Tim Ballard on Fighting Back Against Child Sex Slavery EP 1469

25:54The only jurisdiction I have is a U.S. court. So I've got to find a U.S. person. Who's buying kids. A child or a perpetrator who's United States. Got it. And so on that Columbia case, we had hit like a goldmine of travel. I can't call it that, but we had hit like the motherlode, okay, of bad guys. And how many kids did they have? It was over 100 kids. Wow. It was going to be over 100 kids. And I don't blame my boss at all. He did what he had to do. He's like, you got to come home. Because there were no Americans involved. You can't. There's nothing I can do. He did everything he could to keep it and push it and make it happen.

26:29But there came a point where you just couldn't do it. and that's when I had to make a decision. And I called my wife and I said, what do I do? And she's like, my wife, she's like just very stable and very inspired, I'll say. And she just said, well, it's obvious what you do. Do you think you can save kids? I said, I'm very confident we'll save over 100 kids. She's like, then you quit your job. That's it, we'll worry about, you do the right thing first and you always do the right, how can you live with yourself? And then she said, how can I live with myself? I mean, there came a point with my wife where I was struggling to stay and do this job.

27:05And she said, she ended the debate with these words. And these are verbatim because I'll never forget it. Because it penetrated my soul. Pierced you. Pierced me. She said, I will not let you jeopardize my salvation by not doing this. Wow. I said, okay. And so if anyone needs to end a debate with your loved one, that line works. It's a powerful line. Wow. So that was it. And I was like, okay, if that's how you feel, then I'm in. And we quit and started. Because you're not making millions of dollars. You're making a government salary job. I have no savings. I have six kids at the time. How old are you?

27:42I'm probably now late 30s. Yeah. And I have no savings. Yeah, you're spending thousands of months on food for kids. I'm like, Catherine, I'm just going to tell you, this was like fall, like June, or December. I said, by June, we're out of food. Like, I don't know how we're going to feed the kids. She's like, that doesn't matter. She's like, how can you live with your son? I said, okay. No, you're right. You're right. You're just way braver than me. Okay. You're like, I got to protect you. I got to protect the family. I got to be safe. Oh, it was a tough one. It was a hard, several, it was a hard month.

28:16It was December of 2013. Oh, man. And I was just a mess. I was a mess. This is seven years ago. Yes. So what happens next? Do you go, was that the first thing? You quit the job and then you go back to Columbia? You assemble like the Marvel cast of crusaders to come with you? I have just enough money to do those two. You're funding it yourself. Yes. Yeah. So I'm like calling a lawyer. You got to buy guns. You got to buy whatever materials. We got to buy everything we need to get. Yeah. And I'm calling a lawyer. I'm like, how do I make a nonprofit? Like, I guess that's the best way to do this. I had no idea what I was doing.

28:52Right. Like, well, we'll set you up. And I got some people to donate. and we just went in. We had the two cases, the one in Haiti, which is the other powerful story, and Colombia. They were both kind of the reasons I left. And so I didn't have enough money to go home. So I would just jump, I would bounce back between Haiti and Colombia until we had success. And we did in both. It was, both of them were crazy cases and we ended up wrestling over 120. No way. Yeah. So what happens after you guys go in, you get the bad guys, you know, you break up the operation and then there's a hundred kids what happens to those hundred kids next for the next ten years right so that's the most important part that's the most important question and then that's the question we've asked first before we'll engage with law enforcement partners first of all we always work with law enforcement we're not real goal the local government law enforcement we say here's our services in this case it was easy because as an agent I was already working with them I had to leave and then I said I'm back yeah I lost my badge and my life maybe but I'm back But I brought the resources and a coalition of the willing, you know, former law enforcement folks who were willing to just jump on in this operation.

30:03And and then we but we said we can't do anything until we know what happens to the kids. And so what we do is we have an aftercare department, which is our most important department, which partners with the local non-government organizations that are aftercare centers. And they exist in every country. And so we partner with them and we say, look, we could rescue up to this many kids. How many could you take? And take means raise. Because you don't know. Fund, house, feed, educate. Until they go to university. Because so many times, more than half the time, I'd say, there's not a family waiting for them with open arms.

30:39There is no family, which is how they got taken in the first place. Or the family is part of the problem. Because they're getting paid. They're getting their money. Yeah. And so we set up with those partnerships so that when the kids are rescued, we know exactly. In fact, the aftercare partners are with us when the raid happens and they write to the kids, you're safe, you're not bad, guys, because the kids think, am I getting arrested or what's going on? So we set it up to where the aftercare team is immediately on the ground and the healing process begins. And they'll either get potentially adopted by another family or they'll be in a facility, a home or some type of facility.

