Human Trafficking with Detective Ricky Lynn | Part 4 of 4

A woman posted an ad to sell herself because she had no food at home and needed baby formula. That story sets the tone for a hard conversation with Detective Ricky Lynn about human trafficking as it exists in the real world: less Hollywood, more coercion built from vulnerability, addiction, homelessness, and fear.

We unpack how victims can live inside exploitation without even naming it, why trafficking overlaps with domestic violence and long-term relationship control, and what Lynn has learned from working cases tied to drug dependency and survival sex. He shares what he sees in treatment programs and why the numbers are far bigger than most communities want to admit. We also talk about the personal cost of this work, including secondary trauma for investigators and how repeated exposure to child sexual abuse material can change the way a person experiences everyday life.

The conversation goes wider into labor trafficking and debt bondage, including how organized networks move people across borders, impose “travel debts,” and use threats against family back home to enforce compliance. Lynn explains practical tools that can protect victims and witnesses in the United States, including continued presence, the T visa for human trafficking, and the role of victim advocates and immigration attorneys who can help even when someone is not ready to call police.

We end by facing the demand side head-on, from sting operations to online grooming risks, and why prevention has to include smarter reporting pathways like the National Human Trafficking Hotline and trusted local organizations. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs to hear it, and leave us a review so more people can find the show.

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Transcript

Content Warning And Series Context

Detective Ricky Lynn 0:00

Like that was probably the most gratifying thing for me is to sit down with somebody like that and learn about them. Sure. Because most people don't ask any questions. She said her sister was watching her baby and she needed to buy formula, and she has no food at her house and she didn't know what to do. And this was the last resort, is the last thing she ever wanted to do is sell herself.

Wendy 0:31

Morning. The podcast you're about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener description is advised.

Detective Ricky Lynn 0:41

Human trafficking with Detective Ricky Lynn, part four of four.

David 0:54

We have a content warning that rolls in front of every episode because we usually talk about sensitive topics, and we do not want to trigger anyone or make sure that we all understand that the topics are of an adult nature. The episode you are about to listen to or watch is perhaps one of the darkest we have produced, and we wanted to make sure everyone is prepared for what will be talked about. Human trafficking covers a wide spectrum of atrocities and evil. This interview goes to some of those dark places. While briefly, but they are disturbing all the same. Children should not be present when this one is played. Also, if anyone takes a hard pass at listening to or viewing this episode based on trauma they have experienced or have been close to, we understand completely and would recommend waiting this one out for one of our future drops in stories. We care deeply about all of our listeners and viewers and want to balance making educational content while at the same time protecting vulnerable people. Take care and thank you for your careful consideration on this.

Vulnerability Stories From The Field

Detective Ricky Lynn 2:04

We're here in this class, we're kind of stumped where to go. Uh explained what trafficking was to this lady, and the uh the the lady's response was Well, I guess my boyfriend traffics me, says that he's on pills, and when he uh runs out of pills and he don't have the money, he sells me to his friends to buy his pills. And she thought that was just a normal part of being homeless. Uh and then some of the uh class went into the goodwill and explained they caught the thing about vulnerability, so they go, we don't know where to go. Let's go to goodwill and ask them. Uh, because as police, I gotta say that I I know you worked in in poverty areas of town when you worked, that that mindset, that vulnerability mindset, a lot of people have trouble, police officers have trouble putting their their feet into those people's shoes.

David 3:19

Absolutely.

Detective Ricky Lynn 3:20

Uh so they went into Goodwill and uh like they're looking for this lady from Goodwill to go tell them where to go. And the lady from Goodwill says, Well, my dad used to have a pill problem when he was little. I'll do a five-minute video for you for class if you want to, about what my life was when I was younger when my dad sold me for sex for his pills. This is all in the same day.

David 3:45

Like they're stumbling across these things. Like if you looked up serendipity in the dictionary, those stories would be there.

Detective Ricky Lynn 3:51

So right now, if I do a lot of work with Mountain Comp down in Prestonsburg and Pikeville. And uh, when I went down to teach human trafficking, I started working with them four or five years ago. Uh I I I go to the class, I said, You probably would know maybe you've had a human trafficking victim in your program. And the manager raised his hand and he says, Every person in our program right now is a human trafficking victim.

Speaker 1 4:25

Wow.

