Curious Worldview

Bruce Ladebu | This Man Has Rescued +2,400 Children From Slavery

• Bruce Ladebu • Episode 181

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Out Of The Slave Fields - Bruce Ladebu (Book)

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At this very moment there are over 40,000,000 people around the world trapped in slavery. This is a number larger than at any point before in history… and perniciously, a figure that grows everyday. 

Millions among them are children. And then millions of those are living in the most devastating conditions imaginable. 

Bruce Ladebu runs an initiative called Children's Rescue where he and his team identify and then extract those very children living in the most destitute environments.

To date, the Children's Rescue initiative have rescued over 2,400 children.

Share this podcast with someone. The better informed we are about this reality, at the very least, the more discerning we can be in our consumption that feeds this industry. 

  • 00:00 – The Problem Of Modern Slavery
  • 04:09 - How Bruce Got Into This Line Of Work
  • 06:12 - 40,000,000 Slaves
  • 12:40 - Slavery Growing As An Industry
  • 23:43 - How Someone Ends Up A Slave
  • 30:55 - Bruce's Team & Children's Rescue Initiative
  • 34:22 - The Extraction Process
  • 38:50 - Bruce's Trauma From Exposure To This
  • 42:35 - De-Escelate Communication With Slave Owners
  • 46:21 - Poisoned 
  • 48:25 - Camera More Powerful Than The Gun
  • 50:30 - Work At The Institutional Level
  • 53:47 - Amsterdam
  • 55:20 - How Trauma Effects Different Children
  • 1:02:15 - Slavery In The Everyday Things We Consume
  • 1:06:07 - How Well Known Is Modern Slavery?
  • 1:18:15 - The Sound Of Freedom
  • 1:10:21 - Country Bruce Wants To Add To His Operations
  • 1:11:05 - Final Words From Bruce (Affecting Starfish Metaphor)

🍻☕: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/ryanhogg

SPEAKER_00

At this very moment, there are over forty million people around the world trapped in slavery. This is a number larger than at any point before in history, and perniciously, as well as a figure that grows every day. Millions among them are children, and then millions of those are living in the most devastating conditions imaginable. Bruce Laderboo runs an initiative called Children's Rescue, where he and his team identify and then extract those very children living in the most destitute environments. To date, the Children's Rescue Initiative, which is Bruce and his team, have rescued over 2,400 children. And, as the guest today, Bruce discusses the modern map of slavery, some of the cultural and economic forces that allow for slavery in the modern world, the extraction process of saving these children, and then what happens to the children after they're saved. This is a 90-minute episode, so there is, of course, much around these themes as well, including both Bruce's trauma and the children's trauma from undergoing these experiences, and even as well the Jim Ezekiel movie Sound of Freedom, which Bruce comments on. This podcast works alongside two other episodes we've done before on slavery, the first being with Matthew Friedman, that's episode 152, and Lisa Christine, episode 160. Links to both of those are in the description. And on the latter point, Lisa put together one of the most moving and horrific TED talks explaining the realities of modern slavery, which you should consume. So do share this podcast with someone. The better informed we are about this reality, at the very least, the more discerning we can be in our consumption that feeds this industry. In the newsletter, as the top link in this uh podcast description, I will publish shortly an article that summarizes these three episodes on slavery together, but as well right now available to you is a dedicated post on each of these podcasts. There is some really heavy stuff that Bruce addresses here, and it can seem like such an insurmountable problem, but hanging for Bruce's metaphor at the end for why he does all of this, at the very least, it was very affecting on me. And here is Bruce. So when I wrote to you to ask to join this interview, you said you just needed to head to Africa for an operation. How much can you say about that?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it went really well. We uh were working in a couple different uh locations in Africa. Uh you know, we kind of specialize in going into places where uh others you know don't want to go. So in this particular case, we were rescuing children in a remote area. Uh we had to go by boat, and the children were enslaved in the fishing industry, in mining, in agriculture, uh, you know, uh, like uh, well, it was a lot of drug fields, so it was cartel driven. But we were able to get uh I think eight children out of that one and uh get them into a good safe location. And uh the uh the challenges were of course transportation, you know, going across these bodies of water and the heat and uh and then making sure that these kids were taken care of. They they're all highly abused, they get beaten a lot, they don't eat right. Uh most of them have lice and worms, and so we get them medical care also. We actually had a doctor traveling with us on that one.

SPEAKER_00

And how do you catch wind of these uh situations? Do you rely on a big intelligence network? We do.

SPEAKER_01

Uh you know, I've been doing this for full time for 15 years, but I started in the 90s where uh I was traveling in the former Soviet Union, and uh we had heard about human trafficking, that uh the KGB, when it you know the wall came down, they became the new mafia, and it was just common. Uh so we started looking into it, nothing I could do. I I had no idea what I was doing back then. So I kept researching, you know, looking for people to help me, but I couldn't find anybody anywhere back then. Um, even when I started in 2009 full-time, there was very few people doing this, and now there's thousands of organizations. But the uh uh so I I've just had to learn as I go, you know, and it's been a it's been a learning process. Um I'm not sure I answered your question there, but kind of got sidetracked.

SPEAKER_00

Well, much of the book was sort of Pakistan and Asia, um, but now clearly it's Asia, uh sorry, Africa as well. Uh is your network just sort of growing over time and you're told, hey Bruce, there's this situation here, you'd be, you know, the right outfit to extract these children, or is there other Yeah, we've developed that intelligence network, and I get calls.

SPEAKER_01

I was just talking to somebody the other day, and I said, you know, I get a call at least every day, if not every other day, from somewhere in the world saying, We need your help. We need, you know, my my my daughter, you know, 10-year-old was kidnapped and they're gonna marry her off to a 70-year-old, or uh, you know, these kids are missing, or they've gone, you know, rebels came into a village and took them. There's some I can help with, and much of it I can't due to financial limits uh limitations. Uh, but also some of it's just too big. You know, we we do what we can and we've been pretty successful in how we do things, but uh so all those phone calls and all those contacts and all the travel that I've done worldwide, you know, I've made all the contacts to become our intelligence network, and they're the ones that let us know where these kids need to be rescued.

SPEAKER_00

Is the broad figure of 40 million people right now living in modern slavery still accurate, or is that number larger?

SPEAKER_01

Well, there's different numbers out there. Um so I I I think 40 million is pretty accurate, but it's growing. It's if it's not now, it will be the world's biggest illegal business because it's bypassing you know drugs and illegal, you know, arms and all that, because it's a renewable resource for the for the traffickers.

