Theology in the Raw - S8 Ep899: The Dark World of Sex Trafficking: Tyler Schwab

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

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Hello, friends. Welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. The registration page is now open for the first ever Theology in the Raw conference. That's March 31st to April 2nd in 2022. That's going to be in Boise, Idaho at Calvary Chapel, Boise. Or if you can't make it out to Boise, then I encourage you to stream it online. Although it's going to be a great in-person experience. We're going to have a huge after party on Friday night where you can hang out with people, get to know the speakers. You're going to have a chance to ask questions to all of the speakers and different panelists. It's going to be more. I want to do a conference that's not your just typical Christian conference,

you know, where you got a bunch of speakers giving like 45 minute addresses and then they wander off stage. We're going to have shorter talks. We're going to have panel discussions. I'm going to interview the speakers after they talk. You're going to have a chance for audience Q&A. There's going to be some longer-ish talks, 30, 40 minutes, maybe, you know, max. We're also going to have a lot of shorter talks, 10, 15, 20-minute conversations. And we're going to address hard topics like race, sexuality, gender, critical race theory, hell, transgender identities, climate change, creation care, American politics, and what it means to love your Democratic or Republican neighbor as yourself.

Different views will be presented. No question is off limits. No political party is going to be praised. Everyone will be challenged to think. You can't just sit there and passively absorb some kind of echo chamber. I don't care who you are. You're going to be challenged to think. Somebody is going to say something that you have not heard before, that you haven't thought about. So come and be uncomfortable. Theology and Rock Conference next spring, 2022.

Loads of awesome speakers. Derwin Gray is going to be there. Thabiti Anyubwale. Evan Wickham is going to lead a worship. And worship is going to be in several different languages to reflect global Christianity. Jackie O'Perry is going to speak. John Tyson, Greg Coles, Tony Scarcello, Chris Date, Dr. Sandy Richter. I don't know why I just doctored her, but Ed Uzinski, who's also a doctor, Ellie Bonilla, who's not a doctor yet, and several others. I'm still waiting to hear back from, I mean,

I guess I could let you know now. I don't know. Maybe they said yes by the time this comes out, but I've invited David Platt to come out, Tish Harrison-Warren. Man, I really hope she says yes, and a few others that I'm still waiting to confirm. I'm still trying to find somebody to debate Chris Date on the nature of hell. Chris Date is an annihilationist and I need somebody who will defend the eternal conscious torment view. I've sent out tons of invites and got denied by so many people. I shouldn't be telling you all this. Who lets the cat out of the bag and all the inside scoop behind planning a conference? I don't know. Anyway, again, March 31st to April 2nd, you can attend live in Boise or live stream from your couch.

There is an early bird special, which you will want to take advantage of ASAP. It's only open. Well, it's an early bird special. So if you're a late bird, you're not going to take advantage of the special. And there is limited seating. So if you do want to come here in Boise and have an embodied conference experience, you need to sign up sooner than later because space is going to fill up fairly soon. So you can go to my website, PrestonSprinkle.com, and there's probably a pop-up or something that's going to be in your face letting you know how to register for the first ever Theology in Raw conference titled Exiles in Babylon. All right. My guest for the show today is a friend of mine, Tyler Schwab. I met Tyler when I was speaking at BYU, that's Brigham Young University

in Rexburg, Idaho, not the Salt Lake campus, but the other campus in Idaho. Tyler was a student at BYU, and I gave a talk on nonviolence and hung out with the students afterwards. And I still remember talking to Tyler. He came up afterwards. We had a great, really short conversation. We've kept in touch sort of like from a distance over the last several years. And he's been a big fan of the podcast. And I recently connected with him here in Boise and got to know the work he's been involved with. And I was absolutely blown away at the work that Tyler is doing. Let me give you his bio. Just brief leaks. We need to jump into this. Tyler grew up in Wyoming, and he spent the last decade working on behalf of survivors of human trafficking. He's an expert in quality aftercare services and has testified in the highest offices in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, and Uruguay.

He's fluent in Spanish, goes down to South America a lot with the work that he's doing. He's been featured on several news outlets like ABC, Wyoming Signature, Star Valley Independent, and many others that he's listed here in his bio. In 2013, he founded, so he was a college student when he founded Libertas International, a nonprofit dedicated to the prevention and restoration of survivors of human trafficking in Latin America. And he also works for, wait for it, wait for it, shoot, I'm not seeing it. Underground, oh shoot, it's in the show notes. Underground Railroad. I forgot the exact name of it, but basically works for two different human trafficking nonprofits. Nonprofits that address, not promote human trafficking.

So this podcast conversation is raw. It's gritty. It's moving. It's incredibly sad. I just want to warn you ahead of time. The stories that Tyler shares are mind-blowing in a really bad, bad way. I mean, the evil that humans are capable of is startling. So just to warn you ahead of time, there's some things in this episode that, depending on your background, your traumatic trauma that you might have experienced, this might be a fairly triggering episode, but I think it's a very needed one because the work

he's doing and the work that many others are doing in this area is absolutely vital. So please welcome to the show for the first time, Tyler Schwab. Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology in the Raw. I'm here with my friend, Tyler Schwab. Tyler, thanks so much for being on the show, man. Hey, man. Thanks for having me, man. It's a dream come true to be hanging out with Preston on this podcast. Well, I already talked about how we met, which is an interesting story. And it's crazy that we saw each other in person six, I want to say six years ago,

where we met and then just recently, um, saw each other again in Boise. So yeah, it's, it's great to reconnect. And I, so I wanted to have you on, I wish we did this live when you were here. We should have done this in my basement, but, um, and maybe we can do it again, uh, next time you visit, but, um, just hearing about the work you're doing, man, um, with, And just hearing about the work you're doing, man, with sex trafficking, addressing sex trafficking and rescuing girls out of that, I was just blown away at the stories you're telling. And I just have so many questions. And I'm like, I'm sure a lot of other people do too. So why don't we just start by you telling us just a brief bit about who you are as a person and how you got into the work you're doing. And then I'm sure that'll open up a lot of different avenues for us to go down.

