L.O.G. 162 Lantern Rescue

Alright, everyone, we've got a cool crew on here today. Thank you guys so much for jumping in. Please, real quick, give a very quick introduction for the two of you from Lantern Rescue. Who wants to go first? Craig... Greg is going to go first.

No, I just wanted to say this, Brian. I've had the brochure from Lantern Rescue on my office desk for over a year now. This is the culmination of a lot of effort to get these two folks on from Lantern Rescue, and we're so excited to have them virtually. So kick it. So, Gabrielle and Whitney—or some may know her as Meredith, we'll maybe tell that story later—are joining us today from Lantern Rescue. I tried to drop you guys right in the grease there at the beginning, so thank you to both so much for coming on the show today.

Yeah, happy to be here. I'm Gabrielle, I'm the Marketing Communications Director for Lantern Rescue, so I help get the word out about human trafficking and what we do and what people can do in their communities and things like that. I work really closely with Whitney, and I met Brian and Greg at their course, which was amazing. So, very thankful that we are able to connect and tie together all the information that we all have.

You don't know, I appreciate that, Gabrielle. We, to everyone listening, we met Gabrielle a couple times. Whitney came to the second course at Liberty University when we were out there not long ago. So Whitney, real quick, kind of tell everyone what your role is with Lantern.

So I am the Public Engagement Director, so I deal mainly with the public, donors, and just kind of building that relationship with, you know, people that are interested in knowing a little bit more about Lantern. And yes, we did meet at your course, which Gabby dragged me to, and at the end of it I was just in awe. So it was really awesome and so applicable to what we do. So thank you guys for having us.

Oh, thank you guys. Listen, let's go back and hear more accolades about that. I don't know if you can see because I'm normally red because of my Native American heritage, but I'm blushing so much. Thank you so much. It was a great course, great turnout. Liberty's a great host. We love Christopher P. Rhodes, aka CPR. And it was great having you there. Brian, I know you've got an agenda, but Gabrielle, what brought you back? I mean, you already saw it one time. What brought you back?

You are just awesome and I love hanging out with you, and the course you do a really good job at teaching it. So I do a lot of social psychology, which I love and I'm passionate about anyway. I think a lot of people becoming more self-aware and understanding their behavior helps them communicate with other people and it builds better relationships, which builds better communities. But the way that you translate it is awesome, and so I was like, "I have to get Whitney here," and I wanted to come back to do it. And to be honest, it's so much information, you definitely hit cognitive overload by the end, so it's always good to get a refresher.

We appreciate that, and I will probably get to some examples of some of the stuff that we taught and how it applies specifically to you guys. But I kind of wanted to start out with, you know, what is... there's a lot of misconceptions kind of around human trafficking and what it means and what's involved with it. There's a lot of Hollywood version, social media version, then there's what actually happens. And just personally, I know several people from my past that I've either known or worked with or whatever that have done some work in human trafficking, and they're always there... they're always people in the intelligence community, which kind of piqued my interest a long time ago when I first met a couple of friends, folks that would tell me about this stuff when we were talking about, you know, having other conversations. And it was always, they had this insight, like, "Dude, you have no idea what everything was like." "Dude, you have no idea what's going on." I was like, "What?" And then it kind of, now recently, over the past few years, has really come more to national attention with the problem. With that, sometimes as we get into some areas or some stories or things that don't really happen, and the problem with those is that it really, it clouds the information and everything, makes your folks' job a little bit more difficult. So if you could let you guys start out, what are some of those kind of misconceptions that I want to hit up right up front so we can kind of clear that up for the rest of the discussion?

Okay, I'll start with number one. Whitney, you can hop on the next one. The first one is that human trafficking only exists in secret networks and on the black market. Now, it definitely does exist in secret networks and on the black market, and a huge amount of it is organized crime as well. But that is not the only places it exists. And I think something that hits home with us is that people become so hyper-focused with everything that they could say about what they're observing or what they think or their opinions about the secret networks, about the black market, that it just brings all of their attention to that. And they're not paying attention in their community. They're not looking at the people who or the children being abused or trafficked near them. They're not really investing in things that they can actually do. They're just becoming passionate about saying whatever their opinions or thoughts are on something instead of doing something to change it. And that can harm victims because if they are not being trafficked through the black market or in secret networks, and then if conspiracy theories start rolling, they can start to think, "Well, maybe I'm not a victim. Maybe I haven't gone through this or that." And it clouds up the lines of them getting help, and it starts to make them think, "Well, you know, wow, this is human trafficking. This is what abuse really looks like. Mine's not that bad, or mine doesn't look like this, so it must not be true."

So, you're telling me that going onto a furniture website and ordering a certain product will not get me a shipment of children for me to sexually assault? Is that what you're telling me? That's ridiculous.

Yes, yes. But the founder has definitely debunked that a couple of times. I think the reality that he talks about a lot is that those are like absorbent prices that people will pay to get children shipped when in reality people can do sex tourism and go visit like, the Caribbean and buy a kid for $5-$20 for a night. There's no reason they're going to pay thousands of dollars to get them shipped anywhere.

It's important, Brian, to note as well, Gabrielle, I know from investigations that were launched in the Detroit Metropolitan Area that sometimes the person that's offering the children up is in the home: the uncle, the father, a cousin, somebody that actually gets them. That's an important factor. And I also think that your organization is doing a great job of characterizing what trafficking really is. Because my kids are 40, so I don't have any problem. But Brian, at least twice that I know of, you were going through public transportation where somebody asked a little insurgent, "Are these your parents? Are you traveling with your parents?" Which shows that people are actually paying attention and asking the right questions. I like seeing that, I like hearing that it's actually going on. So I just wanted to make that distinction that sometimes a family member can be the catalyst that gets you into a rough situation.

And unfortunately that happens more frequently than we like to talk about. It's kind of the swept-under-the-rug version of human trafficking because it touches on areas that we don't like to go to as people. Here we are creatures of hiding just by nature sometimes. And so I think that sometimes those, the Hollywood renditions of things—not to say there's not craziness at all in every aspect of the world, right?—sometimes it takes away from the little things that we should be noticing next door with our neighbors.

