President Trump signed an executive Order on January 31 to establish goals and priorities to end human trafficking in the U.S.

“Human trafficking is a form of modern slavery,” he said. “Throughout the United States and around the world, human trafficking tears apart communities, fuels criminal activity, and threatens the national security of the United States. It is estimated that millions of individuals are trafficked around the world each year — including into and within the United States. As the United States continues to lead the global fight against human trafficking, we must remain relentless in resolving to eradicate it in our cities, suburbs, rural communities, tribal lands, and on our transportation networks. Human trafficking in the United States takes many forms and can involve exploitation of both adults and children for labor and sex.

“Twenty-first century technology and the proliferation of the internet and mobile devices have helped facilitate the crime of child sex trafficking and other forms of child exploitation. Consequently, the number of reports to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children of online photos and videos of children being sexually abused is at record levels.

The President wrote, “Effectively combating these crimes requires a comprehensive and coordinated response to prosecute human traffickers and individuals who sexually exploit children online, to protect and support victims of human trafficking and child exploitation, and to provide prevention education to raise awareness and help lower the incidence of human trafficking and child exploitation into, from, and within the United States,” he said.

“To this end, it shall be the policy of the executive branch to prioritize its resources to vigorously prosecute offenders, to assist victims, and to provide prevention education to combat human trafficking and online sexual exploitation of children.”

The Order aims to strengthen federal responsiveness to human trafficking, and make available, online, a list of the Federal Government’s resources to combat human trafficking, ways to identify and report instances of human trafficking, to protect and support the victims of trafficking, and to provide public outreach and training.

Improving interagency coordination for targeting traffickers, assessing threats, and sharing law enforcement intelligence is an objective, and also to enhance capabilities to locate children who are missing. The Secretary of Health and Human Services is to establish an internal working group to develop and incorporate practical strategies for state, local, and tribal governments, child welfare agencies, and faith-based and other community organizations to expand housing options for victims of human trafficking. The Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, in coordination with the Secretary of Education, shall partner with state, local, and tribal law enforcement entities to fund prevention programs.

In 2017 Gov. Edwards and the Governor’s Office Human Trafficking Prevention Commission announced a series of regional summits on human trafficking. In collaboration with various agencies the summits aimed to highlight pertinent information from key stakeholders regarding the existing services, protocols and community response to trafficking victims.

Psychologist Dr. Rafael Salcedo attended the Louisiana Human Trafficking Prevention Advisory Board meeting, held 2018. First Lady Donna Edwards and Senator Beth Mizell, gave opening remarks.

Dr. Salcedo represents psychology on the advisory group and he is also the cocreator with his wife Beth, of a the Free Indeed Home, the only licensed, therapeutic group home in the state for helping teen girls escape the physical and psychological bonds of sex-trafficking. The First Lady Ms. Edwards has toured the Home, Dr. Salcedo explained to the Times.

Dr. Rafael Salcedo is known for his advocacy and comprehensive treatment program for the young victims of human sex trafficking, and for this and other efforts, was named the 2017 Distinguished Psychologist by the Louisiana Psychological Association.

Salcedo is a licensed Clinical Psychologist with subspecialties in the area of forensic and neuropsychology, providing services for issues such as competency to stand trial, sanity at the time of crime, and other legal issues.

He consults to the court system in Orleans, Jefferson, Lafourche and Terrebonne Parishes, to the Office of Community Services, and has worked with the Department of Children and Family Services for the last 25 years, conducting evaluations of children who are in need of supervision or care.

Dr. Salcedo also chairs the Louisiana Psychological Association Committee for Community Psychology & Psychology in the Public Interest.

In 2012, after becoming aware of the depth and tragedy surrounding child sex trafficking, Rafael and Beth, a licensed speech- language pathologist, founded the nonprofit, advocacy group, the Louisiana Coalition Against Human Trafficking.

Dr. Billy M. Seay, long-time member of the Louisiana psychology community, passed away December 4, 2019. He served as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Louisiana State University for many years, and then went on to become the founding Dean of the LSU Honors College.

Dr. Seay was one of the “monkey men,” the affectionate term for those who observed the behavior of primates and then explained the development, adaptation, and social structures of these close great-ape relatives.

When Dr. Seay came to LSU as a young psychologist in 1964, he brought with him the distinction of having published in the then ground-breaking studies about mother-infant separation. Seay studied with the American primatologist, Harry F. Harlow, at the University of Wisconsin, where Seay earned his doctorate.

In his work at Wisconsin and with Harlow, Seay published “Mother-Infant Separation in Monkeys,” in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, “Affectional Systems in Rhesus Monkeys,” and “Maternal Behavior of Socially Deprived Rhesus Monkeys,” and ‘Maternal Separation in Rhesus Monkeys,” in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

“Harlow provided his students with the resources of his laboratory, staff support, and considerable independence,” Seay told the Times in 2015. “When research was published he used a ‘post-Nobel’ style of authorship. Students were consistently the first author of  research reports. Exception occurred only if he had an agreement with an editor to be first author. He would not co-author dissertation publication. You were on your own.”