SPEAKER_00

And in that 40 million, there's distinctions between the sort of severity of the slavery from someone is uh taking care of a family in a house and maybe have their passport held hostage all the way through to the worst of the worst, which you profile in your book. This is an experience from one of the slaves in the book. He this is in Pakistan. He was put in a car, taken to a hospital basement. He already worked at a brick kiln, by the way, had a horrible experience day to day with sexual, physical abuse and all the rest. But he's taken to this hospital basement, told to drink something, then wakes up hours later uh with a giant scar around his kidney. So presumably he's had an organ taken from him, and then was returned directly to the brick kiln and beaten and passed out from the pain. Um, so this on the sort of spectrum of different types of slavery, you know, this is so medieval. How how prevalent is that most horrific version of slavery, would you say, out of the 40s?

SPEAKER_01

I think it's growing, you know. Just about everywhere we go, we hear about organ harvesting. And you know, ISIS, ISIS was taking people, children and adults and harvesting their organs, and I mean multiple organs, so that means that they did not survive. Uh and in a lot of the countries that I've been in, you we hear from pretty reliable sources that uh this is a growing industry. You know, I've witnessed it some, I've heard about a lot of stories firsthand from people who said, you know, their children were taken away and never to seen again, and they they heard rumors that you know the organs were taken. Well that that's assumption there, but uh we we know for sure that there is there's a growing uh international market for organs.

SPEAKER_00

Obviously the exact figures are impossible to know, but is there a percentage of the 40 million you'd be comfortable allocating to that type of barbaric medieval slavery? Uh uh right now today.

SPEAKER_01

I wouldn't have any idea. Uh I would not know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Could you put then uh modern slavery on a map for us? Just geographical regions and explain the prevalence of the slavery here, but also the types of slavery, what industries are they serving? So it's a very broad question, but I think it'd be really useful to understand just by looking at a map of the world, where are the hotspots? Sure.

SPEAKER_01

There's an organization called the Global Slavery Index that lists the percentage of people in slavery in every nation in the world. And other sources would indicate that there is probably no place on the planet except maybe Antarctica that doesn't have uh slavery, whether it's in a uh you know the form of domestic servitude, uh whether it's sex slavery, uh whether it's you know labor slavery, uh it's pretty much everywhere now. The the the bulk of the slavery would take uh place in the Middle East and Asia. But when you look at the global slavery index, you'll see that it's just everywhere. Africa is growing. Uh, and some of the nations are really growing in slavery. Uh it's becoming a you know a new big business. So the United States, you know, sex trafficking is big here. There is some labor slavery like in the agricultural fields and with migrants and so on. Uh but it uh it's a it's a growing thing here. Uh, one of my board members is a founding member of Homeland Security, and he uh uh he's retired now, but he told me that uh they were they were seeing uh a big rise in family trafficking, where parents were selling their children for sex to get money for drugs. He said that was really increasing here in the United States.

SPEAKER_00

So Asia is Middle East, Africa's growing. Could you also highlight some specific countries or regions?

SPEAKER_01

Uh yeah, Central Africa is growing in slavery. Uh in Asia, uh it's it's everywhere. India is estimated to have 17 million people in some form of slavery. Pakistan has millions of people in slavery. Uh Bangladesh, uh, you get into uh other parts of Asia such as Thailand and those, and they're known for sex tourism. When you get over into the Middle East, of course, I just mentioned Pakistan, but pretty much all those countries uh have quite a few people in modern slavery. I haven't verified this yet, but uh I've had two different people who uh live over in uh the Dubai area, and they said that uh they found evidence that Dubai, a lot of the city was built on slave labor. Uh and so we're just seeing the growth, but uh Central America, uh we're seeing a lot of growth there. Haiti, because of the the uh craziness that's going on there, we're seeing a lot of uh kids trafficked. Um you know, I had the uh the US Coast Guard contact me a few years back and want some help on a project, and we had uh we had done some discovery in the Dominican Republic where we found that some party boats were loading up some girls for sex slavery and uh heading toward Miami. Some of the girls arrived, but some of them were uh uh were killed along the way. And uh uh so they uh they were doing an investigation on that, or they were supposed to at least.

SPEAKER_00

What's your explanation for why it's growing? You mentioned there a couple of times it's getting worse in these races.

SPEAKER_01

Um Well, it's a renewable resource. You use drugs one time, but you can use a human over and over and over again, and uh make you know tens and tens of thousands of dollars off one product. Um I think that is the it's money is the bottom line. You know, it's the fact that really people value money more than they do, you know, human life. And so when you see like a movie, you know, taken where you see like that was in in that case it was a Russian mafia that was trafficking girls, and uh, you know, they uh these cartels, they're they're using uh you know humans to generate massive amounts of profit.

SPEAKER_00

Do you have any explanation for the moral implication of this? Because if someone were to take a drug, they inherently know that it's got a filthy supply chain, but they're so far removed from all the violence attached to it therefore you can kind of, I don't know, maybe make some moral equation that's actually not that bad. But in in consuming various types of human trafficking, uh it's it just feels like it must be an in uh a significantly more intense experience, one which I would assume most people morally wouldn't be ready to do. Yet somehow if humans are a renewable resource and slavery is growing, maybe there's a gap between morality over time to now. One first, is that a question that makes any sense at all? And if it does, what's your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01

Well, pornography is is a huge driver of human trafficking, and now you have millions and millions of porn sites easily accessible to any human being. You know, like here in the US, the biggest viewers of pornography are 11 to 14-year-old boys. And if you think of the kind of pornography out there, then that's a perverse generation that's rising up, and they're gonna seek that gratification in in some way. So pornography is a is a big driver of human trafficking.

SPEAKER_00

Um, you know, I don't I do like in the in the acceptance of it, you mean? Or the actual consumption of it as well?

SPEAKER_01

I think both. Yeah, both. You know, we've accepted it, but it's the consumption of it, it's that's uh, you know, some of this things that I've seen uh in our investigations, you know, child pornography, it's there's millions of sites out there, and some of it has child pornography on it. Uh who can explain that? You know, what what kind of normal human being would abuse a child? Who can explain a pedophile? You know, why would somebody be driven to have sex with a five-year-old? Um, you know, we the youngest girl we ever rescued out of a brothel was three years old, and the average age is eight to ten, eleven to twelve, um, in in that range. So um I don't understand the mentality behind it, but it's growing. When you go into some of these countries and we go to we go to cafes and we go to hotels, we go to uh you know uh little restaurants, all of them, I won't say 100%, but most of them will have children working, washing dishes, and then they have to, they're used for sex at night. Uh, you know, what kind of what kind of society you know accepts that? But they do, you know, especially in Asia. Uh in the Middle East, I've I've witnessed uh and talked to families who have been highly, you know, uh abused and tortured and you know their their children sold you know sold off for marriage or you know use in brothels. Um it's just you know I don't I don't understand. I can't identify with it, but I'm sure there's a psychological evaluation of why they do that. Uh but it's nothing I understand.