And Whitney, I think what you characterize as well is that the most vulnerable people in our population are targeted most often. And so all we have to do is look for those people that are vulnerable in any way, and we probably have a target community. I hope a whole bunch of people are listening in on these facts.

I think part of that too, that's why I'm glad you want to hit that right up front with some of the misconceptions here, is because when you think human trafficking, automatically you do think of some organized network of highly sophisticated... and I mean, it's just like, I mean, you've been through our training, you see how we demystify all these things for that point, to go, "Look, that stuff's all great for a movie, but here's what's really going on." And since we don't, we don't think of these things in the context in which they happen and understanding, you know, automatically someone thinks something very organized and coordinated when they hear human trafficking. Well, it doesn't have to be something like that. And just goes to the point Greg brought up and that you two were both just talking about is that, no, this is happening right in your neighborhood. This is right down the street. This is next door. This is a cousin, an aunt, an uncle there that you have some connection to it. Now, the problem is that then everyone gets what they're all scared, like, "Oh my God, it's everywhere!" It's like, "Well, hang on, I mean it, it potentially can be everywhere, that doesn't mean it is everywhere." It's just it's a lot more closer to home than we think. And I think that kind of, I know, again, since we use these big terms, human trafficking, sex trafficking, what do all these mean? Is everything sex trafficking? What are all these different type? I mean, there's a lot of terms, I think we need to explain, at least for myself, to educate myself.

Absolutely. Well, and there are different forms of human trafficking. Usually, that is where our mind goes the quickest is to the idea of sex trafficking. A lot of it is because it's so frequently the one that we see in the movies and we see, you know, Hollywood exploding with their theatrics. But it's not the only human trafficking. I mean, there is everything from organ trafficking, right? So we're taking body parts and selling them that are pieces of people. And so that voodoo element kind of comes in with that regard. Human trafficking, like arranged marriages, when you've got some sort of exchange for that individual. Labor trafficking. You know, when we visit—and it's hard, this is the hard part—is it's hard for us to see that scope of human trafficking outside of the U.S. because we don't, we don't see it next door. We don't see it in our mainstream media. We don't see those things frequently. They're very swept under the rug. But in doing that, they're almost dismissed, and they are a large part of what happens around the world, not just in our own little bubble. And so acknowledging the different types is a big part of making those adjustments and changes to change the world around us.

You know, Whitney, I want to bring up, Brian, again, how close this is to everybody that's listening right now. So I don't want to get on the wrong side of the law, so it's either Eagle, Gunnison, Mineral, or Hinsdale County where I had a caper, and a local rancher in one of those counties actually had a group of people that was living illegally on the property, doing all the work that was going on on the property that came up on Christmas, and it was months since those people had been paid in any form. So he called the local, the sheriff's office and said, "Hey, I got a bunch of illegals living on the back of my property, and they stole all this stuff and, you know, they're on the run now." And so that led on a merry chase, and so we figured out, "Wait a minute, this guy's contrived this entire story for us to arrest and then deport the aliens so he doesn't have to pay them." And think about that. Think about how horrible that is. And I'll tell you in Detroit, I had cases of labial mutilation that ended in a homicide because the people did it so brutally. And it was horrible. Also, the arranged marriages where the people would commit suicide or get into arguments and kill the other people. So you don't have to look further than current headlines to see this stuff is happening. So why do I, I guess the rhetorical question probably is, why do we always want to push these back? Why do we not want to discuss these? Why are these scarier than other things that are in the headlines?

And yeah, and I think sometimes that is because it's hard to define or explain or for people to really understand. And so we fall back on what do we know? Where do we get all of our information from? This, TV shows, movies, and now Facebook or whatever. And I think that's, that's obviously a big part of the problem. So now you have crusaders and activists, trying to get involved in things that they don't even fully understand. So maybe they have the best heart and maybe not just the best mind sometimes. Does that kind of make you guys probably see something like that a lot?

Yeah, I think so. I mean, human trafficking isn't that hard to understand. I think the hard part that people get off is that it looks differently in so many different areas, and they're so focused on exactly what it could or couldn't, like, that they're not, they're missing the point of what those predators are doing. So human trafficking is all exploitation, that's all it is. Once a predator, a human trafficker, gets their hands on somebody, it's really just about exploiting them for whatever they can. That can look like labor trafficking, that can look like sex trafficking, that can be organ harvesting. It's going to be whoever's going to buy that market of what they can do. And labor trafficking and sex trafficking definitely exist here, it just looks differently here than it would in, like, West Africa or Europe. There's a lot of different laws, a lot of different things that can go into why it looks differently. Part of it is what the market is, what's going to get sold, what's going to happen. And so understanding that it's not a predator, it's not coming, that human trafficker is not coming. They're like, "I only want this kind of victim for this or whatever." It's kind of where they're working, especially in organized crime, and how they can exploit that. And that's where you get familial trafficking too, is you know, they're something they want more than protecting their child, so they're willing to exploit their child to gain what they want more, whether that be rent money, whether that be profit, whether that be drugs, whatever it is that they can kind of trade off and get instead, that's what they're going to do. And that exploitation they kind of justify to themselves because they are so used to objectifying things, and objectifying humans, that it's just a profit margin. It's not a human being with feelings and motivations and hurt and pain, and they don't care about any of that. They just push it off and so it becomes the same as, like, selling a water bottle or a car.

Gabrielle, we take a look at, we have to look no further than AFRICOM on this one. And it's important to mention too that Lantern Rescue's mandate is OCONUS (Outside Continental United States). We'll bring that up a little bit later. But the idea, Brian, is al-Shabaab has a rich history of going into villages and taking hundreds of children and females and exploiting them in any manner of way. Sometimes just to say, "Hey, pay back, you know, here's the kidnapping." Many times sex trafficking. Many times just, just work slavery related. I know that that term is hard to use nowadays, but that's exactly what's happening on the ground.

