Randy's Mission To End Child Trafficking Globally
Child trafficking is a harrowing reality affecting millions worldwide. But sadly, it is one huge issue largely ignored by many – even our own governments. What does it take to put an end to this global problem? Katie Harward speaks with Randy, founder of Silent Bridge, an organization dedicated to combating child trafficking in some of the most dangerous and underserved regions in the world. Together, they delve into the real-life human stories behind the numbers and the urgent need for long-term prevention. Randy also shares the challenges of rescuing and rehabilitating young survivors, offering a raw and eye-opening perspective on their work around the world and what more needs to happen to create lasting change.
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Randy's Mission To End Child Trafficking Globally
This is Katie Harward and welcome to Kids S8fty, where we explore the critical issues affecting kids' safety from school security and cyberbullying to online threats and child exploitation. Join us as we uncover the challenges children face and provide insights on how to protect them in our ever-evolving digital world.
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In this episode, we are honored to be joined by Randy, the Founder of Silent Bridge, an incredible organization dedicated to saving children across the world. Randy's story is both heart-wrenching and inspiring as he shares the powerful journey that led him to create Silent Bridge, an organization focused not only on fighting human trafficking but transforming the lives of children who have endured unimaginable traumas.
Through Silent Bridge, Randy and his team work tirelessly to not only rescue children from dangerous situations but also to place them into loving homes where they can heal, thrive, and rebuild their sense of self-worth and hope. Randy will take us through his emotional journey and the profound impact this organization is having one child at a time. This is a conversation you will not want to miss. Let's get started.
Thank you so much, Randy, for being on our show, talking to parents about kids' safety, what's going on in the world, and a lot of things people don't know about. I'm so excited to jump on here and talk about your organization, what your mission is, and the different things that bring you to where you're at, protecting children in America and overseas, and all the different things that you do. I'm very honored that you are on this show with us. First and foremost, thank you so much, Randy.
You bet. I'm honored to be here.
Silent Bridge’s Mission And Focus On Vulnerable Areas
Randy, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit about your mission, the organization that you're a part of, and what that entails?
The organization is called Silent Bridge. Our main mission is mitigating human sex trafficking anywhere in the world, especially in austere locations where most people or even organizations will not want to go for a variety of reasons. It could either be in a war zone or a country where there's a significant danger for an NGO operating in that region or location.
Our real focus is on children, young women who are 8 to 18 years old. A one-year-old is the youngest one we've ever had. The main focus is making sure that we can go and help the needs of the few and the needs of the many, I would say. When I say the few, it's the few because they're the people who are these young girls who are often forgotten simply because of where they live and the dangers of that location. A lot of people don't want to operate in those areas for that reason.
Where we first started our work group to look at the problem and how we could help was in a Hilton hotel conference room. We looked at what other non-profits were doing. All were doing good work. We wanted to find a location or a part of mitigating human trafficking that was maybe missing a hole, if you will, that we could fill so we weren't duplicating other people's efforts.
Why Long-Term Care Is Critical For Survivors
What we came up with was that there are a lot of organizations doing rescue and trauma treatment and providing clothing and maybe food or education. We found the missing link from our research and that the initial work group was long-term housing. All those other things can be done but if somebody is not in it for the long haul after you rescue these children because of the trauma they've been through and the challenges that they're going to have for their future, how do you make those survivors survive, flourish, and become everything that they can be?
We looked at how we do that and where the holes are. When you go to the easy places or the easy to set up as a safe haven, we put building in a country and staff it. When you get to these very austere locations, it becomes more and more difficult because of the political strife or other strife that's going on in that country, the divisions by religion, personalities in the area, or created by organized criminal networks. How do we get involved and operate in that kind of environment?
First of all, we looked at the rescues. There's a difference between the types of rescues. You have a hard rescue and a soft rescue. Hard rescue is the thing everybody likes to see in movies and videos. The good guys are coming in. They've got full kit on and guns. They're rescuing these children. Those are important events that happen. There's the soft rescue. If you do a hard rescue and it goes wrong, how do you operate in that country?
Some countries will not allow you to remove the children from that country. You're still in that country and housing the children in that country. If the country and the local government in these unstable countries don't support what you're doing, then you end up with this chaos. Somebody is going to come and try to shut down the place that you have these children in. Somebody is going to try to interdict what you're doing in that country. You have not solved anything.
We realized very quickly that we had to find a way to conduct soft rescues so that we didn't create any kind of division amongst the political system with the local government, law enforcement officials in the country, or different beliefs in the country. That's what led us to mostly focus on soft rescues, although we have done hard rescues, that's not our preference. Our goal is to stay and work in that country. That's how we got started and looked at how we were going to do things.
We had to come up with a way of the how. We knew what we wanted to do but we didn't know the how. Our first focus, if you will, was coming up with a plan for that. Our plan, which we still use, was we find a place where most people don't want to go. That's where we get into the part of the needs of the few or the needs of the many. We find a place that most people don't want to go and we understand why.