SPEAKER_00

We'll get to some of the cultural forces driving slavery. Um, but first you mentioned earlier the uh city of Dubai being built by largely slavery. There was a great is rather a great uh Swedish journalist called Martin Schubert who profiled the Nepalese workers who were building uh Doha's uh stadiums for Qatar 22. And it was a particularly good uh project because he traced down the families in Nepal who had their elder son most of the time um go leave to Qatar to um participate in building these projects, and then he went through Qatar and Saudi Arabia as well and tried to track down as many of these people that had gone. And a shocking amount of them had died, first of all, but then um also a shocking amount who he ended up tracking down weren't paid, basically, what the agreement was, and were also extorted while they were there, so they ended up going home with almost nothing if they got to go home at all. And he even came across an olive farm in Saudi Arabia, and a Nepalese worker had almost forgotten that he uh he his own language. He he'd been in in servitude as a slave for so long that he had forgotten almost, you know, where he came from and and who he was. But I just thought it's a worthwhile highlighting because it's such a brilliant piece of journalism because it is first hand reporting the whole way through from the families to the individuals at the other end.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we we were in Africa one time and uh met a man whose wife was in Dubai and they couldn't get her back, and she was there not being paid and made to work, uh cleaning rooms. Uh she f she eventually got back to Africa, but it took a few years to get her out of there.

SPEAKER_00

So you mentioned uh it's growing in Africa, Asia, Middle East. It would be easy to make a broad cultural explanation for slavery, but these are pretty distinctly different cultures. So it's a two-part question. But the first being, what is your explanation for the cultural forces that allow for slavery?

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's a that's a tough topic, and uh I'm not sure I want to broach some of that because it would be religious-based, but uh it's been accepted in some of those cultures forever. You know, they uh whether it's Pakistan or India, uh, this has been going on for you know many, many, many generations, centuries. Uh you know, slavery goes back as far as you know humanity has existed. So I think in those particular cases, uh they've just rolled with that cultural norm. And as I said in my book, I think some of these economies would fold up if slavery was actually outlawed, because there's so many. I mean, I've been in places where there are literally hundreds and hundreds of slaves. Uh and I talked to this the like a brick owner, brick kiln owner in Pakistan or somebody in, you know, in the Asian countries, and I'll say, Why why can't you, you know, mechanize? Why do you have to have slaves? And one person said, Because uh in the and it was in this case, he goes, Because the we have a right to own the Christians, and that was a Christian uh population that was enslaved. Uh and that was probably part of his religious beliefs, but also it's just been the culture for for a very long time.

SPEAKER_00

So to be clear, this was a uh Muslim who took uh as his slaves the Christian minority within Pakistan, and culturally he said he had the right to take these slaves because of his beliefs. Was it that same owner? There is such a I mean, there are so many devastating anecdotes from the book, but one that particularly stayed with me. I don't know if it was this particular brick kiln owner in Pakistan, but it was one of the various brick kilns in Pakistan. Um you came to the realization that they would throw the dead slaves' bodies into the brick kiln because the owner um didn't want to stain his land with the slaves. That's correct.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we were told that in multiple locations when we ask what happens when the children die. Some sometimes they're they're left to be eaten by the dogs, which is a horrible, horrible thing to even think about, but many of the times they throw them in the in the furnaces and get rid of them that way. We've documented that. We've got interviews, you know, from many slaves that talk about the details of the atrocities that have taken place um across Asia and and the Middle East.

SPEAKER_00

I know you said uh you didn't necessarily want to address part of the cultural question, so Forgive me if this is too l much of a leading question, but in say the Indian uh seventeen million slaves that are documented there, is it equally distributed among the Hindis and the Muslims? Or is there one part of the culture that is more prevalently taking slaves?

SPEAKER_01

Well, in India it would be uh the Hindu populations, I believe. That's what we've seen so far. There are there are Muslim uh populations there, but uh it's predominantly a Hindu uh nation. But when what we have found when we get into the areas where there's brick kilns, it's mostly Muslim owners. When we get into areas of factories and cigarette plants and places, you know, like that, it was it was Hindu owners.

SPEAKER_00

And in Africa, with the Central African countries, mostly cartels.

SPEAKER_01

Mostly the it was cartels that uh are driving the slave trade there. And in the one area we were, we found that some of the children, according to uh uh an official there, he said some of the children will be taken across the water and sold uh to uh slave traders. And we we could not verify that, but he was he was very adamant. He goes, yes, this happens, and and we didn't have the time to you know try to follow that up, but he was a pretty high-level official, and he was very uh very passionate about the fact that these kids were taken and sold to other countries. These were these to be African children being sold.

SPEAKER_00

And so you mentioned earlier, um, and also throughout the book, some of the reasons why people might end up in slavery in the first place. Uh, maybe you uh fall into some type of debt because you need to buy some type of medicine for one of your children, and now it's a question of almost um triage, you know, do we sell one child to sort of pay off the debt? Um, or in some cases it's like a drug-addicted parent, do we sell our kids off to feed our own addiction? To cases like in West Africa, Mikey Mistradi, a Danish journalist who has been looking into the chocolate supply chain, he found a couple of kids who were kidnapped from a village not too far away, found years later, um, you know, just shells of of their former selves working in these um in these small cocoa plantations. So the various ways people get into slavery.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there's a lot of different ways. Uh one of the main uh ways for labor slavery is debt bondage, where they have borrowed some money, like a poor population, a poor family. I'll give you an illustration. In Asia, we rescued a family we call the the um Brickfield 5. It was a father and three children, uh, father, mother, three children, and the mother had gotten sick, they were very poor, so he went to a local business person and borrowed um uh an amount of money. It wasn't a very big amount of money, like maybe $25, to get her some medical care, and he could not pay it back, so they were put in a brick field, and uh during their time there, they had to work all day uh turning bricks and stacking bricks, and then the mother and the daughter, there was two daughters, but the the older daughter and the mother were uh prostituted out at night. Um we found out about it. I talk about it in the book. Um it was one of uh under the chapter of catch dog, and uh then we got them out, uh, but they would have never been able to get out of there because it's a thousand percent interest, so twenty dollars becomes you know, whatever, and they can never pay it back. It's impossible.

SPEAKER_00

And then they almost enter into generational debt sometimes.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we've rescued um uh three generations of slaves where the grandfather, you know, was got into slavery, and then his children were born into slavery, and their children, the grandchildren, were born into slavery, and it might go on for you know a long time because uh sometimes they would borrow money from the slave owner to go get food, and that would be compounded in there. Um, so it's a very evil system that they can never work their way out of.

