Carissa Phelps joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they discuss an unprecedented opportunity for trafficking survivors to access $215 million in remission funds from the Backpage settlement, with a critical February 2026 deadline that could finally put survivors ahead of their traffickers for the first time in movement history.

Carissa Phelps

Carissa Phelps is a licensed attorney, author, and survivor advocate who founded Runaway Girl, Inc., a social purpose corporation providing survivor-led experiential trainings nationwide. She earned both a Juris Doctor and MBA from UCLA in 2007 and holds a B.A. in Mathematics from California State University, Fresno. As a pioneer in survivor-led advocacy, Carissa has spent nearly two decades empowering communities and amplifying survivor voices through innovative strategies. She is the author of the acclaimed memoir “Runaway Girl: Escaping Life on the Streets, One Helping Hand at a Time” and co-producer of the award-winning documentary “Carissa,” both powerful tools used worldwide for education and training on child exploitation and trafficking.

Key Points

• The Backpage remission fund represents $215 million available to trafficking survivors who were exploited on Backpage.com (2004-2018) and CityXGuide.com (2018-2020), marking the largest victim compensation fund in trafficking history.


• Unlike previous restitution processes that required court appearances, this remission process uses a third-party administrator, removing the traumatic requirement for survivors to face their traffickers in court.


• The February 2, 2026 deadline creates urgency for outreach, as many survivors remain unaware of this opportunity and the application process requires documentation of trafficking and economic losses.


• Survivors First community was formed as a working group under Love Never Fails Us to conduct weekly webinars, provide step-by-step guidance, and connect survivors with pro bono legal assistance and medical providers.


• The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) has partnered with over 15 major law firms to provide free, trauma-informed legal representation to help survivors navigate the application process.


• Economic losses are calculated at federal minimum wage for a 40-hour work week during the trafficking period, though survivors can request higher amounts with proper documentation of different wages or hours.


• This funding opportunity represents a chance for the anti-trafficking movement to get ahead of traffickers for the first time, particularly as new technologies like Web3 and blockchain create new frontiers for both exploitation and prevention.

Resources

• 19 – Runaway Girl


• Survivor’s First Community


• Backpage Survivor Remission Network

Transcript

[00:00:00 ] Carissa Phelps: For the first time, for the first time in the history of this movement, we have an opportunity to get ahead of traffickers.

[00:00:08 ] Sandie Morgan: Right now, $215 million is waiting for trafficking survivors. This is money that most survivors don’t even know exists. The deadline is February 2nd, 2026. The legal system is finally learned from mistakes. There’s no court required here. Victims don’t have to face their traffickers to apply for this funding. It’s a pathway to justice.

[00:00:45 ] I am Dr. Sandie Morgan from the Global Center for Women and Justice at Vanguard University. And my guest is Carissa Phelps.

[00:00:57 ] She’s an attorney, a survivor advocate, founder of Runaway Girl Inc. And she is leading the charge to connect survivors with the Backpage remission fund. Let’s join our conversation.

[00:01:16 ]

[00:01:22 ] Sandie Morgan: Okay, so Carissa Phelps, welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. I have looked back at our history, and the last time you were here was 14 years ago.

[00:01:37 ] Carissa Phelps: Oh my goodness.

[00:01:38 ] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Listeners, if you wanna hear that interview, it’s number 19. So welcome Carissa.

[00:01:46 ] Carissa Phelps: Thank you. Thank you, Sandie. Thanks for

[00:01:48 ] Sandie Morgan: having me on.

[00:01:49 ] So what have you been doing since we talked last?

[00:01:53 ] Carissa Phelps: So, catching up, I guess. I mean that’s over a decade of work, but we built Runaway Girl as a flexible purpose corporation, so a social purpose corporation. We went out with full force. We had. Prop 35 in that timeframe to come out with a historic support for, more penalties for trafficking that saw increased prosecutions for sex trafficking, especially of minors.

