353 – Grooming in Trusted Spaces: A Conversation with Dr. Beth Lorance

Dr. Beth Lorance joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they discover how a high school coach gave one of his players expensive gifts, things her mother had refused to buy, with the mom posting online asking what to do, not realizing she was witnessing grooming behavior that creates the same vulnerabilities traffickers exploit in trusted spaces throughout our communities.

Dr. Beth Lorance

Dr. Beth Lorance is an adjunct professor at Vanguard University, where she teaches Family Violence and has also taught Introduction to Psychology and Psychology of the Family. She earned her PsyD in Clinical Psychology and previously served as the director of Vanguard’s counseling center. In addition to her academic background, Beth is a licensed minister with the Assemblies of God, which allows her to bring both psychological expertise and theological insight into conversations about abuse, trauma, and healing. Her passion is deeply personal, rooted in her own family history of child sexual abuse, and she is committed to equipping others to use their voices to prevent abuse, protect the vulnerable, and walk alongside survivors. Beth also works to bring awareness into the church, encouraging faith communities to reflect Jesus’ response to victims and to take seriously the call to protect those who are most vulnerable.

Key Points

Family violence creates deep vulnerabilities by teaching children harmful lessons that love is transactional, they’re not enough, and there’s something wrong with them that they can’t overcome – wounds that become embedded in their brain chemistry when trauma happens at a young age.
Traffickers don’t create vulnerabilities but rather exploit existing wounds from family abuse, stepping into unmet needs and exploiting lessons already learned about intimacy being tied to exploitation.
Statistics reveal that 90% of abusers are known to their victims with only 10% being strangers, and 31% of traffickers are actually family members of the victim, making “stranger danger” education insufficient.
Grooming is a process of control and manipulation that builds trust, chips away boundaries, and creates dependency so victims willingly comply when lines are crossed into inappropriate behavior because they’ve been normalized to the perpetrator’s actions.
Training is essential for leaders, staff, pastors, volunteers, and teachers to recognize grooming signs like expensive gift-giving, requests for secrecy, and isolating language such as “your parents don’t understand you, but I do.”
Clear boundaries and policies are crucial, including no one-on-one supervision between adults and children, with swift consequences when policies aren’t followed to prevent grooming opportunities.
Children need to be empowered to say no even to trusted adults, with parents and leaders respecting their boundaries and teaching them about “tricky people” rather than just strangers.
Trauma-informed communities must stop asking “what’s wrong with you?” and instead listen without judgment, sitting with broken people without requiring them to change or behave in prescribed ways to receive care.
Parents should be vigilant about adults in their children’s lives, knowing what interactions look like and requiring that any adult who wants to be friends with their child must be friends with the parent first.
Breaking the cycle requires communities that believe victims, provide someone to stand up for those who can’t yet stand up for themselves, and create new family structures when biological families fail to protect.

Resources

Transcript

[00:00:00] Sandie Morgan: Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women and Justice in Orange County, California. I’m Dr. Sandy Morgan, and this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Today I’m joined by Dr.

[00:00:22] Beth Lorenz. She’s an. Adjunct professor at Vanguard and former director of Vanguard’s Counseling Center. Beth earned her ID in clinical psychology and is also a licensed minister. Today we’ll discover how a high school coach. Gave one of his players expensive gifts, things her mother had refused to buy.

[00:00:49] The mom posted online asking what to do, not realizing she was witnessing grooming behavior. This same pattern creates vulnerabilities that traffickers exploit, and it’s happening in trusted spaces throughout your community. Now here’s our interview.

[00:01:11] Well, Dr. Beth Lorenz, I am so excited to have you on the Ending Human Trafficking podcast today.

[00:01:20] Beth Lorance: I am excited to be here.

[00:01:21] Sandie Morgan: We were just chatting before I hit the record button, and we have known each other for two decades.

[00:01:28] Beth Lorance: It’s been a long time.

[00:01:30] Sandie Morgan: and what a deep friendship and.

[00:01:33] Collegiality as I was pursuing my PhD and you were pursuing your side D and clinical psychology

[00:01:44] and. Changing off. I taught family violence. Now you teach family

[00:01:50] violence and I’m a guest in your class, and

[00:01:54] Beth Lorance: I know. It’s wonderful.

[00:01:56] Sandie Morgan: love it, the collegiality and just tossing things back and forth as we work together to make things. Better for our kids.