SPEAKER_00

I just want to linger on the cultural point um for one more moment. You know, I I I can understand uh if you are a devout believer and your religious text says you have the right to behave this way, why you might end up behaving that way. But in other cases, how can you make sense that the individuals involved in taking these children and then abusing these children are not uh making at least a marginally better moral decision? So so the question is, right, if you're informed by your religious beliefs, sure, there's plenty of evidence throughout time of people behaving a certain way under that, you know, false pretense. But if you're not operating under some religious belief, like what is what is happening in the culture that would allow for this to happen at such a scale where you're getting a call, one of a thousand organizations, every day told that there are these people that need to be rescued.

SPEAKER_01

Well, it goes back to the to the uh you know the money issue. So some of the slave owners that I've met, you know, we've tracked down where they live, and they live in very opulent houses, but yet their slaves are sleeping in the dirt. Uh they're making a lot of money, a lot of money. Uh so I yeah, I think it just goes back to the the money question and whether it's here in the United States selling girls for sex trafficking or uh children in in Pakistan that are being used to make bricks or a rope or whatever, or uh kids in the agricultural you know field, uh adults in South America that are working the rock quarries, it just is all driven by by money.

SPEAKER_00

Right. So then the economic point. Um then, if there's economic incentive for this, is there not better enforcement or regulation to sort of nip it in the bud?

SPEAKER_01

Well, when I talked to a a group of homeland security guys here in the US, they they told me they're severely underfunded. That's why they wanted us to help them at that time. When you go to other other countries, the laws are on the books. Like I would in Pakistan, I would say to a slave owner, uh, you know, why do you do this? Why and and they would always laugh or mock me, but they would always end up in the conversation saying, if the government doesn't care, why should we? So in Pakistan, the law is on the books, it's just not enforced. In other countries, you've got corrupt government officials. Uh, in one nation, I think the vice president was found out to be part of a you know a trafficking network. So if the police aren't in empowered and enabled with uh with the right laws and and the right funding, they don't do anything. There's a lot of times we go to places and we're the catalyst that gets them going. Uh like in Ghana, we're working with the police and have a great relationship with the head of national trafficking. And but he would tell me, goes, we're really limited in our funding. Uh we would do much more, but we just don't have the ability to do it. And all and sometimes we found out that they're afraid to go against these cartels or these people, and and we figure out a way to do it, and and uh like we were in Haiti working with the the the police that kind of the child division, and we went and ra raided a number of nightclubs, which they would have never done without us being there. Uh, you know, we went into uh many nightclubs in the worst district in in uh Port-au-Prince, and we raided these nightclubs and got some girls out. Uh, but had we not been there, they probably would have not done that. Right, out of fear of violence, fear of you know, of uh revenge on their families, uh plus we also would uh empower them with some finances to do it too.

SPEAKER_00

And so yourself and the people you work with are either former military or trained in um I don't know what the technical definition is, but trained for conducting operations. Yeah, extractions, uh preparation, all this sort of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we have we have a lot of different people, a lot of different backgrounds. Uh my main team right now consists of a newly retired Navy SEAL, a newly uh year-ago retired Homeland Security uh agent, one of their top agents. Uh got a former Air Force Mission Aviator, I've got a sheriff, I've got a guy who's one of the best operators here in the United States as far as tracking down trafficking victims, uh, and and a bunch of others like that around us. And we do a training every year where we have people from all of the United States, we've had people from Europe, uh, Amsterdam and Germany and Ireland and uh have come over for our training. Uh and uh uh it's a week-long, very difficult week, very hard week. Uh we put them through a pretty rigorous course. And uh this year it's in August, and we have I think we've got 27 or 28 people coming in from around the U.S.

SPEAKER_00

And the organization relies on donations, or do you also have government funding from the United States?

SPEAKER_01

No, we have no government funding. We rely completely on private donations from individuals, church groups, uh corporations, service clubs, all those different things.

SPEAKER_00

You must get this comment and experience all the time. But I couldn't imagine a better use of charitable funds than by supporting the children's uh rescue.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, it's uh I think it's one of the greatest causes on the planet, you know, to work with kids, rescue kids, help help children. And uh usually when when people uh see our presentations, hear the stories, uh, you know, they want to get involved. And for a lot of people, the only way they can get involved is financially, which is really valuable. We don't have any other than me occasionally, we don't have any paid employees, you know, everybody's a volunteer. Uh I take some pay when we can, but we also support children in other countries. So, like this morning, I sent sixty one hundred dollars overseas to two different locations uh to make sure the kids stay in school and you know they have health care and clothing. And so we we're committed to helping the children up until they're 18 years old, the ones that we rescue.

SPEAKER_00

How many of you had graduate from 18 of all the thousands you rescued?

SPEAKER_01

Oh my, I I'm not sure how many have uh moved on, but we've rescued over just about 2,400. Uh so there'd be many hundreds that you know have already uh you know graduated. We have one girl, um, she was in a brothel for a couple years. She was 13 at the time, and there's three two other girls, I think 10, 11, and 13. And uh beautiful young lady. We rescued her out of a pretty bad, uh, really bad situation. And now she's going to school to hopefully be a lawyer uh so that she can be an advocate for trafficking victims. Yeah, pretty cool story.

SPEAKER_00

So you get a call and you mobilize um your guys, you decide how many people you need, what resources you need, and then you go and extract them. Um, how much liaising happens with people on the ground? And is it always the case that you will pay off their debts to get them, or do you sometimes just take them without the slave owners knowing?

SPEAKER_01

No, we don't we don't pay. Um when we started for the first couple years, I didn't know what I was doing. So we were uh giving the money directly to the slaves to pay off their own debt, and then we would mark in the book uh, you know, debt canceled and then take them. But we realized that that money was being used uh probably to go buy more kids out of the slums. So we stopped doing that, and uh we just for uh all these last 10 years, probably, we just take the children. Money never money never exchanges hands.

SPEAKER_00

Are you always armed when you do this?

SPEAKER_01

Uh no. There's sometimes we are and sometimes we're not, depending on where we are. If the police are going with us, they have the the firearms. If we're on our own, we you know, we we're all pretty well trained in non-lethal solutions and and other weapons uh because we can't carry guns and we do a lot of training in martial arts. Never really had to use any of it because we have become very good at what we do of getting in and getting out without causing too much trouble. And and we have we have some uh uh operations where we have we're intercepting vehicles at borders, searching them. We've arrested over 60 traffickers in the last year and put uh and rescued about 85 or 90 girls now, and the police are the ones who make those arrests. So we we we search the cars, we call the police, they come and they make their arrests.