Yeah, man. So I definitely didn't go like seeking this out, like when it first kind of came on my radar. I lived for a little while in the Dominican Republic. I was a missionary down there. And so that's pretty different to where I grew up. I grew up in Wyoming. And so it's two very different worlds, just those two worlds. And so just kind of being exposed to like poverty and violence against women, violence in general in a place like Dominican Republic.

violence in general in a place like Dominican Republic. And when I was living there, I noticed, you know, young girls hanging out with like European men, American men that may be like their mid 60s, early 70s, really old, older guys. And, you know, it was weird, but I didn't think anything of it. It was like something weird was going on. I just thought it was I thought it was just a weird country that I wasn't used to. And it wasn't until I moved back to the States and and I saw where I was reading like what trafficking was going to learn about for the first time. modern day slaves today, like in 2011 or whenever this was, than there's ever been in the history of the world, like more than there's ever been during the transatlantic slave trade or during the times of Moses, during all these different times that there was more slaves living in 2011.

I think the number back then was like 26 million people in modern day slavery. And they mentioned, you know, the Dominican Republic being a place where there was slavery happening. And so I obviously wanted to learn more about it. I wanted to help. It just touched me so deeply. Some of the stories that this guy was sharing that I'd listened to like on campus of just like the horrific crimes being perpetrated against women and children and men. And so I sold like my mattress I sold my textbooks you know a college kid like you have like 20 bucks to your name at any given selling like just the most expensive things that I own just to buy a plane ticket back and so I went back and I went back just you know I wasn't

going to rescue anybody I wasn't going to go to heal anybody I just wanted to learn you know I just wanted to get to know like the if I wanted to, I had to do it in a way that was educated. So I went down and I just, I hit the streets and I talked with taxi drivers, motorcycle drivers, anyone that kind of knew, like, where children essentially were being sold. And I ended up in this brothel um this kind of bar brothel um in this place called Boca Chica Dominican Republic and I went in there I'll never forget like the first night I was there because yeah I wasn't like undercover anything I was very open about what I was doing and so I talked to this pimp and just kind of find like the youngest girl there and I think the youngest girl was was around 14 years old now that that girl over there I wanna I wanna talk to her I'm not gonna do anything with her I just want to

buy her dinner and this pimp like he totally thought I was a cop like he was you know very confrontational very very like well what are you doing in my club like are you a cop are you are you ice are you like who are you and I was just very upfront I'm just like I'm just here to just to get to know her like how much she how much is she worth per hour and the guy said I think like 20 bucks and so I gave him 35 for 40 minutes and and money speaks to that kind of person like that is that just changed the whole dynamic as soon as I gave him more money like he was totally cool but I had this girl over here um she came over and we were having dinner she was just terrified she was terrified of me and so I you know I kind of broke the ice with her I told her I wasn't I wasn't gonna do anything with her I just wanted to talk to her and find out her

journey find out her story um and so when I told her like I wasn't gonna do anything with her like you should have just seen like just the flood of emotion that came over her face of just relief um and I was curious of why that was and so and she was telling me like she opened up with me when she found out that I wasn't expecting anything in return from her of you know I came to this club three nights ago like they told me it was a job offer I came here um you know they lied to me they told me I'll be waiting tables there they that when I got here they took they they they took my cell phone they took all these different things and They told me I would be waiting tables. When I got here, they took my cell phone. They took all these different things. And they told me I would have to be attending these clients.

And my first client asked for a sexual act that I had never experienced before because she came from a very, very conservative Catholic background. And so when this client asked for this sex this, this sex act, she had no idea like what that meant. And so for the next two days she was locked in a room and she was forced to watch like that particular sex act, um, that sex act being anal sex, um, on like Pornhub and X videos and all these videos so that she would know what to anticipate when a client asked for that. And she thought that I was going to be that client. And so when she found out that I wasn't, like she was relieved. And she told me her old story of she grew up very poor.

These people came to her house, offered her a job. She went to this location. And her parents, you know, when this guy came to his club, like thought he was a godsend. Just he's offering my daughter a job and education. She can help our family economically because we're starving. But it wasn't at all like what was promised. And that was my first night like in country and for the next month and a half that i was there um like i just would meet

girls with that very similar story of girls that had been recruited out of poor families that have been um that came expecting an education a job and in turn were trafficked under the threat and and wouldn't escape because of the threat of violence and I had it in my mind I was like this is so terrible this is so heartbreaking just a month and a half of just like hearing these girls trauma and I decided I was going to do something when I was you know in my mid 40s late 50s early 50s whatever when I had money to give and I could give to somebody. And when I was flying home, I ended up in the, like, the Delta Lounge through Atlanta to Salt Lake City. And there was this guy there and he saw my shirt and it was, like, a Dominican Republic shirt. And he asked me, like, what I was doing in the Dominican Republic.