No, and that's exactly what they're talking about, especially when Gabrielle was just mentioning it, that, you know, humans become a commodity. So whether it's kidnapping for ransom, kidnapped to sell to work, trade, slave trade, sex trade, whatever that is, it just becomes a commodity for some of those larger organizations, especially like you mentioned, al-Shabaab and these terrorist networks that are doing it, they need the money, right? So they know there's money in that. And so, you know, that, that, that's what, and that's, I think, kind of what more people think of as trafficking and human trafficking, which then also becomes difficult because, I mean, it's like, "Well, dude, I don't hang out in West Africa. When am I ever going to see al-Shabaab? What do I, what do I, how would I ever do anything about that?" And so I kind of want to bring that a little bit closer to home, like you guys are all talking about, is what does it look like for real? Because that goes in a couple ways. One, how do people fall into that where they're the victims? Then, then how do people fall into that where they're the, they're the ones victimizing? What do they do? What does that, what does it look like? So, so I think knowing kind of what to look for and how to look for it is always good, but, but, you know, there's all these misconceptions, then, like, what is it for real? Like, what does it really look like here in the United States or abroad? I mean, how does someone see something like that, whether I'm, you know, here, traveling around the country or on vacation with my family somewhere and I see that stuff?

So for victims, it can look differently in different areas. It's really just how those predators are going to gain access to them. In the United States, it looks a lot like outside of familial trafficking, phones, grooming over phones, boyfriends, you know, people that they might know, and then it grooms them through small pieces of exploitation until they're having, they're selling material and then their CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material), and then, or they're meeting contact with them. And they just find the most vulnerable groups. So, like, when you go to places like West Africa, yeah, there are a lot of vulnerable groups, and it still can happen over the phone. A lot of it's job offers, they're looking for jobs, they want something, even kids are looking for jobs. So they give them this job opportunity, they take away their identification and put them across the border into another country and tell them, "Oh, you're going to go work here." And really, they're going to be going to be sold to domestic slavery, to labor trafficking, or to sex trafficking.

Yep, we had a, we had a situation at Benning, Fort Benning of all places in the world. A young specialist that was in the army, they came up to us and had a number of passports, if you remember that, Brian. And he was from a place in Africa, and he goes, "You know what, it's just easier traveling back and forth when you get these." And every village has a place where you can go and get fake IDs, and they're good enough to cross borders. Well, most of those IDs were harvested from the people that came in with legitimate job offers, thinking that everything was going to be fine. And then the next thing they know, they're on a bus to the neighboring jurisdiction and they've got no rights or rules, and nobody who's going to champion them, you know what I'm saying? The local law looks the other way because they're getting a cut of the action. Many times the local military doesn't say anything because they're sometimes availing themselves of the situation. You know, it's just whenever you talk about organized crime, people think La Cosa Nostra or the mob or the mafia or The Sopranos. They don't really think that it's just a, it can be a small group, an unsophisticated group of people to just say, "Keep your mouth shut, or I'll beat you down," or, "You know, hey, listen, you're at the top of the stack now. You don't want to go to the bottom of the stack." And, you know, because people get involved, for example, in the sex trade industry, having been a copper in a major metropolitan district, people get involved because they're vulnerable, because they got a divorce, because now they're homeless, because they got to fend for their kids. There's myriad reasons that they get into the industry at first. And every one of them that I ever interviewed said, "Look, I'm going to do it for just this length of time until I get back on my feet again. You know, I'm going to go to the bar and I'm going to dance and I know it's going to be topless, but you know what, I've got to do my kids." And then the next thing is, "And I'm going to do a little bit of cocaine on the side selling." And then the next thing I'm using, it happens so quickly that you can fast become overwhelmed by the events. Is that a true story in your history?

I think for everybody, it's definitely a model. Like, other people don't have to groom you, you can kind of groom yourself. Like, there is a level of cognitive dissonance that you feel conflicted, and as soon as you talk yourself into justifying or accepting those kinds of actions, it's a very slippery slope. So you will continue to justify things: "Well, this is not as bad as what I did before," or, "This person's not as bad as the person before." And you just keep going down the road until it doesn't even look familiar to you, which is why I think a lot of people that are abused or trafficked don't always recognize that they're abused or trafficked because it wasn't like how it looks in the movies where they're just kidnapped and pushed away or put somewhere and they're in chains and dark rooms and basements. It's people that they know and they're living with them, and that person is, you know, like a normal predator. Like, they're going to give some, they're going to take some. Or they give them no hope, so it's like, "Okay, well, this is my life now," and they learn to adjust.

Yeah, I know. You, you, and you brought up, you, you and Greg, both brought up. You both kind of implicitly and explicitly, it's all about access, right? And access to especially someone who's vulnerable. Vulnerable populations, you know, we talk about that stuff. I mean, we did talks about that in class, even with like folks, like, what was his name, Jared from Subway, who was predating on children. He set up a foundation for kids who didn't have role models and stuff in their life. Exactly same thing with Coach Sandusky, all those folks, like, they just target those people that are the most vulnerable, and then one, less, like, someone's less likely to say something. It's easier to predate on someone who doesn't have a strong social network or family or friend network for support. So I mean, yeah, and then you get it, and then, you know, so you take that vulnerable population, then you start that whole grooming process with them, and then sure enough, I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't take a lot for that to happen. So, what is it, what are you guys doing then? I mean, what does, what does Lantern Rescue do? What, what's the goal and, and how you guys operate? Because I think it's pretty cool because you provide a lot of training, which we're all about, right? It's not just money going somewhere and showing a bunch of numbers and yay on social media and, and, you know, the whole non-profit world is, is tough to navigate. Greg and I do work with other non-profits as well, but we're very, very careful and selective because we know how bad that industry can be, and it just preys on people's good nature. So, so, you know, I, I want to throw it to you guys to talk a little bit about what Lantern does and tell us how, what, how you guys are different from other folks in the field.