We find out what the political system is in the country and what the stability level of the country is going to be. We find out what the religious divisions are within the country and realize that we have to work with all of those different religious organizations in the country because they can have an impact on how we operate there. We find a place that is the safest to put a safe haven to house the children who are rescued.
The next phase is to find the staff that we need, which is very difficult in a very austere location. In third-world countries, people with education, knowledge, skills, and abilities that you need have a tendency to gravitate towards the central cities or capitals and that's where the money is and where you can survive. We have to find the people. We recruit and train them. We had to find the building that we needed. We prefer to rent versus buy because donors want their dollars to go as far as possible in a third world.
In many cases in unstable countries, you don't want to spend $500,000 or $300,000 building a facility. The country goes back to being unstable again and you lose that resource and all that money that donors have donated. Find a place. Preferably rent a place. Remodel the place or location. Furnish it and then begin the rescues. Once it's filled up, find another country and do the same. That's what we've been doing. That's our goal.
How long has Silent Bridge been around for?
A few years. In the beginning, all I wanted to do was one country. I call it Country A. “I just wanted to do Country A.” I had been there doing some work. I was very interested in the area and culture. I saw this huge need of the people there. It's incredible poverty there. Young girls who were 9 or 10 years old came up to the door of the car that I was in. They were blind, asking for money.
I found out days later that those girls were girls who lived on the street and were purposely blinded by the people who had taken them in to make money. They had purposely blinded these young girls so that they would come up and beg for money. People would feel bad for them and give them money. That led to a powerful vision and memory for me. That led to wanting to work in that country and another country that was like that and I saw the same thing.
That is so important for people to know. It’s the whole purpose of me doing this show like I've explained to you before. We've talked that time before, which lasted about an hour. It had such an impact on me. These are things that no one knows are happening in these different countries, Country A, Country B, whatever the country may be. People don't know that these things are happening and the prevalence behind them too.
It's probably a sensitive conversation but what was it originally that you saw that made you want to get into the space of helping kids in sex trafficking? If I was in a car and two blind little girls came up trying to find money and I knew the situation in which somebody purposely blinded them to get those feelings out of people to give money, what was it that caused you to say, “I need to stop this and work in this space?”
It's always a tough thing for me to talk about. Luckily, through some of my other careers, I traveled a lot and got to see a lot of different places and things. I was in what I call country A. It was a nice hotel. It wasn't a 5-star hotel but for that country, it's probably a 4-star hotel. People knew that there were people there with money, although I didn't have money. It just happened to be where I was staying.
One night, somebody knocked on my door and I opened the door. The person spoke broken English and a couple of little kids, a little boy and a girl. I still think they were probably brothers and sisters. I didn't quite understand everything he was telling me. I found out he was trying to sell these kids to me. I had traveled a lot in the military overseas so I'd seen a lot of things over the years.
When I went to the front desk and talked about what happened, they said that these people would come in, follow in behind them, and get into the hotel and other ways too. They would focus on foreigners selling kids. I'm ashamed of that part. I'd seen so many things and poverty in the world already that I was like, “It's a huge problem. It's not my problem. There’s not anything I can do to fix it.”
It's like anything else in life. You can see problems but when it affects you or becomes personal, then you want to get involved more than maybe you would otherwise. I went to another country within country B that we've done stuff into. I was there. I was getting ready to go somewhere and traffic there was heavy. I asked the lady at the front desk, “I got to go over here to this park. I want to see this thing. What's the best way to get there? I’m only in a cab. It'll take me two hours to get a half mile because the traffic was so heavy.”
She said, “We can go this way out the front door and take a right and take another right about three blocks down. You'll cross this bridge.” It was an old Roman footbridge. She said, “Be careful because there's a place like a brothel. There are all kinds of crazy stuff. There are criminals down there. It's a bad part of town.” I was walking there. In this country, there are a lot of dog fights. People fight with dogs and bet on the dogs. It's mostly dirt roads or some paved roads.
As I was approaching the leading edge of that bridge, I saw what I thought was a dogfight. There was a whole bunch of several men around in a circle. This girl came busting out of there and her clothes were ripped off. She couldn't have been more than maybe 12 or 11 years old. It's hard to tell there. Girls are pretty small. She ran almost right towards me.
I was like, “This is a problem. I don't want to get involved. I don't look anything like the people around here. I don't know how it's going to turn out.” Before she got to me, she turned and went up this footbridge. At one point, she stopped, turned back, and looked at me. I still remember the wind was blowing across this little river thing. She looked like my oldest granddaughter. It was like there was a hammer hitting me in the head, “This is your mission.”
It's crazy how God speaks to you in such pivotal and bright ways. There is no doubt in your mind when those types of things happen. I thank you for sharing that story with me. I know that it's difficult to have those conversations and share those. I feel that. What's beautiful behind such a tragic story is the fact that we can look at it, see, feel it, and know that these things have happened. It makes us want to be involved as well and help in the ways that we can.
