Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin, and here's the thing. Child sex trafficking
Speaker 1: has been called the ugliest preventable man made disaster in
Speaker 1: the world. Over a million children are sold each year
Speaker 1: as sex slaves into an industry that is said to
Speaker 1: be worth billions of dollars. Sex trafficking overall is one
Speaker 1: of the most lucrative crimes on Earth, second only to
Speaker 1: the global drug trade. The numbers are horrific, but sometimes
Speaker 1: numbers that size have a way of obscuring the greater horror.
Speaker 1: Behind each number is a person, a victim whose individual
Speaker 1: story is ghastly. New York Times op ed columnist Nicholas
Speaker 1: Kristof recently told the story of schrey Pove, a Cambodian
Speaker 1: girl who was sold by her mother to a brothel.
Speaker 1: Her virginity went to the highest bidder she was six
Speaker 1: years old. For the following three years, she was forced
Speaker 1: to have sex with up to twenty men a day.
Speaker 1: Stories like shre Poe aren't limited to Southeast Asia. They
Speaker 1: happened in Africa, Europe, and right here in the United States.
Speaker 1: My guest Rob Morris works to protect young people like
Speaker 1: shrepe Hove around the world. Rob is president and co
Speaker 1: founder of Love one forty six, an organization that fights
Speaker 1: to prevent child sex slavery and provide after care for
Speaker 1: its victims. Rob has been doing humanitarian work most of
Speaker 1: his life, but ten years ago, when a musician friend
Speaker 1: of his said his band wanted to take on the
Speaker 1: issue of child sex trafficking, Rob was oblivious. I had
Speaker 1: honestly never heard of child trafficking before, and then started
Speaker 1: looking at it. Um, we have never heard of it
Speaker 1: at all. I had never heard of it. I was
Speaker 1: given the impression back in high school that slavery ended
Speaker 1: with something that we call the Emancipation Proclamation, but the
Speaker 1: reality as it hasn't. Not long after that initial conversation,
Speaker 1: Rob and his friend took an exploratory trip to Southeast
Speaker 1: Asia to see how they could help up with the issue.
Speaker 1: They were given about an hour of training before they
Speaker 1: entered a brothel pretending to be John's Men who wanted
Speaker 1: to purchase young girls for sex. It was the most
Speaker 1: disturbing experience of my life, because here I am having
Speaker 1: to learn how to pose as the very thing that
Speaker 1: everything in me is completely an early repulsed by as
Speaker 1: a human being, as a father, as a man, and
Speaker 1: remember them saying, look, if you don't think you can
Speaker 1: hold it together, if you're going to freak out, and
Speaker 1: when you see what you're going to see, don't go
Speaker 1: in because we can't risk an investigation being taken down
Speaker 1: because of your reaction. We're brought into a room and
Speaker 1: we're looking through these class windows. They call it a
Speaker 1: fish bowl at young girls and they were sitting watching
Speaker 1: children's cartoons on television sets and they had the dignity
Speaker 1: of a name taken from them. He just had numbers
Speaker 1: been into their dresses. And on this side of the glass,
Speaker 1: we were shoulder to shoulder with what I would describe
Speaker 1: as predators who were purchasing these kids for sex where
Speaker 1: they predominantly What was that this was a brothel that
Speaker 1: catered particularly to Westerners. They looked like, anybody, could you
Speaker 1: tell language wise where it will be America, kins, Europeans.
Speaker 1: The stats, the latest stats that I've read, and they
Speaker 1: say that about of sex tourists are American men. I'm
Speaker 1: hearing the voice of this investigator in my head who said,
Speaker 1: if you don't think you can hold it together, because
Speaker 1: everything in me instinctively wants to smash you the glass.
Speaker 1: And yet as many of these kids out of there,
Speaker 1: and we couldn't do it because there was an investigation
Speaker 1: taking place that they had to get together exactly. So
Speaker 1: it was incredibly disturbing. And the thing that so shook
Speaker 1: me was the looks in the eyes of the kids.
