Human Powered
Season 1, Episode 3 Transcript
Jimmy
Hey everyone. A head’s up that today’s episode contains some difficult topics. We’re going to be talking about sexual assault and human trafficking. So please take care of you while listening...and if that means this episode isn’t for you, we’ll see you next month.
Rachel
I just…one day I was finished with a bike ride. And it was a beautiful day in June. And I thought you know those triathlete people, they'll get off the bike and throw their running shoes on and run. And so I did. And I didn't feel horrible. For the first time in my life. It felt good.
Jade
Hey, Jimmy!
Jimmy
Hey Jade!
Jade
So, how are you doing today?
Jimmy
I’m pretty well, you know I feel like things are warming up, happy to get outside, talking with one of my favorite people—how are you doing?
Jade
I’m doing really well. I’m also really excited to get into this episode with you today.
Rachel
I always tell people my nemesis is a 5k. The suffering is not less, even though the distance is a lot shorter than a hundred miler, the suffering is not less…
Jade
So, do you remember when I was telling you about Rachel Monaco-Wilcox?
Jimmy
I do, I do, yeah, you actually set up an interview between me and her.
Jimmy
I’m not a runner, we had talked about that—like I do short distances, but I want to do distance...
Jade
Yeah, I’m so glad that you guys met! As we’ve been working on this story, I’ve been really inspired by her. She has this infectious passion towards art, and life, relationships, and extreme running. She’s amazing!
Jimmy
She is amazing. So, in this interview, I spent maybe an hour and half by her… we were socially distanced.... And just sitting on this picnic table in front of her house, but she was just such a force of nature.
Jimmy
The future is bright for me!
Rachel
...it is bright for you. And if you can run five miles and like it comfortably and your body is liking it, there's no reason whatsoever that you can't do whatever you want.
Jimmy
100 miles?
Rachel
Of course, you can do 100 miles because it's slower. You don't, you don't speed, there's a lot of walking.
Jimmy
Okay okay okay, I appreciate that...
Jade
I love hearing this interaction between the two of you because she really does make you feel like you can do anything.
Jimmy
I mean, I walked away thinking I could legit run 100 miles. One day, maybe not now, but one day.
Jade
Jimmy, I think you could run 100 miles.
Jimmy
You think so?
Jade
Yeah, I mean, with the right shoes.
Jimmy
I could walk 100 miles with the right shoes.
Jade
For sure.
Jade
But it’s not just running 100 miles at a time. Rachel also really shows up for other people…in their hardest and most hopeless moments.
Rachel
For me it's really nurturing to be able to, to help forge a path for somebody who's coming up because I have walked this walk. It's my destiny to blaze trail. There's a reason I'm a trail runner. You know, it's my, it's my destiny to break a path. And then I feel strongly whenever I just sit down with somebody start talking and I say, "Oh, I know where you are. I've been there. Try and look at it this way. This is what happened for me. And maybe that will help you.
Jimmy
When she’s sitting down with people and having these conversations, like, who is she talking to, you know? Like, what is the work that she does?
Jade
So, Rachel is the founder of a legal clinic in Wisconsin; it’s called LOTUS. And they work with survivors of trafficking and sexual assault.
So her team provides, like, incredible legal support for these clients, but they also focus on investing in survivors and really helping them share their voice—if they choose to.
Jimmy
I’m Jimmy Gutierrez. Host of Human Powered, a podcast from Wisconsin Humanities and Love Wisconsin about how people make places better.
Now I’m from Milwaukee, so driving 30 minutes to Rachel’s home...for a city kid was kinda surreal. And that’s because Rachel lives in an old farmhouse. And there’s a restored tractor in her yard. She’s got heirloom fruit and maple trees. And I can confirm, yes, that they produce delicious maple syrup.
Now, Rachel has been doing this kind of work—working with survivors of trafficking and sexal assault—for around the past 10 years. And for the last seven years that work has come with LOTUS, the legal clinic that she founded.
Today, producer Jade Iseri-Ramos, a name you've heard every month in our credits, is going to be telling this story. The story of Rachel, the work that she’s started and the people who have found healing in community. And we're starting today with Jade in Milwaukee.
Jade
Before LOTUS, Rachel taught at Mount Mary University. It’s a women’s college in Milwaukee and she was hired to run a new major there: the Justice Program. Basically, it’s a pre-law major that covers what justice actually means and looks like. But as a professor, Rachel found herself teaching on issues that she saw her own students dealing with.
Rachel
Some of my students were trafficked. Some of my students had family members that were being trafficked.