So there's really a lot of different ways that we stand out against some of the other people out there. And I don't want it to sound like a competition by any means because we're all fighting for the same purpose, and that's the better good of mankind, truly. But you're right, there are, it is hard to navigate, and we'll leave it there. You know, so, but for us, it's a little bit different. As we go into these other countries, we're not just going in kicking down a door and then saying, "Okay, great, we got the girls out, we got the guys out, we're good, we'll see you later," right? "Let's post some pictures up and call it a day." So that's not what we're there for. We want to see, we want to see sustainability. And so the reason that we, we operate a little bit differently is so that we can maintain that stability, and it continues once we are not in that country anymore. So for us, that looks like working with local law enforcement—I mean, obviously, there's a lot of vetting process that has to happen there—but working with local law enforcement, the governments in that area, in that country, so that we build those partnerships and relationships so that it lasts beyond our footprint there. We also have a training aspect, right? So we're training those law enforcement people to see the signs of someone being trafficked, someone that may end up being trafficked, those vulnerable spots, so that they can start pinpointing and understanding where those are and being able to work with those governments and those jurisdictions and those people really allows for action to take place beyond just rescuing the girls and then leaving people that are still doing the bad things to keep doing bad things, right? So there's a process, a judicial process, that then happens. And so that is a big part of it because there's got to be an element of punishment, or justice that is served beyond just saving people.

No, and, and it's a, sometimes when it comes to, you know, other countries, other cultures, you know, people want to, I don't like, I'm not here to pass judgment, but I will, they, they recognize what, there's different standards in different countries. So, for example, my experience, like in Afghanistan, you go drive through downtown middle of Kabul and you see, like, an older woman there holding a kid begging for money. And sometimes that's not even her kid, where she'll pay to basically rent a child to help her beg. And that's sort of, a lot of people there know that and it's almost socially acceptable. I mean, it's, it's obviously wrong and it's awful, but in that culture, they look at it as, "Well, she's just begging for food." You know, but, but if that's your, if that's your standard right there, I mean, what else are you willing to look past? And again, because culturally that was the norm for so long and they grew up thinking that and seeing that, it almost, you have to then educate those people, like, "Hey, hang on, like, you're almost educating someone the value of life." Like, "You can't do that to another human being." And again, it's just they didn't know any better, right? That that was what was going on. I'm assuming you run into quite a bit of that with, with what you guys do in your mission.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we see that more frequently than we'd like to see, you know. And it is a mindset, so you're creating a mindset shift, and that takes time. That's not something that happens overnight, it's not something that happens in a week's time. We're cultivating relationships with people. You know, our founder, he's adamant on, "I want to know the people I'm working with. If we're training a group of men to continue this workforce beyond, I want to know their family. I want to know if they can't feed their family so that I can step in and find a way to help that." Because you have to meet those needs of the people and build those relationships to be able to expand and change and cultivate a new way of thinking. And so we do see that, yeah, because it's easy to go downhill, it's easy to backslide, it's easier to slip back.

And you've got to remember that I'm a little older than all of you added together. And back in the day, there were terms like prostitution and pimp and hooker and these type of things that we have to disabuse people of. But then Hollywood keeps bringing it back into us with Pretty Woman, and other rap artists bring it back to us with song. And so the, the problem is that's negative reinforcement. And I think Gabrielle, you brought it up very well when you, you're one of few people that have used cognitive dissonance correctly in my life, and I applaud you for that. That's a wonderful thing. What people don't get is there's not just the mirage that goes along with cognitive dissonance, there's that mental turbidity. And when you're in it, you can't see it, and somebody has to walk up to you and break that bias. Or, you know, it's the magic mirror, mirror on the wall, and you keep feeding your own [ego], and after a while you start believing it. So first of all, that, that to me is huge. Second of all, the lexicon, Brian, we are grooming now. We chose the word grooming. Well, listen, when I wanted to date somebody, I groomed too. I went to church because that's where you find the good girls, right? I made sure that I looked at the family. I went and saw, they used to hang clothes with wooden clothespins in a backyard. I would ride my bike over and take a look at the undies of mom because I would want to know what I was getting into. Now, as horrible as that is culturally as old as I am and where I grew up in Detroit, that was my, my father, my father taught me that first Marine Division dad saying, "Hey, son, these are the things that you have to look for." So when we talk grooming, yeah, grooming for somebody that doesn't want to be groomed, that's in a vulnerable state, that needs to be illegal and it needs to be brought out into the sunlight and so people can see that that's wrong. Because there are still people in the United States that feel, "Hey, listen, you got into that line of work. Yeah, you were dragged into that line of work, pushed into that line." You know, there were other things behind the scenes that we don't always see. That's why an organization like this, with a mission like this, with information on different cases, can educate me. I can just click through their website and see a couple of situations that they were involved in, actual rescues, and go, "Oh, now I've got a better understanding of what it means." You know, and that's important to me. I need to learn, I need to know that the culture has shifted over the last 40 or 50 years, and now we know more than we did back then.

Well, I mean, you're even, and it's, it's we talked about access and grooming and how people get access to victims and stuff. But, but, I mean, even when you just brought up with what you, you said your founder wanted to say, he said, "I want to know the people I work with." Like, that's such a simple way of looking at things that everyone listening right now can adhere to. You want to know the people you work with. You want to know the people you live next to. You want to know who your kid hangs around with. And you don't have to know every single thing about them or look at every comment they made on social media, right? You just have to know enough to go, "Is this person likely trustworthy? Do they have some other nefarious intent?" And I, I think that alone helps, helps people deny access because those simple things. And, and, you know, you guys have, so you have these teams that go out and work with local authorities and train people and help, you know, right there on the ground. But, but you do, you do more than that, right? I mean, you have ongoing, like you said, you want something that's sustainable. So what, I mean, because like you said, like, I, I know enough people, you know, people, I can put, literally, I could get a phone call, put a team together if someone paid us to go get some people out of somewhere. Okay, great, maybe that helps solve some immediate situation, but that's not going to, that's not going to win any wars doing that.

