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Interview with Becky Rasmussen, founder of Call to Freedom.
👉🏻Today’s show is brought to you by Rise.TV, where it’s our mission to awaken, uplift, and unite America—one show at a time. Get your free trial of Rise.TV! https://bit.ly/3f4JyPD
To lea...
Interview with Becky Rasmussen, founder of Call to Freedom.
👉🏻Today’s show is brought to you by Rise.TV, where it’s our mission to awaken, uplift, and unite America—one show at a time. Get your free trial of Rise.TV! https://bit.ly/3f4JyPD
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Seth Holehouse is a TV personality, YouTuber, podcaster, and patriot who became a household name in 2020 after his video exposing election fraud was tweeted, shared, uploaded, and pinned by President Donald Trump — reaching hundreds of millions worldwide.
Titled The Plot to Steal America, the video was created with a mission to warn Americans about the communist threat to our nation—a mission that’s been at the forefront of Seth’s life for nearly two decades.
After 10 years behind the scenes at The Epoch Times, launching his own show was the logical next step. Since its debut, Seth’s show “Man in America” has garnered 1M+ viewers on a monthly basis as his commitment to bring hope to patriots and to fight communism and socialism grows daily. His guests have included Peter Navarro, Kash Patel, Senator Wendy Rogers, General Michael Flynn, and General Robert Spalding.
He is also a regular speaker at the “ReAwaken America Tour” alongside Eric Trump, Mike Lindell, Gen. Flynn.
Alright. So folks, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Man in America. I'm your host, Seth Holehouse. So Trump campaign in 2016 with a promise that gained the support of millions of Americans, build the wall. From then on, the media was flooded with images of children with dirty clothes and sad faces.
Speaker 1:And we were told they've been separated from their families, and it was all Trump's fault. Fast forward to now, and the migrant crisis is worse than ever. And what do we hear from the left wing media and democrats now? Nothing. But the truth is that this issue desperately needs our attention because our border has become a massive pipeline for the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, human trafficking.
Speaker 1:And joining me today to discuss this is Becky Rasmussen, founder of Call to Freedom, an organization that helps trafficking victims to escape and heal. So folks, we're going to jump right into the interview today. I apologize for the technical difficulties. So can you hear me okay?
Speaker 2:I can hear you great, Seth. Thank you. What would it be without any technical difficulties? Right?
Speaker 1:You know, we we'd probably be mainstream media, and we wouldn't be talking about this. Right.
Speaker 2:Right. No worries. No worries. And thank you for having us on the show.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely. So, Becky, you have an organization called Call to Freedom. And maybe you can start just give us a little bit of your background. What led you into this fight against human trafficking?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a faith lady. And so I actually was with an organization and my first encounter with a real trafficking individual was in Sturgis, South Dakota. And we have what's called the Sturgis Rally, which brings about 400 to 500,000 individuals on their bikes for about a two week span. And it's a tourism. It's a it's a fun activity.
Speaker 2:It's a great event. However, any time you have large groups of people at events, you have the potential for illegal activity. And I had met a girl, a young girl, when I was doing outreach in Sturgis, and her name was Marissa. Through a conversation with her, I did identify through that she was a missing girl and that she actually had been found in this as actually in August of twenty fifteen. She was found in October of twenty fourteen and went missing again in May of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2:And I began to find out with my encounter with Marissa as Sturgis Rally that many programs are not in place for victims of human trafficking and that if we don't provide services to those that are victimized by either sex or labor trafficking, they're very vulnerable to be pulled back into trafficking situations. And that time in 2015, there was only two ninety eight programs that were working with trafficking survivors. There's a stat that over every thirty seconds somebody is pulled into human trafficking. Now, if you compare those numbers, there weren't enough services to provide safety for victims of human trafficking. And I couldn't leave that and decided and was prompted to begin an organization called Call to Freedom.
Speaker 2:We became a five zero one c three in 2016. And fast forward to today, we have a staff of nearly 30 where we started with all the volunteers and we've served almost a thousand survivors through the doors of Call to Freedom just here in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. And so we know that it's happening. It's one of the least talked about social injustices, illegal activity. And the more we don't talk about it, the more victims don't come out.
Speaker 2:There is a stat that ninety seven percent of victims never leave trafficking situations. And that's simply for the fact if they don't believe that they can be safe leaving trafficking, they won't come out. And the life expectancy of a trafficking victim is seven years. And so if we don't, a community, do something about this growing epidemic, and it's been with us for years, it's only been put into statute, federal statute in February. And we've really been talking about it the last twenty years.
Speaker 2:But modern day slavery has been happening for years and years. We've just now put a name to it called human trafficking.
Speaker 1:And I read on your website, and this was astounding to me that that you'd said that there are currently more slaves on earth than any period in history. Is that is that correct? Like, that just seems it's just insane to think about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, over 40,000,000 people. And I would also challenge those stats because I don't believe that we've been educated enough, nor do we give this topic the attention it deserves. And that stat that ninety seven percent of victims never leave trafficking situation tells me that we have a lot of work to do and we have high numbers right now. I believe those numbers are even higher. We just don't have to recognize the problem, nor have we gotten educated in how to address it.