31:14Yes, exactly right. Now, what about, you mentioned that, it sounds like half the time the parents are involved in selling their kids, especially, I've heard about this in Asia, like a lot of their, it's like a form of love to like say, how much money can you bring back to me type of thing. I don't know if I'm off there, but how do parents, what's the psychology behind that for parents where they feel like it's not a bad thing? I've heard of this sometimes, some cases. It's like part of the culture, I guess. Now, how do you, as a parent, how could you do that? How do you get to that point? So you're exactly right how you're describing it.

31:45That is how it is. And it's something I cannot comprehend. It's almost like they're so desperate for means, for money. They're so poor. And they're just like, well, I think they just have to compartmentalize. And just kind of normalize sexual activity. Even if it's your 12-year-old daughter. You just got to, this is what we have to do. Oftentimes it's cyclical, generational. So it's like, that's what I had to do. So that's what you have to do. and we've got to break it. And that's been part of the problem because when it's culturally accepted, sometimes the laws reflect that as well. And so there's a lot of countries we've gone in and helped them establish their laws where they didn't exist before.

32:25And oftentimes, I'd say the majority of the first cases we do, the first investigations we do in a given country is their first investigation into this as well. So we provide the tools. We build digital forensic laboratories, for example. We built one in Southeast Asia that services four or five countries there and give them the tools they've never had before to go into the dark net, to go and find where, you know, track IPs, where child pornography is being distributed. Yeah, it's a nutty thing. So is U.S. the biggest consumers of sex trafficking then? We're the biggest consumers of child exploitation material.

33:01So pornography. Yeah, child pornography. Child sex pornography. Yeah, we're the biggest consumers. We're the biggest consumers in the world. And one of the biggest producers as well of it. Really? Yeah, so we are the demand. Oh my gosh. This is why we have success overseas. Why are we so messed up? I think it has to do with, first of all, it's the internet. It's access to the internet. It's the technology that's readily accessible here that we can use, peer-to-peer networks, dark net kind of stuff where we can learn how to use that quick. It's softer, and then all of a sudden you're in. And so it takes a degree of technology.

33:31And then we have a large population with lots of technology. I don't think per capita it's a whole lot worse here. It's just that we have the numbers and the technology and that together creates it's an easier access it's easier access Yeah, so people become sex addicts easier in this country in mass So there's another there's sex acts all over the world. We just have easier access to exploiting that Thing and we have a few hundred million people there All have that access so that creates a lot of demand in this country. How easy is it to watch? Cha I've never seen child pornography. I don't even know how easy that would be how easy if I wanted to go on the internet right now way too easy how long would it take for me is it 30 minutes is it less five minutes if you have some skill like it's not you just type in chopper no you're not going to google it no okay and no one tried that by the way it's the cops they'll track you yeah no it's not it's not that easy like it's just like a google search but there's ways if you understand the dark net and how and how different networks work i don't even know what the dark net is yeah that's crazy so if you can get into that then you could find it quick oh it's it's if you have it's like updating new stuff all the time Oh, yeah.

34:35In the last three or four years, there's been a 5 ,000 % increase in new child content. It's growing like mad. I mean, are they doing it because they're making money? Are people having to pay for it? Is it free? Like, how do they? Oh, no, they make money. By selling it. They sell it, yeah. You purchase access to certain places. Like a membership. Yeah, and then you end up traveling. You know, then you get into that world. you get into the networks and now you're traveling to engage and become a contact offender as we call it contact offender where you're now having sex having sex yeah a contact offender a contact offender contact offender yeah so man this is a whole other world I'm sorry I know I'm bringing darkness to this beautiful show no it's okay I think it's important to educate people on how to live a better life and how to how to you know constantly be educating ourselves on all these different challenges we have to because the problem is considering the fact that we are the number one demand and we are number three for destination countries, that means that the pedophiles are here and our kids are here.

35:40They're mixed and mingled amongst this group. So parents need to wake up and understand the apps that their kids are using. We had a guy just 30 minutes from my home just a few weeks ago who was gaming with two six-year-old girls from Indiana. Six years old. This guy's 42 years old. Like on Twitch or something or like on some platform? Well, it started on Facebook. These kids were on Facebook, and then it went. Most games today have the ability to, you know, you can play with other people from across the earth. And it's fun. It's cool. But parents who didn't grow up with this mentality and this technology, they think their kids are playing the computer.

36:17Because when I was a kid, it was Atari. Yeah. And you're playing the computer. Yeah, you're not playing other people. Right. So parents don't even think, like, oh, she's playing that cute little game. She's fine. She's been playing for six months with a pedophile from Salt Lake City. And the guy got the kids, the six-year-old girls, two of them, to undress and take naked pictures. I'm not kidding. He just said, just desensitize them. They can read or he can talk to them and just like, take your clothes off. Put the camera down. No way. Yes. And the AG's office picked the guy up and arrested him.