I don't have a story like you, Randy, but I heard stories from you, Dr. Bello, or numerous people in the organizations that I work with. I feel and hear it in every single one of your voices. It makes me want to become a beacon of light because of you. God entrusted you guys to share that mission so that we can help. I don't think a lot of people know how prevalent it is. Can you speak a little bit about the prevalence in the different countries? It's probably something that happens in more impoverished countries. What does that look like as a foreigner? If I was going to one of these countries, what would I see?
Sex trafficking does not always stand out to you unless someone knocks on your door and tries to sell you a couple of kids.
The average person who hadn't developed an interest in what this problem is for human sex trafficking around the world would be somewhat oblivious to what's happening out there. It doesn't always stand out to you unless you get that knock on the door and somebody's trying to sell you a couple of kids or you see the event that I saw in country B. You realize that it's not a dog fight. This girl was raped.
The things you would see at times would be a person going into a local bar maybe to have a drink or have a meal and a drink. All of a sudden, they're in country C. I've seen this happen before where all of a sudden 3 or 4 girls from a country to the South that are 16 years old are trying to make the money for their college education. They come from such an impoverished country and poor families. They can't afford it.
They come up and approach 1 or 2 men at the table and a conversation starts. Maybe a couple of minutes into the conversation, an alert person who has good situational awareness will realize, “These girls are not just talking to me. They are talking to us because they're trying to sell something to help fund their education. There's probably somebody in that room behind them or someone outside that is helping manage them and taking some of that money.”
A lot of people don't realize that but there were a lot of girls. When I say girls, they’re very young women in these impoverished countries. That's how they make their money for their college education. You may see something like that. The other thing you may see is the experience in the hotel room, where somebody's knocking on the door. Another experience could be an innocent person going to country D. They were 40 years old and had a bad back problem. They've had surgery or something. They go in to get a massage and find out, “Why is this young lady who’s in country D, 4,000 miles away from the country of her origin, working as a masseuse?”
The person realizes during the course of this that she's not just a masseuse. It's her way of marketing what else she does to make money. You find out there's somebody behind her who is not just managing her but managing twenty other girls like her that they brought into that country. It could be that you visit country E to meet a very affluent person for a business deal. They invite you to their home for dinner, which is customary in that country. You notice that there are three Filipino workers who are working there, one's helping prepare the meal, one's helping serve the meal, and one is cleaning around the house. It’s a very big estate.
You realize at one point in time that after you come across an article, maybe in the Wall Street Journal or something, how there were over 900,000 women from the Philippines who were the subject of human trafficking to the region that country E is in. As soon as they come into the home, they think they're getting this great job to work at this estate with somebody who has got a lot of money. They take their passport away and can't leave the house. When the wife leaves to go out shopping or whatever, they become that person's sexual toy.
How Cultural And Religious Differences Impact Solutions
You mentioned a lot of different countries and ways in which we can see it. How does child sexual trafficking differ across cultures and countries? Are there particular regions that are more vulnerable than others that you've seen?
It starts with places with little to no infrastructure. What I mean by infrastructure is not just electricity, clean water, and things like that but it starts with places with little to no infrastructure. For example, country B let's say has a central capital where most everybody lives. Maybe 60% of the population lives there but the population is kept poor for a reason. They have a lack of education. You only go first through sixth grade.
There are no English teachers in the school system. You have to be able to speak English. If you go to the nation's capital country B, you have to be able to speak English because most of the professors speak English. You're way behind. Your grades are not going to be good. You're not going to do well in school. It's not just water and electricity. It's education and lack of jobs in the outlying areas where the major built-up areas are or their capital regions.
Also, places with limited opportunity. I'll mention those countries. It’s countries like Mali. They have limited opportunities in Mali. That's how sex trafficking blows up there. Also, Burkina Faso and Chad. Africa is a huge place because you have all these young men and older men too who have become involved in terrorist activity. You're a young male, 13 or 14 years old. You can't get a job. You have no power. Somebody gives you an AK-47 and twenty rounds of ammunition. They show you how to shoot it. You can pressurize people because you can take their life.
You want to make money so you round up ten girls in the village and tell them, “You're going to work for me. If you don't, I'm going to come back and kill your father and mother.” They get forced into sex trafficking and then end up moving to a different part of the country. That happens all over Africa. Not in every country but in a lot of countries. We see those things that happen. Boko Haram is coming in and taking all the girls out of school. They’re forcing them to marry the fighters. People go, “I could make money doing that. I'm going to do the same thing. I got a gun and I can force people to do what I want them to do.”
If a country faces a huge political upheaval, people are not getting arrested and prosecuted for sex trafficking.
Also, political environments. An example would be country A, a political environment. Country A had a huge political upheaval. You have a country that loses its prime minister, for example. It goes away. You've got the infrastructure of law enforcement and the criminal justice system. The court system is all in disarray in a country like that. What happens is people aren't getting arrested or prosecuted for sex trafficking. It opens a way for opportunists to create a human sex trafficking ring and make money by taking these girls and shipping them to other countries, either neighboring countries or even overseas from where they're at.