Detective Ricky Lynn 4:26

Jails, drug rehabs. Uh so I came back from that and we did a survey of a thousand people at the Hope Center, uh, which is a drug rehab center uh here in town. And we didn't put any names, we didn't put anything, and we surveyed men and women, and 100% of the women screened positive for human trafficking, and 25% of the males screen positive for human trafficking. So we all know when you get into the dope world, it's a very violent world, but the question was: have you ever had to perform a sexual act against your will to get your your drugs? And 100% of the women said yes. So this is way bigger than most people think it is. Goes on every day. Uh, I taught Thursday, this past Thursday, and there was uh 600 people in the room, and I tell everybody if I got more than 50 people in a room teaching them, at least one person's a victim of human trafficking. And I probably had 20 people come up to me and and like I didn't ask them, like they come up to me and wanted to tell me that thank you, that I'm a victim of human trafficking. I just want to let you know. Uh like like I said, this is a hidden crime, and it's it's kind of like the women we were talking about involved in prostitution. How many of those women that were involved in street prostitution were raped weekly?

David 6:08

Oh, for sure. Yeah, I mean, again, never reported, very rarely reported, uh, and physically assaulted and any number of things robbed, right? Uh, yeah, very rarely. I mean, let's be honest with you, really. The only time they got reported is that they wound up in an ER and the staff looked and said this is a physical assault, and they've got a call. Uh crazy. You know, and you look at it, if if you go really wide on this, and it's just we know the reported crimes and we know what violent crime is and the ugly things, right? But then now you've got this thing that what do you what do you write that off to? That man, people are just really shitty to each other in a scale that we just assume. And I know that sounds naive, maybe, but it's like uh, and maybe broad, but it does open your eyes the idea that I think I think both of us question levels of humanity because what we've done for years, and and that's just part of the job and everything. We see all of that, but then it really makes you step back and you start looking again at the family abuse. And uh, you know, you and I would never turn one of our kids out for dope or or to to pay somebody back, but but it happens, and it happens, it's sad, it happens a lot.

Detective Ricky Lynn 7:20

Well, one, it's a training issue. It's like I didn't realize until I got out of patrol. We would go to a domestic violence call and we would get a snapshot of what's going on in somebody else's life, like a very brief 10 second. Yeah, yes. And now getting learning what I have, and I've read and read and read a lot more about family violence and violence in homes. Domestic most domestic violence people, that's a relationship crime.

Speaker 1 7:55

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 7:56

The whole relationship is domestic violence. So instead of me going in and going, Oh, he hit her or she hit him, now it's time to ask all these questions. And I never knew this until I got out of patrol. And most guys that are police officers and they work in patrol still believe it's that snapshot when they go, Well, no, nobody's hurt, we're gonna leave. And not ask any questions about, you know, 60% of the callers for domestic violence are children in the home.

Speaker 1 8:32

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 8:32

Who's the victim here? You know, I I stand in Walmart and hear parents argue on the phone back and forth about custody, and the kids are standing there, and I'm that's domestic violence.

Speaker 1 8:45

Oh, it is.

Detective Ricky Lynn 8:46

It is so uh but but I think a lot of people overlook many uh I'm I'm gonna put it this way. I'm invited to a lot of friends' parties. I'm not allowed to talk about work because nobody wants to believe that goes on.

David 9:03

Yeah, I think that's remember we there's this deniability as human beings that we like to have, like uh some cognitive dissonance, right? If I don't see it, it doesn't exist. Because I'm seriously, I said that stupid thing, but it's like it's actually it makes you think.

Detective Ricky Lynn 9:21

Well, uh, I mean, everybody loves your podcast. Most because well, yeah, but you talk about murder, right? But they don't many times you don't talk about the nitty gritty uh we stay off of things that we see that haunt you. I mean, I'm sure you have visuals that haunt you every day, like something pops up in your head and going, Oh, that was a horrible day.

