Mission 991 and Human Trafficking Intervention

Fr. Aaron spoke with Julian Diaz of Mission 991, Inc., a non-profit organization engaged in human trafficking detection and intervention (www.mission991.org). Julian shared about the tragic statistics regarding human trafficking (not just sex-trafficking, but forced labor as well), and how his military and law enforcement background has helped him act as a successful liaison with foreign governments to detect and intervene where people (made in God's image) are being trafficked. They discussed ways that parents can be vigilant to protect their children from falling prey to this, and resources avenues people can follow to support the cause. 

Human Trafficking Hotline: 1-888-373-7888

Text BEFREE to 233733

NCMEC - National Center for Missing & Exploited Children 
https://www.missingkids.org/home

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello everyone. Today I had the pleasure of talking with Julian Diaz, who has an organization called Mission 991. Now, Mission 991 gets its name from the parable of Jesus in Matthew 18, where he talks about if a shepherd has 100 sheep and loses one, leaves the 1999 safe while he goes and finds the one that is lost. And the reason why that name is so pertinent is because this organization focuses on finding those that are suffering from the plague of human trafficking here around the world. Now, his his uh time in the military has given him unique skills and abilities to find patterns or you know, to recognize patterns and behavior, where you where people possibly might be victims of this, and go and seek and find them, seek and find those people that's suffering that are in from human trafficking, that cooperating with other governments in, say, Central Central America and the Caribbean. We talked about some of the time times where his travel is taken in places where he had to go and detect where people were and participate in how they were basically liberated from that type of slavery, from modern slavery, and how the ways in which the programs that can help those people recover and have lives after that. We have share a common Christian focus on wanting to see people freed in this way. And so we were able to get at why he's what are the things that are part of human trafficking, what are some of the things he's encountered, what governments can do to possibly close the net around this even better, and maybe even parents can be more vigilant at helping make sure their children are never victims to this. Anyway, we had a wonderful conversation. I hope you'll join us for this journey. So thank you for coming in our recording. Really appreciate you coming to join me. Um saw a movie a couple of years ago that was with Jim Cavizel. That was Cry of Freedom, I think. Or Sound of Freedom, was that it? Uh what it was called. And I think for many people that was their first exposure to um how you know, type of you know, human trafficking, the networks that it involves, how widespread it can be. And it was a it was a wake-up call for some. And but uh uh for many people, like we need to know more. And who's doing anything about it? And I'm so glad I ran into you at the Fourth of July celebration in downtown Dothan. But anyway, I I don't want to talk too much, but uh, I if you could just kind of introduce yourself and let's talk for the benefit of the who sees this, what you do and what you what's got you into this.

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Sure, sure. And then we can circle back to the movie because I I know that a lot of people have uh watched the movie and it it raises a lot of questions. And so that's a big part of what I do with Mission 991, nonprofit uh here out of Dothan. But we operate a lot in Central America. It's just kind of where a lot of my connections and requests are, but we kind of answer the call wherever we can. Obviously, time and resources is always a battle there. But the uh the a big part of what we do is addressing educationally what is the reality of trafficking and the way that it presents itself versus the Hollywood version of it, right? And there's a lot of that in that movie.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

But the every every pursuit has a mythology or it's been mythologized in some way. Yes. I mean, movies aren't supposed to be accurate, they're supposed to be a conversation starter if they if possible. If they can't I mean, I know a lot of firefighters will have backdraft posters up on the wall of the station. They're like, you're not embarrassed by that. Like, yeah, but you know what? You know, that's the closest anyone's gonna know to kind of like you know what we really what we do, even though there we can point out all the inaccuracies all day long. Still, though, that's somebody's gonna ask about my actual job because they saw it. Right. So, not to interrupt you, but that's kind of hopefully that's hopefully that's was a conversation starter for you.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah, for sure. And uh so with me, um it's been a roundabout way of kind of answering the call and where I'm at now. And I don't I still don't know what that looks like five, 10 years from now, right? Uh, but with uh the anti-trafficking effort and all that, I was uh so I was a high school kid when 9-11 happened and all that. And so I was I went directly into the military and uh I initially I was a military police officer, became an investigator uh for the criminal investigation division, okay, where I did some counter-narcotics and counterterrorism work and investigation there. So that's where I got started in the investigative world. A lot of what I continually got pulled towards because I'm good with computers, okay, was a lot of the digital stuff. Um, I don't claim to be a digital forensics guy or anything like that, but uh it really got me involved in that. I did some nonprofit work back then, and it just kind of got me in the field of intelligence gathering.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 5:15

Um, I later became a pilot. That's what I'm doing at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Now I'm a contractor there. So the nonprofit part of nonprofit is sometimes a problem, right? So I still have a day job, but we uh I I got a call years ago. I was in working in the airlines, and uh, you know, it was somebody that knew me from that world and asked me to come and help out with uh the it was Operation Underground Railroad, the organization that is behind that movie, Sound of Freedom, that you um and so I just came in as a general contractor for them, doing some work and some volunteer work. Uh, and slowly that built up to where I was a country director for them, and uh we continued to expand on that. Eventually, Operation Underground Railroad and the team that we were operating with in Latin America had some kind of differences in the direction that they wanted to go and they wanted resources to go elsewhere, so they shut down operations in Central America.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Well, me and the rest of the guys there, we were vested in in the communities and the partnerships and agencies that we had. So that's kind of where Mission 991 was born.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Um, named it Mission 991 after Matthew 18. We leave the 99 to go after the one. Right. And when I got that call, that first call to assist with anti-trafficking, you know, I I kind of went back and forth because I remembered the uh perceived pressure and urgency behind every case that I used to work, right? Uh, because when it involves children and things of that matter, the the stakes are high. And I remember looking at my wife and telling her, well, you know, if it works once, then it's worth it. Right, right. Whatever it takes, it's worth it. And it kept working. And so here we are a couple years later. Um, and uh we're still trying to answer that call the best we can. We have some ongoing operations in uh Latin America, Central America predominantly. Um it's kind of a three-tiered approach of what we do. So we try to educate the public and bring awareness to it. Uh, we try to train the agencies and some of the law enforcement and the legal entities that work and operate around human trafficking and survivors, as well as some of what I do is the field and digital intelligence gathering still. So I'll do what's called open source intelligence gathering.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

Uh, but all of this stuff is not me just going out there and doing it, which is really, really important for the audience to understand. Right. These are partnerships and memorandums of agreement that we have with the host nation. And so everywhere that I go, it looks a little different because when I'm asked to come in and be either somebody that is going to be there as a liaison, as a support, or if they're gonna ask me to get directly involved, we'll do up uh what a memorandum of agreement between our operations and what they expect. So those left and right parameters, right? We like to have those bumper guards up because everywhere is different, and I don't want to end up in a Central American jail anytime. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:30

I mean, right, because and the unpredictability of each situation has to be factored in. I mean, I imagine. I mean, I I think about the times I've written with law enforcement, how any given traffic stop is potentially career or life-ending.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

And so you there's that level of chaos that you go, I have to have to mitigate that as much as possible, really, in many ways. I can only imagine how that scales out for what you're doing with in terms in in terms of having to interact with uh other governments and other law enforcement agencies and what are the parameters there, kind of so you know in advance what it is, what you what you do, what you don't do, what their responsibilities are, what your limits are, and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Yeah, and it's it's important uh to de-conflict a lot of this work as well. And uh I find that a lot of people that want to get involved, they have a heart and a passion behind it. They just don't know really how to get started or what to do. Um, so you know, I I remind people all the time do what you do, what God has given you, you know, your gifts for, and just do it well and do it with pride and you know, follow through with what you're called to or led to give or to assist with. So that looks different for everybody. Right. If if you're a baker, then bake and be the best baker that you can. Right. But you know, five dollars towards an organization such as Mission 991 puts those people that have that training to work. So we have, you know, people talk about the dark web and stuff like that. And uh I'm not super into all of that stuff either and coding and all this stuff. I'm not that guy, but I know people that do, uh-huh. And they have bills and families to take care of and everything. So if we can put those guys to work to go find these children, then you know that's that's what it takes to get the community involved behind it all.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

I think for many, it's uh there's almost uh not I don't want to say out of sight, out of mind, but just like for those who might care about this, it's not something they think is happening in their arena or their community. Um and so as a result, like uh it it's the need is very abstract because uh the very same people who might go, well, that's a tragedy, someone should do something about that, they themselves will never get acquainted with that level of evil. You know, they they might not they don't know that they've actually come across anyone who needs that millstone around their neck tossed into the into the you know Lorient and trench.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Absolutely. And one of the things that I remind people of, uh, you know, I I make myself available to come and speak at uh different audiences, whether that's a corporate setting or a church setting or an educational school setting. Uh, and again, just separating what's Hollywood, what what's reality. And I find that there's a lot of confusion around the word human trafficking as well. Okay. Um, it's kind of become a little bit of a buzzword. There are some celebrities out there now that are that are pushing it. And like I said, it it it has a very emotional response to it. Um, and everybody wants to get involved, but there's there's all these labels that we like to put on things, and the quote unquote bad guys don't really have that problem.

SPEAKER_02 11:51

So all right. So so do you have technical definitions that you have to work with?

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Yes. So what would be examples of those? Uh again, every country is going to be slightly different. Um, but the overarching kind of United Nations uh definition of human trafficking is the use of force, fraud, or coercion. Okay. And so we have to prove those elements of force, fraud, or coercion in either labor trafficking or sex trafficking. And those lines blur. I imagine consent is something of an elastic term across borders, also. It can be. Um, you know, one of the things that we uh try to attack all the time is uh kind of a multi-tiered approach to the human trafficking problem because a lot of times, and I and I love law enforcement, I, you know, coming from that background, then I fully support all of our law enforcement. But our law enforcement people and the public need to understand is very reactionary. Right. They're reacting to the problem. And so it's just whack-a-mole. Um, and you find yourself kind of chasing your own tail, which is an important thing. We have to continue doing that, but the only way we're gonna get in front of the problem is to be proactive about some of the problems that that and some of the markers that might push people towards uh some type of human trafficking event or lifestyle.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

So that the uh the way that I approach that, and again, it's that conversation is different depending on the audience, from a faith-based approach, you know, we have to understand that there's a spiritual side to all of this. Right. And what we're discussing, human trafficking, because that's the new buzzword, it's just slavery. Slavery has been around for thousands of years. Right. And uh so we're still talking about that that slavery, that ancient problem of just like not seeing that Imago Day, the the you know, divinity or or uh respecting that that person's you know self-awareness and self-consciousness and and just loving on humanity. Because if you saw people that way, then this wouldn't be a problem.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

