The Life Challenges Podcast
The Life Challenges Podcast
Empowering Communities to Combat Trafficking: An Interview with Tracy Scheffler (Part Two)
Online predators and sextortion are more prevalent dangers than many realize, and we're unpacking these pressing issues with returning guest Tracy Scheffler, Founder of 5-Stones Dodge County. Our discussion exposes the alarming tactics predators use on social media and smartphones, where they cleverly disguise themselves to earn the trust of young victims. These predators often manipulate emotions to coerce the sharing of compromising images, a situation that can spiral into extortion and emotional turmoil, sometimes with tragic outcomes. Our goal is to arm parents with the knowledge to engage their children in meaningful conversations about online safety and to emphasize the life-saving importance of reporting suspicious activities.
We also take a hard look at the pornography industry's wide-reaching impact. By drawing parallels between addiction and skill acquisition, we see how users are led down a dangerous path toward increasingly extreme content, often with catastrophic results for personal relationships. We take a stand against the notion that pornography is a mere private matter and call for community awareness and action, particularly within often-overlooked spaces like churches. Through collective vigilance and open dialogue, we can address the harmful effects of pornography and human trafficking, equipping communities to protect future generations. Join us as we discuss these critical topics and highlight the transformative power of local anti-trafficking initiatives.
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5-Stones Dodge County: https://www.5-stonesdodgecounty.org/
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There are handfuls of stories well probably hundreds of stories of average citizens who got educated somehow. They went to an event, they went to a presentation, they read something, they heard something and then all of a sudden, they're somewhere and they're seeing something and their antenna goes up and they say something's not right. Do I have the courage to make a call? That's really the question that we ask ourselves in those moments, because the human brain will try to talk ourselves out of it. Am I being irrational? Am I being paranoid because of the presentation I heard or what I learned? Am I being nosy? Is it going to be foolish of me to make a call to police or the hotline number which there is a national hotline number Law enforcement and the hotline they which there is a national hotline number Law enforcement and the hotline they say make the call. If you're wrong, you're wrong, you've lost nothing, but if you're right, you could potentially save a victim.
Paul Snamiska:Welcome to the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. People today face many opportunities and struggles when it comes to issues of life and death, marriage and family, health and science. We're here to bring a fresh biblical perspective to these issues and more. Join us now for Life Challenges.
Christa Potratz:Hi and welcome back. This is Krista Potratz, and this week we have part two of our episode with Tracy Scheffler on sex trafficking, and so here is the second half of that episode. I kind of wanted to talk a little bit.
Christa Potratz:Go back to the online predators because, you said too and this was one of the areas that I wanted to talk about too was just how, maybe like what has been different since we last talked a year ago, and when you were talking about the online attacks. I mean, I'm sitting here as a parent of a preteen and my kids are getting to be that age. What advice do you have for parents going and trying to navigate the online type of situation that you're seeing nowadays?
Tracy Scheffler:Yeah, the writing is on the wall, and I think the more we go into it with our eyes wide open, the better and the healthier we will all be in regards to this. So sextortion has been around for some time now, but it kind of was like sending pictures on your flip phone to each other when you're in high school, you know like, and then if there's a breakup, that kid might use it against you and might show people or send it out. That's what sextortion used to look like. Now that we have just the extreme availability of social media to all ages and a lot of kids have their own smartphone in their hands, and so it's just there's so much opportunity and so there's a lot of bad players out there online who have figured out how easy it is to trick. I'm in a little tongue-in-cheek you might be horrendous looking. That's how much you can trick someone online. You know what I'm saying. Like they think they're talking to one person and really there's nothing real about that, and so you think you're in a relationship as a youth, and so they'll start to kind of normalize little sexual inferences or start using language that is a little more sexualized, kind of just slowly slide that kid into a comfort level with that, slowly slide that kid into a comfort level with that and then at some point say oh, I'm going to send you a picture, tell me what you think, and they'll send you a picture of some body part. That isn't something you'd normally see when you're just passing somebody on the street. It might just start off like a guy with his shirt off. Right, the older boyfriend sends a pic with his shirt off, says to the girl now your turn. The girl's kind of giggling and somehow does it. Maybe she takes her shirt off, maybe she just lifts up and shows her belly. Maybe the next step is well, take that bra off. I can't. You're so gorgeous, I want to see more of you.