36:46But this is happening in mass, especially right now. We've never seen it like we have right now because the kids are out of school. Kids are out of school and people are in their homes all day. And pedophiles are out of work. And we can track their chatter on the dark net and the communicating. and they keep saying it's harvest time, these kids are sitting dust. No, they're not. They're not sitting. They are. How many? Six million, up to six million additional reports from the National Center for Mission Exploited Children than the same time last year. And we won't even know the ramifications.

37:15It'll take years before some of these victims come up because these guys are, the lines are out in the water right now. Oh my gosh. We take for granted the infrastructure of schools and after school programs and sports programs. We take for granted how safe that makes our kids from these online predators because that's where they are. They're online. So it's easier to fish now. Oh yeah, because the mom and dad are worried about their jobs. They're scavenging for food. The kids, hey, they're told, take the smartphone, take the laptop, stay here, play games, do your schoolwork. We got to go figure out.

37:43It's almost less safe to be on a tablet than it is to be at an after-school program. 100 % less safe to be home. You hear stories about Larry Nassar, I think the doctor. Yeah, the gymnastics. The doctor, yeah. It's like, okay, you felt like your kids were safe at a U.S. sanctioned training program, but this happened to hundreds of girls, but it's less safe online. Right, it's a great point. Some people say, well, I get worried about after-school programs. And this is a credible doctor who's like creating educational videos. And that happens as well. But this, in terms of the sheer numbers, is way more threatening because there's millions of pedophiles.

38:19It's easier to do it. There's millions of kids. They know the parents aren't paying attention because they're worried about their livelihood. And they just access the kids and they start gaming with them, they friend them on Facebook or whatever, and all of a sudden it's on and it's horrible. What are two or three things that parents can do now that they have this information to protect their kids against any type of sex offenders? So the most important thing is understand the apps your kids are on. Understand the social media platforms your kids are on. Know if people can access them pretty readily, pretty quickly.

38:54and that's the problem is parents just, if you're my age or older, we missed it. We missed the internet. So we didn't grow up understanding with raging hormones and undeveloped brains. We didn't have to deal with internet too. Our kids do. And so parents just don't know there's education. What are the most challenging apps they should be aware of? Or is it all social media? It's all social media. Anyone where you can connect with bad guys. Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, it doesn't matter. The parents of those six-year-old girls I told you about, they said, We had no idea. We thought the kids were just playing the computer.

39:26No, no. They were playing a pedophile and the little kid game, whatever it was. And so parents, that's the number one thing. Know what your kids are doing. Understand the applications. If you need help, you can go to your internet service provider and say, hey, can you send me a record of every... You own that phone that you give your kid, right? Right, right. They can give you a record of every site that's hit, every game that's played. Conversations, yeah, yeah. Right, every conversation. What's the conversation that a parent should have with their kids, whether they're 5 or 15, to at least educate them a little bit without scaring them?

39:56But what can a parent say, whether they know something's happening or not, to prepare them for this? So it's a great question. And for me, having nine kids, you have to really meditate and pray and focus on each individual kid and customize that answer. Because if you come in too early, you could hurt them. It's a tough subject. But if you miss, if you come in too late, you could also hurt them. So when they start asking questions, and when you kind of feel your intuition, luckily I have my wife, who I can say, when is it time for this one? It's now. Okay, let's have the talk. And then what you say also is customized, you know, to what you think they're ready for.

40:32But you have to be in front of it. Whatever that answer is, that's the key is being, have a close relationship with your kid. Be their friend and their parent and connect with their soul so that you can get that inspiration. Okay, now's the time and here's what I'm going to tell you. Too often we say nothing because we don't want to talk about sex and, you know, it opens that whole door, birds and the bees, and parents just ignore it. That's the worst thing you can do. Because then someone else is going to teach them, and they're going to get hurt. So it's just tuning into that kid. Wow. That's the responsibility you have as a parent, to be a leader and to have hard conversations.

41:05I'm not a parent yet, so I don't look forward to it, but I also know that I'm going to rise to the occasion and be able to have the courage to be able to have those hard conversations. How do you categorize a pedophile and how many of them are there in the USA? Well, like what's the definition? Someone who actively seeks sexual interaction with a child. In-person contact. No, there's still a pedophile. You could not have become a contact offender quite yet, but they all want to become. It's like someone who looks at porn, right? An adult who's looking at porn. I don't think anyone looks at porn with that being the end.