Exactly. It's no longer a solution there. So what is it besides that initial stuff that you guys go and do with the training and working relationships and educating a local, maybe police force or something, but what else do you do beyond that sustainment piece? Talk to us about that.

So we sustain in different ways. First, we do advise domestically that we do not do anything tactfully domestically and or operationally. We do advise and we try to build networks, especially with the involvement of CSAM (Child Sexual Abuse Material). CSAM is what ties all of the human trafficking in the world together primarily because you do have sex tourism, things like that. But CSAM, you can pimp out or traffic a child or a victim, record it, and then resell it, and that happens all the time. So we advise there. Then we are in different regions, we pick the most vulnerable regions usually, and we build a team there and we stay in contact with them. So that there's all of these different teams working together. That's the only reason our numbers are so high, because we're not actively doing the work. We train the teams to actively do the work. Several regions are fighting this at the same time with the resources and training that we provided, but equipping themselves in their cultures to change that, to fight it. And that looks differently everywhere, so that can be a little bit of a speed bump. And so things that are obviously not culturally acceptable here are not that obvious in other places, right? We, it's a long-term process of trying to help them understand, "Okay, no, like that isn't acceptable. We do have to fight this, this leads to this, this leads to this." And help them kind of learn to change that. You can go on our Instagram and even see some of the pictures of how those cultures are learning to change it, and it's very primitive to people in the U.S. They're like, "Yeah." And then we have other regions, like right now we are in Ukraine. We built a team there. A lot of them are volunteers that are Ukrainians that just wanted to step up and do things for the common good there. And so they are helping feed people, they're helping people gain necessary items, but they're also teaching people what those predators are going to look like as they go across borders, so that they do not become victims themselves. And they know kind of what to look for, what to say, what to avoid, and what to trust.

Listen, this is so important if you're listening right now to the sound of my voice or you're watching us on YouTube. You have to understand that when I went through high school, if a girl got pregnant, they sent her to a home for wayward girls so nobody else saw what was going on. When I was growing up in the 60s, if you gave your wife what they used to call the Irish sunglasses and you knocked a black eye, they would wear sunglasses when they went shopping the next day and you didn't talk about that. "Hey, what happens in the home?" You know, all domestic violence leads to more domestic violence, which leads to death. And, you know, when we were in Afghanistan, Brian, the fatality of babies was what led Afghan families and farmers to have more children, and sometimes that impacted the health of the neighborhood. Knowledge is power. And when we don't understand what's going on or we accept a misogynistic view, for example, of women as chattel, then things can get out of hand real quickly. And people look you straight in the face and go, "There's no way that that's still happening." Brian and I witnessed genocide. Well, we saw it, you know, we just, we saw infant abuse, we saw females and young males being abused. And you know what, it was how things were in that neighborhood. And it doesn't mean you have to accept them, you just have to know that it exists.

Yeah, no, 100%. I think one of the hardest things to overcome is that, is the cultural change and the stigma. It's being told, but it's being told by mass media. It's not being told by the people who have gone through it. We are stigma into their culture that they can't say it. I mean, even look at our churches, you can go into your church and say certain sin, but certain things you cannot talk about. That leaves you vulnerable because then when other people use that against you, you have no one to go to to tell, and you're stuck in this cycle of it happening over and over and over again. And then a lot of abusers turn into abusers themselves, so first they have to, you, you act out what you see every day. And so there's a really fine line there.

No, that's, this is such an important segment, the reason that Brian and I fought so hard to get you folks on the show. One, Brian's charming and smart and can get the information out there. But two, you know, I, I've been victimized in my youth. If anybody else was victimized in their youth, you know, I, I always say Isaiah 6:8, you know, "Lord's looking around and saying, 'Who, who's going to help out on this?' 'Me, I'm ready.'" And that's why we do so much service. That's why Brian and I are out there on the road so often is because, you know, we got to shine a light on something. That's why also we love the Lantern Rescue, because we talk about it in the clear light of day. Look at people face to face, drag it out in the sunlight so it's not a stigma anymore. Just like PTS, just like suicide. You know, and I would challenge everybody listening that grooming occurs everywhere. So if you're trying to get a date, or if you're trying to catch a fish, or if you're trying to molest a child, that grooming process is what you need to look for because there's certain characteristics in each one of those realms that will stick out when you're educated and when you look for them. But they could be right next to you on the plane seat, and you're going to miss it because you haven't been brought up to speed, you haven't been told.

And that's that's a good point, Greg, is to keep the general term of what we mean by that because, yes, the indicators are going to be the same now. Like, I'm grooming the insurgent to because I want her to pick up her damn towels after she takes a shower in the bathroom and be a productive member in society and be a good kid. But from an outside perspective, like Greg, you would be coming to say and watch a, you know, a bird's eye view of me throughout the day teaching her, like, you'd be like, "Oh, he's grooming her to perform as a functioning member of society," right? I'm doing it without her explaining everything that I'm doing, right? But if you think of it as that way, that's how groomers work. They have a nefarious intent. Their intent is to sell this person or have sex with them or do something else like that. That's what they're in. Now, our intent might be completely different, but the behaviors will be very similar, which is, which is, I, I think makes it a little bit easier for people to understand, like, "Okay, I got to get my kid to go along with me on some things. So I bribe them or say certain things this, but, but it's 'cause I'm raising a child and they're, they're a pain in the ass sometimes." Not because I'm trying to sell or harvest their organs, but it helps me as a person navigating the environment to go, "Well, what, what would I do? How do I, what actions do I have that would look similar in this situation?"

