This week we’re going to continue our conversation with Lisa Hansen we started this last Sunday. She is the founder and CEO of the Tucson nonprofit Power Over Predators. Lisa is a subject matter expert with over 20 years experience as a professional speaker, trainer and author, as well as a youth care provider. Her organization focuses on a hidden pandemic which she says is destroying our youth.

Today is June 11th, my name is Tom Heath and you’re listening to “Life Along the Streetcar”.

Each and every Sunday our focus is on Social, Cultural and Economic impacts in Tucson’s Urban Core and we shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about. From A Mountain to the U of A and all stops in between. You get the inside track- right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on DowntownRadio.org- we’re also available on your iPhone or Android using our very own Downtown Radio app. Reach us by email contact@lifealongthestreetcar.org — interact with us on Facebook at LifeAlongTheStreetcar and follow us on Twitter @StreetcarLife

Transcript (Unedited)

Tom Heath

Good morning. It’s a beautiful Sunday in the old weblo and you’re listening to KT DT Tucson. Thank you for spending a part of your brunch hour with us on your Downtown Tucson community sponsored, all volunteer powered rock and roll radio station.

Tom Heath

This week we’re going to continue our conversation with Lisa Hansen we started this last Sunday. She is the founder and CEO of the Tucson nonprofit Power Over Predators. Lisa is a subject matter expert with over 20 years experience as a professional speaker, trainer and author, as well as a youth care provider. Her organization focuses on a hidden pandemic which she says is destroying our youth.

Tom Heath

Today is June 11, 2023. My name is Tom Heath and you are listening to life along the streetcar. Each and every Sunday, our focus on social, cultural and economic impacts in Tucson’s urban core. We shed light on hidden gems everyone should know about, from a mountain to the University of Arizona and all stops in between. You get the inside track right here on 99.1 FM, streaming on Downtownradio.org, also available on your iPhone or Android with our Downtown Radio Tucson app for

Tom Heath

the show, you can interact with us on Facebook and Instagram. We’re over there’s life along the streetcar. And then if you want more information on what we do, our book, past episodes, or just simply to contact us, head over to our website, lifealongthstreetcar.org. And we always invite you to listen to the podcasts on a lot of the platforms out there that you’re used to hearing Spotify, itunes. And sometimes you can just say, hey, smart speaker, play Life Along the street podcast. And that won’t bring anything up because you have to say, play Life Along the Streetcar podcast and that’ll bring things up. Well, it’s been a very emotional week in Downtown. If you’ve been part of the Downtown family or do a lot of work in the downtown area, you’ve known the name of a man named Donovan Durbin. He’s been an activist in Downtown for decades. He’s worked as an aide for council member Kazachek. He is currently an administrator at Park Tucson. And in between that, he was instrumental in the creation

Tom Heath

of the Downtown Alliance, which has morphed into the Downtown Tucson Partnership. He was a co founder on that first push to get second Saturdays back up and running in the area, bringing music, art, culture back into the urban core at a time when it was desperately, desperately needed. And he remained active in that role

Tom Heath

for some time. The loss of Donovan was unexpected and it sent shockwaves, really through the community. We’re going to do a little bit more of a feature next week and share an interview that we had the pleasure of recording with him a while ago about one of his passion projects with making efforts to help the homeless in downtown. But today we wanted to finish up our conversation with Lisa Hansen. This is a more serious topic that a lot of times we cover light hearted feel good stories. And although this is a feel good story because Lisa Hansen and her team are making really positive impact in Tucson and with the youth in the urban core as well, it is a heavier subject. If you listened last week, we did the introduction and talked about her organization, Power Over Predators and learned quite a bit about the challenges in the community about child and sex trafficking and how it’s happening and how it’s happening in ways that are hard to

Tom Heath

measure, to identify. And that’s what their group does, is they go out and they help prevent and identify situations that will keep the young people safe by helping them be more aware, as well as helping law enforcement in the community recognize it so that they can address it

