Radical Empathy Education Foundation
Radical Empathy Education Foundation (REEF) is an Austin-based nonprofit that licenses immersive, interactive Virtual Reality (VR) software to trainers, educators, and community educators. These experiential learning experiences are focused on ending human suffering through providing the best educational experiences on the planet. Their first title, TRAPPED: A VR Detective Story, was designed and improved over the course of four years, and is currently available for Oculus Quest headsets through mobile device management software distribution. It teaches people how professional predators use people’s emotions against individuals and trick them into becoming victims of domestic abuse as well as human trafficking. It provides trainees with a full understanding of coercion and psychological manipulation that is simply not possible in a classroom setting at scale.
Co-founded and led by Jacqueline and Billy Joe Cain, who learned their children were being “groomed” by Billy Joe’s boss, who turned out to be a registered sex predator. They sold their house and became advocates to help others understand how anyone could become a victim of coercion and psychological manipulation. Their research into the topic showed that the main failing of current-day training is that people do not understand why someone doesn’t “just leave” their relationship with the predator.
They have multiple licensees using their training software in 10 states and have served over 15,000 trainees of all ages and backgrounds, including middle and high schoolers, medical professionals, lawyers, government officials, and human trafficking prevention training professionals.
Currently, they are working with Indigenous groups to design additional training scenarios that match their specific cultural needs, as the more connected a trainee is to the material, the more effective it is.
Radical Empathy is prepared to help your company create any type of interactive educational tool or game. Since entering the interactive industry in 1992, the Cains have worked for Electronic Arts, Sony, the United States Air Force, Nickelodeon, and many other companies on hundreds of projects.
Reach out and connect with them — they’re ready to help you take your training to the next level!
Notable Customers:
Media Gallery
Use Cases
Uprising: In-Person Community Training and Integration into the Greater Rockies Immersive Training Conference
One of our licensees, Uprising, runs an annual conference called Greater Rockies Immersive Training (GRIT), and they focus on human trafficking prevention. GRIT is a multi-day event for professionals in this field that breaks attendees into groups that follow a particular “case” from an outcry to prosecution. They learn from subject matter experts that include victims, law enforcement professionals, healthcare workers, social workers, prosecutors, legislators, and more. We have been part of their program offerings since their first year.
Their Executive Director, Terri Markham, provides an overview (from 2022) of how they have been using our VR application at their annual event and how they use it throughout the year to educate their community.
“Hello, I’m Terri Markham, Executive Director of Uprising, a Wyoming-based anti-human trafficking non-profit. I’m hopping on this video real quick to spend a couple of minutes telling you about our experience so far working with Radical Empathy and Billy Joe Cain, and utilizing his “TRAPPED” virtual reality experience that he developed.
We got access to the technology, and our original intent was really just to bring an immersive, unique experience to our regional human trafficking conference called GRIT. The very first time I met Billy Joe and tried it, I knew it was going to be a really unique way to show people one way that human trafficking could look. When I experienced it, and when my family members who were with me experienced it, it elicited that empathy response, which is something that you cannot simply teach. So I knew that I wanted to get this technology and try it out.
Last May, at our conference, we actually built a whole case study around Lisa, the victim featured in the VR experience. Our attendees had a lot of positive feedback about that experience—they really enjoyed getting to step into the shoes of this case that they had been learning about throughout their conference experience. It was a really unique addition to our conference. In fact, as a result, I believe we now have three people who tried the VR with us and are now working directly with Billy Joe themselves to get the VR in their communities.
Of course, having this technology, we didn’t want to only use it at a one-time event. We’ve been using it a lot, particularly with youth. We have found that it is an incredible tool. We take it with us into schools and to youth events for them to try. Every time we put that headset on a young person, we have a debrief afterward where they get to tell us or write out how they felt during that experience and what takeaways they had. We hear all kinds of amazing feedback. People have told us they felt scared, worried for Lisa, or anxious that her trafficker was going to walk in on them. We’ve had kids say they want to be more careful with their social media or even delete their Snapchat after experiencing Lisa’s story because it opened their eyes to the potential for exploitation.
It has been a really effective tool—we’ve used it with hundreds of youths, and I think we’re getting close to about 500 people that we have put the headsets on. Our organization has purchased five headsets, and I think our biggest challenge with the VR is actually that we need more of them. When we take it into a school, we want to put it on as many heads as possible, which means we’re going to need to invest in more headsets soon. It’s something that we are looking at doing because we have found so much value in it.
