1042: Sex Trafficking | Skeptical Sunday

23:15It is non-cringy, down-to-earth, super easy. It's not awkward or cheesy. It's not gonna make you look bad or feel bad or the people you connect with look or feel bad. It's a relationship-building course, a skill-based course, takes a few minutes a day. That is all it takes. It'll make you a better friend, a better peer, a better connector, and many of the guests on the show subscribe and contribute to the course. So come join us. You'll be in smart company where you belong. Sixminutenetworking.com is where you can find it. All right, now back to Skeptical Sunday. All right. How does this tie up with the movie, The Sound of Freedom?

23:48I interviewed one of the producers because I wanted a better look into the film without hearing from the lead actor, who frankly comes across as a total kook in many ways in a lot of interviews, where he just wholeheartedly parrots QAnon conspiracy theories without any backing whatsoever. That was episode 872 for those who are interested. I had a producer in and he was on the record and off the record was kind of like, yeah, no, we as an organization like never believed any of that. And the movie has that actor in it. And those are his views and it has nothing to do like the actor's sort of weird political conspiracy views got blended into the story of the movie.

24:25And it just became a really gross mashup. And this film is a film that came out midway through last year, like I said, and was roundly criticized by the left and absolutely adored by the right, and I'm generalizing. But you can see the sentiment pretty clearly, and I'm not sure anybody would really disagree with that assessment. And as is the case with every topic ever, neither side could at all understand the other. And I wonder how we can make sense of this, because you have people writing in like, I was crying the whole time, and I immediately bought out a whole theater and invited all my friends to come see this movie so that they could find out about the evil in the world.

25:00And I'm just thinking like, what? What? But why? It wasn't moving enough for that, honestly. Or I'm a psychopath. Maybe that's part of it. I've just not watched it. And it was important for me to watch it because of my job as a podcaster. I should have done it. I'm not that interested in action films. It just felt like something I didn't really want to watch. And I didn't need to see all the sad stuff. I didn't want to feel sad. But yeah, loads of friends of mine came out the same thing, like crying their eyes out. And you've got to see this film. It's the best thing I've ever seen. That's already I'm suspicious.

25:28It already feels religious when people are saying that. It was religious, yeah. Yeah, it is. And it is actually religious. I mean, that is a thing, isn't it? It was made by religious people. Jim Caviezel played Jesus before that. There is some religious aspect to it. But we should try and make sense of it, because otherwise we're just all talking past each other too much. The right loved it because of the suggestion in the film of highly abusive people who were sex trafficking minors. Jim Caviezel, as I say, who played Jesus, now plays Tim Ballard, an ex-US government official, on a mission to rescue children who have been sex trafficked to Colombia.

26:00Friends of mine who have seen the film, as I say, they've never been so moved in their lives. They sat through the movie in floods of tears. And that's understandable because it's a true story about a truly emotional subject. Right. So I guess what's wrong with that, one might ask? Well, those who criticize the film say that it takes dramatic license in floating some of the QAnon conspiracy theories, including that anti-Semitic blood libel we spoke of. It feels to them too much like a jingoistic religious attempt to paint the left as pedophiles and the right as saviors. The right pushes back saying, well, you may link it to QAnon, but this is a true story.

26:36And it appears to be very much the true story of Operation Underground Railroad, an anti-sex trafficking organization who has been accused of exaggerating its feats. and in actual fact, the protagonist of the film, Tim Ballard, has been accused by multiple former staff members of sexual harassment himself, even said to have been coercing women into sexual acts during their sting operations. Yeah, so I had Tim Ballard on my show years ago, years ago, before any of this stuff came out, obviously, and it all seemed like just such an amazing tale until it started to unravel a couple of years later, and that was episode 369, by the way.

27:15I No, it's like, well, you know, I mean, my Russell Brand episode is up there too. So all of this leaves us with a left who believe the film is hypocritical and exaggerated and aimed at them and a right who thinks the left are lying to cover up for their pedophile politicians. Well said. Yeah. And both sides have points. I mean, the left with its ideas around liberation has in extreme moments gone a little bit that way or enabled a scenario. Take Germany. In the 80s, doctors with close links to the far left Green Party noticed there were too many homeless boys in Berlin and too many pedophiles for whom they could do nothing.

27:52And so they killed two birds with one stone. They placed the boys into foster care with the pedophiles. It's one of the worst abuses of children on a state level of all time and an example of what can be allowed to happen at the very far edges of the left. The French far left intelligentsia, including Sartre and Foucault, were in favor of legalizing adult-child sexual relations. So this is a weakness in the ideologies of the far, far left, just as there are issues in the far, far right, but it's been weaponized by the far right, and understandably so, but also often weaponizing and misleading people.

28:28Hungary's right-wing authoritarian leader, Viktor Orban, is one such person. He's focused his campaign on hunting down pedophiles and has increased harsher punishments to those who engage in it. Okay, good. but he snuck in homophobic laws. Of course. Yeah. But back up the truck. Forcing homeless kids into foster care with pedophiles? Yeah. That is really gross. That has to at least make the top five list of terrible things Germans have done over the past hundred years. Yeah. That's sort of only half a joke, I guess. It's really fascinating to get an understanding of where these two sides stand on sex trafficking and pedophilia.