Well, I my archaeological research was on religions of ancient Mexico, and um, I remember reading specific uh codices and arguments that were taking place among Spanish friars and uh arguing with theologians back in Spain and with other Catholic authorities on the humanity found within these these Indians of New Spain, basically. And if they bear the Amango Day, then can can't then if they bear God's image, then they are convertible. If they are convertible, are they enslavable? And it's like that, you know, that was actually a you look at that now and go, what in the world are you doing? But that would have been a big topic for them. Yeah, is you know, how much are you are you how much are you actually going to treat these people as humans and not just things and something that has never gone away. Now um tell me is whether this what this statistic I heard from someplace I can't even remember, um, whether it how it's accurate that that slavery is actually in many ways more prevalent now than even in the controversial, you know, sixth, you know, 17th century when America was even being founded.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah, and and that goes back to you know how we define trafficking versus all these other things. Because it's slavery, right? Right. Right. Uh it's just hidden more in in plain sight, you know. So there's uh you know different statistics out there, but you know, we're talking about 27 to 28 million people that are enslaved at this moment in some form of human trafficking. Okay. But again, you start splitting hairs on what is the definition of that. Okay. So about six to seven million of those uh sex workers or in some type of sex trafficking industry, uh, whereas the others are labor. And so really that just comes down to again that force fraud or coercion. There's it takes many, many, many forms. Uh a lot of what we deal with is the sex trafficking, although we've come across uh been invited into some of the labor trafficking. But does that individual feel safe to leave if they choose to? Okay. Do they have the ability to? Are they restricted by a geographic or a transportation problem or an economic problem to where they don't have a realistic choice to leave if they choose to? And again, that that looks different everywhere we go. I've worked several cases, for instance, in the Caribbean and Bahamas area, where they will look at areas where there are there are certain women that are maybe more highly valued in these circles than others. And so some of those countries dealing with harsh economic issues, they'll send basically recruiters. And those recruiters will hire or recruit and groom these young ladies based on a job application or some type of job. So in the Caribbean area, a lot of times there's a lot of those resorts, and they'll go down and talk to these women about uh how well they'll be treated, they'll get housing and how well they're gonna get paid on these resorts, and they'll come in as either cleaners or some type of bartender, entertainer, something like that is the job that's being offered. But once they show up, they control their passport. Oh, okay. Now they can't leave the country. Um, a lot of times they're brought in under the pretense that, you know, we're gonna help you get established, but then it becomes, oh, you know, you thought that that airfare was free and that you've been staying with us for three months now, and you know, this is the bill, the debt that you've racked up, and it becomes a revolving door. And one of the things that, you know, especially for parents to understand and to teach their kids, the biggest red flag that I've seen over and over and over again are the words justice once, because that's what'll happen. Right. Just do me this favor, justice once, and they'll talk themselves into it, then guilt and shame sets in and it just starts to become a cycle.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Or secrecy becomes its own thing, it becomes its own veil. That you know, and and what happens is that you see this, especially with young children, somehow they are the keeper of the secret, and and they can become very fearful of the chaos that could ensue if they really if they reveal that secret.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:33

So somehow the chaos that would the the ramifications of of exposure are more fearful to them than re than having to endure repeated offense. Correct. And uh I think that that happens a lot in church.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:49

Um, I I'm very sensitive. I've done taken a kind of a dive into ways in which religious institutions are just guilty of sin. Uh and I and I say this as someone who's like here in this arena, but I know that in many cases, especially religious religious institutions, at a certain size, it doesn't matter what size it is, it doesn't matter. Since it's a voluntary association where people uh that people providing a service people are electing to receive uh that they they're very scandal averse. And so what will happen is um something happens with uh uh first of all, the predator knows where the prey are. And so they they know where the hunting is good. And so the predator finds themselves in a situation where they're with minors or children. Something occurs where they'll say just this once, but now you have a secret you have to keep. Yeah. So now the onus is placed upon the child to keep the secret because of the chaos that it can ensue if you reveal the secret. And then so now another, and then what happens is that in the at the institutional level, it's discovered, and that fear sets in of the chaos that could ensue if that is revealed. So that's how they become so scandal, they're so scandal averse, that's how they wind up being secretive regarding their own, you know, something that's happened in their midst. Um, rather than going to immediately to law enforcement or you know, their standard required reporting, there's something we'll handle this in-house. And and people want people ask, how in the world do does this happen in religious institutions? Why is this why can this happen in church? And it doesn't matter if it's a small church or big church, why does this happen there? Are they all just a bunch of pedophiles? And like, well, I think that fear of what might happen if the secret gets out. Will everybody just leave? Will they vote with their feet? Will our whole institution go away? Will they lose their faith and be, you know, and lose confidence in everything we're doing? Well, we have to try to manage this secret now. Well, you're basically just perpetuating the child's captivity at scale.

SPEAKER_00 20:55

Yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people discredit or don't give as much credit as is deserved to a person's sense of belonging and identity. Oh, yeah. And they'll assign that belonging and identity to different things, the family, the different tribes, right? Right. And so then, like you're saying, um, it becomes their their mission to protect that tribe at all costs. Right. And sometimes in a religious institution or even in a family institution, it becomes uh that crisis management every day. Yeah. And it just becomes the normal.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Um, I think that the think about a child who's going, okay, this happened maybe in-house. Something happened in the home. If I reveal this, it breaks apart the home. So now they're bearing the burden of not breaking apart the home by keeping the secret of what happened to them.

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Well, and I and I deal with a lot of that cultural uh systemic trafficking and and abuse, and and those lines blur all the time, but you know. At the end of the day, abuse is abuse and exploitation is exploitation. Right. But when you have these cultures where the legal age of consent is 14, and you have these um, you know, elder matriarchs in the in the tribe, in the culture, in the uh community, and they see this abuse happening to a 14-year-old minor. Well, they just kind of have the mentality, well, uh, I I went through it, I turned out okay, right? Right. So now it's your turn. Or sometimes they will literally go to them and they will say, like, you know, we were falling behind on bills. I had to do this when I was young. Now it's your turn.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

And they'll perpetuate that because a lot of people don't understand that familial trafficking is a big part of human trafficking as well, where individuals are introduced to trafficking very often through a family member, sometimes the mother, the father, uh, or a close relative or friend as well. Because when traffickers and groomers, you know, they're thinking that they're some people think they're they're hacking their computers and they're hacking their kids' phones and stuff. What they're hacking is emotions. Yeah. And they take over that person's emotion, their sense of identity, uh, the isolation, and they start planning those doubts and seeding those doubts to lead them down the road to a point or a decision. And it's uh it's that series of yeses. Nobody just wakes up one day in a trafficking situation. No, yeah. And the other side of that coin is true as well. People don't just wake up as a, you know, you ask a five-year-old, what do you want to be when you grow up? They don't say a pedophile. No, no, no. You know, no, I mean, right.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Psychopathy, you know, can be and have some genetic components to it. But yeah, typically, um, for a lot of people, they wind up in a much more evil place down the road than they you know intended when they started.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Yeah, and it's just a series of small yeses that start.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Well, I saw a film recently that was for the most part, I didn't consider it high quality, but there was one performance within the film that was very well done. And I just like if you could just have just if if the whole film could have been the quality of this one actor, and it was a film uh called Nefarious, yes, and it was the actor who played the demonically possessed inmate, thought he was excellent. And the law of the dialogue I thought for him was well written. Yeah, and uh one of the things that they came out, he says most people can most people grossly underestimate the patience of the demonic.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yep. So true.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Well, he's like, we'll just we'll we'll we'll we'll we'll drag out your little yeses in a row over the course of a lifetime. Yep. It's like huh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

And I like to remind people too, it's not great to think about. I mean, I uh what I I don't want people seeing the boogeyman behind every corner, right? But that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Correct. Yeah. And uh, you know, it's important to reflect on the statistics. The statistics, they're just math, you don't have to like them or not. Right. And uh so if statistically speaking, 30, 40 percent of America is watching pornography or ingesting it in some way, form, or or otherwise, and the numbers might even be higher now. I think the the last statistic that I heard was that the average American child was introduced to pornograph pornographic imagery at the age of eight. And uh the the fact that this is happening statistically across America, if you're in a congregation of a hundred or you're in a congregation of a thousand Americans, right? Do the math.

SPEAKER_02 25:43

Right, exactly. Oh, I know. It's very difficult. I mean, and for us, I was talking to the young man about this the other day, because in many ways Christian teaching on sexuality, on sexual norms, that's remain consistent. And it it is not within my purview to change any of that, what the church has taught for 2,000 years. Having said that, um classically, our age of our our age of abstinence, our our our time frame or our our shelf life of abstinence for most of human history was about five years from puberty to marriage. It was we'd be a maximum of about five years, from 13 to by 18, maybe. And that's assuming that and that's assuming that um when because we have uh young people hitting puberty earlier now, yeah, and we've got them and they're still then they're marrying at you know legally marrying at 18 now. My grandmother once told me if they weren't married by the time they were 16, they were considered an old, an old maid. So that's a maximum of five years for the most of our country's history. That's a maximum of five years you would ask someone to be abstinent in their in that age when they're going through all their emotional, um, uh emotional rollercoaster. I mean their uh hormonal roller coaster. That's a maximum of five years. Now it's closer to 50, we've tripled that because one puberty is happening for young people earlier and they're getting marrying way later.

SPEAKER_01 27:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:17

You know, in their late 20s, maybe early 30s. And so now what we've done is we've created a situation where we've almost entirely taken away the hope of healthy sexuality for them. Because what used to be that short window of abstinence, uh short window of abstinence has now tripled. And in place of that, we're throwing in all these other unhealthy um avenues of sex of sexuality, and we have no idea where it's gonna go. This is a cultural experiment we're still in the middle of.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Absolutely. And I I agree with a lot of that. The uh because I I've been saying for a long time America is a cultural experiment. I mean, this has never happened before, ever, in the history of the world. Um, and and it's fantastic, and I love this country, but the needle has been shifting for decades now, uh, the wrong direction. Right. Right. And we see it in our our youth now, and I know it's always the old guys, like back in my day, old curmudgeon. Yeah, but uh, but there has been turn that rock and roll stuff off. Right. I mean, but there has been a big shift away from uh just you know, basic respect, ethics, and morality, and uh a lot of it is uh driving people further and further into isolation. The biggest uh way to identify, and of course, you know, people can go to mission991.org or other sources like Nick Mick, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Um, the blue campaign from Homeland Security is a great one as well. Okay. Where you can get resources. Uh the blue campaign is great, by the way, for anybody listening that has a business or a church or something like that. You can get um educational products like posters and reporting numbers and things like that. Blue campaign is what it's called. Okay. So where would people find that? Uh you could Google it. I I don't know the Google Blue Campaign. It's it's the Department of Homeland Security. Okay. So you might encounter a couple of other websites, but it's the official uh government Department of Homeland Security website that you're gonna be looking for. Okay. And the uh they provide those resources for free. Uh you just tell them what you need and where it's going, uh your justification, and they'll they'll mail it right to you. Right. Um, but you know, when we're looking at some of the stuff, like I said, the community needs to understand that that that interjection. So uh, you know, I pay my bills as a as a pilot now. And in in aviation, we talk about the Swiss model that leads towards an a uh aviation accident. So every time there's an event, right? So there's a a bird goes into an engine and damages it, or whatever occurs, maybe a mid-air collision, whatever that event is, is the trigger here, and then they go backwards. And so Swiss cheese, you know, it's got the holes in it, right, right, right. And they say, what happened at all of these different events for it to connect the dots for this to happen? And then we're gonna go back. Is it possible to shift any one of these? And now you prevent the accident.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

And so when you look at individuals that have been trafficked and abused at the level that we're talking about, there was a critical cliff event in their life where they agreed to whatever event or they were forced into it. And what occurred leading up to that day that could have been prevented? And of course, there are people listening that probably have maybe gone through that, or they have somebody in their life that has had to deal with that sort of thing. Um, and we're not talking about self-blame and self-crete and all that to that extent. But as a community, where can we interject to prevent the exploitation and abuse of our minors and youth? And it's not always abuse of minors and youth. Uh, there's a lot of different ways out there. And that's that's what people need to understand is that when you're talking about human trafficking, it's a business. Right. And they're gonna look at you or your family. And when they make that assessment, just like any salesperson would, you want their determination to be not worth my time. You know, that's that's too hard of an enclosure, it's too defended, not worth my time.