Speaker 1: There was nothing left there, man, and they were so
Speaker 1: emotionally shut down, no life in their eyes. Except for
Speaker 1: one kid. It must have been new to the brothel,
Speaker 1: because there was still a fight left in her. She
Speaker 1: was the only one that was not looking at the
Speaker 1: children's cartoon, and she was staring at us through the glass.
Speaker 1: Never forget those So there was a fight I have
Speaker 1: not given up yet. Her number was one that was
Speaker 1: just sort of emblazoned there in our brains, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's who, that's who we fight for. And she
Speaker 1: represents the new name the organization Love One. We actually
Speaker 1: named the organization at that time UTUS for Children International,
Speaker 1: and then after a few years we changed the name,
Speaker 1: partly because Mother Teresa used to say this and said
Speaker 1: it so well. She said, if I didn't pick up
Speaker 1: the one off the streets of Calcutta, I never would
Speaker 1: have picked up the fort. And so when we look
Speaker 1: at the stats, the numbers, and we throw these things
Speaker 1: out there. There's a dehumanizing that takes place. We forget
Speaker 1: that this is not about an issue, it's not about
Speaker 1: a cause. It's about somebody's daughter. This is about somebody's son,
Speaker 1: little boy, little girl. And sometimes we get just sucked
Speaker 1: into the stats and we're throwing these things around like
Speaker 1: we're not talking about human beings. And so that's why
Speaker 1: I even renaming the organization. It's a reminder to us
Speaker 1: that this is about a girl. This is about a child,
Speaker 1: This is about all those children that she represents. Is
Speaker 1: there something about the culture in Southeast Asia and other
Speaker 1: parts of the world that the government really won't put
Speaker 1: their shoulder into stopping this? I don't think something. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are always advocates, and there are always people, and
Speaker 1: that's who we look for. I mean, what do you
Speaker 1: think prevents a country like the Thai government from doing
Speaker 1: a better job at extinguishing these practices. I think it's
Speaker 1: just will and recognizing that this is an issue that
Speaker 1: we need to deal with. And again I don't want
Speaker 1: to just single out Thailand. I mean it's it's the
Speaker 1: same thing when we look at here in the US.
Speaker 1: I think it's not just a cultural thing. We're talking
Speaker 1: about poverty, we're talking about marginalized people. Were talk about
Speaker 1: places of conflict, or even when you see something like
Speaker 1: a natural disaster in a place. The first people on
Speaker 1: the scene in Haiti, it wasn't aid workers, they were traffickers.
Speaker 1: Are the indigenous Haitian people or again I think it's
Speaker 1: people that are looking for opportunity. How can I make
Speaker 1: a buck? So men and maybe some women who are
Speaker 1: in the sex for higher business there in the prostitution business.
Speaker 1: The earthquake comes there there in Haiti, and they said
Speaker 1: to ourselves, this is our big chance. We're going to
Speaker 1: make a killing here. And I mean it's estimated that
Speaker 1: the trafficking of human beings basically generates between twelve and
Speaker 1: thirty two billion dollars a year. It's profitable. You have
Speaker 1: the same situation happening here when it's vulnerability. You've got
Speaker 1: himps lowering girls from bus stations. They come here, they
Speaker 1: don't have a place to stay, looking for something to eat,
Speaker 1: perhaps come from a broken home, and this pimp comes
Speaker 1: in as the night and shining armor, and it's all
Speaker 1: good at first. I'll give you a place to stay,
Speaker 1: give you food, I'll take care of you, I'll be
Speaker 1: your daddy. And here's a girl that's either had an
Speaker 1: abusive father or maybe not even a father in her life,
Speaker 1: and this guy's telling her the things that she's always
Speaker 1: wanted to hear a father say, you're beautiful, you're special.