29:04And by the way, I used to live in Germany. I've got German family. I'm basically also from Austria. a German, my family's German. So I'm not really like, I hope Germans aren't like, wow, I didn't know Jordan hated Germans. I don't. I'm just picking on you guys today. But what about the trafficking itself? Is it still happening in America? I mean, it's got to be. We're a big country and lots of gross stuff happens here. Yeah, yeah. It goes on in America, despite a prevailing myth that it only happens in developing countries. In fact, the US is one of the most active places in the world for trafficking across cities and suburban and rural areas.

29:35This is a problem that affects every country in the world. 27 % of trafficking victims are children, and two out of three of them are girls. But it does happen to boys too, which is often forgotten. Sex trafficking is a kind of human trafficking, the other kinds usually being for labor. Think of the pig butchering scams whereby people in East Asia are kidnapped and sent to prison-like casinos where they are made to work nonstop by calling us to try to trick us into giving up our money. If they don't fool enough of us, they're tortured. There's, of course, a fine line between human trafficking for labor and for sex.

30:08And it is thought that many of the trafficking victims in the pig butchering scams are forced into sex as well. Yeah, I've actually done a few episodes on the pig butchering scams, one to outline the scam and then another one to outline the trafficking and slavery elements. So this episode 737 and 833, by the way, and I actually uncovered, helped uncover a pig butchering scam in the UAE. And I'm still working with the FBI on this because somebody who worked in a scam center reached out to me and sent me a bunch of evidence and stuff. It was like, and he's like, yeah, I was sort of tricked into coming here because I speak Chinese, like a Pakistani dude.

30:46And he's like, they kill people. They torture people with tasers. And he told me all about how it works. And I have these recorded calls and like these telegram chats with this guy. It's absolutely insane. It's like a true crime podcast, but I'm living it nuts. That's crazy. That's the life of Jordan Harbinger, ladies and gents. Yeah, he's currently sort of off the grid. And I'm like, okay, is he dead? So I don't know, TBD. I hope he's all right. Yeah, me too. Sex trafficking is, of course, associated with organized crime, huge mafias who round up children and adults, two thirds of whom in the US are US citizens.

31:19In terms of America's history, we can go back to the arrival of early colonists to the Americas, who would take and trade Native American women to be their wives. The same happened to African-American slaves. Much later on in 1910, they brought in the Mann Act, that's M-A-N-N. This was named for Congressman James Robert Mann from Illinois. The Mann Act made it a felony to traffic any woman or girl for the purposes of prostitution or debauchery. However, it became unofficially known as the White Slavery Law. It was designed ostensibly to prevent sex trafficking, but was really used to punish consensual interracial relationships So those are the horrible racist foundations of sex trafficking in the U.S.

32:01Wow, that is an inauspicious start. And sex trafficking went on to become a huge mafia industry, like you said. So what sort of mafia stuff? Because when I think of Italian mafia, I think of like extortion of a construction site or the stuff Sammy the Bull talked about when he was on the show. Can you tell me a little bit about that kind of stuff? So it depends on where that sort of mafia is from. I see. So you get this sort of the cantinas. That would be the sort of Latino mafia gangs. They've got these big sort of cantina places where that would go on. Apparently with sort of Asian gangs, I'm talking East Asian, it would be the massage parlors and things like that.

32:36Yeah, I can go into more of that. I've got that sort of lined up to talk about in a bit. Okay. At your own pace here. Yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay. Let's keep talking about the sex trafficking. Can't get enough. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a horrible situation. The thing is, yet again, we're faced with a politicized problem and guessing games. This is the kind of thing that governments and colleges can only really estimate because so much of this is underground and unknowable. So you get these figures from official sources that vary wildly. The U.S. State Department, for example, estimated in 2001 that 50 ,000 to 100 ,000 women and girls were trafficked into the U.S.

33:12By 2003, that estimate seemed to have been reduced to 18 ,000 to 20 ,000. By 2005, we were at 14 ,500 to 17 ,500. Okay, so that's for sex trafficking, or that's just like people coming into the US illegally? Yeah, it's not people coming to us illegally, but it is all trafficking. So it will include labor trafficking. Okay, that's what I meant. Yeah. Yeah, it's estimated that about half of that estimation, if you're following these estimations of estimations, is for sweatshops and other kinds of hard labor. Got it. In any case, in the seven years following the first estimate of 50 to 100 ,000 women and girls per year, the US was only actually able to identify just over 1000 victims.

33:53So far, far fewer. However, other studies have figures that show that girls and women are being sex trafficked at a way higher rate. I found one study by Deliver Fund claiming 15 ,000 to 50 ,000 women and girls are sold into sex trafficking in the US each year. But the US Department of Health and Human Services estimated that hundreds of thousands were being sex trafficked. Let me pause this because I want to highlight a little bit. Normally, when I see like one estimate that's super high and another one that's much lower, I always look at the source, right? Because if the super high one is like this private company that sells this device that prevents this estimates a million people need it.

34:29And then it's like the government says that 1000 people need it. It's like, okay, look at the incentives. But this is kind of like deliver fund is a, you know, it's a fund. They're estimating 15 ,000 to 50 ,000. But the US Department of Health and Human Services, which is not really like under any sort of pressure. to inflate stats here, most likely, estimates that it's hundreds of thousands just for sex trafficking. That seems a lot more likely, actually. So that's scary. Quite possibly. But then, like you say, why wouldn't Deliver Fund go with those same claims? Yeah, I don't know. They've used, you know, various different ways to get their surveys.