Speaker 2:And so there's a lot of work to be done from all fronts, from service providers to law enforcement, to local entities, to federal entities that we really need to break the silence. And that's how this is facilitated. This is business. You can sell a human being over and over again and make a lot of money. Whereas a drug a drug transition, you actually have a possession and a distribution charge For a human, you actually have to identify that that human has force, fraud, or coercion or is in those circumstances, and they have to comply and be a witness in cases.
Speaker 2:And those are very difficult cases, a, to identify and b, to actually prosecute. And so we have a lot of work to do. We need to really talk about and challenge our systems to put those resources into place to really actively investigate these and and search out and do more sting operations so that we're finding these victims within our systems and our communities.
Speaker 1:And in your experience in dealing with victims and obviously researching and knowing a lot about this, what role does the Southern Border play in humans? Because I know that for drugs, it's huge. You know, it's one of the main, you know, gateways of, you know, the you know, all the various ways that they're bringing across, whether it's, you know, methamphetamines, or heroin, or fentanyl these days. But what role does the Southern Border play in the trade of humans?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, those intersectionalities between drugs, guns, trafficking, and humans, they go hand in hand. If somebody is dealing drugs and some of these organizations are dealing drugs as organized crime, you're typically also seeing that they're facilitating the sale of human beings. And so when we're not monitoring our borders and there's two things that we're seeing, we're seeing a lot more illegal activity come across our borders because we're not monitoring the way that we should. But you also have a lot of people that are in countries that are in unsafe situations and they seek refuge in The United States for safety. And perpetrators also see that those traffickers see that while this is a business opportunity, you know, this person wants to come to safety to The United States.
Speaker 2:So let me offer that to them. Let me tell them that I can, if they pay me $60,000 I'll be able to pull them across the borders and provide them with a new life. And those are false promises where that creates the sex trafficking and the labor trafficking. And so when we have that massive amount of people that we can't monitor coming across the border, I was looking at numbers, almost 230,000 people alone in September, the largest record of a number of people, immigrants coming across the border. We can't monitor that.
Speaker 2:And organized crime knows that. And they see that as an opportunity to a victimize vulnerable individuals that are across the border, but also to infiltrate into our communities. I mean, we in South Dakota, we have seen this increase of homicides, illegal activity, drugs. And I would say that that is coming from our southern border for one and maybe other opportunities as well. But when we don't monitor, that's what a legal activity loves.
Speaker 2:And that's how it really successful is because when it's hidden, we're not looking for it nor are we equipped to combat it.
Speaker 1:And so for all the people that are have somehow begin kind of being taken in and put into the human trafficking trade, How how is it that most of them fall into this? I mean, is it that they're just kidnapped one day? Or what are some of the scenarios of of how, you know, a, say, a 15 year old girl that's going to the mall in America ends up basically being a sex slave that's being prostituted out?
Speaker 2:They have a lot of manipulation. If they can get a victim to think that that was their choice to be involved with the human trafficking situation, then it's really hard to prosecute these cases and it's easy to control your victims. So we see what we call grooming and recruiting. I like to refer to it as manipulation because these traffickers will build relationships. So, for example, they'll they'll meet him at the mall.
Speaker 2:They'll notice we had one scenario where a young girl was crying at the mall because her boyfriend just broke up with her and she became a target. And this individual walked up to her, befriended her, said all the right things, made her feel important. And over three months, he had actually got her into isolated control environment and started pimping her out. And so these traffickers, this is business. And I think this is one of the things that people don't realize is that these people, there's a demand, which are the individuals who are buying individuals.
Speaker 2:And then you have a trafficker who's the business person who facilitates this business. So the demand really sets the tone for what that trafficker is going to recruit or target as a victim. And so if we don't address the whole picture, we're going to have more victims than we ever have. So if a demand, a person wants to buy a blue eyed blonde haired girl who's not addicted to drugs and has a Midwestern girl, guess what that trafficker is going to recruit? I can make a lot of money off a blue eyed blonde haired thirteen year old that this demand side is requesting.
Speaker 2:And so there is no whatever the demand wants is what the trafficker recruits in and brings into their circle. And so there is a lot of manipulation. Sometimes it's very relational. We've had parents who have trafficked their own children, and I think that is the hardest. And we call that familial trafficking in South Dakota.
Speaker 2:That's very prominent because we have three of the poorest counties in The United States located in South Dakota with our Indian reservations. And so that creates a dynamic of cultural poverty and I'm selling individuals to meet my basic needs. But 52% of who we serve native, the other are Caucasian and different backgrounds. And so it doesn't have one way that it's facilitated, nor does it have another way that a victim is. It doesn't have a stereotype.
Speaker 2:We've also worked where it's gang related, which usually has the cartels behind the gangs. The gangs are usually facilitating a lot of this trafficking, but it's more organized than we all know. And I've learned a lot from survivors over the course of the last seven years. And so when we look at this organized crime, it really is facilitated a lot of different ways. But what I would say to individuals who are listening that are parents, social media, 120% increase of recruiting online when COVID hit.
