When Rebecca Bender's boyfriend turned out not to be a boyfriend at all, but instead a human trafficker, Rebecca's life had already taken a downward spiral. She was a single parent, now she was a drug addict, a victim of domestic violence, and desperate. My mom had shown up to take my daughter from me. She thought I'd just become a drug addict.
No one knew I was being trafficked. I don't think any small-town family thinks human trafficking, right? You think something's wrong with Becky.
That's what they would say. Something's wrong. Is she on drugs? Is she in domestic violence?
Everyone thought domestic violence because I was being beaten, but no one realized that it was to keep me in compliance. This is Family Life Today. Our hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.
I'm Bob Lapine. We'll hear Rebecca Bender's story today and hear how God delivered her from the desperation she was in. Stay with us. And welcome to Family Life Today.
Thanks for joining us. I don't think you guys have had a chance to hear this today, what we're going to hear. I recently listened to an interview that Kim Anthony, who has a podcast that's a part of the Family Life Podcast Network, called Unfavorable Odds. Kim is telling stories, introducing us to people who have in the middle of very difficult life circumstances found hope and redemption and help and healing. She interviewed Rebecca Bender recently, and Rebecca's story is—it's one of those stories that this is happening all around us, but we don't see it.
We don't know it. It's a story of being trafficked, being led into prostitution, how she got trapped in that, how she didn't have any hope of getting out of that, and how God met her in the midst of that. And what you guys are going to hear and what our audience is going to hear really is a remarkable story of redemption. And I think we have to remember as we listen to this, whatever the desperate circumstances people are in, there is no circumstance that is beyond God's ability to step in and to rescue and redeem. Yeah, and this story from the little I know is a testament to that. I mean, just as I looked at the details, I'm like, only God could take this life from the pit and do what God does. Only God can do this.
And it's also a reminder that God can take our mess and make it our message. And I think that's what's happened with Rebecca. Well, you're going to hear that today as we pick up the interview, and this went on for maybe almost an hour and a half.
You listen to the podcast, you can listen to the entire interview. But Rebecca met a guy. They became boyfriend and girlfriend. They moved from her hometown to Las Vegas. Everything was moving forward in their relationship.
She was not following Christ. And one night he suggested they try a game, and that game was that she would sleep with somebody else, and they would make money doing it. And that was the introduction that ultimately led to this being the regular practice. This is how they made money. He was trafficking his girlfriend as a way to make money. And she was trapped in it because she was dependent on the money she was making in order to survive.
And that's where Kim picks the story up as we listen to this excerpt from her podcast. This is a man who was telling you that he loved you, yet he was selling you to other men. Did that ever raise a red flag for you?
Absolutely. I mean, I think that's partly why he got sick of me constantly crying and saying, this isn't what you promised me. I can actually remember a time we would get in physical fights quite a bit, and a domestic violence call had been called on our apartment. And I can remember once he slapped me across the face, and he left. And I remember just falling to the floor in the kitchen and just crying. And I wiped my mouth, and I saw blood on my hand. And I remember thinking, what more can I do to make him love me? I've crossed lines I never crossed. I've done things I swore I've never done. This wasn't what he promised me.
He calls it the game, but this isn't a game to me. Like, this is my life. And later on, when I finally met Jesus, I can remember the first time within the first few months of getting saved, the Lord brought that memory to my mind of sitting on the kitchen floor.
And I remember hearing the voice of God say to me, that's how I feel about you. What more can I do to make you love me? I've given my life to the point of being crucified on a cross.
What more can I do to make you love me? And I just, I wept because I would never want to give Jesus the same kind of heartbreak that I know I've felt in my life. Before you met Jesus, how did you cope with living with that lifestyle? I ended up using a lot of drugs and alcohol to cope in the beginning. I became addicted to cocaine by the age of 21. I was a full-blown addict. If my dealer wasn't around or available, I'd resort to any drugs, you know, smoked crack, bent over in the floorboard of a car. I can remember hitting my pretty lowest of low at that moment thinking, I've really crossed some lines.
Like, I don't know in our brain where we make these invisible lines, right? Like, well, I'm not an addict if I don't shoot needles is what I kind of thought in my brain. But then when I'm hunched down in the floorboard of a car smoking crack, I thought, wow, I really am an addict and I need help.
So I definitely self-medicated to cope. Tell me about the night that you and your friend Amy decided to hang out. Do you remember that night?