41:40Right, right, right. They want to take action eventually. And that's how child pornographers are as well. They're eventually looking to take action and become a contact offender. That's crazy. How many are there? I couldn't give you the exact number, but we do know this. The fact that there's 2 million children in sex slavery, consider what kind of number justifies that demand. It's 550X, right? Exactly. It's like any other market. A percentage is going to take action. If they need 2 million kids, that means you're going to have a market of 550X. 2 million U.S. or 2 million world clubs? That's worldwide.

42:11Global, yeah. Yeah. But the U.S. number keeps rising. There's a couple hundred thousand we estimate children. Wow. But that number, there's about 18 ,000 women and children a year who are smuggled in to the United States for the purposes of being exploited as slaves. And is this a financial transaction, 300 ,000 kids, or is this sexual abuse? Again, it's like from adults to a kid. Yeah, there's a mix. There's a mix of both of those. I mean, for me, I was sexually abused when I was five by a man that I didn't know. You're kidding me. I didn't know this. Yeah, and the babysitter's son, he was probably 16 or 17, I was five.

42:47It's one of my probably first three or four memories I've ever had. Oh, my gosh. For 25 years, I didn't tell anyone, and it deeply shaped my life. It only happened once. I can't even imagine something happening over and over again and not feeling comfortable or safe. and it deeply impacted the way I think, the way I took action, how I was defensive. And I felt like everyone was out to get me. It was like, everyone's trying to abuse me. Everyone's trying to take advantage of me. And it showed up in every area of my life, from sports to teachers to relationships to business partners, until six and a half, seven years ago, I finally opened up and started to heal and started talking about it for the first time.

43:3025 years, no one knew about this. Wow. And it was one of the hardest things I ever did was talking about it. And then I knew that this had power over me because I was so afraid of what would happen if people knew this about me. The more I talked about it with family, then friends, then I finally opened up publicly about it on my show. And the moment when it was no longer scary to talk about it was when I realized, okay, now my healing is starting. and it's been an amazing six and a half year journey of healing the past, letting go, forgiving obviously not forgetting, it's always going to be with me the memory, but the ability to have peace in my heart and move on and see what can I do moving forward to make sure that other people aren't sexually abused what you're doing is so important because the problem is people, if they heal, they've got to start talking about it you have to talk about it, it's the only way you can really heal is to start sharing with someone, whether it's a spiritual pastor a therapist, a parent that you trust, a friend you trust, but when you hold on to this secret and you don't tell anyone, you're going to suffer.

44:37Right. Now imagine, that's happened once, right? Yeah, one time. Imagine it happening every day, every week. Yeah, imagine. So I was with a neurologist once because I had to understand what's going on with these kids. And he says, Tim, let me show you something. He told me two brains, scans of brains, two children's brains. And he says, do you see the scarring in the, yeah, what's going on? He said one of these brains was a traumatic car accident. This other one was a child who for five years was sexually abused. And I was like, wait, what? Very similar. So that's what, I mean, it creates actual physiological scarring in your brain.

45:12Absolutely. And this is the problem. So the rehab part. The chronic stress, the chronic fear, all these different things have come up. Yes, it actually creates physical brain damage that requires physical healing of that brain. Emotional healing, physical, spiritual healing. And when I saw that, I can't tell you how motivated I was to get back out and just start nailing these guys. Because this is, I mean, there's nothing worse in my mind in earth or hell than this. Most of these kids would rather that they were killed than go through this. Our sentencing so far, I don't think, really reflects the real damage that's being done.

45:47And it's because people don't want to talk about it. The more we talk about it, the better our justice system will be. the better our aftercare services will be. But this is a very real, very, very real threat to all our kids. And how's the process work for you, if you can break it down for me? How do you decide who you're going to go after? Is it, okay, we're assessing the dark web information first. We have researchers on your team that are finding this person's got 50 kids. This has got 20. How do you guys assess where you're going to make the hit? So when I first left the government, I had basically pending cases that I couldn't work because they were outside my jurisdiction so those first ones like the one in Columbia and Haiti those were easy but then after that it was like now where do we find the next one so it's funny great question because I'm like knocking on doors like can I work can I help you guys because those two hits were successful so we got more donation dollars and I had to actually convince people like you have a problem we can help we were turned down seven years later by governments, countries, governments, law enforcement I'm like, we don't need your help.

46:47We're fine here. We don't think there's a problem. Today, seven years later, we are saying no. We can't keep up. Everybody's asking us, hey, so-and-so told us you did X, Y, and Z in their country. Can you help us with this piece? Can you help us with that? And so now what we have to do is we have to find the law enforcement units around the world. We're in 26 countries. The ones that can sustain our tools. So if we give them something and give them training that it's a scalable solution they have, you know So it's not just us doing the work and then leaving. So that's how we kind of judge it right now We wish we could be everywhere But we have to go to where they're most prepared to make the biggest difference the biggest impact of course So and what are the top three countries right now that have the most cases and the biggest problem?

