Pints With Aquinas - Freeing Women from Sex Slavery in San Diego w/ Grace Williams

Episode Date: February 9, 2022

Grace's Ministry: https://www.childrenoftheimmaculateheart.org/ Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Support the Channel!: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/ Spe Salvi: https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html Last Conversations of St. Therese: https://amzn.to/3B9p3b3 Study on Sex Trafficking: https://www.sandiego.edu/news/detail.php?_focus=57024 

Hey, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Thank you so much for listening. If you like Pints with Aquinas and want to support us, you can do that in one of two ways by supporting us on Locals or Patreon. If you go to pintswithaquinas.com slash give it'll let you know there what you get in return. Thanks. Okay, what does that mean? It's Welsh.

I don't know what it means. Welsh is my last. Frat is Welsh. Oh, nice. So, Grace Leonello, welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Thank you. Thank you for flying out from San Diego. My pleasure.

Yeah, it's snowing here. I'm looking out the window right now, there's snow. What's it like in San Diego? It was about 75 when I left. It was like the first days of spring. My wife and I are going to Miami next week. Just so we can make it through the winter. We were like, let's just go and sit in sun and do nothing.

When I landed in Chicago on my way yesterday, I was by this like seven year old girl and her mom, and her mom was like, look, we haven't seen snow for six days. And I was like, I haven't seen snow in over a year. Yeah. First time I ever saw snow, I was 22, I think. 21, 22 up in Canada. And it was like if you had never seen stars. Yeah. And then one day you walked out and there they were. Like my reaction

seemed completely inappropriate to the Canadians I was with. But yeah, it is so lovely to have you on the show. Grace Leonello. Used to be Grace Williams. So the reason I keep saying this for those who are just joining is you just got married. Congrats. Thank you. Yeah, wonderful. Thank you. So for those who are just joining, tell us a bit about the ministry or apostolate first and then we'll go deeper into that.

Absolutely. Yeah. So it's called Children of the Immaculate Heart. We work with survivors of sex trafficking just in San Diego. So we're local. We have two programs, one for adult women, focusing on one with children, because that's a harder population to get services for. Women with children. Yeah, yeah, most programs will serve just single women, and for understandably, I mean, it's hard to house and take care of so many people.

And then we have a home that we just opened about a year and a half ago for teenage girls. So it's foster and probation youth who obviously were removed from their homes and stuff as foster youth and then trafficking happened to them later. So that is a 24-7 residential therapeutic program up in northern North County of San Diego.

My first reaction is like, how are you so joyful? Like you are such a beautiful, joyful person. And I'm like, I think I'd want to walk around just shooting men in the face continually. Yeah, it's not it's not for everybody, but I think being able to. Keep the perspective of redemption always is what makes it possible. Otherwise, it's too. Yeah. Heavy. Yeah. I felt like that with my anti-porn sort of writings and things like that. Thinking about that all the time is very difficult. But hearing about people finding freedom and marriages growing stronger through it

and things like that was helpful. So how on earth did you start? And by the way, we got a link to Children of the Immaculate Heart. Neil, can you put it down there? I don't know if you have. He has. He's great. And he knew on it. So Grace didn't tell me to say this, but I'm telling you, please consider supporting these guys as a link in the description below.

You guys are what? Four, one, three, three, three, five, one. Yeah, I know nothing about business. I said you are that you're a nonprofit. Five, oh, yeah. Good, good, good. So people should consider supporting you. How on earth did you get into this?

How did you start this? Describing a call is always a bit odd, but I'm actually a converse. I think it starts there. So I came into the church when I was whopping 20 years old and many things drew me to the church, but the first moment when I thought, oh no, maybe the church is right. What were you prior? I grew up in a Baptist church,

we're just kind of evangelical Christian, like not really like thinking there's a church that has it right or something like that. But I heard Dr. Janet Smith speak one day, and that was like the day where it was like clear that the church was right about everything she teaches about the human person, human sexuality, like all the pro-life stuff, but like to such a degree I'd never really heard it before.

And he was like, okay, the church is the only entity on earth teaching all of this. So in particular, was it what she had to say on contraception? Because you say the church is true about what she says about the human person, which is a broad category. Contraception part, but like that made sense to me. I don't know why I hadn't. It wasn't like a topic I had grown up hearing spoken about. So like just logically from the very beginning, that was like just made sense.

So like just logically from the very beginning, that was like, just made sense. Although the fact that the church was teaching it so clearly and nobody else is, was like certainly significant. I mean, there was other things too, just like when she was talking about like IVF and like what different people think should be done with these frozen errors.

And it was like clear that they believe there was like a soul and just talking about and having hashed it out so much. But I think a lot of it too, I mean everything that you know John Paul II wrote about woman and all of that was so life-giving for me. Especially just as like an American teenager growing up in a super confused world. Are you reading John Paul II as a Baptist? So I was in college at the time. So, yeah, I had a Mormon guy ask me why there were so many different Christian denominations, and I thought about it. But it wasn't really until that moment where I'd really experienced somebody

standing on the outside kind of of accusing us, and correctly so. And that being a stumbling block, and just looking at our Lord's Prayer in John 17, like this is one of the last things our Lord prayed for, like this, followers would be one, as I and the Father are one, so the world will believe you sent me. So our lack of unity is a cause of disbelief.

And so it was like, we gotta do something about this. I didn't think I was gonna become something else, but it was just like, we got to do something about this. I didn't think I was going to become something else, but it was just like, we got to learn about all the other, you know, Christian traditions and see how we can be one, which of course, you know, typical leads you back to the first seven ecumenical councils and we were all one. Like, ad fontes, all of it. And you know, like Cardinal Newman said,

to learn history is to cease to be Protestant. So that was that. That's what happened to you. Yeah, that was that. But yeah, so starting to just get into all this stuff. And my best friend and I, who she became Catholic, six months after I did went back to her house after hearing John Smith. And we were like, we sat on the floor and we're like, oh no,

what if they're right? Cause we didn't think we were going to have to like change anything. It's like always that like always that meeting with Christ where all of a sudden you've met a living person and it's like, now what? Cause all bets are off, right? Like everything you planned for your life. And it's, I mean, for, I think many comrades experience this

but you sort of feel like the rug is pulled out under you cause you have like this idea of what reality is. And then it's not quite exactly how you thought it was. Um, but in any case, it's a long way to say, um, that this apostate really embodies the things that brought me to the church. Um, and I think, you know, we live in a world that is, I mean, sort of neo-Pagan when it comes to human sexuality and understanding this.

And then also coming from a, for me, from like kind of a Protestant background that was much more like Puritan. Or like those two things mixed are like bad, right? Like not, you know, very confusing. So the church is having such clear teaching and unfortunately, you know, the girls and the women that we serve,

they're just kind of at the, I don't know, they're getting the worst end of the deal of what our society has going on. Like, and especially working with the kids. I mean, most all the adults that we've worked with since starting it in 2014 have gotten into that life as teenagers, they just got out as adults. But when you see like a 14 year old kid who's like,

who really doesn't know any better and really doesn't even know what's going on and has just kind of been told that this is where her value is and just so confused. It's like all of the lies and all of the, all of people's use and not so much JP too spoke out so clearly like in love and responsibility, the opposite of love when it comes to the relationship

between man and woman isn't hatred, it's use. So you just see these kids are just being used for money on one person's hand and for pleasure on another person's. And they think they're living the good life. So anyways, that's sort of what intellectually drew me to this. On a practical side, I had friends who were feeling drawn to this and kind of got interested in it. Because I was living in San Diego when I believe when this started, we started working at Catholic answers. You and I went to the same FSSP parish.

Yeah. So how did you move from how did it even begin? How did children of the Immaculate Heart become a thing? Yeah. I mean, so that summer before I moved to San Diego, like three months before I moved to San Diego, so I moved in the fall of 2012, I was on a pilgrimage to the missions in Southern California with a group of young adults and a priest,

and they were biking and I was in the van taking care of the bikers because I don't bike 70 miles a day. It's not good. Thank you, though. Thanks for the invite. Yeah. I will make your dinner on the other side.

Thanks for the invite. I will make your dinner on the other side. But the priest and a few of the young people really felt, were really like drawn to do something for an into abortion and into trafficking. And the priest of the Diocese of Denver, Father David Nix, he talked about how, the way he came to articulate later was that abortion kills children's bodies and trafficking kills children's souls. And so all of them is really intertwined. And I think too, right? Like the devil hates the woman.

He hates innocence, right? And so anyways, it was kind of through speaking with them and I was not thinking of doing this. I mean, I was like, I had just tried my hand at religious life and had to leave and you know, whatever is trying to figure out what to do next. But then all these things just started to come together. So that's when I moved to San Diego with the purpose of trying to get into this.

So I started volunteering with some sisters who work there at their home. I was, my degree is- At whose home? So it's, they're Mars missionary sisters. They have a home in San Diego for mostly international victims of trafficking. Oh, I see.

Yeah, and they've been there probably 15 years now. But my degree is in linguistics and they worked with international victims like we don't need volunteers. And I'm like, I can teach English. That's kind of how I got my foot in the door. And then they started just teaching me lots and taking me to different meetings with all the people who are involved in the anti-trafficking movement in San Diego. And then just the next year we started Charlie Maguire and there were such there still is, but at the time there was even more of a need even less programs around. So we started with women with kids because the first woman who came to us had four kids and we

didn't have a program. And when she came to you are you working with these sisters or are you your own? I was I was volunteering with them but it was it was right after that gala. So it was literally like the next that was in January. And she came in February because I'm just trying to understand exactly how this started and what you did, because there are different ways of fighting trafficking. Yeah, like like I like the taken mentality. What's the guy from Taken, the Irish actor, Liam Neeson,

just beating the snot out of people. I like that. That sounds cool. I think someone should start that ministry. That's not what you do. And nor I don't think is it the case that you go in and rescue. We don't. So what is it that you do? So we do all just in what you might call aftercare, but I want someone is out of the life or like, I mean, maybe in that very short interim stage of helping them get out with the adults

with the kids, they're referred to us by their social worker. So it's different. I mean, sometimes they're referred to us and then by the time we say yes, the kid has run away and is like, oh no, if she comes back, we'll tell you. But yeah, pretty much it's like housing,

case management, therapy, help with basic needs, schooling, job search, whatever. And it's quite a lengthy process. So most of our, especially our adult women are with us for like years. The kids, it's a totally different set up. It's supposed to be like a six month intensive mental health treatment. So how many houses do you currently have to house these women? So we rent apartments for the adults because it's moms with kids and we just found it works.

First of all, sorry, but having like eight people experiencing complex trauma and like 20 kids running around a house is like no one's gonna stay. I can barely do it with my own four kids. It's not gonna work. Yeah. So that makes sense. Yeah. It's just way too much. Did you try that at first and realize that wasn't going to work? We didn't. No, you knew right away. Most other places, I mean, it's more economical, of course, to have like one building.

