Lantern Rescue - Psychological Bondage

This is Stu Epperson from the Truth Talk Podcast, connecting current events, pop culture, and theology, and we're so grateful for you that you've chosen the Truth Podcast Network. It's about to start in just a few seconds. Enjoy it, and please share it around with all your friends.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for choosing the Truth Podcast Network. Somebody who's accepted in that area, who can wander in and out through those yards, and he will send a secret private message to those kids saying, do not be alarmed when this occurs. Some people coming to help you.

Sometimes he doesn't say anything. I've seen both faces. I've seen the face of a child who clearly knew we were coming and was excited for that moment to the ones who are looking at us in shock as well. Welcome to Lantern Rescue, a ministry program dedicated to bringing light into the darkness of human trafficking. It's time to light the way to freedom. This is Lantern Rescue. We tell the stories, we talk about rescues, and we empower you to do something about it. William Wilberforce once said, let it not be said I was silent when they needed me.

This is Lantern Rescue. It has horrendous effects, right? Yeah, you know, there's a lot of different ways that traffickers use manipulation to keep control of their victims. You know, there's still this common misconception that victims of human trafficking are only kidnapped victims that are held in chains and cages somewhere in a basement. And it's really hard for people to understand that a lot of the victims, the majority of them, are moving around in day-to-day life, and it's hard for people to understand why they wouldn't just call the police or run away. And we just kind of wanted to talk about why that doesn't happen and why it takes someone else and a third party to come in and show them the way to freedom because of the manipulations their traffickers use to maintain control of them.

Yeah, so, Mark, can you take us into one of those situations a little bit? Yes, and my main thought this morning with this show is really this, is that almost, in my experience, almost half of the rescues in my life, including from ISIS to local traffickers within a country, the girls, those who are being abused, are often, they almost refuse to cooperate because of the psychological bondage that they're under and the way that they've been manipulated and the threats that are placed in their life. And they're so isolated from other connections sometimes that they lose touch with what's real.

You know, and like the stats that I read this week, understanding that, and I believe this to be 100 percent true, that 88 percent of these girls hear from their traffickers that I will take care of you, that I love you, and they're going to buy them items. And so that psychological bondage that Ren is referring to is always present, you know, not that internationally we don't work in environments where people are the sign of bondage is also sometimes, you know, ropes and things like that. But that's not always present. What is always present is the psychological factor. Right.

So, Ren, can you give us some of those? Yeah. So one of the first cases that comes to mind was a case that we were working last year, and the victim's name in this case was Carly. And she had a very young daughter that she had actually had with her trafficker when she was young. And Carly was over 18. She was in her 20s, early 20s, still very young. And every night the trafficker would take her child and hold it against her and not return the child to her until she made enough money working the streets for him. And a lot of people would think, you know, why didn't you just take the kid and run? Why didn't she do this? Why did she do that?

She didn't have any resources. The trafficker was the father of the child and could report it as being kidnapped and missing. And the trafficker had made her believe that the cops were going to abuse her worse than he would. That if she went to the cops, that he would turn her in for being a sex worker, and then she would never see her kid again. And he really had this control over her of this child. And she's a mother.

I think a lot of mothers can relate. She just wanted what was best for her child and didn't want to be separated. And for her that meant that she had to do this thing, and she truly just didn't see the other side that we would be there to help her. She honestly believed. And it took multiple interactions with her before we were able to free her because she honestly believed that we were not there to help her, that we were the enemy, and that her trafficker was the only person in the world that cared about her even though he was doing this horrible thing of forcing her into sex work and holding her child against her.

That's unthinkable. T.C., have you got a story that comes to your mind? I do, and I also have a thought about coercion. The coercion that anybody receives, whether it's domestic violence or things like that, is based on the real need that the person who's being coerced, the victim, is in need of safety and of some sort of comfort.