The fourth thing would be the collision of religions. Syria, for example. They have Christian communities in Syria and Iraq. They have indigenous populations in those countries, too. There's a collision of religions between Islam and Christianity if you will. That can create a problem because people from one religion or the other can say, “I don't believe in your religion.” A lot of times, people call them Yazidi. They’re not double worshippers they have a different belief. You say, “Your religion is so bad that I don't feel bad taking and forcing you into sex trafficking. I don't feel bad taking your 13-year-old daughter from you and making her marry a 35-year-old ISIS fighter.”
My next question was asking about the unique challenges of marginalized or vulnerable populations, children who are in foster care or are indigenous to their area. That answers a lot of it. Looking from an American point of view and trying to see where this all happens and how it happens, can you talk to us a little bit about how, as a parent, it would be for your child to become part of sex trafficking? Americans are sitting here like, “How could that ever happen to your child? I would protect my child. That would never happen.” What happens in these different countries that allow this to take place?
We can start with the US right there. How does it happen in the US? Let's say you've got a thirteen-year-old and she doesn't agree with what you told her. She decides to run away from home for 2 or 3 days. We see it all the time when there's an Amber alert. There's a young girl missing or whatever the case may be. Drugs are so prevalent in our schools and communities. Mental health issues with teenagers, they become involved in drug activity and get hooked on some type of drug. The next thing you know, they're out on the street and they've run away from home.
In the US, there are opportunists like there are overseas. Somebody sees this young girl and befriends this young girl. Pretty soon, they're making that young girl turn tricks on the streets to make money. She's getting a small amount of the money but not much, just enough to be fed, clothed, and looked nice on the street. The person who's managing her is getting money. Let's take and move that overseas. How does it work overseas? Each country has its own flavor about how we operate in those countries and how young women become involved in sex trafficking.
Let's take an example for country B. There are earthquakes, landslides, and horrific storms all the time. There are mountainous regions. It's dangerous 6 or 7 months out of the year from the weather. A family of three is in a house, a mother, a father, and a daughter. There's an earthquake and the mother and father die. The daughter is smaller in stature. She survives the earthquake. There are no relatives. A lot of these countries have a horrible infrastructure. It’s not like the girl can walk down the street to a social services location and say, “My mother and father died. Who's going to take care of me?”
In a lot of cases, they are out on the street. They're hanging out. They got a sign and begging for food. If they're in country C, some woman's going to come along that reminds them of their mother. There are women like that out there who do this in these other countries and say, “I'm so sorry you lost your mother and father. Tell me your story. I'm going to take you in and take care of you.” A week later, they're tied down to a bed and blinded on purpose. They're out in the street with a sign begging for money.
The other thing is it could be that they're there in a trafficker in country C. There are ones who go through these small villages and they're looking for these young girls who are out on the street. They will talk to them. They'll promise them a job somewhere. The next thing they know, they're in country F working in a pedophile brothel. Usually what happens to them is they bring them into a room. They're not mentors but they're like a guide.
A guide will tell them, “I'm going to take care of you. You're going to be okay here.” They don't tell them anything about what they're going to have to do. A couple of minutes later, another man comes in and eats them for about 5 or 10 minutes with a rubber hose or something like that. He then leaves. The other guy comes back in. “I'm sorry that guy came and did that. I should have been watching what was going on. I'll protect you.”
20 minutes later, 2 men will come in and gang rapes her at 13 years old. They'll do that for a period of 2 or 3 days until she's broken. The person will come back in and say, “I'm sorry this happened to you. I had to go somewhere for a couple of days. Remember, I’ll protect you from now on. Nothing will happen to you as long as you do what I tell you to do.” This thirteen-year-old girl ended up servicing 6 to 8 men a day.
That breaks my heart. That is wild to hear that these stories even happen. A lot of international organizations are doing a lot of things to help these innocent children. What role do international organizations play in combating child trafficking? How can cross-border cooperation be improved to help this? The whole point of the show for me is to bring light to this to show people what's happening out there. A lot of the time, people think, “Now we know but what is it that can be done?”
There are organizations out there such as yourself and things that you've been doing but what other things are happening? How can we better support these organizations? How can we work with other countries to help end child trafficking? Do you have a view with religious and cultural beliefs and the differences that this is something that is a hard battle that we're up against that potentially is bigger than we're ready to combat?
The Impact Of Trauma On Young Survivors
I'm going to tell people these stories and they can't believe them. I've seen them so I may have seen what's happened. I've interviewed people after it's happened. People don't believe it. I said, “If you don't believe I'm telling you the truth, you can't handle the truth. If you want me to take you there to see and interview people that this has happened to, if you can walk out of there with a dry eye, you're a better person than me.” It's the truth. It's what happens. Nobody wants to tell the ugly about what's going on in the world.
That's the great thing about talking about this. It's not easy talking about it. Even when I'm talking to you, it's resurfacing things that I've seen. I do a podcast about officers being shot in the line of duty. As they go through the after part of the event, when I hear their story, it's emotional to realize the pain that they've been through from what happened, what they went through, and also seeing what they saw.