David 9:52

Yeah, we got invited to a really neat thing on National Avenue right before the holidays, and uh they did a live podcast, uh, Chad and Erica, uh really cool people, and we did a panel. And uh the the one of the people on the panel hit me with that. Uh what what's the I think was like the wildest thing, craziest thing, maybe not even worse thing. And uh I've I've kind of got the deer in the headlight look. And because there's a part where it's you and I both know this, it's like uh uh a video tape head, video tape running across the head real fast of like there's so many. Like you're bombarded with it. And then like I finally, I think we rattled around, I think you answered a question or something because I wanted some more time. And and I think the way I finally said it is I told just like you I said, there's there's there's things that we see that we we I think we have an obligation in the community not to share. It's one thing I the only drawback to body one camera, let me hit this real quick, is there's things that go on in homes that for a long time we had a social contract that we didn't share, and now that that's a whole different. I don't want to take body cameras away, but that's a bad thing. That said, um uh there's some things that that just belong in that box. That did that, yeah, we could we could really go into a lot of detail. We could have a very macabre show, and we could, and unfortunately, I think there'd be a small percentage of people out there that would gravitate toward that, which is sickening. But um, yeah, there's a lot of it just that's left, and we'll just carry that with us and and whatnot.

Policing Blind Spots And Domestic Violence

Detective Ricky Lynn 11:18

So secondary trauma is real.

David 11:21

Oh, it's yeah, for sure. And in our industry, we could do a show on that. As a matter of fact, uh uh I've got Trevor willing to come in because it's like I mean, he's made his life out of that. I really want people to understand what that secondary trauma is on first responders because it it's real, it's cumulative, and it builds up. I've met people in the true crime production business that suffer from it simply by analyzing files and looking at cases. And because the closer you get, it's it the hotter the flame is.

Detective Ricky Lynn 11:52

Well, uh yeah, and uh it's it's like in my world, I've looked at so much uh CSAM that uh like it has changed like my rewired my brain. And uh like like I don't even like if you would hand me your phone and say here, I'm very careful not to manipulate manipulate anybody's phone. Like I'm afraid to look at like like uh I I was with a friend last night and he's showing me pictures of his daughter going to kid to kill you, to kill you in school dance, yeah, yeah, yeah. And uh she's in a pretty dress, it's down to her knees, and it's got really short sleeves, and I'm looking at it, going, how do you let your daughter dress like that? And like, like there was it was a picture you could print to hang on your wall in your living room, and I'm just I'm looking at it, and like so many bad images come to mind. I'm just going, and then I thought about it afterwards, and I'm going, uh like it is really twisted my brain that I think everything's wrong. Like, like I want my daughter to wear, you know, uh stockings, leggings, jeans, all the same day, all without like like I want you to wear turtleneck and long sleeves.

David 13:29

Exactly.

Detective Ricky Lynn 13:30

She shows up in the summertime in shirts and a t-shirt, and I'm just going, uh, you need to put some clothes on. Yeah.

David 13:36

It does that. You it it and it's a battle to not let it change the focus on the world completely. It's hard. I get that. And I wasn't around a lot of that. Thank God. I'd I mean, you know, we all see our a degree, but if that's like of the seven levels of hell, that's number eight.

Detective Ricky Lynn 13:54

I I mean, really, CSAM would be so that's the reason I retired, and uh I went to teach full-time, and then uh uh the police agency I work for come to ask me that they had a re uh a detective leave all of a sudden, and they had all these cases with victims on it, and they needed somebody with the certifications I had, and I told them no four times in a row, and finally they started talking about victims. And I said, uh, all right, but you only got me for two years. But the reason I left is like I was having like horrible dreams and stuff like that, but you know, nobody can that's an agency thing. Like, if you're working in special victims three, four years of an agency smart, you have to go somewhere else.

David 14:46

Amen. With with help and support, yes. I mean, I definitely we're finally getting better about that.

Detective Ricky Lynn 14:50

Yeah, we're finally well. I start going to I've like go to Trevor once a year just to go. Uh if it's you know, check me out because sometimes you don't see yourself like you see yourself. Amen. You you need somebody else to go, you need help.

David 15:08

It's kind of like a heart disease thing. It's running in the background, maybe. Uh powerful stuff. Well, again, moving on, what it we back to the human trafficking with adults. Uh,

Secondary Trauma And CSAM Reality

David 15:18

before we sat down, we we were talking about those methods and where they are. And uh without overglossing it, prostitution, dope sick, which again is the uh where the the the trafficker uh has somebody who's addicted, causes them to be addicted, and kind of strings that out about, you know, just dope sick is when you're going into withdrawals. And and the cure for the withdrawal is is more more drugs, and they do that with them. But I think that's the thing that we see a lot of and and know. But one of the things you talked about uh that I think was a shock to me a little bit, maybe I've heard it before, was the food industry. Uh go down that rabbit hole a little bit because I I think we all have a picture of the other thing, the massage parlors, the uh trade sex, the the places you talked about on the internet where you can buy people, but then the the food industry. What talk about that?