Tom Heath

in a concerted effort to stop this. The conversation does contain some disturbing imagery, so it’s not something just be careful of. If it’s a family around the radio, there’s definitely some adult themes in here, so just be cautious of that. If you want to hear the initial episode of the introduction, then you can head over to our webpage Lifelongthstreetcar.org and just put in Power Over Predators in the search bar. Lisa Hansen and it’ll pull up the show. It should actually be the first one on there because it was last week, the first part of today’s show. If you were listening last week, the first couple of minutes of the interview are the same introductory comments that I made, the same introductory conversation I had with Lisa on last week’s show. I wanted to give that sort of foundation and context because we jump into kind of a more in depth conversation. So the introduction will sound like last week. And after about a minute and a half, two minutes, it will get into the second part of our conversation with Lisa Hansen.

Tom Heath

We are joined by Lisa Hansen, the CEO and founder of the program Power Over Predators, something that has been ongoing for some time. Lisa, welcome to the show here.

Lisa Hansen

Thanks for having me.

Tom Heath

So I was introduced to your program by another guest of ours, Enrique Al.

Tom Heath

Donna, who was telling me that I had to talk to you, and I said, okay. And then you and I spoke a little bit a few weeks ago to.

Tom Heath

Get a little backstory on the program.

Tom Heath

And I was like, oh my gosh, how does something like this happen in Tucson? And not everyone be talking about it.

Tom Heath

So I appreciate you taking some time to share what you’re doing.

Lisa Hansen

Yeah, well, I appreciate the opportunity for conversation because you’re right, it’s a conversation that a lot of people kind of shy away from, just really don’t want to talk about, don’t want to believe that it’s something that’s happening.

Lisa Hansen

But our kids matter. That’s my whole goal is just protecting kids.

Tom Heath

Well, the organization is called Power over predators. And can you give us kind of an overview of what you do? I know we don’t have a lot of time so it’s not super in depth, but really kind of give us the idea of what you’re doing. And then I’d like to know a little bit about more how you got involved and the ways people can get involved to help.

Lisa Hansen

Sure. So right off the bat, what we do is we provide prevention education. I believe that prevention is well, it’s actually the first P when it comes to on a national level, how do we approach the issue of reducing child exploitation, specifically child sex trafficking. And they bring up four PS and it starts with prevention and then it goes to protection and prosecution and then partnership. The interesting thing is, across the country, prevention is what is lacking. And so I’ve been doing prevention education for about 25 years now and it’s just such a powerful tool because it’s a discussion, it’s a conversation, it’s helping kids define things so that they can be aware or realize that maybe they’re in a sticky situation that they don’t.

Speaker 5

Know how to get out of.

Tom Heath

And then this information is it done.

Tom Heath

Through presentations in schools.

Tom Heath

Do you do outreach events? I noticed on your website you’ve got videos and podcasts and all kinds of ways to get information out, but for the youth themselves, where’s your most impact?

Lisa Hansen

I have literally done a complete shift. COVID really kind of made me rethink how we approach this because we were seeing a lot of success in the schools. We were presenting in the schools to about 10,000 kids a year just here in Pima County. Our program is national, it’s being used. Those prevention training videos that you were mentioning are being used all over the country and we’ve made it a very easy, accessible resource to where anybody can go there. It’s free. They can choose a topic that they want to discuss with students. There’s downloadable materials that teachers can use. But we also really want parents to be aware and parents to have this education so that they can watch these videos and they can share this information and watch these videos with their kids. Because I believe that still the number one prevention tool in a child’s life is their parent. Research is still showing that kids want to be able to have these relationships with their parents. They believe that their parent