[00:02:07] So we’re gonna talk today about the link between family violence and human trafficking.

[00:02:14] And I know in my world that many of the victims. Of human trafficking that we’ve served right here in Orange County, California started with some kind of childhood trauma,

[00:02:31] and that often happened in a family context,

[00:02:35] so I would like. To start with talking about how you help your students unpack the complex dynamics of abuse and how that might contribute to fostering vulnerabilities that then traffickers exploit.

[00:02:59] Beth Lorance: Yeah. really when we look at family violence, what we see is that it creates all of these vulnerabilities in a person’s life. And if they don’t, find healing from those vulnerabilities, if they don’t come to recognize them, if they don’t come to, get over them, get over is not the right terminology, but to, um, move beyond them.

[00:03:21] Then they can be exploited later on in life. And we do that in my class as we talk about what family violence does for an individual. And we look at things like, the lessons that abuse teaches a person. And when a person faces trauma or abuse at a young age, they learn these lessons that they’re not enough.

[00:03:42] That love is transactional, that, there’s something wrong with them that they can’t overcome. And, no matter what the type of abuse is, if it’s sexual abuse or emotional abuse, neglect or physical abuse, they begin to learn these lessons. And it’s more than just a, like a lesson you would learn in school.

[00:04:03] If the trauma happens at a young age, it begins to rewire your brain chemistry and it really becomes embedded in how you see the world and how you, interact with people around you. How you experience, love. You begin to confuse danger with love or attention. it will impair a person’s decision making.

[00:04:25] It will increase their fear response. and all of that is because of this trauma that they experienced in their family at a young age or even at a middle age, like a adolescent, that kind of thing. And so that’s what we do in my classes. We unpack that and we look at how, that impacts a person and how we can prevent and intervene and bring healing to people that have experienced that in their lives.

[00:04:52] Sandie Morgan: So let’s go and

[00:04:53] Look at this from the perspective of a victim of human trafficking.

[00:05:00] We often credit the traffickers at being master manipulators. They start grooming someone and three weeks later they are turning them out. in a prostituted situation,

[00:05:14] but that grooming seems to have started at a much younger age. Can

[00:05:21] you connect the dots for me?

[00:05:24] Beth Lorance: Yeah. So there’s a couple of ways to look at that. The first is, if we look at example of a person, that maybe was neglected at a young age, and so they have, they weren’t. Given their basic needs of life. And so they, come to see themselves as an invisible and unwanted, they don’t have their, any affection that they needs being met.

[00:05:48] those kinds of things. And they begin, they, that they begin to believe that they. Are not, they do not deserve to be cared for at all. and that leaves them vulnerable. So a trafficker can step right into that vulnerability and say, I can provide these unmet needs for you, but this is just what you need to do for me so that I can provide those unmet needs for you.

[00:06:13] Or somebody that has experienced sexual abuse. they are taught and they learn lessons about and lies really about intimacy and relationships, and they come to believe that love is tied to exploitation. They, learn that their value is. Only what they can give someone else.

[00:06:32] And these are wounds that are deep that a trafficker can just step right into and exploit for their own purposes. And so, when we talk about grooming, we’re not talking about a trafficker coming in and grooming somebody that comes from a family where they’ve learned they have value or they learned that they can be,

[00:06:54] stand up for themselves, or they’ve learned that they have a voice. They already have these deep wounds and these lessons that they’ve learned that allow the trafficker to exploit those things.

[00:07:06] Sandie Morgan: So when I am looking at this

[00:07:09] grooming process. That starts from a base of lessons learned and. Honestly, when you first started talking about lessons learned, I’m an educator and I love learning, and so hearing lessons learned in a negative context is like fingernails on a chalkboard

[00:07:34] for me. Why? Our students, why are my kiddos learning lessons that are wrong? And those lessons are then deeply ingrained from the time they’re a child.

[00:07:48] Whether it’s the, the violence is the first response, whether it’s the neglect. And one thing I used to teach the family violence class. I wanted to see my students’ faces when they began to understand that neglect is often the number one

[00:08:12] prevalent form of abuse.

[00:08:15] There are no marks. It’s all

[00:08:17] internal, but it creates a very fertile field for the kind of manipulation and coercion that traffickers use. So.

[00:08:30] Thinking about, how they introduce coercion into that grooming process. What does that look like?

