Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: We're

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: live.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Welcome folks. This is January. This is a joint meeting with the House Corrections and Institutions Committee along with the House Judiciary Committee. We are going to be talking with Lieutenant Steuben from the State Police Department in terms of what is out there for human trafficking as well as sex trafficking. And I hope to have an open dialogue with all members with the lieutenant and vice versa. So I'll turn it over to you, lieutenant, if you could just identify yourself for the record.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Sure. Lieutenant Mike Student with the Vermont State Police. Thank you for having me for the committee. I appreciate it. I've been with the state police since 2003, so approximately twenty three years of service. You have me for about another seven months, and then be fortunate enough to retire. So currently, I'm assigned to the Bureau of Criminal Investigations, and so I oversee and manage two detective units down in the Southeast part of the state out of Westminster and the Royalton Barracks. And as one of my responsibilities, I've been the human trafficking coordinator for the state police, about 2019. So been doing this for just a little while.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Lieutenant, could you speak a little louder because we're way down here?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Sure. I don't have that problem. So I will say that for me, human trafficking was first introduced to it during a car stop back in 2007. I had arrested a female from Vermont who was coming from Hartford, Connecticut to the Windsor, Vermont area. She was in possession of a few ounces of crack cocaine. She was arrested, followed through with the process. Probably about a week and a half to ten days later, I received a phone call from the state's attorney that was prosecuting the case, and he had indicated that he had received a phone call from a detective down in Hartford, Connecticut wanting to talk to us about the female that, I had arrested. So we met with her, and she describes a situation where this female who was living at the time around the Montpelier area had befriended a group that was up here selling drugs from the Hartford area. One day they asked her to take a ride down to Hartford, CT, which she had done probably dozens of times. Well, on this occasion, instead of coming back to Vermont, they chained her up to a bed and she was trafficked out of there for several weeks until she was able to free herself and the detective that we had met had interacted with her as she was running naked down one of their roads in Hartford, Connecticut. So back then, nobody really knew what human trafficking was. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking something that we spoke about. Definitely not anything that I had been involved with. So that's 2007. We fast forward to 2025. We have the exact same problems going on in the state, and we know that the same types of exploitation of our Vermonters are happening. But at least now we're a little bit more aware of it. We've gotten some training on it, and we're working on combating it. So when we talk about trafficking, we really talk about two different things. It's exploitation of vulnerabilities. Right? The traffickers are very good at manipulating the vulnerabilities of their victims and exploiting them based upon those vulnerabilities. And so that's kind of what we're gonna talk about today. Hopefully, by the end of my presentation, we'll have a better understanding of what human trafficking is, some of the elements of human trafficking, some of the recruitment tactics that these traffickers will use, a little picture of what human trafficking looks like in Vermont, how to recognize it, some indicators and red flags, our investigative approach to this, how it's centered around a victim centered approach to our investigations, and how we take into consideration the needs of the victims while we're trying to help, and then some of the barriers and these needs that really we could use would be very helpful for us as we investigate these types of crimes. So what is really human trafficking? There really wasn't much of a definition of what human trafficking was until the federal government passed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act back in 2000, and that really defined sex trafficking, which is the important parts of the Commercial Sex Act, and it's being done by, force, fraud, or coercion, or it's being done by someone who is under the age of 18. We'll get into some of the details of that. You have sex trafficking, and then you have the labor trafficking, which is the recruitment, harboring, transportation of a person for labor or services, again, force, fraud, or coercion to get that labor. Vermont has its own laws which mirror the federal statute, and it does the same thing. The first four parts really focus on the sex trafficking aspect of it, and the last three parts focus on the labor trafficking aspect of it. I would say as a state, we do a better job investigating the sex trafficking than we do labor trafficking. And I'm not really sure the rhyme or reason behind that, but we seem to be a little bit clearer on what sex trafficking looks like, and it's a little bit harder to identify the labor trafficking violations that are going on. So really, when we start looking at this, it really breaks down into three categories. You have commercial sex acts for sex trafficking is the must, right? That's the basic component. And then you have, if you're 18, you need the components of force, fraud, and coercion. The nicer thing about investigating a sex trafficking case if the person is 18, you don't need to eat those three elements. You don't need the force, the fraud, or the coercion because they're minor, as far as the law looks at them, and they cannot consent to that commercial sex act. And then again, we have the labor trafficking, and again, you need those three elements of that force, fraud, and coercion. Sometimes we get a little bit confused with the difference between what is trafficking and what is smuggling. And sometimes you do have an overlap, but when we talk about trafficking, is a crime against a person. Alright? That person has not consented to what is happening to them. They're being exploited by the trafficker, and they did not consent to any of that. The smuggling part of it is usually agreed upon by the victim. The victim, in most cases, will pay someone, usually called a coyote, to transfer to smuggle them into a country, and we look at that as a crime against the country, not against the person. Now sometimes you'll have an overlapping where you'll have someone smuggled across into the country and then trafficked once they get here. We have seen issues of that because there is a fee that comes with that smuggling. And if you don't have the money up front or even if you do, sometimes the elements of that agreement change and the situation change, and then you're forced to pay that off once you get here. And how are you gonna pay that off when you have no money? Well, you're gonna be trafficked either sexually or, through labor. So there can be an overlap between the two, but they're also can be independent of each other. Some recruitment tactics. We have the American dream tactic, which not only applies to those folks that don't live in America and wanna come here and make a better life, but as we all know, there are some parts of Vermont that, don't have the means as other parts of the state. So if you don't have a certain thing and you really want it and somebody's offering to you and that sounds like a good opportunity, well, there's your vulnerability, and that's what the trafficker is gonna exploit. So the American Dream Tacket is not just for those looking to come here, but it's for looking for someone who wants more, wants something better than they have at the moment. You know, if you're living in a in a remote area and you don't have access to nice clothes, to nice cars, to all the things that the Internet tells you you should have, well, if somebody comes along and offers that to you, there's your American dream tactic. Fraud, where somebody's making a false promise. They may have offered you one thing, and then when you get to that situation, it's totally different than the reality of what is going on. We did an investigation into a massage parlor, and one of the victims said she was brought here under the guise of advertising in a paper advertisement in a paper. And then when she got here, she was forced to do massage. And all she kept saying is that's not what the ad said. I was not I did not sign up to do massage, but when I got here, that's what I was doing. So that's the fraud aspect of that. Coercion, you know, could be a harm against, yourself, against a family member, something that's important to you. I recall doing an investigation where the threat was to the family pet, That and was the most important thing to that individual, and he would have done anything to not have the family pet harmed. So there's that coercion aspect to it. Then we have the familiar trafficking, which is when somebody in your family, somebody significant other uses you, to traffic on their behalf. So parents to children, husband to wife, boyfriend to girlfriend, that kind of a situation. And we've also seen that here in Vermont. So we we have uncovered, trafficking that fits every one of these categories in the state of Vermont.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Do you wanna have a time for any questions before we get in too deep at all? Make sure the committee members some of this is probably well known to some members and maybe new to other members. Just wanna make sure that people feel comfortable that they can ask the questions. Barbara? I'm curious,

