Survivor Sandy Storm

If you follow trafficking stories in the news like I do, this week you likely read about a human trafficking operation in Tarrant County, Texas, that resulted in 56 arrests.

Operation Red Card brought together local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including the U.S. Secret Service, for a coordinated counter-trafficking operation during the FIFA World Cup. Investigators targeted people attempting to purchase others for commercial s*x, individuals attempting to exploit children, and suspected traffickers.

More than 40 potential victims were identified or recovered, and at the time the results were announced, 14 additional investigations remained active. Those numbers are impressive, but what caught my attention wasn't only the number of arrests. It was how they did it:

They stood together.

Multiple agencies from multiple jurisdictions, each with different resources, responsibilities, experience, and areas of expertise, came together against a common threat.

And as I read about what they accomplished, I thought about a passage of scripture that my partner Heidi A Chance For Awareness and I have been meditating on. This verse has become deeply connected to our vision for Frontline Activation:

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.” — Ephesians 6:11

The Shield Wasn't Designed to Stand Alone

When the Apostle Paul wrote about the armor of God in Ephesians 6, the imagery of a Roman soldier would have been familiar to his audience. The armor wasn't abstract. Roman soldiers carried distinctive equipment for both protection and battle: belts, body armor, helmets, swords, and large shields.

Later in verse 16, Paul describes the shield of faith as capable of extinguishing the flaming arrows of the enemy.

The Roman scutum wasn't a little decorative shield. It was large, oblong, and convex, constructed of layered wood and often covered with hide. It was designed to protect much of the soldier's body. Roman soldiers also understood something critically important about protection: a soldier became even more formidable when he stood in formation with others.

Shoulder to shoulder, shield beside shield, one soldier could protect himself, but a line of soldiers could protect one another. Roman soldiers could create a formation known as the testudo, or “tortoise,” positioning their shields together in front, along the sides, and overhead to create a protective barrier against incoming missiles.

And that's the image I can't get out of my mind.

💡 LIGHTBULB MOMENT: When we come together, we can do more to protect the vulnerable than we could ever accomplish alone.

What Happens When the Shields Don't Touch?

Traffickers don't care where one jurisdiction ends and another begins. A victim may be recruited in one city, advertised in another, exploited in a third, and transported through several more.

The trafficker may have a home base somewhere else. The buyer might be traveling from another county, another state, or even another country. The money could move through accounts, apps, businesses, or financial institutions that investigators in yet another jurisdiction need to trace.

Meanwhile, pieces of intelligence can sit siloed inside different agencies without anyone realizing they belong to the same puzzle. One department has the phone number, another encountered the victim, and yet another has arrested the trafficker before. A jurisdiction in a neighboring community may have identified the vehicle, another has information about the buyer, and yet another has an investigator with undercover experience who may be capable of infiltrating the network.

The gaps between those agencies can become openings traffickers exploit in their illicit business model.

But imagine what happens when those shields begin to touch. This is about more than your teammate “having your six.” It's about raising the standard of our coordinated response so agencies aren't simply working cases alongside one another; they're building investigations capable of dismantling criminal enterprises together.

As a survivor, I can't help but wonder how different my own story might have been if that kind of coordinated response had existed when I needed it.

You Don't Need a Massive Agency to Make a Big Impact

I've heard some version of these statements from smaller jurisdictions:

We don't have a human trafficking unit.

We don't have enough investigators.

We've never conducted an operation like this.

We don't have the resources of a major metropolitan agency.

And that's precisely why properly trained, coordinated task forces matter. A smaller department doesn't have to become Tarrant County or have every resource under its own roof. It simply needs to know how to bring the right people to the table and how to ask some important questions:

What resources already exist within neighboring jurisdictions? Who has undercover experience? Who understands digital investigations? Who can follow the financial trail? Which prosecutors could be involved before the operation rather than after it? Which victim service organizations need to be prepared? What intelligence should be gathered before anyone goes undercover? How will information be documented and shared?

And perhaps most importantly: What happens after the arrests?