35:04And, you know, could there be a reason for, and I don't want to get into conspiracy theories on Skeptical Sundays, is there a reason the US government might want to cause more fear than is necessary? Maybe they get funding too for sex trafficking if they overasset. Who knows? It's hard, man. You really need like an exhaustive evaluation of everybody's incentives who are making these estimates in order to find out where the BS is, which is why this stuff is so hard, especially when it's a black market, which it is. Yeah, it's impossible. This is the Skeptical Sunday part of sex trafficking. To what extent is all of this exaggerated and overblown?

35:37To what extent is it going on at great levels, but simply untrackable off the radar, the black market, like you say? One of the most conservative estimates I could find came in 2019 by the University of Cincinnati, who found 1 ,032 victims between 2014 and 2016, and 4 ,000 people during that time who had been deemed at risk of being trafficked. But these are just such unknowables, unfortunately. Yeah, I suppose even if it happens to one person, right, it's a terrible tragedy. So even if the numbers aren't anywhere near as high as initially thought, the fact that hundreds or thousands, single digit thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands of people are being sold into sex trafficking, I mean, it's gross.

36:16Who is doing the sex trafficking, right? You mentioned organized crime, but what are we talking about here? Yeah, it's believed that a lot of this goes on through, as I was saying, some of the massage parlors, cantina bars, and residential brothels. What's a residential brothel? Is that like someone's house? I suppose it is, or a brothel that's just part of the neighborhood, isn't it? Yeah, I don't know. It makes me think of Buenos Aires, where they've got all these little motels where you pay per hour sort of thing to rent the rooms. They look very residential, so I'm just thinking of those. Oh, dude, this reminds me of a super short story.

36:47I walked into this place that was nearby my old place in Hollywood, and it was like a therapy place, and I checked reviews, and they were okay. I didn't realize that they had bought the location of a previous physical therapy place and turned it into what I'm going to assume is kind of shady. So I walk in there and I'm like, this is a weird environment, but whatever, you know, a lot of like massage places are, they like have candles and stuff and quiet music. So I was like, all right, it's a little tacky, but whatever. And there was this like, kind of like big, rough looking dude in a chair. And I was like, oh, hey, go ahead.

37:19You were first. And he was like, no, no, no, go ahead. And I was like, all right, that's weird. He's just, maybe he's waiting. Later, of course, I realized this is their security guy, right? But I didn't know. And these Asian women, like Chinese women come up and they're like, hey, how can I help you? Very broken English. And I'm like, yeah, I want a massage. And they were like, okay. So I go in and I get the worst, like crappiest. And I'm like, these people are totally unqualified for this. I was pretty pissed off. And I was like, yeah, I'll just never come back here. I don't want to complain about it.

37:45So I go to pay and I noticed that like there's like a TV and a little refrigerator and I see like a light on in the back room and there's a girl just laying down on the mattress and I asked them in Chinese do you live here and she's like yep and then I was like you live here in the place yeah how long have you been here oh just a few months and then another woman comes out from like back and she's like she tells them in Chinese she's like stop talking right now and like at this really snippy way and I was like all right uh bye and then I left and it took a while for everything to sink in and I was like I'm pretty sure I just got a crappy massage because this is actually a brothel and those women live in the back.

38:21And she was like too new and not clued in to be like, maybe I shouldn't tell the customers that we live in this commercial building on mattresses on the floor. It was so creepy. And so I was, I called the police and I was like, Hey, I think people live in here. And they were like, uh, okay, thanks. I told my friend who's a lawyer and he's like, yeah, I wouldn't get too involved in that because the reason you found out about it is because you went in there to like get a massage. So I'm not sure that you want to like go on record all as being like a customer of this place. And here I am talking about it in this podcast, but I was just dumb.

38:57I mean, this is like 20 years ago. I really didn't know. Yeah. And remember, that wasn't actually you, was it? It was someone else. And right. It was a friend. I've told told me the story. But that's what I'm thinking of when I think of residential brothel. The women live in the brothel, I guess. Yeah, maybe that is what that is then. I was just imagining a place in a residential area that looks like part of the street. It used to be small-time opportunists, but it's now being sex trafficking, that is. It's now being run by migrant smuggling operations of Mexican, Eastern European, and Asian crime organizations.

39:30The FBI has also reported that infamous street gangs, such as The Bloods, have been involved in sex trafficking. A 2017 analysis of more than a thousand convicted sex traffickers compiled intriguing demographics. Around 75 % of them were male and 25 % female. So it's predominantly male, but 25 % is still surprisingly high for women, which goes to show that our instincts can be wrong. I just imagined them being almost entirely dudes. Yeah. And the women get into it younger, which does, in my mind, raise suspicions about, you know, how many of them are on that line, that blurred line between perpetrator and victim themselves, you know, where they sort of pushed into it themselves and they're a bit younger than these men.

40:11But they are on average 26 and the men are on average 29. 71 % were African-American, 20 % Caucasian and 4 % Hispanic. That's interesting about the women being a little younger. I'm putting words in your mouth here maybe, but you do wonder to what extent they're also coerced. You wonder how much is just a case of people being trafficked themselves and later becoming traffickers because this is all they know. What do we know about typical victims here? Well, regarding the victims, there is a great variety. This affects runaway children and homeless people, but young people are also being targeted through social media.