SPEAKER_02 31:34

We used to call that uh being a bad mark. Um, you know, because my my long ago I taught martial arts full-time my pre-ministry career was the and we would we would talk about this in rape prevention classes and so forth. And people I talked to in growing up on the street, they they had to educate me because they said you've lived in this pristine suburbia. I'm like, don't talk to me and tell me what you know. And they would talk about how it's lines of the Serengeti. It's that gazelle is too much trouble. I can't, I can't take the lines assessing, I can't take down that gazelle. Um, if I expend too much money, expend too much energy taking that gazelle down, I won't have any left over to defend that kill. So therefore, that's a bad mark. Means like, nope, I'm moving on. There's gonna be plenty of other opportunities are a good mark where I can both take the take it down and have enough energy left over to defend my kill. And so we you expand that out or you apply that to basically it was a rape rape prevention class, but ways in which all the different ways to make yourself a bad mark, changing your routines, be situational awareness, having any anytime a person's even training the art, they're changing their countenance slightly in a way. And so the more a person trains, the percentage of them actually ever encountering a predator drops sharply because the predators are all watching, going, nope, nope, nope. Okay, that one.

SPEAKER_00 32:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:56

And so there are probably a lot of different ways in a human trafficking standpoint where people can be educated to be a bad mark.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Absolutely. And and your children as well. Uh, and people are always looking for that that one magic thing, right? That's gonna prevent their kids from being groomed or whatever. Um, and short of you know, Little House on the Prairie living and and being isolated.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

Uh Little House on the Prairie had an episode about that, bro.

SPEAKER_00 33:23

Uh so there's, you know, the the truth is hurt people hurt people, right? And the world is full of hurt people. And so the the approach really, there's no one magic thing, it's a multi-layered thing that you're you're trying to implement, which are digital device security uh protocols. Uh nothing that's and it sounds complicated, but it's not a lot of this people can Google. Uh, there's a fantastic YouTube video. Oh man, it just jumped in my head, but I can't remember her name, but she's a mom and she's like a uh computer engineer and she puts out these videos. But if people Google them, there's so many resources out there. Your phone is more than just TikToks and you know, cat videos. But um, you can uh multi layer this, you know, parental controls and some apps that are out there like Bark uh and for self-accountability. People have probably known about the uh Covenant Eyes, yeah, other ones like that. One that I like telling people about is um it's a Christian organization, uh ProtectYoungEyes.org. Okay. Um I don't know them personally, but I love that they they have a very practical approach to apps and softwares and things like that. So your kids will come home and say, I need to download, you know, cake three for this class project. And you're like, what is that? And these apps are always changing, and uh, you know, um you can go on there and search it, and most of the time they'll have some kind of evaluation, like these are the pros and cons, these are things to consider, and then you can make an informed decision. It doesn't mean it's an automatic note, right? But you don't have to put these things into the hands of your children right off the bat.

SPEAKER_02 35:11

And in the inflammation of any one of these things can do you can make someone a worse mark along the way, yeah. You know, where you're not as easily marked by the predator. Um, I I come at it from the perspective of I I get I'm exposed all the time to people who are immersed in classical education. And one of the things in classical Christian Christian education, they're constantly asking is I I hear all those threats that are possibly coming in through the devices. Why does your child have a device again?

unknown 35:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:40

And what was the what was this great necessity that they had all that screen time? Argue for me why your child is being babysat by a device. I mean, so that's they're they're starting from the very ground level. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

And the the data is out. Um, you know, I just put it out on a different podcast that was talking about some of this stuff because uh there's a research was done on a large data set of youth that they tracked. And what they found was when it came to uh pornography and other types of um, let's say harming activities online digitally, that the the age was 13 was kind of the hard one where the the data spiked, where if your child was given a device at 13 or younger, then every year increased their likelihood of being addicted to or involved in this type of behavior. Um and I'm a huge advocate of just delaying that as often or as long as is practical. And it was hard for you know my age group growing up because we were getting used to these devices and we didn't yet have the data to know what the long-term implications were gonna look like. And we our approach to these devices is very different, you know, from my age group had getting that, you know, when teachers were like, You're never gonna have a calculator in your pocket every day, and it's like, Yes, I am. So they uh but I still view this device as a little computer. Oh, yeah, and I use it as such.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

Oh, that that that could that could have powered the Apollo 13, right?

SPEAKER_00 37:23

You know, right? And and just a wealth of information, and I'm constantly using my devices that way, where younger people don't really view that device that way anymore. It's it's the perspective has shifted. And uh I believe that you can absolutely teach a 16, 17, 18-year-old individual how to use a computer. What you can't teach a 17, 18-year-old is emotional maturity, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:48

How to use their uh intellect and biology in terms of cognitive development at all, in many ways. I mean, heck, the brain's still forming by the time they were kicking them off to college in many ways. In some ways, it seems as though, because we all complain about, you know, in 100 years ago, you know what a 16-year-old would have been doing? Yeah, I don't know that that's a good comparison because we've in some ways we've almost uh evolutionarily adapted down to the comforts of our society that allows children, our kids to mature much later than they would have earlier in in some ways. I mean, I don't know. I that's my my just my thoughts. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

And there's been a uh, you know, I don't I don't do the politics thing, but uh, you know, too much. I don't I don't dive into it, but uh in terms of our education.

SPEAKER_02 38:41

It's too bad because I'm gonna ask you about that.

SPEAKER_00 38:43

Well, I mean, I I sure but if there are specific laws that we could be pursuing that we don't that we're not. Oh, absolutely. Um, you know, I'll uh make a note and then uh come back to that. But the uh sorry with the uh with the younger generation though, I think that our education and uh other areas in our country have taken somewhat of a socialist approach to things where you know, no child left behind, all of that. And because we don't allow anyone to fail, we we've dropped the standard to the lowest level rather than everyone rising to that standard. And you're gonna have some that fail, maybe at that, but then they might discover their other gifts in other areas. But, you know, when it comes to the approach that we've taken to these devices and bringing them into classrooms and everything else, it's just um there's no respect for what that device potentially can do. And I used to explain this to my daughter as she was growing up. You know, would you feel comfortable? You know, I I had this conversation with her, she was like 13, and I caught her her and her mom caught her talking to other people online and doing all that stuff, and she's like, I'm in control. No, you're not, kid. But I try to explain to her that that device is a two-way portal, it's a two-way door. Yes, you have access to all this information, but it has access to you. That's right. And if you're taking that device to your bedroom, then it's isolated access, and you wouldn't feel comfortable with me dropping you off in the middle of Central Park, surrounded by 3,000 strangers in the middle of the night. You just wouldn't feel comfortable. Right. But that's exactly what's happening when you're opening this device. And even worse, at least in Central Park, you have randomness occurring where that individual there might be a cop and he's just off duty and he's gonna protect, versus that might be a bad guy, but he's not sure. And maybe he goes into the park looking for you again throughout the week. Maybe he sees you, maybe he doesn't. Right. Well, online, that can be specifically targeted through an IP address, a username. That individual will get a ping every time you come online. Right. And going back to just the business of human trafficking, they're gonna evaluate you and your family and they're gonna put you into a sales funnel. Maybe I can sell you drugs, make you a client, maybe I can sell you a human, maybe that's labor for your business, maybe that's sex trafficking for gratification. Um, whatever it is, I'm gonna evaluate you and put you into the sales funnel and I'm gonna try to sell you something. If I can't sell you something, maybe I can sell you, maybe I can make money off of you in some way. And so it's it's a business. And when people divorce themselves from that emotional reaction to human trafficking, they can start seeing it that way a little more clearly as well.

SPEAKER_02 41:35

Well, one of the phrases I heard with because we all got addicted to social media, and you thought, well, it's this free thing. Nothing's free. And because what I learned was that when the service is free, you are the product. Because that because the company is how what's their business model? The business model is is focusing in on you and selling everything that's can be collected about you to whoever needs to advertise to you.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Absolutely. Just look at Google, you know, and right they don't charge you to necessarily do a Google search.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Gosh, yeah, how many times I'm talking to my wife in the car about something her phone's sitting over there. Yeah, it's behaving itself, it hasn't jumped up and attacked us recently, but it's over there in the corner, and yet we're having a conversation about something I think is just between us, not so much because instantly those advertisements start happening on whatever you know uh app that we you know open next. And it's really rather creepy. Somehow we've all gotten used to that level of creepiness, it's almost entertaining, but you realize no, no, no, there's a dark side to that.

SPEAKER_00 42:38

And I I try to remind youth all the time like you're special, but you're not that special. You, you know, there's statistically speaking, if you're a guy and I put some scantily clad, beautiful girl in front of you, you're gonna slow your scroll down. Yeah, and you know, it's gonna catch your attention. We're biologically engineered that way. And that's by God's design so that we can go forth and multiply, but it's been corrupted. It's been, you know, um the when I do talk about human trafficking, a way to understand it is uh you can think of like a three-legged stool, right? It's a very stable platform. And when I look at my investigations, when I'm doing field intelligence gathering, open source intelligence gathering, I identify patterns. It's one of the things that makes an investigator an investigator. Um, and so, you know, this is we're living in God's design. It's, you know, it's a fallen world, but it's God's design and, you know, the the Trinity and all that. And you see this replicated throughout the world in nature and everywhere around us. And so when you're looking at human trafficking, it's a very stable platform held up by three legs. If you take one out, the whole thing topples over. Okay. So you have the victims, you have the traffickers, and then you have the institution or the traffickers being like the institution, and then you have the customers. Demand. Right. Right. And uh so if you were going to take out the world's largest retailer, how would you go about doing it? And I'm not saying compete with them, right? Just have them removed off the map. Right. So, you know, there's different ways and approaches to that. And one of them being the the victims. So you harden the victims. That's what we're talking about with uh parental controls. And parents need to be very careful when you are allowing your children to have access to an app that allows conversations to occur. And there are good apps that have uh a lot of protections around that. Um, but then what you're what you want to keep an eye on is if those conversations are moving off platform. So they'll go from, let's say, uh, you know, Facebook, which is not good. I don't want to make it sound like it is, but um you it's a bigger, well-known platform, and then they'll move that conversation to something like Viber, which is a messaging app that's encrypted and has disappearing messages. Or WhatsApp or something like that. Yeah. So if those conversations are moving, that's a huge red flag.

SPEAKER_02 45:09

There are but but and then like uh Candy Crush has like chat features to it, doesn't it? Almost everything does it. I mean, just everything does.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

So I'm not sure how one even polices that, you know, because there's so many different ways in which well, you know, like you were talking about the sin of uh that permeates some of our culture and and you know, sometimes seeps into an organization. Uh it's everyone instinctively knows that sin is more likely to occur in the shadow than in the light. So just bring it into the light. You know, if your kids need access to a computer, fine, but it should be right there in the open with the screen facing the room. Yeah. And there's some people out there that'll be like, no, they they need privacy. No, they don't. No, you don't. They absolutely do not.

SPEAKER_02 46:03

That's an odd. That's an odd. Sorry, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

No, my computer made an odd noise. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's listening, right? I know, right? Yeah. Uh so you know, bring that stuff into the light, give it exposure, and it's not gonna fix every problem, but those situations are a lot less likely to occur. Okay. And then making it to where your children have access to ask questions, to in in a non, you know, confrontational way, uh, to where they can bring something to your attention and not immediately get attacked. And, you know, you're so dumb. Why are you doing this? Uh so there's a lot that can be done there, but schools also can implement these things. And I think we're starting to see the data come back also that we don't need all these devices in the classroom. For the first time ever, the intelligence marks across the US dropped.

SPEAKER_02 46:59

I think with regard to the devices, and this is just my own, you know, my own um um uh pop, you know, I'm just positing this myself. But I think the devices are parallel to how in the 20th century you basically got an entire culture smoking. With all this, with and and even we can go back to our own even um the cigarette commercials of their health benefits and how people were enjoying this and so forth. It took a while for everyone to kind of realize, oh, this isn't good for us. Yeah, and so now you still have people, you still have smokers, people have freedom to still smoke, but generally the zeitgeist became, yeah, this wasn't a good idea. Even it was everybody was, but what turned out it wasn't a good idea. Yeah, and I feel like we're kind of in the midst of we're still in that phase, or only now starting to realize, oh, maybe all these devices weren't the best thing.