Brian, you use it all the time. Growing up in Chicago and I grew up in Detroit, very, very acute similarities at ground level. So I'll give you a quick one. I had an aunt and my aunt that came in, when she saw you, she would chase you down and she would pinch your cheek so hard and hug you so hard, so we all ran when the aunt came in a room. And you could see by the atmospherics in the room that everybody was staying away from the aunt. Well, we also had an uncle not related that was in that same room and that uncle liked to touch in your bikini zones, right? So the idea was that you tried to evaporate into the wall and shove other kids in the way so you had flak so you weren't the target that day. And now, although those things seem harmless at first, when you take a look at them, you go, "Wow, my family is kind of like that too. I had that uncle, cousin, brother. We had that thing that we didn't talk about at home," right? We got to start talking about those things, and this is a way to take a look at what the end state is if you don't tend your garden. If you don't go out there and educate the folks, it can turn into a situation like this where now you have a global reach and you're never ever going to be able to catch up with the problem at the speed that you're going, even though you're doing great work. I mean, it, it, it must seem, there must be days that you come in and, and you tell me, Whitney and Gabby, you've got to have some days that you come in that you feel that you're completely overwhelmed. How do you, how do you keep going on those days?

Yeah, there are days like that. You know, we've, we've had, Gabby and I have had stories come across and we're just like, "You know, I just need a day or two. I need to be able to process, I need to step back because I can't emotionally handle the situation right now. Like, I'm just not ready." And we see those things and it does beat you down. But, and I'll say, you know, it's really two parts: one, God gives us great endurance to keep pushing, and for the race, we're here to win it. But that's not, you're right, there's not a, you know, one day it's all going to disappear and end necessarily. And so we have to keep that in focus and understand we don't want to come at this with unrealistic expectations because that's going to jade what we do today, right? And so there's an element of it that really each day it's just you keep pushing for the one, right? And so, I mean, one, pulling one person out of the situation, that's where we begin to focus. Like, whatever it takes to get that one, you know, that one girl that's stuck in a room somewhere or in a situation and thinks that there is absolutely no hope and nobody's coming for her, that's what keeps us going.

That's amazing. That's so smart.

For me, it's when I started going through that, I realized that a lot of people look away because it is hard, it is emotional, it is difficult. A lot of it too, like, I believe a lot of people have been abused or experienced abuse or almost was abused, and so that can be very triggering. But us looking away doesn't mean it's not happening, and the only thing, if the only thing we can do is pay attention and be there for them and like validate that it's happening, then at least we're doing something. We're not just ignoring them like everyone else. And someone had said something to me, and they were like, "You know, like, why, how?" And I was like, "I want my heart to be broken over stuff like this." Their heart is broken over stuff like this. Their heart is broken over stuff like this. Why should my heart not be broken over it? And I can't be so stuck in myself that I'm like, "Oh, I can't live with a broken heart or being emotional or feeling distraught over that," because they're living that every day. And if one thing I can do is to have my heart broken and want to have empathy for them and do what I can, then I'm going to do that, even if it's hard.

Yep. Yeah, empathy and compassion are so huge parts of the drive. But, but it's also that you want it to end, you want that pain and suffering to end in that person. And if, if not you, who? You know, we're right back to Isaiah 6:8. If it's not going to be you to step up, who is going to step up and champion that? Sorry, Brian.

So, you know, I know you guys are good about, like, you, you know, you don't really show who your team members are, you kind of everything is very private, as it should be, with, with things like this. But you always obviously still have to get the message out and what you're doing. So, I'm curious, would you guys be able to share with us, you know, obviously take out any, any details that can't be shared, but like, what's, what is it, what's a typical sort of case from you guys? Like, how does it work? You get contacted, you know, what is a typical situation that you deal with and have dealt with successfully to help someone?

I think it still looks differently in different areas. We have and they've done raids and investigations that are more long-term, especially in places that have like brothels. That, that's just a longer process. They have to go in, they have to watch, they have to see what's happening, they have to get enough evidence to prosecute and do that investigation. Some of it is a lot of prevention. We get a lot of people at border crossings because they, right then and there, they're either they've been trafficked and they're on their way to another trafficking situation or they are just now getting trafficked. So that team has been trained to know like what to look for, what incongruent signals are there, like who's going to go, who's not going to go, what doesn't fit, and like ask those hard questions. And that helps a lot of people before. Then you have places that, like are Ukraine, that's just preventing. So we've had team members like in other countries, like Poland, that are just advising and finding all of the holes and like, "You're not recording who's coming across, you're not teaching in this, you don't have safe zones. Everybody who's helping or organizations that are helping aren't wearing the same colors that are noticeable so you know who's safe and who's not safe." All that kind of stuff, processing and assessing the holes to make sure that those are filled. Usually then after like victims are rescued, it depends on the country that they're in, but they'll go through like the government system, whatever is available. We do help facilitate aftercare, so we'll work with social services and people in that area. And if there is good aftercare that we can recommend, we do that. Sometimes they're reunited with family if the family wasn't the one who sold them or trafficked them and things like that. It, it again, can look different in every region. My favorite stories are the ones who, there are some older victims that we get to put into trade schools and they get to learn whatever they can to be independent in their future because a lot of them, we had one girl, and she went back to her family and her father was paralyzed and they were very, very, very poor. And we just knew like she was going to get retrafficked. So we put her into a trade and paid for her education to stay there, and she's going to learn this one industry and go and be able to have an independent life. And that doesn't look like how it would here, she's not going to like own some big corporation or anything. She'll make enough to feed herself and not be retrafficked and hopefully help with her family too.