Oh, yeah. Amy, what we're referring to as Amy, she'd become a friend of mine that was also being trafficked. Her and I used drugs together frequently and my mom had shown up to take my daughter from me. She thought I'd just become a drug addict.
No one knew I was being trafficked. I don't think any small town family thinks human trafficking, right? You think, no, something's wrong with Becky.
That's what they would say. Something's wrong. Is she on drugs? Is she in domestic violence? Everyone thought domestic violence because I was being beaten, but no one realized that it was to keep me in compliance. So my mom had taken my daughter and I felt at that moment like I had no other reason to live. And I tried to kill myself twice.
The second time was with Amy. I purposefully tried to overdose to kill myself. I just thought, I just want to go home to Jesus. Maybe everything would be better in heaven. And I thought, my daughter's with my mom now, so she's safe.
I just didn't feel like I had any more reason to live and I couldn't figure out a way out. Did you know Jesus at this time? My grandma was a praying grandma. She took me to Sunday school when I was a little girl. If I'd spend weekends with her, she was always in charge of the vacation Bible school in our town. So I would go to VBS every summer.
She would take me to Awanas. I can remember memorizing verses as a spark for Jesus, spark delights the world. I can remember that still to this day. I was like six and here I am 38 and can still remember the song.
So clearly it works. So yeah, I mean, I had a view of Jesus. I probably was a little bit skewed. My parents never went to church. My parents weren't living for the Lord, but my grandma didn't.
My praying grandma really made a difference in my life for sure. But they don't teach you about Rahab and Tamar. They don't teach you that in Sunday school.
They're teaching you much more age-appropriate stories. So I didn't realize that Jesus loved girls like me. He loved Mary Magdalene. He trusted Rahab. He loves girls like me.
I didn't know it. I felt so ashamed that God would never love people like me anymore. I was unsure how to even change some of my behaviors or mindset. So I just kept crying out with Amy and I just wanted to go home. And I kept trying to overdose on drugs and I eventually blacked out. I don't really remember how I got to the hospital, but I woke up in a hospital and they thought that my brain was hemorrhaging, that I had overdosed and they wanted to do a CAT scan. And I just remember thinking, I'm going to get in trouble from my trafficker.
And so I ripped the monitors out and they made me sign an AMA against medical advice that if I died that they wouldn't be held liable. And I woke up several days later in the back of a car. I can remember waking up feeling like I couldn't breathe, like you're in a hot vehicle. I could only imagine like how animals might feel if you're locked in a hot car. So that's how I remember waking up, just like gasping for breath in this really hot, stuffy car in Las Vegas.
And whatever time of year it was, I don't even remember. And I never had any medical problems since. I don't know what happened. I don't know if Jesus healed me.
I don't know if he stopped me from dying. All I know was the doctors were concerned and I woke up three days later in the back of a car, healthy and fine and ready to get help. Ready to get help.
So who did you turn to for that help? I called my mom and I said, okay, I'm ready to go to rehab. And I believe my mom and my grandma, maybe my aunt, I'm sure, collaborated, got me a list of rehabs.
And there was a list of several rehabs that they gave me over the phone. I wrote down on a piece of paper, and one of them was a Christian rehab. And I thought, I ain't going to no Christian rehab. I remember saying, these Christians ain't got a clue what life on the streets is like.
I ain't doing it. And nowhere had vacancy but the Christian rehab. That's just how God works everywhere. No vacancy everywhere I called. So you went back to Oregon. And you went to Victory Outreach, was it? Yep, I went back to Oregon. I left. I just left it all. I left every couch, every piece of clothing. I just packed up a bag.
I left my vehicle in the airport parking. And I just remember leaving a voicemail to my quote unquote boyfriend saying, I can't do this. This isn't a game to me. This is my life.
This isn't what you promised me. I'm going to go get clean. I got to get my daughter back. I think he was pretty happy to let me go.
I was kind of the trouble girl out of everyone he had, just because I was so in love and I was so hurt that I made that known. And I left a voicemail for my drug dealer that I wasn't coming back either. Those were the two calls I made and left everything sitting there and went to Victory Outreach. And you encountered God there, didn't you? I had a radical encounter with God that changed my life. I was radically delivered from drugs in the blink of an eye at the altar, which I know is not everybody's experience.
And I'm so grateful. You hear stories, but you don't really know that. Okay, that's good for you.