The goal is never simply hosting a successful operation that produces an impressive number for a press release. An operation can generate an incredible amount of intelligence through phones, advertisements, payment records, vehicles, hotel rooms, financial transactions, social media accounts, and interviews. Connections can begin to emerge that investigators couldn't see before.

Those connections can lead to traffickers, additional victims, facilitators, buyers, financial crimes, and assets connected to criminal activity. They can turn a one-night operation into the beginning of a much larger investigation capable of dismantling the business behind the exploitation.

The arrests aren't necessarily the end of the operation. They may be the beginning of the investigation.

Building the Line Before the Attack Comes

This is a central part of the vision Heidi Chance and I have for Frontline Activation.

We don't want agencies waiting until a trafficking case lands in someone's lap to figure out who should be called. We want to help jurisdictions build the relationships, operational capacity, investigative strategy, and communication necessary before they're needed. And we especially want smaller and under-resourced jurisdictions to understand that they don't have to do this alone.

Perhaps one department has three pieces of what's needed, another has two, and the sheriff's office has another. A neighboring jurisdiction brings technology tools. The prosecutor brings specialized knowledge. A state or federal partner provides resources no local agency could justify maintaining on its own. Victim service providers bring another essential piece of the response. No one has everything, but together, they may have enough.

Shield beside shield. Agency beside agency. Jurisdiction beside jurisdiction.

When we come together shoulder to shoulder, what no single department could accomplish alone becomes possible. That's what I picture when I think about building a human trafficking task force.

I see men and women standing shoulder to shoulder between predators and the vulnerable people they are trying to reach. I see agencies refusing to allow jurisdictional lines to become cracks criminals can slip through and intelligence being shared instead of sitting in silos.

I see investigators equipped to recognize opportunities, conduct strategic operations, gather evidence, follow the money, and build cases that don't merely interrupt trafficking for a night, but attack the criminal enterprise behind it.

And behind that line is a stronger community where agencies communicate and intelligence moves. This means predators encounter coordinated resistance instead of jurisdictional gaps and vulnerable people are harder to isolate and exploit.

Operation Red Card demonstrated what can happen when agencies coordinate their resources around a common mission. Now, the question I want smaller jurisdictions across America to ask isn't, “Could we ever do something that big?”

It's: “Who needs to be standing shoulder to shoulder with us?”

Because the resources usually aren't as far away as we think.

We simply need to bring our shields together.

Ready to Bring the Shields Together in Your Community?

If your agency wants to strengthen its human trafficking response, develop multi-jurisdictional partnerships, prepare for undercover operations, or learn how to turn operational intelligence into stronger cases, Heidi and I would love to have a conversation.

Frontline Activation was created to help agencies move from awareness to coordinated action and help jurisdictions build the capacity to make a bigger impact with the resources already available to them.

Start a conversation with us at FrontlineActivation.com

ACTIVATING THE FRONTLINE

For years, communities across the country have invested in human trafficking awareness.

Professionals have attended presentations, conferences, and conventions.

Community members have watched news stories and learned the warning signs.

Agencies have received training, equipment, and technology tools.

Campaigns have reminded us that trafficking can happen anywhere—and that there are hotline numbers to call and shelters with beds waiting to be filled.

Governments have drafted statements against the crime and created aesthetically pleasing annual reports detailing the millions of people affected and the billions of dollars flowing through the illicit shadow economy that fuels the buying and selling of human beings.

Human trafficking is big business.

Awareness is trending.

Forced labor generates an estimated $236 billion in illegal profits every year, yet no one can reliably account for how much the world collectively spends fighting it, or whether those investments are producing results proportionate to the scale of the crime.

And despite all the awareness, the nonprofits raising money to fight it, the news stories, magazine articles, and survivor memoirs—even in light of the energy and resources spent to combat it through avenues ranging from government initiatives to grassroots efforts—the business of fighting trafficking seems to be booming, too.

As a survivor, I believe solving this problem must become a greater focus than simply raising money to fight it.

I believe holding traffickers and buyers accountable is the fastest way to shut the market down.

And rather than continually rescuing victims from an industry that remains intact, I believe we should set our sights on dismantling the enterprise that profits from the commodification of human beings.