Not only has it been great for the professionals at our conference and for youth, but we also use it at community events. Anyone, from our average community members to legislators, law enforcement officers, and victim advocates, has tried it, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. I cannot recommend it enough. It’s a really unique tool, especially for youth, who are drawn to technology-driven experiences.
It’s funny because VR can be a space that is really dangerous for youth, but reclaiming a piece of that technology for good and for our purposes is really cool. If you ever have questions, you can always send me a message, and I’d be happy to answer any questions about our experience with it. But we highly recommend it.”
Virtual Reality Offered to Fight Ugly Reality of Human Trafficking Fox 7 Austin KTBC
Mayor Stephen Santellana Mayor Stephen Santellana Experiences TRAPPED: A VR Detective Story
Testimonials
“The story and situations in TRAPPED are very real, it’s very typical from what I see on a daily basis, investigating human trafficking incidents. So it was very real. The fact that she wasn’t getting along at home is one intersection. The fact that she was online with this man that started buying her things, clothing… It’s very accurate. It’s on point on how they meet their victims online.
It’s on point with how they groom them in initial meetings, where they find some type of avenue where the victim may be seeking some type of attention they’re not getting at home and they target that area and then they go from there and then it turns into the vicious cycle of control, manipulation, and coercion.”
– Houston Police Human Trafficking Unit Lieutenant Angela M. Merritt
“With youth we have found that it is an incredible tool. We take it with us into schools and to youth events. Every time we put that on the head of a youth we have a download afterwards where they get to tell us or write out how they felt felt during that experience and what takeaways they had, and we hear all kinds of amazing feedback. We hear things about people who felt like they felt scared they felt worried for Lisa they felt anxious that her trafficker was going to walk in on them. We have kids who tell us you know now they want to be more careful with their social media or they want to delete their Snapchat after experiencing Lisa because it wasn’t even in their mind that they could be exploited in that way, so it’s been a really effective tool.
I think our biggest challenge with the VR is actually that we need more of it! When we take it into a school, we want to put it on as many heads as possible. That means we’re going to need to invest in more headsets soon and it’s something that we are looking at doing because we have found so much value in it. Not only has it been great for the professionals at our conference and for youth, but we also just use it at community events so anyone from our average community member to a legislator to a law enforcement officer.
I cannot recommend it enough.”
– Terri Markham, Executive Director, Uprising
“The VR application, TRAPPED, was a great experience. I have 16 years in law enforcement. And out of those 16 years, about 12 of them were spent dealing with cases that focus on domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse, and human trafficking. So seeing this and actually going through the experience of assimilation of what a victim of human trafficking goes through…
It’s very real and the storyline is very authentic. And it actually aligns with what you see in a lot of these types of incidents where young girls and boys are trafficked and these are experiences they go through: the Grooming Phase, it was spot on the grooming phase explaining how she was trafficked, into on down to the family dynamics that tend to take place and what type of children, young people, are actually more vulnerable or susceptible to being put into these type of positions of being trafficked.
So I really enjoyed the simulation. It was a great experience and I definitely recommend that it’s something that continues to be taught and brought into education environments as well as First Responders because they definitely need to have this type of training available to these types of tools available to them.”
– Dr. LaTienda Pierre, graduate coordinator for LSU Shreveport and retired law enforcement 16 years
“Being immersed, where you have control to drive what you’re seeing and work through something, and so that she has a nature where you understand, almost like a game, that I have to drive through this. When you feel it and you hear it, it’s much more memorable, and so it gets planted in. You wanna reach out and touch this girl as opposed to hearing about something out there.
What this does is does that with actually more feedback for the brain so the brain’s actually picking it up and it’s engaged, it’s connected. And it’s actually feeling it alongside and that’s what you want to do when you do a talk. And this allows you to be assured that people are getting in the situation.
You have to have something that can go to small towns, particularly, because they are as much a target as any. Having a speaker is not gonna do. We’re not going to get the work done quickly. What this allows is to multiply, and so suddenly you can take it anywhere and simply get access to more people to get more communities educated.
When the kids themselves believe in the story, that’s critical. So I think having this type of tool so kids can recognize and go, well, this sounds like my friends, this is my life, I have these kind of problems and I would like someone to talk to. And so all of the “positives” of potentially running away, all the things that a child easily thinks of, all [a trafficker has] to do is create a conduit for them. And so this helps them to see how dangerous these conduits are and those relationships are. And so I think it’s very good.”