Lisa Hansen

is their best source of protection. And so I think parents just feel pretty ill equipped. And so one of the things that I just started, and we’re going to do a big launch in July, is my volunteer program called Mothers Against Child Exploitation. To where these are our volunteer moms that are they’re the ones going into the schools presenting the content where their kids are at, so where their kids friends are at. And it’s having a huge impact because it’s much easier on the schools to have parents that are in their communities be the ones presenting this material as opposed to volunteers from an organization that they don’t know about. Even though our program has been placed on Pima County Superintendent of Schools Healthy and Safe Schools initiative as the preferred provider of this content, it’s still a topic that people shy away from. So that’s why if we’ve got parents and people that are aware and care enough to go spend time with kids and have this conversation first at home, bringing

Lisa Hansen

it to the schools, it’s just so important that we do so. It impacts everything. A child who’s being abused without a voice and without help, it affects their mental health, it affects their education, it affects everything. And so I just think if we kind of peel back all the layers and just start with that awareness piece and giving kids the education that they need, I think I know we will personally see a huge shift in this because the reason that the kids are being abused at such a young age is because they don’t have a voice. They are more vulnerable. And so that’s why I believe parents have the greatest impact in just being aware and educating their kids, teaching them how to protect themselves and how to protect others.

Tom Heath

And then are you working with organizations like Youth On Their Own and others that are working with a similar population?

Lisa Hansen

Yes, we partner well, like I said, all of our videos and resources are free to anybody who wants to use it. So people can go to the website and download whatever they want, use whatever they want. But we have made it available to Youth on Their Own, we’ve made it available to the Boys and Girls Clubs. We’ve made it available to anybody that works with kids, specifically group homes and foster care. Foster care kids and group home kids are just at some of the greatest risk for being trafficked. And it’s a whole long story. It goes way into the mind of a predator and how they’re actually using the group homes as a place to maintain relationships because at the group home, they don’t have to pay for the meals, they don’t have to close them, but they have relationships with them. And typically it’s all through social media and online. So it’s a vicious cycle.

Tom Heath

That is Lisa Hansen. She is the founder and CEO of Tucson nonprofit Power Over Predators. That was a third segment of a four segment interview we did. It started last Sunday and we’re going to wrap it up here in just a moment with the fourth segment coming up just after the break. But I want to remind you that you’re listening to Life Along the Streetcar on downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming on downtownradio.org.

Speaker 6

Greetings and salutations, downtown radio listeners. Paleo Dave, your unfrozen Caveman DJ here to spread the good word about the scrambled Sunrise Rock mix happening every weekday morning from seven to 09:00 A.m. Right here on Downtown radio from the earliest days of psych punk and new Wave to 80s college rock, 90s alternative, and the ongoing wave of 21st century indie rock. It’s all right here on the Scrambled Sunrise. So tune in via 99.1 FM if you’re in the greater Downtown area or streaming worldwide via Downtownradio.org.

Tom Heath

So we are now going to finish up our two week interview with Lisa Hansen done in four parts and talk a little bit about her staff and how they all came to the organization and what they bring with them as well.

Tom Heath

I know you have to run Zoom and a couple more questions, if we could. I was looking at your website and I noticed that your staff is made up of everyone on your staff has been very open about a trauma or an experience that led them to you and now they’re working with you.

Tom Heath

It makes sense. But I also find that amazing that you’ve got a group of five people that are standing up as survivors and trying to take that mantle forward to prevent this from happening.

Lisa Hansen

Yeah, it’s an amazing experience. I mean, honestly, each one of the women that work with me and partner with me in this issue each have their own different story. But the relevance of each one of them said, where were you when this was happening to me? If I had only known, if I had known the signs, if I had seen, if I’d known what to look for, if I had known that there was somebody out there that would help. And so that’s really what our goal is, to just get this information out there so that people don’t get stuck in these scenarios where they just feel hopeless and have no option, no choice. And so it’s just been an absolute honor to see these women, these young women and these mothers just step up and use their voice because I tell you now, they have a bunch of stories from people that they have impacted by sharing their stories. So it’s huge.

Tom Heath

And then how do people find you, get more information, get to these videos and maybe have you come in and present to a group?