When we shut down trafficking operations, we should confiscate the assets generated through illicit exploits; assets that can then support task forces, community prevention programs, and, most importantly, restitution for victims.

That is why my partner, Heidi Chance, A Chance For Awareness and I started Frontline Activation.

Heidi is a current law enforcement officer and former Phoenix Police Department detective who worked undercover inside the commercial s*x industry. She posed as a woman being sold and experienced firsthand how traffickers and buyers behave when they believe no one is watching.

I'm a survivor of twenty years of trafficking, and I have a way of helping law enforcement understand the mind of a trafficker while also recognizing the heart of a victim.

Together, we are committed to helping agencies build multi-jurisdictional task forces that lead operations resulting in data-driven cases that trace financial crimes to stop trafficking operations and seize the assets connected to them.

What Happens After We Recognize It?

Imagine a patrol officer encounters a teenager who may be experiencing trafficking.

What happens next?

Does the officer know what questions to ask without making the child feel interrogated?

Is there an investigator trained to recognize grooming, coercion, and trauma responses?

Can the agency identify the trafficker, buyers, facilitators, financial activity, digital evidence, and other potential victims?

Are neighboring jurisdictions prepared to share intelligence?

Is a prosecutor involved early enough to help strengthen the case?

Are victim service providers ready to respond?

Does everyone understand their role?

Traffickers don't limit their activity to a single city, county, or jurisdiction. They move victims, communicate across digital platforms, exchange information, and adapt quickly when they believe law enforcement is watching.

Our response must be equally coordinated.

A room full of people with awareness training who can recognize trafficking is valuable. But a network of trained professionals who know how to respond together can disrupt it. That rapid, coordinated response could mean the difference between life and death.

Two Sides of the Same Crime

For twenty years, I experienced human trafficking from the inside.

I understand what it is like to be targeted, groomed, manipulated, exploited, and conditioned not to identify what was happening to me as trafficking. I also understand how a victim’s behavior can be misinterpreted by someone looking from the outside.

Heidi encountered trafficking from another direction.

She interacted with traffickers and buyers, identified victims, gathered evidence, built cases, and learned what agencies need to move from suspicion to investigation.

We were looking at the same crime from opposite sides.

When we brought our perspectives together, we realized that the gap between awareness and action is where opportunities to intervene are often lost. That realization became part of the foundation for Frontline Activation.

Beyond Training and Into Activation

Training is important, but activation requires more than transferring information during a presentation.

It requires helping professionals apply what they have learned within the realities of their own jurisdictions. That may mean bringing agencies together to establish a multi-jurisdictional task force, training investigators to build stronger trafficking cases by recognizing behaviors through the lenses of grooming, coercion, trauma, and survival.

And when agencies come together, they can better prepare for undercover operations, strengthen collaboration with prosecutors, and identify gaps before those gaps affect a case. But beyond the training and the operation, there remains a need for continuing support of the professionals doing the difficult work of building cases and pursuing prosecutions.

That's why Heidi and I won't simply blow through town, leave behind notes from yet another training, and disappear.

We will help prepare for and support undercover operations. We will continue consulting and advising the team as cases progress toward prosecution. And we will help build the relational equity necessary for agencies to work effectively across jurisdictional lines.

That ongoing support can make all the difference as a case approaches the finish line.

💡 LIGHTBULB MOMENT: If we want traffickers and buyers held accountable, vulnerable people protected, and communities made safer, we can't stop once people are aware of the problem. We must build the relationships, infrastructure, investigative capacity, and operational strategies necessary to respond to and interdict the crime.

Yesterday, Heidi and I officially launched Frontline Activation to help law enforcement agencies do exactly that.

A former undercover detective and a survivor of twenty years of trafficking. Two different perspectives united by one mission: Moving beyond awareness and activating the frontline.

🛡Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the schemes of the devil. Ephesians 6:11

Learn more about Frontline Activation and watch our launch video at FrontlineActivation.com.

For twenty years, I experienced human trafficking from the inside.