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: and maybe you're we'll be getting into this. How much of it is minors and if it's sort of geographically distributed? I know for a while South Burlington had somebody who was dedicated in their police force to this. So I just wonder if there was sort of hot spots also.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: So my best answer to that is, yeah, we'll get into some of the demographics of the victims. But as far as where you're gonna find this, and there's a slide about this, it really is all throughout the state. Some of it is more uncovered in certain areas because we have a greater law enforcement presence. We have better victim service provider opportunities in certain areas, but you can find it in the South, the North. It it doesn't matter what county that that you're in. It's it's going on.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Excuse me.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Anyone else? So I like to talk about this example because it's pretty similar to something that we could see here in Vermont. Was a mister Bradley and miss Odell were they owned a tree company in Northern New Hampshire, and they had recruited individuals from Jamaica to come up here and work on the farm. When the individuals got here, they took all their documentation, which is something that is very common. It isolates the victims, to their situation. They were promised a higher wage, a good living condition, the prospect of coming to Northern New Hampshire and enjoying all the benefits that, you would have living in that area. Well, the reality is they were living in trailers with very poor conditions, no that most of us would not wanna live in. Their rate of pay was not what it was promised. It was much lower. They were threatened with violence. Sometimes violence was committed. There were dogs that were used to get them to go to work. They were threatened if they were ever left the farm that there would be retaliation against them. So this is a federal it was a federal investigation. They both were found guilty of it, and that is something that is very typical of what happens when it comes to labor trafficking is you have a situation that is promised to a group of individuals. When they show up to perform the work, it's different than, what they were told it it would be, but yet they're forced, to stay, and leaving is almost impossible.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: What was the penalty for them?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I believe they ended up serving I wanna say it was somewhere between five to seven years in federal prison. They were a bunch of back and forth. I think it went all the way to the Supreme Court, actually.

[Rep. Karen (last name unknown)]: Karen? Maybe you're getting into this, so you don't want to talk with the flow with it. But I'm curious, like, how was this identified? Like, that's the thing that I'm very curious about is is you think, oh, okay. It's a tree company. They're just doing the work. So what are is that what you're gonna get into? Like, what are the signs? How will we know?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Like Yes. In this specific case, one of the victims had managed to leave the farm and then had communicated about what was going on, and that's how this was uncovered. But we will talk about some of the indicators and things to to look for. So some of the elements of human trafficking. You need an action. There has to be some sort of recruitment, harboring, solicitation. So how did that person get into that situation? Were they recruited for it? Was there an advertisement? Were they solicited to do it? So that's how you start. That's your first element. Then you have the means up. So how is this person kept in that situation? Is it through force? Is it through fraud? Is it through coercion? And then the third element would be the purpose. Right? What are they doing? Is it commercial sex? Is it involuntary involuntary servitude, debt bondage? What is the person that that what is the purpose for that person that was brought into that situation? And then if that victim happens to be under the age of 18 for the purpose of commercial sex, then you do not need that force, fraud, or or coercion element. Everybody clear on that one? Okay. So what does this look like? Force, I think, is pretty explainable to most people. You know, everybody thinks of, okay, maybe gun violence or maybe physical violence. But if you're victim a and there's victim b right next to you and you see the trafficker physically assault or victim b as victim a, I'm gonna do what the trafficker says because I don't wanna end up like victim b. So that's a form of force, although it was not directly applied to me. I saw what happened to victim B, and I don't want to be victim B, so I'm just going to go along with what the trafficker says. So that's another example of force that we may not think about. In the state of Vermont, facilitated drug use is also a form of force and is more of the withholding of that drug to get the victim to perform something because the fear and reality of withdrawal is something that most folks don't wanna go through. Fraud, false promises, better life. I love you. You're my girlfriend. You're the only one I care about. You're here to do this. This will only be one time. I swear it's just until we can pay the rent, whatever it is. It's just it's not what the reality shows. And then there's the coercion, the threats to somebody else, the withholding of legal documents, especially if you're not in the country legally, and then that psychological manipulation and control. So those are the means that we talk about when we speak about traffic. So how do traffickers keep control over their victims? Biggest way, obviously, is violence. Violence and intimidation. That goes hand in hand with trafficking. Violence and sex, especially when you're talking about sex trafficking, those go hand in hand with each other. A lot of the times, it's isolation. They're gonna remove the victim from everybody else in their family that they're comfortable with. They may end up with a new friend group. They may end up alienated from their family. They may move them to a different area where they're not comfortable, where they don't know anything, where they don't have any support system. And that's just another way for then that victim to become solely dependent on the trafficker. If you're in a new area and you don't know anybody, well, a trafficker is your only hope. Financial control, they control all the money. One of the questions that we ask when we talk to victims, especially when they say, oh, no. I'm doing this voluntarily. Well, where does your money go? Do you have any control over your money? If the answer to that is no, well, how much control do you really have? And then over time, there's dimin diminishing resistance to what's going on, because they control everything. They control your basic needs. They control your work conditions. There it it becomes futile to to fight back against it, threatening to use law enforcement, especially with those that are in the country illegally. We've had some instances where we have workers that are here, and then at the end where they're like, oh, well, if you don't wanna do this, then we're gonna call law enforcement on. And that's at least in Vermont, that's not the way it works. So