Speaker 2:So COVID changed some of the dynamics because they couldn't get face to face with their victims. They couldn't go to the mall. They couldn't make that direct contact. So what do they do? They say, I can go online and I can make connection with your kids through Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, wherever they can profile you and look at your kids and maybe your child says, I'm so sad, my parents just got divorced.
Speaker 2:Boom, target. You now have a vulnerable kid who's now just giving you this in to begin a conversation and to facilitate a relationship. And we've had individuals who have dated their trafficker for up to six months before they were pulled into human trafficking. And so also we've had many two handfuls of survivors that we've served that had been married to their trafficker. And so they will build relationships.
Speaker 2:They will find any avenue to connect with these individuals. And the latest we've seen are young boys. I don't want to exclude that this is just women and young girls. We're talking about boys and in this organized front, what they will do is they'll find out what we're not talking about, what we haven't educated on and what we're really not looking at. And that's boys.
Speaker 2:And boys are really difficult. There aren't a lot of services for young boys in the anti human trafficking front. And also, boys are kind of a different victimization where they don't break that shame factor. They don't talk as much. They don't believe that their service is out for them.
Speaker 2:And so they actually are more susceptible because of some of those gaps in services and those vulnerabilities. And so if a demand wants a young boy, they're going to find a young boy. And if demand wants a young girl, they're going to find a young girl. And it's usually in identifying that individual's vulnerabilities and capitalizing on it.
Speaker 1:So you speak about the demand. So where is this demand coming from? Because I think that when, you know, we think about the movies, it's like, oh, the demand is this this really fat, ugly guy, like, living in a trailer, you know, that that's playing video games all day or something. But, I mean, is the demand just a particular, you know, class, or is the demand coming from, you know, white collar, you know, like successful people, your local sheriff? Or I mean, where's the where's the demand coming from in America?
Speaker 2:Yeah. All of the above. We've had individuals who have been in our political world. We've had individuals who have on the demand side, they've been law enforcement. Usually when the survivors come in, we start working with them and they're on their way to being a survivor.
Speaker 2:They begin to tell us that you would be surprised who's buying individuals. And I think one thing that we need to talk about and bring the elephant in the room is that pornography piece, is that a lot of these individual individuals that are stuck in what we call the demand who are purchasers have been pulled in by pornography. It's very accessible to individuals and it's highly addictive. Sex addiction is probably one of the least talked about, but most common because it's so accessible today. And let me tell you, those online pornography sites know how to target individuals to get them addicted to this particular life because there's a lot of money to be made off of it.
Speaker 2:So there is not one demographic that really fits that demand side. We've seen what it does is that organized crime then recruits based on those demand circles. So when you have political individuals who want girls that have no addiction, who are a certain age and it's usually young or they want boys, they're going to cater to that particular demand circle. And so when we see gangs, it's more that vulnerable where it's homeless, maybe girls that have gone through addiction and the person doesn't care what the victim looks like as long as it fits their need to fill that sex addiction. And so it is all over the map and you would be surprised.
Speaker 2:I think the big elephant in the room is we need to talk about the sex addiction, the pornography that drives this industry. And we don't talk about that and it's taboo. And we need to provide resources and services to those that struggle with sex addictions because it's a real thing. It's just like drugs. It's highly addictive and very difficult to work through that recovery process.
Speaker 1:With a lot of the social trends that we see in America, especially, like, with the sexualization of children, like, you've, you know, mentioned that the addict nature of pornography. It's like, well, you know, now you've got children. You come out with social media. And, you know, we know that, for instance, looking at TikTok that the which is really an instrument of the CCP, that they have different algorithms for kids in America than kids in China. And that the kids in America are being intentionally shown more pornography, self harm, you know, drug use, etcetera.
Speaker 1:So with the social trends, it sounds to me that what happens on the supply demand side of human trafficking is really probably affected by the societal trends. And so if you're saying that, well, there's now being more of a a demand for young boys. It's like, well, does that have anything to do with this push for transgenderism or drag queen story hour? Or, you know, the grooming. You know, we have now these young boys like Desmond.
Speaker 1:I think the young boy's name is Desmond, who's a cross dresser, and he's been, you know, he's been on mainstream media. They're they're kind of saying, oh, this is so brave of you. So do you think that a lot of these trends are actually starting to kind of fuel into and lead to increases in in demand and human trafficking?
Speaker 2:I think it it lends into individuals and how they view humanity and how they view an individual. One of the hardest things, I think, for me in the trafficking realm and working with survivors is there's no value for life. We have devalued people. We have devalued gender. We devalued certain things in our society that we've created some of this dynamic.
Speaker 2:When we were young, couldn't say swear words on TV, you couldn't show body parts and be exposed. And that's not the trend. And today is a different world. You see young girls who now are now subjecting their bodies and they're not valued by who they are. They're valued by the way that they look.
Speaker 2:And so that creates this whole dynamic of individuals not being have self worth. And you're so much more worth than what you look like. It's what's valued inside of you. To work with a survivor and to restore that honor to them that they've been devalued, they've been caged satanic rituals. Mean, we've seen so many horrific things and the value that you think that this is okay to do to a human being.
Speaker 2:It is not. This is somebody's daughter. This is somebody's son. This is somebody's grandchild. This is individuals who deserve to be valued.