47:33I think it's I think Southeast Asia really is that whole region is just It's just so sad and so terrible. But the law enforcement is doing amazing work and working closely with us. That's where we put our first digital forensic lab. And so now they're going in and routing out the bad guys in there. And it's 50 % locals and it's 50 % kind of U.S. based who's coming in and committing the crimes. Yeah, lots of sex tourists. The locals are... How big of an industry is the sex tourist industry? How much money? Okay, well, human trafficking altogether is$150 billion. a year. No way. $150 billion. And so to put that into perspective...

48:11And how much is the sex tourism in human trafficking? That's about$35 billion, I believe. Wow. Yeah. Just the sex alone is$35 billion. The contact, the physical sex, not the digital consumption of media, right? Yeah,$35 billion in the selling of people for sex. Gosh. $35 billion. You can imagine that number. I mean, and then you bring in the slave labor and that's what gets it up to 150 billion. Human trafficking in general. Human trafficking in general. And to give some perspective, because that number is so big, with the amount of money made buying and selling people every year, you could buy every Starbucks franchise in the world.

48:49You could buy every NBA team and still have enough money left over to send every U.S. child to college for four years. That's how much money is spent in modern-day slavery every year. That's why I say this isn't a peripheral thing. Right. even though we act like it is because we don't want to address it we don't want to engage it it hurts why do we not want to address it it hurts you know it's just it's I know why cuz I didn't want to address it I ran I tried to quit many times and my wife always turned me around is that you can't sweetie oh my gosh you know because here's what happens this happened to me is you see children being hurt and you can't help it you superimpose your own children's faces on those children and then you just can't bear it right you just can't handle it.

49:33I mean, I had to go to psychotherapy to not do that. Mandatory, they sent us every year to get checked out. And I kept, I'd go every year and think, okay, this is my year that I'm going to, they're going to boot me out because I know I'm crazy. And like, oh, you passed Mr. Bellic. What? Save me. Because I thought I was crazy. No, you're fine. Okay. But one of the things, that was the hardest thing for me to kick is learn how to not see my own child's face so I could deal with it later on about about 10 about 15 years later into this i changed my tune and i allowed myself to see my kids faces and that made all the difference because all of a sudden now i'm i'm pushing the envelope it's more you're more connected to it what happened was i i came across a situation a few years back where we were but we were going into a child trafficking center and there was 28 little children they were being sold little meaning under 12 oh from 1 to 12 gosh for For sex.

50:27For sex. And so I'm walking in there. They think I'm a customer. And I'm walking in and I see all these kids. Like a storefront? It was an orphanage front. They were claiming to be an orphanage. No way. This was in Haiti. They were claiming to be an orphanage. But all the kids were mostly kids they collected after the hurricanes or earthquakes. The parents die and they say, oh, come to our orphanage. Well, it's not an orphanage. So we were actually tracking a missing child that we knew had been there. And so that's what got us in there. and when I saw the kids outside the gate, I was about to go in, it was almost like a PTSD reaction where I'm like, oh, I'm seeing my kids.

51:01Okay, do the training they taught you. But instead I said, you know what? What if I don't do that this time? What if I let it happen? What if I just allow these kids to be my kids? So I went in there and I was like, oh my gosh, I never should have done that technique. I should have always done this. And this is what I encourage everyone to do. Because before you were wearing like a mask. Right. So you wouldn't feel it as deeply but now you're feeling it so deeply. So deeply. And what wouldn't you do for your own child? Oh, wow. So now I'm willing to go the distance, right? And that case got nuts.

51:30And it's funny. I know this experiment led to this. After we rescued 28 kids, we did the whole sting by, and I ended up adopting two of the kids that we rescued, who are now my kids. In Haiti? Yeah. It was a preventative strike. Turns out none of it had actually been sold yet. They're all being sold. And so, yeah, so two of my kids now, they came from that operation. Wow. So they literally, like literally made it. They became your kids. They became my kids, yeah. Wow. How many kids do you have now? I have nine now. Wow. Seven from birth of your own. Seven, yeah, biological. From your wife, yeah, and then two adopted from Haiti.

52:06And then two adopted, yep. How many more? I mean, how many do you want to have? Oh, man. The prenup said six, okay, when we got married. Really? Yeah, we were done at six. And we were both done. We're like, we can't, we got the six. I came from six. My wife came from six. Yeah. And then this case happened after that. and we saw these kids and it was just like here's my wife again i call her i said you won't believe this what i just saw these two little kids it was the two kids i actually bought in the sting operation i mean i just like grew attached to them and it was my wife who just had this experience and she just said i want to be their mom wow i said no you don't you can't do this like we can't do this you know i want to be their mom so that's how that's how it started and we ended up bringing them home and then the seventh one came defying all science somehow somehow how much does it cost to buy a kid i mean to buy a kid is it to buy them to own them to buy them to have sex what's the difference between you they do both okay so generally if you're going to take a kid if you're gonna if you're gonna use a kid for for the weekend or something you can probably double or triple the price of what the the the the adult sex market would be so if you whatever a prostitute you know a sex worker whatever you want to call it you can double triple double or triple for for a child for for a night or for a weekend.