Yeah. Most places do that and they have really high turnover and we have like exceptional. So stability rates, people stick around. So you're you're renting apartments for these people yeah and what's the deal I mean is the deal is that you kind of do they have to work with a therapist they have to check in with you how does that yeah so they come to our office for case management they there's a few different there what does that mean case management it's um

basically setting up like what are your needs or how are we going to help you meet those what services are running at you into to get that whether it's. You know helping their kids get enrolled in school or sending some kind of occasional training or we have like a group therapy different things like that like what do you need to help get you back on your feet? How can we help meet that need? Are these children sometimes or often the result of sex trafficking? Yeah, it's a mixed bag. It's really a mixed bag. I mean, it's so messed up. Like, it's like your work on porn. It's like, once you start getting into details, it's like your work on porn it's like once you start getting into details it's like but I mean sometimes traffickers like don't want you to have their kid or sometimes they only want you to have their kid yeah so I mean it's just yeah it's a pretty big mix I mean it's also very common that traffickers will you, take their victim to have an abortion

if it's not a kid that they want, whether it's someone else's like or theirs. So yeah, usually their kids do not have the same father, or maybe two have the same father and, you know, one or two have other fathers. So yeah, it's tough. It's tough for them. But the women we have who've been with us for a while, I'm very impressed with. And we're getting a few ready to graduate in the next year.

So. And how many of the women that you deal with, would you say were? Because my understanding of sex trafficking is that it's defined as any sexual act that's brought about through force, fraud or coercion. That's usually how it's defined as any sexual act that's brought about through force, fraud or coercion. That's usually how it's legal definition. Yeah. Do you use that sufficient? Do you think? Yeah. Yeah. And so the women that are coming to you, were they sort of forced or is it something they felt they had no other choice and ended up in or is again mixed bag? Yeah, it's really I mean, my experience, which is, you know, whatever limited. It's really, I mean, my experience, which is, you know, whatever, limited. So we just work with American victims.

I mean, you know, you can't do everything. You certainly can't do everything well. It's hard to do a few things well. So we focus on just the American victims, and that is the majority. In San Diego, like 80% of sex trafficking victims are American born, according to the most detailed study that's been done. So it's mostly gang involved sex trafficking. So with the American population,

it's much more the coercion, the psychological manipulation. The force, for sure I saw that with the international victims. It's like they showed up from China to get a job to send money back to their family. And it was like their papers were taken. It wasn't a job.

It was some kind of, you know, sexual trafficking situation. So when they, it's bad, but it wasn't something they ever like wanted to or got drawn into. So it's easier to get out and the healing is sort of, it's still a big deal, but it's different. With the American, I mean, the average age in San Diego from that same study is 16 years old. So it's kids obviously younger too, but it's mostly teenagers

who are being drawn into this. And first of all, the psychological maturity is not there. Second of all, traffickers are smart people. They could do some great stuff with their life if they chose They could do some great stuff with their life if they chose a better end. But I mean, they know how to look for the girl that's on thought, that's on the edge, so to speak. That's hurting like one trafficker who was interviewed in the study was done by Point Loma Nazarene and USD and published in 2016. And they were they basically paid traffickers a hundred bucks who were in prison to interview them. And they interviewed, they basically paid traffickers a hundred bucks who were in prison to like interview them.

And they interviewed survivors in programs. And then they got to like look at all the like law enforcement documents to see how many different kinds of crimes were booked in a certain period and all this stuff. So anyways, one trafficker aside, you know, he would go to a mall to recruit kids. And if he, you know, found a girl who was just kind of like hanging out,

it's like, you have beautiful eyes. And if she was like, thank you, he would just move on. I see. But if she was like, no, I couldn't receive it, he's like, that's my girl. Cause now he can start to like build her up, make her dependent on him and attach to him

and then exploit that. So like they're good at finding people who definitely aren't going to recognize themselves as a victim of crime who are gonna, yeah, I mean it's so much like from a psychological perspective what happens with the abuse and the neglect and the attachment issues from like early, you know, early childhood, like either neglect or abuse. I mean, the trafficker is just coming in and filling in that need.

And of course, totally messed up way with the wrong purpose and then takes advantage of it. So, I mean, generally speaking, most kids really think of this as their boyfriend. And- So they don't believe that they're a victim. Not really. They almost feel, you know, thwarted, warped sense rather that they're powerful in a sense.

And this is something that they control. And they feel like somebody finally cares about them. And even though there's obviously like negative things, like, I mean, can be physical or like verbal abuse or whatever, right? I remember I said this once, I think at a public talk, one of our clients was there and she told me afterwards, she's like, that's exactly true. I mean, the trafficker was the most stable person

in their life. Like other people who were, I mean, by nature and by the way, has abandoned that, I'm like parents, whatever. And this guy is like always there. So I mean, it's really difficult. It's really difficult for them. I mean, not only like physiologically to get out,

but just psychologically to work through all of that. I mean there's even when you have come to accept a certain level that like this isn't really the life that you want. Where like where else are you gonna go? I mean we had like one of our you know not success cases um a girl we had at the home, she was 17. And like when you're 17, you've been in the system for so long as a foster youth. Like she had basically just given up. So like these, and it was clear,

like she's about to turn 18, which is scary for them. I mean, it's hard working with a 17 year old because they know they're about to be like on their own, even if they're going into extended foster care. Like, I mean, okay, you're gonna have your bills paid and a place to live, but you're by yourself now, you know? And when you're looking at that, and then there's this whole like literally gang where you belong, even though it's like messed up, you belong. And that's such a like, that's such a profound psychological need, you know?

And that's such a profound psychological need, you know? That it's just like so hard to break out of that. I mean, she would run away and go back to them and stuff. And it's like, I mean, it was hard to blame her because like she's looking at like just the loneliness and emptiness and like, you know, her family wasn't that great. So it's really hard. Hmm.

Yeah. So when you know that they're running back, right? So there's obviously some awareness of where the traffickers are. Yeah. I'm wondering why more isn't being done. But I want to ask you this question. We'll obviously get to some stories of hope and healing. And I should have said this at the very beginning.

This is going to be a triggering episode, especially if people have experienced abuse in their own life. Hopefully the title would be enough to sort of give that awareness to folks. But for those who are like, okay, I get that maybe this is a big deal in other countries, but I mean, is it really that big of a deal in America or in my city? My little, could you help us understand the scope of it? Yeah, I mean, it is, unfortunately. I mean, it's a universal problem, but we're definitely not exempt.

And I think there's definitely more awareness that has come in the last 10 years or so in the US that it is a problem here. But I think a lot of the movies and stuff still give us kind of a wrong idea. So like just the way you're taking, talking about, yeah. You know, people often still think of it as associated with kidnapping and kind of these giant, like, I don't know, dramatic stories. Which can happen, but it's quite rare, honestly.

I mean, I don't think I've ever met anybody who had that kind of a story. I mean, they're really, traffickers want a willing victim. I see. Traffickers don't want somebody whose dad is gonna come kill them. I mean, they really don't. I mean, it's one of the reasons why it's not really,

where there's not really a danger for us as workers with the trafficker, because they don't wanna show their face around us. Like they're going to jail for like a long time if they're caught, right? Like, so they, you know, I mean, it's easier for them to get a new kid than for them to show up at our house

and do like a showdown, trying to get some kid back, right? Like, I mean, if they can lure them back other ways by contacting them online or something, and the kid runs away themself, great, but they're not gonna show their face to us, you know? So like, that's good for us, but bad for, you know, the whole thing.

But yeah, I mean, they're really looking for kids who aren't gonna fight back and who are too broken inside to have that in them really at that point. And I mean, I think that's important for parents to know too, like one, so you're not unnecessarily worried about your kids, you're like freaking out and never letting them walk outside because it's really not gonna be the white van like rolling down the window and like, I mean, sure. Anything's possible,

but that's probably not going to happen. But where parents do need to worry is like, am I spending the time I need with my kid? Like am I building them up interiorly so they know who they are? So that no one else is coming in trying to tell them who they are. Because so much of it is wrapped up with identity and stuff. You get a whole name when you're in this life and- A whole name?

And usually on the street you have a street name. So you're given a name, you're given like this gang, that's your family and this whole like identity and sense of belonging that's given to you. And that's really what was lacking for them. So if you're building up your kids and they know they're loved and they know they belong,

that's not really gonna be attractive for them, right? But I mean, whoever, wherever we're here for, working at a school, just paying attention to those kids who are kind of on the outskirts and making sure they're not getting sucked into this as much as we can. One thing I remember as I would write on the topic of pornography

is you'd sometimes encounter people who would make these overblown statements to show how evil pornography is. And so they would say something like, pornography is sex trafficking. And I was frustrated with that because I thought pornography is evil enough on its own that we don't need to be making hyperbolic statements that may not be true. Certainly, pornography can be an instance of sex trafficking if that sex act is brought about through force, fraud or coercion, you know. So with that in mind, I think there are these kind of maybe it's far more seamless than we'd like to believe, you know, pornography, prostitution, sex trafficking, right?

There may not be these clear delineating boundaries in the way we had thought, but maybe speak to that a little bit. I mean, what differentiates prostitution from sex trafficking? Legally? I mean, it's the force, fraud or coercion. So if somebody's. Coercion is such a broad thing. So broad. I mean, I honestly think it's really hard. Because, I mean, it's, you know, like you said, universal statements are dangerous, but generally speaking, no little girl thinks like, oh, I want

to be a prostitute when I grow up. That's just not like how we work as human beings. Usually someone goes into that lifestyle, like whatever you want to call it, for whatever reason, there's a lot of things happen before, and that can be sexual abuse, that can be just all kinds of things that break someone, and that make a person feel like they don't have other options.

Yes, exactly. I think it was Catherine McKinnon, who was a legal scholar, who I quoted in my book as saying, you know, the people in prostitution pornography are in the main not there because of choice, but because of a lack of choices. Right. And when you feel like you have no other choice, then in what sense are you using the word choice to say, well, she's consenting. Right. But it's sort of like consenting in the way that someone might consent to be raped feels that there is no other option, no escape and ultimately just sort of acquiesces. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've most of what I know, really, I've learned from speaking with our

clients and our adults are much more, you know, they're more mature than the kids. So they're more open to speaking out there, their experience. And they've also gone through more healing, so they're more open to speaking out their experience. And they've also gone through more healing, so it's less painful. But one of them told me that the group she was involved in, they would tell the women who were working there, working, some women were made to be housewives and some women were made to be whores.

And the latter obviously being them. And so it's just like fed to you like you're only good enough for this year. You're made for this. And so it's just like psychologically reinforced all the time that like, you're never going to get out of this. Like this is this is your life. So you just accept it. life to just accept it. What happens to women who don't get out of it? That is to say what happens to those women in sex trafficking who age out who are at the point where perhaps they are undesirable to be sure this is so does I feel so disgusting saying no I know I'm so good. I don't work for you because I think I just be depressed every day and punch

every person but like what what happens to them when they're in this group? Yeah. Are they kicked out? Are they? I mean. It is one of the things I enjoy about working with the adults. It just is like with with age and with especially when you're like a mom, your whole brain, it just changes, right? And at a certain point people are like, why am I doing this?