It's the same thing with this. When you sit in front of a nine-year-old girl next to her in a car when you're bringing her out of the environment she was in and you're hearing the story of what happened to her in the previous year, it's the most emotionally impactful event you can ever have in your life, in my opinion. Your question about what role international organizations play in combating child trafficking and how we can cross border cooperation to be improved, first, it's working with governments who have an interest in funding the mitigation of third world countries.
I may get this wrong because I can't keep up with everything that's going on but the money spent by the US, for example, rates a country on a rating system. It's still 1 through 5. It could have changed. I don't want to be quoted on that. 1 is you're doing a great job on human trafficking. 2 is you got some work to do. 3 is you're on the border and not doing a very good job. There's a lot of problems. 4 is you're bad. 5 is you're the worst in the world.
The US government has that rating system. Other governments have something similar. Great Britain will go, “We'll give you this many millions of dollars to fight against human trafficking.” If you're at this level, you're doing well and making progress, the US government will do the same thing. If you're not, then you're not going to get any money because it's a waste of money.
Working with the governments that have an interest in these third-world countries, the places a lot of people don't want to go, and coming up with smart people coming in with a strategy of how they can best do that is important. Sometimes people will start a non-profit with great intentions. They want immediate success because they want to show donors that there is immediate success. We have to work with governments to find a way for long-term success because the only way we're going to combat this problem, in my opinion, is that we have to have a worldwide strategy.
There is no worldwide strategy. There are 3,000 McDonald's out there serving hamburgers but each of those McDonald's are not talking to each other. They can't come up with the right recipe. There’s no consistency in what's happening. People don't like me saying that but it's the raw truth. If we don't speak the raw truth, we're not going to solve the problem.
If we have a long-term strategy and solution to sex trafficking, we have to find out the right prevention method.
The second thing in your question is there is prevention, protection, and prosecution. If we're going to have a long-term strategy and solution to human sex trafficking, we have to find out the prevention part of it. An example in the US is educating your children about, “If you run away from home, this could happen to you. If you get involved in drugs, it's not just using the drugs but it gets to the point where this could happen to you.”
The protection part of it is if somebody becomes involved in sex trafficking and becomes a victim before they're a survivor, then we have to have a place for long-term care to take care of these young women. I talk about young women because that's our focus. The governments and NGOs have to be in for the long haul. It's not just bringing these kids out of the environment. I ask all these organizations when they tell me, “We're going to rescue these kids,” “Then what?”
“What happens afterward?”
Do you know what they all tell me? They look at me with a blank stare. The ones that tell you they're housing children, I said, “Take me to the place and show it to me.” The reason they don't is because they don't have one. Some people do but very few do. The ones that have told me they have them, they don't have them. The last thing is prosecution. It does no good to have a good system of rescuing and housing if there's no long-term prosecution. It's like somebody killing one of your family members and saying that they're going to kill the rest of your family.
They put them in prison and then three years later, they let them out on parole. They're going to come back and kill the rest of the family. There's no prosecution or long-term punishment for what the traffickers did. In most of these countries, the ones that we operate in, their prosecution success rate is 3% to 6%. These are hard cases too, Katie. It's a slammed-up case and they let them out. They bribe people. In one place, the judge got bribed $80,000 US dollars, which was about 4 years of pay for that judge to release all the traffickers.
I hear that they also have these girls who are speaking in front of their abusers and saying, “Did this happen?” You put a young girl in front of their abuser. They're not going to be able to talk about the situation that happened. Is that something that you see happening a lot as well?
Yes. That's a great question to something I hadn't thought about bringing up. There’s a unique country. Remember I said every country has its own flavor of how you approach it. That country has this crazy rule that the accused has to be in the room with the accuser. You have an eight-year-old girl who was put in a pedophile brothel and the traffickers arrested. This terrified eight-year-old girl is sitting across the table from the person who made all these things happen to her.
That country has a very phenomenal donor. She's a super great lady. It was funded to build these rooms that have two-way glass so the trafficker can see the cues, in this case, can see the girl being interviewed but she cannot tell he is in the room so she can speak freely. The room is very well-outfitted with things to make the young girl feel comfortable. That's another way to do it.
Let me talk about what other organizations do. There are limited resources for protection, housing, and trauma treatment. Finding a way to fund those is the hard part. The housing and trauma are long-term. It's not that it's better than anybody else. It’s just what we do because that's what we think the need is. We're in for the long haul. We have the girls in there, these young women. We're with them all the way through college.
In one of our locations in country B, we're building a new safe haven next to the existing one, which was one we've been renting. We're negotiating to keep that one. You have to remember that when these young ladies leave, almost all of them have no family. I'm sure you've got aunts, uncles, relatives, a father, and a mother. Imagine if you went out into life and you had no family linkage.
They can come back here to us in that country. We're going to do that in every other country too because it's going to work well. On holidays or national festivals in countries like that, they can come back and feel like they're around a family and be around the staff. Somebody has become their mother, sister, and brother.