40:47As for foreigners who are imported to the US, what tends to happen is that the victims first find themselves in abject poverty due to their unfortunate circumstances. Then they're swayed by the promise of a secure route into the US and false promises of citizenship or a passport. People who go into industries such as hospitality, au pairs, modelling, or bar and club work are particularly at risk. And then there are kids who are groomed by neighbourhood pimps. Around half of them have a history of homelessness. These would be American kids and they come from broken homes generally. they're then prevented from communicating with their families.

41:27And there are often coercive techniques used to initiate a kind of Stockholm syndrome, whereby the victims identify with their captors. I've got to say, a lot of what you've described certainly sounds like cult tactics. The love bombing, isolating victims from their families, trying to trigger that Stockholm syndrome. What are some of the, are there like different types of sex trafficking? It's interesting you refer to cults because the BITE model, B-I-T-E, developed by anti-cult and former cultist himself, academic Stephen Hassan, is often used to try to get victims out of the coercive clutches of pimps and traffickers.

42:01The model describes four categories of coercion used on sex trafficking victims, behavior control, information control, thought control, and emotional control. And it's used as a way of trying to reach victims who feel they've lost their identity in the cult-like setting. Yeah, Stephen's been on the show before as well. Episodes 237 and 471. He consults for us a lot on Feedback Friday because we have a lot of people who write in that are like in cults, family members in a cult, they escaped a cult, whatever it is, cults galore. Yeah, he's like the OG cult expert when it comes to the persuasion techniques used in cults or other coercive situations.

42:36We've mentioned gangs, of course, who create this atmosphere. But there are also, of course, street pimps who coercively control victims. And there are organized crime operations. But we also have more subtle kinds of sex trafficking. For example, it's considered sex trafficking if a minor is not necessarily being controlled by a person, but feels as though they have to perform sex acts to survive. That's called survival sex. Families force their kids to perform sex acts in exchange for things like drugs and money. That's familial trafficking, and it's particularly difficult to catch. We don't know if familial is more common than other forms of sex trafficking, but we do know that sexual abuse in itself is most commonly committed by a perpetrator known to the victim.

43:20In fact, less than 20 % of those sex offenses are committed by strangers. And then there are religiously motivated forced marriages, with Pakistan often mentioned as the go-to country. Typically, children from these extreme Muslim families are flown out to Pakistan and forced to marry a cousin or friend of the family. The FLDS, which is the fundamentalist outcrop of Mormonism, has been accused of trafficking people across state borders to be part of polygamous relationships. Then, and this is pretty horrific, there's something called cyber sex trafficking, which involves the kidnapping, trafficking, and live streaming of sexual acts carried out on victims.

44:00My gosh. Okay, there's a lot there. So I definitely have heard that a lot of this stuff is caused by familial connections or people you know. And I was going to jump on you for saying then, and this is pretty horrific, as if the rest of it isn't. But then when you told me about cyber sex trafficking, I realized that this is even worse, because I can't even imagine what kind of hell that must be. So you're being abused. You know, a bunch of random gross people are getting off on it on the dark web. No one is coming to help you. They're all enjoying your suffering at some level. I've heard that this has surged recently, especially because now you have cryptocurrency.

44:34So the users are not tracked. It's much safer for gross criminals to view this stuff with impunity and never get caught. You've got your VPN, you know, your private network. You get your payment method completely anonymous. Their identities are hidden and they feel safe doing this. And so the kind of restraints are off of a lot of these disgusting people. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's horrific what goes on out there. And it does make you wonder about humanity. And then there's, you know, there's a traditional, let's call it sex trafficking, the traditional sex trafficking, the type we're seeing in movies such as The Sound of Freedom, but also Taken.

45:08That was another one, the Liam Neeson vehicle. They tend to involve poverty stricken individuals who are sold a lie of a better life before being forced into slavery. And that could be labor or sexual. You're listening to Skeptical Sunday on The Jordan Harbinger Show. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for listening to and supporting the show. Your support of our advertisers keeps us going. All the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. You can also search for any sponsor using the AI chatbot on the website as well. Consider supporting those who support the show.

45:43Now for the rest of Skeptical Sunday. Going back to The Sound of Freedom, obviously there's this debate over how much it stretched the truth, or to what extent the main character Tim Ballard is abusive in real life. It's based on a true story, right? So do you know about what went on there, what that whole background is? The specific story depicted in Sound of Freedom centers around the rescue of a young girl from Colombia, but the narrative is actually a composite of multiple real-life operations conducted by Ballard and his team. In the film, the girl is shown as being kidnapped and sold into a trafficking ring.

46:17So I realize this all sounds a little vague and abstract, and I think that's partly a good thing because it reflects the reality. It is murky, underground, difficult to find concrete facts about. Even a story like a girl kidnapped, taken to Colombia in the movie, we find out that's an amalgamation of many stories. So what even is real? So I do want to share a couple of stories of real people and exactly what happened to them and how it happened. Okay. First, there's the story of Chandra Wawaruntu, who had a promising job in finance in Indonesia before she lost her job due to racial persecution and started looking for something else.