You know, like, and it kind of comes to you like, I don't actually have to do this. Like, I mean, that's where then like a program like us can be really helpful because a person is at that point where they're like, I wanna change. I don't have opportunities. I don't have a family I can go home to, but like, can you help me?

And I'm like, yes. So that's, I mean, those are like the easiest. That's who you deal with. So you wouldn't know how to answer that about women who are kicked out? No, well, I, I, there's, there's some overlap. I, I don't, I've never heard of anybody being kicked out. What if they get pregnant and don't want to have an abortion? Yeah. I mean, that, that happens for sure. Um, I don't want to have an abortion. Yeah, I mean, that happens for sure.

I don't know, I mean, I haven't, obviously, I mean, all these women are coming to us with, like, you know, some are really one in four kids usually. So they've had their kids and their kids are everything to them too. Their kids are often the reason they decide to get out. That first woman who came to us that I mentioned She had three boys and then her fourth was a girl and that was the moment where she was like I don't want this girl to have the life that I have to do something never these particular women who have children and are in sex

Being sexually trafficked are they living in their own apartments or their own houses? So and they're working for the, what do you call him? Not a John. The trafficker. The trafficker. John is like the term for the buyer. That's right, that's right. Or the pimp I should have said, but the trafficker.

Yeah. Are they living with the trafficker? Often, yes. Different gangs work differently. Those sort of traditional pimp set up, yeah, like he might have like four or five women who are all living in the same place. And often, I mean, runaway youth are at high risk

for the super high risk, at least very high risk for being approached by a trafficker, even within like 24 hours of leaving like a kid on the street is like, just kind of a sitting duck for this type of thing. But yeah, it's common that, you know, if you're in this life and you have a friend who's gone homeless, I mean, it's messed up, but like, it's also, you see just the human goodness

that's in us. It's like, come live with us. Like, you don't have to be on the street, right? But so you're giving your friend a place to stay, but now she's in this, this whole scenario too. So is she usually being taken care of financially or is she, is she being paid? Does it? Yeah. I mean, like it, it, it, it differs.

So like, for example, in San Diego, that's really, I mean what I know the most about. So sometimes they're like more white gangs that are often more like escort services, it's treated a little bit more like a business deal. So it's like 50-50, we split the money and there's like a lot of money actually in this. So there's that kind of a setup

in the more like sort of traditional like African-American gang, for example. She not really keeping anything. Now she lives there, there's food, there's whatever, you know, clothes, but she doesn't really have any money that's like hers, it's all sort of controlled. I mean, one of our clients would talk about like, she would, and she could get in trouble for this,

but would pocket some of the money just to go shopping, just to get like a break. So she's like total shopping addiction to it. So it's just like how she would try to relax. So yeah, it's kind of a mixed bag on what it can look like. I mean, there are situations where you have a teenage kid who's like actually living at home with their parents, but they like run away on the weekend nights

and go spending with these traffickers. And so that they're, yeah, sometimes they all live together, sometimes not. Yeah. So when people are coming to you, have they heard of Children of the Immaculate Heart? Or as you say, are they going to, how else are they finding help? Where are they going to that then they direct coming to you, have they heard of Children of the Immaculate Heart? Or as you say, are they going to? How else are they finding help?

Where are they going to that? Then they direct them to you. The adults come to us usually through referrals from other agencies. So they've come into contact with someone who, you know, has expressed that they're trying to get a from a traffic or they're trying to get out of this life and And they have kids and so they refer them to us because we're one of like two programs that will take them in with kids. We're listed with 211, which is like a homeless hotline

as well, so as long as we get direct calls from someone who's like calling, trying to get help. So if that comes up in the conversation with a screener, they'll transfer them to us. Or word of mouth, like friends referring friends out of the life, which is always kind of nice. The kids is different. Their foster youth and at a certain point all foster youth now in California at least are being screened for trafficking. So if that comes up in this screening process, they automatically qualify for a home like ours.

screening process, they automatically qualify for a home like ours. So the home we have, it's called, it's kind of licensed as a short-term residential therapeutic program, but it's for kids who are considered a danger to themselves or others if they're in a home-based setting without like 24-7 supervision. And that can be because of, you know, suicidal ideation, self-harm, And that can be because of, you know, suicidal ideation, self harm, violent anger, outburst type stuff, or simply because they're going to go to a situation with a trafficker if they're like at school and just living sort of a normal teenager life, not with someone all the time who's there to make sure that's not happening. So yeah, kids get referred to us and we basically review their referral packet and see if we think we can provide for their needs and then they come to us and sometimes they come and they want to come and sometimes not.

But yeah, it's a mixed bag and they come from all across California. But yeah, it's a mixed bag and they come from all across California. So y'all are called Children of the Immaculate Heart. It's a very Catholic sounding name. So what part does faith play in your apostolate? Not in the sense of those who are leading the organization such as yourself, but is there an attempt to help these women experience the love of God? Yeah, there is. In our adult program, we can be much more free

because it's people who are coming to us on their own accord at the program for the teenagers at home is called the Refuge at the Refuge. I mean, it's a state regulated license at home, which doesn't mean that we can't, it just means everything has to be optional. So there's, which is like, God leaves himself totally optional.

So that's like normal to us. But the kids, they're kids, first of all, so you have to be careful just because they are so easily influenced. And you want things to be free, right? Yes, yes. You don't want to be manipulating them. No, this is the last thing they need. So it mostly comes up naturally, honestly.

I mean, we have some pretty strong believers on staff, so it just comes up in conversations and whatnot. We do have a chapel at the house that kids can go to. And honestly, the vast majority, I would say easily 90% of the women and girls that I've worked with were believers. I mean, you just don't, you don't encounter direct evil and not believe in good and evil and God in some sense. It's just when you've suffered so much too,

like there's really no atheists out there in this world. And the ones I've met who were not Christian were like really into Eastern religions or some form of spirituality. So it's interesting in that sense. Most people I would say are pretty open to talking about such things. since most people, I would say, are pretty open to talking about such things.

Yeah, so it's kind of individualized a bit based on what kids are open to and interested in. We've had kids who have definitely been like, let's go to church and other kids like, you know, not. But we kind of leave it up to them to. I once heard a talk by a therapist named Dr. Mary Ann Layden, who I quote a lot in my book, The Porn Myth. She's just terrific.

She has the same winsome charm and way of putting things as Peter Crave, but a woman, she's just beautiful. And she said the first time she was a therapist and someone came to her office and was explaining sexual abuse, she actually cried. She kind of like broke down and cried and immediately realized how inappropriate that was because of how unhelpful that was. Like the person coming to them really didn't need somebody falling apart. Yeah. And so she said, I believe it was her, it may have been another therapist, it was at this big conference, but she was saying she'll envision a sort of invisible

the therapist, it was at this big conference, but she was saying she'll envision a sort of invisible shield between her and the person, because in order to be helpful, she has to mentally distance herself from what's being shared with her. How has that been true for you and those who work for you? Because I have no idea, this is why the Lord is clearly not calling me to this work,

how you could engage in this and be joyful. Yeah, that's a really good question actually. And something I probably wish I could articulate better. But what I think doesn't work for the kid is I'm just going to, I don't know who this person was, but one of the early meetings I went to in this whole like anti-trafficking world in San Diego, there was a professor who was asking a woman who worked with kids in the

same context, that same kind of question, like, how do you deal with it? And she was like, I just say to myself, this is your problem, this is not my problem. And I was listening to her and I was so, I don't know, I was like young too and idealistic, you know, whatever, 26 or 27 or something. But I just remember thinking like, no wonder these kids run away. Like these kids are so smart. They're the most intuitive, like good at reading people. And they had to do that to survive in their own home. They do that to survive with a trafficker. Like they know how to read the staff immediately and who they can take advantage of and who they can't and all that stuff and all your buttons. So if you're thinking you're not my problem.

Yeah, like they know that so of course they're going to go to somebody who like even if it's in a messed up way cares about them because it on some level, this is like a whole other can of worms, but I mean the trafficker and the trafficking victim like can have a real like relationship like especially the first girl that he gets, that really is kind of his girlfriend, even though all this other stuff is going on, right? So there's actually a human connection there. And when there's somebody that you know is just there

because they're getting paid to and they care on some level, but they also don't, sorry, I wouldn't open up to you either. You know? So I remember hearing her and then speaking about it with my friends and just really like thinking about our Lord and his agony who actually took on all of our like sin suffering. And in some way we need to do that too,

but not in a messed up, unhealthy way. I know it's where it can be tricky because people who do not do do well and not well for themselves but also like not good for us or the kids is people who are like way too like way too personally involved but it's not because it's personal that it's the problem it's like oftentimes it's I I think you're one situation that happened. I think a lot of times it's when a person has their own expectation for this other person. And so they're like, they want this kid to succeed so much

that they can't let go. And that success looks like, has to look like what they think it should look like. And that's just not what it is. It's funny, parents, I mean, I know it's different, but parents do that. No, totally. Yeah.

And for me, I know these kids are free. They can walk out of this house. It is not a lockdown facility. California doesn't do that. And that's not really what we do either. So if they want to go back to their traffic, they can't. I'm really only interested in that deep interchange, because that's the only thing.

If all we're doing is keeping them safe for even six months, which is a significant period of time, and feeding them and whatever, the day they walk out that door, if they were only here because they were locked in, they're going right back to their trafficker. You haven't done anything. Like, so the only thing that we can really do for them

is trying to reach them deep in their soul, in their psyche, and letting them see that there is another way to live, and that they're worth more than that, that they can, that their value is not where they think their value is. Their value is much deeper than their cool makeup job and their nails. Have you ever gotten to a point though where you just were like, I cannot do this anymore? Not from the kids.

Yeah, like there's other things in running a nonprofit that are hard and finding the right people is hard. And I mean, I'm also like just learning all the time. So it's like, you know, whatever, you have to change ways you're doing things. But no, I love working with the kids or with the women. But yeah, it's just like trying to get to that deep inner change without, I don't know. I think the biggest thing is just to look at

how God relates to us and try our best to do that. Like God gives us the opportunities, he gives us the freedom and it's up to us to take. And if a kid doesn't want it, like it's okay. Like maybe all you were supposed to do for that kid was plant the seed. Like I love, with this work, I really love the passage in St. Paul

where he talks about how like, you know, I planted the seed like a potless water, but it's God who gives the growth. Like it's not up to me to give the growth. And I think that's where people fail when they're like, I gotta make it grow. And it's like, the growth doesn't happen like that. You can't make it grow.

