Child Rescue Coalition

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Simply go to Geico.com or contact your local agent today. This is the Truth Network. The following program contains sensitive content. Listener discretion is advised. Previously on Lantern Rescue. We started sharing about the diseases and the physical problems they're having and the emotional toll it has taken on them. And they just broke down and sobbed. I think all but one, we all ended up holding them while they just sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. They are so broken and destroyed. And the one girl said it very well. She said, my body's not the same and my emotions are not the same. It's all broken. Everything is completely broken.

And that's very devastating. Let it not be said I was silent when they needed me. This is Lantern Rescue. Welcome to Lantern Rescue and I think we have a really special opportunity today to hear from somebody that's heart and soul is in this child rescue coalition, I guess is the best way to put it, right Mark?

Yeah, man. And thanks, Robbie, for your time today and those listening. The thing that people need to know is that, you know, with Lantern or with any organization that's doing the work, it takes a great deal of partnerships and friends and like minded people, the difficulty sometimes trying to find the organization that really does what they say they do and that they're a good partner. And the gentleman that we have on the phone today is a key part of the Children Rescue Coalition.

They are such an involved in the heavy lifting. And I'm excited that we get to collaborate and work together. And I'm really excited about having Glenn on the phone. And Glenn is going to share a little about who he is as an individual and how he got into the fight, because I think that's what our listeners, they like to hear about God's calling and how things worked in their life to bring them into this. So, Glenn, thanks for joining us, man. Hey guys, and hi to all your listeners as well.

Thank you again so much for the invite today. And I'm excited to talk to you and to share some of the collaboration that we're doing. And really just to back you up on that, I would say that any organization that says they have the silver bullet answer to the challenges of child exploitation are either lying to themselves or they're lying to others, because it really is all about teamwork and collaboration in this space. Yeah, that's absolutely wonderful. So it really is that you guys have that and that God's provided the partners for you.

So Glenn, how did you get into the fight? Yeah, so I'm going to try and condense 31 years of law enforcement career for Her Majesty the Queen into just a few minutes. But yeah, I originally was part of Her Majesty's Customs and Excise way back in the day, and was in investigation in the 1990s. So the reason that's relevant to today and relevant actually to child exploitation is the first case that I was involved in involving what we call child sexual abuse material, what's sometimes still referred to in law as child pornography. But what we call child sexual exploitation material, or CSAM, involves a VHS tape.

I'm hoping some of the listeners like me can remember the days of VHS tapes. But what would happen then with those tapes of children being sexually abused would come through the UK border. And then we would intercept those tapes and they'd be passed to us in investigation to do what we would call a controlled delivery. So our job then was to deliver the tape to whoever imported it into the UK, and then trying to figure out well, who imported this tape?

Who made that child abuse material? So why is that relevant to today in 2022? Well, unfortunately, and again, maybe a lot of your listeners won't know this, but we are still working with legislation that was made in the 1990s. And as we all know, the technology has come on many decades, but the legislation is still many decades behind. So the ability for these criminals to access child sexual abuse material is much easier. Of course, all our kids are online. So my career dating back over 30 years is touched on that really old technology of VHS tapes. But the legislation is still based in the 90s.

I think it's important for your listeners to know that. Now, for me, I spent then many years in investigation, investigating serious and organised crime, all aspects of that, whether that would be drug trafficking, money laundering, fraud, gun trafficking, all these types of crimes. But I was fortunate enough to be based in Portugal for six years, doing the liaison role, which basically involved being the UK liaison attaché for law enforcement. So lived in Portugal for that six year period, worked very closely with Portuguese law enforcement. But coming back into how I ended up full time in child protection, there was a case that happened while I was based in Portugal, but it's still basically like a bag of rocks for me to carry with me to this day, because a three year old child was abducted. And we still don't know to this day what happened to that child, but she was taken from a very small resort in the south of Portugal.

And to this day, we don't know what happened to that child. And I think cases like that can really affect you. Wow.

Yeah. So where did that lead you? I mean, what was the result of I mean, I guess you got connected to other people looking into that same kind of thing.

Yeah, so what happened was, Robbie, that case, like I say, we hope it does get resolved. But what happened is, I ended up back in the UK for a few years in the field office within the field office in the north of England. And then I was posted by the UK National Crime Agency, which is a bit like a mix of HSI, DEA, FBI, but just one UK agency.