And the traffickers or the perpetrators offer that in small amounts and in real, general ways to keep that person coming back or take that person on the hooks, so to speak. My story took place in a country where we were raiding establishments looking for illegal activity in the trafficking arena, and we had run into this one place. It was in all-time Florida. It was dark. There was lots of lights and music, very loud environment.

The team was not able to communicate or anything like that. As we went through with the government officials there, we tried to identify very young-looking individuals. In this particular case, we did identify this one young lady.

She sat there. We actually held lights over her and asked for identification. She was incapacitated to drugs and alcohol, to the point that we actually had to help her stand up.

She had no idea where she was. We actually had to help her all the way to the vehicle to get her out of there. And that sort of manipulation is, as Mark has said, is often the case. The one that you were talking about before the show, Mark, that kind of just blew my mind is one time there was a young lady that went into shock, actually, was what you described. Yeah, you get multiple reactions to the rescue operation, and it always is revealing of how much control, whether it's through drugs and manipulation of the mind and threats, how much control that an owner or pimp or club owner has over these girls, because their reaction will sometimes be that they are so scared to cooperate with you that the actual rescue op is traumatic. We are pulling them out of a very threatening environment where they have been in possession of individuals, primarily one individual. And often when they finally get away from that for a moment, shock will set in.

I try to put myself into their heads to know, but I cannot. But I saw, I remember a particular girl, we were going into a shop, a shop owner, a lady had possession of her along with some younger girls. They had a bed in the back of this very small shop. The bed's only purpose was for people to come 24-7, buy one of these girls, go into that little bed with a curtain that pulled around and do whatever.

And when we found them, they were all on that bed, removed them out. That girl, you could tell, was reluctant because she was afraid of the owner who had probably placed many threats on her. And then once she got in the vehicle, she began to shake uncontrollably. She just, ultimately, we actually had to stop our caravan, our movement, get out on the street, lay her out, and handle a shock. She was going into shock. I was ready to put an IV in her.

She was at that point. And that's that psychological factor playing out, that manipulation of this young girl in control of her. So, wow, I knew that you were part of the medical aspect of this, Mark, but I had no idea. So you literally have those kind of things where you could put an IV in somebody if they were necessary?

We do, yeah. You know, not just for the girls and the children, but also ourselves. So, Wren, as we think about these different forms of manipulation, you know, what is, we are listeners, is there something there we should be aware of that perhaps we're not? You know, I think the main thing to be aware of is just that you can be encountering people in your everyday life that are victims of some sort, whether that's human trafficking, domestic violence, whatever it might be in their home life or what they're going through on the day to day. And a lot of people are very good at putting on a face that something's not wrong. And a lot of people assume that the only way you're going to spot a trafficking victim is if they're starved and bruised and they're, you know, running naked through the streets because they just escaped a cage in someone's basement. And that's just not the reality of the vast majority of cases.

You know, traffickers want their product to be marketable, so they're not going to beat them on the regular, at least not in places that show. These victims are able to move around society and they're not held in cages. And that's hard for people to understand because for them, you know, everyone thinks if I got taken, I would run the first chance I got.

You know, that's easy to say until you're actually in this situation. And a lot of these victims are not kidnapped. They go quote unquote willingly. You know, the traffickers start this manipulation very early. They convince them, you know, they're their boyfriend or they care about them.

They're going to get them this good job, whatever it is. A lot of these victims feel like they can't leave because they've chosen to be there. And that's just not the case.

These traffickers are masters at manipulation and they're able to maintain control and it's very difficult for someone to get themselves out of that situation. So just be aware of your surroundings. Be aware of the attitude of people around you. And if someone don't look at their body for signs of abuse, look into their eyes for that. Wow. And TC, can you think of another situation where you looked in their eyes and that's what you saw?