And so many times we’d talk about rape in the classroom, we'd watch a piece of news piece or documentary, and you'd have a third of the class disclosing.
Jade
These students were so deeply invested in seeing change in the justice system, but there weren't exactly textbooks for this sort of thing. To help her students become survivor advocates, Rachel her students to hear and learn from other people with lived experience.
Rachel
We don't just passively talk about these issues, we go and seek out the words, the wisdom, the insights of survivors. And that's what drives making good law. And I wanted my students to be raised in an environment where they understood the whole cycle of how to get it right.
Jade
While Rachel’s classes tended to focus on the aftermath of gender-based violence, they were also unpacking a larger system of human trafficking. And it’s important to understand that not all trafficking is about sex.
Rachel
it's all about compelled service: cleaning hotel rooms; in the construction industry somebody can be trafficked; providing services in a restaurant, somebody can be trafficked; being filmed with a webcam, and having money made by somebody through putting sexual videos up online. All of those things fall into this this giant universe of human trafficking.
Jade
While trafficking was impacting so many of Rachel’s students in Milwaukee, it was, and is, happening all over the state.
Rachel
It is everywhere. We're seeing in the schools, you know we're seeing it in the hotels, we're seeing it in restaurants. We're seeing it in the tracks, right that what people maybe 20-30 years ago would have said, you know, the red light district, right? Those are still alive and well…I think for people in Wisconsin to understand there is no city that is free from this. Because when you exploit vulnerable people, we have vulnerable people everywhere.
Jade
One day Rachel is teaching at Mount Mary’s. And she gets a phone call from Detective Dawn Jones. At the time, she was the only officer covering trafficking cases in Milwaukee.
Rachel
And she said, "Rachel, I know that you're a lawyer. And I know you understand something about human trafficking."
Jade
The Detective told Rachel that she had six women who just testified -- in federal court -- against their perpetrator. And while that case was wrapping up, the women were headed back to court facing charges themselves...
Rachel
… one's facing charges for a traumatic breakdown. She lit the apartment on fire, where she was being kept. Another is in paternity court, fighting for her child You know, another has $20,000 in tickets for municipal fines for solicitation and pandering. Can you help them? we--any ideas?" And I said, "huh, let me see what I can do."
Jade
Rachel called a bunch of lawyers that she knew and found people to take these cases. But she realized that this was just the tip of the iceberg.
Rachel
Immediately I knew where there's six, there's 600, there's more.
Jade
Not long after, Rachel went to lunch with the college president, Eileen Schwalbach. She asked Rachel, If you had a magic wand, what would you do?
Rachel
And I said, "we need a legal clinic for survivors of trafficking and maybe even of survivors of crime."
Jade
That day, a seed was planted. From it, grew LOTUS.
It started off as a pretty straightforward legal clinic, and Rachel was doing *it all*: connecting with survivors, finding lawyers, chasing down grants. It blew up quickly.
Rachel
The demand for our services is tragic, heartbreaking, constant, and growing.
Jade
Rachel buried herself in that hard work--putting in 70 hour weeks AND still teaching!
She was now surrounded by survivors and their stories every day. All of this work she was putting in didn’t just help others. It also gave her a way to integrate her own healing with the work.
Rachel
Lotus is the answer to an unmet desire in my heart for how I could have been helped.
I truly struggled with deep depression, with anxiety, with suicidal behavior throughout my teenage years. And a lot of that was just the result of early childhood trauma. I was sexually assaulted when I was seven. But no one really knew the real story because you only start to manifest what's wrong with you, and then people start attacking your symptoms. They say, "Oh, this child is, is anxious, this child is depressed. Let's go for medication, or let's be in psychotherapy." But nobody ever really asked me, "what happened to you?"
Jade
Rachel would escape to a place that was close to her. A place she was familiar with and felt safe in…
Rachel
I would just go roam the woods, you know, as like a seven or six year old I would be out in the woods with my imagination. I loveed to read. I would sing. I would write poetry. I loved to make art, and I loved animals.
So my art and my poetry and my nature was my way of healing myself or trying to, but there's some wounds that just keep weeping and they won't go away.
Jade
Back at LOTUS, Rachel started making space to heal, through art -- to have conversations. To tell the untold stories. And that became the name of a new project at LOTUS--Untold Stories. It’s a writing and art-making workshop for survivors.
On the first day, it’s just an opportunity for people to come together and share space.