Detective Ricky Lynn 16:05

So when people come here from other countries, uh and everybody knows that for the last few years we've had open borders, and I'm not getting into politics Yeah, we don't have to get political at this point. But there was a lot of people that were brought to the United States. So if you come from another country, like if you come from China, uh the gangs in China, whether it's a triad or another gang, uh triads like an umbrella for all the gangs in China, uh will ship people here and they usually get shipped to Mexico and cross the border and come to the United States, and then they get moved to uh Chinatown in New York, Chicago, or LA and housed, and they get sent to different businesses, one of them being like Asian buffets or something like that. And I'm not picking on Asian buffets at all. I just have talked to enough Asian victims to know that they owe between $25,000 and $50,000. Uh like the people that sent them there will hold, you know, the the uh like your parents' deed for their house or their farm in exchange for you to pay them what your debt is. So let's say a person goes to an Asian buffet and they owe $25,000. So they go stay with the owner of the business's house, and then you work for tips, he doesn't have he or she doesn't have to pay you, uh, and then all your tip money goes back to pay your debt. Uh and that happens like that's from another country, how you get here, and like somebody I've had people go, Well, why wouldn't you just leave? And I said, We had a a case in Lagrange, and uh she was working at a Asian buffet in Lagrange, and she got pregnant while in transit. One of the people moving her here uh raped her, and she had a baby. Well, she loved her baby to no end, but two weeks after she had her baby, she got put on bed rest during her pregnancy, and uh the this only social media in China is a social media thing. Uh it's like Facebook on steroids, it's called WeChat. Uh, so the owner posted on WeChat that she's a bad employee and she wouldn't come to work. Well, two weeks after having the baby, two guys flew in from China and took her baby back to China until her debt was paid.

David 19:03

Oh, wow.

Detective Ricky Lynn 19:04

Like, this is serious. Like, like uh I've had a number of people that I've bought bus tickets for back to New York and sent them back to the traffickers because really bad things will happen at home in China to their parents. Uh, I've had people that we've we've uh charged somebody here and like their parents' house burned down the next night. Uh so they were very worried about their family back home. So they said, I'll tell you everything if you get me back on a bus to go back to New York today, so I can fulfill my debt to them. Uh, and that happens. I've I've had people from South America, I've said people from Mexico. If you're from Mexico, it's just less money that you owe. Uh but I don't care who you are, how you get moved here, uh, there's a price to come to the United States, and nobody looks at it, like everybody looks at that person coming here as the evil party. The evil party is usually way, way in the background where that person owes them money.

David 20:19

Uh I think the most exposure we get, and again, not politically on a border, is the uh the mules and stuff like that, the people that and we have a picture of that, uh especially if they're from South America or Mexico. But uh again, I don't think people have an appreciation for how organized that is in the background, how unscrupulous and evil it is to snatch that kid and take it back. And then that's the new leverage tool, right?

Detective Ricky Lynn 20:47

Yeah, yeah. Uh and and it could be anything, like, but they take your world, like most of the people that are coming here don't want to come here.

Speaker 1 20:57

Right.

Detective Ricky Lynn 20:58

Like they put them on a plane with a couple handlers, they land in Mexico. There's a couple handlers there. Now, the people from South America, uh actually, a lot of people you saw pictures of on the news with people on top of trains and stuff coming to the United States. Well, those people want to come here, right? But every place they stop is a like is owned by the cartel. So your bill depends on how many places you stop, how much food you consume, like a bottle of Gatorade is $5. Uh, for them to carry your kit or the luggage up mountainous terror, you know, terrain is is $150. And all that is tallied of what you owe when you get here. That train ride, think about that. There are hundreds of people on that train that costs them money to ride on top of that train.

David 21:57

I have no doubt.

Detective Ricky Lynn 21:58

So, so When you get here, you owe between ten and fifteen thousand dollars. And uh like like I said, that your family's being held hostage back home. And in the first part of my career before I got into human trafficking, I had people going, Yeah, I'm sending money back home, and I'm going, that is so sweet of you because the exchange rate, like you, you're helping your family out. That money's not going to their family.