I was posted overseas again, to here in America where I live now. So back then in 2012, we had something like nine or 10 liaison officers, but nobody had the remit to investigate child sexual abuse cases. So I kind of volunteered to do that work, and began some work in actually in the Caribbean, to build capacity to share knowledge really on what these cases are, and how local law enforcement in the Caribbean can identify these bad actors and rescue kids from the most horrendous abuse.

Wow. And that somehow or another, became Child Rescue Coalition? Well, actually, no, what happened is, while we were doing that work, it was a mixture of my agency, the National Crime Agency, and Homeland Security Investigations, we started an operation called Caribbean Guardian. And we were actually at that time, using leads from what is known as NCMEC, which is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

They get leads from Facebook and Gmail and all the technologies we use. And we were using or trying to use their leads to identify criminals in the Caribbean. So while we were building that strategy with local law enforcement and with the chiefs of police, there was a small organization here in Boca Raton called the Child Rescue Coalition that I was introduced to. I met with them and saw the technology.

And frankly, from that moment forward, that's when I knew I could use this technology to help rescue, really not just hundreds, but thousands of children. So we immediately, if you like, pivoted from those NCMEC leads, which were, frankly harder to work, and not every single one was the child abuse case, whereas every single lead that we produced at the Child Rescue Coalition is a felony level offense. So this is going to be quite shocking for your listeners, I'm afraid, but every single lead that we work involves child sexual abuse of children who are prepubescent, so visually younger than 12, and I'm sorry to say, often much younger than 12, down to the age of toddlers.

Wow, which is kind of the group that originally broke your heart. Yeah, so, yeah, and again, eventually, when you begin to understand the level of criminality, it's actually quite a scary dark pit to look into, but it's something that a light needs shining onto, because I mentioned earlier the drugs trade or any other criminalities, you can think of pretty much as based on one thing, and that is to make money. Whereas, for child sexual abuse, don't get me wrong, sometimes it is involved in making money, but some of these guys, some of these monsters, it's not about making money at all. The money, the currency that they trade on, is the images and videos of children being sexually assaulted, so the currency is the children, and the trade in this horrific material sometimes doesn't even involve a monetary transaction. And I'll say one other thing, Robbie, in terms of, I probably used the wrong word there when I said monsters, because to call these guys monsters makes it seem as if they are not among us in our communities, and that's wrong, and I probably shouldn't have said that, because I think if we think about it this way, what is the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, right?

Making people believe he doesn't exist, well, frankly that's what some of these guys do as well, right? If you think about famous cases like Larry Nassar, well, Larry, Larry Nassar, what a great guy, what a fantastic man, great friend. Well, that's simply, Robbie, because he did what many of these criminals do, sometimes it's the adults that are groomed first for access to children, so it's never going to be a monster or somebody who looks weird. More often than not, it's the most average looking guy, and it normally is guys involved in this crime, and they might seem like the best guy, the best coach, the best teacher, but obviously they live at least two lives, right?

They live that public life, the one that they want everybody to see and believe, and then they live another life, which involves sexually abusing children. And so this technology just becomes a really major tool in this battle, and I understand that that nonprofit has really grown, and the resources, God has really blessed you guys. Yeah, so we're still quite a small nonprofit, but you're right to say that the technology, I mean, it still amazes me to this day, and it's kind of seven or eight years since I first saw it. It's very easy for law enforcement to use. Just before we started today, we were talking previously about the Dominican Republic, so to give you an example of how the technology works, the law enforcement and the Dominican Republic, they receive a three-day training course, and then during that training course, by the third day, they're able to investigate real criminals in their jurisdiction, so based on their license code, which is a license that we give them for free, when they log in any given day, they can see suspects in their jurisdiction and begin an investigation. For cops in France, they see the targets in France. If you're a police officer in Texas, you'll see the targets in Texas and so on and so forth around the world, so very, very clever technology. We're processing tens of millions of records a day, but the actual dashboard itself, by which I mean the user interface that law enforcement uses, is very easy to use.

I'll be honest, Robbie, I couldn't code my way to store them back, so it has to be easy for us cops to use, otherwise we won't use it, if that makes sense. Oh, it's beautiful. Hey, we've got to go to a break, so I know our listeners are very interested in hearing much about how the battle goes on and what we can do and how we can pray for you all, and so we're going to be back in just a moment with a lot more with Glenn with the Child Rescue Coalition.

We'll be right back. Lantern Rescue is a USA-based organization that conducts international rescue operations for people suffering from human trafficking. Lantern specializes in sending former U.S. 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.