Rachel
When you bring those 15 people together in that room, and within an hour, everyone is crying and laughing and loving on each other because you don't have to explain. There is a bond. It's undeniable.
Traci
There was something about being in that room with those people who understood. And we all had different stories, but we all had this common thing. And I didn't feel as alone as I had.
Jade
This is Traci Powell. She lives in Orlando. And she was in the middle of her own healing process when she heard about Untold Stories.
Traci
Just having the courage to apply was difficult, because I had this part of me that was like, "you have to do this because you've got to find a way to use your voice." And part of me that was saying, "nope, you have no right to do this." But I went ahead and I went and I met Rachel and my life changed forever.
Jade
Before Untold Stories, Traci was a nurse working with newborns. She was also raising two kids on her own, and from the outside, people thought she was doing great. They said she was a hero. But inside, she had never processed the trauma she experienced as a kid. She had never even told anyone about it.
Traci
As much as I remember the abuse, I also remember this day when I was seven years old, and I was sitting on my bed and I was thinking to myself, someday I'm going to grow up and make people feel better, who get hurt, like I do. And, you know, for a long time, I thought that meant being a nurse. But it never really sat right with me. I love being a nurse, I work in the NICU, I take care of really sick babies. I'm blessed to be able to do this work, but it never satisfied my soul.
Jade
Traci felt like she was fooling everyone around her and eventually it was too much. She started having massive panic attacks. And suicidal thoughts.
So, after over 40 years, she started telling people -- her family, friends and close co-workers about the abuse she experienced. And when she did, they started opening up, too.
Traci
When the conversation ended I went to my office, and one of the nurses knocked on my door, and it was our charge nurse, And she walked through my door, and she fell to the floor and was just sobbing, and proceeded to tell me that she had planned to take her own life two nights later, because she was experiencing the same thing I had experienced several years earlier. And she didn’t feel like she could reach out for help.
Jade
After that conversation, Traci realized that this was her calling—sharing her story and being there for other survivors.
So that week, she applied for Untold Stories.
For the last two years, the Untold Stories workshops have been led by Austin Reece. He--like Rachel--used to teach at Mount Mary’s, but that’s not where they met. They met at Untold Stories when Austin was a participant.
Austin
Sitting in that room and that kind of a circle with people who've been through similar experiences and hearing them speak candidly, clearly, with empathy, and with incredible creativity and imagination, it was very inspiring.
Jade
People come to Untold Stories to work through traumatic events. Some of them happened when they were young, and others were more recent. But no matter where you are coming from, trauma makes time stop.
Austin
You would think, you know, you're living your life and you're moving forward, but a photograph, a smell, a word can be said and you snap right back to the moment of trauma, like no time has passed, which is, you know, it's a whiplash. It's a painful, painful thing to experience.
And so when we think about trauma, we think about, well, if this is overwhelming, if it's too much to talk about, we've got to start with that fact.
Jade
The fact that it might be too hard to even speak, but people still need to find a way to jumpstart time. For Austin, one of the best ways to do that is through poetry.
Austin
You have these negative feelings, these, these very hard, painful emotions and memories, but you take them and you, you transform them into a positive, into a small creation, if you will, a poem.
Jade
So the group reads poems. They talk about poems. And then they write and share their own poems. Slowly, everyone finds their voice.
Austin
there's something implicit about poetry, where it has an audience: it's meant to be spoken. It's meant to be heard. It's meant to move somebody. In what I would call a brief, intense agreement of feeling, and these moments are rare in life. But I think what the gift of a poem is that when you put it out there to be heard. There is this sense of genuine connection and empathy.
But this is what this program is about. It's not only about processing trauma, but it's about coming out and thriving on the other side. It's about being able to have certain words and certain skills and certain memories, experiences that you can carry with you.
Traci
It was freeing. Because for the first time in my life, I felt understood. And I didn't feel like I was hiding who I was anymore. And it just, it gave me the permission to be able to start to move forward and try to heal.
Rachel
The writing workshop brings out different things in people. Where I see it at the end of the day, is that it gives people a powerful tool for finding their own voice to identify themselves and get their feet firmly planted in the honesty of who they are. Know your truth, know your truth. And then if they choose, speak your truth.
Jade
Some participants are already doing that work before they come to the workshop. Lisa McCormick is one of them.
Lisa
I had vowed at my son's grave that I was never gonna let another family go through what we went through. And so I chose to publicly share that. And Rachel helped me navigate that world. And that's how she introduced me to Untold Stories and this entire world of public speaking.