Tracy Scheffler:It's not that hard to trick someone when they think they're in a relationship with you and when they're excited about that and you, we, when we're in those first vestiges of relationship. Bob, you mentioned before we all got married for the crazy reasons, because it's like being on a drug when you're first in a relationship, chemical things happening in your brain that make you act like somebody who's a little bit high, and so it's very easy to take advantage of a kid when they're in that place with this relationship. And so what happens is they walk them through this kind of sending pictures back and forth and this is fun and this is sexy and you're so gorgeous, or you're so cool and you're so gorgeous or you're so cool. And then eventually they will say I'm going to use these pictures unless you send me $300 or 200. It'll start with that's actually the smaller amount. Send me a couple hundred dollars, or else I'm going to release these pictures to your family, your work, your friends, your church.
Tracy Scheffler:And a youth really can't think past the. Is that even? Do they even know where I go to church? How would they get this to all my people? In reality, they can't think past. Is that really viable or not? But they're thinking in that moment I got to get $200.
Tracy Scheffler:And so they're stealing it from mom's purse or getting it from somewhere else grandma's house, once a trafficker and this person could literally be overseas. There are networks overseas who are trafficking through sextortion our kids here in America. These kids think they're talking to someone here falling in love with someone here and it's literally a guy in a networking system in a basement somewhere overseas. Sometimes, often, it could also be networks that are here 100%. They're everywhere is my point.
Tracy Scheffler:But then they'll start upping the price and these kids cannot see a way out and this is why we've seen a very notable uptick in suicides at this age level, because the sextortion online puts them in such a panic that they can't tell anybody, they think they can't tell anybody, they can't see a way out, so they're taking their own lives. It's the only escape they can fathom. And well, hartford had a speaker, had John DeMay recently to talk about the loss of his son this way, and we're also having John DeMay from Michigan come in March to do an event with him as well, because he's not the only dad who's talking about this, it's not a one in 3,000. It's happening more and more frequently. It's probably, next to drug use and drug abuse and the fentanyl opioid problem, the biggest reason that kids in this age group are taking their lives in this kind of year or these last few years.
Bob Fleischmann:And then you add to it AI and generative imaging.
Bob Fleischmann:I'm a big fan of AI, I like it, but I also think it could be extremely dangerous If you get to the point where you're beginning to share pictures. Just remember, any picture can be manipulated, and you're hearing stories of it, including suicide stories of boys who somehow found their image associated with other body parts that they didn't want to have revealed, and they don't know how it is, but they feel like they're caught and can't get out of it. I found it interesting, Tracy, when you had mentioned about you're not thinking clearly. You've got to come up with the $200, you know you've got to start that way. It just reminded me of something that happened to my dad, who's 89 years old, and he contacts me and he goes Robert, why do I get this text message from USPS saying that they can't deliver my package?
Bob Fleischmann:you know, because they don't have my address.
Tracy Scheffler:Click on this link for further information.
Bob Fleischmann:First, of all, how do you think USPS got your cell number? Have you ever given it to them? I don't think you have. And I said secondly you mean after 89 years they lost your address. It's just not happening.
Tracy Scheffler:And did you even order anything, right, yeah?
Bob Fleischmann:But it does get you caught, caught up in the moment. Especially if it's potentially embarrassing and so forth. Right? So, pointers I, if it's potentially embarrassing and so forth. So, pointers I mean, from a parent's perspective, what do you tell?
Paul Snamiska:your children, even from somebody who's listening now?
Bob Fleischmann:who's teetering on this? Maybe engaged in social media, but not quite sure what's going on.
Tracy Scheffler:Yeah. So number one don't send pictures of your body parts. That is the easiest way to avoid being sextorted, which is just so people understand the word sextortion. It's taking the word sex and extortion and combining them to be sextortion. If you don't send pictures of things that you would be embarrassed about being out online and there is that fear that they live forever once they're out there in the cloud universe, that will greatly decrease the likelihood.