Well, that's exactly right. There is zero chance that any of the listeners have not met somebody who has been coerced, abused, or psychologically held, so to speak. And I would say that there's a fairly large percentage of your listeners who are actually in that situation themselves. My thoughts on this are that we have been coerced and been coercing since the garden of Adam and Eve were coerced and they have been coercing ever since. There's a bit of coercion in all of us and so it's too easy to do to try to manipulate and move people with games that we play to get them to do what we want. In my law enforcement career, it would be mostly domestic violence and I have seen it hundreds of times, literally hundreds of times, this kind of coercion and manipulation.

Yeah, wow, Mark. I was thinking that Jesus said one time to the Pharisees, you're responding to your father, right? Because they'd gotten into such coercion by Satan that their father, you know, they felt like this guy's my father, right? And I'm sensing that from these victims, that their sense of security, right? Like, you know, we would have from our earthly father would be the kind of security that they're looking for from their abuser. It's amazing, the manipulation of the mind that can be brought to something that's untrue, a person can be convinced that this is true.

You know, just like we in our walk, sometimes, you know, we know something's wrong but we participate in a level that then we convince ourselves that it's right. The mind is extremely powerful and, you know, I referred to ISIS earlier in the show how much, you know, we saw and knew about in America and I personally saw, you know, on the front that they manipulated the minds of their victims and those they held hostage. That same control factor is present in human trafficking. In the exploitation of these girls and young boys, that is present. That same control factor is there.

It's not that ISIS knew how to do something and the rest of the world doesn't. This is what perpetrators do. Wow, we got a lot more of this manipulation and control and seeing how Satan really even has these traffickers, they don't know, they're duped worse than perhaps what they're doing. Guess they're going to pay, you know, they're going to be held accountable.

So we got a lot more. Lantern Rescue, stay tuned. Lantern Rescue is a USA-based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former US Special Operation law enforcement and intelligence personnel to partner with host nations and assist them in creating specialized units to combat ongoing security problems, such as genocide, terrorism, and human trafficking.

As a nonprofit charity, they offer services free of charge to their host nations. Human trafficking has grown into the second largest criminal activity in the world, reaching an estimated $150 billion in annual activity. Lantern Rescue has developed rapidly to combat trafficking. Lantern operates through a trained international network in order to rescue women and children from sex and labor slavery and facilitates holistic aftercare services. They're gearing up for operations right now, and you can go to lanternrescue.org to see how you can support them financially. Welcome back to Lantern Rescue, and we always want to indicate you can go to lanternrescue.org and find out more about the team, how you can pray for them. You know, if you feel led to contribute, they're fixed to leave out of town. Shortly after this recording, you get to hear them on Saturday, and we really need to be praying for protection as they head out to fight these forces of evil that we're hearing about that just seem totally unbelievable. But TC, can we revisit the young lady that, when you first encountered her, was just totally inebriated?

Yeah, we can. I mean, for somebody like her, by the time she is coming out of whatever toxins she's going to hear from themselves, the truth of the matter is once she's delivered from what she was a part of, she can actually see that some of the lies that have been told to somebody like her are now revealed as just bad lies, and they're actually people that want to help. A lot of people want to help, and so, you know, that spell, that bondage is broken.

I think Mark has a similar case. Yeah, TC, that's such a rememberable rescue operation, that particular girl, because of the way the mind progressed into a safe area, and we got to see it. So we're making everyday visits on this girl.

She's 13 years old. As TC said, she went from complete control and possession of someone else to now a free space, and now she is seeing love, care, and concern from a different way. And now she's recognizing that, man, what I was in was not right, and this is. And then the smile begins to come. And for our listeners, who I wish could not just see the awful crimes that we see, that's not what I really want you to see. We'd love for you to see the response a few days later, a month later, or however long it takes for that individual, just the smile that was on her face and the recognition that, man, I'm in a way better place.

These people really do love me and really are buying the things that I need and trying to help me quickly get into a place, a good place, and have a future. And those are great photo ops, and we catch those smiles, and those are great memories that we can have among a lot of other harsher memories. Those are the nice ones. Those are the ones that we like to hang on to. And, you know, even if I go back to the girl that was shaking uncontrollably, and got her to a place where she's calmed down, and then got her into her new care, and that situation took a little bit longer for her.