Lisa Hansen

Absolutely. Yeah. So I’m on every social media platform, Power Overpredators, and then my website is where all of our videos are stored, so that’s Poweroverpredators.org.

Tom Heath

Okay. And then I noticed that you have a volunteer advocate. So I assume then that you are looking for people to help with this mission. I would imagine there’s kind of a heavy vetting process that goes into this, but you’re looking for people that are willing to go out and present the material or what specifically would help you.

Lisa Hansen

Sure. So the volunteer group that I mentioned earlier, which is Mace again, you don’t have to be a mom, but anybody who is passionate about moving against child exploitation, there’s lots of different opportunities to quote unquote, volunteer.

Lisa Hansen

Donating is very helpful. We are a nonprofit and we totally function solely off of private donations. We do not take any government funding and because that allows us to really keep the narrative of the conversation that we believe is important. So donating as far as I’m concerned is a huge volunteer opportunity. But I need people spreading awareness on their social media sites. So I give multiple opportunities for people to volunteer and find out how they can get involved. And more of the descriptions are on my website, on the Mace page where you can learn more about how you can volunteer and how much time things will take. I would love people who will go advocate at parent at PTO meetings. Right. I do believe that parents just don’t know that this is available and they would want it in their schools if they knew it was there and they knew it was free and that it’s a vetted program so they can learn as much as they want to learn through the website. And so really just advocacy is a big

Lisa Hansen

thing. So when it comes to presenting in the schools, the reason we’ve done it the way that we have so that we don’t schools, if a parent wants to go in that parent already has to go through background checks and the school is held responsible for the content. And so that’s why we’ve made it to where the videos have already been done, to where somebody can just press play and have conversations with these kids. And then when kids do come forward, if they are in the school setting or a youth setting where maybe it’s YMCA or boys and girls clubs, if a youth does disclose abuse, then everybody is required to follow the mandatory reporting and procedures and policies just to protect those kids and get them the help that they need.

Tom Heath

All of your staff, they’re female. Is that intentional or is that just coincidental?

Lisa Hansen

It is coincidental. In the past we’ve had male volunteers that have gone in and presented and dads or even we’ve had a couple of college kids, young men that just really got well, they’ve experienced abuse themselves. And so this is not a problem for girls. This is one in four girls and one in five boys are going to be sexually abused before their 18th birthday. And again those are based on the reported cases. So there is not a significant difference in

Lisa Hansen

the gender of a child being abused. So it is a very relevant issue and we do have a lot of men that come forward and want to.

Tom Heath

Present this content and are most abusers and getting away off topic, this is just curiosity for me. Are most abusers men or is there a similar sort of ratio for men versus women as far as being abusers?

Lisa Hansen

No, you’re correct. Statistically it is a much higher percentage of men being the abusers.

Tom Heath

Okay, again, just kind of thinking through the optics of a male presenting that could be somewhat challenging for someone maybe to step forward because they anyway, I’m far afielded here.

Lisa Hansen

You’re right.

Tom Heath

I’m far afield here. Well, this has been incredibly eye opening. I think rather than try to edit this down, I think what we’re going to do is spread it out over two weeks to make sure we cover everything because there’s nothing in here that doesn’t need to be said. And I launched this program because I wanted to find hidden gems in Tucson. And I’m always amazed at things I don’t know about. And the fact that you’ve been doing this for almost 15 years now, I’m sure you’ve been doing it longer, but as an organized movement for almost 15 years, it’s quite amazing. And now starting here in Tucson, working with everyone all over our community, and now you’ve got people nationally taking some of this information and implementing it in their communities. That’s just tremendous.

Tom Heath

And I know you don’t do this.

Tom Heath

For accolades and accommodations, but Lisa, that’s just absolutely amazing to me that through your tragedy and your trauma, that you’re able to bring this such positive energy into a really tough conversation.

Lisa Hansen

Yeah, there’s hope for every person and that I’m living proof of that. So that’s my goal, get that hope out there.