That's not how it works in the rest of our world. You know, I've heard stories like that. And so to have it actually happen, I got delivered probably first of 2003. So 16 years clean and sober.
Never desired to use drugs or smoke cigarettes ever again. Well, we've been listening to an excerpt from Kim Anthony's podcast, Unfavorable Odds, an interview she did with Rebecca Bender. And again, I'll remind our listeners if you'd like to hear the entire conversation, and it is riveting, go to familylifetoday.com and the complete podcast is available there. It was interesting to hear her say, when you are in this lifestyle, I mean, we'd all look and say, well, why don't you just step away? And it's not that easy. I have a friend that grew up in Detroit that was trafficked in Detroit. And she's come to know Jesus. I've been mentoring her for several years.
And that same question came to my mind, couldn't you just walk out? But it's so complicated. There's so many things that are going on that I don't think any of us really understand the magnitude of the hurt, of the addiction, of the pain, of the fear that's going on in these women's lives. And I think it's also interesting, Rebecca talks about being healed. And yet healing sometimes is a moment, many times it's a life. She's going to continue to be healed as she goes forward, as we'll hear.
She was healed from drugs and from alcohol and from cigarette smoking, but she met another guy and what she thought was maybe going to be a different kind of relationship wound up being the same kind of relationship she had been in before and was back into being trafficked. So was this new place your ticket out? Man, this place ended up being worse than I had ever, ever seen or experienced. So intense brainwashing and so much extreme violence. I'd been beaten so much that I had my face broken in five places, my palate cracked, my nose twice, my maxillofacials and my turbinates impounded.
Actually, I'd have surgery several years ago because I wasn't equalizing when flying, so I would have lots of pain when flying. I didn't even know that this kind of abuse happened other than on movies. It was very extreme. And I started to feel like I was going crazy.
Living in that kind of fear really affects your psychology. I felt like this guy's following. I'd get out the car and try to check my mirrors. I was so paranoid.
I thought cameras are in my car. He would tell me conversations that I'd have in private. He would repeat to me, which made me think he was listening or following.
He would randomly show up where I was, made me think he had a tracking device. I mean, it was extreme. And I thought, I'm going crazy. I have got to get out of this. I literally felt like my mind was slipping away from me. I started feeling like, I feel like I'm going crazy. I don't know how to get out of this. I feel really, really trapped. One night, I just remember beating my head against the floor. We had this marble bathroom, and I just remember beating my head against the floor, feeling like I'm going crazy. I don't know how to get out of this anymore.
This was really extreme. Whereas before, I was trapped from love. I was in these mental chains from love, and now I'm physically being abused daily. My brain is slipping away, and I don't know how to get out of this anymore. Did you ever think about Jesus and the relationship you had developed with Him during these times?
Absolutely. My first time back, right after I had left Victory Outreach, I can remember actually feeling like I could actually see the demonic a little bit in people, like their faces shifted when they would buy me. I can remember one guy having, I felt like these really pointy teeth. It's kind of weird.
I know that might freak people out. That didn't last very long, though, if I'm honest. It lasted about a day or two, and I must have grieved the Spirit. But I can remember praying over myself. Victory Outreach is a Pentecostal church. I can remember going full Pentecostal. I'm buying the Spirit of Rage in the name of Jesus, and I'm loosing the Spirit of Peace over my own. I would pray like that over myself while being trafficked. And I just imagined that Jesus was sitting next to me in the car, and I just felt like I don't know what to do anymore, God. Like, I don't know how to get out of this.
I've gotten myself into some stuff, man, that's real dangerous, and I don't know what to do. And He showed up again. He always comes through. I'm so grateful.
Just what a mighty God we serve, man. How did He show up, Rebecca? In 2006, the feds raided the Dallas home that the other victims were in there. They had warrants for my trafficker and the wife-in-law that had recruited me. They had a warrant for their arrest, but they weren't there.
They were in Vegas. So at that point, we knew the feds had been watching us. They took the other two women in. They were hoping to build a case of trafficking against our trafficker in hopes that the victims would talk.
But everyone was way too afraid and way too brainwashed or traumatized, so no one would talk. At that point, we learned from those women being released on bail and starting to begin a potential plea deal for whatever charges were going to stick. We knew that they had been surveillancing us for 18 months. They had been badging our trash man, pulling our trash man over at the end of our street and taking our trash and digging through it for evidence. And my trafficker at that point started getting very paranoid, like, oh, the feds are watching you.