[00:08:41] Beth Lorance: So, when we talk about grooming, we have to really, for some people, we have to define what do we mean by grooming? And it’s this idea that, um, it’s a really a process of control and manipulation that. Begins to build trust in a person. it chips away their boundaries.

[00:09:00] It, Creates dependency so that when the line is crossed to inappropriate behavior or wanting the person to do something that’s, that’s inappropriate to trafficking somebody, They are already well willing to do that because they trust this person, they love this person, this person is meeting their needs. And they, it may confuse them, like, why is this person that loves me or that I trust wants me to do these things? But they’ve been normalized into how this person behaves. So I think of a person who, A, a groomer who is very charismatic, very gregarious, very friendly, very loving, and starts to show affection to somebody, puts their arm around them, gives them a hug, and wears down this idea that physical touch is inappropriate with a, with somebody of this age, and when they then cross the line into something.

[00:09:58] Inappropriate. the victim is like, oh, this is normal. This person loves me. This person is just this way with me. And because of that, they’re able to, they’re able to do what they need, what they want to do with the, with the victim.

[00:10:14] Sandie Morgan: okay. So what you’re describing feels natural

[00:10:20] for, for this child or this, young person and just. In the last week, we both live here in Orange County. A high school coach and a church staff member were arrested for child abuse.

[00:10:36] they were entrusted communities where giving a kiddo a hug or something is. It feels okay. Right.

[00:10:46] So talk to me about our fixation on Stranger Danger and not understanding how we protect our kids in, in our trusted communities.

[00:11:01] And

[00:11:01] I’m using air quotes.

[00:11:03] Beth Lorance: Yeah. Well, Perpetrators of abuse can be anywhere. they, they can be coaches, like you mentioned. They can be teachers, they can be, people in your church, your pastors, your lay leaders. they can be a close family friend. Really what we’re finding now, statistics show the CDC has come out with statistics.

[00:11:23] Say the 90% of abusers are known to their victims, and only 10% are actually strangers. and then when we look at trafficking specifically, the US State Department came out with a statistic that said 31% of tracker traffickers are actually family members of the victim. And when we, when we look at that, we’re looking at people that you are in your everyday life, that know your family, that know your parents, and we’re not warning our children how, or teaching our children how to stay safe from them.

[00:12:00] And we’re not. being vigilant when we look at interactions between these quote unquote trusted individuals versus strangers out there, and I like to say, you know, when I was a kid, we were taught stranger danger. In school you see a stranger and you run away, you yell, you do all these things. What I teach my kids is we need to be worried about tricky people.

[00:12:26] And tricky people are people that try to trick you into doing something that is wrong or that you don’t wanna do. And, it can look like a variety of things. It can look like saying, let’s keep this a secret from your mom. You know, we’re gonna have this special moment that we keep. A secret from her.

[00:12:45] Here’s, here’s a lot of gifts, giving gifts to the child or the young adult and saying, oh, but don’t tell anybody about that. I’m giving you this gift. They won’t understand or saying to a child, your, or a teenager, your mom doesn’t understand you. Your dad doesn’t understand you, but I understand you. So you can tell me your secrets and I will,Understand what you’re going through and be here for you. And when we’re more vigilant about adults in our children’s lives that are doing those kinds of things, we can begin to protect them from groomers and things like this.

[00:13:20] Sandie Morgan: So when I was teaching that class, you were

[00:13:25] my guest

[00:13:26] and, I remember talking to you about one of my students who wasn’t able to rejoin her family for Christmas because her abuser was a relative who would be at the holiday table. Talk about what happens when this strikes a family unit.

[00:13:53] Beth Lorance: Well, this really,

[00:13:54] Hits into my personal story and I come from a family that has a history of family violence. This is why I am passionate about this topic and I so enjoy teaching the class family violence that I teach. And I came from a family that, from the outside it looked very perfect.

[00:14:15] It looked like, you know, it’s the kind of family you wanna be a part of. We were large. We got along well from the outside. We were very close. We spent a lot of time together. I was raised in the church. My parents were missionaries. so my dad was a minister. All of my growing up years. My grandparents were very faithful church attenders.

[00:14:37] They were, they taught Sunday school, they were on the board. They did everything you can to volunteer at a church. But what nobody knew was that my family had a very dark secret, and that was that my grandfather was a child molester.