And I just jokingly, I was like, oh, I was hitting up some clubs. And whatever I said, like, must have just, just like hit a nerve with him to where he just confided in me like he saw me as someone safe and he was like the Dominican Republic is so great like I can leave work at six be on a plane by seven be in the Dominican Republic by 9 30 and then have sex with young women and kids all weekend and be back at work by 9 a.m on Monday and I was like so shook by that experience of just like i can't believe like someone like this exists right now like in 2011 like i can't wait to i can't wait until i'm older to to do something when i have more resources like i have

to do whatever i can right now and forever to to protect these girls from people like him and tyler i'm just curious and because this is how my brain works when you tell that story would you have guessed that about him based on his presence you know i'm asking like a doctor like he wasn't like you yeah like you know like you watch like law and order like some of these pedophiles are like these like heavyweight guys with half beards and just – they look like pedophiles. I don't want to say they look like pedophiles, but some people look like pedophiles. But this guy, he was very well-dressed.

He was wealthy. I mean he was sitting in the Delta Lounge. That is like the epitome of privilege if you're sitting in the Delta Lounge in Atlanta. I would have never suspected that he was like a sex tourist or a pedophile or anything like that. And I think that's what caught me so off guard. It's a doctor. I'm scared to ask what kind of doctor he is, but yeah. Oh, sorry. Good. Keep, keep going. Yeah. No, no. And that's what, that's what started my journey. And so I ended up dropping out of school the first time, um, and starting my own nonprofit, um, working in the Dominican Republic, working in Latin America specifically,

supporting aftercare for survivors of child sexual abuse material, human trafficking, rape. And that's what I've been doing for the last nine years. So I have my own NGO. My own NGO is called Li called libertas international which is still running say that again say it again you clicked out real quick what's the name oh sorry yeah the name of the ngo yeah so my personal ngo is called libertas international libertas okay yeah it's it's latin for freedom um and we support aftercare for survivors of

human trafficking c-sam and rape in latin america and i'm currently employed by a group called the operation underground railroad which rescues um human trafficking survivors across the world and my current position there is it, it's a mouthful, senior country manager for aftercare for Latin America. What I love about your story, and one reason why I wanted to have you on in particular, one, you know, we have a relationship, but you started your nonprofit while you were in college.

Is that correct? Yes, sir. Because there's other people that run large organizations that address human trafficking. And it's kind of like, well, I can hear people say like, well, I'm a painter, I'm a business owner, I'm a teacher. I care very much about this as a thing, but I can't do this. What I love about your story is you're just Tyler, dude. Like you, you came face to face with a profound injustice. And as a college student, we're able to do something kind of just grassroots or whatever. And now this is something you do full time, but you, you represent many people listening who are going to resonate with so much what you're talking about, but might feel like, ah, but I can't really, what can I do?

You know, anyway, that's, I just love the story that you started this in college. It's crazy. Can you give us, help us get our minds around the global phenomenon of sex trafficking. Maybe some numbers, some areas, the industry. Just give us a little peek behind the curtain of what is going on right now, even as we're recording this podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So there's 27 million people more or less that are kind of hard to come by that are victims of human trafficking right now, the majority of them being women that are forced into the sex trade, women and children. The average age of a girl when she goes into the sex trade is 14 um and i can tell you i just it's um it happens all over like it's it's

there's no there's not a community in the world that's not untouched by this and it's not touched by this in some way um and uh you know the pandemic is just worse than that honestly um because there's there's a lot there's less reporting now because children aren't being because the big reporters in the past were like people like school teachers school counselors and kids aren't seeing their teachers or school counselors as much and they're spending more time online which allows more of these predators to groom that's that's a growing phenomenon here and um just the new age of technology is this thing called cyber sex trafficking. that found like this, this IE, the IB address of this woman who was broadcasting child pornography, child sexual abuse material to us,

to the city of Pittsburgh. And what happened is that she was trafficking her two daughters, ages seven and five. And she was taking requests from the people of Pittsburgh, like sexual acts that she would want the older child, who is seven, to perpetrate on her younger sister. And our partners knew that this was happening in their country but didn't know exactly how to trace it. So they allowed us to help with this case and allowed us to bring in some of our experts to help track where this IP address was coming from, allowed me to come in to help provide the aftercare for these girls.

And I remember we did the raid and we arrested the mom. We rescued the two little girls and they were just living in a hellhole, just a one bedroom shack with this just dirty mattress and this camera that was placed right above the mattress. And it was a case that really shaped my career just because it was so dark, and it was the first time I had encountered like a family member that was really trafficking their kid. But also just how easy it was for this woman to traffic her own kids inside of her own home. And so that's why I think people – there's sometimes a misconception that like you have to be taken to thailand or mexico to be trafficked while like you can be trafficked and still go to school every day still live with your

family still live with your grand grandparents i mean kids are trafficked every day they still go to school they still um go to soccer practice they still do all these things. So knowing the signs of what to look for can really help us as a community recognize those kids that are being abused. But there's not a community in the world that's not touched by this in some way. I mean, that's crazy. What you're describing is crazy. How common is that kind of scenario? Maybe not the specific darkness of that scenario, but how common is it for, let's just say somebody in the United States to have somebody close to them that is trafficking them? Like a child being trafficked, not being kidnapped or whatever,

but like it's where this scenario where they're living a on the surface of it seems like a normal life is that i mean one in a million or is it like several hundred thousand people or i mean i it maybe you don't have specific numbers but i mean have you encountered various cases like that yeah there's there's a i can tell you the number that the that this company called Polaris puts out. I think it's around 65 to 100000 kids are trafficked here in the in the United States. OK. And I can just speak like from where I live, like here in Salt Lake City, we see a lot of like familiar trafficking where kids are trafficked by their own family and they still like they still do the everyday life. They go to school and they go to soccer practice. They go to church even and they can still be trafficked for at night or they can be trafficked online.