I'll remember that. And it wasn't until she experienced the love and care of actually a family that she was united with did she finally break through that psychological manipulation of her mind and the control that she had been under for a length of time, and it fell away. It is a real bondage, and that's what we're talking about on this show today. Yeah, Erin, there's some aspects, especially this drug and alcohol thing that you guys see that really are surprising. Yeah, so traffickers often use drugs to make their victims more willing to participate, but that's not the only thing they use it for. They can also, you know, if a girl tries to run or she says she's going to call the cops or whatever, traffickers can turn that around on them and say that they're going to call the cops on them because they have drugs on them, or they're wanted for whatever crime that the trafficker might have forced them to do. So them calling the police isn't as easy as picking up the phone, as you might think.

They've been manipulated to believe that not only is the cop the enemy, but that they're going to get arrested and taken to jail, and their trafficker is still going to be walking the streets doing his thing and whatever they want. So that's another way that the traffickers really maintain control over them, and we've seen that all over the world. That happens here in the United States. It happens in other countries. You know, there's victims everywhere, and this is a very common tactic that they use.

Hey, Wren, TC, this is Mark. How about the fact that how many people we have rescued who their trafficker is a police boss, is a government official? You know, is in control of that environment. So now they're in a place, too, where, you know, you've got a police boss who owns the club that is working you, and is also giving you that threat that Wren just talked about, like, hey, you know, any issues with you, I know what you're doing, and we'll turn them over into authorities. They're in a very hopeless situation from their perspective.

You know, not from ours, but from their perspective, they're in a complete hopeless situation. Oh, yeah. I mean, how many times did we raid that prime minister's daughter's house, you know? Yeah.

Yeah. And also, the one I remember that was a police boss, too. He showed up with his thugs and then took pursuit of us. You know, we had a pursuit issue. We thought for sure it was going to be guns-a-blazing, you know, in a short moment, and praise the Lord for his intervention. It's amazing. Go ahead, TC.

I'm going to double down on what Mark said real quick. That's one of the absolutely critical things that Lantern does when we go overseas, and that is to train up the officers that we work with, the government officials that we work with, so that there isn't that kind of corruption, that we literally fight corruption by training these guys and girls to run to this work and to actually show the local folks that there is real, honest to God, law enforcement somebody on their side, trained to deliver them from these circumstances. Yeah. Yeah, we've been so blessed and impressed with the agents that we have trained in the countries we work in. God has protected us from those who mean us harm, who are, you know, and there are some. There are some that we have questions about. We're like, nah, that guy's on the Charlie team, and he's staying at the vehicle. You know, we just don't, you know, fully, but, you know.

I think I just heard some code that I was not aware of. So he's on a part of, I'm sorry, he's on part of the operation that's divided into different units, and he's in a place where. Right, I got it.

The Charlie team. He's sitting in the bench. He's sitting in the bench. Thank you, that's what he's doing.

He's sitting in the bench. He's wearing a uniform, but nobody. That is something that I want to say something about, though, is we talk about how brave our operators, our foreign law enforcement partners are all the time, and I think people might think that it's only because they're living in the same world as the traffickers, but you have to think, like, these law enforcement officials in other countries, they're not only under threat from the traffickers on the streets, but there's people within their own police departments that are corrupt and that are doing this kind of stuff. So these people are just, they're just incredibly brave, and I'm just so proud of our operators. Yeah, because, you know, they too have bought certain lives, I'm sure, if you're sitting there working on that police team and you're working under the corruption, and you're as hopeless when you see that going on, you know, with stuff going on right in front of you that undoubtedly you didn't get in law enforcement unless you wanted to be of service to your people.