No, that, and that's, that's, that's amazing because especially when you're talking about places even outside the United States too, it doesn't always take, it doesn't need to be a lot. It needs to be enough where they can sustain themselves and now have something else to do. Because, yeah, maybe they're technically choosing this trade or profession, but, but if you wind the tape back far enough, at some point usually they didn't have a choice and then everything went downhill from that, right? So, so now it becomes, "I've been doing this so long, this is all I know." And, you know, what do we talk about? No matter what it is, humans look for familiarity. Why do people keep doing that? "Well, this is what I know, and if it, if I at least I know what to expect here." And sometimes that, that's enough when you have this unknown of, "Well, I can't do anything else, I've never done anything else, this is all my life has ever been." You know, showing people that, "No, no, there's, there's an out here, there's a way, there's something else you can do, there's other skills you can develop." I, I think is, is really huge. And you brought up one thing and I, I kind of, we mentioned it before in different, different discussions, but you said specifically, "Okay, we've got people maybe at like a border crossing." So anytime you're at a border crossing, whether that's between two countries, between even just two states here in the U.S., that immediate area is going to have a massive increase in all illegal activity. I don't care if you're, you know, you're trafficking humans, you're trafficking drugs, you're trafficking, you know, knock-off Louis Vuitton purses, doesn't matter. You got to get on an interstate, you know, with your stuff and you got to drive somewhere and you got to get gas and you got to transfer it off to someone else. So anytime I'm in a border town area, I don't care what it is, there's always so much more illegal activity going on just because of the location of it. And those literally, like those, those gas stations, those rest stops, those, those areas right off the, like right there off the interstate where you and your family are filling up with gas to go on vacation somewhere, that's where that stuff is happening because they can do it out in broad daylight. If I can do it out in the middle of the day and I can hide in plain sight, that's better than trying to do some secret thing at some desert location in the middle of the night where there's no reason for anyone to be out there. And so anyone who sees it can be like, "Hey, that's odd." But we, and I think that's part of the, you know, the misconceptions of it all, it's like, if you're checking out, if you're filling up at a gas station somewhere in the U.S. right now, you're about to do that listening to this podcast, you can take a look around and you can start to determine, "Hey, what are the relationships here with these people? Hey, that seems a little odd, why are they watching them everywhere?" All of that stuff exactly is so right there that, you know, if we live a life where we don't see those things, then we're less likely to notice them.

We don't look for them, Brian. You know that, we don't look for them. So I, I wanted to throw out one example. I apologize, bio break for the COVID meds, but I think I'm cured. The, the, my upbringing, there were two incidents that I was thinking about when you, Whit and Gab, were talking, Brian, and it's all about intent. One was that occurred on the freeway. It won't be very specific, but it's near, near where I grew up, and I was a copper. And a family went to the local place, bought a new mattress and bought a bed frame. And they had a van, and the oldest daughter was up on top of the van when they entered the freeway to try to hold the mattress down. And she flew off and was hit by a number of cars and was killed on the freeway. It was a horrific scene. I'll never forget for the rest of my life. Now, the idea was the family never had nefarious intent. They may not have exercised advanced critical thinking, they may have not had an explanatory storyline on outcomes. They made a mistake, and the mistake cost their daughter their life. In that same neighborhood, within one mile of where that incident occurred, one square mile, let's say, an uncle was pimping out his niece for crack cocaine, and he would show up at the crack house because crack was, you know, fast through the mail slot or through the, not that you guys would remember a milk chute or a coal chute, and then you use abandoned homes and then move on quickly before the cops could get there. And because this guy couldn't pay, he paid by offering his niece for sex. That intent is nefarious intent. That's what we're talking about when it can be something that's happening right in front of. Now, there would be somebody that would say, "Yeah, but the guy was sick, he was an addict." Yeah, but he victimized a vulnerable person. Now, the other family victimized the vulnerable person, but the intent is what makes the difference. Are both still a form of child abuse? Yeah, but listen, one's an accident, a situation that happens and it's unfortunate. The other is intentional, and that's where you're going to find the difference when you start looking for intent. And Brian, when you're talking about motels, hotels, things by the airport, airline travel, bus, gosh, the train here that leaves out of Grand Junction, those are the places that you're going to be able to move people that nobody's paying attention. Why? Because we're all too busy, we all have our life, we're down and in, nobody's looking up and out. So, so I think that's another reason to visit the Lantern Rescue site to look and say, "Hey, how can I get involved? What, what are some of the roles that I can take in this?"

So you guys have like, like I said, you kind of really don't talk about who your team members are, but what's the reason behind all that? Like, what is your, your way of thinking and doing? Because, you know, it's a little bit differently the image you project versus a lot of things I've seen on social media. So, which I, I appreciate it. Like, like we don't ever, I don't think the only time we ever post stuff about, like, ourselves, Greg, is like when Greg wears a tie for the first time I've ever seen him wear a tie. And then I would not know, Brian, because I'm not, I don't ever see any of this social media. Then I have to be like, "Okay, well, this is novel, this is noteworthy." But it's not really about us, it's about what we do and what we're going for, right? Because that's our intent, that's our focus. So you guys kind of came across something similar when I see your stuff. You know, you still have to play the social media game and get stuff out there, but like, you know, you don't really show who your team members are. So why is that?

So one thing that we do not do is exploit any of the situations. I think that's one of the biggest things that are different, especially victims. I'm not going to further exploit them. I'm not going to change their story to make it more cool or more impactful or emotional. I do want to write it well, but I don't want to manipulate it or change it. And as far as our team members, there are safety reasons, OPSEC (Operations Security) reasons, we don't want to ever go in between them, their family, everything that they do, especially members that live in other countries. But one of the biggest reasons that brought me on board with Lantern because I knew immediately it was different, is the heart behind not wanting to have one person in the limelight like a lot of organizations do. We, it's not about them and they don't want it to be about them. It's about the victims, it's about what they do together as a team, it's about what we can do together as culture, as a community. It's not about one specific person that's just decided to stand up and do it. And they stay very steadfast with that. They do not want the savior mentality of going and being the hero or anything like that. They're really good at banding together and staying behind that. So you will see like me and Whitney and some of our other team members that are more on like the marketing and communication side, we do usually add all of us because we feel the same way. But we step in to be the face because we want to be relatable and answer people's questions, but be able to support that well, to support the team well, to make sure that they have what they need, that they are spoken for too and protect them in the ways they want to be protected.