53:19For purchasing, it depends what the country, but those kids they sold me that became mine, were 15 ,000 each. 15 ,000 for a person's life. Yeah, unbelievable. Just say here, it's yours. In the Middle East, we're dealing with ISIS and we're working, and this is where we're getting organ harvesting, and a pediatric heart is up to a quarter million dollars. So that's a - A kid's heart. A kid's heart. That's how much it sells in the black market. How often is this happening with organ harvesting? In the Middle East, quite a bit. So ISIS rolls in in 2015, and they make sex slaves out of the Yazidi people, these beautiful people that are just peaceful, living in northern Iraq and a little bit in Syria as well.

54:01And ISIS came in and just said, you are less than human, and they just took them and made sex slave markets out of them. Also, a lot of the Christian communities were devastated in a similar way. Eventually, ISIS gets pushed off its sovereign territory, and it was making its money by taking over cities and taxing people. So they lost their oil revenues when they got pushed off the land, but they kept the kids. And so like, well, I got to make money. So they start selling these kids to sex slavery or to organ harvesting. Oh my gosh. We've taken down two organ harvesting rings already so far. So we, this is - Do they keep the kids alive after they take out some of their organs or is it you're dead?

54:39Obviously it's hard. Obviously it depends, yeah. And not if it's a kidney or something. They just take it out and then, okay, see you later? Yeah. People are finally reporting on it. I think CBS or ABC News recently did a story on it. But we're in the middle of it. This is the Nazarene Fund. I'm the CEO of also the Nazarene Fund, which is a sister organization with OUR. Mercury One, Glenn Beck started that. Oh, wow. And then I took it over three years ago. Glenn Beck's still the founder. Yeah, no, he was the godfather of OUR as well. He gave us all our first money. Glenn did. The money I needed to rescue those kids in Colombia, in Haiti.

55:12That was Glenn. Really? He was the only one that took the chance. He's like, I'll front it. Go for it. I'm like, are you serious? He's like, yeah. He got me the money. It was pretty intense. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, risked his whole media company. Wow. Really. His lawyer said, don't do it. If they fail or somebody gets hurt, you're screwed. He's like, I don't care. He's like, I'm not going to go to my maker and tell him I said no. It was an amazing story. So, yeah, he asked me to run the Nazarene Fund three years ago. So that's our work in the Middle East, which is just the stuff. And we're extracting these kids.

55:42I mean, we're going in and taking the kids out. So have you found kids who've had, you know, I guess, organs taken out? Oh, yeah. No, the ones that are surviving. Kidney stuff? Mm-hmm. Really? Yeah. So you find them and they're sewn up or whatever? Yeah. And there's been, like I said, some mainstream media have gotten into it, thank goodness, in the last several months. And you can see that people can go on Google and you can see it. They're stitched up. But if you're a small child, they're going to make their most money off a pediatric heart. Really? quarter million dollars off a heart they're very high in demand yeah man this is crazy man yeah servicing markets generally outside the united states right like these are markets in countries that there's there's no regulations and there's just crazy black market stuff the work you're doing is really amazing you've got a movie coming out which i got to see a trailer of it a couple months ago and when's the date it's coming out do we know we don't know later in the year yeah covid shifted everything so we don't really know but the film is locked it's done stars Jim Caviezel, Mira Servino, Bill Camp.

56:41It's going to be amazing. These guys are artists. They're geniuses. They did a very good job. And what's the movie called and what's it telling the story of? It's called The Sound of Freedom and it basically tells the story. A lot of that I just told you. Like for example, the little boy in the van, they actually filmed that scene exactly where it happened with the necklace and all that. Oh my goodness. And it gets into Columbia, the Columbia raid where we rescued the 120 kids, our first big operation that rescued 121, yeah. And what's your mission moving forward with the movie, with just everything you're up to?

57:13Is it to end sex slavery? Is it to rescue a certain amount of kids a year? It is to end it. Yeah. So we did an experiment, and it was very telling in 2014. We put almost all of our resources into the northern region of Columbia. One region. One region, and we just pounded, pounded, pounded. like every month two or three operations and empowered law enforcement and then to the point where they stopped and the would-be traffickers said yeah i had to give it up i'm into drugs i'm doing something this is crazy and so we we did it we knew what happened is logical like now there's a consequence there wasn't before but we did it to show like if everybody would would would focus focus focus on child crimes if we all did it together we could we could end it but it's not It's not gonna be governments alone, it's gonna be people getting loud, which is, we have an opportunity right now, because people are getting loud about it for the first time in a long time, or maybe ever, on July 30th, which is, this anti-human trafficking world, anti-awareness day.