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: Barbara? So so you talked about how it's different trafficking is different than smuggling. Now I'm wondering how trafficking is different than kidnapping in some cases, or is that also a charge that happens?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, I'm not to say that some of these individuals weren't kidnapped initially, but that's probably a small section of it because you need that person to be able to freely come and go. Sometimes, you know, they're confined to one place over and over again, but if you're sending somebody out to perform a date with somebody, you you can't chain them to the wall. Right? You gotta have them leave and then come back. So there's gotta be other ways that you control them besides restraining them. Why is it the fastest growing crime? Because it is. And the reason why is it's so profitable. And it's unfortunate to say, but when you have a commodity, we'll say drugs, you can only use that once. You can sell a gun a few times, but once you sell it, it's out of your possession. With humans, you can reuse that human over and over again until that human expires. So you can get the most out of them, which means that it's extremely profitable. You know, you could be making a thousand to $1,500, if not more, a single day, and that's day after day after day. There's very high profit margin, and it's pretty much hidden amongst us. Like I said, back in 2007, I had no idea what it was when I was in law enforcement. I'm pretty confident to say the average person didn't know what it is and may not still today. So it's going on right in front of us, and it's hard to detect. A lot of it's not seen as a crime. It's just prostitution. This is what this person chose to do. When you start peeling back the layers, that's not the reality of it. And it's difficult to prove because it's very victim based, and sometimes the victims aren't your best witnesses. So there's a lot of things that law enforcement needs to do to make these cases stronger to build more evidence than than just the victims.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So why wouldn't the victims be good witnesses? What plays into that?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Sure. Fear is one thing. Trauma bonding, they build a relationship with their trafficker, especially if it's been going on for a while, especially if it started in an affectionate manner. A lot of them don't have a substance issue, so that affects your memory. If you're intoxicated for most of your day, your memory of what you went through is probably not the best, So there are a lot of issues along with that. Sometimes our victims are also involved in the criminal justice system, so there's just a lot there to unpack to try to get these witnesses to these victims to become good cooperating witnesses.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: One more question and then answer. So would the victim be predisposed to protect their abuser?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: In some instances, yes. Absolutely. We've I've also heard from some victims that maybe they didn't wanna protect the trafficker, but the other girls that if there was a larger trafficking organization, they wanted to protect them, and they know if they left or if they testified, then there would be more harm to the other victims, and they didn't want to deal with that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: I'm curious.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: You mentioned in the first story you shared about the woman who was arrested. Your initial contact with her was as a defendant, as an alleged criminal. And then you learned later that she was actually being trafficked. And I was thinking, so what was the result? What did the prosecution decide to do in that case? And as you're pointing out here that victims are often not the perfect victim or even a reliable witness, I'm curious what you've seen. Is there a trend? Is there a common outcome? I recognize every case is different, but how are victims being treated by our system in Vermont? And what do you see in terms of prosecution of crime of trafficking with them as victim and their crimes with them as defendant.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Right. Because there are a lot of dual criminality that's going on based upon the situation that they're in. Like you said, each individual case is specific, so they have their own issues that you're dealing with, and I think each one is taken on an individual basis. I think in this instance there was a lot of consideration given to the female that we had arrested based upon her past trauma and her willingness that she cooperated down with the authorities in Connecticut. And I've seen, you know, we definitely have changed the way we do things here in Vermont. We're much more victim centered than I think we used to be. I think we work a lot more with our victim service providers to get these victims the services they need to try to turn them around, and maybe sometimes that includes some incarceration, sometimes it doesn't. It really depends on the circumstances and the level of involvement of the victim, because you also have some victims that are more involved than others. There are victims that are really being victimized, then there's others that may be partially involved in the recruitment of some of these girls. So their level of involvement varies as well, and that's why I don't think there's a, you know, one consistent response to that.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: Yeah. I appreciate that. And I'm just, you know, aware of the fact that the statistic that ninety percent of the population in our one female prison at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility, ninety percent of the folks there are victims of sexual or domestic violence. So I'm just it seems like there's an incredible amount of crossover.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Is in trafficking, there definitely is there's a sexual component of it. There's definitely the violence component of it. I think it's definitely a category of its own. Although you may have elements that that touch on both sexual violence and domestic violence, the issues that we see with trafficking victims have their own they need to be treated differently. I don't think they fit nicely in those boxes, and I think that's you know, we work the state police works a lot with the case manager, Katie Newell, out of South Burlington who does a great job as a liaison with us and really tries to help on a granular level of what these victims need instead of just saying, okay, well, we know this is what we do for domestic violence victims, and this is what we do for sex sexual assault victims, because human trafficking kind of is its own little element.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So I know we focus this. Women are being trafficked, that human are sex trafficked. And there are also men and males being sex trafficked Mhmm. Women trafficked.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Yes. The the obvious the answer to that is absolutely. Our reporting in Vermont is not good overall, so we really don't have a great understanding of what the, universal picture looks like of trafficking here. We I will say that as far as the victims that have been identified, the majority of them are females, but due to the fact that we know that there's a lot of underreporting, there's definitely a male population that's being exploited. We we just probably haven't done a very accurate job of figuring out to what extent.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: How could we increase the reporting? What would be needed?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, we used to have a Vermont Human Trafficking Task Force, which brought together a bunch of stakeholders, and as part of that required reporting amongst those stakeholders from victim service providers, from law enforcement, from DCF, so forth. With that dissolving, requirement, that obligation to report data has kind of gone away. You'll see in the statistics that I provide later on. It's really just from the state side, so law enforcement and DCF. We really don't have a good understanding of what the service providers are encountering when it comes to trafficking.

[Unidentified Member]: Lieutenant, how much trafficking are you seeing across the Canadian border, and how's the coordination with Canadian law enforcement?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: So, again, I I think that goes back to the smuggling aspect of it. We'd we know that once they've got here, they there have been cases of them being trafficked to pay off that debt. We have we work well with HSI. They're actually the lead trafficking agency in the state of Vermont. Without them, 99% of our investigations wouldn't happen. So I know they have coordination with folks that are crossing the border and with border patrol and so forth, but I have not been involved in any with any Canadian, officials as far as folks that have been smuggled across and then, trafficked.

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: Thank you.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So we

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: we've kinda touched on already the sexual sexual exploitation of minors. That threshold for minors is a lot lower, fortunately, so we don't need that force, fraud, or coercion, those elements, which is really helpful when, you know, you have a minor saying, No, I was a willing participant in this. Well, fortunately, you're a minor and you can't be a willing participant of it, so we don't need the forced, fraud, or coercion. We just need that commercial sex act. And again, the commercial sex act is trading sex for something of value. Now, for an adult, that may be money or drugs, but when we talk about a juvenile population, it could be something like a vape, could be something like housing because they're a runaway. It could be nice sneakers. It could be I like nice clothes and pedicures and things like that. So it could be cigarettes. It could be whatever is of value to that individual. So it's not just necessarily money and drugs. It's a broader range of things. And when we look at these cases, we don't distinguish between immigration status, gender of the youth. It's just whether or not that individual was trafficked and what we can do to help them.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: How do you determine age?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Usually self report. So

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: you trust them? But verify. How do you verify it?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: That's what I'm asking. Well, can either follow-up with parents, with DCF, whatever contacts that they have had. If they're in that situation, maybe they've already been encountered by law enforcement. So there's a few ways that we can try to validate their ages. The runaway population. Sure.

[Unidentified Member]: Sorry. I'm sort of hiding back here. I'm just sort of letting it run over me, but this notion of the commerce part of it, when you're dealing with a kid, the kid is taken and forced into some sexual acts. If there isn't the commerce aspect to it, what do we call it? What is that?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, there has to be some sort of value that that individual is receiving. So if they're being involved in you know, if they were sexually assaulted, then that's a sexual assault, and it's not trafficking.

[Unidentified Member]: But if if taken by a person and sorry. I'm thinking about something in particular. And forced into acts with several people, but they don't receive anything for it, then we're just dealing with, you know, abduction, rape, something of that sort.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Oh, is the trafficker receiving that? Because then that is the something of value. Okay. Thanks. My screen keeps wanting to jump ahead. But we talk about runaways, which are component of the juvenile population that becomes much more vulnerable for exploitation because they are on the run, they're without their basic needs. They're looking for them to get met in some capacity, and so what we talk about with that population is survival sex, where they're trading sex for those basic needs: food, clothing, housing, maybe drugs, alcohol. And they, again, we talked in the very beginning about vulnerabilities. Well, these are the vulnerabilities that a trafficker is gonna exploit. When somebody is out on the run, they're obviously in much more need of their basic needs than the rest of the population.

[Rep. Karen (last name unknown)]: Just as you were sharing, I'm similar. I'm letting this all hit and, like, okay. Processing this. But you said that it's increasing, and it has been increasing. So I see it as two groups. It's the folks that are doing the exploiting, the traffickers, and then the folks who are being exploited. So are those numbers both increasing in Vermont that the number of exploiters, traffickers is increasing and the number of Vermonters who are being exploited?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, I think you can make the correlation. If there's more people being exploited, then there's probably more people exploiting them. Do I have statistics exactly on that? No. But I I think you can probably make that correlation.