So, you know, Brian, I don't know if you noticed this, but ladies, Brian's got a gift shop. The only thing currently available in the gift shop is our coffee mug, which is a good thing. You guys have a much more full "exit through the gift shop." Sorry, the head, and I noticed on there a bunch of ways that you could, like some people don't like donating money, some people don't like getting involved in that way, but they could buy a shirt and you guys got some killer bling stuff that they could wear around that would make people stuff, you know what I'm saying? So you could, so people could learn more about the message. When you guys were at the course, you wore it as well, so everybody else at the course could see and read it and then say, "Hey, what's that about?" We really believe in that word of mouth, the messaging, the, you know, the whole reason that the podcast is popular. Look, Liberty is a perfect example. Okay, Liberty's free. We do Liberty like four times a flipping year. If you're in Virginia and you're in any way associated with law enforcement, you get continuing education credits. So every time I see a free chair in Liberty, I'm thinking, "Ah!" And you guys are such a great non-profit. You have such a great message, a great website. So look, folks, if you're not sure what to do, buy a damn T-shirt because 100% of the profits go back to Lantern Rescue. And you never know, you could save a life with somebody reading that shirt on a plane or at an airport or at a sporting event and going, "Hmm, maybe I want to get involved." It's all about managing those COMSEC (Communications Security) and you talk about zigzag, totally get it. OPSEC, totally get it. But when it comes down to getting that message out, if they've never heard of you, you know, how, how are they going to help? So I just want to bring that, Brian, is no.

I, well, that's not a coffee, coffee mug and a T-shirt. I was going to ask them, you know, what can, what can someone do? But I guess I, I don't have to. Greg kind of, kind of answered that. But I, I want, I have a 5X shirt on the way.

Brian, it's going to be a little, it's going to be a little snug, but it's on the way.

Oh, I'd rather I'm going to make you a custom shirt. And I am for y'all getting a fetch shirt, it needs to happen.

Isn't that amazing? So I, I, the coffee mug is good enough, but there's nothing, Brian, you take a look at that Lantern Rescue site, you know, no offense, I'm against coins. And the reason I'm against coins is coins used to mean something, now everybody gives out coins, right? So, you know, the wilderness girls came and I bought some mint cookies at the front door and she flipped me a coin. But the other thing is something like a message shirt that brings somebody right back down to what you do for a living. I love that. And that's the cheapest form of advertising. I think is having a person that's out there wearing your, I don't know, it's not called bling anymore, Brian, wearing your swag, is it called swag still? I'm so old. But whatever it's called, yes. You guys are making fun of me. Gosh darn it.

I like the idea of the custom shirt though, Gabrielle. Start working on that.

Oh, I am. You have to get a bed sheet though to be big enough and just cut a hole in it, like a poncho, and I'll wear it next time I show up at Liberty.

Make a tuxedo T-shirt.

There you go. What else can, what else do you, yeah, what do you recommend people do? I mean, obviously we're going to put all your stuff up for Lantern and to go to the website and check out everything that you guys are doing. But what is it that you recommend? Because like, when I went through your website, I was like, "Oh, okay, I get it. But this is also different than, than, you know, a typical website for an organization such as this." And you guys aren't mentioning any of the big names or anything, so I won't either. And I don't want to again start talking to like, "Oh, we're going to talk crap on them," because whatever, but they're all out there. We've seen plenty of situations where a non-profit gets real big and gets popular, then you find out like, like less than 10% of the money they collect actually goes to helping anyone and the rest is just creating this mess.

We would do that if we could get people to donate. Yeah.

So, so the idea is, what, what can people do then? I mean, I know supporting you and go to the website, but like I said, it looks very different because it's not, "Hey, feel good, hear someone's story," and, "Look at all the ways." Like, no, this is what we do. These are the people that we've helped. This is how we do it. Like it's very explicit, and I appreciate it. So what, what can people do to help out?

So yeah, I mean, we don't have to definitely say names, but there are ways to look up where non-profits' money goes. If you're going to invest, I say do that. Also look at sustainability models. You'll find out quickly who to donate to and who not to donate to. But yes, we try to be transparent. We're not afraid to ask any questions. I think everything has to come out into the light. That's why we developed the programs that we did. So we have a couple already launched and in the process of launching so that if people do not want to donate or cannot donate or have already shopped, they can join like a freedom dinner and make change in their community. They can, Bags of Hope is coming in November, and that's going to take Bibles and necessary goods to some of the victims as soon as they're rescued in other countries. We're going to have a brand ambassador program launching, other kinds of stuff like that to kind of get people involved here in their community that kind of spreads awareness because though I support Lantern and want to help internationally, I also care about changing the culture here and people's hearts. And part of it is the more people invest and see CSAM pornography, they don't know what they're doing. They continue not looking at anything fair trade, and they just continue down that hole, and it's only making it worse in other countries as well. So I would say learn all of that, learn the basic models of human trafficking, be passionate about it, talk about it, go and share about it, but learn the truth about it. It's not hard to understand, it's just exploitation for force, fraud, or coercion. And learn the red flags. If you're seeing grooming, I know that there can be different forms, but if any grooming involves sexual behavior or manipulation, that's a red flag. Learn it and say something about it.

No, and it's good, and I think a lot, a lot of, like, again, we like talking about this stuff because, you know, parents have concerns and then people get scared. And what happens when people get scared is they overreact or make stupid decisions or go too far. And it's like, look, you're not defining the problem clearly, so you're kind of at a loss here. And that's why we appreciate organizations like yourself that you guys do. So I know everyone listening can find out more on their website and get involved there. Like Greg said, order some, order some, some, some swag or bling, whatever you want.

Let me, let me say something right quick, let me say something real quick.

But order some cool [expletive] on Lantern Rescue, yeah.

No lie, it's been over a year, I still have the brochure on my desk. Thank you both, Gabrielle and Whitney, for coming on. Thanks for what you do with Lantern. And Brian, something you say all the time that I want to repeat here: We always say, "If you see something, say something." But we never say what it is that you're supposed to see and who you're supposed to tell. And now, on this very show, I know when I call or I text or I email, I'm going to get one of you. It's very likely that I'm going to talk to the very person who's on this podcast. And Brian, that gives us a great starting point, doesn't it? I mean, that opens, yeah, it's access for a really, really powerful conversation. So thanks.

Well, thanks again for coming on. Thanks everyone for listening. Please share the episode with your friends if you enjoyed it, and don't forget that training changes behavior.