Tracy Scheffler:However, pointing to what Bob just said is AI can take anybody's picture anywhere and change it to look like it is your nude body on your head with your name, and ruin lives even that way, and it has happened and it is happening, and so that sounds very hopeless, I know, but the reality is traffickers and sex torturers really rely on you not going to someone for help because it's so embarrassing and so shameful. So that is the number one thing that they're relying on is that you're actually going to send the money and, frankly, when it's these big networks, if you drop out as someone who's not playing the game and sending the money, they're just going to move on to their next victim, rather than release photos to people in places that they don't even know. But I understand that, wanting to take that chance. So the first step for a victim or a potential victim, you've got to talk to someone, you've got to tell a trusted adult and every parent I've ever spoken to has said about this and about just even just being trafficked is that there is nothing that our kids can do that would make us not want them to come to us about it. There is not a single thing that would make me say I would never want my kid to come to me for help about fill in the blank. And so I think that's the first thing we need to know. The second thing is I understand that not everybody's parents are that person, but everybody has some adult in their life that they trust. You just got to think about who that is. Is it a teacher? Is it someone in youth group? Is it someone in your church or is it just a friend or an older friend or an older brother or a friend's older brother or sister? There's somebody who you feel a safety net from and that's who you want to go to.
Tracy Scheffler:The other thing is that the initial and I you know we would all feel this the initial response is I got to delete everything. I got to delete every picture, at least on your end, even knowing that it's out there on the other end. But actually law enforcement and the courts and the DAs, they want you not to delete everything because that could be well that will be evidence against a sextortioner and so, even though it hurts to not wipe those things out on your end, if you're wiping them out on your end, they're still alive at the sextortioner's end. So end. If you're wiping them out on your end, they're still alive at the sextortioner's end. So really try to just close that off from your spirit for a moment and don't delete everything and speak to an adult. That adult can call your local DA, district attorney and report and they will take the evidence that you haven't deleted and look into that.
Tracy Scheffler:There's also helps online. There's a site called Take it Down that will eventually help you to take it down so that it's not living out there forever. It's tricky to get things taken down even with the helps of these apps, but that is why I say don't send the pictures ever. To begin with, I understand that relationships are happening online more than in person for these generations, but we have to figure out a way to not let that make victims out of them.
Christa Potratz:I'm going to ask one more question here. I know we're kind of getting low on time here, but it is one that I just really wanted to ask you too, because when I went on the website, I noticed that you had a large area on pornography there, and so I just really wanted to know kind of the role of pornography in all of this and what we should know about that.
Tracy Scheffler:I'm really really glad you asked about that. Pornography is the greatest contributor to sex trafficking. I have no hold back to make that statement. It is the greatest contributor to demand, not just in America but in the world. Pornography creates the buyer, and so we really talk a lot about it at presentations with adults and then, in a different way, with youth, because it's the only thing that really is going to change, sex trafficking being the most lucrative and fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. It is to change.
Tracy Scheffler:Pornography really is legislatively fighting the pornography industry. We fight it from our stones, which means talking to people, breaking open the ceiling on the conversation, not letting it be the secret sin that nobody's talking about, because when you're not talking about it, you're not dealing with it right. And we know when we speak to audiences that statistically, people in our audience are using pornography and therefore some of them are going to be addicted to pornography. The pornography industry has very intentionally created a situation where men and women but again, the greater percentage of pornography users are men. If they keep going back to it which is what it is created to make you do the bar keeps being raised. You need more and more to get the same effect, and for some people they get to a level where the next best thing that they can do is to go and find a person that they are willing to commit a crime with and pay for commercial sex to act out what they're seeing in pornography. And we know this is true because women who are being sold for sex or selling themselves for sex are reporting that this is what a lot of the majority of their buyers want to do. They want to act out something they've seen on pornography.
Tracy Scheffler:The addiction is real, so I'm not excusing it, but it's real. It's a chemical brain, neurological pathway addiction. We have neuroplasticity in our brains. The things that we do over and over again create new pathways. This is the same as learning to play an instrument. Learning to be good at a sport is the same as learning to play an instrument. Learning to be good at a sport it's awful, but it's not necessarily because the person ever really meant to have evil intent. It's really the pornography industry abusing what they know they have and creating addicts.
Bob Fleischmann:And it's an illusion that it's a private sin. Like well, it's just my business and that it's a private sin. Yes, Like, well, it's just my business.