You'll exhaust yourself real quickly and no longer be working for us. Yeah, then that happens. It totally happens. But when you know, especially, I think it helps me to have worked with the adults first, because I hear all the stories of their teenage years where they tried to get out and went back

and tried to get out and went back. And then I know that they eventually made it out and then this person and this person that person along the way Made that difference for them to finally make that that no looking back type choice I Search just knowing that it's all on God's good time and it's not really up to us Like I just have to do what I'm asked to do but the results are. So how do you advise your what do you call them workers or staff? How do you advise your staff when you see that somebody just you know they'd be I mean for most of us we're quite sheltered from this world.

Maybe I shouldn't say most of us but many of us are and so when you first come into contact with that world I remember the first time I heard a woman who was a sex actually traffic got up and share her story. I actually broke down in my chair. I just wanted to die. I wanted to be an atheist. I wanted to kill people like it was the most horrific thing I have ever heard. And I've heard horrific things, but this was more shocking than anything I had ever heard. It was more disgusting, more evil than anything I'd heard.

So I imagine I would last with you for about a day. Do you? There's people who quit like before they start. Like that actually happened this week. You're supposed to start Thursday and you just email me and you're not coming. How do you advise your staff when you see that they're getting into this in an unhealthy way? You know, they leave from work to home, but they just, they can't stop thinking about what's taking place. Yeah. I mean, it is common. I would say it's pretty common where people can, especially younger people, um, they just can't kind of let go. Um, I mean, I think the first

thing is just in our initial training is to like, sort of set the framework so that if it starts to happen, you can touch back to that. And I mean, I talk about it in the framework of the redemption because I don't really know how else to. I mean, there's the psychological tools, there's boundaries, you know, whatever, like I get it. But I think it's so important for us at the forefront of our minds going to this work to know what we know by faith that God would never allow evil to happen, any evil,

but especially, I mean, like something so awful, right? Like as what you were just speaking about, God would never allow this evil to happen if he couldn't bring a greater good out of it. Like, and you have to start from there because otherwise it's, like you said, it's meaningless, right? You want to become an atheist, it doesn't make any sense. So just to know, I mean, Mary Magdalene, right? Like one of the greatest saints in the church. I mean, in the old liturgy, she's the only saint who gets the title

penitent. She gets her whole own, her own category. And I remember being really moved reading Anne Catherine Emmerich's, you know, in her visions of life of our Lord. There's a point with Mary Magdalene where Martha, her sister, is all like worried because Mary's living the spot life. And our Lord just looks at her and says, don't worry, she will surpass you in holiness. And it's just that, that's what it is.

I mean, that's, or just speaking about my good friend Christian Love, here, who's now at Clear Creek, he worked for us for about two years. And I loved working with him because he understood this and went to work with this every day, that like, these are our next saints. This is the next Margaret of Cortona. This is the next Mary Magdalene.

Like that potential is completely there. And honestly, I mean, unless you've suffered that much, that potential's not there. It's different. There's different saints for everything. That's great, you know? But- See, I'm okay talking like this. So long as

we're also considering rounding up traffickers in the streets and publicly flagellating them, you know, where's that? Where's that? No, actually. Um, have you read pop Benedict's space? Salvia? Yes. That's my favorite in sickle, which is a very nerdy thing to say, but we're on pints with the Guinness, so it's a fair game. The whole thing is on hope, right? What is the reason for our hope? And among many other things, and actually today is the Feast of St. Bikita, the church's patron saint of trafficking victims. Amazing.

How did that happen? I actually didn't know if you knew that or planned that. I didn't know that. How did we set that? That's cool. You got to tell us about her in a minute. Okay, yeah. So the first time we read about her was in Space Salvi. And she makes it on like page two, Pope Benedict brings her in.

She's the first Kenanized saint from Sudan. But she was, I'm like, I'm going to go into what I was saying, but I'll go through Space Salvi that way. I'll go through space. She was captured by Arab sedatives as a young child. And actually the whole experience was so traumatic for her and like a victim of trauma and model for that. She forgot her name. Like that's kind of a big deal.

So she was given the name Bikita, which meant lucky in or which means lucky in Arabic. And I mean, God somehow miraculously preserved her. She was never sexually abused or all. She was a slave in that life. And eventually traded hands a few times and came to be owned by an Italian man. And when he was going back to Italy, she just had this, I mean, I think just grace from God

to be like, I want to go. So he ended up bringing her back and then giving her to a friend who wanted her and slavery was actually illegal in Italy at the time. And that's long story short, where she came to, to encounter the faith for the first time. From this man she went with? From the school that his daughter went to. So he went to she went to a school with Kenosha and sisters. And at some point, going back to going back to Sudan for work,

Bakita went with the daughter to the school to stay there for a time. And so staying with these nuns, you know, encountered the faith. There's a great movie, Ignatius Press movie out there. Just is it quite good? I think it is actually. Most of the movies make you want to cry because they're awful, not because they're moving. No, she.

Like the one on Therese was the worst movie that's ever been created. Oh, no, that's the worst. That is the worst. And I love Therese. This one's okay. Don't watch that one. I love Therese, yeah.

Yeah. But Bikita, this one's all? Yeah, it's one of the Italian ones, which tend, I think, to be a bit better. Okay. The story is not 100% historically accurate. You know, there was dramatized a little bit, but I think they do a really good job

at capturing her spirit because it was just, I mean, kind of weird, she was so joyful in the midst of everything that happened to her. But what's lovely about it, which is true story, but they portray it pretty nicely in the midst of everything that happened to her. But what's lovely about it, which is true story, but they portray it pretty nicely in the movie, is just this kind of fresh encounter with the gospel, right? And it's like the whole GK Chesterton thing, right? It's like only in a postmodern society

can you look at a crucifix and like not be moved in a post-Christian society. Like, so you have this, you know, girl from Sudan who's like seeing a crucifix for the first time and it's like horrified. Like, why do you have this girl from Sudan who's seeing a crucifix for the first time and it's horrified. Why do you have a picture of a guy being tortured on your wall? Fair question. Because it's not normal. And as Bruce explains from the film, this is the good master. And that's totally different from the masters that she's experienced in her past.

Anyways, eventually she gains her freedom and then she also eventually becomes a nun, which was not an easy thing to do, being like the only African person in a really small Italian town. I've been there and it's still a really small Italian town. Did you go to go there? I did, yeah.

A number of, I don't know, back in 2016 or 2015, I went with a friend, yeah. It's, she had this tiny little town north of Bologna, it's like two and a half hour train ride. And it's like one of those places where they're closed for lunch for like four hours. I wanna get a little bit. Yeah.

Like literally, it was like, you arrive at lunchtime and it's like, come back in four hours, okay. But yeah, so she eventually became an aunt. But one of her more famous and moving quotes is she said later, if I were to meet the slave traders and those who tortured me today, I would kneel and kiss their hands because if we're not for them, I would not be a Christian and a religious today. So that's okay if she thinks that I don't think should think that. I think we should want to stone them. And I think that's not your first reaction.

Yeah, you're not. You don't have a properly ordered soul. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's the beginning of space. But then going into like his various reasons for our hope, he talks about the last judgment as one of the reasons for hope, which is not like a popular topic that people talk about in Catholic theology world. But it's important to realize that at the last day, God will put everything right.

Everyone will answer for what they've done. And whatever evil you might wish on somebody, it is nothing compared to what they will have to answer for like on that day. And that's why you know, you know, vengeance is, is mine. Says the Lord. Right. And the anger of man doesn't bring about the justice of God. Yeah. Yeah. So I think. Wow. So it's almost like how on earth would you do this work without being.

I have no idea. I honestly. Same thing with Mother Teresa and her sisters. How would without being a Christian? I have no idea. I honestly don't. Same thing with Mother Teresa and her sisters. How would you live that life? I don't know. I wouldn't. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't.

I would be doing something nice and comfortable for me. Yeah, no, I don't know how you can. I think that's why there's not so many people who do it. So St. Bakita, what's the last bit of, what is it? Is that just her name, St. Bakita,? Is this another way of Josephine Bikita? Her religious name was Josephine. God bless her. Oh, pray for us. St. Bikita.

Yeah. Have you heard of Mary of Egypt? Of course. OK. Have you heard of St. Vitalis of Gaza? No. All right. Ready? Ready. People can look this up for themselves so they can see that I'm not making this up. Vitalis of Gaza was a monk. I want to say five hundreds, something around then, but I might have that completely wrong.

But he would hire himself out as a day laborer and every night bring his money to a different prostitute so that she would not have to sin that night. And he would, you know the story? No. Yeah. And he would stand, he would pray, pray the Psalms throughout the night. And because of this, many of these women gave up their lives of prostitutions and became holy wives and mothers. He was eventually killed. The stories conflict, it was either by a pimp who was upset that he's losing this business, or a fellow Christian so scandalized

by seeing a monk come out of a brothel. And he was always hit, struck on the head and ended up dying in his hermitage. And it said that there was a candlelit procession of women who were honoring the man who was able to see their dignity when they couldn't. Either women who were still in lives of prostitution or those who had left. So look him up. There's so many cool people in here. Right?

Vitalis of Gaza. But one more I want to tell you about, and I just learned about this man recently, St. James the Faster. Have you heard? I have not. Are you ready? I'm ready. Are you buckled in?

Because this is insane. Okay. Ready? Are you buckled in? Because this is insane. OK, Saint James the Faster is a saint recognized in the Eastern Church who was a monastic and a hermit and had gifts of of of healing. And so people would come to him and he would pray over them and they would experience some degree of healing in one shape or form. So he was highly esteemed in that regard. degree of healing in one shape or form, so he was highly esteemed in that regard. One day he rapes

a girl that was brought to him for help, even if it was statutory rape. That's awful. He then kills her to cover up the rape. He then hides her body to cover up the killing. And naturally. humanly speaking, despairs of his salvation. It could happen. Good thing. Because I despair over it when I like yell at my kids.

So fair enough. He is then counseled by a fellow monastic who says no one is beyond the mercy of God. And then for the rest of his life, lives in an open grave, repenting, as he should. Yeah, that will be sent to Siberia. But he is a saint, at least recognized a saint. And I think that's such a powerful story. And it's powerful too, because, you know, I know of people in the Catholic world, even I know of somebody recently, I won't say the sex, I won't say anything, but who fell from grace, you might say, who was caught up in a very, well, somewhat public scandal, sexual

scandal. And this individual, despaired of her salvation. This person was revered and looked up to by many in the church, you know? So it's so important to realize this, I think. And that's such a powerful story for those who are engaged in ministry. First of all, that the devil has a target on your back.

But second of all, that we should never despair of our salvation. But not in a flippant sort of way, but like dig a grave and live in it if you fall into that degree, I think is kind of appropriate. But I think it's so important to, like St. Augustine, right? Who said, if we're not for the grace of God, there go I. We all know that. And in this work, it's so important. And, and I try to, to, to drive into the staff, like, it is not us and them. There is no us and them here. I mean, the refuge is really something like

a convent, even though it's, you know, whatever their staff, there's kids, like we're all on this like path to heaven together. And we all have our struggles. Like none of us has it all together. And the second you think you do, like pride comes before a fall, right? Like, and in God's mercy, he allows us to fall sometimes so that we don't really fall in the end through our pride, right?