Jade
Lisa lives in Tomah, Wisconsin. It’s a small city in Monroe County. Lisa’s got natural warmth and her home in Tomah reflects that. Her walls are filled with family photos and when we met, she was wearing a t-shirt that says “Mom.” It has the names of her three kids on it.
Lisa loves being a mom.
Lisa
I always say I'm just a mom. That's who I am. I'm a mom.
Jade
But Lisa is also a parent advocate, public speaker, and fierce protector of her son Jeffrey’s legacy.
Lisa
Jeffrey was an extremely creative young man. He loved music, he loved art, he loved writing. He loved to do photography. His favorite was to take pictures of the sunrises and sunsets. He loves shadows. So like, the light between the trees coming through the trees. He was an aspiring artist, I guess I could say.
Jade
Jeffery, the creative, aspiring writer, passionate skateboarder, died in 2016 while he was being trafficked. Lisa has since been working as an advocate and an educator to keep that promise she made at Jeffrey's funeral.
The first step is reminding people that can happen to anyone. Anywhere.
Lisa
Every single county in the state of Wisconsin has a trafficking case, And that's enormous to think that that's happening right here in our back door. The people who are being trafficked, you know, they're such...everyone thinks it's just girls. And it's not. It's also a grossly underreported industry...many people do not come forward and say they are being trafficked, especially the boys. I’m trying to think of some of the other myths that are out there…
The average age nationally is 11 to 14 years old. I think Wisconsin right now is age 12. The youngest in the state of Wisconsin, I believe, is 18 months, and the oldest is age 64.
Jade
When Lisa went to Untold Stories, she wasn’t sure what to expect. But like Traci, she was drawn to community. She worked on her writing, and really processed her grief.
Then, in 2020, Lisa participated in a follow-up project called Rise and Thrive. Basically, folks who have already done Untold Stories partner with an artist and turn their writing into art. It starts with thinking about an image. And Lisa had one in mind. It was a memory from a family trip to Mexico before Jeffrey died.
Lisa
We got up really early one morning and we went and we took these photos of the sun rising. And it literally was one of those things, like, each picture you took got better than the next one because it was so beautiful.
Jade
At Rise and Thrive, she explained the colors and gradient to the group.
Lisa
And so I talked about the ocean, how it was the deepest, darkest navy blue way outside to the beautiful turquoise as it comes in, to where it's so clear, you can see the sand below, you know, below, and I was just describing the picture. And someone says, you just described the healing process. And I was like, what…
I've goosebumps talking about it still, you know, the dark navy blues are the are the depression and the hurt and the feelings. And the blues are as your healing and it's getting, it's getting clear because you are healed and you are better and life is good again.
Jade
Lisa worked with a local artist to create a painting of a sunrise. It’s really beautiful. The painting is also a reminder of the hard but important moments Lisa and Jeffrey shared.
Lisa
To me a sunrise is a new day, a new beginning. And my son and I always had the… whenever he'd run away, when he'd come back home, I would let him tell me everything that just happened on that run away. And sometime it was jaw dropping, pretty difficult stuff. But he would tell me everything that happened, and then we would never address it again, he would tell me one time, and then we move forward. Because, we didn't need to dwell on what happened in the past, we are working on trying to get him better for the future. And so to me, that's what a sunrise is.
Jade
The Untold Stories workshops only last a few days. But the project is year round. The art work is presented in an exhibit. Participants publish their work in a magazine and read their work publicly. And in past years--non-COVID years--they’ve brought the art to the state capitol. Because getting these stories in front of lawmakers, that’s where policy changes can happen.
Rachel
People find there is justice in being authentically seen and heard, and feeling like something that they've said it might be actually changing somebody's hearts and minds, whether that's a legislator, or whether it's a parent of a 13-year-old that you just talked to you and you spoke about your episode of human trafficking.
It matters. And I think when we do it the way we do it at Untold Stories, it breaks down the barriers toward people's resistance to change.
Jade
That work is happening for the people who connect with LOTUS. Lisa and Traci found their voices and entirely new careers. They’re out in the world sharing their stories and working for change.
At the end of the workshop, Traci quit her job to speak her truth.
She’s now a writer and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner offering counseling to other survivors. And she wants to start Untold Stories back home in Orlando.
Traci
When someone shares their story, it gives another survivor permission to speak. And really, in the end, that was what got me talking. And I've seen over the years, how me sharing my story... It's just amazing. I don't think there's a day that goes by and I'm not exaggerating when I say this, that if I mentioned my story, another woman will tell me for the first time, what happened to them.
