Law Matters: A Conversation With Professor Robin Boyle-Laisure

In this installment of our Law Matters story series, Dean Jelani Jefferson Exum speaks with Professor Robin Boyle-Laisure about her scholarship and advocacy addressing cults and human trafficking. Drawing on nearly three decades of research and writing, Professor Boyle-Laisure is the author of Taken No More: Protect Your Children Against Traffickers and Cults (Bloomsbury 2025), a practical guide for parents and caregivers that includes a chapter on online predatory behavior. Their conversation explores what drew Professor Boyle-Laisure to this work and how her own research and writing inform her approach to teaching legal writing and drafting at St. John’s Law.

JJE: Taken No More reflects decades of research, writing, and advocacy around cults and human trafficking. What first drew you to this work, and why has it remained a central focus of your scholarship?

RB-L: After law school, I met an attorney who was litigating pro bono cases against cults and told him about my research on the Violence Against Women Act and other laws protecting women. He invited me to speak at a conference for mental health professionals, lawyers, and families who had lost loved ones to cults. During my lunchtime keynote, the room was completely silent, underscoring how integral the rule of law and legal remedies are to this work. So, I continued researching and presenting at conferences, as well as for nonprofit organizations and schools, and published several peer-reviewed articles. The idea for Taken No More sparked when a parent shared that she was scared to send her daughter away to college. I advised her to send her daughter off with an awareness of the dangers, but also with critical thinking skills.

JJE: Federal trafficking statutes were enacted in 2000. How did those legal developments shape the connections you were drawing, the questions you were asking, and the arguments you were making as a legal scholar?

RB-L: Because cults themselves are not illegal, the legal system hasn’t traditionally provided straightforward civil or criminal remedies for the harms they cause. The enactment of federal human trafficking statutes in 2000 significantly changed that legal landscape. In an article published in the Oregon Review of International Law and later reprinted in the peer-reviewed International Journal of Cultic Studies, I argued that these statutes could be used to prosecute cult leaders. The conviction of NXIVM leader Keith Raniere for sex trafficking and other criminal offenses is a highly publicized example of the usage I predicted.

JJE: At St. John’s, how does your work on cults and human trafficking inform how you help students analyze statutes, develop legal arguments, and write with clarity and precision?

RB-L: My work on cults and human trafficking has helped me research efficiently and give close readings to statutes and cases, skills I emphasize to the 1Ls I teach in Legal Writing. In my scholarship on cults and human trafficking, I use existing laws to demonstrate how they can be applied to new factual contexts—whether to support cult survivors or to assist prosecutors—even in the absence of established precedent. That flexibility in applying law to fact is a core skill first-year students develop. My research has also led me to question precedent, an approach I teach in my Scholarly Research and Writing class. Although the subject matter can be emotionally difficult, I find the writing process deeply pleasurable, and I share the joys of clear, precise writing with both my first-year and upper-level students.

JJE: You wrote Taken No More as a practical guide for parents, caregivers, and others. How did your background as a law professor influence how you translated complex legal concepts for a lay audience?

RB-L: As someone trained in the law, my first drafts of Taken No More began with the operative words of statutes and cases, including terms like “fraud, force, or coercion” from the trafficking statutes. Those early drafts read more like a law review article. For example, writing about online solicitation required an analysis of the Communications Decency Act and Section 230, which many argue confers broad immunity on online service providers. But I knew those legal details wouldn’t resonate with a lay audience. So, I spent a lot of time fine-tuning the proposal and early chapters, transforming dense legal text into prose that a non-lawyer could understand. That process—moving from technical legal language to clear, accessible writing—is the same skill I help my students develop by asking, “What are you really trying to say here?”

JJE: As conversations around coercion and exploitation continue to evolve, what do you hope Taken No More contributes to the broader public dialogue about recognizing these harms and the law’s role in addressing them? 

RB-L: I wrote the book to raise awareness of how these pernicious enterprises operate, while also offering guidance on how to raise a savvy child. With an estimated 500,000 predators trawling the internet daily in search of victims, our first line of defense is teaching children that if something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. I hope the book will foster ongoing dialogue between parents and caregivers and the children they seek to protect, and that it will serve as a trusted resource for policymakers and others looking for legal remedies to address these serious societal harms.