SPEAKER_00

So we don't we and you know because of your intelligence beforehand that there's likely going to be some slaves trafficked on this route at this time.

SPEAKER_01

Well, they they search as many cars as they can 24 hours a day. And so they're just they're stationed at different places, a couple in uh a couple different locations, you know, and uh they're finding a lot of a lot of traffickers.

SPEAKER_00

So uh for example, you you get the boat over, you come to the location where the slaves are, you identify the slaves that you know at least um you can save, and you just take them with you? You like what is what happens when there's an altercation, say the slave owner or one of the other employees there decides, hold up, they're taking away our resources. Is it because you guys are like a professional and intimidating force that they just decide it's not worth the altercation? Or are you typically optimizing to do it when just no one's gonna find out?

SPEAKER_01

Uh kind of there's a lot of different methods. Sometimes it's kind of shocking awe. We just we roll in in a van, do a cafe, open the doors, go in and get the kids out, mark the location, get that to the police, and get the the children out of there. Uh sometimes locals uh we empower them to bring the children to us and we and we'll get them out because some places we can't get into easily. Like it's if it's a cart cartel drug operation, uh, and they'll uh they'll get in there easier because nobody suspects them and get the kids out. And then we we we take the those people to safety too. Uh there's there's times that we uh we we just do a lot of surveillance, figure out what's going on, and when it's the least dangerous time, we go in and get the kids. Maybe it's just the madam who's left there, the security have walked around back to do a cigarette smoke, and we go in and grab the kids and get out and once again mark the locations, get that information to the police. And uh, but in some areas the police are the you know part of the the whole problem, so we have to, you know, just get the kids out.

SPEAKER_00

There's no arrests made, but we're getting better at getting getting the bad guys incarcerated, so and how how do you and the team deal with the trauma of having to confront this and like as we hinted at earlier in the book goes into but like the worst levels of depravity that really humans can conjure. Yeah. How do you and the team deal with that over time? Sort of make sure you don't snap, you know, and you do something to jeopardize the mission or have you know, when you get back home, stuff like that?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that's a good question. Um I think we all deal with it in different ways. You know, I've I've had more sleepless nights than I care to to think about, and I've cried a lot of tears and not ashamed to say that. Thing the things we've seen and the horrors that we've seen. I had a team one time with me uh that uh we had just done some rescues, and the one guy was he was a very seasoned combat veteran. Two, two, another guy that was a security professional, and we had just rescued some kids that were in really bad shape, some little girls. They had just been so abused. Got them to our the safe place where that they were gonna get a lot of loving care, and everybody just kind of took a different direction and walked away, and you could see everybody was crying. Uh, so that trauma does stay with you. You know, I my team members, I've got a couple team members that have been out with me a lot. Uh, you know, we we talk a lot, we have to process it. Uh there was one time, Ryan. I came home and I didn't talk to anybody for over a month. My wife got really concerned. She started calling some people saying, What do you think I should do? I just I just couldn't talk about what I saw. And to this day I've never talked about it, but it took me a while. I didn't want to be around people, I just had to be by myself, you know. Um, as a person who, you know, is a Christian, I I spent a lot of time in prayer. Uh you know, I just had to I had to work through it. Yeah. Not not an easy thing. So we we talk a lot, you know, the team. There's times we we do a rescue and there's just no nobody talking in the in the van or the vehicle. Yeah. It's it's very quiet for a long time, you know. So but we laugh a lot, we laugh a lot too, you know. We we try to have a lot of humor when we're not doing the rescues and and a lot of camaraderie, all that.

SPEAKER_00

And then presumably on the other side of it, uh no matter how traumatic it is, it's still probably the most worthwhile day of work you could ever do.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I look back on all these children that we've rescued, and like this this little girl here on the front of my book, um, she was in a a brick field and with a bunch of boys, we and they were just covered in mud, and we got them out, and uh when we went back to check on them, I didn't even recognize her because she went from this abused little girl to being in a school uniform and smiling and and uh and doing doing it really well.

SPEAKER_00

So you're um working with translators most of the time, uh which I imagine makes communication quite difficult, especially if you're trying to be, I don't know, maybe manipulative to you know get that opening where you can extract the child. What have you learned through your training, but then from experience about ways to sort of de-escalate? Because you're coming in and pretty much saying, I'm leaving with these people, and they obviously are saying, No, you're not. So it would be just when I was thinking about this podcast, I thought, yeah, he must have these moments all the time.

SPEAKER_01

I wonder if there's anything interesting that I've had translators that have changed all my words and uh and did not tell me exactly what the owner said, which makes it difficult because uh, you know, I'm there to confront these people, and if they water it down, it it really affects you know our ability to um maybe intimidate, but it affects our ability to be uh uh uh effective. So I always talk to every translator and say, you have to say exactly what I say, don't change it, and don't change their answers. Because sometimes they want to protect me because you know the owners are being very you know vile toward me, and uh but um that's okay, you know. I I want to know what they're saying, so yeah, I can take it. Uh so I I usually have a pretty good sit down with the translators, and I've had some really, really good translators, and I've had a couple really bad ones. Um and uh so I've learned. A lot of lessons, you know, about communication through translators, and uh and sometimes they're afraid to say what I'm saying because they're afraid for their own life, you know, because I'm when it comes to confronting those people, I'm not a nice person. You know, I'm nice in general on life, but there's a uh a switch that gets flipped when I'm in those situations. And I'm I'm in there to to uh to get those kids out. So uh yeah, that would that was an insightful question on your part, uh, one that I don't think anybody's ever asked me before. So that's that's awesome.

SPEAKER_00

Thanks. So you're like your non-verbal, your voice, your words are very uh sort of aggressive and intimidating. That works more effectively than say a smile on your face. Hey, I'm from this organization, this is what I'm planning on doing. What do you think about that? You know, like what the alternative type of manipulative communication might be to extract what you want.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I've used a lot of different methods. Um I've I went to a we went to do a rescue, and somehow they found out we were coming, and so there was I can't remember how many, five or seven slave owners that were there to confront me. And so as we rolled up, I said to to uh Emmanuel, I said, What's going on? He he didn't know, so we got out and he told me real quickly, he goes, they're here to confront us. So I just started smiling to everybody, and I told the one guy, I said, Oh yeah, you look really familiar, you kind of look like my dad. And and uh I smiled and they had a big thing of cookies there, and I picked it up and I walked around and served everybody, and uh, you know, they're all kind of staring at me like, I don't know if I want to take a cookie from this guy, you know. Um, and so I kind of disarmed them and they let us walk away with a lot of kids, a lot of children. Wow, and because we had the video cameras rolling and they kept glancing at the video cameras, uh, but we uh we were able to walk away with a lot of children, and then one guy got a hold of us, he goes, I want you to pay us, I want you to pay us, and I'm like, We're not paying you anything. And uh he was very angry, and of course, we get a lot of death threats, you know.