Speaker 1: And in the United States, many of these people are
Speaker 1: coming out of foster care systems, that people who are
Speaker 1: runaways from that system of vulnerability. Basically, that's the bottom
Speaker 1: line is it's about vulnerability. So where are their vulnerable children,
Speaker 1: Foster care system runaways, throwaway teens, and there are hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people working every year between the ages
Speaker 1: I was told of eleven and fourteen years old is
Speaker 1: the average age that where they start. Yeah, a child
Speaker 1: usually enters into the trafficking situation or prostitution. The average
Speaker 1: age anywhere is between thirteen and fifteen years of age
Speaker 1: in the United States, and the statistics are really dangerous. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of really good solid research. You'll
Speaker 1: hear numbers from everywhere from a hundred thousand kids at
Speaker 1: risk for commercial sexual exploitation to three hundred thousand. Because
Speaker 1: it's the issue is such an in the shadows kind
Speaker 1: of issued. Many times victims don't come forth, or they're
Speaker 1: arrested as criminals. Even most states, a fifteen year old
Speaker 1: is picked up for prostitution, they're arrested as a criminal
Speaker 1: and thrown into jail. The next day, the pimp fails
Speaker 1: them out in their back in the situation, so they're
Speaker 1: not even counted as a victim of traffic. So people
Speaker 1: who are in the ranks of this vulnerable group of
Speaker 1: people in the foster care system and so forth, are
Speaker 1: there people who are working on the fringes of that system,
Speaker 1: or perhaps even within the system itself, who function as
Speaker 1: pimps and shills and and they develop talent if you
Speaker 1: will incide that business. Is that a big problem? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's that's a that's a huge question, ston. I think
Speaker 1: um pimps, traffickers, john's, whatever, any of those categories will
Speaker 1: look for places where they can get easy access level.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen something happen just recently in the
Speaker 1: news with Penn Stay. So coaches, people in ministry, you know, pastors, priests,
Speaker 1: you see um A camp counselors, teachers in the news
Speaker 1: who have gone in that direction. It's an easy situation
Speaker 1: because they get easy access and they sometimes come with
Speaker 1: trust built in. Explain to the audience, then how someone,
Speaker 1: I mean, what are signs maybe the parents, peers, or
Speaker 1: other people involved in the lives of these children can see.
Speaker 1: What is the mechanism of which we cross over from
Speaker 1: mentor in a relationship and becomes a sexual relationship. Is
Speaker 1: there a language that people are using. Have you even
Speaker 1: been involved in any research of this or scenity researcher?
Speaker 1: I think that I think that's a really legitimate question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think there are signs to look for
Speaker 1: if it's your own team ager with such a ying
Speaker 1: spending inordinate amount of times, I mean, it's inappropriate for
Speaker 1: a kid to be spending time alone with it. And
Speaker 1: that's my thinking. With a teacher at their house, that's
Speaker 1: just a no brain. So that's what you see happening.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's I mean, that's what we've seen happen.
Speaker 1: That's what continues to happen. And so these people that
Speaker 1: are these predatory or potentially predatory people in terms of
Speaker 1: child sex abuse, it begins with excessive or significant amounts
Speaker 1: of time alone with the child that they get them alone,
Speaker 1: and that's when they begin to develop this relationship that
Speaker 1: then they cross this line and lead them by the hand,
Speaker 1: if you will, into a sexual relationship. Yeah. And again,
Speaker 1: what happens in the mind of what could be described
Speaker 1: as a predator is beyond my comprehension. I don't think
Speaker 1: anybody wakes up at forty five years of age or
Speaker 1: fifty years of age and says I'm going to have
Speaker 1: sex with a child. There is a grooming that takes
Speaker 1: place over years and years, and that's what we're seeing now.
Speaker 1: And even when it comes to media and grooming, where
Speaker 1: media has normalized the objective cation of women and girls
Speaker 1: and that leads in some realms to exploitation. Kids are
Speaker 1: watching videos where you have a glorification of pimp culture,
Speaker 1: where it's totally like okay to watch a music video
Speaker 1: where you have a guy walking women that are hardly
Speaker 1: dressed with chains around their necks, or somebody swiping a
Speaker 1: credit card down in a girl's crack in a video.
Speaker 1: Do you recognize that our society is far more sexualized
Speaker 1: when you were growing up or was it twas ever? Thus,
Speaker 1: oh man, I think things have changed very very quickly.
Speaker 1: I think you're seeing images portraying women younger and younger.