Um, we had a case, uh, here in Salt Lake of a girl that was, um, she was being trafficked by, uh, her, um, clergy leader here, um, where he would, uh, he had, you know, he had a group of other clergy that were unfortunately, um, involved in something like this. And he had like a spiritual hold on her to where, um, he made her feel as if this was like an elevated step of like of their religious experience. And she was doing, you know, the everyday thing that like a girl growing up here in Salt Lake City would of going to school, being a cheerleader, doing dance classes. It's just on Sunday she would be in traffic by her clergy.

What kind of clergy? I mean, like a Christian church or some cult? It was an LDS bishop in this specific case. And so they used that spiritual manipulation to have her feel that it was an elevated spiritual experience. It was total grooming, total manipulation. And they're all in jail now, total manipulation. Um, and they're, they're all in jail now. Like, thank God. But, um, you know, they, they, they, they build that relationship of trust and then explore that relationship of trust, which is just, just too common. Like that's, that's how traffickers

work of they they'll never, um, like, it's so important to just like know who your kids are talking to. And I don't want to say like trust no one but like trust but verify like in some of these cases because when you remember the case of like elizabeth smart like way back when when she was kidnapped you remember that no okay so um usually traffic sometimes people think that like traffickers will kidnap kids and and that does happen but it's not super common just because when you kidnap someone like the amber alert goes out everybody gets a text message like i think he kicks up a lot of dust well if you can manipulate that person like get to trust that person groom that person and then convince them to leave their own accord um then there's never going to be any dust uh kicked up like i mean there's a case here in salt lake of

um a boyfriend um mother meets up meets a boyfriend i mean he slowly starts to groom this girl of i'd love her to like come meet my friends to come spend the night go clothes shopping stuff that um might seem innocent i guess like in a romantic relationship but what he was doing is he was grooming um her trafficking her essentially um without having to like physically kidnap her to not kick it kick up any dust because he was able to fly under the radar for so long like her abuse um lasted a significant uh longer time so yeah yeah, that's, I've heard, I've heard this before that, you know, the, the, it's really rare for like, I mean, I'll just use my daughter as an example, like they're walking downtown and, you know, black SUV pulls up and grabs them off the street,

throws them in the car and drives off. Like that is extremely, that kind of thing is extremely rare, right? Because one, like I, it's, you know, if they were like homeless or something, then, then I could, that might elevate that kind of scenario. But I mean, I'm going to be blowing the whistle and they want to fly below the radar, right? Like the last thing they want is more attention. They just want to fly below the radar. And so it's not that kind of scenario that leads to it. It's often what you're saying, like somebody being kind of wooed into it or parents kind of being involved. Man,

can you tell us, because you've done work in like South America quite a bit, what does it look like from A to Z to rescue somebody out of trafficking all the way from going into the brothels, kind of what you did experimentally at the very beginning. And I'm really interested too in the aftercare. How does somebody recover from something like that? I mean, my mind can't even get around how many layers of trauma there are just... How do you get over that or how does life go on after something like that so can you yeah can you speak into all that yeah for sure man um so that's my job so that's like where i have to like hold on hope is like that is possible and it is it is hard

like the aftercare is probably the is definitely the hardest part in my opinion just because the physically removing somebody from a situation exploitation is is you know hard but it's just a one-time event versus like the after care it's an ongoing process i can give you an example of like how our team works um so we had this case um there's a case called uh operation eternal spring in medellin, Colombia. And so I can talk about this because the guy's already been sentenced. And it was this American dude, his name is Victor Galarza, and he was trafficking girls to American pedophiles. He was hosting parties and he was exploiting these girls. And basically, he was a he was a like a guy that

found dancers for music videos um and he would use that like position to recruit girls that were in extreme poverty that wanted to be famous into these trafficking rings and and but he had a bunch of recruiters like he had a bunch of people that would go out these communities and find these young girls and and convince them to come work for this american pimp essentially and so our team what's what's unique about our team um at operation underground railroad is that um we're a bunch of american former cia military law enforcement like we have a couple different backgrounds but what sets us apart is like our white skin so when we go and we interact with these traffickers um they don't suspect that like we're working with the cops because we look just like any other american sex tourist what they

don't know is that we've made connections with like the police in the country of columbia we've connected with homeland security in columbia and have been given specific targets on their behalf to go and investigate and verify gather that intel that maybe a columbian cop can't yeah so like an example of that is we'll take them uh we'll meet these traffickers like in these brothels and we will buy something that's not water so So like the cops, they can investigate this stuff because there's also a number of Colombian clientele that abuse these girls, but their budget is so thin that when they go undercover,