SPEAKER_00

So Yeah, you were in fact poisoned in Pakistan.

SPEAKER_01

I was twice. Uh the first time was fairly mild. We were in a we had just done rescues all day, coming back into a city, and and our host said, Let's stop at a at a little restaurant. He he had never been here before, and we walk in and it was full of uh a lot of radical people. And so they slipped something into our food that day, and we got sick. You know, I just I we were all kind of throwing up, and uh, and then the my host got really sick. Uh he was uh he ended up going to the hospital and he he was in critical condition for a while. Um for me, it was just intestinal burning and a bunch of different things. The second time was the real serious time where on the last day we were leaving over there, uh we were at a restaurant. We had to go through different levels of security to get in there, so we figured it was safe. But apparently my picture was being passed around and contract on my life, and they uh the I'm the only one that they slipped poison in. My wife was actually with me and a really, really good team, and they slipped this uh poison in my food somehow. And uh when we I felt okay until we got on the plane, and then I fell asleep and I woke up hallucinating. And my wife had to hold me in the seat because she said I kept saying I need my medicine. And uh when I got home, uh we went to a doctor, he didn't know what it was, went to another guy that he recommended. We ended up at Cleveland Clinic, a famous you know, hospital here. And uh the doctor uh, you know, he said there's two maybe two reasons for this condition tox toxic stuff or poison. So I thought, oh yeah, that makes sense because that's kind of a common thing over there. And so it took me about a year and a half to fully recover. My legs were really weak, and I had burning skin and neuropathy and a bunch of different symptoms. But as soon as I was better, we were right back at it.

SPEAKER_00

So and it sounds like as well, you mentioned camera a moment a moment ago, and from the book uh the point was repeatedly made that the camera is actually maybe your most sort of powerful tool when you go on these missions, uh, because it's very evident to the slave owners, you know, they have a crime here caught on camera. And if they, you know, decide to act a certain way, it's gonna be even worse for them than what it already is.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, we document everything from the very the very beginning. We've documented every rescue, uh photographed videos, uh GoPros, you know, that we carry or hidden cameras. Uh we make sure that everything is documented. And in certain cases, you know, we have big cameras uh out there because that's the the we want them to see that we're filming this. We're we got your your face, you know, your ugly face on this uh on this video, and uh we're gonna use it. Uh you know, if we need to, we'll get the word out to the world. And I mean in Pakistan alone, the Holocaust that's going on, I know I know that's a that's a heavy word, but there are so many people uh in this in this slavery that are dying. Uh just just unbelievable amounts of people that you know we've uh uh heard of or seen that have are dying, you know. It's just uh an amazing thing over in that part of the world. And so we wanted to document as much as we could.

SPEAKER_00

That I mean that that as well like does make me think about what what is the cultural forces that allow this type of slavery when it can be so well known that these brick kilns, these rope factories, these various other you know, materials being produced is largely coming off the back of slave labor. Maybe from an institutional level, surely you as a Pakistani politician don't want people to think of your country as a place that has slaves, is famous for having slaves. Do you have any explanation for why this there's not more effective work at the institutional level at stopping slavery?

SPEAKER_01

Well, we've encountered members of parliament that were slave owners, and so you're kind of it's kind of like uh, you know, they're not gonna vote against themselves. Uh we've met so it's just corruption. Corruption. We've met other um members of parliament, uh, or in other countries, members of government that are fighting against it, but they're the minority. So, you know, it's a big uphill battle. There are there are a lot of um uh groups within those nations that are that are really pushing hard to to get this ended, but it is so ingrained in culture, uh there's some a lot of religious belief behind behind it. Uh, you know, whatever religion it it is, there's usually justification, you know, uh to own other humans.

SPEAKER_00

So you mentioned ISIS earlier. Um was it also the case there that the slaves they were taking for the organ harvesting were Christian minorities?

SPEAKER_01

Uh in that particular case, it was the minority um Iraqis, the Yazidis, uh, that they were they were taking the women and enslaving them as sex slaves. And uh I think it was Glenn Beck that had uh a video on of the ISIS members taking children into a room where they were their uh organs were harvested. But um ISIS uh they very much believe in child brides and they believe in slavery, they believe in you know conversion by conquest uh and and all those types of things. So uh yeah, and unfortunately they're they're rising up again in certain areas.

SPEAKER_00

So religious implications in certain countries, cartels, so just large organized criminal networks in other countries, these are the two main forces that are using slaves?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, religious-based slavery is probably number one in the world, and number two would be cartels, but then after that you would have um, you know, strip clubs and brothels that are you know small independent ones that uh are also partaking in this, participating in this. You would have um all the way down to individuals that have are keeping a girl, you know, captive somewhere. So there's a lot of different levels of that. If you really look at the whole area of prostitution, if a pro if a prostitute has a pimp that's controlling her, that's a form of slavery, you know. It would be different from a girl that's just f doing it on her you know free will, that's what she wants to do. But when you have girls that are controlled by a a pimp, he may just be a a lone wolf, that's still a form of of some kind of slavery. Or she has no rights, she turns all the money over to him, you know.

SPEAKER_00

You did mention Amsterdam earlier. Uh, what have you learnt about s human trafficking and sexual slavery in Amsterdam that might, you know, maybe shock listeners? Because I I pinpoint Amsterdam because I don't think people are gonna be shocked that, you know, in a rural village in Bangladesh there is a lot of slavery happening in the sexual human trafficking side of things. But um I wonder whether it's just as prolific and degraded in Amsterdam, you know, a capital of a huge European country which features Western tourism year-round.

SPEAKER_01

Well, once again, it's demand-driven. Uh so anywhere you have, you know, prostitution, especially if it's legal or if it's you know uh uh illegal but operating in you know a wide venue, you'll find uh sex trafficking there because there's a lot of men that want little girls, or a lot of men that want little boys. There's there's uh there's a demand, a market for it. So you I think you'd find it anywhere. You'd find it in New York City, you'd find it in Las Vegas. Las Vegas has a tremendous amount of stuff going on there. You know, it's a pretty crazy city. So I think uh anywhere you find uh the the wave of you know prostitution or I don't know what the word I'm looking for is, but yeah, you're you're gonna find human trafficking, you know, in a place like Amsterdam.