[00:14:55] And he, had been molesting children in our family, children outside of our family, people that saw him as a trusted adult, people that saw him as their church leader, as their educator.

[00:15:10] and, for many years, and this did not come out until I was an adult, until I was in college. And while I was never a direct victim of my. Grandfather. Many of the people in my family, many of my siblings and my cousins, and my aunts and uncles were victims of my grandfather. And so when we talk about how do you then live with an abuser, it becomes very difficult because especially when you’re disclosing for the first time and you’re having to work through all of your feelings about that.

[00:15:48] And when that. That abuser is protected by other family members and you’re not allowed to talk about it or you’re not believed, that this could be happening. And I was very lucky in my family. We were very lucky that the victims were believed from the beginning, and that when my grandfather was finally confronted, he confessed and he ended up going to prison.

[00:16:12] where he has since passed away in prison and that was, he passed away about 15 years ago. but my story is unusual in that most victims are not believed by their families. And so then to go and be a part of that family unit is a very difficult thing and it takes a lot of, um, strength of mind and of.

[00:16:32] Of will to say this isn’t right and I’m gonna stand up against what happened to me. And so there’s really no good answer except for having somebody that can walk alongside the victim and say, until you have the strength to stand up for yourself, I will stand up for you. And I will be your voice and I will listen to the ways in which your family hurt you.

[00:16:56] And I believe you. And if you need a new family, we will, we will be family so that you don’t have to subject yourself to that. And, it’s a long process to get to a point where, they feel that they can stand up for themselves, then

[00:17:14] Sandie Morgan: So breaking that silence

[00:17:17] and then being believed, and particularly thinking through how a community can be more trauma informed,

[00:17:27] that’s going to support the, the healing process.

[00:17:31] So.

[00:17:32] Beth Lorance: Yes.

[00:17:33] Sandie Morgan: does trauma informed look like? Okay, so your family situation

[00:17:38] was in the church and Oh my gosh. In the church there is so much shame.

[00:17:43] some families just quit going to church. What you say to church leaders to make sure their team is trauma informed.

[00:17:57] Beth Lorance: we need to stop asking the question. What’s wrong with you? You know, I think that’s so much what people do is they’re saying, what’s, what’s wrong? why are you acting this way? Why are you, why is that happening to you? And just listening and listening and being supportive and being nonjudgmental.

[00:18:19] And so for me, it’s, when I talk, speak to church leaders, I talk about how, Jesus calls us to. Get down in the broken places with broken people and listen to them. and not to try to change them, not to be judgemental, not to try to tell them how they’re supposed to be responding, but to just be with them.

[00:18:43] and that’s, that’s really what I encourage is in part of being trauma informed, is just listening and, sitting with people. And not judging them for their, for what they do and what they say.

[00:18:57] Sandie Morgan: And. For me personally, in my experience, that not judging piece is the hardest thing for those who want to come alongside. They want to see progress and they might say things like, well, I’ve been praying for you, so you should

[00:19:16] feel better. You should be coming to, this extra opportunity for. A Bible study or a women’s group, or a youth group, how do we in a trauma informed perspective, adjust people’s expectations of the healing process?

[00:19:37] Beth Lorance: Yeah. Part of it is realizing that sometimes it’s really hard to share your story, and it’s really hard to be seen by people to truly be seen. And if we require a person to, if we require an understanding of somebody’s story to be able to love them, then we’re not really loving them. We’re. Doing exactly what the people that abuse them to do.

[00:20:03] We say our love is transactional. You have to tell me your story. You have to behave the way that I behave, that I want you to behave in order to receive the care and the love that, I wanna, I wanna give you. And, if people begin to realize that their actions are not that much different than that of the abuser, if we make.

[00:20:27] If we prescribe to a victim how they should act, then maybe they, we would start to see a change and maybe we would start to see people be less judgmental. But just to reframe, when I say to somebody, I’m praying for you, why aren’t you getting better? Or, why aren’t you coming to church? Or, why don’t I see you at Bible study?

[00:20:48] What I’m saying is, I’m only praying for you so that I’ll see a change in your life. And if I don’t see what I deem quote unquote as change, then maybe I’m not gonna pray for you anymore, or maybe I’m not gonna support you anymore, or maybe I’m not gonna listen And that does a disservice.