46:55She found an advert for a job in the States at a hotel in Chicago. Now, the agent who met her at JFK Airport in New York took her to a van, confiscated her passport, and put a gun to her head. After that, she was trafficked between brothels in New York and Connecticut and forced to perform sexual acts on people almost 24-7. She eventually escaped by jumping out of a bathroom window in Brooklyn. That is horrible. Imagine how desperate you have to be to jump out of, we're probably not talking about a first floor bathroom window. That poor woman. It just makes you wonder whether customers are the brothels.

47:32You got to wonder who goes in there who's not just a dumb kid who is misled by Yelp reviews. Yeah. Right. Who goes in there to purposely patronize a brothel and like knowing what they're going to buy when they get there? Do they have any idea of the situation of the women that are in there? That's I got to wonder, would they have cared either way? I mean, if that's the United States, I assume it's got to happen in a similar way in most Western countries. Yeah. You know what? That actually reminds me, as we speak, of a big situation that sort of blew up on YouTube a year ago with a guy called Lloyd Evans, who is a prominent ex-Jehovah's Witness.

48:11And he's like, you know, in YouTube, there's all these communities. And he's like, maybe the biggest or one of the biggest ex-Jehovah's Witness YouTubers who sort of speaks out against the church. And the Church of Jehovah's Witness, like many of the religions and things, has hidden all sorts of sexual violence and things like that. And he's been exposing it, which is great. but he's also taken you know a lot of people have given him contributions for his channel and it was found that he had and he admitted to this that he left his wife to go to i want to say i think it was thailand it's always thailand yeah he was sleeping with or patronizing sex workers and he admitted all of this and then a lot of his viewers were like well hang on a minute you know we give you money to continue your work, which is against all sorts of sex trafficking, which we know goes on in Jehovah's Witness circles.

49:01And here you are going out to Thailand and you know full well that many of the women, maybe not all of them, that you went to see and were paying money to will have been sex trafficked. And he just refused to see that link at all. But it caused an absolute furore online. Jeez, how does he get caught? Did he admit doing this? He suddenly told two or three of the people who are also ex-Jehovah's Witnesses who worked with him. It was like a confession. And there are all sorts of theories as to why he told them that. Some people have said, you know, it's that kind of making them complicit. You know, once you've told people, that's what some people do in those kinds of situations.

49:39So those people then were like, look, we've got to talk about this kind of thing. And then he had to like make a video admitting to all of it. Oh my God, that's so embarrassed. I'll never sort of be able to get my mind around paying for sex. I can't imagine it's enjoyable to do that. Like, isn't the point? You stopped doing it, didn't you? When did you stop beating your wife, Jordan? Oh, God. Isn't that the classic loaded question? The whole point of sex is the other person actually likes you. I thought that was the point anyway. You know, like, isn't that the point? I suppose, you know, because I've never done that either, right?

50:14But I suppose there's, who was it? Kundera. So Milan Kundera, in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, he wrote about sexuality as uncovering the one millionth or something like that, that you can only see in the acts of sex. He wrote about a protagonist who kept cheating on his wife. And he said, like, his wife's friends were nowhere near as beautiful as her. They were nowhere near as intelligent or interesting or sexy or whatever it might be. but they had one thing she didn't have, which was that they weren't her. And it becomes about, for certain men, I think, an addiction, like a Pokemon kind of thing of trying to collect all those one one millionth that you don't see of these people until you're in a sexual relationship or sexual situation with them.

50:58Whether they're entirely fulfilled when they get that one millionth through prostitution, I couldn't say. I can't imagine. I believe that's what they're pursuing. Yeah, that's what the addiction is, right? You never scratch that itch. I just, I don't know. I can't imagine it's that good. That's all. Who knows? Maybe I'm missing out. I'm content with not ever knowing. Yeah. Write in to jordanharbinger.com or whatever. Write in and tell us your experiences. With prostitutes. Yeah. Exactly. Back to a very morose topic. There's a variety of ways that sex trafficking is carried out. One example of the kind we see in movies, the kind we have in our minds, is the case of Sarah Forsyth in the UK.

51:33Again, there is this familiar idea of seeking a job abroad. Sarah left Newcastle in England for Amsterdam in Holland, where she'd applied for a job working in a nursery. Just 19 years old, upon arriving, she was held at gunpoint again, and that's the thing. Yeah, and abducted. Then she was forced to perform sexual acts for 20 men a night in the red light district of Amsterdam. As you say, you wonder to what extent the clients of the night, you know, these people who go to the red light district, to what extent they know that this is going on, or if that might have even changed things for these men, you know, if they're getting off on this kind of thing.

52:10Sarah says she was shown a video of a young woman from Thailand in a similar situation to her who was murdered by her pimps for not making enough money. She believes her death was used in snuff videos, which was, you know, videos that go out on the dark web of people being killed. So again, things are hazy because some people don't believe in snuff films, that they're just hoaxes. But Sarah is convinced that every time a woman disappeared from her window position in the red light district, she'd been used in a snuff film and therefore murdered. God, and this is an answer. When I think the Netherlands, I usually think like, Van Gogh, it's relatively safe.