[Rep. Karen (last name unknown)]: Right. Because I'm also seeing it too that is it that we could have a lot of traffickers in Vermont, but trafficking people outside of Vermont into it. I'm just seeing it as, like, two two groups for us to be looking at.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Guess I don't have a better answer than that for you. When we talk about vulnerabilities, obviously folks with disabilities fall into that category, and they become a group that is vulnerable for trafficking. And with this group, it usually falls back on the groups that they know the most because they're most informed on what those vulnerabilities are. And you can see by this chart that the folks that are victimizing them are usually the ones that are closest to them. And the thing about folks with disabilities is they come with disability income, so that's something that is exploitable right off the top. They're also sometimes isolated. They are not amongst the population as often as other folks. There's lack of resources in the state for a lot of these situations, so they become a much more vulnerable population. Right? And we talked about with individuals with disabilities, they already come with that financial piece. So who commits trafficking? You know, we talk about offenders, but it really is anyone. Anyone who can manipulate someone to get them to do what they want them to do. When we talk about massage parlors, we're talking about more organized crime type businesses, but we've we've seen every single one of these on the list. If you have someone who's looking to exploit someone for a financial purpose, then you have a trafficker. What does the process look like? It's not you know, most people when they think about trafficking, they think of the movie Taken, and somebody pulls into your breaks into your apartment, pulls you out, puts you in some sort of a trailer, a building, whatever, and then traffic's you out of that. But that's a very, very, very small percentage of what happens. Most of the investigations and the situations that we see, there's a process to it. It starts with some sort of a recruiting process where they get to know the victim. They get to build that relationship with them. They get to learn their vulnerabilities, and then they start to exploit them. There's the grooming phase after the recruitment phase where everything is great, and they're treated like a king or queen until they're not, and that's when they get turned out. That's when they get told, okay, well, this relationship is going to change, and it's going to change in the way that you're going to start making money. And if you don't, well, there's consequences. So that's kind of what the process looks like. Three stages: recruitment, grooming, and then turning out. Questions? Yes, miss?

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: What's a bottom girl?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: So as we talked about before, there's different levels of victims, and you may have the bottom girl is more like you can think of it as like a totem pole, the foundation of it. Like, has progressed to the point where now she is recruiting others and in charge of the girls that are being trafficked.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: Like the Ghislain Maxwell? Uh-huh.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Could be.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Recruitment pathways. Sometimes you have friends that are doing it. You have one girl that says to another girl or one guy that says to another guy, I'm making a lot of money doing this. It's not that bad. Why don't you try it? It could be through violence in a relationship, turns violent, and then all of a sudden, you're you're trafficking. Could be through lack of options. We talked about runaways, covering basic needs. It could be whether it's a parent or parents to children. Know, we just need to do this to get enough money to get to next month. Well, or I just need you to do this because I need drugs for for tonight or whatever it is. And, you know, next thing you know, that's the relationship that builds. Promises. What do they do to keep victims in a situation? Economic economic opportunities. Talk about folks coming into the country, but, again, it's also those that don't have the means that they think they want or they deserve. Material conference falls in the same pain. Love and affection. You know, if you really love me, you would do this for me. It'll only be once. I promise. Basic needs, we've talked about. You know, we just need to make enough money to move away to start another life. And I can't do this, but you can. So these are some of the promises that some of these victims get caught up in. In Vermont, the majority of trafficking that we're seeing on the sex side of it all has some sort of an addiction component to it. A lot of it starts with an addiction and then gets exploited from there, and the traffickers know that. So sometimes the victim may be getting too lost in their drug habit, and the trafficker solution is to bring them to rehab. Rehab is also a great place for recruitment. Our correction facilities, both from victims and from traffickers. They may be sending somebody in to start to do some recruiting. You have a population that is ripe for that, and it's a good place because everybody's sticking with the same roof. So as we talked about earlier, traffickers are very good at their craft, and they're very good at fighting victims with vulnerabilities and what better place to look than a recovery center or a current correction facility.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So how much of that are you really seeing in Vermont? Like, if you go back to the screen, where they're posting bail for a victim to avoid detoxing in jail, or they're really starting to recoup facilities, a person purposely Has Vale said they're not willing to they're not paying it so they can get into the facility to start recruiting? Is is

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Is it 20%, 50%, a 100%? I I don't really know. I think that's a better question for, like, a victim provider that really interacts with the victims that are going through the correction facility and the rehab. Katie Noah would be a great resource for that. She would probably have a better understanding of what percentage we're talking about. But I know I spoke with her this morning, and that is a concern that we have. We have two basic recovery centers in the state, so those are pretty easy targets for recruitment.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: I mean, I'm just concerned, you know, our flexural facilities have so much movement in and out. And I'm just even wondering if there are the trafficker to begin with, the head honcho is getting in there and starting to recruit.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think it would be interesting to see who is paying for bail, who's putting money on certain people's accounts, who's waiting for them outside when they get out, who's bringing up nature. Those are good ways to figure out if there's a trafficker involved or if they're involved with a group that's doing this for sure.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Or even during visitations? Correct.

[Rep. Karen (last name unknown)]: Thank you. Just in listening to this too, can't help but think about the isolation piece of it. For folks who are going to rehab, incarcerated, like likely have burned a lot of bridges, don't have a lot of other people. So, yeah, I'm just thinking about that piece of it and what we can do in our work to help give folks some unity. These are the folks they're relying on.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Correct.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Particularly Yeah. When they're coming out in reentry and they may be having a hard time for transportation to get to services, or they're having a hard time to get their meds, and they're dependent on other folks. It's your vulnerability.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Correct. Having housing that's just for human trafficking victims would be helpful. Trent, like you said, maybe MOUs with taxi services to help folks get from a to b because, you know, we are a pretty rural state. So if you don't have those opportunities or those people that can help you with that, then you may be solely dependent on the one person that you don't wanna be.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: I mean, it it's having worked in the field, I I see I have seen 15 year olds whose mothers have trafficked them, and their relationship is complicated, in terms of not having contact with their mother moving forward. I I was thinking what you were saying about service providers. So if they're under 18, I'm assuming there's mandated reporting going on. But again, I think making sure that service providers know what's what they're looking for so that they can intervene. And I don't know if that was happening when the task force had been meeting. I know that there was a lot of activity with that task force. So, it does seem like that same training that corrections officers would have would be really important to have for runaway and homeless youth shelters, for battered women, lots of different types of programs.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I am part of an MDT that does training to a lot of different organizations, providers, law enforcement. So that's really what we've spent a lot of over the last four or five years doing, just like you were saying. But it definitely is a different type of challenge for human trafficking victims than it is for providing services for domestic violence or sexual assault.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: Sure. But just in terms of who might be coming in.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I know DCF has done a lot of training with their staff to try to recognize some of the indicators of that. We've done trainings with corrections as well to try to identify some of the indicators of trafficking that are happening on in the both in the facility and then when you have probation and parole about checking on folks.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: And then, Ken.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So far, I've heard about snuggling, trafficking, and the victims, but I haven't heard anything about those who are paying for these services. The sex. Are we gonna get into how you identify those who are paying for the sexual favors and what we're doing about that? Or is that not part of your presentation?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: That is not part of the presentation today as far as what we're doing to try to curb demand. As an agency, we haven't really participated in any proactive type enforcement where we set up stings to have, you know, people solicit sex and then do any of those type of details. So, yeah, we we haven't really aggressively gone after that supply side.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: And I understand this is the the oldest industry in the world in history. So if we don't take the demand away, we're just shoveling sand against the tide. So I would like to see us think about that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Is that because there's a lack of resources or lack of focus to go after the folks who are the perpetrators?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think it's they're like everybody else, we have limited resources, and we're trying to use them in the best manner that we can. And, you know, we're we're still trying to identify victims and help them with what they've been through. And then, you know, then our next stage after that is to try to increase the number of prosecutions that we have. And then so it's not that we don't want to. It's just we're not there yet.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Are there laws on the books that if an individual has been proven to be paying for sex, many of these victims, that they have a consequence for that person for the customer I

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: mean, not for the customer, for

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: prostitution and silly filth. I I didn't understand what you said. Yeah. Anyway, I shouldn't If you get if you get caught paying for a prostitute in Vermont, is there a penalty?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I believe there is.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So if yeah. Good. Start.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Cam?

