Festival of Ideas: Jane Lasonder: Hidden in Plain Sight

Human trafficking and modern day slavery are horrific crimes happening in our own towns and cities. This talk will expose the hidden reality of exploitation, revealing how victims are often concealed in plain sight.

Through storytelling Jane will:
Expose the hidden signs of trafficking and exploitation, enabling the audience to recognise potential victims.
Challenge common misconceptions about who is affected and where these crimes occur. Share her powerful personal experiences as a survivor of child sexual exploitation and trafficking in the UK.

She will recount years of being trafficked, her experiences in and out of the hospital, feeling invisible despite being in plain sight, not being identified at school, living as a runaway child on the streets, and her later work rescuing trafficked women forced into prostitution in Amsterdam’s red-light district and on UK streets.

Jane will also discuss her journey to becoming an international author, a speaker at the UN, a voice for the voiceless, an advisor to governments and policymakers, a media commentator, and a recipient of a parliamentary award. Showing that no matter your circumstances there is always hope and if you are determined to succeed you can!

Empower audience members with knowledge and resources to take action and make a difference in their communities.

This talk is a call to awareness, urging us to open our eyes to the suffering around us and become a force for change in the fight against human trafficking and slavery. Through her storytelling, we can unlock the power to make the invisible visible.