they can't afford to buy like a beer or a Red Bull in a brothel. And who goes to a brothel to buy a Red Bull or buy a Red Bull or buy a water? They just don't do it. So our team can help like supplement some of that, make them look more like sex like sex tourists pedophiles our team always goes in um with cameras with audio so we can we have all the evidence with these guys of um like what they're saying what what are they how are they exploiting these girls because obviously they'll try to fight

it in court but when you have it like on audio of oh this girl who's 15 years old cost this much money and she'll do whatever sex act you can't deny that in court if it's if it's on audio so once all the evidence is a rescue where we, the Colombian police will arrest the pedophiles, arrest the traffickers. And then our team, my team will go in after the fact with the social workers once the mayhem has already taken place and start working on that aftercare for those survivors. And in this case, you kind of work your way up the hierarchy of needs where it's like you need food, shelter and water. I had one case once of a girl that was about eight months pregnant when she was rescued and she hadn't been fed in three days because the trafficker wanted to make her look thinner for the purchasers. And so in that case, like the first thing I did was buy her like a chicken, the type of chicken

they sell in a grocery store, like a Smith's, a rotisserie chicken. Gave it to her and she ate the whole thing. And that helped me build trust with her because that gift was freely given, which is another thing about even talking on a more spiritual level, a level of the gift of grace, giving something without an expectation of something in return and how much trust that builds. Because these girls, their whole life is unfortunately transactional. without expectation of anything in return like it really builds like our rapport my rapport with them and allows us to kind of work our way up the hierarchy of needs of where we can um where we can miss these girls and so i'll focus on one specific girl in this case so the rescue happened she was freed traffickers arrested and then the american our american partners arrested the main trafficker, Victor Galarza, up in New York City.

And so so we meet up with the survivor. She's she needs safe housing. So we got her into safe housing. She was put in a safe house for a number of a number of months. She received some mental health counseling while she was there she started to work on like the trauma that she had been given or that she had she had suffered at the hands of these travelers and then once she went left the home went back to her family we could start to evaluate some of her needs that she has just in her family and so one of them was this like this this guy

he uploaded her abuse to different porn sites and so what and that was starting to make the round in her community of people seeing her like on these like porn hub or x videos and what so what she wanted is to have those videos taken down and to somehow pursue justice against um these porn companies and so through like some various connections that we have we want to provide both of those things for her. That was very unique where that was one of her needs, but we were able to help meet that need. So real quick, so there is video recordings

of not just obviously sex, but her being raped and abused, and that was on Pornhub. I'm not an expert of Pornhub. Is that like even within the porn ethic? Is that deemed like illegal or wrong or not really? Because I didn't know that that could be posted on even Pornhub. Or is that how you got it down? Because they can do that yeah they can't do that um so we um we're able to get it down because it is illegal content like she was a minor she was being raped um but Pornhub um specifically and there's a couple of

different groups that are looking to take down Pornhub or hold porn companies like more accountable because that's a very common threat among teens that maybe send explicit photos is that some of these people like hold that over their heads that they're going to post it on Pornhub in order for them to send more videos and it's called unverified content and there's like the channels on Pornhub that are like verified, like sex performers, like professionals. And then there's the unverified content, which is like username 1156 can upload whatever video that he wants. And Victor had an account like the latter of like a user 5176 or something like that. It's totally legal. It's child pornography.

It's totally legal. It's totally legal. It's child pornography. It's totally legal. But the porn companies don't verify – didn't verify the video because they get so many – like so many views every day that they just didn't bother to verify it. But what sucks about Pornhub – and this has been fixed thanks to some advocates in 2020. But they have a download button. So anyone that uploads something, somebody else can download. And that's what happened with this specific girl is her abuse was downloaded and then spread throughout her community

but because it happened like she she has the right now to sue this company um and so she is in a current lawsuit against this company to hold them accountable too for for the abuse that she suffered because she she described it once as she was being uh globally gang raped because when she saw her video when it was forwarded to her by a classmate, it had been seen by half a million people. So – but in her case, like after she wanted to sue the company and pursue justice there, she wanted to go to college. But obviously like her resources didn't allow her to do that. go to college but obviously like her resources didn't allow her to do that um and that's something that we believe in like 100 is education that leads to some kind of employment and so she's currently in vet school like she actually last week just dissected her first eyeball which i think is totally gross but she's she's totally into it um because she she loves animals wants

to be a vet and in my experience that's when you really see like the chain of exploitation truly be broken is when these survivors are able to gain some kind of meaningful employment and start making money in a way that's not exploitive when that happens even if it's like not a ton of money there's some kind of pride there's some kind of um like happiness that comes into them that they've never felt before and they're just able it's what i see truly healing happen is when they're finally able to break that final chain of of exploitation because unfortunately there's a lot of money in in being exploited and being hurt in that way and when a survivor is able to see that they are worth more than what people are willing to pay for them and they have some kind of skill set where they're able to gain meaningful employment, that's when I see the train truly be broken.

And so after Carinah Hall, we try to meet their needs, whether it's lawsuits, whether it's mental health, safe housing, returning them to their families, repatriation if they've been trafficked across country lines. And then we at OUR and at Libertas, we apply this method called a person-centered approach where each person has their own separate program, essentially, where the survivor's needs in Utah may be different from this survivor's needs in Colombia, may be different from this survivor's needs in Thailand, maybe different from this survivor's needs in Columbia, maybe different from this survivor's needs in Thailand, and just try to meet their needs exactly where they're at age-wise, trauma-wise, and just in their overall journey. With the actual rescuing, are you going into, maybe not even you specifically, but your team, they go in and act like they're traffickers? Or what does that look like?