David 22:22

That's I think we all have that. Like, okay, payday Friday, Western Union, right? They're lined up at the stop and rob at the convenience store, wherever it's at, and uh Western Union. That's that's the impression I've had forever. This is uh work really hard here and ship that money back.

Detective Ricky Lynn 22:37

And it's going to the cartel. Yeah. Like it is so organized that uh and and you say, what why don't we do something about it? So I tracked money from the uh I ended up working a massage parlor case, and I tracked the money and I did subpoenas, and like the owner of the massage parlor had something like 19 bank accounts, and I'm trying to figure out this this little old investigator from a small town, and now I'm dealing with IP addresses and bank accounts and routing numbers, and so I figured out and tracked the money all the way back to an accountant in New Jersey and tracked the money from the accountant in New Jersey all the way back into New York City, and then I had another case that went to the same place and went to the same place. So I contacted FBI in New York and said, Hey, can you go lay eyes on this place? Like all the money. So when they get there, it was a Chinese, it was like a uh Chinese UPS store. Okay, and all the money went into uh like these little boxes, and out of those little boxes, the money got shipped somewhere else, and like but it's perfect organized crime, sure.

David 24:03

Like leaves very few traces, or you had to go through that much work to locate cash.

Detective Ricky Lynn 24:07

It it took me over a year to get just to follow the money to where where it was going, and then it was a UPS store and fake names on the the post office boxes, and then uh they had somebody else come in, and what a better place to mail money.

David 24:25

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Detective Ricky Lynn 24:26

Like you don't even have to go outside.

David 24:28

Like in plain sight. Yeah. It it's kind of like when you talk about in a restaurant industry when they when they give their tips over, is uh that's easier because that tip money is kind of nebulous, it's there, it's not, and everything. And then you look back and it's like, okay, they they they don't take it out of the cost of the operation because the operation's got to look good. Yeah, the the books have to balance, they have to be able to show that there's income, you know, whether there's a profit or not. I've always said that over the years, even in our town, there were some little stores that would open up. And I remember I'd go into them and the inventory never changed. Do you know what I'm talking about? Like they would dust the Snickers bars, and it's like I'd walk out and I'm like, this is this is a money laundering thing. And that's that's a whole nother topic, maybe to do one day is money laundering about how sophisticated that is. But it's all about hiding in plain sight and making it difficult to track.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:20

Right. It's it's if you spend at face value, it's the victim's fault.

David 25:26

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Detective Ricky Lynn 25:28

And if you dig into it, there's 17 people standing behind a victim, and none of them do enough that you could ever charge criminally, and the last person is in another country.

David 25:41

Oh, there we go. There we go.

Labor Trafficking Debts And Money Trails

David 25:44

If if uh if you do locate uh a national and uh in either the sex trade or like the the food trade or the anything like that, and it's it's established that they are a victim and that they're is there anything in the United States or what are the mechanisms to try to improve that or protect that person?

Detective Ricky Lynn 26:02

So in the United States, if we find somebody that is a victim and or a witness in a case, uh immediately I can fill out a form and send it to homeland called continued presence. And as long as they're helping in the investigation, helping themselves, they will be allowed to stay here for uh during the investigation and prosecution of that crime.

Speaker 1 26:30

Gotcha.

Detective Ricky Lynn 26:31

If it's human trafficking, there's a visa called a uh T visa. And if it's another crime, they could use a U visa, but a T visa is strictly human trafficking. Takes about seven years. Uh, but what in the process of uh getting that approved, they're allowed to stay here. And they're uh if they they are a trafficking victim, they'll be allowed to be able to stay here in the United States if they wish to.

David 27:00

Do we do is there any services that follow through on it that you're aware of, or any attempts to give services?

Detective Ricky Lynn 27:06

So there's uh when I started this, there was very few organizations, but now there's a lot of organizations, and now we have immigration attorneys that are tied to uh the Department of Advocacy, uh, which is helping uh organizations such as Natalie Sisters or Refuge for Women, Scarlet's Hope, uh all these different organizations, uh Catholic charities. Catholic charities actually has their own attorneys that that help apply for those visas. So as long as a person's helping themselves, uh there's help for them. Uh but you know as well as I do, trying to get someone convinced that I'm gonna help you, that have been victimized their whole life, sometimes they don't they don't believe that what we're doing is right for them.