How The General Public Can Help Combat Child Trafficking
I love that. The big part of this all is about the general public understanding what's happening. In your eyes, what role can the general public play in raising awareness and taking action to end child trafficking and what's happening out there? Both here in the United States and overseas, what are some steps that as you an expert in the space can tell somebody how we can raise awareness? How can we take action? What are your thoughts on that?
First of all, one of the biggest voids next to having housing and safety for these young survivors is understanding where a huge mental health strain is upon them from what they went through, not only a mental health strain but the medical piece of it. The general public and people who are physicians and people who are in research and development for the treatment of people with mental health issues and trauma, also with medical injuries, the first thing we do when we get these young women is a lot of them have periodontal disease because they never had their teeth cleaned with the environment they were in and what they were dealing with.
Also, STDs. They have some horrible injuries. Some of them have to be treated. How can those things best be done in austere environments? How do we get them treated? The second thing is trauma. The public can help by trying to figure out through technology how we can best treat these young survivors with their trauma injuries, realizing that they're in very austere locations.
Part of that is looking at AI, for example. How can we incorporate AI into mental health treatment, number one, and also communications? We have one program where we have to hire trauma counselors but they don't want to come up where we're at. We have to have internet connectivity and the data capability to talk to them.
Starlink, for example. They know somebody at Starlink. Starlink does more to get into some of these countries like country B, for example. We need that technology. Starlink negotiated with that country. It’s supposed to start in 2025, when we'll have the amount of data we need for the counselors to be able to talk to them. We're used to the US or we can get on and do Zoom and some places overseas.
In most of the places we operate, we're loading a card into a mobile router every 30 minutes to be able to have that trauma counselor from a central location, talk to this young lady, and be able to try to work through her issues. That's some ideas. The other thing is awareness via self-education. Focus on preferably a region that you have an interest in. You look at your genetic profile or where you came from, if you came from Bangladesh, South Africa, Amsterdam, or wherever your family or relatives came from, your family's history. Focus on a country like that and look at the problem.
I was talking to a lady from Honduras or Belize. I can't remember She was interviewing me about something. She said, “I don't think there's a problem at all here in Honduras with human trafficking.” I sent her a bunch of articles about things that I knew about that were happening in Honduras. One of the incidents happened about eight blocks from her house. She was blown away. She could not believe that there was that much of a problem.
She goes, “How can I get involved?” I said, “Here's an organization. Go there and tell me you want to volunteer. You can volunteer. It's not that difficult. When you're a donor, you just give money.” She’s like, “What happened to my money? I don't feel connected to the organization.” One of the programs we have is a donor gives money and that money supports a staff member.
That staff member in country B gets $147 a month to work. That's good money in that country. On the first of the month, that staff member and donor talked to each other for twenty minutes via Zoom. All they do is like me talking to you. I'm the donor and you're the staff member. I'm saying, “How was your month this month? How are the girls doing? What's your day like? Do you have any challenges?” It makes the donors feel connected. You have to be careful about how you match those people up. Every donor has their personality and you have to be cautious about that.
Sometimes you have to work through an interpreter because their English is not always that good for the staff member. The other thing is to become an advocate for nonprofits working in the region. One of the things that's challenging to me is running a nonprofit. Everybody has their little niches and clicks. To me, it’s like, “This is not my nonprofit. This is your nonprofit.” We have a goal to stop this problem. If we get where it's about us and not about the survivors, we're losing the mark.
There's one common mission. That's what is so strong about all the organizations they have. They all have the same mission. They're all trying to do good in the world but if they all came together I feel like as a beneficial whole, there's so much more that could be done. It's not just what people think of the boots-on-the-ground type of missions, where people are going over countries and helping these children, taking them out of the situation but there are also organizations like your own that have to heal these girls.
There's so much trauma, PTSD, and health issues that are going on that they need help afterward. It is true. The statistics show that the likelihood of a child who is protected and taken out of these situations will probably get back into that situation if not taken into the right care. They think that's the only way of surviving after being in that situation for such a long period. It's crucial that there are so many different organizations that work in their different niches but if they all worked together, there could be so much work done.
I admire everything everybody's doing. We're not doing anything better than anybody else's. We're just doing it differently. I wish that everybody would work together in a more compatible way for the overall goal. The only thing people can do is speak at the local place of worship and association groups. There are so many religious organizations in the country. Even with the board and advisors, we have people from every religion. We got people from the Church of Latter-day Saints, Protestant, Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, and a little bit of everybody there.
It's so important to take into account everybody's preferences. Sometimes I take people on trips and we go into a place. They go, “I want to talk about my religious beliefs. I said, “It's hard to walk into this place where we're going to talk about your religious beliefs because it may not go across very well, even up in one place I went including costing your life. Our goal here is to save the kids. Let's all work together.”
That's why we have such a wide variety of people who are on the board. One of the last things that people can do on that part is encourage local media to report on the issue. It gets lost with all the other stuff. The election is going on, the economy, and this and that. The last thing that seems to be talked about is the problem with sex trafficking.