Speaker 2:And our society has devalued and objectified individuals, especially women. And then we talk about the gender with boys. I just think we've become so distorted in how we view things that we've almost said it's okay to have these values and to do this and to really even talk to some of the demand afterwards. And even some of the traffickers and say, why did you do this? And traffic girls say, it's all about the money.
Speaker 2:I can sell this person because I just view this as a business and it's all about the money. Or a person that is buying, say, well, she wanted it, she showed up. No, I'm sorry. When you're three or four years old and you ask your three or four year old, what do you want to be when you grow up one day? They're not talking about being in pornography, prostitution.
Speaker 2:They want to be doctors, lawyers. They want to be something that makes a difference. And so somewhere along the way, we have this person has been hurt, we've devalued them, or they think that this is their value and that's not okay. And we need to really look at our communities and our society say, how do we how do we change this for good and not continue to go in this negative direction?
Speaker 1:I absolutely agree. You know, my daughter's two years old. And so thank you. She's not telling me what she wants to be yet right now. She just wants to you know, play with the dog and, you know, play with the chickens, which is great.
Speaker 1:And and I'll I will be the most watchful hawk of a father over her. And, you know, maybe by the time she's 25, I'll let her have a smartphone. Maybe if she she plays her cards right. But, you know, this is maybe a little more of a difficult question to ask, but what would you say is one of the most difficult cases that you've dealt with? Because I think that something that, like, even hearing you talking about, like the satanic ritual abuse and what you've witnessed, like I'm welling up with tears, you know, just from that.
Speaker 1:And I think that this is people need to have a visceral response to this information. They need to understand what this means. Because as a parent, I look at this, it's it's unfathomable to me to think about even if my daughter bangs her head on something because she's just playing and and, you know, what even that's more difficult. But to imagine what you're talking about is unfathomable. So, you know, in your experience, what's one of the more difficult cases that you had to deal with and walk us through that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think it's when individuals are trafficked by their own mother or father. There was a case when we first started Call to Freedom and we work a lot with domestic violence shelters and they're like kind of the first place that somebody is in crisis or in an abusive relationship they run to. So we do a lot of trainings with domestic violence shelters to ask the right questions. It may look like a domestic violence situation and survivors will tell you that every domestic violence situation always Human trafficking always has domestic violence, but not every domestic violence case has human trafficking.
Speaker 2:And so in this particular case, we had actually trained the domestic violence shelters to ask more questions to better identify what was going on with some of these individuals and could it be human trafficking? And they began to ask this young girl, she was in her mid twenties, a few questions and she answered yes to all of those questions. And so they said, Have you ever heard of Call to Freedom? And she goes, I have no idea what you're talking about. And she showed up on my door and on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 2:I went in, met with her. She had been using drugs. She had been in a horrible car accident, very angry, lots of layers there. And I had asked for her name and she lied to me because why would she trust me? And come to find out that she was actually a survivor of human trafficking and she didn't know it as she was going on being 26 years old.
Speaker 2:And here's why. At age three, her dad introduced her to pornography. From three to four, he introduced her to drugs and from four to seven, he sexually abused her and he was grooming to sell her to his friends to make money off of this young girl. Now this young girl didn't know any other life. This is the person she trusts the most, the person who's supposed to raise her, who's supposed to nurture her, take care of her.
Speaker 2:But he victimized her all the way to 18 And she had to have reconstructive surgery because of the victimization of being sold for year after year. She was in and out of systems. So she was one of what we call a juvie kid, Department of Corrections. She was those kid that looked like a troubled kid, but nobody ever identified that she was being trafficked by her own dad. And she would actually go to service providers, Child Protection Services, JDC, and the protocol to them was to send them back to the parent.
Speaker 2:So she would disclose, my dad is abusing me, not understanding the dynamic of human trafficking. And then they would say, well, let's call your father. And so our systems have failed a lot of the kids that are in familial trafficking. And so she left her dad and went on to be a prostitute and was addicted to drugs because she was introduced by her dad. And at 26, she learned that she was a survivor of human trafficking.
Speaker 2:And we began to journey life with her. Now there's a lot of layers there. When you talk about addictions, you talk about sexual abuse, you talk about complex trauma, you talk about value and self worth. And this young girl had to go on a very difficult journey of healing. But there was something for her to realize that this wasn't something that I asked for, that force fraud and coercion was used, that I was a survivor of human trafficking and something switched in this young girl when she was identified later in life.
Speaker 2:And fast forward to today, addiction. She's no longer in that life. She owns her own home. She's actually traveled with me through the services of Call to Freedom to share at a legislative level in South Dakota to change laws, to better identify kids that are victimized within homes, within our systems so that we can better protect those young kids that are in these circumstances that they don't self identify. And I think that's one of the things I want to get across is why do victims come out of this?
Speaker 2:A lot of them, this coercion, this manipulation is so well done that they don't even realize that they're a victim of human trafficking. And so we're very passionate as an organization called the Freedom to train first responders and those that are coming in context. Eighty eight percent of individuals that are in trafficking situations go through our health care communities. They're going through our emergency departments. And so for this young girl, her life might have been the same until that conversation at that domestic violence shelter that had been trained, that now she knew she was a survivor of human trafficking and she could come and be able to find healing and and being able to put an identity to what had happened to her versus thinking it's something that she asked for and that was something that she deserved all of her life.