Yeah, so I should clarify. It's always the foreign governments that rescue these survivors. It's never us particularly. We help facilitate the rescue, but we're not putting handcuffs on anybody. facilitate the rescue but we're not putting like handcuffs on anybody okay um but yeah it's essentially what our team does we go undercover as sex tourists to engage with these traffickers to gain that confidence to gain that intel and then um pass over that intel to the local cops so that they can go and do that rescue um either with us or without us sometimes our ops team is not invited on the rescue, which is totally fine.

But our aftercare team, we're always invited to go help provide the follow-up for those survivors that are rescued. So like me, myself, I've been on probably 20 rescue ops, but it's always been like after the aftermath happens. Like once the arrest happens and bad guys are in cuffs and survivors are separated, that's when I come in

and start to work on the aftercare. So I've never been arrested, thank God. But that's what our team does. Our operations team goes undercover and basically pretends to be sex tourists to gather the intel for local governments in their fight against these traffickers. And do they say, do they hire, kind of like what you did many years ago, do they go in and hire them and then get them in a room and talk to them and say, hey, I can get you out of this if you want? Or what does that look like? It's mainly interactions with the traffickers.

And so they don't talk to the victims as often. So they'll engage with the traffickers. And usually how it works is like they're talking with the traffickers and so um they don't talk to the victims as often so they're they'll engage with the traffickers and usually how it works is like they're talking with the traffickers the traffickers saying hey i got 10 girls um ages whatever they're going to do sexual act um and then they set up what we call um an op an operation where we set a location like a party um either have like a like a ranch or some kind of building or a club or whatever and then traffickers go and they bring um bring their victims and when they arrive at this party um sometimes our ops team is there sometimes they're not but when we are there like we we act like there's like there's a party is going to happen or still engaging with the traffickers, like making the negotiations.

Usually what has to happen is there has to be like a cash exchange before like the evidence is finally able to be prosecutable. And so usually on the day of the op is when there's like a cash exchange for sexual acts. op is when there's like a cash exchange for sexual acts and as soon as all the evidence is gathered our team has like a code phrase where it's like bring in the wine or have you seen the stars or whatever yeah but all of our team knows like what that that phrase is and as soon as that phrase is spoken our ops team knows that um cops are on their way and so cops come and sometimes they'll arrest our team to like maintain the cover of like our team was was was sex tourists oh um yeah so and there's we have a couple documentaries online that people can check out as well to kind of see like how the process works but the cops will come in at if we're involved in the in the rescue um if our ops team

is there on site um they'll usually be arrested too, like a fake arrest, just maintain that cover. Because most of the survivors that I work with never know that the Americans that were negotiating with their traffickers

were actually part of our team. We maintain a very distinct separation. Okay. And so all those guys, all of our ops guys will never get to see like some of these girls that they help rescue ever again and but they make the sacrifice of exchanging with these traffickers talking with them going through that trauma of i mean that's a trauma i can't even fathom but pretending to be a pedophile and in like talking about a child as if they're a computer part or something.

But that's usually how the process works. The cops come in, arrest us if we're involved or if we're not there. The traffickers think that we're on our way, but we never show up. And then the cops show up and arrest everybody. That's a whole other – I didn't even think about that. The person doing the rescuing has to put on a really good cover that they are going to have sex with this 13 year old girl. Like that, that alone is dark.

Makes me think of like Heath Ledger in the dark night, you know, like how he, like, is that, is that an issue? Is that something that these, what kind of person does it take to

do something like that a very necessary thing but gosh that that a lot of people would not be able to do that i don't think no i definitely i definitely couldn't especially like working with as many survivors as i have like i know that the kind of trauma these people place on the survivors and i'd probably kick their ass, like honestly. Like I think I would totally break cover. But it takes a very disciplined person. I'm one of the operators that I really enjoy working with. He's very disciplined.

He's very – he compartmentalizes very well. He's a current law enforcement officer as well um here in in in utah um but our team believes a lot in in mental health for um not only for our survivors but also for us as well and and so we have um some trauma therapists that are just really good um trauma therapists that invest a lot in like the mental health of our operators and our aftercare team and our team we've created we've cultivated just a spirit among our team to where um you know that darkness like you try to keep like that darkness maybe like in your heart but less in your head and it comes to a point i think for all of us where we just need the time to like step back where it's like i just I just need a couple of weeks.

I need a week or something to go spend time in the mountains or spend time with my family, do something to just kind of clear my head. Our team has created a culture to where that's an acceptable thing to say, where you can say, hey, I'm not okay. I need to step back. That's good. And how about you? and how about you i mean you've seen firsthand so many dark stories and and really the epitome of human evil how do you deal with that is that is that hard uh yeah yeah it's it's uh it's tough um i have a great therapist uh he he's super good about helping me kind of understand the things that i can't control which

is i think it's human we try to insert control and things to kind of give ourselves power and so we self-blame like all the time like that's my fault my fault my fault and it's usually when things sometimes things just go bad but when you say it's your fault like it just it helps you feel better about the situation because it makes you feel like you're in some kind of control um i have my self-care my mechanisms i love to go to like rock concerts i was actually just i was in boise last weekend at a rock concert and it was just a such a good release of energy um what kind of like heavy metal i would i would i feel like i'd be a huge like metallica fan if if i was in your line of work i do love metallica yeah it was bare toots. It was like semi-screamo, which I love semi-screamo.