Jade
Austin is developing the next round of Untold Stories. I asked him what he would tell people listening—right now—if they had an untold story?
Austin
I would say, I believe you. Um, and I would say if you are ready to be heard, I'm here to listen. And there's a, there's a great community of people here who are all so talented and so caring that. It would be my honor and my privilege to, to bring you into this community, to this relationship.
Jade
And Lisa is now working to change actual law enforcement policies in Monroe County.
Lisa
instead of police arresting those with substance use disorders, we're going to try to walk with them through recovery, and get them into recovery. So that's kind of a big, it's exciting, because it's nothing in our state like this.
Jade
She’s fulfilling that promise she made, that no one else should have to go through this.
Lisa
I want Jeffrey's name and legacy to be this work. I want him to be remembered as this legacy that we're going to be able to go out and tell others and share his story so that this doesn't happen to someone else.
Jade
Hey Jimmy! Welcome back to this episode!
Jimmy
Thank you.
Jade
What do you think about all this work being done inside and now outside of Wisconsin?
Jimmy
I mean, it’s just wild to think about how much of it came from Rachel and her experiences and her filling a gap that she saw, and the ripple effects that it’s had, and hearing people’s stories. And not just the ripple effects, but how deep it all the work goes.
I think a question that people will have is, what’s going on with Rachel now?
Jade
That is a great question. Well, about a year ago, Rachel left LOTUS. But, you met her after she left LOTUS, and you guys talked. What did she tell you?
Jimmy
We did, yeah, when we talked, it was post LOTUS. And we spent a lot of time talking about that decision.
Rachel
What stands out to me now, in hindsight, is there were parts of my spirit that definitely were sending me all the signals of, look: your creation has thrived. It has grown. It is amazing. Look at what's happening, but then because of the growth of the organization, I had turned into a bean counter and a manager. You know, all those years that I was writing grants and doing staff meetings and writing spreadsheets and, um, the part of me that is very much me that needs to create things…just make beauty. Right. I resonate with beauty. I have to be surrounded by it. I have to see it in other people. My house is full of orchids and flowers and just, I like to nurture beauty and I'm not ashamed to say that trafficking and sexual assault is ugly, but people who come through it are beautiful.
So part of my theme has just been thinking about ways that we tangibly create more beauty in our dark world.
Jade
Man, these people really are beautiful...and I am so thankful to Rachel for connecting us. And I am so thankful to them for sharing their stories. For opening up and creating this space for us to share with our listeners.
Jimmy
Absolutely! I was kind of taken aback, by being invited into those conversations, just how open people were and wanted to share with us. It really transformed our whole team. I asked Rachel a bit about how she’s approaching LOTUS, and she was just incredibly proud of the team that she has built, she has so much love for the people that she has in place that are going to guide the work forward. But she is also still connected with the people that he heard in this episode, the people that she’s helped, the people she’s inspired, the people who are now sharing their stories because of what she did and the model that she set. And I really think that that’s her legacy.
Rachel
You know, these people gave me their trust, their entire, Oh wow, their unimpeded trust and their stories of deep pain and suffering. But they also gave me their joy. You know, to your point about Lisa and Traci and Austin, all of these people, the connection remains and it's so deep. What stands out to me is just the gift of deeply seeing the individuality of every person.
True freedom and survival and thriving from experiences of exploitation means that you are just free to shine your light, whatever that looks like…yeah…
Credits
Wisconsin Humanities and Love Wisconsin have teamed up to make six monthly podcasts of Human Powered because we believe that sharing stories about people making their communities better helps us all imagine what is possible.
If you like what you heard today, please subscribe wherever you listen. And be sure to leave us a rating and a review, which will help more people hear all about Rachel’s story and LOTUS legal clinic.
Resources for survivors at our website and in our show notes.
Human Powered was produced by Craig Eley at Field Noise Soundworks, along with Jade Iseri-Ramos and Jessica Becker. Story editing by Jen Rubin.
Dena Wortzel and Brijetta Waller are Executive Producers. The show is mixed by Rob Byers, Johnny Vince Evans, and Michael Raphael of Final Final Vee Two. I’m your host, Jimmy Gutierrez.
Special thanks to Audrey Martinovich at Audio for the Arts and Ian Olvera at Wire & Vice Studios.
Music in our episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions and the band Kinfolk, who you can find on Facebook.
Visit Wisconsin Humanities at wisconsinhumanities.org and Love Wisconsin at lovewi.com for more information about this episode and our work.
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