SPEAKER_00 47:59

Yeah, and and I want to be clear too, I'm not anti-technology, uh, like AI and everything. There's there's some amazing advancements that are occurring around us, right? Um, but it's a tool. And the tool placed, you know, a hammer can build a church or it can be a murder weapon. Right, right. So in the hands of the right individual, these these become, you know, false multi force multipliers to the type of work that we can do. Um, what I'm referring to is protecting the growth, maturity, spiritual, emotional, physical of a child until they're at a point where they can make those decisions for themselves.

SPEAKER_02 48:42

You mean just remain engaged parents that aren't you know that you aren't using devices to babysit your child because you know you're so stressed out you won them out of your face for a minute?

SPEAKER_00 48:52

Yeah, and and what these technologies have allowed are these groomers to throw this wide net and they're just fishing. And the problem is now they can have that conversation a hundred thousand times an hour, and all they're looking for is that one kid. And I try to remind parents because I I get all the time, you know, I I go and I talk at to an organization and they'll say, Oh, that's that's so sad for the people in South America. Oh, that's so sad. And then I go to South America and they're like, that's so sad for the people in Central America.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

And it's always over there. The problem is never here. No, I know. And the when it comes to their children, it's hard for them to see their children behaving in these ways.

SPEAKER_02 49:35

Uh and groomers able to use AI to their advantage in this regard.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

Oh, absolutely. Okay. Yep. And uh just like any sales funnel, they'll engage a certain conversation or script, and all they're looking for is that engagement, that response. Okay. And so these parents, you know, it's hard to see your children that way, and I get it. Um, but we need to remember that what we're preparing for and defending against is not our best day or even our average day. It's our worst day. So, you know, your daughter might be the type of person to never ever engage or have these conversations. And I fully agree, you know. However, that day she went to school and spilled, you know, chocolate milk down her shirt, had to go get that cleaned up, and she got dumped by her boyfriend, and then she got, you know, bullied and made fun of by her friend group, and she failed that super important math test in the later period because her mind was somewhere else. She walks in the door, she's a little grumpy, mouths off. And what do you do? You we don't talk to me like that. That's disrespectful. Go to your room. It's a perfect story. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And then she's in her room, isolated, alone, and she opens up this device and ping. Yeah. How are you today? And the conversation starts from there. So, you know, we're not necessarily talking about people's everyday life. It's it's these moments, and and the same can be said about the other way around, too. You know, you you're not an individual to engage with uh trafficking or be the customer in this case, but all of a sudden your marriage is kind of on ice. Uh, no intimacy in the last six months, let alone I've heard some guys that I I've mentored six years of no intimacy in their life. And now you have this opportunity on this business trip and the product is there, it's available, and it just becomes a lot harder to avoid that sin. And though these are the things that are the stumbling blocks that are put in front of us, right? Um so you know, the going back to we we have these victims, we can harden those victims and be more involved as parents, as church leaders, as community uh personnel to give outlets, healthy outlets for these individuals to mature and then protect them from some of the things that are that we know are targeting them. Right. And then the other one would be the customer. And so for that, you know, we just want to drive them away. So that there's twofold on that. We we have laws and legal systems that make it harder for that storefront to be plastered, right? So if you can't advertise, if you can't sell, yeah, then you're gonna make less money. And if people are making less money, they'll go do something else. Um, and as a customer, also, the I mean, the other one that we fall back is just good old-fashioned fear. You know, if we're making arrests and we're putting those arrests in public forum and putting them on Facebook, uh, then they they should be uh more widely known and it creates fear. Uh, one that I like to bring up in youth is that engagement in pornographic content and in some of these behaviors will impact it's scientific. It'll impact your erectile dysfunction as you grow older. Physiological effects for them too, yeah. Reliance on medications, intimacy, connection, affection. Uh, it's gonna impact your marriage and all these things. And uh not to mention uh transmitted diseases, sexually transmitted diseases, it's not pretty.

SPEAKER_02 53:22

And you've spent your you've spent your you know, your productive energy in that arena on things that were unhealthy for you, and then now you lack that capacity for your healthy outlets. If you if if for a whatever reason you're able to recover that, you're able to recover that connection, then say with a spouse, or you're getting married and you you get married or whatever. Now you've possibly potentially have this healthy outlet, but you've damaged yourself in some capacity in that you know so yeah, we see that.

SPEAKER_00 53:52

No, absolutely. And and the outcome and you know, the repercussions of your your actions today will have these issues with you later down the road. So are you gonna make that decision today that's gonna drive you there? You know, seeing somebody one of the when I was younger, if you're in the Philippines, right?

SPEAKER_02 54:08

No, no, no, no. I you now you say this because Philippine, yeah, my wife's from the Philippines, and um their uh tobacco warning labels are pictures. And so here we just have like a little text that says the Surgeon General says smoking's bad for you. There, they actually have an image, a picture on the pack on the on the on the cigarette pack of a guy dying of emphysema in the hospital bed saying smoking causes emphysema or birth defects. There's a small child in the ink, and it's just they're nasty. You almost want to collect all of them.

SPEAKER_00 54:42

You're still gonna have a of the population that will still be.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

Oh gosh, you see this. You you do see that um every now and then where you ever seen the person who's got the trach, you know, oh no, and they still want to put a cigarette up to that. You're like, dude, you're just give it up, man. You damage yourself so much. Nope, I still got to do this. And I think that in the military in many ways, you're right, pornography is the same issue where you could tell you could tell someone you're participating in a crime scene with your OnlyFans subscription or whatever else other site you go to because of the trafficking that occurs there. Because who knew that pornographers aren't all ethical about this? And you're participating in the crime scene there, and they go, oh, and they feel badly, but somehow that dopamine hit, that addiction rush, they come bring keeps bringing them back. And it's tough because we are so saturated in many ways. I mean, that we one of the chief things affecting Christian men. I mean, my I myself participate in various different discussions among Christian men are like, what how do I do this? I mean, I'm just I'm just swimming, I'm in a I'm swimming in a culture trying not I'm in the fishbowl trying to not to be wet.

SPEAKER_00 55:50

Yeah. You know, you're like, well, I guess a part of that dopamine addiction does have to do with uh just staying busy. I mean, we like I like we said, like the American, you know, social experiment has led to more off time, more leisure time than ever before. And, you know, back in the day, you're hunting, gathering, right, you know, you're you're shoulder to shoulder with other men in the community, and you're actively just surviving. And slowly we've gone to more and more and more leisure time. And it's absolutely true, you know, the idle hands and all that.

SPEAKER_02 56:29

Uh this is why I really disagree with Elon Musk when he paints utopian images of the future where AI and robotics will be able to handle almost all labor, and then you'll humans will be able to kind of operate in some you know less laborious fashion. And I just see that as so self-destructive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Well, we know. I mean, it's in Genesis, right? Right.

SPEAKER_02 56:51

Aldrin Givesley, I think, has something to say about that as well. Yeah. From Brave New World. But no, no, you're right. Genesis, like at the primordial level, we must be about tending the garden. The labor that you must perform. Well, uh the you know, Solomon touches on this that all a man can do is eat and drink and enjoy the work of his hands. This, too, I've seen is a is a gift from the Lord. And so this idea of you know busying yourself with purposeful work and the labor that you gives you satisfaction, these things all kind of in a security way bring us back to our grandma telling us that the idol's hands are the devil's workshop.

SPEAKER_00 57:30

Absolutely. And, you know, nobody likes to toil just for the sake of toiling, right? It's purpose-driven. So if you find that purpose, you know, Micah 6.8, it it spells it out very, very clearly: justice, mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord. So, you know, it's justice is something that we absolutely have to regain and reprioritize. And it's been a small incremental attack on our language, especially to our youth, because you have different organizations that have different goals. So you have communist movements, you have socialist movements, you have the LGBTQ community and all these. And what they do is they hijack words. So words like pride is not necessarily a bad thing. If you have pride in yourself and your community and things like that, um, you have a you know, all these things like calling someone a hero, and it's so, you know, uh courageous to do this stuff, and they're they're pulling words from you know, battlefields and all these things for these very whatever. But the that identity attack has been incremental. And, you know, it's just that return to what are the things that we're gonna hold sacred and how are we gonna defend them, and having that justice forefront and then having the mercy and compassion to reach out to those that have maybe stumbled and fallen and bringing it back into the fold. Um, but yeah, the the the and and for the listeners, looking at how how can I get involved, what can I do? Yeah, again, you we're we're looking at shoring up the victims, and that's just being actively uh participating in your community and keeping uh vigilance in your community, in your workplace, in your church, and uh and just asking the right questions, having conversations with people. And for the customers, you know, one evaluating how am I potentially participating in this industry. Right. Because, you know, again, the conversations always go more towards the sex trafficking route because that's the emotionally engaging one. But the numbers are more people stuck in labor trafficking than sex trafficking. Okay. So 28 million total, about six to seven of those in sex trafficking, the vast majority is labor trafficking. And so, how are you voting with your dollar? Where are you spending that dollar?

SPEAKER_02 59:51

And stuff to nail down because I can't imagine how one lives purer of that in a culture where money's tight. Uh you know, the people outside the US tend to look at the US as so rich as like, well, everyone's just swimming in in loot, right? And like, no, no, it's really expensive to be here uh in many ways. And so uh so someone is shopping at that store that seems like it has you can furnish your home and clothe your kids for a lot less than everywhere else. And then then the guilt trip comes in. You know what, you know, you know what sweatshops are going into making that that the cheap stuff. Yeah, I know. I don't know what to tell them. I'm not willing to, I don't know if I'm willing to kind of like guilt the the lower income people at first.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

No, they they should absolutely not have any shame over that. And and this is just you know my uh experience in this. Um, I believe that the ownership is more on the business owners than it is on the individual shopping.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:52

And so if you're going to run a department store, if you're going to do all this stuff, you're you're bringing in a lot more than that person is spending at the Dollar General or whatever, right? Right, right. So if you have, and it doesn't take much either. You look at some sheet metal company out here in Alabama, and let's say that they're bringing home a profit, you know, individual of a hundred thousand a year. It's not you're not rolling in the money. But even for that to carve that out, the raw material plus expenses and budgeting and all that for the year, you're talking, let's say, one and a half million dollars a year in raw material being sourced out of China or whatever. Okay. Uh, and for that to trickle down and then expenses and all that, you know, business owners know it, it just gets eaten away.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Um, but one and a half million isn't nothing. And have you ever hopped on an airplane and gone over there to see you're you're sending these people a million dollars a year. Have you ever shown up and just seen what conditions the workers are are working in and how they treat their individuals and if there's respect and dignity there? And you know, if a lot of our uh, you know, the fabric industry, the the raw material industry, the that is moving goods and including the food industry, if you were to take personal ownership and where you're sourcing materials from, then we can start to dry up some of these uh regions that just routinely and culturally systemically uh abuse people.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:27

Well, I don't know where the solution is, though, because in many cases, that that business owner who's getting their raw materials from some source, that's I'm assuming I'm making assumptions about their profit margin and where what their expenses are and uh versus payroll, considering you know the all the um payroll taxes and everything else that are placed upon them because we know that payroll is the most the largest expense for any business, but then their insurances and all their taxes and everything else they have to do, what's left for them in terms of their profit margin? And if they can't get their materials from that source, then are they able to maintain a competitive edge and even stay in business? So, my question always is where's the line that we land? Because for the most part, most of us are not sitting in front of CEOs saying, hey, you need to do business by your conscience. Yeah most of us are interacting with their consumers. And so if we're trying to if we're trying to inspire people to be um conscious or or consumers of conscience, to what extent do we are we giving them the burden of shopping morally based upon the practices of a business? I mean, where is that separation where they where you say, hey, you know what, if you shop there, you're participating in the bad practices of that business. Right. I mean, where do you well there there's a there's tough to know?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:57

There is definitely uh a trade-off, right? Pros and cons to everything. And uh it just makes me think, you know, there there's so many laws that are in our design, again, patterns around us. And one of them is the 80-20 rule, right? Uh, I don't know if you're familiar with that one from like business and everything. And so from the listeners, if I have a business that I'm operating, 80% of my profits come from 20% of my customers. Okay. Because they're my best customers. Okay. And likewise, 80% of my problems come from 20% of my customers. So I'm always trying to identify which one's which so that I can pour more into the ones that are giving me profit and less into the ones that are the problem. Um, and so I think when it comes to our consuming, it's the same true is gonna be true there as well. There's probably 80% of our income. Excuse me, there's probably 80% of our income that is being driven towards certain expenses. And so if we, I'm not saying that you have to go and look at every single individual thing that you do, right, but what are the things that we know that we're gonna purchase every single week, every single month. Right. And let's look a little closer at where those dollars are going. What the, what are the companies, what do they believe in? Um, you know, uh I I try to identify local businesses and faith-based businesses. And even if it costs me a few more dollars, I like to know that I'm pouring into that.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:32

I can't I have an example, but I first want to ask you, I want to ask you first before I jump into mine. Um, you have an example of when you made a uh consumer conscience decision and you went, you know what, it's inconveniences me a little bit, but I'm shifting to another brand. You have an example of that?