For nearly two decades since then, I have worked to help professionals understand what victims may not yet understand, or be able to explain, about what is happening to them.

My friend Heidi A Chance For Awareness has spent her law enforcement career approaching the same crime from another direction.

She worked undercover, investigating traffickers and buyers.
She built cases, identified victims, and helped put offenders behind bars.

Today, those two perspectives officially come together.

I am incredibly proud to announce that Frontline Activation is live!

Heidi and I created Frontline Activation to work directly with law enforcement agencies to build multi-jurisdictional task forces, strengthen investigations, support undercover operations, and develop strategies that work in the real world.

This has been in our hearts for a long time.

There is something else that makes today feel especially meaningful.
On the day we are launching Frontline Activation, six planets have appeared across the morning sky, a solar eclipse is crossing the Northern Hemisphere, and the Perseid meteor shower will peak tonight beneath a New Moon.

We did not choose this day because of what was happening in the sky. But after years of preparation, prayer, experience, and purpose, there is something beautiful about launching on a day when the heavens themselves remind us of God’s order, timing, and majesty.

Somehow, everything has aligned.

It has required courage, prayer, preparation, collaboration, and a willingness to step into something neither of us could build alone.

Awareness is not the finish line.
It is time to take what we know and put it into action.
We are moving beyond awareness.
We are activating the frontline.

Please watch our launch video and visit:
FrontlineActivation.com

And if you know an investigator, prosecutor, law enforcement leader, task force coordinator, or community partner who should know about our work, please tag them or share this announcement.

Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. -Ephesians 6:11

IS CHILD TRAFFICKING REALLY HAPPENING IN AMERICA?

A Lightbulb Moments Article by Survivor Sandy Storm

With so many sensational stories swirling around social media, it can be difficult to separate fact from fiction.

• Are traffickers really lurking in unmarked white vans in grocery store parking lots, putting zip ties on windshield wipers to mark potential victims?

• Are random men really following moms through department stores, waiting to sn**ch their toddlers and sell them on the dark web?

• Are trafficked children really being kept in cages or chained to basement walls?

• And is trafficking really more prevalent near interstate highways, college campuses, and major sporting events?

The answers may surprise you.

Because while child trafficking is absolutely happening in communities across America, much of what goes viral on social media bears little resemblance to the cases investigators are actually encountering. And this is concerning, because when we become conditioned to look for trafficking that resembles a Hollywood kidnapping, we can miss the vulnerable child or traumatized victim standing right in front of us.

**Understanding the Crime**

Before we can distinguish disinformation from reality, we need to understand what the law actually says.

The U.S. Department of Justice defines human trafficking as a crime involving the exploitation of a person for labor, services, or commercial s*x. Federal law establishes an especially important distinction when the person being commercially exploited is under the age of eighteen.

When a child is caused to engage in a commercial s*x act, the government does not have to prove that force, fraud, or coercion was used for the situation to qualify as child trafficking. A commercial transaction might involve money, but it can also involve food, shelter, clothing, drugs, transportation, protection, or something else of value.

A child can't legally consent to being commercially exploited.

It doesn't matter whether the child was physically abducted or if the child was taken across state lines. It doesn't even matter whether or not the child received any money. And, most importantly, it doesn't matter whether the child appears to be willingly participating.

These distinctions are essential because many trafficking situations don't look the way people expect them to look.

**Trafficking Is a Business**

Human trafficking is built around an illicit business model.

Traffickers identify vulnerabilities they can exploit for their own benefit. Sometimes they deliberately manufacture these vulnerabilities, maybe by driving a wedge between a targeted victim and their parents or caregivers. Creating isolation and destroying safety nets are often done in the early stages of grooming and then a trafficker might introduce a drug or involve the victim in criminal activity to create dependence on the trafficker and fear of contacting law enforcement.

A child may need food, shelter, transportation, affection, protection, drugs, money, or simply somewhere safe to sleep. The trafficker presents himself as the person who can meet that need. What initially looks like help can quickly become a mechanism of control. Promises turn into obligations. Gifts become debts. Affection morphs into manipulation. Shelter is no longer a safe place to stay. Drug dependence can be leveraged by the trafficker to maintain compliance.