Tracy Scheffler:Yes, and that's an illusion, because participating in it in some way lends credibility to it in some way, which makes it something that the other side wants to keep supporting doing no harm if it's just you and your computer, but you're harming your own brain to body experience, because then when you're in a true, loving, healthy relationship, your brain can't tell your body what to do to have beautiful, loving, intimate moments with your significant other, because your brain has been trained to need that heightened, heightened experience. And then there's also the issue of the dark web, which, as pornography has grown, it's become more violent, it's become sometimes actual victimizations being taped and people utilizing that for their experience, and so it's create more victimology, it's created more perversity, it's created more predatory behavior and it's created people going out to commit acts that they never thought they would do. It's destroying marriages, it's destroying people, but men mostly. It's destroying relationships. There is nothing good about it. The other falsity that you'll hear is that, oh no, we use pornography. It's made our sexual relationship better, it's brought us back, and, well you know, that may be true for a week, a month, a year, but eventually it's going to distort, because that is what pornography does it distorts, it destroys and it ruins. And frankly, that's another area that we think we can make the great separation Like well, this isn't in my life. But those people, oh boy, like, well, this isn't in my life, but those people, oh boy.
Tracy Scheffler:The reality is that more than you would ever think amount of people are actually addicted to pornography. They are, and it is happening in our churches, and some statistics will say that the greater pornography addictions are indeed in our churches and they're with some pastors. So there isn't this separation of this moral separation of who is using pornography and who isn't. And I don't say things like that to shame anybody, but I say it so that those who are already using can utilize the resources to get off of pornography, to stop using, and it's not easy, but you can do it, anybody can do anything they set their mind to right, we've dealt with that too here with Conquerors for Christ, an agency within our church body, very good.
Christa Potratz:All this is very interesting and I know we could talk a long time on this and everything too. I feel like we've just kind of scratched the surface.
Bob Fleischmann:We'll just have to have her back again.
Christa Potratz:Well, I'll come back, I'll come, but yeah, but before you leave, don't leave quite yet. If you could just tell people listening how they can get involved and if people have thought, man, this sounds like something I want to be a part of, how can people get involved? How can people contact you? What you know, projects or things are you kind of working on now?
Tracy Scheffler:I always say look in your area first. So you know, I've had people contact me from the state of Washington and say, can we get involved with Five Stones? And I say, well, I love that you want to, but look for what's happening in your place. There are always grassroots organizations or bigger ones that you can get involved with and you're going to have the greatest effect in your own area and you're going to care mostly about your own area and your own kids, right. So we've had a wonderful, wonderful response from Beaver Dam, which is where we started we used to be Five Stones Beaver Dam so much support and affirmation for the work that we're doing and that's because it's their children that we're trying to save from being trafficked. Then we branched out to Dodge County because we found ourselves being asked further and further out and it's their children that we want to care about, right, that we're talking about. And so for you guys, Washington County has their anti-trafficking group through Wendy and Jason and connecting and collaborating with so many others. And so I always say look for the group that is in your area and try to work with them, and then go online to see. People will say, well, I don't know what's in my area. Just Google anti-trafficking in your county or your city or your town and you just kind of start there and keep going out until you find something. But we just want people to get educated. So if you get educated, that may be the thing that helps you to know how you can or should help right. What are your passions, what are your skill sets? Find that group, Start going to meetings, See what they're doing and then find your niche within that group. That's how we kind of function as Five Stones Dodge County. We also want the community to keep their ears and eyes open. You don't even have to be connected to a group to make a difference to trafficking victims or to prevent.
Tracy Scheffler:There are handfuls of stories well probably hundreds of stories of average citizens who got educated somehow. They went to an event, they went to a presentation, they read something, they heard something and then all of a sudden they're somewhere and they're seeing something and their antenna goes up and they say something's not right. Do I have the courage to make a call? That's really the question that we ask ourselves in those moments, because the human brain will try to talk ourselves out of it. Am I being irrational? Am I being paranoid because of the presentation I heard or what I learned? Am I being nosy? Is it going to be foolish of me to make a call to police or the hotline number, which there is a national hotline number Law enforcement and the hotline they say make the call If you're wrong, you're wrong, You've lost nothing, but if you're right, you could potentially save a victim. Law enforcement also wants you to make that call in your moment, not the next day when you've talked yourself into it. Finally, they want to be able to come to where you are to see what you're seeing. It doesn't mean you're involved and that a trafficker is going to know who you are. We are not to approach traffickers because there's a lot of criminology there and a lot of money involved, which means there's probably weapons on hand because they're going to protect what they, in their minds, they own.
Tracy Scheffler:Another way is to fight pornography. Get yourself off of it PornHarmsorg, FightTheNewDrugorg. There's a lot of ways that you don't even have to deal with a real live in-person group. If that feels threatening to you or too exposed, Go online. Look at the groups that are helping people to get off pornography, but also the youth in your circle of influence. So if you're using pornography and you get off of it, model that behavior Instead of being ashamed and embarrassed. Model it because we only find the courage to do what we need to do if we've seen someone go before us, usually If you are the person who does that first. That's a great leadership quality and a courage quality that not everybody has. So we need to do the things that we want to see other people doing.