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: So these organizations are already well known by the the people that are wanna keep the victims involved. How do we how are we even dealing with that? You know what I mean? I mean, they know they're already in getting treatment or whatever, and they're just waiting for them to come outside. Like you've already you've already said, people know who's in there waiting and making sure they don't go to the police or or they stay away from law enforcement and all that stuff, and they're probably threatened by that, I would assume. Right? Well, I've certainly heard that. And how how are we dealing with that?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, it's complicated because the investigation, we need a victim. So, you know, we we don't start the other way around. You know? We can't just assume somebody's offender and committed a crime without a victim. So we're we are trying to bring victims to law enforcement to help us prosecute these. That's a long and arduous process. A lot of victims, even if we do identify that they are a victim of trafficking, don't want to cooperate with law enforcement. We can't force that, nor would we.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: Which I assume is the the threat

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: effect of of them. Right? That, like, they already know that once they go into a facility or something like that, that that that if you say too much, you're gonna pay the price when you're out. It could be. Yeah. There there's I don't wanna say there's just one particular reason why a victim may not cooperate. There may be a multitude of reasons why they don't cooperate, but I assume that would be one of them.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: And you probably don't wanna answer or maybe can't answer this, but are we enforcing the laws enough?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: How so, sir?

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: The people that are doing the the the bad things. Are we we

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, I think if we

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: why? Are we making them pay the are we are we sending them to jail? Whatever it takes.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think if we identify traffickers, you know, we're trying our best to prosecute them. How are we doing with that? There have not been many state prosecutions for trafficking since I've taken since 2019. Back here. A lot of them are being done federally.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So Shawn and then Seth?

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: I just googled it. It's hiring a prostitute or aiding prostitution is currently classified as a misdemeanor in Vermont for your first offense with penalties up to one year in imprisonment or a fine of up to $100.

[Legislative Counsel (name unknown)]: So I I just correct that there is also a crime for soliciting a sex act from someone who is human trafficked, and that's a five year felony.

[Rep. William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Okay. Great.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Thanks. The prostitution.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Okay.

[Unidentified Member]: Sam? Yes.

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: Thank you, chair. One question I had is around task force, and the I I believe there was a human trafficking task force that was stood up. My understanding is that it was dissolved. And I was curious if you kinda get into maybe the the need for a task force to help address some of the concerns that we're talking about today and maybe into why it was dissolved in the first place.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: So I came into this position when there was a task force, and it was set up primarily police and the Center for Crime Victim Services had received a grant from the Department of Justice. And as part of that, they set up the task force to work on that. When the grant sunsetted, pretty much so did the task force. It would be helpful to have some sort of a mechanism to bring those folks back to the table that would mandate some better reporting, because I think having a better understanding of what exactly trafficking looks like in the state could help you folks could help us really try to combat the scope of what is going on here. I don't know if it's in a task force model, committee, some sort of a committee or council or something, but I think something that has the authority to require certain reporting and participation and cooperation will be held.

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: And one of the things as a follow-up that we hear consistently as a challenge, you know, in in house judiciary is, you know, the the information sharing between agencies and stakeholders. And do you think that I mean, did any of that play into what happened with the I mean, did you feel like there was best efforts in information sharing with the human trafficking task force when it was in operation?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think certain segments of it were great, and we still have some of those existing today. Like, we have certain committees. We have a training and outreach committee that still exists that works very well together. We had a labor trafficking committee that worked pretty well together. So there were some aspects of that, and then there were other stakeholders where I think maybe was an obstacle.

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: Thank you. And sure,

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: if I may,

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: just one more one other question. Terms of prosecution, I think that was something that, you know, my colleague, representative Sweeney and representative Winter spoke about very eloquently. In terms of prosecution, are a lot of these cases referred to the Office of the Attorney General? Is it being referred to the federal government? Like, what does that prosecution look like, where are these cases referred to?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: It kind of depends on how they originate and how they're investigated. Like I said, the majority of the trafficking investigations in Vermont are handled either in coordination with state and local with HSI or HSI stand alone. So the majority of those cases are going to the US attorney's office. US attorneys. Okay. So very few are being prosecuted by the AGO? Correct. Sometimes you'll get some on the state's attorney level.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Yep. Thank you. Sure.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Tom had a question.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Oh, Tom. And

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: then Yeah. Thanks.

[Rep. Tom (last name unknown)]: Thanks for being here, Alex. I'm thinking hypothetically about elements you might need to write an affidavit to prove this essentially. Could how much does actual knowledge or coercion is needed? Can can somebody simply have the knowledge of what's going on and sort of create the instance of it happening and be charged with trafficking? I. E. A drug dealer knows exactly what the customer is doing to get funds for the habit, for instance.

[Unidentified Member]: Well, I

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: think I come back to my earlier point is you need a victim to try to steer these investigations. So it would need, at least initially, a victim to come forward and say, I was trafficked, and then we can start our investigation from there. And maybe we don't need that victim to cooperate as much. Maybe we do based upon what we're able to find after that. But it really starts at that level.

[Rep. Tom (last name unknown)]: The addiction itself couldn't be you know, uses the motivation for the per you you could use that as the motivation for the purpose of writing an affidavit. I think They are so desperate that they're doing this.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: That person to say, I'm doing this. They need to. Okay. You know, it could be an element of that, and you you can incorporate that within. You still need to say have someone saying, I am doing this. Otherwise, it's a stretch.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: You mentioned that the investigations are a long and arduous process. And I was wondering if the if the folks in your unit that's the right term receive particular training, specific training for trauma informed training, working with victims of human trafficking and how to help them along the process?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: So the answer to that is yes. And the state police have focused, especially for the last five years or so, is really our approach has been, instead of having a specialized unit, is to train all of our detectives in trafficking training. So that's really where we spent a lot of our efforts. And then myself and the MDT that I'm involved with, we've gone out and trained local law enforcement as well to get them up to speed on what's going on.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So I have a question that you may not be able to answer completely. So, I would assume that there is law enforcement throughout the state, state police, maybe local, that have a pretty good idea where a trafficking is happening and who is the perpetrator for that. How can you go because I'm just thinking of the questions that were asked, going after the person that's really causing it, not the victims, but the person that is doing the trafficking. And if you kind of have a hunch of who it is, where they're located, what's going on, what does law enforcement need in order to pursue that? So I think that's part of the question here. Why not go after the perpetrator? Why are we going after more of the victims? But if we have a hunch in terms of who the perpetrators are, what do you need in order to bring that person in? I think that's where some of the committee members are coming from. Maybe you can't share