Right? Like, imagine that sinking in and thinking, like, this is serious. Like, the feds are after you.
This is no joke. Like, I'm going to lose my baby to the state. I'm going to end up in prison.
I can't do this. I got to figure this out. And that was real scary. Rebecca, how did you get out?
Well, my trafficker was sentenced to 24 months in prison for tax evasion. He had a self surrendered date that was coming up, and he ended up violently attacking the little boy in the home. And I remember rushing my daughter to her room and shutting her in and saying, don't come out till mommy comes and gets you. And then I called my aunt who worked at a domestic violence shelter. I told her what happened. And she said, that's going to happen to your little girl. And I said, no, no, he loves her. And she said, she's seven and compliant.
And at 15, when she talks back for the first time, that will happen to your little girl. And that hit me. I knew she was right.
I knew as soon as you disrespected or said something, you weren't supposed to say that you would be hurt. And so I packed up everything I could as soon as he left to go tell his mom he was going to prison for tax evasion. And I grabbed my girl and ran.
I asked my mom to put our plane tickets on her credit card, which she of course did. But it made me think later on when I started getting involved in anti trafficking work. It made me think about all the young women or young people out there who don't have a mom to call. A huge percentage of trafficked people in our country come from foster care.
In my state, in the state of Oregon, 95% of trafficked teens have been in foster care since age two. They don't have anyone to call. They don't have anywhere to go. And I think that's why anti trafficking efforts are so valuable because there are people who want to run.
There are people that need to run and have a moment when they can. But they don't know who to call and they don't know where to go. And we need the people of God to rise up and help become defenders and protectors of our widows and our orphans, right?
Yeah. So for those young women who are listening right now, who are being trafficked, where should they go? What should they do if they don't have a family or a mother to call? If someone's listening that's been trafficked right now, I would tell you, you're not alone.
You don't have to live like this. There are actually hundreds, if not thousands of advocates out there right now in this army to fight sex for sale that have been fighting for you, that value you, that know you're important and you're loved and there's resources. I know it's hard, but just like grab your suitcase and run, man, and call the 1-800 Human Trafficking Hotline, which is 1-888-3737-888. You can also text HELP to BE FREE.
Well, again, we've been listening to a conversation that Kim Anthony had on her podcast Unfavorable Odds with Rebecca Bender, and Rebecca has written a book that shares her story of being trafficked. The book is called In Pursuit of Love. It's a book that we've got on our website at FamilyLifeToday.com, along with the toll-free number that Rebecca just mentioned and the text information. I'll just give the number again. It's 888-3737-888, or you can text the word HELP to 233733.
That's BE FREE. And if you listen to the entire interview, which, again, is available on our website as well, you learn that Rebecca is married, she is raising her kids, and you hear about the conversation she had with her boyfriend, who is now her husband, where she had to say, this is my past, and how that went, and what it meant for her to open up and be honest about that. And to hear that a woman like Rebecca can have a new life brings hope. I mean, you hear the story and you think there's only going to be darkness at the end of this, and there's light, and Jesus actually can do that in all of our lives if we take a step toward Him. Well, I think I get a little fiery about it, because I think, oh, we need to be praying, because this is going on in our country, and people aren't talking about it, and they're starting to acknowledge it. But we need to be praying that God will set these women free.
Yeah. Well, again, you can go to our website, familylifetoday.com, to listen to Kim Anthony's entire podcast interview with Rebecca Bender. It's the Unfavorable Odds podcast. You'll find a link on our website at familylifetoday.com. There's information about Rebecca's ministry, about her book. All of that's available at familylifetoday.com. If you have any questions, we can help you. Give us a call at 1-800-FL-TODAY, 1-800-358-6329.
That's 1-800-F as in family, L as in life, and then the word TODAY. And we hope you have a very good weekend. Hope you can join us back on Monday.
We're going to talk about how to raise daughters who are confident in who they are, especially when the culture is trying to press them into who they ought to be. Maria Furlough is going to join us to talk about that. We hope you can be here as well. I want to thank our engineer today, Keith Lynch, along with our entire broadcast production team.
On behalf of our hosts, Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Bob Lapine. Have a great weekend. We'll see you Monday for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a production of Family Life of Little Rock, Arkansas, a crew ministry. Help for today. Hope for tomorrow.
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