Selling the Dream: Inside the Economics of Human Trafficking
In this bonus episode of Fracture to Flourish, host Bryce Butler shares an extended conversation with John Richmond, an attorney who has spent more than twenty-five years working at the intersection of prosecution, policy, and survivor care in the fight against human trafficking.
Every system tells a story about the people inside it, and some of those stories are harder to see from the outside. In Season Two, John's voice helped shape the larger conversation about what connects foster care instability to trafficking vulnerability: the isolation, the unmet need, the way certain systems create the exact conditions that exploitation requires. But there was more to that conversation than what made it into the season.
In this bonus episode, John reflects more fully on how he came to understand trafficking not as an inevitable byproduct of poverty, but as a choice, one that can be interrupted. He walks through what the grooming process actually looks like, why victims sometimes defend their traffickers, and what twenty-five years of this work has taught him about where real change comes from. His answer to that last question isn't about policy. It's about survivors.
It's a conversation about the economics of a system built on exploitation, and about what becomes possible when people decide to stop treating harm as something that just happens.
Content advisory: This episode includes frank discussion of abuse and exploitation involving children and families. Please take care as you listen.
Resources
National Human Trafficking Hotline (US): Call 1‑888‑373‑7888 or text BEFREE (233733)
RAINN (sexual assault support):rainn.org
National Runaway Safeline: 1‑800‑RUNAWAY (786‑2929) or 1800runaway.org
NAMI (mental health support):nami.org