David 28:09

Well, every fundamental trust foundation with them has been broken over and over again, right? Yes. It uh and every patrol officer's run into that a million times to where um we could tell stories and I I'm like you, I remember buying bus tickets to put people to get them back closer to home back in the day. And uh and then some people just wouldn't bite. No, you could get on your knees and plead. And and then you understand though that when you put yourselves in their shoes, it's not likely they're gonna trust.

Detective Ricky Lynn 28:37

Well, it's like domestic violence. I mean, like I never for a long time I didn't realize, you know, I'm going, I get a lady or a man into a shelter, why don't they leave? Like, like, why don't they leave the person? But if you go back and stand in their shoes, like I was talking about, a narcissist is gonna put all the bank accounts as his name, all the cars in his name, all the house is in his name. I have three kids now, and that's dead, and now we got to deal with the trauma bonds about he's father of my child, he's he's my husband. Uh it's I think the average is someone leaves before they leave for good, leave seven times. Yeah. Because all those things.

David 29:25

Conditioning, grooming, the manipulation. And it's interesting. Uh a couple years ago we had Ja Hamilton, a lieutenant with animal control in Kentucky, had just passed a thing that on an EPO that a pet could be awarded. You know, and and it was like some people would be like, well, what's the big deal in that? Well, people can't see it, but we've got a beautiful 90-pound German Shepherd in this room. And if somebody's really attached to their pet, that could be the control factor. Uh, we hadn't, and that was on the wings of that case where the the two men were in a relationship and and one of them would put the dog in the oven to punish the other guy and burn its paws. And so uh comes back to where we started. It's not the perceived value you and I have in the leverage, it's to that person. So you're not gonna look at it and say, one more time, that's a 50 cent bottle of generic order from the dollar store, but somebody was willing to change their life over that.

Detective Ricky Lynn 30:18

You know, and the value I I grew like I said in the beginning, that I grew up in a small town. My dad owned his own pharmacy. We weren't rich, but we were far from poor. And I thought I knew what and I worked in a very impoverished area for a long time. And I I leaving that, I'm thinking, okay, I know what poor is. I had no idea what poor is. Like the mindset of a person that think about a dad or a mom that can't feed their children. Like that's a whole you're talking about beating yourself up?

David 31:03

Sure. Completely debilitating. Because you and I know in our station of life, just not being able to get something, a want instead of a need, starts to eat at you. And then you gotta imagine again, that's nothing like not being able to provide a true need, like food or water or heat.

Helping Victims Food Formula And Hotlines

Detective Ricky Lynn 31:20

We were doing a sting in Louisville, and a lady came to the sting, and uh I asked her why she was doing this. She had posted an ad online to sell herself online, and uh like that was probably the most gratifying thing for me is to sit down with somebody like that and learn about them. Sure. Because most people don't ask any questions. She said her sister was watching her baby and she needed to buy formula, and she has no food at her house, and she didn't know what to do, and this was the last resort, is the last thing she ever wanted to do is sell herself. So we had advocates at this thing, and we took her to the food pantry and showed her how to get free food and free baby formula and to feed her baby and take care of herself. This woman cried for two solid hours. So we took her home with her food and she came back to her sting to introduce. She had two little children and a baby. Introduce her children to the nice officers that were helping her family. She says, I thought it was important when I tell this story to my kids about pull this is how police should be.

David 32:53

It's it's it's really how police are most all the time. We don't get that real. I mean, we that's a whole nother thing, is it?

Detective Ricky Lynn 32:59

No, we have police buying groceries, we have police buying bicycles, we do shop with a cop, we do uh, and it's usually a family thing. They, you know, the police officer is bringing his wife and kids to help give to other people, but the news that doesn't sell in the news.

David 33:17

No, it won't. There's a whole nother narrative to that. Uh, if somebody thought that they saw something in a family member, a friend, or somebody they encountered and thought that uh human trafficking was a remote possibility, what are some of the things they could do to try to make somebody aware of that, to have it investigated, or to do that?