58:17Yeah, yeah. So how can my listeners get involved, whether a small way or they wanna get involved in a bigger way, what can they do? Can they go to your website, can they email you? Can they spread the message? People can go to our website, oyorescue.org. O-U-R Rescue O-U-R Rescue.org is the website Look at our videos and there's something on there that says join the fight we have all sorts of ideas people can do to get involved so if people want to go out and get that commission and a little symbol that reminds them of the fight you can go to freedomdogtag.com It's an opportunity for people not only to kind of get their symbolic commission but for every 30 necklaces sold we literally with that money we can rescue a child people can also text help them to 51555 and we're giving specific instructions on how you can get involved in your city on july 30th 60 cities have already committed to to get loud in some way they'll go to a park you know obey the laws and the social distancing but that's a generally go to a park and local leaders will show up and commit that we're going to do more for kids and make sure the kids in your community are protected wow yeah it's exciting and if you want to be a part of helping spread the message.

59:28Make sure to share this video out or share this audio out and make sure to follow Tim. What are you on social media? Tim Ballard 89. Tim Ballard 89. Make sure to follow Tim. Make sure to tag him when you're sharing this out so he can follow up with you as well and stay connected. I know you do a lot of other stuff behind the scenes that I want to get into hopefully soon in Utah and be a part of learning about how you guys actually do this. We're bringing you up, man. We're going to put you into one of our training programs. Lock me in. So the movie, be aware. So if you go to the website, if you sign up, if you follow you, You'll be able to watch the movie when it comes out.

59:58Absolutely. We'll keep you up to date on everything. You've got a bunch of books to talk about this as well. If you want to dive in down the rabbit hole, you can read your books. Yeah, I've got lots of content for you if you want to learn more. Exactly, exactly. But this is an amazing mission that you're on for me who's been, you know, I wasn't sold, but I dealt with sexual abuse. And I know the trauma that it has in the years of unwiring that it takes to feel normal, to feel like the world isn't out to get you, to feel like your stress levels go down, to feel like I couldn't go to sleep at night.

1:00:26It'd take me hours to go to sleep every night until I was about 30. And then when I started to heal, I could finally sleep. So I know what it does to the wiring of a human being with sexual abuse. I can't even imagine what it would do to someone who's being sold by their parent, not by their parent, over and over and over again for years. I couldn't even imagine how you would start to heal. So what you're doing is an amazing gift and service to humanity. and I really acknowledge you for that, Tim, for being an incredible leader in this space, being a hero in this space. Oh, thank you. And using your wisdom, your skills, your tools, your resources, your relationships to make the biggest impact in this space.

1:01:08And I want to be a support for as long as I can on this. This is a big part of me. Thank you so much, Lewis. That I want to help out as well. I want to ask you a final few questions. This is called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on earth. Okay. and you go somewhere else after your body dies, right? Okay, yeah. But you've accomplished every dream you could think of in your whole life, for your personal life, for your family, your kids, for your businesses, for your foundation. Anything you can imagine, it's come true. But for whatever reason, all of your work has to go with you.

1:01:44Your videos, movies, content, it's got to go with you to the next place. But you get to leave behind three lessons you know to be true. You get to write it down on a piece of paper, and this is all we would have to remember you by, of these three lessons, or what I like to call three truths. What would you share with the world that are your three truths? I think the first truth, the most important truth, and this comes from years of trying to find light in my darkness, because to work in this world that's so dark and it will destroy you, it'll destroy you. I needed to find light. and so my advice to people would be, or you know, what I would share is, because we all have darkness, I don't care who you are, you don't even be fighting trafficking, right?

1:02:27Darkness is everywhere. So I would, mine would be based on how to get light in your darkness and the number one thing is serving other people. Service turns the lights on. Tony Robbins taught me this. I mean, I knew it just functionally, but until he put words to it in the research. When you serve people, something happens to your brain. There's a physiological, in my mind, it's God. I'm a faith guy. And when you serve people, your brain literally releases serotonin and endorphins and oxytocin. And what it does is people that have an excess of those beautiful... You feel better. You feel better.

1:03:10You're healthier. You're happier. You have more courage. You have more optimism. This is science, right? Now, in my mind, what that is, is it's also, I believe it's God preparing your body to commune. And with God, your creator, whatever it is, I don't care. But a higher source that will then give you, that you need to be a better version of yourself. And so service has all these benefits apart from just doing the good of helping somebody. It's this amazing thing that turns the lights on in so many ways. So service, number one, to other people. Number two is kind of related to it, but it's that communion part.

