing them as individuals who need support versus who need to be disciplined, which I know not everybody involved in law enforcement has that perspective. But the amazing people I worked with, I know do have that perspective. At the time, they were spending time in group homes and befriending many of the youth involved, and then what they were starting to see outside the homes was the traffickers just how, I don't even like to call them smart, but they, they were, they have a whole there's a book pipology that they they just know what to do, and they would be outside and and all that in terms of recruitment. So I think that they're that understanding has shifted a lot, and we have moved to more of a preventative approach versus intervention, and the intervention is still needed, and that's why all these amazing people involved in this work, in this room, this virtual space, need to support individuals who have been exploited. But the preventative approach is so important because that enmeshment process occurs, and then it's so difficult to get them out of there. Oh, Marie, sorry, this is me. My attention. I came back to your question as well. And just another note, a big one, just social media and just ensuring that it, you know, it monitoring that it may feel like you're invading their privacy, but these traffickers are so, so good at making youth feel like they're involved in something bigger than themselves. And it might be a friend too. It might be a really cool, 13 year old friend who's being trafficked, who loops the young person involved in so I think social media should just be monitored that way too.

Marie 

I. I would say that would be the biggest place where I'm we're seeing some of this in, again, the not understanding necessarily, the nuances of the friendships and, you know, the attention that's being paid. We're seeing this a lot in terms of the social media space, Discord, Snapchat, where the messages go missing. Yeah, after right. So yeah, but thanks for adding that.

Sara 

It may be worthwhile for flourish to develop a parent resource that comes along with, you know, a diagnosis of autism or ADHD, which presents higher risk factors on this particular issue and prevention, that might be something that we could do in the next few weeks so that they're walking away with more information.

Marie 

Yeah, that's a great idea. Any anyone else have any questions, we put up the link for for the archive talks, because we've gotten a lot of interest in people that have had to miss, and I'm sorry for sending out like 9000 invites for this particular meeting. I just realized I hadn't sent the team's invite, so apologies. And yeah, so it'll be up in the next couple of days. I think Sarah will put it up. So amazing. Thanks so much, Kyla, that that was that was great. And next week we have Dr James Watson gays, who is a clinical psychologist who will talk about helping adults navigate substance use issues. So our clinical rounds are lots of awesome and interesting topics. And so yeah, we will see you next week. Kyla, thanks again, and thanks to everybody for having lunch with us.