– David Reid, RedM, Advocate and Changemaker
“Being actively immersed in Lisa’s story in virtual reality was probably one of the most incredible experiences I’ve ever had. VR really brings an understanding of abuse and manipulation to life in a way that you often don’t get from just reading articles or hearing about it in the news. It really puts you in the experience and helps you understand what someone goes through when they’re being groomed and the kind of life they have to lead. I can’t imagine a better way to tell this story, to tell you the truth. It really brings everything to life.
Every parent should experience this. I think educators, police departments, and advocacy groups should experience it too. It’s a great tool for everyone to use so you’re not just getting snippets of it through the news—you can actually walk through and experience what someone goes through when they’re trafficked.
Taking the time to make this a VR experience is something I would never have thought to do. Next week, I’ll be giving a speech on this topic. This is going to be part of what I talk about—how you can use this tool to immerse people in the experience. From a third-party perspective, you’re getting a new viewpoint, but from a first-person perspective, you’ll really understand. I would tell them to experience it first, and I think you’ll be sold in two seconds.
I’ve only been here for 20 minutes, and I think this is going to be on my mind all day. I’m going to be spending a little bit of time with our governor in about 30 minutes, and I’m actually going to see if I can share this experience with him. What a wonderful tool! I can’t speak highly enough about it.”
– Wichita Falls, Texas Mayor, Stephen Santellana
Top Product Offerings
We created TRAPPED to teach about abuse prevention and psychological manipulation after discovering that our own children were being groomed by a registered sex predator — a friend we trusted, who contacted them over our landline. Now we develop tools to help others recognize and avoid predators, empowering people to prevent abuse (including human trafficking) before it happens.
This award-winning, groundbreaking virtual reality app from the non-profit Radical Empathy (reefcares.org) provides an immersive, non-triggering experience where users step into the shoes of Lisa, a 14-year-old trafficking victim who, through her story, explains how psychological abuse changed the way her mind works.
Approved and recommended by subject matter experts, TRAPPED is the only abuse prevention training app that demonstrates the subtle tactics predators use and teaches one of the most complicated concepts in abuse prevention: how anyone can fall prey to predators and still hesitate to ask for help.
With over 15,000 students having used the program across 10 states in America, it is an essential tool that clearly showcases how traffickers manipulate emotions and trick victims into compliance.
Pricing:
The entire VR market is switching over to Mobile Device Managers, the early Virtual Reality “business to business” app stores, and we are so excited!
TRAPPED: A VR Detective Story requires an annual license fee of $6000 per campus and a per headset service fee of $50 per month, paid annually. This comes with an initial “train the trainer” Zoom training and priority customer service by phone and email.
The per headset software as a service (SaaS) fee drops 1% (from the previous price) for every 10 headsets you have (up to 1000 headsets). Contact us for more information.
You are joining a community of trainers across the world, and you will receive tips and tricks from other trainers as well as additional materials that can help you spread the word about your training.
Our trainers include middle schools, high schools, universities, women’s shelters, Indigenous community groups, and more!
Trial Available:
You receive a 30 day trial of TRAPPED: A VR Detective Story to show the decision makers how well the product works. We will work with you to ensure you have the time and resources you need to test and demonstrate the training to the stakeholders in your organization. We understand that a product like this may take longer to get approved through some companies or schools, so we are prepared to extend this trial if needed.
Additional Details
ArborXR Demo Available: No
Trial Period Offered: Yes
Regions Supported: North America
Notable Milestones / Awards:
Billy Joe has spent over 30 years in the interactive space, creating award-winning games, simulations, educational programs, and “gamified” training products. He has launched a new EA Sports franchise, built products for Nickelodeon, delivered a flight simulator for the United States Air Force, and created and maintained online educational programs to improve critical thinking, math, and vocabulary skills in addition to creating multiple interactive online courses about abuse prevention and human trafficking prevention.
He and his wife, Jacqueline, have been building educational products (and training others to use them) to prevent abuse since 2017, because their children were being groomed by a sex predator, whom they had known as a friend for years.
For their nonprofit, Radical Empathy Education Foundation, he developed an immersive Virtual Reality (VR) experience which, in 15 minutes, demonstrates how anyone could be psychologically manipulated into becoming a victim of human trafficking. They are currently designing and building additional VR applications for other clients, including Native American groups and job training organizations.
Type of Developer: VR
Type of Content: Custom, Off-the-Shelf
Device Support: HTC, Oculus / Meta
Industries: EDU (Higher-Ed), EDU (K-12), Healthcare / Medical, Soft Skills
Established: 2016
Headquarters: USA
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