SPEAKER_00

Your organization has saved 240 children? Uh 2,400. Oh, forgive me, 2,400 children, um, both boys and girls, um, both sexually abused, physically abused, etc. Um how have you observed how trauma affects different children?

SPEAKER_01

Great question. One of the things I've I've discovered is that the children that were born into slavery, they recover quicker than the children that were traumatized by a kidnapping or uh they were sold by a family member. Uh and I think it's because the ones that are born into slavery, that's all they ever knew. That was normal life for them. All of a sudden they're just taken into this whole brand new life, and there's a there's a recovery that we've seen that's different. The ones who were living a normal life, and then they were kidnapped, sold, they were runaway and grabbed, uh, the trauma to them is is is is different. You know, I you I in the book I talk about the little girl who her family was killed in a flood in her village and she's wandering around and they she gets picked up and taken uh to a place where she's conditioned for a couple days, you know, multiple rapes, and then she's sold into sex trafficking. That that trauma is it takes a long, long, long time to recover. You know, very just a lot of different levels depending on what happened to them.

SPEAKER_00

And are there cases where you've observed that the children just can't move forward? The older they get, the trauma just overwhelms them. And maybe they take their own life or they self-harm. Um just other is it the case that most of the children can overcome the trauma, or is it some just can't overcome it?

SPEAKER_01

Many of the children that we've rescued are doing really, really well. Some of the ones that were in brothels for a long time, that becomes part of their identity. And so when they get out, uh they tend to be either uh they either go one way or the other, you know, they go into seclusion or whatever, or they go the other way of being very promiscuous, or they they try to find, you know, their the the person that trafficked them because they had become emotionally attached. Uh yeah, there is there's so many different levels to all this, you know.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. And as a part of the um sort of rescue centers where the children go that you save, are they always in the same country where they were taken, or can you get some of them into the United States as well?

SPEAKER_01

No, it's really difficult to get children out of these countries. Uh some have a uh uh outlawed adoption because the traffickers were using that system. Other places you can't get them out because they don't want them to come to the U.S. Uh so we have to get them into good places in those countries. And we found we found really good children's homes, we found good families to to place these children with, and and we go back every year to these countries and we go and and do um forensic interviews, which is a you know a special type of interview where we do with the children, and we are finding just great success. There there's a few that were not happy with the families they were placed with, and so we we you know move them, but the vast majority are doing really really well.

SPEAKER_00

And how do you build up this network of uh people to send them to in these in these base countries?

SPEAKER_01

Well, we have directors of operations in the countries we work in, and it's their responsibility to to find these families or these children's homes or uh you know the places that we we're gonna put these these kids. And so they're out there looking, interviewing, making assessments, you know, talking to the children that are there, talking to family members, and then they they make those recommendations, and then we keep checking on them, and if it's not a if it's not a good placement, then we'll move the children. But 98%, 95, 98% have been really good placements.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, that must be such a stressful part of the business. You know, you go through all this effort to find them. You you you promise them your life will be better now, and then making sure they really go to a place that is better and not someone a part of the system or someone not overwhelmed by you know taking on these extra responsibilities they didn't realize was coming and so forth.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, it's uh you know, every month I sometimes sweat it because I have to send money for all their uh uh support. And during the COVID time, I had to make the decision to go off payroll for about a year and a half. Um, I don't, you know, I don't make a lot, but uh uh because we don't want these kids to go without. So uh and you know, we rely on donations, so if the donations don't come in, we're kind of forced to start selling our possessions to make sure these kids are taken care of, you know. Um it's come close to that many times, and there's a couple times we have, so um, but yeah, it's it's it's a pretty heavy load.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Ah, the donation should be flooding through the the door, one would hope. Um is your tell me if this is too personal of a question, but is your donation mostly a few large donors or many small donors?

SPEAKER_01

Many small donors. We have a couple large ones that uh will uh like they'll fund a rescue operation, which is usually fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. Uh they'll fund a rescue operation, uh, but the majority are just average people sending in donations. And and uh we have a great CFO, really good accountability, we have a good financial rating, you know, we're rated as safe to give to. And uh we have uh uh a great board of directors that you know always checking on things. So uh yeah, so we we uh we put out newsletters and you know a lot of social media. Uh we don't have a huge budget for marketing, so we uh we rely on a lot on social media.

SPEAKER_00

What's your sense for how prevalent slavery is in the supply chains of the everyday things that we consume?

SPEAKER_01

Well, yeah, it's it's big. It's big. Um you know the clothing industry and India and Pakistan, the textile factories, uh, a lot of slave um a lot of slaves working those cigarettes overseas. Uh when you check tags, the majority of the time if it says Pakistan is probably somehow connected to slavery, and India also. China has a large amount of slavery. Um and of course, you know, we're addicted to China products, and uh so we're supporting a lot of that. Uh I think it's called the Fair Trade. Um Fair Trade, you look into it to see what countries and uh what products are safe to buy.

SPEAKER_00

I can't remember the there's a couple websites for that, but um cotton, as you just mentioned with China and Shein and these fast fashion brands. Um to produce at this scale at these prices is not economically possible if your most expensive input uh which is labor, is not free. And so with that being said, I mean how do you make sense of the moral ambiguity consumers generally have? Is it just do you chalk it up to ignorance, or is it that you're too far away from the horror and violence on the supply chain to maybe, you know, take responsibility for it or have it change the way you behave?

SPEAKER_01

Well, there's a major disconnect for sure, because it seems like many people just don't care. You know, they want their products, and when you you know, I speak I speak a lot of places, but the uh uh I guess what I'm trying to say is that the it's like a deer in the headlight sometimes when I'm talking to people and you know you say, well, you know, check your check your products, see if you know where it's made. And I don't know. This seems like a lot of people don't care there's a disconnect. They they have a product here, but there's there's no connection to you know those slaves over there. So uh it's pretty pretty frustrating. Uh pretty frustrating for us to to uh see the apathy. Yeah, sorry.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, the same um that same apathy is is something I've also tried to think about and interviewed people on, particularly around cocaine. You know, like it's very well documented how violent and horrible the uh cartels are who are trafficking cocaine all the way through Latin America and then into Europe. But still, you know, you won't feel like you're doing an immoral act by, you know, buying a couple of lines of coke and enjoying it at a party, when truly you probably couldn't be buying a more uh drug-soaked supply chain. And yeah, it's I I don't know if there is any anything worth saying about it, except it's just one of the many sort of big issues which we have to face in 2024, you know. And uh leading on from that, are you so sure? Surprised or does it not surprise you that the issue of modern-day slavery and actually just how dark it is is not more widely known?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, when I when I first started uh doing talks in 2009, people had no idea. But now there's an I think there's enough information out there that people have heard about it. You know, we we just f flew through the Atlanta airport and there were announcements constantly about human trafficking. So I think people are slowly waking up to it. You know, there's there's a movie out that talk uh it's about uh human trafficking, there's uh there's a lot of documentaries being made, uh books, books out there. So I think little by little people are waking up to the fact that this is one of the biggest issues of our time.