So it's just, I mean, just that humility in knowing like St. Terence, right? Like that she was so grateful that God had preserved her from falling and breaking her leg in her analogy. You know, that she was so aware, but any, I mean, her confessor told her, you could have been a demon, and she knew it. And I think we all have to know that.

I love it. It just I mean, I love St. Teresa is one of my favorite saints. You brought her up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am a Patrick Coffin saying she shouldn't be called the little flower, but the iron will. Yeah, yeah. But just her her knowing she's just brilliant with the way she uses the gospel and kind of like presents it to you in a way that just is so fresh and challenging, right? But where our Lord says like, judge not and you will not be judged, she's like, the measure you judge, you'll be judged.

So she's like, in order not to be judged at all, I won't judge at all. And then that way, Jesus won't judge me at all. And that's, yeah, so brilliant. And it's so simple. So just knowing, you know, that any of us could have been or could become anything, I think is the best preservative for those kind of faults.

Right? Like it's the self-reliance that's the killer. I mean, I love, I don't know if you've read the last conversations of St. Therese. Yes. Well, you know what autobi biography you mean or no, there's a separate book that's even better than her autobiography.

Yeah. What's it called? Last conversations. It's literally like her sisters when she was dying in the infirmary, like wrote down the conversations they had. She might have been a link for that, Neil. It's great. It's one of my top three conversations of St. Therese, Alicia. Yeah. It was like, so, I don't know why it's not better known, but it's so good. I can't wait to read it.

Yeah, it's so brilliant. It's like little just little chunks because it's like little conversations that Celine and it's like written by like a section by each sister who like wrote their stuff. And Celine is, of course, the best because that was her best friend. But there's this point where she's talking about Saint Peter and she's like, poor Peter. Who would dare say that? But to us, poor Peter, if only he had said at the Last Supper, when our Lord said that he was going to deny him, if only he had said, Lord, please preserve me from this and give

me the grace not to do it. She's like, I'm sure our Lord would have given it to him. But poor Peter relied on himself and was like, no, not me, Lord. Right. And that's that's the thing. Right. He's just always being dependent on him, like remaining the child, never relying on ourselves. We brought up Saint Mary of Egypt and then we didn't touch upon her. Didn't speak about it.

Would you, for those at home, explain her story? Oh, you can probably do it better than I. Well, how about I begin and then you fill in the gaps, okay? Sounds good. Because, I mean, like many of these older saint stories that happened long ago, it's sometimes mixed with legend. Sometimes, you know, the lion thing. You remember that bit, the lion?

Yeah, you don't know that bit. Well, there's one story, it's like, she was buried by a lion. I'm like, OK, maybe. But I guess you say Mary of Egypt was experienced some abuse or at least something that led her to run away from home as a young girl. You with me there?

Sounds good. I believe she became a dancer for a significant period of time and then a prostitute. However, we know because of what she relayed to a particular monk that she would often not charge men. She said, I had an irrepressible desire to lie in filth. And she even said something like it wasn't the money. And I think that's such a powerful point, because a lot of women in this pornified society. Yeah. As you say, you know, with these victims of sex trafficking,

don't identify as the victim. Yeah. Like, no, no, this is what I want to do. I want to live in a society where I can't do anything. I want to live in a society where I can't do anything. society, as you say, you know, with these victims of sex trafficking, don't identify as the victim. Yeah, like, no, no, this is what I want to do. I want to lie in filth. They wouldn't say lie in filth, but so I think that that's powerful. Yeah.

So and she well, do you want to say the second half when she went on that pilgrimage? You keep going. You do much better than I would. I mean, you're the guest. I don't want to take over, but. No, you're fine. So she. Yeah, so she she goes on a pilgrimage and she said it was she paid her way by sleeping with the pilgrims and perhaps,

perhaps that's why she even went on the pilgrimage. And I believe that they were venerating a relic of the true cross of Christ. And she is stopped physically by some invisible force in entering the church as this flock of people are entering to venerate this relic. And at first she thinks it's because of her womanly weakness, that's her words, but then says that no, there's something here that's sort of spiritual and she was led to remorse. And so seeing an icon of the Theotokos sort of made a deal with God, at least that's my words.

You know, if I can if I can enter the church, I will leave my life of harlotry and and and become a hermit. And she does. And then either hears the words of our Lord or our blessed mother saying, when you cross the River Jordan, I will give you the desires of your heart or something to that effect. And so received Eucharist, I think maybe for the first time after having entered this church and then she goes out into the desert. For one of two times in her life. Right. Yeah.

Takes a couple of loaves of bread and then just lives in the desert, eating whatever she could find. And I think she may have been there, like maybe upwards of two, two decades. It was a long time. Yeah. And she said, well, the reason we know a lot about her story is you've got this monk, Father Zosimus. During the great fast spending time in the desert, he encounters her and he thinks she's a wild animal. She's she's skin and bones and naked or close to it. And she says, cast cast me your cloak.

He sits down with her and asks her of her story. And she says, well, if I tell you, you flee from me like a poisonous snake. And he says something to the effect of try me. And so that's a lot of how we have her story. She recounts her story to him. And I believe she said for the first 10 or 17 years, she was plagued by those old songs that she had been brought up on and the memories of the sin that she engaged in. And basically doing sort of spiritual combat in the desert. My understanding is he gives her Eucharist then. I think so.

And comes back a year late or maybe comes back a year later and gives her Eucharist. But the second time he comes back, she's dead. St. Mary of Egypt, pray for us. There's a saint we need to we need to hear about. Do you know Margaret of Cortona? I cannot wait to hear. No, tell me. Who's this? She say her name again. Margaret of Cortona, St. I cannot wait to hear. No, tell me. Who's this? She.

Say her name again. Margaret of Cortona, St. Margaret of Cortona. What I love about her is the way, so our Lord would speak to her and she was in a similar, you know, whatever type of lifestyle, but it's just, it's beautiful. And as you progress through,

like the things our Lord says to her. I'm trying to remember, I think he first calls her, my daughter, and then he calls her my bride. And then, I know as time goes on, then he calls her my virgin. And like, you know, none of which titles, of course she felt like she deserved, but like that's how our Lord sees us, right?

Like, I mean, the last, like some last words in scripture, like I make all things new. Like he really does. Like, like for real. Like, it's it's never like I really hate this question. Sorry. Sorry if anybody's ever asked me this question. But like, some people come to me like after giving public talk and ask something like, can these people ever be normal again or have a normal life? And like, what does that even mean?

Like, what what what what do we think the goal is? It's a normal life. Yeah. Yeah. But can these people experience like redemption and like newness of life and life in Christ and heaven? Yeah. redemption and like newness of life and life in Christ and heaven? Yeah. Like will they suffer like you like with Mary of Egypt story, like will they suffer from, from memories and it, you know, all the things that come with trauma. Yeah. But that doesn't mean their life isn't worth living.

That doesn't mean Christ doesn't make everything new, but it's just, you know, it's just the wrong paradigm for like thinking about what life is supposed to be. But yeah, I mean, that's just, that's it. Like, he really, really makes everything now. I mean, he's calling her my Virgin and that was hardly the life, you know, that she had been living, but that was what he made her. Yeah. Sometimes like you get tired of these saint stories, you know, and you're like, OK, whatever. Give me give me a mother of five kids whose son is autistic and her father, the father left them and she can't pay her bills and she's still not punching her child.

Like, give me that woman. That's that's the same I want to learn from, because, yes, sometimes these saint stories are seemingly so sanitized. And that may have to do with the fact that they were so long ago. I think it's going to be weird who tells the story to and what they think. It's going to be weird when we have canonized saints who have Twitter records. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I love St.

Bernadette, actually, because she was like, yeah, show me the faults of the saints and how they overcame them, not the virtues. Is that what she said? Oh yeah, she's the most down-to-earth person I think I've ever read about. Wow. Yeah, she's hilarious. I don't know how I read it. I know nothing about her. This is at Lewitt's? St. Puddinet? Yeah, I mean, she, I'm just funny stories, but she had no scruples, which I just, I love people who are so free with God, you know, and I think we get so weird sometimes, and it's not how he wants us to be,

but they were not allowed to go in this certain part of the garden at the convent. But there were strawberries down there that she wanted to eat, so she like, you know, those like wooden shoes they had back in the day, she like threw that out the window into the garden so that she would to eat. So she like, you know, those like wooden shoes they had back in the day. She like threw that out the window into the garden so that she would have to go fetch it.

Because nobody said they couldn't eat the strawberries. They just weren't allowed to go there. But then she had a reason to go there and she picked some strawberries while she was there. She like, she loved making a long Thanksgiving. And in that order, after mass, they didn't really make a long Thanksgiving. So she told the sister is in charge of the chapel.

Like they would lock the chapel after for whatever reason. They just lock me in. The sister like locks her in. So she has to stay and pray longer. And then later she kind of realized that she probably shouldn't have done that. So she told the sister, never do that. You're just like, I don't know.

She's so free with God. And she was pretty big for me coming into the church and I spent some time in religious life and she was the big draw just because she was so simple and I wasn't. Yeah, she's fabulous. I mean, talk about somebody who had to like, and when you know you saw the Blessed Virgin, the church says you saw the Blessed Virgin, like everybody's coming to like, people would come to the convent just to see her and she was like throwing clogs into the field to eat strawberries. Yeah, but she would like there's once where she greeted somebody out the door and they're like we want to see Bernadette and she's like let me go find her and he never

comes back. Classic introvert. But just I, someone who could have become so proud, you know, and fought so hard to be so simple. Have you ever read I Believe in Love? Yeah. That is one of my favorite spiritual books. That's all right. I don't think I did either. But one of the things he says in there is, I'm not telling you, you believe too much

in your own wretchedness. Yeah, we are far more wretched than we can ever understand. What I'm telling you is you do not believe enough in his merciful love. The fact that he has come to Earth to open heaven under our feet. Yeah. And we act too often like orphans and as if it were hell that were opened under our feet. We are men of little faith. We are like the men in the boat, We are like the men in the boat,

you know, the men in the boat, the apostles in the boat who say, save us Lord, we're perishing. Our Lord rebukes that prayer. He rebukes them for that prayer. He says, why do you have such little faith? And yet we make that prayer, which the Lord rebuked the apostles for our prayer, instead of saying, I thank you that you're saving me and that you are and That you will save me. I thank you that you will make me a saint despite my poverty, which is so apparent I Don't know how we got off on that but that's okay to keep going on Yeah, I'm not that great and sure are you familiar with st. Elizabeth of the Trinity? No, not enough

Yeah, she's my patron to call my mission.. Yeah, Carmelite, contemporary of St. Therese. When the first issue of Story of a Soul came out, she was like a novice in a Carmel in Dijon in France. She was French, too. I love French women, man. Joan of Arc, Therese Mizeux. I know. I'm reading Mark Twain's Joan of Arc right now.