The trafficker then turns a vulnerable person into a product from which he can repeatedly profit.

In cases involving the commercial exploitation of children, the business model also requires someone who creates the demand: a person prepared to pay for access to a child.

Understanding trafficking requires us to examine more than the person arranging the transactions. We also need to confront the buyers whose money keeps the illicit marketplace profitable by driving demand for young victims.

**What Trafficking Really Looks Like**

One of the most persistent misconceptions about trafficking is that a victim was kidnapped or taken against their will, transported or taken across state lines, or physically restrained with ropes or chains. That's simply not true.

The Department of Justice explains that most human trafficking doesn't involve forcible abduction or physical restraints such as chains, handcuffs, or blindfolds. Victims are more commonly controlled through deception, threats, debts, psychological coercion, addictive substances, violence, or a combination of tactics.

This creates one of the greatest challenges for anyone trying to identify the crime.

A child may walk into a hotel room without being physically dragged, carrying a phone and appearing to be a willing participant in what is happening. They may tell law enforcement that everything is fine, defend the person exploiting them, and even return to the trafficker after having an opportunity to leave. But none of those behaviors prove that the child is free.

💡LIGHTBULB MOMENT: Traffickers don’t have to kidnap a child for that child to be trapped. They identify vulnerability, exploit it, and groom compliance, often making trafficking look like willing participation to everyone watching.

Apparent cooperation doesn't equal consent, and compliance might be motivated by fear rather than freedom. Victims can't always explain what they do not yet understand.

I know this because there were times during the twenty years I was trafficked when I didn't recognize what was happening to me as trafficking. From the outside, people may have thought I was making choices, but no one could see how those choices had been engineered through years of targeting, grooming, manipulation, violence, and exploitation.

That's how trafficking remains hidden in plain sight.

**Two Cases Announced This Week**

Just this week, the U.S. Department of Justice announced sentences in two cases involving children trafficked here in the United States.

In the first case, 51-year-old Devin Maurice Harmon was sentenced to life in federal prison for a series of crimes involving the exploitation and abuse of a child. https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/california-man-sentenced-life-federal-prison-s*x-trafficking-enticement-minor-and

According to evidence presented at trial, Harmon met the girl when she was fourteen years old and homeless in California. Over the next two years, prosecutors said he used manipulation, violence, and coercion to control her. The victim reported approximately 100 transactional encounters with adult men during that time. Harmon arranged the encounters and kept the proceeds.

Law enforcement eventually encountered Harmon and the child, along with an infant, at a hotel in Texas. She was sixteen years old and listed as a missing juvenile. They were reportedly traveling toward Louisiana because Harmon had convinced her that men there would pay more money for access to her.

This child was not randomly sn**ched from a suburban parking lot. She was homeless and needed help. Harmon identified that vulnerability and exploited it for years.

In the second case, three men in South Florida were sentenced for exploiting three teen girls who had run away from foster care. https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/three-men-sentenced-exploiting-missing-foster-teens-s*x-trafficking-scheme

According to the DOJ, the men took advantage of the girls’ youth, instability, and lack of family support. They transported the children to hotels, motels, and other locations, arranged transactions, established prices, and collected the proceeds. One of the men regularly supplied the victims with crack co***ne during the trafficking scheme.

Again, these three children were not kidnapped by strangers while shopping with their moms. They were missing foster kids who needed protection.

But traffickers found them first.

Their vulnerabilities were identified and exploited. Then they were sold to barbaric men who were willing to pay for access to children who could not legally consent to what was being done to them.

These stories sound hauntingly similar to my own experiences as a vulnerable child who was trafficked by monsters like these men.

**The Vulnerabilities Traffickers Exploit**

Although no two trafficking situations are identical, these recent cases reveal several vulnerabilities that appear repeatedly:

Youth: Children lack the maturity, resources, and life experience of adults. Their age is both a vulnerability and something traffickers can market to buyers.

Homelessness: To a child with nowhere safe to sleep, an offer of food, transportation, or a hotel room can initially look like rescue.