[00:21:06] And that’s not what we’re called to do. We’re called to listen to people and sit with people in, in spite of how they act, even because of how they act. And maybe the fact that they can’t come to the. Bible study or they can’t come to the prayer meeting, that’s really a sign of them saying, this is where I’m hurting.

[00:21:25] That’s a symptom of their healing process and we need to respect that.

[00:21:32] Sandie Morgan: Wow.

[00:21:32] Beth Lorance: it is hard. It’s hard to be non-judgmental. I have to say to myself all the time, we listen and we don’t judge, and I mean it’s hard, but that’s what, that’s what we’re called to do.

[00:21:44] Sandie Morgan: wow. I’m gonna write that one down because Yeah, that’s good. Okay, so we understand. The process for trauma informed and we’ll put links to some previous episodes where we’ve spent some time drilling down on trauma informed. But I wanna go

[00:22:03] back to grooming because I’d like to make sure that those of us who are in communities where. It’s a community of trust, a school, a faith organization. How can we protect and recognize grooming behaviors early before they can be, weaponized?

[00:22:28] Beth Lorance: This is really important and really, it’s about training. leaders, staff members, pastors, volunteers, teachers, what the signs of grooming are, And so that they know when they see it, they can recognize it and they can respond to it. I was watching a video just this week of a woman telling a story about how her daughter came home with a really expensive gift from her coach, and the woman was like, I don’t know what to do about this.

[00:23:01] I.it was a really expensive gift. I don’t think my daughter should accept it, but what should I do? And then the next day she had posted another video saying My daughter came home with another really expensive gift. And this gift I had actually told my daughter I wasn’t going to buy for her. And the woman was like, I don’t know what’s going on.

[00:23:23] And that is a basic sign of grooming. The fact that this coach is giving expensive gifts to one girl on the team and their, their gifts that the mother would not buy for the girl on her own. And if people don’t realize that, that’s a sign of grooming, they don’t know what’s going on and they. They think it’s innocent.

[00:23:45] They think it’s no big deal, and they just allow it to happen. So we need to train clearly our, and equip our educators, our pastors, our volunteers, parents with what it looks like, what grooming looks like, and then once they see grooming and do they respond to it? What do they do?I think the second thing we need is clear boundaries.

[00:24:08] We need to create policies that limit the ability for an adult to groom a child. So this might mean that there’s no, your policy says there’s no one-on-one supervision between adults and children. And, youth pastors always get upset about that. ’cause they’re, they say things like, well, how can I. Mentor, this youth member, how can I help them know they’re cared about?

[00:24:36] And I always say, well do it with two. You know, like it, the more the merrier. You don’t need to individually mentor somebody for them to be changed by. A relationship with you. You can do that in a way that keeps the child safe and keeps you safe. And so you have to have clear boundaries, very specific boundaries, and people that, respond and follow policy correctly.

[00:25:07] And that when policy isn’t followed, that those people. Receive the consequence of that very swiftly. You have to be very clear on those things. and then the other thing I think is so important in preventing grooming is we have to empower our kids. We have to teach our kids about tricky people. We have to explain to them what unsafe behavior it looks like, and we have to give them the ability to say no even to trusted adults.

[00:25:39] You know, I, it’s so often you go and somebody wants to hug my daughter. I have a, a very cute daughter. She’s very lovable and people want to hug her all the time. And sometimes she doesn’t want to hug them, and I have to give her the right to say no to that. And that when the adult insists on the hug, I have to stand up for her and say, she said no, so you don’t need to hug her.

[00:26:08] and that’s something that’s important that we empower our kids to say no, and we respect it when they say no. So that they learn that their, that their boundaries matter and their words matter.

[00:26:21] Sandie Morgan: So if a child comes from a situation where there is family violence, so we know there’re going to be more vulnerable to grooming and

[00:26:32] to just plain inappropriate. Adult, uh, tension. how do we teach that child about tricky people? because in many situations we have as leaders deferred to, oh, it’s a parental. supervision issue, I’ll tell the parents, but, if the parents aren’t listening, if the parents have not been involved in this particular aspect, how does like a youth leader or a coach begin to integrate that kind of resilience in their. Their leadership with kids so that those kids know they can say no.

[00:27:23] Beth Lorance: I think it’s respecting the words a kid says. So when a kid speaks, it’s really listening to them and believing them and encouraging them to talk about how they feel about things. So I think that’s something a leader could do, a teacher could do. also I think it’s important to remember that grooming happens to, to the victims.