Seay also worked with colleague and fellow LSU professor and development psychologist, Dr. Nathan Gottried, to author The Development of Behavior: A Synthesis of Developmental and Comparative Psychology in 1978.

The Development of Behavior was ahead of its time. While debates still occur today about which influence––genetic, environmental, epigenetic, individual, etc.–– is dominant in development, Development of Behavior set out the importance of five “sets” for determining behavior from all five directions. In Development, they approached behavior from the dynamic interplay of the Phylogenetic Set, the Ontogenetic Set, the Experiential Set, the Cultural Set, and the Individual Set.

“One hopes that what is not lost is that all behavior is multiply determined,” Seay had told the Times. “There is not a single cause for any behavioral outcome,” he said.

“I think that both biological and cognitive psychology fail to recognize the importance of culture in shaping and determining behavior,” Seay said about the awareness of cultural impacts. “The cultural setting is a determining factor with respect to the environment an individual encounters. Failure to recognize cultural influences on behavior limits understanding behavior.”

Dr. Billy Seay was a devoted husband for sixty years to his college sweetheart. Billy is survived by his loving wife, Nedra Dees Seay, of Baton Rouge, his daughter Delecia Seay Carey and husband Tom, of Maurice, Louisiana, his son Franklin Whitfield Seay and wife Cheryl of Denham Springs, and many beloved grandchildren

The Online Journal Contemporary Southern Psychology, announced in June 2018, has published only one volume of one issue, and that volume is not available at this time, explained Dr. Bill McCown, the editor pro temp. McCown is Professor of Psychology and Associate Dean for Research at University of Louisiana at Monroe (ULM).

“We expected to be almost into our third issue by now,” he said. “We thought there would be ongoing operational difficulties, but what we encountered was a bit unusual.”

The journal is the brain-child of co-editor Dr. McCown, and team members Dr. Burt Ashworth, Assistant Professor in Psychology and endowed chair in Gerontology, and Dr. Mkay Bonner, Associate Professor, Criminal Justice & Psychology, College of Business & Social Sciences, both at ULM Contemporary Southern Psychology is a peer-reviewed, open access journal with a focus primarily toward psychological research, aiming to match the style and contributions of the wellrespected, 1980s, Southern Psychologist.

While the editors encountered some expected production delays, what they didn’t expect was to find themselves engaged in national politics, said McCown who noted that as the national atmosphere became increasingly heated, “… things got very strange.”

“Not long after we started talking to outside reviewers and editors we began receiving calls and  manuscripts on unusual topics,” McCown said. “We found out that there’s an entire pseudo-scholarly world out there that we didn’t want to be affiliated with.”

“These are people who want to publish on racist and anti-semitic topics and somehow believe that the word ‘Southern’ indicates a like-minded audience. It’s clear most of them did not come from our area, perhaps not even our country. I guess we just got on someone’s radar.”

After a while this flood of extreme right interest subsided somewhat, McCown said, but it was as if it generated an opponent-process on the left.

“Suddenly the name ‘Southern’ seemed to be in the crossfire of some left-leaning people. We started getting emails and calls saying things like, ‘What are your real intentions? Are you as racist as everyone else in the South?’ And, ‘Are you white nationalists at your University?’

“The rhetoric even got much worse even after we explained our mission,” McCown explained. “At that point we just slowed down our pace and waited for the national climate to become more reasonable.”

“It seems that the word ‘South’, which the editors mean more in a geographic sense, is almost a trigger for nonobjectivity,” McCown said.

Have they considered a new name? “We want to be true to our concept, which is a regional journal which recognizes the brief but influential legacy of Ralph Dreger and LPA in one of its periods of excellence, “ McCown said.

“We also want to highlight the necessity of employing psychology and the behavioral sciences for making sure our region is all it can be. The Deep South was a late adopter to the science of psychology. Sometimes this is overlooked. We want to try to remind people not to make this mistake again. So we are sticking with the name.”

“We aren’t going anywhere. Our funding is secure. Our mission is legitimate.  We have enthusiasm and energy.  We will be a peer-reviewed, open-source, journal with no fee charges.  There is a need and we aim to fill it.”

“By late January we hope we will be announcing a special issue and have a general call for papers for future issues,” McCown said.

“The mission of the new journal is to emphasize what psychology can do for our region,” Dr. McCown previously told the Times. “The South, perhaps for reasons that no one still understands, has been slow to embrace this potential contribution. The results of this failure are all around us. The mental and overall physical health of southern citizens is poor. The southern education system is often disconnected from advances in cognitive and social psychology. Southern criminal justice systems desperately need changes that are informed by behavioral science. In the private sector many corporations inadequately understand what organizational psychology now can offer. Consequently, they are not maximally competitive beyond our region.”

“This is a deeper opportunity for psychology to assert its identity to a region that has not recognized what we do and can do well. This is very much in the spirit of the original publication and we hope is a way of celebrating 70 years of LPA’s successes in our state,” he said.