Lack of a safety net: Runaway children, missing children, and children involved in the foster-care system may not have a safe adult consistently looking for them, protecting them, or noticing changes in their behavior.

Substance dependence: Traffickers may provide drugs to groom victims, deepen their dependency, reward compliance, or make leaving even more difficult.

Prior trauma: Children who have already experienced abuse, neglect, instability, or rejection may be especially vulnerable to someone offering attention, belonging, affection, or protection.

Traffickers are skilled at presenting exploitation as the solution to a problem. By the time the child understands the true cost of that “help,” the trafficker has probably already established control. And with all of this manipulation, how would a child be expected to act?

**What About the Viral Warnings?**

So...are traffickers really marking vehicles with zip ties or following mothers around stores so they can kidnap their children?

In my experience working in the counter-trafficking space since 2009, I have yet to encounter a credible trafficking case that follows the viral scenarios repeatedly circulated online.

That doesn't mean abductions never happen. It means dramatic stranger-abduction stories are not representative of how most trafficking occurs. Traffickers know they will have more control–and make more money–when they groom a victim into compliance.

Why would a trafficker need to overpower a child in public when they can identify a vulnerability, build trust, establish dependence, and groom compliance?

• Are children really kept in cages or chained inside basements?

Extreme physical confinement has occurred in some cases, but many victims retain some apparent freedom of movement while being controlled through threats, violence, manipulation, trauma bonds, financial dependence, drugs, or fear of what will happen to them or someone they love if they try to leave. This can cause outsiders, and even trained professionals, to misinterpret control as choice.

• Is trafficking really more prevalent near interstate highways?

Transportation routes can make it easier for traffickers to move between cities, transport victims, or reach buyers. But a highway doesn't cause trafficking, and its presence alone does not establish that a community has a greater trafficking problem. This misconception can cause victims in rural areas to be overlooked.

• What about college campuses, sporting events, and conventions?

Large events certainly bring concentrations of people with disposable income, free time, and an expectation of anonymity. That creates opportunities for offenders who see being in town for a conference or the big game as their chance to get away with the crime of purchasing a person.

College communities often include young people facing financial pressure, unstable housing, substance dependence, loneliness, or other vulnerabilities. These are openings that become opportunities for traffickers to exploit, especially if the victim is away from their safety net.

But trafficking isn't confined to large events, college towns, tourist areas, border communities, or cities with major interstate highways. It occurs everyday in urban, suburban, rural, and tribal communities across America.

**Learn to See Through the Criminal’s Eyes**

To identify trafficking, it can be helpful to examine the situation through the offender’s eyes:

•What vulnerability can be exploited?
•What does this child need?
•How could the offender present himself as the solution?
•What will create dependence?
•How will control be established and maintained?
•Who's willing to pay?
•Where will the transactions occur?
•How will the money move?
•And how can the exploitation be made to look ordinary enough that no one asks questions?

These are the questions that help professionals move beyond sensational stories and recognize how trafficking actually operates. We can't afford to spend our time searching parking lots for zip ties while traffickers are targeting homeless children, missing foster youth, and other vulnerable people in our communities.

And we can't assume that a child is free simply because there are no visible chains or they say they are making this choice. Our priority needs to be investigating the person profiting from that child’s exploitation.

“Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” Ephesians 5:11

We can’t expose darkness if we don’t know what we’re looking for.

That's why I'm passionate about sharing the truth, shining light in the darkness, and equipping frontline professionals to recognize these crimes, build stronger cases, and put traffickers behind bars, where they belong.

It's also why I wrote The Truth About Human Trafficking. If you had a "lightbulb moment" while reading this article, you'll want to get a copy of the book, where I take a deeper dive into these concepts and share how traffickers targeted, groomed, and exploited me for two decades, starting when I was just six years old.

And I've been working with an incredible partner, Heidi A Chance For Awareness , to create something specifically for frontline professionals who are ready to take that understanding into the real world and build data-driven, prosecutable cases against traffickers.

More information on that exciting venture is coming very soon.

💡 Thank you for helping me shine light into the darkness of the world of human trafficking.