[00:02:18 ] And we’ve been in a uphill battle in terms of getting survivors into leadership positions. But that’s happening now more and more. It’s expected for survivors to not just be at the table or in the room or subject of the conversation, but to be part of the conversation in developing services and reaching victims where they’re at, and survivors where they’re at.

[00:02:43 ] And so this has been, it’s been an exciting decade and a half.

[00:02:47 ] Sandie Morgan: Wow. And I just am happy to report to you that the very first human trafficking victim rescued in Orange County, Shyima Hall, who was an Egyptian child, made in an upscale neighborhood, is now serving on the Global Center for Women in Justice Advisory Board.

[00:03:11 ] Yeah, so we’re trying to practice what you are teaching us as a leading survivor advocate. So I got really excited a couple weeks ago when I saw your post about NCMEC remission, and when we’re talking about survivor-centered justice, why is that important? And for listeners just joining this conversation, NCMEC is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

[00:03:45 ] Carissa Phelps: So I did, I posted, my friends at NCMEC National Center for Missing Exploited Children are doing something similar to what we’ll talk about with survivors first, but we are all trying to respond to this Backpage remission, which is an historic amount of funds

[00:04:01 ] available for survivors of trafficking that were trafficked over 20 years ago, some of them, from 2004 when Backpage was prominent, to 2018, 2004 to 2018, when backpage.com existed and served traffickers really and served buyers and.

[00:04:22 ] Was a means of exploiting victims, rampantly all over our country, all over the world, really all over the globe. And so there were so many victims out of that website. It was finally shut down, with the help of Maggie Krell, who was at the Attorney General’s office in California and others in US Attorney in Arizona, Kevin Rapp, and like there, there were so many people that stepped up to the plate to say this was wrong.

[00:04:46 ] this went even beyond maybe what Craigslist was doing in terms of, just, uh, catering to traffickers in, in what they were posting. So they were, assets were seized in that effort and those assets are now available to victims of trafficking. There was a settlement reached in 2024 with the company, and so some of the funds did go back to the company owners and so that that can be resolved in civil suits and other ways.

[00:05:15 ] But this 215 million has been made available in a victim restitution fund. For victims to come forward to show that they have losses, economic losses, so lost wages, lost time that they could have been working or doing something else when they were being trafficked. And also medical costs and other costs that they would’ve incurred while being trafficked.

[00:05:37 ] Sandie Morgan: So, Carissa, one of the things that was so inspiring when I first met you is you did a double grad program so that you have an MBA and you’re an attorney. So break this down for us. What are you talking about with remission and, asset forfeiture? Tell me about that.

[00:06:01 ] Carissa Phelps: So anytime somebody uses their assets to commit a crime or takes or steals things from people fraudulently, their money or their assets, that those assets could be seized and forfeited to the government.

[00:06:19 ] And if they’re prosecuted, criminally prosecuted, they first be seized and then they would be forfeited. So that happened. It happened with City X Guide in 2021. There was actually a restitution process for victims in 2021 and a $15 million fund, and nobody really learned about it. It was not as well advertised potentially, or people didn’t get the word out, and maybe because it wasn’t as large of a fund, but that $15 million, if it’s not accessed by victims, it doesn’t it, it didn’t disappear.

[00:06:55 ] Fortunately, it’s coming into this fund. But it’s now a remission process, which is different than a restitution process. A victim restitution process is sort of during the criminal trial and before sentencing, somebody could come in and put in a restitution form and say, I’m due this money because I was a victim of this crime.

[00:07:14 ] And the Texas, the US attorney in Texas did make that process available with the City X Guide person being prosecuted. Martono was his name. He was prosecuted. He ended up being sentenced and victims had a chance to go and to give a victim impact statement and to also apply for these funds as a restitution.

[00:07:35 ] But what happened is that the word probably didn’t get out wide enough. There weren’t enough. There wasn’t enough support maybe for victims to get this fund in. It’s a scary thing to go to court