Speaker 1:And what are some of the questions that were asked? Because here's a girl that it's just, it's, it's hard to believe that someone that lived like that could have gone through so many hands of people that should have been looking out for her and to send her right back into the devil's den. So what are some of the questions that that she was asked that really assigned the red flag to her case that she was being trafficked?
Speaker 2:When you were doing these sex acts, was there an exchange to your dad? When you were receiving these drugs, was there exchange of money? I think one of the things that we need to realize in these scenarios is it depends on the emergency and depends on who's providing the services. We kind of tailor those questions. But if there was an exchange of something for an act of sex or labor, then we're talking about human trafficking.
Speaker 2:And so that can come in the form of a living environment, can come in the form of actual money, that can come in the form of drugs. And she didn't see that. She saw that as I'm survival sex. I'm providing for my family because my dad is getting revenue because I'm selling myself and I'd be able to keep our house. And so those are key factors for people to find out.
Speaker 2:Let's ask a little deeper about why was that money exchanged? Could you freely leave that situation? And she couldn't because those systems kept putting her back into the home with her dad. There was one time where she disclosed to a juvenile detention center and they said, I have to report back to your dad and he beat her up in the parking lot. And so why would a victim come to a service provider when they've been failed by our systems?
Speaker 2:So she didn't the reason why she didn't give me her name for two weeks, why would I be any different? Why would I have actually supported her? In her mind, every other system had failed her. And that's the reality of a survivor of trafficking, is that a lot of times systems have failed them. Navigating our systems within our mental health addiction, it's really difficult to and it's overwhelming for a victim to be able to get all those resources on their own, to answer all of those questions and navigate all of those systems.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the reasons why they don't leave as traffickers know I can control you in that environment. And so here at Call to Freedom, what we did is we listened to survivors. Our program was developed by survivors of human trafficking. And every time that they would come out and say, I can't go apply for a job because I've been sold for the last five years, what do I put on my resume? I want to go lie.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, you're not going to lie. We're going to help you do this. And so they don't like to retell their stories. And so if we can take all of these services and really provide services under one umbrella for survivors of human trafficking by collaboration, of course, within our community. But we help navigate that so they don't have to continue to tell their story.
Speaker 2:That's how we're going to get survivors out of these trafficking situations. Two things have to be met safety. They don't think the trafficking victims don't think you can keep them safe, they will not come to you. If basic needs are met, a lot of times traffickers control their victims by their living arrangements, hold their identification. They dictate what they eat.
Speaker 2:They may even be controlling their children. If you can't provide those basic needs to individuals, their trafficker is doing that. And so they are not going to leave those situations for those reasons as well. And so again, asking those questions, getting trained, I just wanna tell people get to a training if you're a first responder because you could essentially save a life out of human trafficking or other and other social injustices as well.
Speaker 1:This isn't the first time that I've heard because I've watched a lot of interviews and interviewed people myself that have been through trafficking. And this is not the first time that I've heard that these government institutions like the child protection services or the the orphanage systems or the foster care systems are actually very complicit in the trafficking. And so it's astounding to me that the very organizations I think they should be able to go to to help them are the ones that are actually, you know, out the back door trafficking the children they should be saving. And so if you combine that at a more of a government level with the fact that we're also seeing just this massive push against securing the Southern border, you know, which, you know, these people, they have to know what's happening, you know, on the Southern border. They have to, you know, to at least some degree, look, these are the politicians that should be the ones that are on the forefront of understanding how something like the border affects crime rates, etcetera.
Speaker 1:But also, you've mentioned that, you know, some of the people that are purchasing, you know, these traffic victims for sex or whatever are politicians. So is the you know, and again, I'm not saying that everyone in these organizations or these are bad, because I believe there's a lot of good people. And, you know, even within, say, CPS, there's probably really good people that may not even know what that organization is doing and that that hidden part of it. But do you think that there is some aspect of our just our entire system that's corrupted with this, especially when you look at the stories about Jeffrey Epstein, the blackmail, the grooming and the use of this. I mean, how pervasive do you think that it is?
Speaker 1:You know, for us, I think it's more of the system breakdown. You know, there is corruption.
Speaker 2:This is a lot of money. There's a lot of money to be made. Lot of times, keep quiet, don't say anything. More of the survivors know some of those inner workings And if they decide to share, sometimes they don't because they're too afraid and sometimes they think about our safety. And so they're not disclosing to us some of that, but they will talk about, you know, it was bought by a law enforcement person and this particular person.
Speaker 2:I think really the bottom line comes down to is we have a lot of gaps in our systems. Our systems are not really designed to really support victims, especially if human trafficking the way that they need to be supported. And what I mean by that is if our state legislation or our state statute doesn't have human trafficking and the sexual abuse law, then they're not going to be addressing human trafficking. If we don't have mandatory training for law enforcement and they're not trained in how to identify it, they don't identify trafficking situations. And so I think the real for us in the service provider world, because we need all of these people, they're the ones that are coming into first contact with the victims, is really more of that education front.