SPEAKER_00 1:05:49

Yeah. Um, so when I do my t shirts and things like that, so it when we're doing any kind of branding, uh the Easy route would probably be jump on Timu and buy a bulk order of $5 t-shirts.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:06

But uh I will generally go and look for the American made products because for a couple of reasons. I mean, one, it's keeping the money locally sourced. I know it's gonna cost me a little extra, but the other thing too is I mean, America gets a bad rap on certain things, but people need to travel more. We're doing a lot of things right. And I love this country. And one of the things that we do get right, even though there are things that sneak in and chip away at this and get sensationalized in the news, but by and large, our law enforcement is very, very good. And our judicial system is very good. Uh, there are a lot of protections around our labor industries and things of that nature. Not that trafficking can't occur inside the United States, because we I know that it does, uh, especially in certain industries like agriculture. But for the most part, there's a lot of checks and balances. So statistically speaking, I'm a lot less likely to be uh participating in a labor trafficking or extortion or exploitation event if I source locally versus maybe from areas that we know aren't as good at keeping up with that, like Africa, China, Middle East.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:21

My example isn't nearly as noble. Um the uh years ago, uh Gillette stepped on a rake with a really bad advertising campaign. It was just absolutely disastrous for them. And they had taken this, they had made the decision to create a commercial that seemed to um uh be an attack on what would be, in their view, toxic masculinity. And of course, for me, myself and many other consumers went, You're a razor company. What are you doing? You're you're you're you're you're supposed to be marketing to the best the man can get, right? And um, so for myself, and apparently I wasn't the only one, because enough people were so decided I do not want to support, even though for all my years and I inherited that company from my father, they decided to shift to look, go out and look for any other brand that they could, other than Gillette. I will buy whatever razor I can. It's just not going to be a Gillette product. As a result, it actually created an entirely new marketplace for all these other alternate brands of razors that never existed before. And a flood of new entrepreneurs came into that arena, it came into that vacuum of people demanding to wanting to you know use products for shaving or grooming or whatever that was anything except Gillette. That was like a and that was a consumer conscience movement. And so if that can happen over the offense of someone going, I don't need to be preached up by some feminist, you know, ad agency, if they can do that and actually have a genuine effect in the marketplace, then certainly other, you know, there are other areas where you can say, listen, this is these are brands, and I trust that you're do you does your website have any of these where it seems like they are their higher risk that fall on a scale of being higher risk than others?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:13

Do you do uh I don't, but there are there's a liability associated with that. There are what's that?

SPEAKER_02 1:09:18

Or would there be liabilities associated with that?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:20

No, uh, I just um I don't have the I mean it the the time is everything. Oh, right, right, right. I I have a day job, I do this, and all the other stuff trying to give ideas in the church. But but but there are organizations though, uh and and there's there's so many nonprofits out there that you people need to be careful there as well and see what if they're rescuing, how do they define a rescue? Okay, uh where are their dollars actually going if they give to an organization? Uh there's you know a charity scam is amazing. Oh, there's some of the largest ones in human trafficking uh, you know, industry, because that's what it has become, uh, are not as reputable as people think, but they just do their homework and ask the right questions. But you know, going back to your your your question, there's uh we we've seen so many examples of that. The Gillette one is a perfect example. There's another one was uh the Bud Light commercial thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:10:20

I never was a Bud Light guy already, but I yeah, I watched it happen. Yeah, and you're like, yes, the marketplace can respond.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:26

Well, people need to remember that the politicians work for us and the corporations work for us, they just don't think they do, right? Uh, but I think people are getting very fatigued with people trying to tell them how to think and and what to do. And I think they're starting to see some pushback on the phone.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:43

With some conscious effort, you know, these things can occur. And but but typically they've got to be named and say, hey, listen, on a scale from one to ten, in terms of high risk versus low risk, we grade this, you know, this company as being actually you have a low probability of participating in human trafficking. This one's a higher probability of human trafficking. And on this, we can place these on a scale. Uh, we no one's would say we would we wouldn't consider anyone to be totally pure, but in terms of what we can detect, if your person's trying to to be a consumer of conscience, here's some possible guides for you. Yeah, and hopefully those reliable sources exist because you know people do want to try to take away the demand where they can, yeah, if possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:28

And you know, this goes back to the the question that you had versus like politics and the third, you know, part of the the stool that holds up this platform that holds up human trafficking would be the traffickers or or the institution of it, right? Yeah, and so that goes into just making it harder for them to put up a billboard and advertise, making it illegal for them to participate in this, and you know, just making the stakes higher and higher for people to get involved in this kind of behavior. Um, and that's where you get your politicians involved, the not just the law on the book, but is it being enforced?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:04

And a lot of people I think the Jeffrey Epstein thing has become something of an avatar toward people's, toward the toward public regarding public cynicism about government's motivation to solve this problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

Yeah. I mean, I I see that the the Epstein thing immediately also for me I I see it as a lot of people on the day-to-day, the grunts, all of us down here, the normal people, right, right, will point at that. And it's kind of the same sin thing. Well, I might sin, but at least I'm not that guy.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:38

Right, right, right. Yeah, it's always easier to I you can always find someone worse. It's totally possible. It's very easy to find someone worse. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:46

And and so you people want to look at are are the laws being enforced? And if they're being enforced, then what are the prosecutions? Like if there's arrests, are they actually being prosecuted? Yeah. And then you start seeing the health of the system. And we're a very numbers-oriented culture, right? And it's hard for people to see that sometimes because when I first started operating in Central America, we were rescuing 30, 40, 60, you know, young women and minors at a time during one operation. And those numbers started going down, and people started. And I've I've talked to donors that think that you know we're we're doing we're less effective now. And it's like, no, we're not. We're actually, this is what we wanted. It might be evidence that you're having making a dent. Yeah. I I just recently went to a small area in in off of the Caribbean, and I landed on this island off of a boat maybe eight, nine years ago, and I was immediately met by hustlers, just street street guys. And uh, you know, what do you want? Drugs, alcohol, women, where are you staying? Where they they would have a catalog to show you right as you stepped off the boat. You tell them what you want, go rest up, and we'll we'll bring it to you. With the menu. Yep. And uh I went back to that same island about three months ago uh for the local government had asked me to come in and do an intelligence run on a at a nightclub, and nobody met us off the boat. I had to go searching for it. So I know what I'm looking at because I I'm experienced in that way. So I I find the guy that's kind of the mark, right? The guy that's running the street. And so I kind of go by and I hit him up and we start have a conversation. He tells me where to go, which just confirms what we already knew. And then we go there and we we're we're doing our thing. Well, it was a lot harder to get to it. We did find evidence of trafficking, and we did uh that did end up later going into an operation where they rescued um seven women out of that, but it was so much harder to I to identify and find. And that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:02

Well, so that's encouraging news, but counter the claim that they're just moving the they're just moving the the deck, you know, the the they're just doing a shell game. Because I mean, I always think that I've gotten all the fire ants in my yard when I spread the special chemical, but somehow they just go to a place where I didn't spread it.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:21

So how do so no counter that's that's absolutely true? Yeah, however, how bad would the yard be if you never sprayed? Right, right. I mean, it would just multiply. Oh gosh, yeah. So, you know, the I'm not naive enough to believe that my efforts in this are gonna be the ones that stamp out slavery after thousands of years and bigger names than mine have uh, you know, been addressing the issue. But you know, it's it goes back to the the same old Winston Churchill thing. The only thing for good evil to you know succeed is for good men to do nothing.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:54

Right, exactly. So we we just keep at it, but but places where you would expect it to still be prevalent, it's you know seems to be something of a a shrinking of that tumor in a sense. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:06

And and at least it's going more underground. So are people going to participate? Yes. Right. But I want it to be as hard as possible for them to identify a victim. Right. I want it to be costly for an individual to go there. It they might choose to go there, but I want you to know that you're statistically playing roulette here because you know, we're there are people that are actively pursuing you. And then if you are caught, these are the repercussions.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:34

And energy they're spending on evasion is energy they're not spending on recruitment.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:38

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. And then and then for the traffickers, knowing that, you know, you're there there's a cost to doing business here. Um and so the in order to keep that stuff active, you know, people need to vote. They need to go to the politicians and they need to educate themselves on a lot of the issues out there. And I I I personally hate the way that we do this in America, where they put a bill up and they make it all about that bill, but underneath it, I stacked a hundred other bills.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:08

Oh, yeah, it falls apart.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:10

And that nobody knows about.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:11

And and right, because it's now because it'll get bundled with the the thing you'll want to happen will be bundled with nine other things that people will don't want. And so what will happen is good people will then vote against that bill because they're like, I it wasn't a good trade. I couldn't vote for the one good thing. This bill that has 10 things in it, I couldn't vote for the one good thing because I wasn't willing to trade it for the other nine bad things.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:36

Yeah. And where people can go directly is NCOSE, okay uh, National Center of Sexual Exploitation, I believe it is. Um, and these are individuals that, again, I don't have every skill set. I never claim to be. So I'm I'm glad that we can partner with all these other entities in a community, right? So uh I don't know anyone there personally super well, although I've I've had the opportunity to meet some other individuals. And NCOSE is made up of volunteers and uh uh employees that are very knowledgeable in the legal framework of things. So I come from a operational field intelligence kind of background, uh, military. These are the people that come from a legal background, and they're taking on, you know, Mark Zuckerberg, they're taking on Google. They've had tremendous success at Capitol Hill, taking on some of these giants that, you know, we wouldn't even know where to start with behind all the legal framework. Um, and every year they put out something called the dirty dozen list. And you can go back through the last couple that they've had, and that they basically just put a target on 12 organizations and they they're gonna go after them legally and everything. And that they're they're a fantastic place to get more informed on a lot of the things that are being brought up on that. And I think um one that people should be very closely monitoring is this new one in Australia. So Australia recently passed a bill, I think a year ago. I might have that wrong, but it's a little too early to have all the data from it. But they've made it illegal for social media, Instagram, and other things, accounts to be opened by anyone younger than 16.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:25

So they immediately deactivated like five, six million accounts, and are people still gonna get it, try to get around the rules and all that? Sure. But I really hope that this shows uh a positive move in the right direction, and that maybe five, six, seven years from now we'll see the effects because you got to remember, I mean, the the average 13-year-old in Australia has probably already had social media access for three, four years. It's gonna be nearly impossible to move that over. But maybe that seven-year-old who that has not had that exposure as they age into this, you know, 12, 13, 14, I'm hoping that in five, 10 years we'll see positive effects from this and it'll be something that can be implemented in a in a larger way.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:15

Now, you were gonna talk about specific laws that you're hoping that you know that legislature will pursue. Is that something like you saw in Australia? Is that hope something you hope to see here?