52:48There's all these people that are terrible dancers and, you know, smoke marijuana at the coffee shops and run a general, you know, what do they make there? Semiconductor lithography machine. like you don't think oh yeah the mafia or whatever is running this red light district that is just crazy and lawless who runs that is it dutch people or is that like a russian mafia layer to amsterdam that could be a skeptical sunday in itself couldn't it yeah i'm so curious have you been there to amsterdam yeah red light district of course you walk through it because it's kind of like near if memory serves near the train station i went there yeah in the 90s when i was an exchange student and i remember because people like you have to check it out so we as all a group of students went there with our volunteers to just like walk through during the daytime.

53:31There are women in their underwear in these windows and they're like, hey, what's going on? And I remember chatting with one because we stopped and she was like, where are you from? I was like, Detroit. And she's like, I'm from Detroit. And we just riffed about like where she went to school. And she was older than me by quite a bit because I was only 17. And I remember just being like, wow, this is like a normal person. And she's in a window trying to get like random dudes off the street to go make money. It was sort of like this surreal, sad moment. It was so bizarre. You should have paid her for the time you took up of her.

54:02Now that I think about it, I'm like, oh, we stopped in front of her window. Other people couldn't see her. We definitely cost her like$100 or something. Man. But no, I know what you mean. And it's really, I remember when I was there, a similar thing happened. And I then happened to see the same woman in a cafe the next day working there because they often have two jobs and they're often just trying to get themselves through university. And there is a very different, despite obviously the story I've just told, it does appear to be, you know, because it's legal, a much safer, more regulated alternative to what happens in countries where that is illegal.

54:35I'm not, you know, pro or against the legalization of prostitution. I haven't really considered it very much. Just in Holland, it just tends to sort of be that way. It's a surreal experience. Yeah. The commodification of people, you know, it's odd. I agree. That's the thing that doesn't make sense to me. I have to do a deeper dive on the Sarah Forsyth case, because why hijack somebody who's from a Western country with strong diplomatic relations and a strong military? Why kidnap someone like that at gunpoint when you have legal prostitution and possibly a ton of other people that you could get who are not going to try to escape?

55:08That part, I'm just like, why? Obviously, I'm missing some pieces to that puzzle, I think. Yeah, I don't know enough. And she's written a whole book about it as well. Yeah, I don't think she's lying about it. I'm just saying I don't understand why the people would do that to her. It seems like there's a million easy ways to do that without being a criminal scumbag. But then again, mafia criminal scumbags are going to be scumbags. If you're already a criminal scumbag, you might as well continue down that path. I guess so, yeah. I guess the difference is that the other women you presume, I don't know, again, we'd have to look into the red light district, but I don't know to what extent the women who work there take the full percentage of what they earn.

55:44Yeah, I don't know. And they also decide, you know, oh, I'll sleep with four or five men tonight and I have the right to refuse them. Whereas when you've got a pimp with a gun in your back, you've just got to take everyone, 20 a night, and give all your money to these people. Yeah, that's disgusting. That's the West. What does sex trafficking look like outside the West? It seems like it's got to be awful. I mean, worse or equally awful at the very least? It's just all awful, yeah. I mean, in Ghana, in Africa, you have what are called connection men and they hang around the borders transporting mostly women with fake visas from there they're transported to the states and certain countries in europe there's a whole network set up whereby ghanaian and nigerian women go to the same parts of europe so it's like these real like almost railroads but across the whole sort of world paths that are set for sex slaves ugandans are sold to Sudan as sex slaves.

56:40That's just the place Ugandans are sold to. Women are recruited from South Africa and sent to certain parts of Europe and Asia. Across the Americas, sex trafficking is rife as well. They all seem to pass through Mexico, whether on their way into or out of the US. And then there's Asia, India, Japan, South Korea, and Thailand in particular. For example, in India, many women are trafficked from Bangladesh and Nepal. In India, it's estimated there are 3 million sex workers, 40 % of whom were trafficked as children. There are 40 ,000 child prostitutes in Sri Lanka, but no country, it seems, is devoid of this.

57:17Iran and Israel are enemies, especially at the moment, and their supporters and detractors are engaging in yet more politicization around the idea of sex trafficking. As it turns out, both countries, just like the US, the UK, and most other countries, are unexceptional. They're hotspots for trafficking. Just like Like the aforementioned blood libel, Israel's critics and anti-Semites, and those are not the same thing, of course, even if there is an overlap, push this idea that Israel is somehow exceptional in its desire to welcome sex traffickers. It's a weird one because when we discuss the problems that the US or Mexico have with sex trafficking, the countries are somehow seen as pawns, bystanders, or victims being overrun by nefarious pimps and cartels.

58:00With the criticism of Israel, you get this sense that the people criticizing, imagine Israel inviting, welcoming, or reveling in the sex trafficking. And that may seem exaggerated by me, I suppose, but as the late Christopher Hitchens once borrowed from chariots of fire, anti-Semitism is something you catch on the edge of a remark. The truth is, of course, that Israel as a country is at the forefront of the fight against human trafficking in all its forms. That said, it is fallible, like any other country, and much of its recent sex trafficking issues have spawned from an unlikely place, the Russia-Ukraine war.

58:35Many Ukrainian women have fled to Israel and other parts of the world with the promise of being high-class prostitutes, and it turns out to be far worse than expected. One place where Israelis and Palestinians seem to work well together is, unfortunately, as operators of sex trafficking. While Israel is making efforts to clamp down on sex trafficking, it's fair to say it has lagged behind and has a lot of work to do. In Palestine, we don't even have figures, but trafficking and sex-based crimes are thought to be prevalent. Some blame Israel's occupation. Others blame the prominence of gender based violence in the country.