[00:27:46] Often parents are groomed also and somebody that wants to, hurt a child, victimize a child. They will often also groom the parents and they will ingratiate themselves with the parents and, Make it so that the parents have no qualms when the child wants to go off with that adult, have no concerns when the child is spending a lot of time with that adult.

[00:28:13] And so for me, I like to tell parents that you need to know what your child is doing with a

[00:28:21] adult, even if it’s an adult you trust, as much as possible. so I want parents to just be aware of the adults in their kids’ lives and know them, but know them, know what the interactions with that, that adult and their child are like also.

[00:28:40] And so that when their kid comes and says things about that adult, you understand what is going on in that relationship. I’m very careful that. In my own family life that I watch, the inner action that my child has with these adults so that my child doesn’t spend time alone with any adults that I haven’t watched how they interact with each other.

[00:29:02] for a significant amount of time with that adult until, so I can see how that adult responds to my children. And if I don’t like how they respond to my children, I don’t allow my child to be alone with that adult. and it might not just be a fear of them being groomed or sexually abused, but maybe I fear of them not being treated nicely or being talked down to because.

[00:29:23] or being made jokes about that kind of thing. I also am really big on if my, if a, if an adult wants to be friends with one of my child, they need to be friends with me first. And, don’t come into a space where I’m with one of my children and talk only to my children without talking to me.Oftentimes, especially, with younger children, you’ll have other adults that wanted to interact with them. And I’m like, that’s fine. As long as I know you and you’re friends with me, then you can talk with my child. But otherwise. You know, greet me first. Talk to me first. This is the relationship you should be worried about.

[00:30:05] Not a relationship with my five-year-old. So that’s another thing. I think we need to teach leaders that, they can help impact families. ’cause they can pass that information onto to parents as the, and they can pass that information on to kids and so that would be something else that I think would be important.

[00:30:23] Sandie Morgan: Wow. This gives us some deeper concerns about understanding grooming, and I encourage listeners to go back and review some of our past episodes as well. So, Dr. Beth Lorenz, what gives you hope for the next generation of leaders and. Advocates, to prevent family violence and possible grooming for human trafficking.

[00:30:57] Beth Lorance: Really, there’s two things that give me hope, and one of them is my students. And when I, we just started this semester and I’ve taught one class, and, I am so excited about the students that are in my class this semester. They’re engaged with the topic. They wanna learn, they wanna. Stand. They wanna say, you know, violence is not, should not be in our homes, violence should not be in our churches.

[00:31:23] It should not be in our schools. And they’re excited about u Learning to use their voice to stand up for those that don’t have a voice. And that’s often what violence does. Abuse does. Trauma does, is it stills a person’s voice. And, um, so that, that gives me hope that there’s young people that care about this, that wanna use their voice, that wanna learn how they can impact.

[00:31:52] The vulnerable, how they can sit with a broken, and that’s always exciting for me. I also get excited when churches, I work a lot with churches and training pastors and I get really excited when churches get it. They begin to understand what Jesus’ view on victimhood is. And they understand what they need to do to help a person find healing.

[00:32:19] And it’s always exciting to me when I talk to a church leader and they’re able to. Express something to me that I’ve always known, you know, or that’s part of what I teach, and they’re able to, and they agree, they agree with what the current research is saying, or they agree with how we need to be responding to victims, or they agree with, um,

[00:32:43] what it looks like to walk with a person that’s a victim.

[00:32:48] They agree with this idea that it’s our job to protect the vulnerable, and that always makes me excited and gives me hope for the future.

[00:32:58] Sandie Morgan: I love it. I love it. And what a great opportunity to take this podcast back to your community and find out if they agree and you can be a voice and make a difference in reducing vulnerability for kids that may be more

[00:33:21] susceptible to grooming. Thank you for listening.

[00:33:25] Thank you Dr. Beth for being with us today. It’s been

[00:33:30] Beth Lorance: it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.

[00:33:33] Thank you, Dr. Beth Laurenz for sharing your expertise and personal story with us today. Your insight about teaching children to watch for tricky people rather than just strangers, completely reframes how we protect kids in trusted environments. Your family

[00:33:52] Sandie Morgan: Listeners, if you loved this conversation, make sure you check out our website@endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources.

[00:34:05] If you’d love to help us grow the podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with someone and connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. And as always. Thanks for listening