SPEAKER_00 1:20:25

Something similar to I really hope that we can start moving the devices out of the classroom. I mean, it's just been proven. We don't need them. Right. Uh and you, you know, I I dealt with this even as a parent, you know, uh being called down to a school and engaging with the math teacher who his response to my argument, because I'm like, look, math is math. It's one of the last things that has a clear yes or no, correct or incorrect. And they're they're teaching all this crazy stuff. So I taught my daughter, I helped her, I tutored her, and she got the right answer, and he marked it wrong. And so I just went down there to have a conversation. You know, how do you want me to tutor my daughter? What how can we do this better for the next one? Because it wasn't just like bad. I mean, she bombed the test, even though all the answers were correct. And uh so one thing that came out of his mouth was, well, I'm just here to help them live their best life.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:24

What? No, you're not. That's a meme.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:26

That is not that's not a response from you're you're here to teach them two plus two equals four, and you're not even doing that well. So, no, you leave the rest of that to me. And it was uh, but that's the um the thought process that's out there right now in the school systems, and and these devices are no better because they're just targeting and what people need to understand is they're they're hijacking our children's emotions and habits. And what they're doing is slowly building a habit where they can control the engagement when later down the road they become the consumer. So at 25, 30, and if you can do that incrementally, then you can you can control the outcome. And what the outcome is a 25, 30-year-old consumer who's going to go out there and buy a house, buy two cars, and you know, put it all on a credit card uh when they go shopping, because that's the new form of kind of indentured servitude that that model that has sprung up.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:26

Oh, I know. I I and he was a guy, we can go on for quite some time about that. I mean, I mean, ever since I think it was the Obama administration's federalized student loans, and it is just the level of of financial irresponsibility that that's you know, that that helps to spike. Yeah. And um, oh, and financial despair in many recard, in many ways, too, because people just don't ever see them themselves out of that ever. But uh for myself, I just everything I see about public school education, and I want to be careful because I know that there are you know there are public school teachers of goodwill that exist. I'm not gonna say they don't, but at the administrative level, at the at the um department of education level, at even at the school district level, there's seems like there's very few decisions that they make that don't continuously argue for and remain the best advertisement, best advertisements for private education. I mean, homeschool is on the is exploding. Uh um classical schools are you know just on the rise and exploding. The floor state of Florida has really kind of expanded their um their voucher program. I don't know yet all the laws for Alabama, where the school voucher program has enabled a lot of new alternate schools to pop up, something of the Wild West. And so they may not all be of equal quality, but nevertheless, it's opening up a whole new arena for parents to have alternate education for their children that doesn't just send them into the public education grinder. And it seems like over and over and over, public education public schools are just continuously committed to being the best advertisement for private education they can. And it's it's too bad because you and I probably both grew up in you know schools that we could consider to be adequate.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:17

But yeah, I was lucky that I uh, you know, grew up in a very small town that still had those values. And that that's the thing that going back to how somebody falls into getting groomed or trafficked in the first place, it's it's a large attack on identity and isolation. And what a lot of parents need to understand is, and for the younger listeners too, um that that tribal belonging is so important. And a church community should, a healthy church community should be able to provide that to their congregation as well. But it has to extend beyond the one hour meeting on Sunday or whatever. Right. Uh, because the problem is when I the where I grew up, small town in Michigan, is it was that ethics and morals were very uniformed across the the uh population, the community. And so my dad would tell me, Don't do that. And I'd be like, What do you know, old man? And then my school teachers would say, Don't do that. And then I'd maybe do it at the grocery store, and the guy stocking the shelves would be like, Hey, don't do that, because in this community, we don't do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:30

Oh, I have my scared street moment. I mean, I was I was I was pretty young and I got into a bit of trouble, and it was it was it pushed, it tested the limits of what my parents thought they could just kind of corral. And so my dad turns, looks literally down the pew at the church and says, Sheriff, can you help me out? Local sheriff of our uh of our county attended our church, and and and sheriff Jim Pope says to my dad, Ron, yeah, I got you, no problem. And I got a tour of the local jail. And he must have slipped all those inmates and smokes, I'm sure there was, because whatever he did, they were on their best acting of all time, all of them reaching through the bars. Little boy, you want to be here with me? Scared straight. You know, but that's what happens in a community that's really tight, like that, where the values are shared. You know, again, that's one of the reasons I love about Doethan. It reminds me of the hometown I grew up in in many ways, because you would just you wouldn't think that. Like, you know, well, I'm I go, I attend church with the sheriff. I this I'm kind of on the borders of what I think I could my son's misbehavior. Uh, can he help me out? Oh, yeah, we can help. We got you.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:41

Yeah. And so and and the problem with these devices now in the hands of youngsters is you might be growing up in Dothan, Alabama. But you're interacting with someone across the world. Yeah, and and now all of a sudden you have 500 people, followers, yeah, uh in New York City that are telling you, no, you're fine. They're just, you know, small-minded and whatever, they're traditional, but you're there's nothing wrong with you. Well, you know, if you're a young person listening to this and you don't feel like you belong, look around. I mean, are you making an effort? Because if somebody from Dothen, Alabama, uh, or small town Alabama, you know, they traditionally look like, act like, dress like they're from that area, well, that just means you're you're part of the group. And this gets into a lot of the stuff that um people just need to understand about themselves, is we are engineered to identify threats. It's what makes us the top predator in the world. And so if you look like, act like, and sound like something that doesn't belong, you're a threat.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:52

And so if you are going to demand that the world accepts your eccentric behavior, I mean, when I was growing up. Up the if you were the weird guy, you knew you were the weird guy and you just accepted it, right? Oh, because everyone's gonna let you know. Yeah, and so uh but for the most part though, if you're if you don't feel like you have that sense of belonging, you know, look around. Are you making an effort to uh to be a part of that community or that group?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:20

Well, that's why social pathogens, such as the LGBT stuff, I mean, it's literally transmitted by through through Instagram. And I mean, all that entire mind virus that is really spread across our society, that's what Dave Chappelle refers to as the alphabet alphabet people. It's like all the alphabet you know identifiers basically spread through the internet. Uh they're not spread through casual contact, they're not spread through you know, in you know, through aerosol air, whatever they are spread through the internet. And that's where we have all these, because you a person will be in an area where maybe that might have been 0.01% of the population, and now it's five percent of the population. Why? Because that many people caught it through their devices, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:11

And the so a part of that also is the that need for young people to know that their life matters, that they have a purpose. Right. And so they'll hijack these words like courage and brave, you're so brave for doing this. Uh and our young generation is very susceptible to that because they're looking at a world right now that's that's tough. You're you're looking at AI replacing jobs, you're looking at uh all these different markers, and it's a very good question. You know, one we need to be better at having conversations, especially with our younger people, because our younger generation will ask, well, why shouldn't I, you know, go on uh uh a pornographic site and get instant instant dopamine? Or why shouldn't I, you know, engage in this activity that is going to maybe be detrimental when I want to seek a job later on? Why shouldn't I get this? And so many adults out there just kind of shut that down. Like that's we're not gonna do that just because I said so.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:17

And you would like for them to be right, you would like for them to say either God says so or I say so. You'd like there to be some level of authority that they would respect there, but unfortunately, that we're just not there right now. Well, people want to know well, is this going to have a negative consequence to me? Okay, I might do it, I might, I might have maintain that healthy practice and and reject the unhealthy practice, but it's going to be out of a sense of self-interest.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:43

Yeah. And uh this it starts at at such a young age, you know, uh, just learning how to play well with others and uh being just involved. And uh, I think Jordan Peterson talks about just going to quote him.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:58

Yeah, oh my gosh, you're freeing my mind. He says you have what about four years to properly socialize your child, yeah, so that by five they will be socialized by others.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:07

Right. Yeah. And and just letting them, you know, take the devices away, put your children in a bedroom together, and they will make a game, they will invent a game, they'll use their imagination.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:17

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:18

Uh, they don't need this constant, and I I I get it, you know, we we have busy lives ourselves, but um, but it's it's important. I mean, I can't stress that enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:28

Oh, I know, I agree. And and it there's there's all sorts of different areas in which we're constantly making ourselves a good mark for the predator. I mean, we put we send our kids, you know, dick here will receive your child at six months old, and so they'll be raised in a hive um where they will be where they will be raised in a pod of other, you know, of others of like of like size and species. Um, but they will all be all their behaviors have to be dumbed, have to be suppressed down to match the most docile female in the group because that's who can that collection can use can be man is who can be managed by the pod overseer, which is the daycare worker, who herself is probably rather um ups, you know, upset and tired and so forth. And so by raising our children in hive, especially at the earliest age, they're already used to being in a in a hive by the time they get to the public education system.

SPEAKER_01 1:32:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:24

And that's why we have all we that that hive practice all began in the late 80s, early 90s. But it now we're seeing the ramifications of this. We have all these college students who can't imagine the concept of personal property because they never had personal toys, they were always had to share everything from the earliest age possible. So they were raised in hive, and so now they have a hive political outlook too. Yeah. And so that's just my personal theory.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:52

But I mean, there's definitely some evidence to that. But I think uh when we present an individual with the opportunity to be generous and to be kind, uh, I think that they'll they'll find that there's a level of dopamine there as well that they can't replace anywhere else. Right. Um and if we learn how to live inside of that, that that basically, and so we've been given the rule book or the the manual for how to operate this machinery, and it's called the Bible. Right, right, right. So if we just operate in that way, people will find a deeper meaning and deeper attachment that doesn't just fizzle out the moment that you get access to whatever it is that you are seeking. Right. Um, but you know, and I and I want listeners to know that I I'm not coming at this with a finger pointing. Right. I I mean, I'm a father, and there's been some, you know, my my children, I'm extremely, extremely proud of them. But are there some things that I would have done differently? Absolutely. So a lot of what I'm saying comes from personal experience and dealing with the personal consequences of overlooking some of this. Now, again, we didn't have the data. We we were figuring, we're we're still figuring it out as we go. And we're doing that now, real time with AI.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:12

So well, we're with the data is allowing enabling us to progressively find out why God was always right. Um as it as though, and it's kind of a shame that we needed that proof, but then nevertheless, it seemed like the more data we get, the more we go, oh goodness, it seems like he knows what he's doing. Yeah, and so that's why I always able to I can argue to people like I can argue from a biblical theological standpoint why X is correct. But I mean, just in my science arena, I can also argue from an evolutionary standpoint. This is also correct because it has the greatest probability of maintaining your strength for adapting to environments and perpetuating the species. And so it's just so happens that from whatever perspective you take, it seems like God knows what he's doing.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:02