That is a good book. Yeah, is it? My wife loves Joan of Arc. Yeah. Well, Mark Twain tells a good story and it's a really good story that's told by one of the best storytellers. So it's fabulous and it's long. So it's like one of those ones that you want it to keep going and you're glad it's long.

But that aside from how awesome French female saints are, Elizabeth de Trini, she, one of my favorite sayings of hers that was really, I don't know, she's one of my great teachers, especially at the beginning of starting this crazy Catholic life. She says that, like, let yourself be loved.

It seems to me, you know, this is the science of the saints, right? Like, it's all about reception. it seems to me, this is the science of the saints, right? It's all about reception. We think sometimes I gotta do this and I gotta do that and I gotta, you know? But that's not what it's about. It's literally, I mean, she wrote this letter

to her mother, Superior, as she was dying. And she kind of takes the whole conversation of Jesus and Saint Peter at the end of, after the resurrection of Peter, do you love me, do you love me? She says, let yourself be loved more than these, rather than feed my sheep and all that stuff. She kind of changes it on its head and is like,

receive more, receive more. This is your mission, to let yourself be loved, above all things. And that's just, yeah, that's where I think we miss, we really miss the boat. And that's like the boat you don't want to miss, like that, because that's the boat. That's the boat.

There's no other boats. No. Yeah, I'm always really moved by the second chapter of Song of Songs. There's that lovely passage where the beloved hears the lover bounding over the mountains, right? And there's this three-stage process that's always just broken my heart in the most beautiful way. It says like wall window lattice, right? There he is behind the wall, peering in through the window, and then he speaks through the lattice. And I have this idea

of the Lord coming closer to us, right? There's this physical boundary. I can't hear him well, I can't see him. Then you have the window. I can see him, but I can't hear him that well. And then he's speaking through holes in the wall. And what's he doing? He's saying lovely things to you. Yeah. And what are you doing? Well, you're the dove with its head buried in the cleft of the rock. Yeah. And what are you doing? Well, you're the dove with its head buried in the cleft of the rock. Yeah. To put it in contemporary Australian vulgar language, I'm giving him the finger as he's telling me I'm beautiful. My lovely one. Yeah.

Look at me. And I'm like, piss off. That's that's I'm I'm Peter in the boat. Get away from me. I'm a sinful man. Yeah. Because it's it's like, I don't believe you. Like nothing has ever promised to be this good and delivered. Everything that is promised to be this good has let me down. So go away.

You're not right. And there's something that's painful to receive. But the holiness is the dove turning its head and beholding just what you're saying and receiving, being receptive. Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth. That is it, man. Holy smokes. Yeah.

And it's our anthropomorphizing of God, I think, that that leads us to fail to perceive that he's so present to us because you're like, I can't be present to my kids. So whoever and whatever God is, he cannot be present to me immediately now. So so we lack that receptivity. But sorry, continue. No, no, no. And I was just like going from like Saint to Saint in my brain. It's all of them.

There's a part in the Flowers of Saint Francis where I can't remember if it's like, I don't think it's Brother Juniper. I can't remember which one it is. But anyways, they're walking together in the forest, same with Francis. And this other brother looks like downcast, right? And Francis is like, why are you downcast? And he's thinking about his sins and whatever. He's just self-absorbed in the end, right? Just thinking about what's all. And Francis just tells him to like look up

and think of Christ and like little by little he starts to like cheer up and everything. But I mean, that's just, it's Peter walking on the water to our Lord, right? When he looks at our Lord, he's fine. Everything's fine. When he starts to look at the waves, that's when he starts sinking, you know, so it's all about just keeping that focus.

Yes, reorienting our focus. I mean, even Psalm 51, which is that great Psalm of repentance, recognizes one's own sin always in light of the kindness of God. Like don't ever look at your sin apart from the mercy of God. Like, think about it. Have mercy on me, God. It's always about God in your kindness, in your compassion. Blot out my offense.

This is why I love and I've said it in a recent episode, but I love our charismatic brothers and sisters because they begin by telling God spontaneously who he is. Yeah. And then by spontaneously saying who I am in light of you. Like you're good, you're powerful, you're beautiful, I am your son. It seems to me those are the two things

that are so easily forgotten and when they do the whole thing falls apart. If I forget who God is or if I believe lies from the enemy or the world about what God is, likewise myself, like I'm just a piece of crap, I don't seem to be growing or healing or, you know, in this area of my life. But to speak against those lies by praising him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I think I mean, it's one of. Like the devil always has a different trick, you know, for everybody based on where you're at, but it's one of his biggest ones is to get you to like look at yourself or to doubt, to despair. Despair is always like, the discernment of spirits comes in handy there, right? Because it's like, if it's making you go down this path in your mind and feeling this, it's not from God, so that's not God.

Like, I love, it's like Philippians, right? Or it says like, the accuser of our brothers is cast out. Revelation 12.10. Thank you. Yeah. That's why you're the host of this show. I don't know many others. But yeah, the accuser. Like that's so that's his name. I mean, that's what he does. Right. And just like being able to like learn in our interior lives to recognize the difference between like the accuser and Christ. Because when Christ reviews. He's like, what's that what's the Holy Spirit called the it's a word for defense attorney.

Paraclete, Paraclete. Yeah, so he's the direct opposite of the accuser. He's actually defending you totally. And this is like maybe this is a silly example, but I don't know if you like the Chronicles of Narnia. I read I had never read the last battle and I read the entire thing on my flight here. It was fabulous. Even with a mask and glasses, how do you manage that?

I took the glasses off. Oh, okay. And you could read? Not really, but. Twisted the mask, I could breathe as much as possible. But yeah, it's like, Lewis does such a good job at capturing, actually what he does the best job at capturing, I think, in that whole series is that desire,

like what Jesus said to Mary, or Mary said to Mary of Egypt, like cross the Jordan, that will give you the desire of your heart. Like he captures that yearning that you don't even know what it's for, and then you're just like, you're reading it, I wanna go to heaven. Yeah.

But like when Aslan comes to encounter each person, I mean in that book, but in all of them, like whenever he comes to meet Edmund after he's been a traitor in the first one, or like in this one, the donkey after he's just destroyed Narnia through just believing stupid things about himself actually.

It's like everyone is nervous to meet him because they know they're meeting perfect justice and perfect love and they don't measure up to it. But it's always this like beautiful, beautiful encounter because the person's, you know, their will is, they want what's right, they're just weak through whatever, you know, for whatever thing has happened. But it's always this like,

there's the rebuke, like it's really there. Like Asun rebukes them in the most kind and loving way. And he hardly has to do anything because they already know. And then he builds them up. And oftentimes you don't even hear the dialogue, like Louis doesn't tell you, because we all know from our own experience, like what

that would be. But it's so perfect because it's just like he I mean, well, like all this the Proverbs and everything, right? Like, I mean, you only rebuke your child in order to help them grow. It's not for the sake of punishment itself or something, right? It's just what this reminds me back to Therese when she would say, actually, I take tremendous comfort in God's justice. It's precisely because He's just that He'll have mercy because He understands my weakness and the world in which I've been born. Like you think of Christ's words, the prostitutes and the tax collectors are going into heaven before you. They really are.

The women you're working with have been born into this broken world in which they've been abused and hurt. Whatever degree of sanctity or virtue, natural virtue you see in them should be far more applauded perhaps than for some of ours. Yeah. Who weren't brought up into those situations. And I know it's difficult to say things like that because things are relative. The gift in the experience, I mean, one of them that these women have gone through or these kids have gone through is they don't have the problem of thinking that they have it all together and they don't need God or they don't need help.

Again, that's oftentimes our problem, right? There's the whole self reliance thing, right? Like that's that's what blocked the Pharisees from entering in. They thought they had it all together. I mean. Yeah. So where are you? What are your hopes for children of the Immaculate Heart?

Is it something that you're trying to preserve what you have and get better at that thing which you're doing? Are you looking to expand? It depends who you ask. If you ask them the board numbers, they're like, yeah, expansion. And for those of us in the trenches are like, um, we're trying to like get this good. So I don't know what the Lord has in store.

I mean, there's always been that hope and plan for expansion. I think we're still trying to catch up to the own growth that we've had. Because I mean, basically when we opened the Refugee or in Africa, we went from like less than 10 employees to like 23 employees. So it's just a big, totally different deal

when you have a 24-7 awake staff facility where there's always people working and always stuff going on. And you're talking about kids with trauma. I mean, you're talking about a lot of serious behavior issues. How many workers or employees or volunteers do you have? There's 23 of us employees. There's a lot of volunteers. I don't know how many.

But yeah, it's a good size, a good, you know, whatever, a good mid-size tent team for something that's only eight years old. What are some excellent other ministries or groups that you would point to who are doing good work in this area? Yeah, there's a lot. I feel like, I just feel like I've gone into this like cave world in San Diego, just like doing your thing

on the ground. So I'm not paying as much attention as I used to, to what's happening across the country, for example. But, you know, I would say the vast majority of groups doing this are actually Protestant groups. There's quite a lot of them. Actually, there's a newer Catholic group that started in Colorado a couple of years back, Avoda.

Actually, the guy who started that was on that same pilgrimage with me back in 2012. So there's them. I mean, in San Diego, there's like Generate Hope is one of the older ones, Hidden Treasures, both Protestant faith-based groups. And then there's some different more just like secular groups involved. hidden treasures, both Protestant faith based groups. And then there's some different more just like secular groups involved.

I mean, as far as like the big names, it's Operation Underground Railroad is huge, Amnesty International. And yeah, doing different questions. All right. Do you know, Do you work with law enforcement? We do. I was involved with county stuff a lot more before starting the refuge and this was just like such a new thing. I had to let that stuff go. So we've had referrals from like the DA's office

and stuff like that. But because we have probation kids at the house, there's that whole connection with probation law enforcement, but we're not. Why aren't, so actually, why aren't these women being questioned as to who their trafficker is and where they live? Yeah, that's pretty tough.

Yeah. One, because traffickers, they don't feel safe to say that stuff because traffickers know them, know their family, know whatever, and have said, like, if you ever turn us in, we're gonna kill you or come beat you up or whatever, right? Or kill your kids or something like that.

So, and that is actually a real threat. It's not just a fake threat. So there's a lot of risk to themselves if they speak out. So most women aren't willing to do that. The international victims, most of them were willing, but there was like maybe less risk. They also have to do it in order to get the kind of visa they're trying to get to like stay.

So that's a whole nother thing. But yeah, most of them, it's just like, it's super risky or there still is some kind of like psychological connection to that person where they just don't feel like they can turn them in and send them to jail for 50 years. Because basically if you're trafficking kids, it's like 10 years per kid and you usually have four or five. So, yeah, it's difficult. And it's also just to have to like tell your whole story. 10 years. It's not that long. Yeah, I know, I know.