Speaker 2:They're not asking the questions, they're not identifying. And sometimes our federal statute and our state statute don't allow us to intervene on these cases. And then people are okay with that. And I don't think that's okay. This is somebody's child.
Speaker 2:This is somebody's grandchild. And so where do we value life in our systems of child protection service, foster care? And there's just so many gaps that we don't talk about because it's easier to brush in the rug because they're so busy with so many other things. They don't want to add and potentially add something else to their plate. I don't know.
Speaker 2:It's just something that I have been frustrated with personally and working in systems. And when you live life with survivors and you hold their hand and you wipe their tears and you don't have answers to why we as a society and as systems have failed you, but we'll work on changing that. But also raising them up to have a voice to make that change. And so I think there's a lot there. I think there's a lot of that education piece and that easy just to wipe under the rug because human trafficking isn't something that people want to say is happening in their community nor in their state because it'll put a red flag on that as well.
Speaker 2:And so but yes, when you talk about Epstein's, Mary, who will have on next week, knows that area very well and knows the organized front very well. And there's a lot of money. And when there's money, people are easily influenced and usually in a negative way. And unfortunately, I think that summarizes human trafficking. It's all about the money.
Speaker 2:It's not about the people. It's not about valuing life. It's about how much money can I make and how much power can I get? And that, I think, lies the problems within our systems.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I think, I mean, it's probably a much larger discussion, but I think that a lot of it just comes down to the morality of the human heart. And, you know, the fact that there's no longer prayer in school or any of these things. It's if you look historically, you know, the way that the human life is valued in our society isn't that much different from a lot of ancient, you know, or or different cultures that, you know, say it's the Mayans that were sacrificing humans to their gods before their culture fell or the the rampant pedophilia in ancient Rome or Greece, you know, or the, you know, even from a biblical perspective, this the sacrificing of of children to ball into, you know, the historical things. I mean, is it's to me, it feels like it just is a sign of where the human heart is at.
Speaker 1:And that's like, I agree with you, there's the gaps in the systems. But I also think that there's some very fundamental gaps in the human heart that have really emerged, especially over the last hundred years. And and I talk a lot about cultural Marxism and, you know, what why our churches are what they are now and the infiltration from the communists and all that, because I think that it's it's a it's a moral crisis that really allows this to happen. So for for parents or grandparents that are watching, or even, you know, siblings, you know, what are some what what's some advice that you can give to people that if they have their own young children or grandchildren? How can folks be more proactive in protecting the loved ones that are close to them?
Speaker 2:We actually are releasing a book. It's a Call to Freedom. The grandmother of the first survivor that ever came through Call to Freedom followed me to three speaking events because her daughter was pulled over in a sting operation and was one of three individuals who were in a trafficking ring. And she had no idea what happened to her granddaughter. And she followed me so she could understand what was happening.
Speaker 2:And to date she says, If I would have known what you taught me, I probably could have prevented what happened to my granddaughter. And they talk about that. Now to say she's doing really well today by the grace of God and I give him all the glory that their granddaughter is doing well. However, she wrote a book and we will be publishing that in December of twenty twenty two and that'll be on Amazon. And that book really tells you what signs to look for, how to protect your children, what questions to ask, healthy relationships, how to navigate social media.
Speaker 2:How do you protect your children? Here's what I would say to parents. What you don't know can sometimes affect your children and they don't have that mental capacity to understand healthy relationships. So I think those are definite conversations that we should be having with our children, but also being involved. You're not their best friend, you're their parents.
Speaker 2:And regulating some of those social media sites with apps called Bark, where they can actually read into certain texts, certain words, and they'll red flag parents Get educated on how this is facilitated, but also how to protect your kids online because a lot of the recruiting today is happening online. And so understanding apps, kids are smart. They know how to add apps without you knowing. And so are you regulating the phone? Take it away at night.
Speaker 2:Don't let them have it in the evenings. A lot of traffickers like to have conversations on FaceTime in the evening hours because parents aren't up. And so monitoring those communication tools that give individuals access to your children, think are really, really key. And I would say attend an event. We're at CultofFreedom.org and starting in November, we're doing what's called parent connection classes.
Speaker 2:Our job to protect our children and it's also our job to be their parent, not their best friend. And resources to do that, we have those and we would love to have you can zoom in on those as well. If you're not in the South Dakota area, you can zoom in from Florida and anywhere you're at and we would love to have you be a part of those classes. The key is for us to be able to tell parents or individuals what are we seeing as trends because traffickers are watching what we're doing, they're watching these cases and they're changing the way they do business and they will divert from one way that they've done business to another if it's on the radar. And so we want to keep parents in the loop.
Speaker 2:I would say if you attend one of those classes, go back in a year and attend another one because it'll be whole group of, it'll be another session on a whole different information. One of the latest, again, like I said, is we've been so focused on women and girls, Now we're seeing this push with boys and what we heard when we sat down with some of our federal contacts is boys aren't disclosing, they're blackmailing these kids. They're starting by asking for pics. Give me a picture of you naked. And they're posing as a young girl that looks like she has a crush on this individual.