But I work out a lot. That's a good avenue for me of exercise. I love to spend time in nature. But then just my relationship with God, that's the thing that I think is probably the most complex in my life is kind of just my thoughts on him. complex in my life is kind of just my thoughts on him because either I feel like I'm super close to him or I feel like he's just like totally kind of indifferent to the situation um like I'll tell you a story that was uh happened last year we worked this girl she was trafficked by the ms13 gang and she um like this this girl like just survived so much abuse when she was six years old her mother um in a drunken like rage threw her into a fire and so this girl has third degree burns like all over her face just she wears her abuse like a like like a mask like it just when you see her you know something bad has happened to her. Um, and she, um, she spent some time in an aftercare home, but a judge sent her back

home. Like I said, the mother never had any consequences. So, um, the judge sent her back home, said the mom had time to think about what she's done. And when the girl went back home, when she was around 12, the mother started to traffic her chapter for about two and a half years. She was rescued from that. She was placed back in an aftercare home.

She left again. She was released again. And at this point, we had met her in the aftercare homes. We started to work with her, just got to know her in the aftercare home. And she ended up on the street being trafficked by the MS-13 gang. And so we had been looking for her like all over the capital city of Guatemala. And it's like finding like a needle in a haystack. At this point in 2020, like 2020 I think was rough for a lot of us. But we know this is 2019.

2019, like my relationship with God kind of goes back and forth. I'm either super close to him or I feel super distant and then this time I was on my way to kind of get close again and so we just said a prayer we were just like hey God if you want us to find this girl tonight like let's find let's let's try to find please please put her in our path and so we were out and I like three three minutes after I said this, I was crazy. I looked to my left and I see this girl in a hoodie and she's walking in the streets. I'm like, I think that might be her.

And my partner who was with me was like, why do you think so? I was like, she just looks kind of like the same height. I think I've seen that sweater before. But then the girl goes up and like scratches her head and I see the burn marks that she has on her hand. So I'm like, oh, I know that's her. I know that's her. know that's her we'll call her Julie um so we go we find her like she just she bear hugs us both and she's like hey I gotta get out of here I'm like I'm not safe um and so we we help her

get out we find a safe place for her in a in another aftercare home in Guatemala City and we're at the home and she's, she's pretty, you know, she's, she's distraught. Um, we, we were running from her trafficker obviously, but there was something else that was kind of on her mind. Um, and so she hands me, um, this, um, this pregnancy test, this, this, this piece of paper I read said positive. And I was like, oh my gosh, like she's pregnant and she's been on the streets I'm assuming she was consuming and and that um that this baby was in dire need for some help and so um we take her to the hospital um it's a little baby boy

and um and they're like we gotta we gotta get this we gotta get this baby out now she's like five or six months pregnant but because of what she was consuming and just the trauma that her body had experienced, like the baby didn't have enough liquid in whatever it was. And they needed to get it out because it was dehydrated. And so the baby was born. And it was a healthy little baby boy. And she actually named it Tyler, which was super sweet on her part. I was super touched, but, um, so little baby, little baby Tyler, uh, was born and he, uh,

he goes into, um, an aftercare home specifically for babies, like, so he can grow and he can develop. Um, and so that, that, that, that's what happened with that portion of the story. After that, unfortunately, this girl, um, she ended up going back, um, to trafficking. Um, her addiction was pretty strong. Um, and she, uh, kept going back to her trafficker who was also her drug dealer and ended up, um, uh, back on the streets. And so that, that was really hard for us.

That made me really just kind of upset at God. I was like, why would you allow this? We worked so hard to rescue her. Now she's right back where she started. And it got worse because this baby, we're just kind of at the mercy of judges in some cases. And some judges will send kids to certain parts of the country in a government shelter and then we'll never hear from him again and we wanted to keep you know keep in touch with this baby so he um they sent him to a they the judge takes him away and sends him back to um just kind of into the abyss of the government system where we didn't think we'd ever hear

from him again little ty Tyler was his name. Shortly after that, like 2020 started, and obviously 2020 brought its own challenges. They weren't able to travel as often and provide even kind of any talking with the government to try to find out where this kid went. But in 2020, I met this Christian woman. She came to me with a case where she was like, there's this American missionary, unfortunately,

he's an evangelical missionary who is using his position as a missionary to abuse young girls. And so me and her worked that case together for the majority of the pandemic, trying to get this kind of get enough evidence on this American missionary who's in his mid-60s to get him put in jail for what he was doing to this to these young girls and and then end up happening and me and this girl end up um uh becoming pretty good friends along the way um she was married and had a kid of her own and they were living full-time in Guatemala and um around like December 15th or something um I get a call from her and she's just sobbing. And I pick up the phone. I'm like, hey, are you good?