Detective Ricky Lynn 33:36

So when the trafficker is gonna do a storyline to the victims about police, right? They're gonna put you in jail, they're gonna do this, they're gonna do that. And we're talking about vulnerabilities. So people are believing this. So a lot of people don't want to report to police. So my suggestion is uh we we have a couple options. We have the national human trafficking hotline that you can text or call. You can just Google it and it'll come up with a number and they'll refer you to a place in Kentucky, or you can just Google the way the internet now is Google Local Human Trafficking Uh Advocate in Lexington, and it would come up with the well or Natalie Sisters and call them and have the like like those organizations will come get you if you need help. And if you don't want to report to the police, you don't have to. And you'll get the same help. Uh it's nice to have the police involved because it'd be nice to stop what's going on to other people. But uh the number one thing for victims is help for the victim. Oh, for sure. Uh and then, you know, from the advocate that helps you, uh they're not gonna force you to do anything. They're not gonna force you into treatment. They're gonna they're gonna try to empower you and let you make your own decisions. Uh and and that that is the victim, and I say victim, that is the survivor's walk. And the point of an advocate, the point of police is to walk next to you and support you through your journey.

David 35:25

Absolutely. That's the way it should be.

Wendy 35:27

Well, I I must say, Ricky, I I my eyes have been open. I mean, I thought I knew what it was, but I didn't realize. I think most people who don't know, they just think it's all a profit thing. You don't realize that it's a need that causes that. But you know, it makes sense once you explain it, but I don't think people think that deep into it. Um and then you're just stuck. And you see these flyers now. Like I know when we go out to Las Vegas on the back of the ladies' restrooms, and I don't know if the men have it as well, but it and that's another thing that I never thought about men being sex trafficked. You just don't think that you think women and children, unfortunately, but I I'm so glad you came because it's opened up my eyes, and I hope that a lot of other people are sitting there thinking, wow, I never thought of it like that.

Detective Ricky Lynn 36:28

So you have to look at the demand side. Uh and I got a funny little story. We were doing a ha human trafficking conference in Louisville, and there was about 200 police officers there. So out of all the cars in the parking lot of this conference center, there's probably a hundred Mark cruisers, and uh we went into one of those fake accounts and put pictures and posted ourselves for sale, and the trafficker actually drove into the parking lot and up to the front door to pick a 12-year-old up to be trafficked. The demand when we were in Louisville, we did four stings in a row. Uh we averaged a thousand phone calls a day to buy a kid.

David 37:32

Unbelievable.

Detective Ricky Lynn 37:33

Uh eight eight hours. Like, not even quite eight hours. And I I believe if we had at that point, we're using the software that we've always like the narcotics guys use. I believe it only allowed a thousand phone calls.

David 37:51

It could have been.

Detective Ricky Lynn 37:52

Uh, it was limited by the software that we had. Uh, but it was unbelievable. Every walk of life. Uh, one of the lead orthopaedic surgeons for kids in Louisville, uh, there were some business guys, there was uh normal blue-collar workers. Uh the thing that amazed me, they were mostly fathers. They had kids at home.

David 38:22

Man, we're just keep going into different twisted levels of this, too.

Detective Ricky Lynn 38:26

So uh, but it's the the demand is so high, this will never go away.

David 38:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1 38:32

Wow.

David 38:32

And in routing it back to the the island with Epstein, I think maybe people, even though they don't have the breadth of it, intuitively, everybody knows it. Now take up uh people visiting, I get that, but now put that out, international water, secluded area. I mean, the ability to, let's be honest, dispose of anything that would get in your way of which would be human beings. And uh take that. There's no re I think that's maybe, maybe people that part of that hunger uh is uh knowing something horribly could be down there, and probably was.

Detective Ricky Lynn 39:05

Well, think about uh nobody's ever shut down the uh child sex trade in Bangkok, and we have Americans go fly there to uh go be with kids. Yes, exactly. And that's gone on, I think, my whole life. Yeah, exactly.

David 39:20

And now it kind of gets memorialized on the internet as a funny thing.

Detective Ricky Lynn 39:24

I mean, it now that's how desensitized people are becoming so uh it's just uh the the the demand is high, the the the adult world is the largest, like I said, the largest uh largest company. I don't know what you call it, but in the whole world. So I they make a lot of rules for the internet that we that uh we we don't we don't have any control and you know, like the parents in the world, but but it's it's uh it's and you know we have parents now that babysick kids on their phones were buying smartphones for children. What's what's funny is I went to a training session the other day, and in China the only phones that kids are allowed to have are flip phones, and in all these new high-end rich people schools, they're only allowed to have flip phones, so the kids don't have smartphones, so they can't be groomed or access to pedophiles. Uh we've I've gone to complaints this year with kids watching pornography on a school bus going to elementary school, and if you don't think that's grooming on the backside of that, oh sure, trying to push boundaries of these kids in the future. I mean, there's nothing more than like the porn industry would like is to change the age of consent.