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, part of that rule book, you know, we're we're directly instructed that in a marriage a man loves his wife and a wife loves or a wife respects her husband. And that doesn't mean that a woman doesn't need respect or that a man doesn't need love. But you see this so often when you see the aftermath of some of the events that trigger abuse, exploitation, and uh trafficking or runaways and things like that. And for a man who feels disrespected, he's going to go out and find an outlet. If he doesn't have personal disciplines built up uh to protect himself, he's gonna find an outlet to find what he perceives as respect or uh devotion and things of that nature. And so, what better way than to purchase it if you have the financial means to do it? Right. So that's why they are so uh targeted and susceptible to that level of grooming as a customer. Uh, not that men don't also get exploited and trafficked, especially in the labor industry, but the uh the other is true for women as well. So a lot of times these young single moms or young women, they get exploited and groomed based on that protection and that uh covering that they should be getting by strong men in their community, in their church, and in their families. But instead they have to seek it. And then the the groomer, the trafficker is always gonna present themselves as a problem solver. Right. They are going to first in build up trust. So if you have a problem with money, they're gonna become the source of money. If you have a problem with affection or intimacy in your life, they're gonna become that romance, they're that that uh that voice in your life that's maybe the only positive thing in your world until I see, and then there's that switch. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:01

So now the hook's in, they don't have to maintain the the incentive has basically gone away for them to be persuasive anymore. Right. Because they're hooked.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:09

And you know, we we talk about these different organizations that rescue, and it's so important for people to ask how do you define a rescue? Because for me and my organization, a rescue is again that Swiss cheese model where we're intersecting, we're intervening, and we're creating a new data point, but I can't control the outcome. That's on God and these individuals, right? So we recently had a operation that resulted in the Caribbean area with 30 rescues. Well, the majority of them were uh women, and uh there were a few minors, but the minors, depending on the local laws, are going to get pulled into the system and they'll get certain care and certain protections that the adults won't, because if the legal age of consent is 14, then you're allowed to do what you choose, right? So that person might choose to get help, mental health, uh, physical, and uh maybe some uh uh job advocacy and things like that to help them get their economic situation better so that they don't have to continue to work in that area or present themselves and be vulnerable to it. Um, but it's it's not up to us. They might choose not to. And so that to me is just about becoming that that intersection, that that roadblock, separating them from the traffickers and giving them the opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:46

What they do with that opportunity is not up to me. And you do see it a lot of times where they go right back into the uh the problem because the underlying issue hasn't been resolved, the economic issues, and it's very, very difficult when you start talking about victim aftercare. I'm currently through mission 991, and if anyone wants to give towards it, uh I'm establishing a victim aftercare program with El Salvador, where the federal office that I'm working with, they have a revolving door of 40 to 60 victims. Usually about uh third of that are minors, and the majority are women. Uh and uh, but they they get a victim in either self-reported or uh through some type of operation with the military uh immigrations or their law enforcement, and they get them basically with the clothes off their back. So they're coming out of a nightclub, they're coming out of a factory or a field. And so we're able to show up and uh give them the resources to give them hygiene products and just basic care, clothing, uh maybe a phone so they can start communicating with family until a more permanent solution can be uh found. What they've found is that that victim is more likely to follow through the prosecution process if they're able to meet them with that up front because it builds trust. Okay. Um, and it's just the right thing to do. Right, right, right. And exactly the uh the long term is getting them the medical care and the the training so that they can go get a job. But it's it's muddy because if someone has been trafficked, let's say the sex industry for two to three years, maybe they started at the age of 14, they're now 17, 18, usually they're gonna have one or two children from that, which becomes leverage points for the traffickers as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:40:43

And we get those are dependents, and they're they're they're they're they're basically anchoring them into that negative arena, also, probably.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:50

Yeah, and controlling the the child as well. And maybe that's gonna become product down the road for them.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:57

But the uh they also come with a lot of um physical problems, um, maybe some uh transmitted diseases and other things like that. Uh, and they are gonna have a lot of trauma and mental health requirements as well. Right. So it's just meeting them on that ground. And the uh that's the long-term, you know, when people talk about victim aftercare. Well, what is the follow-through on six months, six years down the road? Are we actually staying with and partnering with these individuals, connecting them with some churches and other things like that? So we have that program.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:35

That's a tough thing because you can have like, okay, you're free, free to do what?

SPEAKER_00 1:41:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:40

You know, great. You know, I'm free of this captor, but now I'm in this you know, arena of chaos where I I don't know what happens next. So you want to that's where the aftercare comes in.

SPEAKER_00 1:41:50

Absolutely. And it's uh that's so huge. Uh, and there's opportunities everywhere. You don't have to go far to find hurt people, you know, you can find your backyard. Uh so we're we're actively building up that program with El Salvador, and uh in uh in the next couple of weeks to months, um, I have an operation going to Haiti as well, where we're Haiti's chaos, it seems.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:14

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:15

And just trying to trying with the United Nations and other things like that to build it out to where once stability can be implemented again, it's so hard right now because you could point and say, right there, but there's no law enforcement, there's no judicial system to prosecute, there's just it's in chaos. But the the rising cultural issue right now is the Rostovak system of child servitude. Okay. And it's easy to point the finger as an American, but if your options literally are allow my child to starve to death in front of me, or committing them to basically indentured servitude, uh, they're dropping these kids off with wealthier uh individuals that are promising them education and promising them other things. And it's a cultural system. I'm I'm not going to say that it's necessarily right or wrong. The Haitian people get to do what the Haitian people like would like to do. However, it's just so primed for abuse and exploitation. Right. And it happens often where these children are dropped off because of these economic means. And if they if the child is educated and the child is taken care of and all of that, um, you know, it's it works out. But are is the child able to leave if they choose to? Is the child actually being prepared and trained to become a self-aware, self-independent adult? And uh, or is are is the individual now taking the child and you know doing the Harry Potter thing underneath the bl broom closet?

SPEAKER_02 1:43:51

Well, well, that I mean, and able to leave is something of an elastic you know phrase also, because like well, you know, kept in a compound with men with guns, okay. No, they're not. But but then to say maybe you oh yeah, you could walk away, but out there is starvation. Choose wisely. Like stay here and undergo whatever horrors that they have, or go die of starvation because there's no resources out here and you know it.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:19

And so that's also something that's a that's a you know, economic prison of hunger or whatever, and and fear of the unknown. And so, like, better the devil you know than the what you don't. Yeah. So I can I can't imagine all the different things that they face.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:34

And I'm I'm going with a larger group, uh, some partners. I don't, I don't know, I don't have specific permission to mention them, so I won't. But uh they're they're larger organization that's gonna be partly bringing uh the gospel message to the region, but also uh some medical care and other things like that. Like we're not directly involved in that, but we can provide the uh the atmosphere for that kind of thing to occur.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:58

So um our denomination has uh some missionary activity taking place in Haiti. And but the my bishop, who uh is that's uh the our international province where he goes, talks about some of the challenges they face because of the lack of instrument infrastructure and the ways in which you know trying to navigate all those um the those challenges in a pretty chaotic environment, building a church, what what resources can they leave there, what's going to be gone the next morning, but you know, when they if they uh if they try to build up a church, will it be completely looted by the time they come back to to uh build you know build anything the next day? It's a real challenge for them in terms of when he can go there and uh and what he can do. But I can only imagine how that arena, especially if you have chaos like that, lends itself over to those children at risk.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:47

And you know, and a lot of what I do is little one-offs where where people invite me in as a or an agency or partnership uh to do these spot checks or collect data points on on an individual, an organization or a uh a business. And uh, you know, to that point with what's happening in Haiti, I was in the Dominican Republic doing that uh based on someone's ask, checking out a nightclub. And I was there with another individual who was he's not new to operating like this, but he's new to the human trafficking thing, right? And so uh we were there and we're in the nightclub, and he was a little bit confused because he's like, Yeah, it's a nightclub. I mean, some shady stuff is happening, but it looks like a nightclub. And I'm like, no, there's more here. So we came back, came back, and then the individual asked me if I wanted to build up a little bit of trust, and they asked me if I wanted a tour. Sure, I'll take a tour. And they take us down a back alley, absolutely no billboards, no advertising, no anything. There's another nightclub behind there that is not so well advertised. And of course, that's where everything was occurring, uh, and where the trafficking was just openly presented, just like a catalog. Yes, um, and again, it's just stripping all the dignity from these people and just presenting them up as product. Yeah. Um, but you know, we we go through all that, and he was just like, wow, I had no idea all this was happening right here in front of us. And it really is, it's just it's beneath the surface, but just barely. And uh then so the next day I told him, like, all right, well, we we did what they asked us to, like, we can we can take the day off, we can enjoy ourselves. I mean, we are in the Caribbean after all, right? And uh, and I love the Dominican Republic. I I really do. And I will say, to their credit, they are one of the most active and proactive agencies that we work with. Uh, the the country of uh the Dominican Republic has a very good anti-trafficking unit. Um, but the demand is just so big in the area.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:48

Yeah, but that's one of the reasons why I always ride ride with law enforcement is because I know that my naivete is is a is a recurring problem.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:58

I mean, it's like it's it well, a street smarts, I think, is like a muscle that can atrophy if you haven't been out for a while. And so all I'll do is I'll spend time riding with law enforcement and they'll point out things to me like I would never have noticed that. Yeah, like, oh yeah, I know, but that but that's what's going on here.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:12

Like it's like this guy, you know, we're we're sitting there, we have a nice lunch, and we're sitting there, just families playing right there in the beach and kids running around, uh open, you know, resorts that you would go and you know, take your family to. And you should. Again, the boogeyman isn't behind every corner, right? But uh I see this guy coming in towards me, you know, they're selling the tours and all that stuff. And so I look over at my buddy and I was like, so like I it's up to you, but are we working or not working? And he goes, Well, that's what we came here for. So this guy comes up, and two, three questions later, he walks us down the beach, sits us down at a bar, and uh about 15 minutes after that, now we have a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old Haitian girl sitting right there with us. And now we're conversing, and of course we could, but we have our protocols and all that. Um, and um, so we're just gathering information, and certain things are starting to come out of the conversation that my friend is just not picking up on. The fact that these girls told us in passing, you know, I I came down here to shower up, and then, you know, they told us that we could meet some friends and all that, and so just put it together. They're walking down in the morning to bathe in the ocean because they have no running water. And the clothes that they're wearing, the you know, beach outfit is borrowed from the trafficker. It's gonna, they're gonna take it away from them as soon as we leave here. Uh, and so it's every element of control and every element of that force, fraud, or coercion is there. Um, and of course, they're minors. That's an automatic right uh you know trigger for it. But it's just, you know, taking an individual who's also not naive himself, but he just doesn't know what he does. Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:01

So your past and your your your work in CID and you know especially your time in the military has kind of gave you all the tools in many ways that you bring to bear. But that could have been put in service of any passion project. Was there any particular catalyst that that moved you toward this one?

SPEAKER_00 1:50:21

Well, I mean, that's a great question. I initially, I I've kind of always just had an aversion to evil. I mean, I really have. And uh I grew up on all the stories, the books, and I was always drawn to the the protector who was a little complicated, right? The Dark Knight and the Dristward and Aragon. They're they're they're going to protect, they're gonna help, they're going to do the right thing, but it's it's always a little complicated. Right, right, right. And uh, because that's just reality. And we struggle with internal and external things, but uh, you know, lies and and like open evil and exploitation of others has just been something that's always bothered me. But the way and where I grew up, I initially thought that that the great evil in the world was drugs because seeing the effects of addiction on families and uh things of that nature. So I initially just wanted to do counter-narcotics because I thought that was that was it. And so I waged a one-man war against drugs and I got my butt kicked. And uh I also just started to get a little jaded about the whole thing because these are also individuals that could choose to do different, they just don't, and of course, that's very nuanced. But I I I get where that comes that's coming from, I do. And so uh, but then of course, um, military, we got pulled into anti-trafficking. I became an Apache pilot, and I figured, you know, I'll trade in my M4 for a 30 millimeter cannon and get the job done a little quicker. But uh we we're watching that counter trafficking or the terrorism, counterterrorism thing, again, it's uh it's it's difficult to point out where the problem actually lies because is it um is it a cultural issue? Is it a religious issue? Is it a um economic or a political issue? Is it the oil? You know, there's all these conspiracy theories and all that out there. Um, but the lines really start to blur. And it gets pretty gray. Yeah, and and who's the actual bad guy, right? Now, there are some evil, evil groups out there, and uh they absolutely deserve the full brunt of our military's capabilities. Um, because again, this social experiment takes a lot to hold up, it's on scaffolding and it's very, very thin. And uh so I I'm very glad that we have men and women in our country that go out there and do that. But um, you know, I I kind of got a little disenfranchised with all that as well because just seeing a lot of the decisions being made, and I I just started to kind of pull away from that. But then when uh the opportunity came up to work with other NGOs and the anti-trafficking thing, I just kind of came back around to it. So for me, the there's a spiritual element to everything. I I believe that. And slavery in all of its forms is where the spiritual meets the physical, and that's where an individual has been torn down to their barest form in emotional, spiritual, and and physical capabilities or are presence, and uh they're just out of options.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:51

All agencies taken away, and they're you know, they're and they're denied any choice. And so I mean, I could see that where in and what is normally can be very gray now becomes pretty black and white.