This is bull crap. Yeah. I believe Russia just, what? No, go ahead. I believe Russia just passed a law that if you commit sex offense, Catholic Jamie is going to look this up against a child for the second time, you are sent forever to Siberia. I think why the hell aren't we doing that?

We ridiculous. Do you know what's even worse is actually the penalties for the buyers, which like, that's who we need to be persecuting, prosecuting, sorry, and persecuting. Yeah. I mean, if you want to go at it from an economic perspective, right? Demand drives in and you strike. This idea of penalizing the prostitute seems to be. Gangs are turning to this because people are buying, right?

So like with buyers, this is California. So I don't know, different states might have different things. So for all of you who think California is bad, well, this is just going to reinforce it here. Probably, I'm glad I don't live there. You believe? Yeah.

But this was probably, gosh, I think it had to be at least four years ago now that this happened. But our district attorney is very, Summer Sheffin is very involved in the anti-trafficking movement. This is like, she told me herself, like she felt that God brought her to become the DA

to fight this specifically. like she felt that God brought her to become the DA to fight this specifically. But she and others drafted legislation to increase the fines for traffickers, not sorry, not for traffickers, but for the buyers. And my increase, it was not horrible. I mean, it was just, it would have been making them sex offenders.

And that means that then, you know, it's gonna be public, right? So people are gonna like, you know, your wife is gonna find out, for example, and like actually financially increasing the fine and stuff like that. So it wasn't like we're sending them to jail and some like, you know,

but it was like, it made it a lot more serious. And the point was for it to be a deterrent, right? And it went through the legislature and our governor vetoed it. So right now the law still stands, which they were trying to make more serious, that basically if you're caught purchasing a 14 year old for sex,

you're gonna get a fine that's like a traffic like less than running a red light. I hate your state it's worse than sodom and gamora. Yeah yeah but that's disgusting if you didn't pay money for it and you just like raped your friend your daughter's friend now you're a sex offender you're going to jail but if you paid money for it because she's in this life. sex offender, you're going to go to jail. But if you paid money for it because she's in this life, it's just like a little fine. It's insane. It doesn't make any sense. I mean, it just doesn't make sense.

So- See anything on Russia? Yeah, I mean, it looks like it's a lot- Good, this would make me happy. That hasn't passed yet. Hasn't passed yet, but what's going to happen? Is it there? Can you read it?

It would make me happy because I'm getting really angry just listening to you. No offense, Grace. No, I mean, this is the kind of thing that should make one angry because it's just so crazy. And it's like when, when your legislature, which is like not exactly conservative passes it and then your governor vetoes it evil governor, you have like, it's really hard not to think that that is that people in power aren't

complicit in some way. And they don't, you know, like, I mean, I don't think anybody in particular, I have no idea, but like, it's a mess. Anyway, gosh. Yeah. So that's why I like helping victims and not creating new laws and going the whole law school route. Like, that's just like- Yeah, these are different things, aren't they?

That's totally different things. And that would probably make me mad. Yeah, yeah. That wouldn't be good. Well, have you heard of Nicosia, the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in DC? Wait, say the name again? Nicosia, National Center on, wait, what is it? N-co-o-s-e, National Center on Sexual Exploitation. But I haven't heard it said as a word.

Oh, let me put them in touch with you if you haven't. Okay. Yeah, yeah, they're friends of mine. They're doing great work because of the work they've done. I mean, this goes back about a decade. They've had things like what they worked with those in Utah

who declared pornography a public health crisis and have worked with them in other areas. They were the ones who put pressure on Google to take porn from their app stores, which they did. They're the ones who put pressure on McDonald's and Starbucks to start filtering their Wi app stores, which they did. They're the ones who put pressure on McDonald's and Starbucks to start filtering their wifi, which they did. They're the ones who got Marriott hotels and others to remove porn.

They're doing good work in that kind of legal realm. Totally. But yeah, you should be, yeah. Well, but so my point was like when I would kind of write on pornography and speak on it, it's like, okay, I know what I can do well and I know what I have no idea. Like I can stand up in front of 5,000 teenage boys and like convince them that porn is bad.

I'm very good at that. I'm bad at almost everything else, like regarding pornography. Like I can't, nothing about the law. You know, I don't know a lot of stuff there, but so it was almost like people would say that. Well, what are you doing? Like in the league or I'm like, I don't do anything about it, but Nicosia does. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's good that there are people probably, I'm sure, doing work.

There are. Yeah, there's a lot of people doing stuff like that. I would say I would say more than probably people on the ground, which whatever, you know. But well, we get some questions here from our beautiful supporters on Locals or Patreon. If you are a supporter on Locals or Patreon, it's because you are a very attractive person. I just wanna tell you that right now. If no one sold you that today, Rocky, for example, you're a beautiful human being.

Thanks for being a supporter. Rocky says, thank you, Matt, for having grace on the show. She is a dear friend of mine who has shown such love and compassion to me at a time in my life when I chose I chose a different path for my life. Each and every time I am in her presence, I feel the love of our Lord. God bless you, Grace, and the gift that you and the children of the Immaculate Heart are to this country and the life of the church. That's nice. I wish I knew who it was.

Yeah, Rocky, that didn't help. the life of the church. That's nice. I wish I knew who it was. Rocky that didn't help. Well, I mean, we've kind of answered this, so we'll go to the next one. TK is traddished as we hear from anti-abortion slash pro-life advocates that Planned Parenthood is almost complicit in trafficking, ie not reporting suspected victims. Is that true? If you've not already covered that yet? Which we haven't.

No. Yeah, we have not covered that. So I can't say anything for this very moment. Like I don't know if they've tightened up or changed policies or whatever, but for sure they have a history of not reporting, and with undercover videos and stuff, of not reporting minors coming in saying

that the dad is older and stuff like that. So definitely, definitely that's in the history and of course, I don't know individual branches and what they're doing, but it's there. I mean, I think anytime you have abortion quotas, you have a problem because you have a goal that's not necessarily the goal of the patient coming in the door. That's a problem. And I can say for sure, with the clients that I've worked with, they have experienced, I mean, and as teenagers, I mean, this is awful story. I mean, I mean, this is awful story, but one girl who was with us very briefly, she was on probation, ended up having to go back to jail.

But I mean, she told me stories of multiple pregnancies that she had lost, either from being beaten up by her trafficker on purpose, so she would lose this kid being taken to get an abortion or having somebody else beat her up on purpose. And this is like a teenager, so like how are you getting in and out of the door with the traffickers taking you to get an abortion if people are actually like paying attention and like trying to make sure the stuff isn't happening.

So like it happens, like anecdotally, I mean like one of our adult clients almost died in a botched abortion watch and they told me the story. Like, so I would definitely say people aren't paying enough attention or at least historically haven't been trying to, I mean, they're a prime place

to be catching these kinds of situations, especially if you're the same guy who comes in with different girls or the same guy coming in with the same girl. Like, there's just not normal things that you should be able to detect that seem to not get detected. Enrique says, and by the way, if some of these, you're like, I don't want to answer it or it's like, whatever, feel free to skip it. of these you're like I don't want to answer it or it's like whatever feel free to skip it. But who are the traffickers predominantly? What demographics, organizations, mafia, cartels, individuals, corrupt governments, men or women, the rich, the powerful, the poor trying to make

a buck? What's the demographic of the traffickers? No, that's a really good question because I think I just think it's important to know I guess.. I mean, for sure there's like, you know, Mexican mafia and like big scary cartel type things, you know, which that's real. That study I mentioned earlier done by USDN Point Loma. I mean, they found that 85% of sex trafficking in San Diego was gang involved. I think 85% of sex trafficking in San Diego was gang involved.

And so it's, what sometimes surprises people was that it was a pretty even mix of white African-American, Hispanic traffickers. It was pretty much even. The Asian population was smaller, but with the study, the Asian population in California is smaller in jail. So there's always things in a study

that make it not necessarily facts, right? And a lot of the Asian trafficking stuff is like massage businesses where there's also like a sex trafficking thing going on at the same time. So it's kind of, you have like labor and sex trafficking happening together often. And it's a whole nother thing to track because you have like an actual business,

but then you have like, so that's that. But yeah, it's really not any one part of the population. I mean, there's definitely like, poor area gang stuff going on and there's definitely like, quote unquote, high-end money-wise, like escort service stuff too. That same study looked at 20 different high schools in San Diego County from, you know, La Jolla del Gahon, wherever, like, you know, nicer parts, less nice parts, and found reported

and suspected cases of trafficking on every single campus. So it's really not any one person, like any one group's problem. And it was pretty much the same with victims. It's pretty evenly mixed. And we've seen that with those we've served too. It's really everywhere. Just has, can have a little bit of a different face. But the psychological aspect and the manipulation

is pretty much universal. Enrique also asks, are governments and tech giants doing enough to stop trafficking or are they turning a blind eye or even fostering it? I mean, I think this story with the bill getting vetoed shows that maybe not enough is being done. I mean, certainly some places more than others. I don't know.

I mean, I'm glad that's not my job. Cause I just like, what do you do on such a large scale? Like I can help like this person. I don't know what to do. I mean, I think there's a lot more that has been done in the last 15 years or so, like a lot. I mean, it wasn't even until like 2000 that it was even possible to prosecute a trafficker

in the United States. I mean, that's the first time like 2000 that it was even possible to prosecute a trafficker in the United States. I mean, that's the first time we had legislation that made it possible. So that's only like, you know, whatever, 22 years. But I think there is a lot more to be done. I think, I mean, for anything, it's the Netherlands or like Finland, shoot. One of the Scandinavian countries did this whole thing where they completely go after the buyer and that's how they addressed it.

And they were really able to like eliminate a lot. So there's like those kinds of models that are being done in certain places that aren't being done here that make one wonder about complicity or like. Well, I got to ask you this question, thoughts on Jeffrey Epstein's suicide quote. Oh my gosh.

You didn't have to answer that. I mean, just, what a mess. Like what, I mean, that's where, I mean, I think that's where that type of thing, and I don't know all the details of it. I mean, my husband was kind of following it, but I'm where you just see like, this is really the devil's work.

You know, like the devil hates, he hates goodness, he hates innocence, he hates the child. And he's just like, what scripture says, right? Like he prowls like a roaring lion seeking whom he will devour, right? But like Christ came to give life and to give it to the full. And you just see this, it's just so destructive

for everybody involved. I mean, there's no nobody in that trafficker buyer, the victim triangle that's living the good life. Maybe there's money, but that's, you know, yeah. Supporter Dragon Tread and Dixie says, I'll get to the point. In your experience, Grace, how influential or involved is the porn industry in the human trafficking business? Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you can speak to this as well.