Yeah, the average law enforcement in third-world countries is probably making $200 to $400, right? They're already at a great risk, you know, because of the nature of the environment they're in in their country. And then we come in to train them and ask them to do even more dangerous operations and work. And so that's why it's also important that they see our faith, you know, they know who we are and that we're there as volunteers, you know. That we feel passionate about this, not just because it's an injustice, but because it's a crime not against those girls, but against God and His creation, you know. And we communicate that, you know, TC and Alan Wren, we communicate that, and others who, you know, part of our team, we communicate that to those policemen.

And that instills a level of hope that once was hopelessness, now they have hope and they're like, there can be something better, you know. And we get to be part of that. And I just, you know, I'm so thankful. I'm so thankful.

And I would think if I was in their shoes and somebody like TC or Alan is a big guy, you know, clearly with a law enforcement background, like you speak their language even though you don't speak their language. Yeah. You know, I got to tell you a quick, quick, funny story.

Okay. We are, we're in a country that is in complete riots and there's two local, two foreign assets in front of us. And I'm sitting in the middle row.

TC and Alan are actually, they're in another vehicle. And I'm listening to these two talk and I can make out through what they're saying is they're like, they're saying, you know what our country needs? We need 10 Allens.

If we could just have 10 Allens, he would go and clean up all our streets. I mean, they were serious. They were so serious. They were having this real serious conversation at one a.m. in the morning. You know, we're driving to the X, I mean, driving to a place that we, you know, we're gonna do a rescue and they're having the conversation. If we just had 10 Allens, it would fix it all.

I can see that, you know, it would be like, you know, everybody could use a Superman. And he's not with us today. So I'm glad we got to at least talk about himself. But I think, TC, the spiritual aspect of this is so clear, like, oh, my goodness, in my own life, why don't I go to the authorities? Why do I refuse to take this to Jesus? You know, why is it that I'm, you know, going to stay in this kind of bondage? And this is stuff that like, wow, I want to see revival in these people over there in third world countries.

How about revival in Robbie? You know, that's kind of an important thing. Absolutely. That's a perfect thought. Literally, Jesus said the truth will set you free. And so we believe the lives of Satan as our ancestors have. And we do. We literally, when we buy those lives, we place ourselves almost like the program's progress.

We literally lock ourselves in. And all we have to do is believe the truth of the Word of God. And that bondage can be broken. We believe the lie. If you tell somebody, if you confess this sin, people are going to hate you, laugh at you. And none of that is true. Jesus clearly says you need to confess to one another.

And that's when those chains are broken, and it's absolutely true. Well, Robbie, thanks again. And I'm going to wrap the show, I think, a little bit by just one. I wanted to thank the Truth Network.

I wanted to thank American Family Radio. This show is, we're raw. I mean, you know, there's tons of shows out there and things with PhDs. Not that we're not well educated among our group, but that can talk a lot about, you know, can talk about the issue. And so what's raw about our show is that we stumble through as operators to share with you guys, you know, a little bit of everything, particularly, you know, the view that we have, you know, in our type of operations.

And it can look different in a lot of countries. But so I just want to thank our donors. I really want to thank our listeners for jumping in. And one thing we'd love for you to sign up on our newsletter. You know, it is a great way to stay connected to us and to go to our website and then look for that.

How do I put my email in? And I know people get a ton of emails and we're not going to we're not going to send you an email every week. That's not us at all.

So we're probably going to send you one, you know, one or one and a half, essentially a month. And that keeps you in touch with us. So thank you, Truth Network. Thank you, Robbie, because you you jumped in on this whole thing with us, man, when we didn't.

We were like, we need a moderator. And I really appreciate you and your crew. Well, it's been more than an honor, believe me, to see what God's really doing through this and through our listeners. And as you guys head out, you know, we want to be praying. Alan, TC, Mark and Wren, you know, Wren is going to be, you know, sort of operationally involved while the three of you guys are actually over in country as she's continuing in her law pursuits, which is awesome. And so, you know, I you guys were high on my list because I'm anxious to hear we're going to be bringing some live episodes from the field coming up. So stay tuned next week. In the meantime, let's be praying. This is the Truth Network.