Tracy Scheffler:If we can't help our youth get a grasp on that pornography is incredibly harmful and that it's not just a joke or a fun thing or something for boys to giggle at together and they continue to use pornography, they are slated to. Some of them become the next buyers as they grow up, and that's just chilling. It's our job to help them to not become the future buyers of America, and so we need to fight pornography. We need to speak up to the industry. We need to speak up to the local theaters that are playing pornography as rated R movies that 17-year-olds can go to. We need to go online. We need to comment about the things that we see that we know are sexually predatory or perverse and are being normalized in our community. We do have voices, and if we wait for someone else to use them, then we have not participated in the fight to keep our kids safe, and so we need to step out of our comfort zones, and it's not.
Tracy Scheffler:For instance, I'm just someone who lives in Beaver Dam, who looked up Exodus Cry and now look at what's happened Twelve years in. We're fighting trafficking and I have a very committed group, and so you asked what we're doing. So we've created a new presentation on sextortion and social media in the trafficking world, and so we have not launched it yet. It's ready to be launched and it's going to be a little part of that event that we're having on March 12th, but I'm going to be using it at schools I have some dates for 2025 at schools and really anywhere that someone asks. So always adding to what we know by going to conferences, always learning, always growing what we know so that we stay on top of the things that are happening, so that we can educate appropriately. We don't ever want it to get old or repetitive, and so we've got our new presentation. We're going to deal with what's happening, with social media being the number one way that traffickers get to their victims.
Tracy Scheffler:We go to all the table events we can get to so that our team has face time with actual community members, and what's often said to them is oh my gosh, this makes me wonder about my granddaughter or my niece or my nephew. This is sounding like I'm going to talk with them, and that's what we want to happen. We need to be communicating. You know, historically, the campaigns to try to save kids from trouble, like Just Say no. They work, and the basis for those campaigns are talk to your kids, open the line of communication, and some people guffaw at that like my teens don't listen to me, my kids don't listen to you, to me, but you know what fought that. Like my teens don't listen to me, my kids don't listen to me, but you know what they do. They do. They don't want to admit that they do, but research shows that the kids whose parents have communicated with them about hard topics are much less likely to engage in those behaviors. And so we just need to be speaking to the people in our lives and communicating and just not having blinders on.
Tracy Scheffler:I would love to honestly close the doors of Five Stones and never have to talk about sex trafficking again. It's not fun, it's not pretty, it's a burden and then I burden other people. But until this stops and goes away, we feel called to it, but I wish it would be over. But the only way is that we're all in the fight together and so speak into the lives of kids and youth. Be a mentor in your circle of influence.
Tracy Scheffler:Don't be ashamed of things that you've been able to get over and get past. Be a role model. Get off pornography. Talk to kids about sextortion, because you preempt that situation with a conversation. They're not going to fall for it as easily or they're going to come and talk to you more readily once it does happen. Preempt those conversations. And then the last thing I will say is free, and it's the easiest thing you can do to fight trafficking, and that is to affirm the people in your lives. Affirm the youth and the people in your lives. Affirm the youth and the children in your lives so that they have confidence that they know who they are, and then, if you are a Christian, that they know who they are in Christ, sons and daughters of the King, and they will then be much less likely to be the person that that predator picks out and zeroes in on to try to victimize and exploit.
Christa Potratz:Well, thank you so much, Tracy. We really appreciate all of this, and we appreciate so much having you here today too. Thank you, you're so welcome, and we will have your information and five stones in our show notes as well, and anyone can always reach out to us at lifechallengesus. We thank all of our listeners for joining us today and we look forward to having you back next time. Thanks a lot, bye. Thank you, bye.
Paul Snamiska:Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Life Challenges podcast from Christian Life Resources. Please consider subscribing to this podcast, giving us a review wherever you access it and sharing it with friends. We're sure you have questions on today's topic or other life issues. Our goal is to help you through these tough topics and we want you to know we're here to help. You can submit your questions, as well as comments or suggestions for future episodes, at lifechallengesus or email us at. Thank you, christianliferesourcescom. May God give you wisdom, love, strength and peace in Christ for every life challenge.