SPEAKER_00 1:54:05

It is, and and they're mentally programmed to believe that salvation is outside of their grasp. So I I just felt like all the different problems, there's so many problems. There's world hunger, there's you know, uh there's narcotics and addictions and all these problems, but they really do all circle that's they circle down to this point of slavery and just the imprisonment of an individual. And we've we're not talking about metal shackles, but they're they're they're just as real, mental and emotional, and you know, just reminding someone that they're worth fighting for.

SPEAKER_02 1:54:48

Right. That's true. Well, the and to have that level of focus. I mean, I think that everyone has to have their focus, the thing. If everyone says, I just want to change the world, well, that's too broad. You know, it's that's with a lot of young people, especially college-age people. They have this messiah complex, they want to make a difference. And so, what are you gonna do? Well, I'm going to fight climate change. Like, that's really not specific enough. You're never going to know if you are effective. You're always going to feel like you're just forget it. Aim small, miss small is not just a marksmanship philosophy, it can be a life philosophy as well, where you actually get some focus to you where you you go, I can make a difference on that thing. Maybe all evil everywhere. Yeah, no. But this thing here, you can focus in on it and where a difference actually can be made, where you possibly can go, you know what, the demand isn't the supply is drying up in a place where we used to find that it was abundant.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:49

Where you know, the you know, humans as tradable commodities seemingly they're just not as abundant there. If someone, if a customer was showing up here, they would be frustrated that the supply is somehow drying up in this in this area. You got you so you can have some measurable success also.

SPEAKER_00 1:56:06

Absolutely. And you know, that reminds me of uh a gentleman, remarkable individual, older, older man that wanted to get involved. And uh and he didn't have a lot to give, but he did give, which is always something that I'm incredibly humbled by because he didn't have a lot, but he wanted to contribute. Uh, and we're sitting down, I would make time to have coffee with him and and we'd talk about things, and um, because he also had uh uh traumas in his childhood and things like that. He had some skin in the game, and um so he just felt like he should be doing more and doing more. And talking to this individual, he would he was into art, and so he would run a bi-weekly uh community event at the community center where local youth were able to come in and do art with art supplies that were donated and things like that. And uh he'd just sit down and talk to them and stuff like that. Um, dude, you're doing it. Like you're you're actively doing it. You're providing a space for the youth in your in your area to come and report and talk if they're being abused, if they're being uh neglected or anything like that. They have an outlet, they have a trusted individual that has their best interests at heart. Um, and you're providing them a space away from the the areas where they're being groomed digitally or or not um and exploited. And so you're you're doing it. You're a part of the ecosystem that's there to fight this trafficking, right? And uh, and I think that people need to know that they they can be very effective with what they've been given, right? So if you're a school teacher, you you're you're in the fight.

SPEAKER_02 1:57:56

Does this fight have any uh is there any ways in which your family's had to navigate you being part of this fight and where you go, yeah, they've had to kind of like you know, kind of have some courage about this too.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:07

Yeah, absolutely. Uh obviously travel has always has always hardened any job that you travel and stuff. Um but the they they've kind of one thing that I saw with my uh children was um when something is normal, it's not as scary. So they they were actually uh a little more engaging than they should have been in certain things because they they just weren't as uh nervous about around those topics. And I think they always had this umbrella thing that, like, oh, you know, dad and uncle so-and-so. So a lot of my friends are uncle so-and-so. Uh, you know, they're they're pretty capable individuals, they're just gonna come get me anyways. Right. Uh, and uh so we dealt with some of that. But um, I've always been I I mean, it was learned through training, law enforcement and military and all that, but I've always been a very compartmentalized individual. So uh I try real hard to when we talk about undercover work and intelligence gathering, um, there are different totems that that we use. And so, you know, there's certain things that I do to prepare myself going into uh some of this because you can't clean out a horse doll without coming out smelling like no, you can't.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:23

But that is some of the one of the big challenges that a lot of marriages face in say law enforcement and fire service, because uh, you know, that those families, the spouse, children, whatever, they're just like, Well, dad, what do you do? And you're like, uh, how is work? Uh, fine. It was good.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:39

And you're and eventually they're like, we don't know anything about you. It's like, because I don't want to bring work home, you don't understand. I really want to leave it there, but we still want to know you, and your work's a big part of you. And so the successful ones figure out how to navigate that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:55

And and I have my I think a problem nowadays for a lot of people is that they uh, especially youth, they're they've been taught that you should have this friend that can just do everything. Well, I have my friends that I'm gonna call over if I need help with my, you know, transmission or something. Right. And I have my friends that I'm gonna call if I need to go do something else. But I have individuals who are part of this um and have similar experiences and stuff. And so I can I can take the mask off with them and we can talk. And my my wife is amazing, she's very um, she she trusts me uh to go in and and do the right thing because uh, and it's not necessarily something that either one of us necessarily want. You know, if it was up to me, this guy would be living in a mountain in a cabin completely by himself.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:44

Like, but you know, the a lot of really smart wives will tell, you know, like you said, they'll tell police and their firefighter or police husband, they'll say, do what you gotta do, take care of this business, creep crack that relief valve open that you need to with your peers, and then come be with us when you're here. And so they kind of figure that out too.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:01

And for us, it's also what's the alternative? Right. I mean, the the ask is literally there. I I've tried to shut down Mission 991 like five times now, and every time I'm like closing it down and I've notified the board that sounds like me trying to run away from the priesthood.

SPEAKER_02 2:01:19

I mean, no, seriously, no. I was a in our in our in our tradition, there's three sacred offices there's deacons, priests, and bishops. And a deacon is someone who's it's it's not that common where someone's going to be permanently a deacon. Typically, that person is being trained to be a priest. I was ordained a deacon in 2011, and I was gonna be your one of your last permanent deacons. I have absolutely no compunction about the you know, about the priesthood thing. Forget it. No, don't even talk to me. And uh, so I would all say I was on a carnival cruise to Tarshus, you know, thumbing my nose at the whale circling the boat. Uh, because like the story of Jonah is like, you know, no, I'm not doing that. And um, at the beginning, it was at the end of 2024, I visited here and we fell in love. And so it's one of those things where you keep on going, no, I don't need to do this. And God's going, Yeah, yeah, you are.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:12

You know, yeah, and that's it, that was the hard part. I think uh the the lessons I had to learn in a lot of what I I said, you know, the that path of like narcotics into military and aviation and everything was learning that it you have to balance what am I responsible for, what are the things here that are under my stewardship, and what are the things that are under God's. And so I can't control the outcomes. But um, the difference is for me that I I can't look the other way because I have been trained, I have certain things that make me good at this, like pattern recognition and um the ability to turn it off and turn it on. And uh so there's a level of responsibility I feel to make use of those gifts.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:08

Um, and so if you are somebody who has been gifted with speaking, then maybe that's how you can teach. Or if you've been gifted with just incredible wealth, then you know, maybe through generosity you can move the needle in a different direction, you know. Um, but too many of us, I think, want to just be the one that does all the things all the time.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:32

No, do what you can and do it well. And so because that because that level of giftedness, I mean, you have to maintain a what I call robust theology of providence, meaning that that that pay attention to what God has been equipping you with all this time. Yeah. You know, as though somehow He's come some somehow your as though somehow your career path and your life experiences were merely your choice. Yeah. No, there's you have to have this understanding of a divine hand walking you through this so that you will appreciate where he's brought you and equipped you up until this point. Absolutely and you may be the unique tool that's necessary in that occasion.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:14

Yeah. No, it it's uh it it all it all circles back, you know, and it's uh if we allow it to be, if we're obedient, and then it and then it just works. And ever since I came to that conclusion that I'm not in control, my life has been so much better. Uh, because I was going insane trying to control everything.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:34

But thank you. I I don't want to, I don't, I know I'm taking up a lot of your time. Is there anything we haven't covered that you needed to cover while we're here?

SPEAKER_00 2:04:41

No, uh yeah, and and you know, like we said, that all the all the things. So um, you know, I wanted to make people aware of some of the resources. Of course, we talked about the blue campaign. Because I'm gonna link your site to this when it goes on YouTube as well. So thank you. And so, yeah, I mean, if anybody feels led to help us, we really appreciate it. I mean, uh, the demand is always greater than the resources. Um, and uh right now we're actively looking for people who want to volunteer their their gifts. Uh, so if they are good at marketing, any of the administrative stuff, uh, we could use a lot of uh hands in in that to just be able to grow. Um, but resources where people can go learn more are also the Nick Mick National Center for Missing Exploited Children, the Homeland Security Blue campaign. Uh if they want to report, they can report to uh the Human Trafficking Hotline, which is 188-373-7888.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:40

And I'll let me make a copy of that before you go to yours.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:44

Oh, thank you. Uh they can also text to be free. Okay. Uh B-E-F-R-E-E. Um and the Nick Mix Cyber Tip Line. These are all places that can at least get the ball to rolling in the right direction. Okay. Um, but people just understanding that grooming model of identifying, building trust, they're isolating and then ice escalating. They isolate and escalate uh that emotion. And um, and that's where the exploitation occurs. But just educating uh yourselves and educating your children on what could be potentially out there and the statistics don't lie, you know. Um, if statistically speaking, you're gonna be assaulted if you walk down this alley, you know, a 10% chance and you go through it 10 times and nothing happened, then you're like, woo. That doesn't mean that it hasn't happened. It just hasn't happened to you yet. And these are events that it only takes once, and that's the important thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:06:40

Right. Well, and that also goes back to again, back what we used to teach long ago is that um why is it that a person, when they train the art, train train martial arts, why is it that they st they reduce their probability of ever being in an altercation with you know the more they train? Because the more you train, that actually comes out in your person as you're walking through with a crowd, your situational awareness, your posture, your physical prowess of just looking ready for anything is now making you a worse mark for the predator all the time. And so all these things, that's why you so it actually does reduce the probability that you will be a victim of this through the awareness of the all the ways in which you you know consider, you know, consider the threats.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:25

So without being paranoid, without being paranoid about life, you still just your awareness alone is reducing the probability that you'll be a victim of that.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:33

I mean, we weren't given a spirit of fear, right? So we we have to engage out there where the sick people are to bring the healing. Exactly. Um, but yeah, I I think uh I think most people are doing more than they give themselves credit for already. Um, so it's just bringing it under the umbrella of community. Right. So thank you very much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:51

Really appreciate you coming to talk to me. I appreciate that. Um, because this podcast was linked through our our diocesan page. So more people will hear this than just our church or Dothan. We you know, it's it we're it's starting to have something of a that we've actually had some downloads happen internationally too. So great.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:07

If if all it does is make somebody curious enough to go and educate themselves more, then I'm more than happy to do it.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:13

Appreciate your time. Thank you very much. Thank you.