SPEAKER_00

And also the most easy to make a moral judgment on. It's so it's non-political. It's simply just does every human have the right to make their own choices and try to live in some type of freedom they create for themselves, you really have to be like a nut job to say no. Um and therefore, like when you can get lost in the weeds over political things that have huge implications for your life, this one is so non-political and such a big problem, and so easy to make a decision on.

SPEAKER_01

You know, when you when you think about the millions and millions of people in slavery, there has got to be consumers for all that. And that's I think the most disturbing thing for me about all this is the fact that there are customers out there, millions of customers around the world that are looking for the you know, this the sex or the products, you know, uh to make money. So I don't know if I properly answered your question, but that was kind of what was coming to me as you were talking there.

SPEAKER_00

So that's all right, Bruce. Sorry. I don't think I really formulated it as a question. That movie you mentioned, I forget what it was called now, but it had Jim Ezekiel as the main star. Is that the one you were thinking of? Yeah, what did you make of that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's loosely based on fact. Uh unfortunately, the guy that it's about is under a lot of indictment right now, which is really disheartening. Uh there's quite a few women that have come forward that um talk about him misusing his position uh uh to seduce them. A lot of money uh misused, those kind of things. It's it's out there on the internet a lot. Uh I I knew some insiders in the organization that told me this this was gonna happen. So it makes me angry because you know, this is not about money, it's not about you know our gratification. This is about the children. You know, we live to to rescue these kids, and unfortunately, you get people like this that uh misuse their their power and position and money uh for themselves. So, you know, unfortunately if it affects all of us because then people don't know who to trust.

SPEAKER_00

Uh yeah, that's so fucked. I mean, it's one of the first big mainstream um displays of this problem. And then if it turns out that those allegations are true, the first thing people will say is the other side of the coin, oh, it's just another big you know, opportunistic fella.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly, exactly. So yeah, people can research that on their own. But the uh uh the the good thing about it though, Ryan, is the fact that the movie did bring a lot of awareness, even though it's loosely based on fact, um it brought a lot of people to like wow, this is going on. And I'm really thankful for that. I'm thankful that the movie has made people aware.

SPEAKER_00

Totally. Bruce, I got three more for you. Um, but actually, before I ask it, is there something particular that you wanted or want to talk about that I didn't bring up?

SPEAKER_01

I don't think so. I can't think of anything right now.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, nice. In that case, what's a country you're not operating in at the moment, but want to be?

SPEAKER_01

Well, we've we've been invited to so many. I'd like to get into a uh a couple more African countries. Um we've been invited to uh Syria, Lyon, Liberia, some other ones along that uh the western coast there. Uh we've been invited into uh Bangladesh and others. Um just kind of we're just kind of mauling it over right now and and looking you know at how difficult it's gonna be to get into certain places. We want to do a lot more work here in the U.S. too. Uh we have one one of our operators that is really good at tracking down trafficking victims, and he's gotten several dozen girls out here under under great danger. Uh he's yeah, he's a pretty amazing guy.

SPEAKER_00

Um final two, Bruce, they're kind of you know mild adaptations of questions that I typically ask every guest, but I would say you're definitely an atypical uh type of guest. And actually that makes me think, now I'm about to ask it, how does it make you feel that when media want to talk to you? It is obviously in promotion of the amazing work you and your team are doing, but nonetheless shrouded by just this extremely depressing and dark subject matter.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, not an easy thing to talk about. Nobody really wants to hear it, you know. But my book, my book has really been a good catalyst because I've had literally a few uh hundreds of people that have told me that they were not wanting to read it, but they wanted to read it, and they would read it and have to put it down, but then they had to get right back to it. And uh so that that has been a really good positive um thing for me. I I think we communicated without putting too much really dark stuff in there. We've communicated the issue, and I've had so many people from all over the US and even Europe who have told me that it's just a really, really excellent book. Um makes you cry, and uh but they had to keep reading, you know, and get right back to it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I echo those sentiments uh for sure. And you're currently producing an autobiography, which I imagine will be of an equal tone.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I was a professional outdoorsman for 20 years, so I was doing crazy stuff like following wolf packs in the Canadian Rockies, and I tried to ski to the North Pole in 1981 uh with a team, Canadian team. Uh, we did first ascents in the Arctic uh in Canada. I was a guide. I taught survival courses and climbing and caving and all those things. So I have a lot of really uh some very serious stories, but a lot of really funny stories also. And so it's it's a lot easier to write this book on all these adventures uh than it was to write the first book, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you sort of answered my question there, but I wanted to ask what the serendipity was which has entered your life because of the publishing of the book and therefore the raising of your public profile.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I get asked to speak a lot, so that's been great. I last fall I was, I think, 17 weeks uh traveling and speaking. This year, not not as much uh yet. Um starting to get invitations for the fall, uh meeting a lot of wonderful people. It has helped uh with support, so there's been uh uh you know a good increase in support, but not close to where we need to be. But uh yeah, it's been a good good catalyst uh you know to raise funds, but it also has uh opened the door to meet a lot of really wonderful people.

SPEAKER_00

Uh Bruce, something I'd like to end on is you tell this incredible starfish metaphor for why, even though this feels like such a deep, insurmountable, dark problem, it is still nonetheless a worthwhile pursuit.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, there was there was a a story about a boy that was on the beach and there was a lot of starfish that had been washed up and they were stranded, and he's walking along, and there's just thousands and thousands of these starfish. He's picking them up one by one and throwing them back in the water. And this older fellow walks by and he goes, There's so many, there's just so many. What does it what does this why are you doing this? What does it matter? And he picks up one starfish and he said, It matters to this one, and he throws it in the water. And that's that's how we operate because you could feel like we're trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. And so every child, it matters to that one, you know. And uh, even if we'd only rescued a couple kids, uh, a couple adults, children, whatever, uh it it's still changing people's lives.

SPEAKER_00

Bruce, that was wonderful. And uh thank you so much for being generous with your time. The book is incredible. Everyone listening to this will find a link to it in the description, and then as well, if they feel like uh donating to I couldn't think of a more worthwhile cause, uh a link to that will be there as well.

SPEAKER_01

Well, thank you so much, Ryan. As you're fading off into the darkness there, I really I really really appreciate uh you taking the time to uh have me on, and I was really honored to be asked. So thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00

Absolutely, Matt.