I would say so there are some ways that that pornography and trafficking are directly intertwined. It's not very pleasant, but traffickers will use porn to as part of their grooming process for their victims. So they make them watch it. So they know what people coming in will want them to do or buyers coming in will bring porn so that they can show the person what they want them to do. Of course, there are some people who are in pornography

who would legally be considered a victim of sex trafficking. So that also means if you're watching it, you could be directly participating in that way. And I think the more remote sort of cause, but in the end, it's pretty significant. As I mean, and you will speak about this much better than I, so feel free to take over. But I mean, addiction all works the same way, right?

So it's not uncommon. This is not like I'm not saying this is everybody, so please don't take that the wrong way, but that somebody who starts with a pornography addiction would then want to act those things out. So it can lead to becoming a buyer, for example. I mean, I think the whole, and if you're going sort of more global,

I mean, the way that women are perceived or objectified or whatever you wanna call it, and especially the pressure that that puts on these call it. I mean, especially the pressure that that puts on these teenage kids. I mean, the way that they try to dress or like when they're among themselves and think no staff is listening, they might like talk. Or I mean, it's just clear that they've been sold this lie

that that's where they think their value is, is like in in being sexually attractive to people usually much older than themselves. So it's, I mean, it's all sort of part of the same mess, not the same thing exactly, but I don't know if you wanna add anything to that. Yeah, well, I mean, there's a few ways to come at it. I think that there's a straw man

that anti-ponography people such as myself can sometimes put out there. I don't know how many people do this, but they can give the impression that if you look at pornography, you are then going to go out and say, I'm sorry, you're significantly more higher. And that's not, that's not the case. I don't think that said in order for someone to sexually abuse a woman, some part of him must first believe that she is not so much a person with their own interior life and desires and ends, but that she is an object for my selfish sexual satisfaction. And I don't think that there's a more convincing propaganda campaign sort of get producing that belief in people than pornography.

Yeah. So I absolutely think the two are connected. I also think it's it's beyond dispute. I mean, we know for a fact that pornography that we might be watching is documented evidence of sexual trafficking. So there was a article that came out several years ago at CNN about a 54 year old Japanese man who said he was conducting sleep studies and was looking for women between certain ages. Trigger warning

here. These women he would meet at hotels and give them sedatives and alcohol, and then he would rape them. And he filmed the abuse and to his own estimation sold that footage upwards of $100,000 to different companies. The point point is this how would you know the difference. Much of the pornography out there today isn't shot with high resolution. Cameras and lights and you know it's made to look as if it's filled with an iPhone. How are you so sure that you're not not masturbating to a modern day slave. that you're not masturbating to a modern day slave. And that's a pretty disgusting thing to think about.

And it's a disgusting thing to think about because it's disgusting thing to do. And that isn't meant to shame people, but it is meant to sort of wake them up and to have them and me and all of us ask ourselves the question, my God, what am I doing with this powerful gift of sexuality that you've given me? I mean, some of these women that we're watching in pornography are dead. So you're masturbating to someone whose corpse is rotting in the ground. That's disgusting. So and there's been instances on porn hub and elsewhere where we have women being trafficked in there. And this seems to me, I would suspect that this is far more prominent than we even suspect,

because if you are the kind of disgusting pile of crap human person, sorry, not your words, mine, who sells women or children, in a way, that's a good business strategy because unlike drugs the thing doesn't evaporate immediately upon selling. Yeah and it's much harder to catch I mean if you're caught with cocaine I don't care if you're just handing it to your friend in a moment like from somebody else like it's illegal you're part of the deal now. Right. But you have to actually see a crime to arrest somebody for it and

these aren't crimes that are seen. That's right. I mean, it's really hard. If you're traveling with this person, you're not getting... Yeah, and it's not illegal to be scantily clad for the weather or whatever it might be. So there's no obvious crime. So the point I'm just making is that this person is somewhat of a savvy businessman. I am.

Now, why wouldn't you set up a camera to film the abuse in certain instances to then make money from it? That just seems like an obvious next step to grow your business, doesn't it? If you're set on something so perverse. Yeah. Well, you already are. But that's the thing. We know that the perversions are so why wouldn't you now? There might be reasons, but I don't know how overwhelming they are. And so, like if we discovered that a particular sneaker company produced its like five percent of its sneakers in sweatshops,

and that became a, you know, common knowledge. You'd be right to sort of stop purchasing that sneaker. Well, the amount of abuse that goes on in the porn industry, I think, is significantly higher and even more disturbing in certain instances. And so, you know, even if you don't buy the Catholic churches claim that pornography is intrinsically evil, that's a pretty that's a pretty good reason to stop consuming it. You know, yeah. Yeah.

It one of my actually my favorite speaker in the anti-trafficking world is, I mean, completely unknown, but she's a therapist and she worked with sex offenders and she ended up working with some traffickers because that's the only way they could have gotten them prosecuted and booked was like for something smaller than they did, but at least like when I make them to time. I'm trying to remember.

No, that's okay. No, she's like totally local. And she was proposing this thing to San Diego County, trying to get them to give a certain kind of treatment, like psychological treatment to traffickers who were in prison because she had done this successfully. And I'm like, I can email her her name later. Yeah, that's fine.

But it was so brilliant because she was looking at it from that point of view, but she speaks about this type of like antisocial personality disorder that they have. And unfortunately, when somebody is in that state, the only thing that they learn by getting caught is how to not get caught last time. I mean, and this is where you see,

and I'm not talking about any individual in particular, but I mean, this way you really see what mortal sin is, right? Like, and if for those who might, like, just be more in the scrupulous world, like, this is what that is, right? I mean, in space solver, like Pope Benedict talked about this, that you don't meet many people in life

who are like that, right? Whose will is completely set on evil. You also don't meet many people who have reached the state of perfection. Most for sure are somewhere in the middle. And again, he's giving this as part of the cause for hope, it's like purgatory and stuff to you, right? But you really see just, it's just,

I mean, it's sort of mind boggling, but this kind of just evil, But like you really see like just, it's just, I mean, it's sort of mind boggling, but this kind of just evil, just real, real evil. I think that's why you have so many people coming out of this life who are believers in some way, because it's just, you can't experience such different things and not believe that, that there's some kind of actual good and evil out there. But yeah, anyways, she was fascinating

because she was proposing a way really to kind of try to treat that from a mental health perspective, which she had success with. And what did she come up with? Did she have a- Yeah, it was like, gosh, it was this old model that was used like in the eighties in some prisons,

but it like really, it's literally like instilling morals, but there's like a psychological terms for it. But it's like trying to actually introduce them to the hierarchy of values. I can't remember like the diagnostic kind of terms and the name for that type of treatment, but it's too bad people weren't listening to her because I think it could have done some good.

You know, I know I've sort of expressed anger at people who've engaged in this, and I think that's probably good. But but it's also important to realize that these sons of God are that and God desires their salvation. Yeah. First Timothy, where is it? Two, four. God desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. That would include traffickers.

So if I were God, I would come up with a compelling syllogism against my decision to save everybody. I'd be like, bugger you. But thank God I'm not him and that he is he him. And that is he, him. And that's a good thing. So I think stories like we just shared, like St. James the Faster is a good story. I also think is it Alessandro who killed Maria Goretti?

I mean, he tried to rape her and when she denied him, he stabbed her several times, went into the next room, heard her moaning, went back out, stabbed her several more times. On the way to the hospital, she forgives him. I know you know this story, but for those at home, she forgives him, says, and she's like, she's 12. She says, I want him to be in heaven with me. He goes to prison. He has a dream of Maria Garetti and he becomes a Catholic. He converts if he was Catholic, he kind of converts to living the faith. Later on, he asks the forgiveness of Maria's mom.

She gives it to him. He ends up becoming a Franciscan brother. And like your former story doing penance for the rest of his life. Yeah, I mean, I have no doubt. I'm sure soon we'll see if it hasn't already a cause for his canonization being opened and looked at. But these are stories we need to hear. So whoever we are, I mean, there's there's saints that we can turn to,

whether it be Alessandro, St. James, the faster, but to your point about instilling values and those who have decided I've I've become a monster. Yeah, and you have But God can turn weeds into wheat Oh, and that's where that whole identity piece is so important like both for the women We serve coming out of life but for them to you right because I mean that's the lie the devil wants you to buy Yeah, this is who I am. Yeah, you're disgusting. You are. That's what you did. Yeah. Who you are. Amen, sister. Yeah, go. No, I mean, first was first Timothy to four. Yeah, to first. That's right. For yeah. It says, well, it's continuing halfway through a thought.

Yes, basically taking the beginning and then continue continuing that thought. First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men, for kings who are in high positions that we may lead a quiet, peaceful life, godly and respectful in every way. This is good and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth for there is one God and there is one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ, who gave himself as ransom for all. There's your answer against the Calvinists.

When it says he came to save all men, what it means is all men. That's it. All right. There'll be some response video to that little clip. Okay. Let's see here. Okay. So here's a practical question.

This comes from supporter Cecilia. She wants to know how can we help to fight sex trafficking? I think the first thing, and I know this is always like the cheesy answer or something, but it's really not like our battle is not against flesh and blood. So like when I ask those who are listening for their prayers, I mean, it really like it is God who gives the growth, right? And our prayers contribute to that because I see see, when I see kids who choose to go back to that life or kids who choose to move forward

in a different direction, I know that's not us. You know, I mean, we're giving them the opportunity, we're trying, you know? But there's a grace that precedes that for sure. And that grace can be merited by anyone from anywhere. proceeds that for sure. And that grace can be merited by anyone from anywhere. So that's more important than we may sometimes give, you know, than we might think,

or like actually really believe and act on, right? I supporting organizations who are doing this is big. I mean, we can't do it by ourselves. Yes, yes. Let me do it so you don't have to. There is a link in the description below to Children of the Immaculate Heart. You can go there, they can give online, I'm sure.

You're a nonprofit. You're not a 401c3, but you are a 501c3. So that's good. So people could, please, I would highly recommend that you support the work. And I would say, do, I mean, whatever people are, whatever city you're in, there's stuff going on everywhere.

There are organizations pretty much in any size, good size town. So you can get involved, find out what's going on locally. And once you get in, good luck ever trying to get out. It's one of these worlds where like, it's sort of addicting in its own way where people are just like, I don't know. I think people are just called to it and just get get the bug.

But. And also more some anything else you want to touch upon before we. Wrap up. Not that I can think of. OK. Yeah, thank you. Well, I'm so grateful for the work that you're doing and to all of your your employees and volunteers. God bless them abundantly and to those lovely lovely beautiful women who you serve Well, let everybody know who's watching right now that whenever we do these interviews we do post show wrap-up videos

So we're gonna delve into some other topics more deeply Maybe in a way that YouTube wouldn't allow us to so If you are a patron or a local supporter, please support us over there and then you'll get access to all of these videos, not just these ones, but all the ones we've done in the past. And you'd also get other things in return and we would greatly appreciate it. So there's that. Thank you so much. Thank you.