The following program contains sensitive content. Listener discretion is advised. Welcome back to the Lantern Rescue and today's special guest, Glenn, with the Child Rescue Coalition. And Mark, you've got a question.

I do because I've been blessed. No, Glenn, and one of the things I admire and respect is just I'm going to tee up the question, and that is, Glenn, you're not just in this fight. Your family's in this. Your wife is active, too, correct? Yeah. So actually, my wife and I met during our law enforcement career. So she was Customs Investigation as well many years ago. But yeah, she also works at Child Rescue Coalition and does an amazing job. And for anybody who goes to our website at childrescuecoalition.org, all of those website updates and the news stories that you guys can see on there, well, my wife loads all of those up and she does many other things as well. So yeah.

Yeah, that's cool. I think that's important. I mean, everybody that I meet, you know, in the network, Robbie, I think it's not an activity, just law enforcement or your background. It's an activity of passion and a calling and people who want to win this fight. And I know that CRC is doing a great job when it comes to winning this fight against CSAM.

But I do want to ask you, Glenn, you've been doing this for a while and you're particularly very focused in the CSAM realm. Are we winning the fight? Do you feel like in the US or what parts of the world because I feel like, you know, I hear how hard the UK is working towards this. Tell us, like, where are we winning this fight? Where are we losing it? How are we winning it some places where we're not others? It's a great question and probably a very complicated set of answers, if I'm honest.

I would say on balance, we're not winning this fight. I think I mentioned earlier about the pace at which technology is changing is so scary that legislation is just so far behind. And there are so many different aspects of this crime. So when we talk about protecting our children, you know what, when I was a kid, when I was 10 or 11 years old, my parents would worry if I was playing football.

I think you guys call it soccer here in the US. And it was getting dark because they knew once I was home, then I was safe in my bedroom. The important thing then was learning how to cross the road. But now, all of our kids have to be proficient at protecting themselves online, right? Because the companies, the technologies that the kids are using these days, the companies have to do zero to protect children.

By which I mean, there's no legislation which compels those companies to protect their users online. By law, they have to report that CSAM material, that child sex abuse material, if they find it, but they don't have to do anything to look for it. Okay, so it's really complex in terms of the different types of criminals who commit this type of abuse, right? Including, again, this is very difficult for people to hear. But, but I think people do need to know the truth, including fathers, and all grandfathers who actually got access to that child because they live with them.

That's the thing nobody wants to hear. But it is the absolute truth. And some of the heroes, some of the law enforcement officers and agents who do this work, using our technology and others, without them, that child is never going to be rescued, right? Because sometimes it's the father who's committing a crime.

That being said, sometimes it's a far more horrific in terms of abusing kids on the other side of the planet for just a few dollars. So the reason I say that is, there are multiple different facets to this crime type. And sometimes people will say, well, what could be done?

Well, there's no one thing that can be done. It needs to be multiple different ways. And I think there are one or two things that all of your listeners, I guess, probably don't know. But you know, compared to one of your listeners, frankly, I will be classed as an expert. But I'll say this, like, I've been doing this as more of a specialty for 10 years.

And most weeks, sometimes more than once a day, I learned something new about it. So I think we all need to be open and open and honest about learning more about this crime type, because there's so many different aspects to it, that to say we're winning, I think would be incorrect. Is there a country that you feel like is taking the lead in legislation of this kind that should be modeled?

Again, another great question. If we were to compare the legislation, almost like a horse race, the Kentucky Derby, I think the UK is, is a horse probably at the front of the race. And then Australia is also looking at some legislation. But no one country has yet passed any convincing legislation that will make the companies do more in this space. So the UK is getting close.

But right now, there's no real country that is at the front, they right now we need to just need to follow this country's model. And part of the reason for that, Robbie is really complicated from a privacy perspective, right? I mean, I used to work for the government, of course, we all want our privacy, right? Constructing legislation, which protects all of our privacy, but allows law enforcement to do their work is very complicated. And unfortunately, a lot of the time, the headlines just go, Oh, you're going to lose your privacy, just through this trial protection, which is not true, you know, there are checks and balances in place. You know, if we want to conduct surveillance on somebody, there's quite likely a lot of paperwork to complete here in the US, it's known as a title three application. application to wiretap somebody's phone, I'm here to tell you that's a complex procedure.