David 41:04

Oh, for sure. And you're right, those places that try to nick it down to 14. There's Nambla. I mean, there's some pretty, pretty wild stuff that so far we most of us agree is pretty sick. Hopefully we continue with that too. Uh

Demand Side Stings And Online Grooming

David 41:18

super commendable work, very well spoken. I you know, it's funny when we're sitting there talking about it, uh a good friend of both of ours that passed away got coming on four years ago, Ray DA. Um, I don't know if you know it or not, but even after he left the Commonwealth Attorney's Office that last couple of years, and we'd sit down and talk, human trafficking came up all the time. And and he was really, even though he was out of the business, you could tell it was really working on Ray. Is that I think he was starting to just grasp how bad it is, especially in the in the children world. But Ray talked about he would we would talk and he would just say, hey, at some point, there people gotta get on top of this human trafficking thing. And it and again, kind of like a silent rumble that most people don't think about.

Detective Ricky Lynn 42:02

I think behind the, I mean, that's we had a police chief that had some forward thinking and made me the first full-time human trafficking detective, and everybody thought that was kind of foolish, but I think I think Ray had some could have some say in the background. Uh, and then what's what's funny is that so then I retired and went to work for the AG's office, and I'm at a meeting, and uh my buddy at the state police says, Well, I guess we're gonna have to assign somebody full-time to it now. So we need many, many more investigators for human trafficking. Amen. Uh, but the state police has uh three dedicated people to human trafficking, and they cover half the state, and their main purpose is to help local law enforcement with cases. Uh, but I gotta say that uh my buddies in in J Town, uh Paul Maskey was riding a bike in in J Town during the summer, and that was his assignment patrol and bike patrol, and he investigated two or three cases all by himself. Uh, like he needed help at different times, but his whole beat was all the hotels in J Town, and he started realizing like a robbery report for a phone for a girl. Uh now it the it's the trafficker taking the phone away from the girl, and he started talking in their language and he built trust, and he ended up solving a couple human trafficking cases from his bicycle.

David 43:48

Oh, he'll go far.

Detective Ricky Lynn 43:49

So uh uh I have some phenomenal friends that uh across the state that that do remarkable work.

David 43:58

Yeah, I have no doubt. It's neat to see it coalescing and coming together, being taken seriously. I think Kentucky State Police is an extremely forward-thinking organization, anyway. Let's be honest. I mean, that the that's an incredible group of men and women there, and their leadership is fantastic to be able to do that. And in the business, you're right, is that whenever police department starts something new, even puts their toe in the water, every other cop is like, bad, you know, uh try being a DARE officer. Nobody gets off your back for that. Am I right or wrong?

Detective Ricky Lynn 44:26

Well, yeah, you know, they come out with that study about DARE doesn't impact a lot of people, but for the amount to be to have kids be able to spend uh uh, you know, six months with a police officer, I I don't, I don't care what the stats say. That is that pays for itself tenfold.

David 44:46

Oh yeah, a whole nother topic. Yeah, we belong there, we're recruiting, we're and let's take it and wrap it into what we're talking about today. That might be the influence a kid needs to take that deep breath to come forward when they're being abused. And because of that trust, right, is to defeat all of that, is to rationally if somebody's telling them the police are bad and everything to be able to say, Well, I go to school every day, and officer Lynn's there, and he sits down and we have a carton of chocolate milk together. All of that is super powerful. Thank you so much. Super well spoken. Maybe you can come back one time and take some cases that have been cleared and we can uh talk about them. You know, we'll make sure we stay around is to actually break those down um and do that. But uh Hugh, I've learned a lot too. I mean, there you you can spend your life in this business, Ricky, and you'll learn something if you keep your eyes open. Uh, especially if it's not a specialty that we engaged in or whatnot. So thank you for coming. Appreciate it.

Detective Ricky Lynn 45:42

I appreciate you guys.

Why More Investigators Must Step Up

David 45:47

The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolice Podcast.com, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters, and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store, where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast Swag. We are also on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are here impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars in a written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts. Make sure you set your player automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop. And please tell your friends.