The Reality Of Child Trafficking And Why It’s Hard To Discuss
That was one thing I wanted to touch on. This show is all about kids' safety in every realm within schools, safety, cyber security, bullying, and even child trafficking. There's a wide range. This is near and dear to my heart. The one thing that I see that is not talked about the most would probably be child trafficking. The reason why is because I like to say it's not bubble gum. It's not a feel-good conversation. It leaves you feeling in a way almost hopeless because you can't believe that these situations are happening.
You tell these stories of things that have transpired and people don't believe you. People question, “Could that happen?” Even if it's overseas, I can't see another human being treating a child this way, let alone another human of the same age. My biggest concern and the thing that I want to nail down and communicate is why do you think that this is something that people don't talk about?
One of the ugliest parts of humanity is that nobody wants to discuss and see the ugly.
It's the ugly part of humanity. Nobody wants to see the ugly. There are quite a few people who know that it's out there but when you bring it in front of their eyes and they see it, it’s like you stand on a fifth-story or fourth-story parking structure that's dilapidated and look down on a factory that's got 20,000 workers that go into it daily who are all men. You see a hotel. It looks like the worst Motel 6 you've ever seen in your life. There are twenty room doors.
Over the doors and between each door is a clock. The men line up outside of that location ten deep before each shift. Inside that room is a girl who’s anywhere from 8 to 14 years old. They pay the equivalent of about $1.50 to be with that girl for ten minutes before they go to work and some of them when they come out after work. They'd be staying on that parking structure and you see the end of that ten minutes after everybody's cleared.
You see the girl cannot walk. The men carry her out of there and put her on a slab behind a cement wall but you can see it because you're standing on a fourth floor of a parking structure. You see the attendants take a brush like a car wash and take the white clothing wrap off of the girl that's completely stained and rub that brush over like they're washing a car and then hose her off with cold water. It's not clean water. They wrap her again in a linen and she lays in that room until the next shift gets off.
If that can't change a person wants to be involved and fix these problems, no matter what organization it is that they help with. How do we shift the attitude about looking at the ugly as we tell the truth? People don't want to talk about the things we're talking about because they don't want to believe that it's out there but it is. One of the things you can do is increase media focus on the problem. Push your local media.
Maybe you live in a small town that's got a local newspaper. Push them or whatever the case may be. Read the hard-to-read stories like the stories that I'm talking about. Tell these stories again. People don't believe me that they're out there. I've seen them. That one story I told you where the person told me, “Don't bring your knife. I'm going to go show you something.” I'm glad I didn't have it with me because you can imagine I'm not an aggressive person but after I saw what I saw, you know what I wanted to do to the people who are doing that to these kids,
Support groups that are already successfully advocating for children, get involved with them and help them. It's not all about money. It's about time. Like what you're doing, you have a great ability to talk to people. You've got this show and you're spreading the word about things. It could be that you're good at project management.
There's a lady we interviewed who's done stuff for Microsoft to all kinds of people like a project manager. She's getting ready to retire. She's going to come help us with these 3 teams of 8. We're going to send her overseas to help build a building. They're going to pay for their time, travel, and all that. I'm buying all the materials. I'm going to build a couple hundred thousand dollar building. One would be $1 million here for about $40,000 worth of material in their labor.
You can lift a brick, put it down, and connect it. Working for the children versus working for yourself. That's what we didn't talk about. That's where our name came from, Silent Bridge. I saw a lot of organizations that all started with good intentions and then it became about the people who were running the organization instead of the kids. That’s why I said Silent and we don't show our pictures.
There's nothing wrong with people having all their resumes on the website. You don't see our resumes and stuff on the website. I will tell you one thing, though. I never bragged. My father, before he died, told me to be a humble man and only hang out with humble people and you'll do well in life. If I put all of our stuff up on there, there's no organization that matches the resume of the group that's working with us, nobody in this field.
We're not out to brag about it because it's not about us. That's why we came up with the name Silent. We're going to do a good job. We don't want any credit for it. We don't want our names out there anywhere. The Bridge part is the catalyst of the story of that young girl. Understand that it's a long-term commitment to the children rescued. If we can get that in everybody's head, there are a lot of films that have come out. Everybody started calling me, “I want to start a non-profit about rescuing children. I want to do this and that.” I said, “That's great. I support you 100%. I'll help you do it. What do you want to do?”
“I want to go rescue kids.” I asked him the same question, “Then what?” “See a lot on our websites. We've got a place where we've got 1,500 kids. We've got a place where we've got 4,000 kids. We've got a place where we've got 6,000 kids. We've got all this.” I said, “Where were they at? Show them to me.” I went to those countries and asked the people who would know. I said, “Where are these places at?” There's nobody there.
There was a country we set up a mission in. I was told that this organization was getting $1 million a year from donors. They had it all in their transparency. I went there to the border where the majority of the trafficking was happening. I went to two different entry points. There was this nice SUV in that country that cost $200,000. It would cost $80,000 here because of the import tax. It's sitting there with two people in it and their driver sound asleep.