Like what's going on? And she's like, well, like as you know, like we've been trying to adopt for the last three years in Guatemala. And the system has been so hard. It's been such a long process. And she was like but they they just assigned us our two kids that were allowed to adopt because they're not allowed to pick their kids that they adopt because of some legal rule if you can't like pick kids like pick this kid or pick this kid they just get assigned at random and so she called me she's crying she's like I just

gotta sign my two kids I'm gonna adopt and I was like that's great like congratulations like why are you crying they should be like so happy and like, well, like one of the kids like, how's your name? And I was like, what? And she was like, yeah, his name is Tyler, whatever, whatever, whatever his full name was. But he was like, and they told me the story of like, why he's named Tyler and whose kid he is. And he's like, and he's going to be my son. And the government assigned him to me. I'm going to adopt him. He's going to be my son. And she was like, I can't believe this is happening.

And I couldn't either because at the time, my relationship with God was very kind of on the rocks again. I hate to say it, but I think it's totally normal of just the ups and downs of the relationship with God. But 2020 just happened. This girl was just lost in the darkness of addiction and trafficking. But like God is so faithful of every time I hit my low, like he comes and finds me.

Like his grace, like the book that you wrote, Scandalous Grace, of like that grace that's like pursuing, like actively pursuing, hunting, almost like it's a wolf. It was so applicable in this moment because once again, like God showed me like his mercy, his miracle, his power, his grace. And gently let me know. He was like, no matter how much you love these kids, don't you ever forget that I love them more than you do. And that I'm always right by your side to help you rescue them, help you heal them, help you do like help you do your work.

And it was never more evident to me than when my friend, the kid that had my name. Golly. The emotional weight of just, I mean, just the story you share, the ups and downs and ups and downs, like your adrenal glands got to be shot. I mean, I, you know, cause I, the stories of redemption and you told me other stories when we were hanging out a couple weeks ago. But even the emotional high of some of those met with the emotional lows of the ones that don't find redemption. And just seeing firsthand the darkness of humanity, that's tough. I'm glad you have a therapist,

seriously. And it really takes a certain kind of person. Um, what can P so, I mean, anybody listening, I mean, you could be, whether they're Christians or not religious or atheist, whatever, like what, um, what, what can people do? What can the, somebody who isn't going to do what you do like full time, how can people do something? And is there, is there need for more help? Are there an overwhelming number of people who are involved in the kind of work you're doing that you might say, we got this? Or is it like, oh my gosh, no, we have so many needs, whether it's personnel or financial or whatever. How can people help if their hearts are being kind of tugged during this podcast? help if they have a heart if their hearts are being kind of tugged during this podcast well um they could totally like buy your book the scandalous grace to know how much god loves them

shameless shameless plug for your book um that would be that'd be an awesome thing but um what they could do obviously we always have financial needs and so um so ourrescue rescue.org is, is the, is the donation site for our Libertas freedom is for, is for, uh, Libertas. Both of those organizations obviously need money. Like we need money. It costs money to, to rescue. It costs money to heal. It costs, it costs money to make this work go. But like, there's, there's things that people can do. Um, just like everyday people, everyday steps that people can take. The first thing I would say is look into foster care, honestly. That's where a lot of the survivors that get rescued here in the United States end up is foster care. And there's

such a need for good foster care parents and good people that just like house these survivors and kind of show them like what a real family looks like like what what grace looks like what forgiveness looks like what are a healthy relationship between mom and daughter father and daughter father and son looks like um so if they have that heart and they want to serve in a very tangible way, foster care is a great way to start. I'm going to throw this plug out there too. What people can do to help curb trafficking is stop watching porn. That was a question I was going to ask. Is the relationship between the explosion of porn use and trafficking, are those directly linked?

explosion of porn use and trafficking are those directly linked is that yeah i think like i mean it takes concrete steps for like men to go out and purchase a child for sex or purchase a woman for sex and porn is is just like the grease that like that makes it happen where the slide happens because you just you get exposed to such violent forms of pornography dehumanizes women dehumanizes men to the point where you're like i want to buy a girl working the street i want to buy a child off the dark web or whatever but then like i've never very few cases maybe maybe five percent of my cases did not have some kind of camera involved. All the other cases of the survivors I work with had some kind of filming of their abuse happen. And so that ends up somewhere. And when you consume that,

you push up the market for that to where these girls are being trafficked, also get filmed and their abuse gets uploaded um all over the internet like you never know like the real story behind like a like a pornographic video that you're watching um and if if people were to stop watching porn um i think that less men would purchase women and children for sex which is this is the only reason trafficking exists is because there's a demand for it if they would stop doing that trafficking would go away and the the demand for commercial sex would go way down um but then like just training too like i think another thing is there's tons of free trainings our has one if you go to our rescue.org slash training or something it helps walk you through

like the signs of where um like just your everyday person can can see something and identify something and report that due to correct authorities and i probably think that's the third way that people could help with um is having that knowledge to when they see something knowing that something's not right because they have the knowledge base and be able to call somebody report something so that the law enforcement can intervene on the survivor's behalf. Because the more people stay silent, the more people that don't know or don't notice something off, the longer the exploitation is going to go on. Because these victims interact with the community on a day-to-day basis.

It's just that the community may not be aware enough of the signs to know that something wrong is happening. Well, Tyler, you've given us enough to meditate on and pray about. Thank you for the work you do. Seriously, it's incredible. It takes a certain kind of person. And man, I'll put all the info in the show notes that you gave. So if you guys are interested, go check out the show notes. And yeah, look forward to seeing you again

sometime soon yeah awesome thanks preston take care you