Tom Heath

Lisa Hansen, the CEO and founder of Power Over Predators, information at their website, poweroverpredators.org all over social media. We’ll link to all of that from our page. And this will be a two part episode, so there’ll be lots of information out there for you to dig into, to learn more. And then I encourage you to check out the website and maybe get involved with their Mace program. Lisa, thank you.

Lisa Hansen

Thanks so much. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Tom Heath

That was Lisa Hansen, founder and CEO of Power Over Predators. If you joined us late, we did a two day segment with her because the interview a lot of times I’ll do the interview and maybe edit a few pieces out so it’ll fit the show. And this one, there was just nothing to edit. Everything she said was just so powerful. So we started last week on this topic, June 4 episode, which is on our website right now. And then we wrapped it up today with the second part of it, so they go together. Want to thank Lisa. We were under a time crunch. She had an appointment right after our meeting, but she was very gracious and stayed till the very end, even though we went over the allotted time. I told her that we would need my name is Tom Heath. You are listening to life along the streetcar in downtown Radio 99.1 FM and streaming on downtownradio.org.

Speaker 7

You’re listening to Ktdt, Tucson, Arizona 99.1 FM, downtown radio. I’m Brother Mark, host of a show called Radio Club Crawl that airs every Tuesday at 03:00 P.m.. We try to focus on most of the bands that are coming through Tucson and we give you a tasty taste of their music. You want to check out what’s happening around Tucson check out Radio Club Crawl, Tuesdays, 03:00 P.m. Right here on KT DT, tucson, Arizona. 99.1 FM, downtown radio.

Tom Heath

Thank you very much. Enjoy your evening.

Tom Heath

Bye bye.

Tom Heath

Well, thank you again. To Lisa Hansen from Power Over Predators. If you want to listen to that complete interview starting last Sunday, just head over to Lifelongthreestreetcar.org. You can pick it up there. And then this episode will be available as a podcast later in the week. Probably typically we get them up by Tuesday and you can watch and listen to those and then, of course, head over to their website to learn more about the programs and volunteer opportunities. We started the show today just remembering Donovan Durban. He was a downtown, really an icon and instrumental in making so many things happen in this area. He passed unexpectedly last week and on next Sunday show we’ll do a little bit more of a tribute to him and also air an interview we had the pleasure of doing a few years ago with him and talk a little bit more about his impact and some of the organizations that he was involved with and supported. If you want to get a sense of him as what he does here in the community.

Tom Heath

His instagram page was fascinating. I loved Watch It, and he chose the name Exit 258. Exit 258 is the downtown exit when you’re coming off of I Ten. And so he really focused a lot on that urban core, just like we do. So a lot of common interest there with Donovan. So we invite you maybe to take a look at his Instagram page. And the handle there is exit 258-2581. Of the organizations that he was very instrumental in co founding was the Second Saturday’s Committee. And getting that effort back up and running, bringing music and culture back into downtown been happening for quite some time now. And it was really, at the time, so important because people were not coming downtown. And that started a trend. And to this day continues fittingly, last night was second Saturday, and the team, the committee and the organizers of second Saturday chose to rename the main stage that they play music on on Scott Avenue as the Donovan Durban main stage at Scott Avenue. So now all the live music that happens

Tom Heath

on Second Saturdays will be on the Donovan Durban stage. And it’s, I think, fitting. So we are going to leave you with music today that was played last night, a band called the Barefoot on Bumblebees. They’re a local band here out of Tucson and they have some energetic kind of folk music and they were playing on the Donovan Durban stage last night with, with a few others as part of Second Saturdays. So we’re gonna leave you a little music from them. It’s back. It goes back to 2010. The album is called Everything Shiny is new. This is the Barefoot On Bumblebees Tucson band. And the song is called Lonely Are the Brave. We miss you, Donovan. My name is Tom Heath.

Tom Heath

I hope you have a great week.

Tom Heath

And tune in next Sunday for more life along the streetcar.