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think each instance is unique. So I'll give you an example. Like if we know that there's a house that is a known drug house and we've heard that there's information of them also selling sex out of the place, we may try to get in there based upon the drug activity and then hopefully to evolve that into also a trafficking investigation. So we do go after it from with different lenses, but still at the end of the day, you need a victim to say they have been trafficked in order to get a trafficking charge. Now you may be able to walk away with a drug charge or a gun possession charge or some other violations, but for the trafficking part, we we do need the victim to say, yes. I you know, raise their hand and say, yes. I've been a a victim of trafficking.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Because the perpetrator isn't gonna say, hey. I'm doing this, and I am traffic people.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Most of the time, no.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Got approved. Correct.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: And and for us, that's really where we've introduced, you know, the case manager to try to build that relationship because sometimes they don't wanna deal with law enforcement.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: The victim, right,

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: and to try to build that relationship so that if and when they're ready to talk to law enforcement, we still have that connection, and that has been successful. You know, not always. Some victims never want to really come forward and cooperate for, you know, maybe they don't want to relive the trauma that they've been through. Maybe they're fearful of the offender, the reason is, and then others do, but sometimes that takes time. We've had folks come forward two years down the road and say, okay, I'm ready to cooperate now.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Mary, you have a question?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Yeah. There is a piece of legislation on the senate side to legalize prostitution. What would that look or do to this issue?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think there's a lot of tentacles to that question. I don't know if it's just a simple if you legalize prostitution, will trafficking get better or worse?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So And that's, I think, towards both levels.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Right.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: You don't have a sense of

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I don't know if the state police has a sense of what that is better or worse.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: What was the question? Missed the question.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Well, I said there is a piece of legislation on the senate side to legalize prostitution. So how would that look to, I don't want to say better, but would it be make this situation worse or because we're kind of opening it up or would it lessen it because the demand isn't there, the want or need or demand for it isn't there?

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. I was gonna ask a similar question actually, because there's a House bill to decriminalize consensual adult sex work. So I guess the same answer was probably for that question. To improve consent.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: When you have a person with more power over your Mhmm.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Is the question. Much of it is consensual? And I think you'll get a lot of different answers on this.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Yeah.

[Legislative Counsel (name unknown)]: I think my question is just around the point that you made earlier that a lot of people who are in these human trafficking situations are also in the criminal justice system and are maybe even committing crimes as a part of being trafficked, especially in the scenarios where it's around addiction. Something that I've interacted with a little bit is that there's a part of the human trafficking chapter around vacating convictions because someone was being human trafficked while that crime was convicted and or was committed, and then they were convicted of that crime. But they could eventually essentially have that wiped because it was being it was done while they were trafficked. I haven't really seen that much. I don't know if we're talking about, like, getting victims to work with police and cooperate to try to address the underlying issue. Do you see that being a tool to work with victims that essentially they could try to address their own criminal record because of the crimes that they've committed while they're trafficked.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Can I ask for a clarification? You said you don't really see that much. Which part of that

[Legislative Counsel (name unknown)]: I don't see any discussion of of, like, For me, I really know very much about any of this. That a tool that you guys use at all as a way to work with victims of human trafficking to get them to cooperate like a carrot that Right.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I will say that there is a lot of dual criminality that does exist in the trafficking world, whether it's a trafficker having someone go purchase a firearm for them because they're not out shoplifting for them, stealing things just because that's all that they that's the only means that they have. Having that option to not charge that person with a crime because they were doing it under duress, that could be a tool that is used to gain cooperation. And that tool already exists?

[Legislative Counsel (name unknown)]: Well, it's a little different than that. They are charged, and, actually, they are convicted of And of then And you can vacate. And then the defendant defense attorney can make a motion to vacate that conviction with a showing that they were trafficked at the time. And that's kind of where I'm like, it's kind of a convoluted thing that I don't really know if someone who's a victim of human trafficking has a lot of pending stuff or has been convicted of stuff. I don't know.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: How many people are in CRC up right now that we could be having that conversation?

[Legislative Counsel (name unknown)]: And who have yeah. I don't I and that's kind of

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I know my very And what level of articulated question

[Legislative Counsel (name unknown)]: is discussing. Right? Like, what

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: level of trafficking were they engaged in? And you'd have to be able to verify. Yeah.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Who for thought? And that was the goal for today.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Earlier, you had mentioned that people that you deal with get them in touch with crime victim services. And I'm just wondering from from the angle you see crime victim services, do they have the resources to handle what you give? I know they have the skill, the know how, it's a wonderful organization, department, resources. It's not a straightforward

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: answer. So like with everything, there are some that are better at dealing with it it than not. After hours is always an issue. Human trafficking, again, is different than sexual violence, domestic violence, so having someone that is just familiar and well trained in that would be helpful. We rely a lot on our human trafficking case manager, who that is her primary role, and she's very good at it. And then she kind of will reach out to other service providers that she sees the victim needs so that we don't have to shop around for different providers. So that relationship and the strength on that really helps us to assist the victims. Thank you.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: All set? Yes, sir. Very rudimentary. Would increasing the penalty for those who finally get convicted be a useful tool to minimize the trafficking?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I don't think the lack of penalty is the issue. I think the laws are pretty stringent. They're pretty significant, the penalty. So I don't think increasing them would really have much of an effect.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: So those who are taking advantage of children and weaker people aren't afraid enough to stop taking advantage is what I'm hearing.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I'm not sure that comes into the equation. It does. But like I said, I think our laws have pretty severe consequences if convicted.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: It's to get the conviction. Correct. That's the key. And in order to do that, you need strong evidence to do that.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Yes, ma'am.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: And that's where you need to make sure that your victim is willing to come forward with the evidence.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: It's part of the puzzle. Right? We we try to look for other things, electronic evidence, other witnesses. We try to build a pretty three sixty degree picture, but it is part of that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Well, it just occurs to

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: me that the one way that I'm thinking of it now is that the state has a hard time competing with the provision of needs that trafficker is supplying. So if the state had the resources to say, we will give you housing, we will give you food, we will give you drug treatment. Perhaps there would be That's fine. There's it just it it, like, levels the