Speaker 2:And they send them a picture and that's when the blackmail begins. So they're not only trafficking, but they're also exploitation, which is another form of trafficking. And so they will begin to say, all right, I'm going to exploit you. I'm going to send this out on all your social media sites, all of my social media sites, your pictures and what you sent me. Send me more pictures and they're putting them out on pornography sites.
Speaker 2:And then they're also saying, go get your mom's credit card and begin to blackmail these kids. These kids feel like they have nowhere to go. And what we're seeing is this increase of suicide. And I'm like, that's not good enough. These individuals, this is money.
Speaker 2:They sit in a room eight hours a day paid to target our kids. And because we're not paying attention to this, because we're not getting educated, because we don't have the resources to investigate it, guess where they're going from drugs? They're going to human beings because it's easier to facilitate. And so parents, I'm just telling you, please get educated. Please take the time to understand how this is facilitated to protect your children.
Speaker 1:Maybe you don't know this particular figure, but how much money can a pimp or, you know, a cartel member, whoever it is, how much can they make in a year off of an individual?
Speaker 2:Yeah. There's several figures. On average, what trafficker or survivors rather have told us is usually an average trick is 100 to $125 a trick. Depends on who they're being sold to, depends on the ring. But if you take that $100 to $125 and on average, they're sold up to potentially up to 15 times a day.
Speaker 2:So if you take 15 times that just low average of $100 you're talking about significant money. Now with that, you also don't have any overhead because you're not providing a lot for that individual. You don't have to buy a drug. So drug, you actually have to purchase that drug in order to sell the drug. You don't have this overhead.
Speaker 2:So where is organized crime going to go? They're going to go to where I can make a lot more money and where I'm not going to get identified. And that is human trafficking. The stat is the second largest criminal illegal activity that's growing and it's only been in statutes for twenty two years. In February is when it went into federal statute.
Speaker 2:Twenty two years. And we're talking that it has now moved up the second largest. I would even say it's probably beyond some of the others because of gun trafficking and drug trafficking because it's hard to identify and we don't have correct stats. Most law enforcement have never been trained in most states to identify human trafficking. Most of our emergency departments in our health care communities haven't been trained either.
Speaker 2:Our domestic violence shelters, parents, because it's such a new social injustice. So we're seeing this trend where if they're selling drugs, they're also selling human beings because you can make a lot of money off of both. There's usually that intersectionality of criminal activity, which includes human trafficking with some of the guns and and the drug trafficking that we see as well.
Speaker 1:Gosh. I can't believe. Up to 15 times a day.
Speaker 2:A day.
Speaker 1:That is just it's just unfathomable.
Speaker 2:Think about that.
Speaker 1:What would that do to an individual?
Speaker 2:So let me tell you what that does. By the time and I get really emotional about this, so I'm sorry. We started working with adults and when they started coming through the door, sometimes they're so far gone. Their mental health, their addiction, their complex trauma is so severe that sometimes it's really difficult to reach that individual. But as we began to talk through their journey, we started to realize that they were victimized as kids and never got identified because it's such, it's new conversation.
Speaker 2:And so we thought, gosh, we can't reach them now, but how do we get to them at a younger age? And so we've really The average age of a trafficking victim is 11 to 14. And so, you know, and we're seeing it get younger because the demand just seems to get sicker and sicker. But in that, if we can get to the kids early, we can intervene, we're not going to have this complex trauma that we're seeing as we're getting them as adults that they've been victimized for years and years. So I've seen where they've been victimized for three months and I had a woman walks through the door who was 63 years old who had been trafficked for over fifty years of her life.
Speaker 2:She could not function her mental health, her PTSD, her anxiety. We started her on occupational therapy where she would admit and smell colors so much what we call triggers. And sometimes survivors refer to them as cues. They're cues, they're reminders, they're triggers. There's so much layer your body suppresses trauma.
Speaker 2:And as your body begins to relax and deal through that trauma, layers and layers and layers are revealed. And so when you talk about that kind of trauma on multiple times a day, different types of victimization, it's not like sexual abuse. It's much more severe. And so the recovery process for a human trafficking victim is sometimes a lifetime. And that's why I called the freedom.
Speaker 2:We don't say you can only come to us for a year or two. That survivor has the opportunity to stay with us as long as they want. And so we've served from the beginning to now survivors. Sometimes we serve survivors for three months to four months because we transition them to another service provider because of safety. It's really up to that survivor and you can't restore somebody fully that has been through that kind of trauma.
Speaker 2:It's a journey. And in order for them to get back into work environments, to get back into family, to want to be a parent, you got to work through and provide a structure for them to be supported in those life choices processes. That's what we do. And we now have almost 30 staffs that are doing different things from housing to occupational therapy, to employment services, to addiction counselors on staff. We do counseling as well to holistic.
Speaker 2:We have a spiritual coordinator on staff, too. That's a journey. I mean, you can't ask a survivor who has been treated this way to forgive somebody or to believe that God was there in those circumstances. That's a journey. And I always say they have always been said things and experienced something different.
Speaker 2:It's our job at Call to Freedom to show them and model what Christ is. They don't care what we say, they're watching what we do. And I think that's a key in gaining the trust of a survivor, but also for them to learn healthy and to model healthy behavior is to really see it in action versus people saying they're doing it or telling them what to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You show with your yeah. With your actions, not your words or your intentions, but just do it. If how do you operate? How do you fund this business?
