Confronting Human Trafficking with Uprising

A local nonprofit has been confronting human trafficking through education, outreach and awareness. Sheridan Media's Ron Richter has the story. 

For the past four years Uprising in Sheridan has been working to educate the public on human trafficking. Uprising's mission is to empower communities, volunteers, and donors to confront human trafficking and exploitation through awareness, education, and outreach. Co-founder and Executive Director of Uprising, Terri Markham, recently provided an update on the organization to the Sheridan City Council.

TRANSCRIPT OF THE ABOVE CLIP: “For the past four years Uprising in Sheridan has been working to educate the public on human trafficking. Uprising's mission is to empower communities, volunteers, and donors to confront human trafficking and exploitation through awareness, education, and outreach. Co-founder and Executive Director of Uprising, Terri Markham, recently provided an update on the organization to the Sheridan City Council. You may or may not have known just earlier this month. There was actually a sentencing hearing from a man named Kyle Smith who was sentenced to 35 years in prison because he was exploiting children via the internet out of Sheridan County and so that is actually I think one of the biggest obstacles that we're seeing with Uprising.

Our youth are especially vulnerable to online-based exploitation and crimes. We actually have a department called ICAC in our state. It stands for internet, crimes against children, I would definitely urge you to check out more about what they do. If that's unfamiliar to you but their house within our department of criminal investigation and all they do is work. Internet-based crimes, involving children and there's a big mission with eye cat that a lot of the stuff that they're working might be like teens sending nudes and back and forth but that's not really the case.

They're actually working primarily cases that involve a really graphic rape and exploitation of mostly prepubescent children in our state.

Markham said that they are seeing a lot of what is referred to as sextortion in Sheridan County, which is when a youth may be, sends an illicit photo or video to someone.

This can easily happen by being groomed online and coerced into thinking “it's a boyfriend or it's a girlfriend” and as soon as that predator has that content there then exporting these kids with it. Telling them: “Now, you need to send me more of this content or I'm going to release the photo to your parents, to your school, to your friends,” or they're asking for money. “Now, you need to send me money or I'm going to release this photo” and we're seeing a huge spike. In those types of cases, kids are being reached out to through social media platforms through, even online gaming platforms, cases from every sort of app and game that you can imagine Roblox Minecraft Instagram Facebook, Twitter Pinterest. Like it's it's the list is endless.

Markham also talked about familial trafficking, which is when a child might be being exploited right out of their own home, usually by a parent or a family member.

I had multiple occasions this year where I didn't get an outright disclosure of familial trafficking, because we are very upfront with the youth that were mandatory reporters. So they know if they tell us something like that, that we are going to go to law enforcement. But I do get a larger number of youth who are inquiring and wanting to know more questions and typically when they hone in on something and ask more questions, that's a good indicator that something might be going on.

To learn more about Uprising, you can visit this story online at Sheratonmedia.com. I'm Ron Richter. Sheridan Media News.“

Editor's note: The remainder of these clips, below, are smaller parts of the above clip, and therefore the transcripts would be repeated.

Markham said they are seeing a lot of what is referred to as “sextortion” in Sheridan County.

Markham also talked about familial trafficking.

To learn more about Uprising, click here.