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: You're 100% correct. So I interviewed female who was being trafficked and was willing to cooperate. And at the end of our interview, you know, I'm like, what can I do for you? Where what do you need? Where are you gonna go? She's like, well, I'm gonna go back to the house that I was being trafficked out of. And I can't blame her. I didn't want her to, but I couldn't provide her housing on a long term basis. I couldn't provide her food on a long term basis. I couldn't provide those needs on a long term basis, but they can. So yeah, was that a loss? And it's something that she would have earned, so it's not like I was giving it to her, but I couldn't even present it as an option.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: Which is the saddest thing for victims, that at the very base level, there sounds like many are just looking understanding that drug addiction complicates it tremendously, but they're also looking to have their basic needs met.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: In some situations, absolutely. And it's not just those that don't have needs, right? That is a one subcategory of it. Are different categories of victims, but with that category, yeah, that is true. I think we've touched on some of these as we've been in the Q and A. Why do they stay in what we call the life? We talked about some of them basic needs, addiction, normalization of it. That could be just prostitution. This is my life now. Bonding with the trafficker, shame, self blame, you know, nobody feels bad for me, this is just where I am. So lack of alternatives, you definitely have the threat of violence. So all of these things, you know, there may be one, there may be a cluster of them, but these are the reasons why they stay. Things that we like to remember is that bond, especially if it's on a long period of time that develops either between the victim and the trafficker or the victim and other victims, is really strong and is really influential in a lot of what happens to that victim in the short term and definitely in the long term. You know, if you're in a situation like this and the trafficker has controlled your whole life for years, taking people out of that situation, a lot of them don't know the basics of how to live because they haven't done it for quite some time. They don't know how to have a job, what we would consider a normal job. They don't have driver's license. Maybe they don't know how to get from a to b because that's been taken care of for them for the last two years by the trafficker or the group that they're affiliated with. So keeping that in mind when we're dealing with victims is pretty important. And that leads us into the approach that we use with victims, it's much different now than it was when I first started. We're much more victim centered as far as what is it that the victim needs, how can we help that, listening to what they're saying and not saying. They've just come out of a situation where they've been manipulating and controlled. They don't need another person, agency, whatever to come in and fill that void, right? It's time for them to start having some control their lives. My circle?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Something happened here.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Something happened to my connection.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: It's probably working with you somehow.

[Rep. William "Will" Greer (Member)]: Are you still in the Zoom call?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think I may have

[Committee Staff/IT Support (name unknown)]: got kicked out. Okay. So if

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: you go back to that link that

[Committee Staff/IT Support (name unknown)]: just need to there, she'd be able to join back in.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Gave you a look.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: What just happened?

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Exactly. We're gonna say how much we love you.

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: That makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Remember where I need to.

[Committee Staff/IT Support (name unknown)]: Should be able to just start right back up.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: We're gonna

[Rep. Shawn Sweeney (Clerk)]: have to take

[Unidentified Member]: it from the top.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: I guess. No. It's not.

[Committee Staff/IT Support (name unknown)]: You're gonna

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: have to

[Committee Staff/IT Support (name unknown)]: share your screen on here as well.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Thank you.

[Committee Staff/IT Support (name unknown)]: Should he'll he's just in the process of giving you the privileges. You're still gonna pardon me. You're gonna have to go back and do the the share screen button again.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: K. Looks good. It's better than the floor chairs.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: It should be That's for sure. Anything else? Gotta just keep moving.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: So some of the barriers that we face when we're doing these, obviously, resources is a big one. No one case is the same. You know, you're victim from a massage parlor case is going to be a lot different than a victim from a mother who has an addiction selling their children. So each one of them is different. It's not like we can just hand out a single playbook and say, Hey, this is how we're going to investigate trafficking cases. You need a lot of flexibility and patience for these. Talked about victims are sometimes not the best witnesses. Sometimes they're cooperative, sometimes they're not. Sometimes their addiction gets the best of them, sometimes it doesn't. So, you know, there's a lot of ebbs and flows to these. Building a rapport initially is also very challenging, and that's where we rely heavily upon our case managers to fill that void to keep helping them with their needs if and when they're ever interested in coming back around and helping out law enforcement. And then trauma and addiction plays a big role in people's abilities to recall events, timetables, and names, and places, and things like that. So it is definitely not an easy crime to investigate. Someone asked earlier, where are we seeing trafficking? And the short answer is it's everywhere. We have as much of a problem in the Bennington County area as we do in Orleans County or in Wyndham County. So everywhere throughout the state, are seeing cases and victims and having reports. It's So not segmented to just one portion of the state. This is limited reporting that we have from 2025, and this is just from our DCF cohorts, state police, and HSI. So we know that this is underreported. We know from when we were working as a task force, when we were all sharing our data together, we had somewhere close to 400 reports of trafficking. So now that we're down to only 42 reports from these three agencies, we know we're missing out on quite a bit of what's going on. And without accurate reporting, it's really hard for us to get a complete picture of what trafficking look like looks like in Vermont. But what we do know is, at least in Vermont, the majority of the victims are female, and we're talking about an age group of 11 to 24 years old. That is what we're seeing. The younger population, a lot of it is through online. You know, they're offline all the time, and people are reaching out to them that they have no idea who they are, and they're making all those promises that we talked about earlier. Either I love you or, you know, I'm gonna offer you things that you don't have or what whatever the lore is, it's working. So that's a lot of what our juvenile population is getting exposed to. And in the offenders that we're seeing, the majority of them are male, and the age vary. But like I said earlier, HSI really is fortunately for us, the lead agency in the state. They have much more resources than they do and a lot. There's a component to these crimes that reach out of state, so they're a great agency to help us out when it comes to that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: We do have a question here. Zach?

[Rep. Zach (last name unknown)]: Thank you, chair. I so what I mean, it's a really incredible huge precipitous drop going from you said, like, 400 report cases down to 40, and I'm I'm sure it's very difficult to pinpoint a single instance of of why we've seen that decline. But you also at the top of the slide, you mentioned, and I'm paraphrasing, but when we were sharing information. So do you think that some of the victims are being encouraged not to share information with law enforcement?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I'd like to think that doesn't happen. Not naive It's enough to say it doesn't. We just don't have access anymore to service provider information, so that's why you see such a drastic decline in the number. This is just the law enforcement lens that gets us these reports.

[Rep. Zach (last name unknown)]: And they wouldn't voluntarily share that information with you Correct. Providers. Right. And my a follow-up to that is what is the working relationship with US states with The US Attorney

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: for Vermont? Assume productive, but I just Correct. Yeah.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Thank you.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: We've talked about some of these already, some of the needs that would help us in this endeavor. Housing in and out of state, especially with some of these victims that are caught up in larger organizations of trafficking, getting them to a safe place outside of Vermont so that they can kind of cut ties but yet still stay engaged would be helpful. Same thing with drug rehab. We talked about how when you go in there, everybody knows if you're in rehab, you're in one of two places in Vermont. So some of these things could be very helpful for us. I think you asked earlier about service providers. Just having human traffic specific providers, I think would be quite beneficial because like I said, it's a unique animal and it brings its own separate unique needs for the victims. And then some form of group to help push this along would be great that you know, maybe gets us back to the table to start sharing some of this information so that we do it as a collective instead of just more silo approach that we've been doing since.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So we have a few more questions. I'll go over to Will first.

[Rep. William "Will" Greer (Member)]: So my question about the third bullet point on MOUs with hotels and taxis. I'm curious if you could elaborate a little bit more on why that's a recommendation and how other jurisdictions have potentially used it to curb some of the trafficking that we're seeing.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Sure. We were just talking before about dependency, and if you're relying on those your trafficker to provide you with a roof over your head or transportation or things of that nature, well, then you're right back at beck and call of your trafficker. And we know that Vermont is a very rural state and if you need to go to treatment or you need to go to a medical appointment or things of that nature, and you don't have access to transportation, that could be a barrier.

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: Thank you, Chair. I'm going back to the prosecution point, because a lot of these points are coming up as we're working through the presentation. But I wanna go back to the attorney general's office, and I know the the great work that the AGO is doing on ICAC. And I'm curious if it would be I mean, it seems like there's a willingness to prosecute cases with ICAC, but there may be a lack of willingness or lack of interest in prosecuting the cases with many minors and youth victims that are youth in this instance. So am I understanding that right? Does it make sense for the AGO to get intervened here?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I don't think it's a lack of interest. I've never seen that. I haven't seen them say, no. We're not gonna prosecute this case. The decision making of where things get end up getting prosecuted out of which office, I don't usually get involved in, so I'm not so sure I'll be the right person to address that question.