Speaker 1:If you have over 30 staff, I'm guessing that the trafficking victims aren't paying to be in your service. So do you use your business or that does the it's a nonprofit. Right? So you rely on donations and grants. And I mean, how does that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when we started this, it was really hard. It was strictly the community because there weren't stats. There was nobody keeping stats of human trafficking victims in the state of South Dakota. They weren't talking about it.
Speaker 2:We've now worked with entities as Department of Public Safety to get those implemented across the state. However, we started with community support in the latter part of 2017. Were accepted into three over the course of the next year and a half, three federal grants. We also get some state funding. But what I've learned is, and no offense to the federal government, but they don't really understand survivors.
Speaker 2:And so when there are certain requirements put on us and how to serve survivors and survivors are saying that doesn't work, you know, we have to go where survivors are telling us and what works. And so we're really kind of shifting from some of that federal and funding to more of that community focus. And that gives us more flexibility to be able to develop programming that's more effective with less limitations. So we do we get a funding from all different sources, but we're really going to that community funding so that we can provide services that are effective and don't have the restrictions or control of how we facilitate that.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, that's good. It doesn't surprise me to hear that the federal government's not the most helpful with this stuff.
Speaker 2:There are some good things. No offense. Sorry if anybody's listening. There are definitely some good things. But for me, we will always be an organization that listens to survivors.
Speaker 2:Nobody has experienced what they've experienced. And there are times where I've had to take them to doctor's appointments and it's been very traumatic for because their trafficking was cartel and it was down in Mexico and they would hire doctors in a small room and do operations on these individuals so they could keep selling them. And so anytime I'd have to take this young girl into emergency department, she would trigger. They would say one wrong thing. They weren't trauma informed and she ran and so she wouldn't go to get medical help.
Speaker 2:And so we had to train them. And so, I mean, really what we want to do is we want to we live life with survivors and then we learn how to do this better. And so we actually have four survivors who are on staff that do program development for Call to Freedom that are in a really good place in their recovery process where they're able to lend their voice to the development of what we do. And one of our new projects was Marissa's House, which was named after the young girl that I met in Sturgis, South Dakota. And the Lord told me that to restore honor back to her and so all of our housing projects will be named after her because of my encounter with her in Sturgis in 2015.
Speaker 2:And that now has evolved from just offering housing for just survivors, but it now has housing for survivors and their children. And one of the things that we started to see with survivors, they were doing so well and they wanted to be reunified with their children. What had happened is they had lost them because they looked like they weren't good parents. They were in trafficking situations that they didn't disclose or weren't identified. And so they lost their children in the system.
Speaker 2:And so we opened that new project April first of twenty twenty two, and we've now reunified seven families in that short period of time and we've had 19 survivors go through and we're currently housing nine children with them. And it's one of the most amazing experiences to see somebody who thought that they would never have life again or experience a normal life to begin to learn how to be a parent in a supportive environment, to learn how to do a job balance, their checking book, to just having classes with other survivors where they can talk about what happened with them and get healing. And so it's really, we're very passionate about making sure that survivors have a voice at the table, but also that we're providing every opportunity for a survivor of human trafficking to do well and to have every tool within their reach so that they can accomplish that for themselves.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's fantastic. And actually, had I was looking up, doing a research and I saw the the housing and it was just incredible what you've been able to accomplish. I mean, especially going from just, you know, one person on a mission to, you know, nearly 30 people and multiple offices and everything that you're doing. So I think it's it's so commendable because a lot of us hear about this, and it's just it's that one thing that you don't wanna talk about very much.
Speaker 1:Or maybe you do, and you you share it on social media, and then Facebook kicks you off because you're, you know, doing something that doesn't fit in line with what their what their values are. So so Becky, we're not gonna jump into the q and a portion. But before we go, I wanna bring your website up one more time. Also, I think we had we had a few audio issues, which I just apologize for. This happens sometimes.
Speaker 1:It seems to be always the the really important discussions where we have some sort of issues. So but we just we kind of power through it, and we get the message out there. So your website, which I'll bring up again, one second here, is just calltofreedom.org. So for everyone that's watching, calltofreedom.org. If you want work, there's a donation button up there on the in the top bar.
Speaker 1:But you can also I would recommend everyone watching here, at a minimum, you know, put a book bookmark this and try to get in one of the events. Try to get in one of training events if you're a parent, a grandparent. Because I think I I my guess is that it's happening in the the places we'd least expect. Even in probably wealthier neighborhoods and good school systems, it can still happen. So get yourself trained.
Speaker 1:And if you want to join us now for the q and a portion, that's gonna be over on Rise TV. So you've heard of Rise TV by now, I'm sure. It's a Patreon owned stream platform. And if you want to come join us and have Becky answer your question, if you have any other questions or comments or just want to share some thoughts, please come over with us. They're in the description below the video.
Speaker 1:There's a link for a free trial, so you can come check it out. And we're gonna go and hop over there now. So Dom, you can go ahead and cut the public streams. And we're gonna dive right into the q and a.