And so it should be. But that doesn't mean everyone's privacy needs to be lost for child protection. It just means we've got to give law enforcement the tools they need. And we've got to have the big tech companies in particular, join with us to lean into this problem so that they can do the maximum possible to protect kids who are using their platforms, right? They're clearly using the data of the kids. Okay, so they need to protect their users as well.

themselves to do that stuff as a leader? Is there one of the tech companies that you feel like is doing something unlike the other tech companies? But I think that's a fantastic analogy. It's the perfect analogy for this area. And I would love to say, yeah, there's a company over there. That's the Volvo equivalent, because I think that would be fantastic.

Frankly, no, there isn't. And worse than that, you know, I mentioned earlier that we, we are a small nonprofit, we survived in part on donor funding, whereas the big tech companies are spending 10s of millions of dollars lobbying in DC, lobbying in Bristol. So I'm sure that same thing went on with the car industry when they don't want to put these guardrails in place, right? But you've got to have safety.

So I think the perfect analogy, and unfortunately, not one company springs to mind in terms of saying, yeah, this is a company that should show the way for the others. Well, it's remarkable. Well, I should point out that if you go to childrescuecoalition.org, what a beautiful website they have. And it says right there front and center that there's 3,240 children rescued, 14,087 predators arrested, 97 countries worldwide.

Those are the impacts and those statistics are out there right now. Is there one of those stories that you could kind of put a face on one of those rescues for us, Glenn, so our listeners could get an idea of how the technology worked towards that? Actually, just to use the Dominican Republic again, because I know that that's close to Sam's heart. So here's an example. One of the cases we had in the Dominican Republic involved law enforcement identifying the location through the use of our free technology. And then what happens is law enforcement get the judicial search warrant, they go to the address.

And then I would say the best cops using our system are the ones who say, hey, thanks, DRC for getting me here. Now it's my job to investigate, right? What else has this guy done?

What else is this guy doing? And in that case, there was a British guy, former sex offender, who was living with a Dominican Republic lady, and he was actually sexually abusing a seven year old who lived there. And of course, that child was saved through the use of this technology. Another quick example, if I can, Robbie, there was a recent case in Canada.

And again, you know, your listeners can scroll through our news page to kind of look at the rest stories. There's a ton in Brazil, they're doing great work. Canada, there was a recent case where the guy was, again, identified through our tech, the cops got there and figured out that this guy had trafficked in an African girl at the age of eight. And she was living there with him. And he'd been raped and active for three years.

She was 11 when they got to the door. And again, for us, that's a real blessing to know, you know what, this technology makes a difference. We put it in the hands of cops, and they go do what cops do best, right? They investigate and they figure out, okay, what else is this guy doing? We've seen this so many times where the cops use our system. And they are doing what we call proactive work.

It's not waiting for that seven year old or 11 year old to make a complaint. It's being proactive and getting to the door of a guy who has a highly illegal sexual interest in children, and is trading some of the most horrific material imaginable. I mean, I'm quite lucky now that I'm not in law enforcement anymore.

But I never have to see or even worse to hear these videos ever again. But I'm here to tell you that the work that these the men and women do to protect other people's children, frankly, is frankly amazing. So hats off to our law enforcement users here in the States and Canada and in the UK and elsewhere that they do an amazing job. I think the toughest job in law enforcement in 46 of 50 states in the US child sex dolls or more probably called child rape dolls are legal. And what that means is, in all of those states, when one of these criminals imports one of those dolls, law enforcement does not get notified. So I would encourage your listeners to write their representative to look at the petition that Child Rescue Coalition has on this subject, and to demand that state laws are changed so that child sex dolls are made illegal. So Hawaii used our campaign and referenced our campaign when they change legislation, it can be done.

It's just that there's 46 states to go. For law enforcement. If they head to our website, childrescuecoalition.org, there's a tab for law enforcement and just need to click on it. They'll actually generate a contact us email to me.

So the email addresses le contact us at childrescuecoalition.org. And then we can figure out supplying them with training. And we just completed a training last week here in the States.

So we've had a couple recently in Texas and Alaska and elsewhere. So we're keen to get this technology into the hands of as many cops as possible. That's wonderful.

And clearly, we all know, the prayer requests here for all the things that we've discussed here as far as legislation, child sex dogs, dolls, and then that the other law enforcement around the world would take advantage of this technology is clearly making such an impact. Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you so much, Glenn.

And keep up the great work, guys. Thank you. Thank you so much, Bobby. Thanks, Mark. Thanks, Glenn. Appreciate so much. And thank you, Rob.