Human trafficking discussed in Havre LifeLine presentation

At 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, the Havre High School auditorium was home to members of the Lifeguard Group, Montana natives committed to combating human trafficking and introducing students and adults to ways to identify potential victims of trafficking and prevent the creation of more.

Earlier that day, they had given presentations of their LifeLine Project to the students of Havre Middle School and Havre High School.

Before the evening public presentation began, Havre High School Principal Edward Norman introduced the group as “a group that’s making a difference here in the United States.”

The first to speak was Carson Hochhalter a student outreach specialist with the group and son of its CEO Lowell Hochhalter who would speak later in the program.

“We’ve really enjoyed our time here in Havre. Some amazing students, some amazing stories, and honestly, some amazing staff,” Carson Hochalter said.

He began by talking about the misconception that human trafficking is something that is only pervasive in foreign countries. Or that victims in the U.S. are exclusively foreign born.

“It’s such a misconception that it’s always there, that it’s always somewhere else. When, unfortunately, it’s happening in our own backyards,” he said.

Hochalter went on to talk about the changing landscape of human trafficking in the age of the internet compared to years ago.

“We need to be ready to be on guard in different ways, be prepared in different ways, that we might not have even thought about then,” he said.

The next topic was introduced by Jamie Rindal a former teacher, now a member of Lifeguard Group’s Board of Directors.

“This isn’t a parents issue, this isn’t a law enforcement issue, this is an everybody issue,” Rindal said.

She said predators and human traffickers seek out the most emotionally vulnerable students.

While Rindal was never a victim of human trafficking herself she did have experience being an emotionally vulnerable child.

“I am the queen of a mask. I am the kid that became really good at telling everybody that I was fine,” Rindal said.

She said her mother was severely alcoholic, infamously so where she grew up, and explained how that upbringing affected her.

“Her addiction fed my addiction to being perfect,” Rindal said. “I was a vulnerable child. I may have looked like I had it all together, however, one slip of somebody seeing the pain that was behind my mask could have been an opportunity for me to slip into the wrong hands.”

Rindal went on to say that, in the age of the internet, people need to be far more vigilant about what children do online.

“We are allowing our children to become victimized because we are not paying attention,” she said.

She said this is increasingly important due to the rise of “sextortion,” a practice where online predators lure teenagers into sending them sexually explicit pictures or videos of themselves, which the predator will then uses as blackmail to get more.

Rindal urged parents to keep closer tabs on their children’s online activities.

“They live in your house, if you are paying for that cellphone, and those tablets it is your job to be in the know,” she said.

Rindal added that her niece was a victim of this increasingly pervasive tactic.

“This happened. In my house,” she said.

Rindal was not the only speaker who talked about an emotionally traumatic past. Joe Danzer, a LifeLine Project presenter, spoke about his own experiences as a child and how his emotional vulnerability could have been exploited.

“The way my life started, I definitely could have ended up in a situation like this.”

Danzer’s father died when he was 2 years old, at 6 his mother died of illness. He says he remembered the unfamiliar man who told him when his mother suddenly passed.

“Your mom’s dead, would you like a donut,” the man said to him.

He also remembers her funeral and what a friend of the family told him that day.

“He looked at me straight in the eyes and said, ‘Boys don’t cry,’” Danzer said.

He went on to talk about how his stepparents physically and psychologically abused him and his siblings growing up, and how kids at his school would make fun of him because of his mother’s death.

“I’d go to school, I’d get bullied,” he said. “I’d come home, I’d get bullied.”

Even after he moved out of the house as a young man the abuse haunted him, and drove him to alcoholism, and drug use, Danzer said. He started deliberately dressing to look scary because he wanted people to leave him alone, he explained.

But he also remembers the man he met one day at a McDonald’s.

“This guy wasn’t scared, he sat down and said, ‘Hey, my name is Doug.’ And he started to mentor us,” he said.

Danzer believes that if it weren’t for Doug, that he would not be here.

“Doug, the guy at McDonalds, that’s my hero,” he said, urging the audience to, “Be the hero to somebody.”

Finally, Lowell Hochhalter rose to speak. He echoed the sentiments of Rindal regarding young people’s use of the internet but made sure to make clear his position.

“I’m not trying to cut your access to all the great things. I’m trying stop the access that people have to you,” he said.

Hochhalter went on to talk about the pervasiveness of “familial trafficking,” where people are trafficked by members of their own family for financial gain.

“It’s one of the largest entry points into the trafficking world that we find, in victims that come from Montana,” said Hochhalter, whose organization has spoken to hundreds of victims from Montana alone.

He lamented the necessity of teaching children about this subject, saying that he didn’t want to be the first one to tell children about rape, and sexual assault, but that it’s necessary if people want to have a better chance at protecting kids.

Interspersed throughout these speakers were videos, including testimonials from victim of trafficking read by young children, and dramatic reenactments of sextortion and pimping. But the video that was shown then was a real event and proceeded by a trigger warning by Hochhalter.

It was a brief segment from a security camera showing a young girl being stopped and led away offscreen by the man who would later attempt to traffic her and kill her, with a driving range just out of the view of the camera.

Carson then rose one more time to talk about the Lifeguard Group’s “Street Smart Defenders Course.” He expressed skepticism about the efficacy of traditional martial arts-based defense courses explaining that their course puts an emphasis on escape.

“A good self-defense course tells people how to run away,” he said.

The presentation reached its conclusion with Lowell Hochhalter once again emphasizing that this painful subject is one that needs to be talked about with children at an earlier age than we would all like, citing the fact that so many trafficking victims are as young as 12 to 14 years old.

“It’s not our goal to come in here and scare you, but the very fact that our children are being exploited is scary. It’s the facts that are scary,” Hochhalter said.

Despite the grim nature of the subject, Hochhalter ended with a message of hope.

“We are in such a great position for a comeback. There’s nothing better than a good comeback story,” he said. “We can come back from this.”

“We have to believe that we can change this. We have to believe that,” Hochhalter said in an interview after the presentation.

He said he wasn’t at all disappointed by the modest-sized crowd, of fewer than 20 people.

“Would we want it full? Absolutely,” he said. “But it’s a hard topic, it’s hard to hear.”

This sentiment was echoed by Rindal, who said that “if one person were to come, we would still have given the exact same presentation.”

Hochhalter expressed the hope that the people there would go on to inform and challenge others with the information they gained.