59:10In the West Bank and Gaza, almost 30 % of married women are subjected to violence by their husbands. 14 % of single women are beaten by other members of their households. That's according to a survey. So of course, it could be higher. People are having to grade themselves on that. So if there's a lot of secrecy, it might be higher. Israel, Palestine, the US and Mexico are countries I've zoned in on. But the reality is that this is something that affects every country on earth and is particularly brutal to women. What are some of the lasting consequences to the victims? I mean, this is all super traumatizing and horrific.

59:44Well, people who survive sex trafficking go through a lot of tough health issues, similar to what victims of domestic violence or forced labor face. They often catch diseases like STIs because they don't know much about them or how to prevent them, and you can't really prevent them when someone's raping you, of course. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that only one of 23 trafficked women interviewed felt well-informed about sexually transmitted infections or HIV before leaving home. They also suffer from physical problems like injuries, hunger, and pains in different parts of their body, and these issues usually don't get treated while they are trapped, so it can be long-lasting even after escaping.

1:00:23Mentally, it's really hard for them too. They deal with a lot of anxiety, sadness, and PTSD because of the unthinkable trauma. It's a cycle and a downward spiral because these mental health disorders also make them feel alone and ashamed. Many of these survivors end up using drugs or alcohol to try to handle the pain and stress. Sometimes the traffickers force them to use these substances to keep them under control and they become addicted. Even if they weren't forced, many still use drugs or alcohol to cope with their experiences. Because they're often scared of getting in trouble with the law, especially if they don't have the right papers, they get stuck in this bad cycle.

1:01:00And sadly, women in this situation usually have a much shorter life, with studies showing their average lifespan is around 34 years. That's at least according to data in Colorado Springs about women in prostitution in general. Man, dead by 34. That is so sad. That is absolutely crazy. So what is being done to stop this? I know there's NGOs and stuff, but like, what else? Yeah. And also, I was just thinking with 34, I'm sure a lot of them must live long lives still, which means if that's the average, it's going to be much lower than 34 for a lot of women or girls. It doesn't even bear thinking.

1:01:37I didn't even think about that. But yeah, in terms of what's being done worldwide, getting the word out so that people are a bit more skeptical, firstly about the huge numbers, there's not scaremongering and stuff, but also so that people are skeptical as in potential victims, you know, so they know like, hey, this looks like a cool holiday, but let's be really careful here. It's not as simple as that because Sarah Forsyth was actually already a little suspicious when she walked into her Amsterdam nightmare, but it can only help for people to learn about trafficking from a young age. Some of the ways we're all getting the message out there is through marketing, such as January being National Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

1:02:13By improving all facets of society, we can curb sex trafficking numbers, not just education, for example, about trafficking itself, but just education, being better able to find other types of work. A lot of these stories are about young people who found themselves out of work and often with no prospects. It's difficult, though. It's thought that the average age of entry into street prostitution in the US is 12 to 14 years old. And that's often where malicious people are finding these kids or a few years on adults to traffic to brothels on the streets. Often it's not a job offer like the above examples, but you know, vulnerable people looking to make money in the sex industry who believe they're going to retain their freedom while working.

1:02:54And that turns out not to be the case. Pimps and traffickers begin withholding payment, keeping them locked up, forcing them to overwork and so on. So it's no easy task to prevent this from happening. Yeah, I've kind of seen a little bit of this myself. I worked at a security company in Detroit in the 90s. I was 17, 18 years old. I worked there for a few years. And I remember one venue, I was new to this venue, it was a new contract for the company. And it was like this after hours party place. So the bars close at two, can't get alcohol, you go to this like, crappy place that has a pool table and an open, you know, a bar with a bartender and you just pay in cash.

1:03:33And it was like a lot of strippers would go there. Exotic dancers, I should say, would go there after the strip clubs closed and they would work there. And it was it was gross. I saw a girl there who is maximum 14 years old. And my colleagues and I were like, what the hell? We told our boss and we're like, this is not OK. What the hell? Like after hours strip club. Yeah, not our favorite venue, but like consenting adults. We're breaking liquor. Well, they're breaking liquor laws. Like we've got bigger fish to fry. Who cares? At least these people aren't beating each other up, shooting each other, doing drugs, whatever.

1:04:03But then when we saw that, a bunch of us were like, I'm never working here again. And our boss was like, yeah, we're never working here again. We are not coming back here. And that was just a horrifying wake up call to the severity of this problem because we were like, what is a 14 year old girl? Where are her parents? What is happening? And she was definitely like being paraded around. She wasn't right in the head, so we're like, what drugs is she on right now? This 14-year-old girl. And from what you've told me today, I feel like the state of affairs is as follows. The idea of sex trafficking is often weaponized and politicized.

1:04:37It's exaggerated. It's a large part of conspiracy theories that seek to expose elite figures like Clinton, Trump, whatever, Bill Gates gets an honorable mention here or dishonorable mention. But on the other hand, we have to be careful not to dismiss the whole thing because sex trafficking, even if it may have been exaggerated a lot by our own government back in the early 2000s or whatever, it's a massive industry that ruins thousands and thousands of lives. And Epstein was, surprise, surprise, doing horrible things on that island. And networks run by organized crime organizations are currently trafficking people for sex, many of whom are young girls across countries and continents to satisfy the sick perversions of humans the world over.