The Emotional Toll Of Fighting Against Child Trafficking
I sat there drinking tea and watched him for 2 or 3 hours for 2 or 3 days. I could see the girls going back and forth across the border and the people we'd identified as traffickers. Nobody was doing anything. That's the other thing. If somebody wants to get involved in it, get involved. It's not glamorous in any way. It's emotional. I've done some tough jobs in my life. I retired from my fourth career. It's the hardest thing I have ever done because of the emotional impact it has on you.
I can see that. This show, just so everybody knows, is only going to be in audio for purposes of making sure that people can't see your face and you're doing a lot of things like missions overseas. The worst thing that could happen is your ability to help these children stop because of something happening to you or somebody involved in your organization.
First and foremost, thank you so much for shining a light on this dark thing. I don't think there has been anybody that I've talked to in any organization who's dealing with child trafficking, who has been on the front lines, whether that's boots on the ground, missions that you've done, or whatever it is. No one has ever had a dry eye after having these conversations. It takes a very strong individual.
Everybody can have their belief system but in my eyes, it's the pursuit of God. God is putting this in your life. He knows how strong you are and that you can help in these ways. I don't think there are a lot of people who are quite like you. I greatly appreciate your time and being able to speak openly about this and help people see what's happening.
The story that you told me, I tried hard to hold it together but it's devastating. No one can even fathom the things that are happening. What's hard for me is hearing these stories and going to bed in my comfy house with blankets and everything that I have that I'm so grateful for. I go to bed wondering, “How am I able to go to bed knowing that these situations are happening? There are clocks outside of these rooms where men go in before and after shifts with 8 to 13-year-old girls. How am I capable of doing that?” That's the emotional toll that it takes.
If it doesn't hit you like that, then there's more of an issue. If you can have those feelings and you need to figure out a way to help, whether that's being an advocate, donating, volunteering to whatever extreme that may be, or being involved in the pursuit of protecting these children and getting them into a safe space, it's not just getting them out of it but it's putting them in a healthy environment that's going to treat them expand their lives and hopefully let them live a life happier than what it has been.
Making their dreams come true was one of the things I didn't mention. Our whole goal is the end state. We're in the long haul. The best example I can give of that is three of the first girls that we ever came out of the largest brothel in the world. There are 5,000 sex workers in that brothel. It's a city. They're getting to the age where they're going to be able to go to college. They're amazing.
We give them education and everything else. Two of them have done so well in their studies. They want to be doctors. In the next couple of years, they'll be in pre-med. What they want to do is go back because their mothers are still in that brothel. Their mothers are under bondage and won't be able to ever come out of that brothel.
They want to go back into that brothel and treat their mothers. Medical care there is non-existent. They want to be able to treat the other mothers and other women who are in that brothel. That's their life goal. They came out of there and they want to go back and treat them. The third one wants to be an attorney and use the legal system within that country and probably other countries to fight against the trafficking problem and also prosecution of traffickers and also to help get women out of bondage like the women that we mentioned. I’m so proud of them. I saw them and they're amazing.
That's such a sentiment to you, too. Thank you so much for everything that you do. You've changed these children's lives. They're able to see the light at the end of the tunnel because of things that you've done. My heart is so wide open to you and it makes me so emotional. You are very silent in the work that you do, which I appreciate. What could the audience do to help in your organization, which is Silent Bridge? Is there a way that they can donate or volunteer? What kind of action can they take?
The biggest thing they could do if they want to donate funds or volunteer is they can go to our website. It's SilentBridge.org. There's a donation location there. Under the notes section of the donation, if they want to dedicate it to a specific country, they can list it there. What we do is we have separate banking accounts that are for each country and then that money goes in there. That's how we do the projects if you will.
Randy, thank you so much for being on my show. It was the best news I had had all week when you told me that you would be coming on my shift. I was so excited. You said before the things that your organization has done and the light it has brought. Every organization that is in the field says that as well as I've spoken to. They have nothing but amazing things to say. You have done some wonderful things. I hope that through this show, the word, and people communicating about this you will be able to be more successful in all of the things that you do. I thank you so much for everything.
Thank you so much. You said what I did but the last thing I would say is that with everything done, all the credit belongs to the donors and the amazing staff that we have overseas. They have a hard job. It's a great experience. They're working with these young women and trying to make them whole again. It's not an easy job. They have a tough job. I'm so thankful for all of them. I talked to most of them every day in one way, shape, form, or another. I'm proud of each of them and everything they're doing. Thank you so much for having me on, Katie.
I appreciate you. I do want to end on this note too. You did share a couple of photos and videos with me looking at some of the girls who are in your space in the homes that you've created for them. The joy, love, and happiness that you see coming out of these little girls is heartwarming. You can listen to this story and we had that conversation. At the end of the conversation, I was in tears. To see those follow up with those videos and photos, brings so much joy to my heart. Know that there's a mission here. There are things that can happen. We can be changing lives every single day. Thank you so much, Randy. I appreciate your time. I hope to speak to you so soon.
Thank you, Katie.
Thank you, Randy.
Important Links
The Fight Against Child Trafficking With James Haven