1:03:44It's prayer, meditation, whatever you want to call it. But connecting to that greater being, whatever that is, and getting that positive energy. Because it just makes, if you're a better version of yourself, you are a blessing to other people, right? So it's not a selfish thing. It's actually a selfless thing. Get yourself good, because then you're good for others, you know? And so number two, I'd say that, is that meditation, that communion. And number three? The number three is find at least one person that you really love and that really loves you back. There's a lot of relationships where you don't have time or the ability to connect that way.

1:04:24But for me, it's my wife. But find that person. Because I've told you many stories. The coolest stories I told you was actually me running away and my wife turning me back around. None of this would happen. I wouldn't be sitting here with you if she hadn't turned me around when I ran for cover throughout my life, throughout my career. And I credit that relationship. What's the thing you love about Catherine the most, your wife? She does the right thing no matter what. And it doesn't matter the consequences. I mean, she literally said to me, if we end up on a beach in a tent and that's where we're living because we did this, I don't care.

1:05:04we have to do the right thing by these children and by god and the right thing is to quit and leave everything i mean i calculated it was millions of dollars in pension and i had a whole i had a whole charted out my life was charted out right i'm like captain we're watching it doesn't matter these are real children and there's and there's consequences for yeah and if you said one it's worth it in her mind how is it not worth it and just how quick she gets to that like this is wrong this is right we're gonna do the right thing okay like that she just she has that kind of it's a it's intuition it's inspiration a conscience I don't know what you call it but she she has it and and I know I can go to her and say I don't know what to do what I do and she's gonna be right you know and if she doesn't know she'll tell me I don't I don't know let's figure this out yeah so I think that's that's the thing I I love most about her that's beautiful yeah okay um we can find you online timboward89 we'll we'll connect you and link up everything in the show notes I've got is there anything that you want to share that you haven't shared before my final question anything you wish people asked you about this or do you feel like people need to know about you know one thing i'll say is um i'm worried about the world right now i'm worried about kids right now a lot um because i feel like we pursue good things and and they make sense but too often we don't consider the children who are being hurt and it's unintended no one's intent to do this but we we talked about for example we're in the middle of a debate right now and i'm not this is It's not partisan for me, it's not political, even though everything seems to go that way these days, right?

1:06:37But the idea of opening schools and what that does, all I'm saying, I'm not gonna give the answer to the question, I'm not smart enough to give an answer to that question. But I will say this, that we're not even, I don't see the kids as part of the debate. For example, the spike, six million additional reports of children being abused, originating online, this is from the National Center for Missing Us Played Children. And that's a lot of pain. and it happened because we as a society we decided to shut everything down because of COVID okay do we know the trade-offs that's all I'm asking do we are we considering the trade-offs and the concern I have is you know the CDC and others have come out I'm not a scientist but I can read data and if you're 60 years or younger you have a 99.9 percent chance of surviving if you're older it's very very very dangerous and you should definitely take mass precautions and and we should do everything we can to support that.

1:07:29But teachers who create the infrastructure that keep kids from being sexually assaulted, they, like 89 % are under 60 years old. And so the real question we should be asking is what's scarier to you? A virus, once we've taken care of the most vulnerable, what's scarier, a virus with a 99.9 % survivability? Or the trade-off, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of children being sexually assaulted. We're not even having the discussion. That's my concern. I'm not smart enough to come up with the actual solution. But at least have the discussion. And it boils down to this. Kids can't get loud. They can't organize.

1:08:09They can't protest. They can't march. And so we don't hear from them. It's on us adults to stand up and be their voices and say, we will sit at the table for you. We will make sure you are represented. So that's my... Something to think about, for sure. Something to think about. We need to figure out a solution. Right. It's hard. These are complex things. I don't have the answers, but I know kids are being hurt, and I know more can be done to make sure they're not. For sure. Absolutely. Well, there's always more we can do. That's for sure. You're doing amazing things, man. I appreciate you. I got one final question.

1:08:37That's what's your definition of greatness? I think for me, greatness is how much positive impact you can be on others. In fact, I try to make this a rule. I'm not great at this. I'm a believer in it. Okay. I'm not a master of it. But when given a fork in the road, right, a crossroads, you've got to make a decision. And we do it every day. Do I do this or do that? I don't know what to do. Which one will help more people? And if you always take that road, I think that's the definition of greatness. Yeah. I'm proud of my man. Thanks, bro. Thanks, bro. Appreciate you, man. Thank you, man. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.

1:09:18Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

1:10:02And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great. No, no, no.