1:05:16That's the long and short of it, I think. It's a mess. And not enough is being done. or even can be done about it. That's certainly true in the case of Prince Andrew, who faces several accusations and doesn't seem to be being held accountable. I've done two episodes recently on my podcast Heretics with Insiders who explain quite how dark Andrew is and how weird he is. So I hope anyone interested will check those out. And although this is a depressing subject, I hope people will take heart from this because we know that firstly, sex trafficking is not quite as prevalent as the media suggests. And secondly, by learning about it, talking about it and spreading the word, we're helping to inform more potential victims about the dangers.

1:05:55Thanks, Andrew, for what was a dark and definitely murky episode of Skeptical Sunday. A lot to think about here, man. Hug your kids, y 'all. You're about to hear a preview of the Jordan Harbinger show with Amanda Catarzi, who was raised in a cult and later sex and labor trafficked. The women were trained to be insanely submissive. You could never say no to any man. And then the men were trained in a very military way. These people are well-armed and well-trained. And it's a whole group that thinks that the world is evil and they need to repopulate the world with their people to bring the kingdom of God.

1:06:34When you turn 13 in that culture, you're an adult. So to be 13 years old, being courted by men twice my age, three times my age, to see if I would make a good wife, it was just kind of outrageous. So I moved to California to go to school and I start training MMA. And my trafficker was there. He was actually one of my boxing coaches. Then he's like, you know, I like you. And so now we're dating. So this is my first adult relationship. He's twice my age at this point. And then he would always take me up to his cabin on the mountain, which was really far away from everybody else. No phone service, isolation.

1:07:16and it was on a Native American reservation. So whatever they wanted to do to me, they could. Oops, you accidentally got gang raped. That was very common of going to go train and then all of a sudden, now that you've fought 12 rounds, now you're going to be raped. A girl ran a red light and T-boned my truck. So I pull out my phone and I text my trafficker and I say, hey, I almost just died in a car accident. He said, is your face fucked up? And I'm like, no. and he said, well, you're still fuckable then. Something isn't right here. This isn't who I want to be. This isn't what I want and it was like I was coming out of water.

1:07:57I had this moment of clarity and I knew something wasn't right and I knew this wasn't what I wanted and I knew I needed to act fast in order to get out of that situation because I knew I'd get sucked back in. To hear how she escaped her dire situation, check out episode 631 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.

1:08:42on his podcast, Heretics, anywhere you get your podcasts, especially on YouTube. He's got a crushing YouTube right now. This show is created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogerty, Ian Baird, Milio Campo, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own, and I am a lawyer, but I am not your lawyer. So do your own research before implementing anything you hear on the show. Also, we may get a few things wrong here and there, especially on Skeptical Sunday. If you think we've really dropped the ball on something, let us know. I know this is a dark episode.

1:09:12We tried to lighten it up here and there with some jokes. Maybe not all of you will be receptive to that, but please keep in mind it's hard for us to do stuff like this. It is dark. It is a little gross. It's a lot gross. Anyway, y 'all know how to reach me, jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism we doled out today. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.

1:09:44This episode is sponsored in part by Vital Proteins. You've probably heard of Vital Proteins. They're the number one brand of collagen peptides in the U.S., and for good reason. A lot of people, myself included, take it pretty much daily to support things like healthy hair, skin, nails, bones, joints, all the good stuff. That starts to matter more the longer you've been walking around on this planet. But now Vital Proteins is shaking things up, literally. You can tell a dad wrote this copy with a brand new collagen and protein shake. And this isn't your average protein shake that tastes like chalk and sadness.

1:10:12This one's light, chocolatey, super smooth, and it's got something pretty unique going for it. High quality protein, 30 grams of it, plus collagen. That's pretty good ROI. Usually you're choosing one or the other, but Vital Proteins gives you both a ready-to-drink shake you can toss in your bag or fridge, zero added sugar, no artificial sweeteners, and no carrageenan. And I don't know what that is or if that's even how you say it, but you're supposed to avoid that. If you're already taking collagen or you're just curious about how it might support your hair, skin, nails, joints, and you don't want any carrageenan, this is a super easy, tasty way to try it.

1:10:45Get 20 % off by going to vitalproteins.com and entering promo code Jordan at checkout. This episode is sponsored in part by the Something You Should Know podcast. Finding a great new podcast can feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. Let me save you some hassle. Check out Something You Should Know with my friend Mike Carruthers. Every episode is packed with fascinating insights that you can actually use. Mike interviews top experts on topics that shape your life, like how to optimize your brain chemistry, the best and worst ways to apologize, probably could use that recently why couples hate to talk about money no matter the topic mike asks the questions you'd want to ask getting straight to the good stuff and the conversations are always engaging always insightful guaranteed to leave you a little smarter than before they've got thousands of five-star reviews but do you even need that i'm recommending it and you don't need other people's opinion right at this point i would hope anyway give it a listen just search for something you should know wherever you get your podcasts look for the bright yellow light bulb and start listening to something you should know Always get Trueк Layered