[Rep. Sam (last name unknown)]: So maybe it's is it a prioritization issue, maybe?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: It it could be. I don't know if it's a resource issue. It's you know, if it's a jurisdictional issue. You not know, really sure of the circumstances around that. Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: I think most of the jurisdiction will be with federal system or our county state's attorney's offices. That's where most of this is gonna be litigated. It's my hunch, not through the attorney general's office.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, we we have had several prosecutions on the state's attorney's side.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Most of it gets carried through.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Yeah. I'd say it depends a little bit on jurisdiction. Well, if it's a statewide kind of human trafficking situation, I could see the attorney general stepping in more likely than a state's attorney.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: It depends.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: It depends. Yeah. Would the feds get involved if it's once they're crossing state lines with that?

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So these are some thoughts that we we should take a look at, some recommendations in terms of what the legislative branch should look at. Little bit.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Just a few additional ones, things that we are working on. We had two case managers at one point. We're down to one for the state. We used to have a north and a south. We're working on, I believe, some specialized trainings for prosecutors and judges. These are things in the works, but definitely could be more robust.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: I wonder if an addition to that would be specialized training for our correctional officers.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I know we're already engaged in that. We are working with corrections and PMP to provide that kind of training.

[Unidentified Member]: This position is vacant or eliminated or no?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: The case manager position is vacant at the moment. What is MDT? Those are multidisciplinary teams, so you have are you familiar?

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: I just wondered what the acronym was.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: That would be the end.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: So I'm wondering, most of the things on the list involve sort of resources. Are there legislative changes that would be helpful?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, I think, like we had discussed earlier, the penalties for these are pretty significant. I think the laws are are pretty clear. I think they provide us with what we need from that angle. I don't think it's a lack of a statute that is a hindrance.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: I noticed that some states require a governmental agency to do more outreach and education, And Vermont is not one of those states. It's suggested, but not required. Do you think

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, I think as we talked about earlier, if there was a body that was kind of spearheading some of this training, the data collection, things like that, I I think that would be very helpful.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: So that body would need the resources to implement all of that work.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I think the resources and the authority.

[Rep. Barbara Rachelson (House Judiciary Member)]: Yes, right. And so we shouldn't think of it as we shouldn't think of it as just getting that body, but making sure there's advertising money or training money, so that we can actually do what's required.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Yeah. Something to hold some folks accountable for getting the work done.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Tom?

[Rep. Tom (last name unknown)]: Personal opinion of yours I'm looking for, I guess, is with the strength of the grip that the trafficker has on the victim, how many are we missing?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Oh, I I think we're missing a very significant amount.

[Rep. Tom (last name unknown)]: And if if if we we can't break that, are any of these other things really gonna help?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, I think you don't know what you don't know. Don't we there are a lot of victims that we're not coming in contact with. There's a lot of situations that go uncovered. So I think the what you saw in the presentation is what we feel would help us win the ones that we have come in contact with.

[Rep. Tom (last name unknown)]: And if we can't stop it with already I I mean, I see life sentences are sometimes involved in these. If that's not breaking the cycle, this is gonna gonna be a really tough nut to crack.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Well, it comes down to the money. It's very it's extremely profitable.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Shawn, I'm having exceed that money.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: So Speaking of money, I'm wondering if the resource the needs that you've shared with us, if the correlating resources, meaning money, would be in DPS budget request or in the governor's budget?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Don't know.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Totally. Yeah. Nice try. They can't share at this point.

[Unidentified Member (House Judiciary/C&I)]: I hope to see it in the governor's budget. Kevin?

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: In the middle of my league to ask the question, but is there some kind of evidence that you see that if you had the right to use that to prosecute a perpetrator, but you can't use it for some reason or other now? For example, you're saying you have to have a victim that's willing to charge what I'm hearing. If you know that it's going on and you don't have a victim who's willing to charge, is that something that through legislative changes we could make that allows you to convict more and make some significant progress?

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: I don't wanna say that you 100% need a victim every single time. Right? There's ways sometimes that there's certain evidence that will make that not as relevant. But I can't think of any specific thing I would say. If we were able to do this, then we would get more prosecutions, more convictions. I guess I I don't have a good answer for that.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: Tom, and then?

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: When representative Rachel was speaking about what we could do legislatively, it came up that something we did for ICAC a few years ago, and she'll probably shoot me at some daggers when I bring this example up. And I'm not necessarily saying this is a potential tool for you, but maybe other than going to penalties or something like that is facial recognition in the state. You folks can't use it for the most part. But what we did with ICAC a few years ago is we loosened up the restrictions around it, and it's very narrow for them that they can use facial recognition know, just to research, to find people, you know, common faces on a website or something like that. So I don't expect an answer from you, but maybe give us some thought and something along those lines other than, you know, penalties that we could loosen up some restrictions maybe that you have around your investigation. I I think having additional investigative tools like that would obviously be helpful, especially

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: when you're trying to identify victims Yep. Who are maybe moved in and out of state and are a lot of trafficking takes place online. And if

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: I remember right, and Barbara may be able to verify it, I think the facial recognition is around finding the victims' images online, you know, and on the, you know, I guess we'd get a web or whatever, I think it was narrowed to that, which is a tool that they can use.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Unless non judiciary people like advocacy.

[Unidentified Member (likely Judiciary)]: Oh, Internet Crimes Against Children. It's a federal task force. Every state has one. There's 67 offices in The United States. Every state has at least one office. Pretty close. Yeah.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: It's very good.

[Rep. Tom (last name unknown)]: To go back sort of originally to my very first question and where we are now. When when you say you need to have a victim, you need to have a knowledge of a victim. You don't necessarily have to have a cooperating victim. You could you could charge based on what you see happening. Right. It's definitely more advantageous to have them cooperating. Right. But the same thing happens in a domestic violence case. I mean, you're required to make an arrest even though the person may not be interested in having you arrested.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: Right. There could be additional evidence that we find after we're alerted to the initial crime that may make it a lot easier to prosecute without a cooperating witness. Absolutely. Okay.

[Rep. Kevin Winter (Member)]: Very helpful.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: I hope this was helpful. I hope it wasn't redundant for folks.

[Lt. Mike Student (Vermont State Police, Human Trafficking Coordinator)]: There's Thank a lot

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: of new information. Just thought it was important for members of the legislature to become aware of what's really happening in our state law enforcement and communities are dealing with, because this is safety issue as well, and it's really dealing with folks of our state who are being victimized.

[Unidentified Member]: Thank you very much.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: So I wanna say

[Rep. Karen (last name unknown)]: thank you. Yes. Thank you.

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: And anytime, you know, folks have questions, I'm sure the lieutenant will be available for more conversations, one on one conversations. I really appreciate everyone here

[Rep. Karen (last name unknown)]: for, honestly.

[Unidentified Member]: For seven months or so. So

[Rep. Alice M. Emmons (Chair, House Corrections & Institutions)]: That's right. That's eight years of time. So