Speaker 1: Somebody was telling me about this show that's on TV
Speaker 1: where they have these kids in these beauty pageants, and
Speaker 1: you don't dress a five year old kid provocatively. That's
Speaker 1: just insanity, you know. One very I don't want to
Speaker 1: say dated or tried and true. One traditional, if you will,
Speaker 1: component of this is the issue of sex education in schools,
Speaker 1: or sex education in some way in our society, where
Speaker 1: we really come get a little more honest with ourselves
Speaker 1: about the power of sexuality and the forces it is
Speaker 1: in our lives and how much we need to face
Speaker 1: that and everywhere increasingly younger group of people sexism and
Speaker 1: that you don't want to demonize. You don't want people
Speaker 1: to grow up thinking that sex is a bad thing
Speaker 1: or sex is an unhealthy thing, because you're gonna have
Speaker 1: a whole other set of problems when you do that.
Speaker 1: What's your opinion, if any, about the need for recalibrating
Speaker 1: and be dedicating ourselves to a serious sex education program
Speaker 1: in schools. I think, coming from our work, we would
Speaker 1: love to see the issue of sexual exploitation be taught
Speaker 1: as a regular part of the curriculum of sex education.
Speaker 1: It's usually not and so getting that as part of
Speaker 1: the taught curricul What is exploitation? What does it look
Speaker 1: like the schools that we've been going into. It's amazing
Speaker 1: the lights that are turning on. Kids will be up
Speaker 1: afterwards saying this is happening to my friend by somebody
Speaker 1: who she thinks is her boyfriend. I think it needs
Speaker 1: to be part of a sex education curriculum. How do
Speaker 1: you protect your self from being exploited so that you're
Speaker 1: not in a place do you see? That's fascinating to
Speaker 1: me that you say that, because in the past, I
Speaker 1: mean sex education to me, as I recall in a
Speaker 1: biology class in the ninth grade, we had a sex
Speaker 1: education component. It was folded into that class. It was
Speaker 1: almost like the duck and cover response to atomic bombing,
Speaker 1: you know, like they might as well have just had,
Speaker 1: you know, Eisenhower come in or Ellen or Roosevelt and
Speaker 1: teach us sex education. It was so dated. But what
Speaker 1: you're saying is even more interesting, which is to come
Speaker 1: into a room and start to teach kids, and even
Speaker 1: in seventh and eighth grade perhaps and say to them,
Speaker 1: here are some of the dangers of sex and sexual exploitation.
Speaker 1: Because as I've said to my own daughter. I have
Speaker 1: a sixteen year old daughter, and my conversations with her
Speaker 1: about sex are guys will say anything to you, some
Speaker 1: of them to get you to do what they want
Speaker 1: you to do. And the real issue is that some
Speaker 1: of them are very good at it. Some of them
Speaker 1: will really sell you on the idea that doing what
Speaker 1: they want you to do is what you want to do.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if a more sophisticated, more evolved version
Speaker 1: of that is what we need in sex education classes,
Speaker 1: which is to teach everybody here's where sex can get
Speaker 1: you in trouble. Yeah, and I think challenging guys as well.
Speaker 1: Challenging boys. You know, the definition of rock and roll
Speaker 1: from the School of Rock is sticking it to the man.
Speaker 1: And basically, let me tell you what the man is doing.
Speaker 1: The man, the culture that we're living in, a hyper
Speaker 1: sexualized culture, is grooming you to be this forty five
Speaker 1: year old man some day. So if you want to
Speaker 1: stick in a man, rebel against that, be your better self.
Speaker 1: I was in a school and in teaching in a
Speaker 1: high school classroom on the issue of trafficking and exploitation,
Speaker 1: and there was a guy in the back of the class.
Speaker 1: It was just sort of like smirking the whole time.
Speaker 1: And he's like, man, this sounds like a good business
Speaker 1: to go into, and you know, and and your business. No, no, hey,
Speaker 1: I can make some money here. He's like, this is lucrative,
Speaker 1: you know, because I was talking about some of the
Speaker 1: stats and and the kind of money that's generated through
Speaker 1: you know, the sale of human beings. And he's thinking, man,
Speaker 1: this sounds like a lucrative business. And he's making jokes
Speaker 1: and everything, and then I start to unpack about you know,
Speaker 1: let me talk to you about what a pimp really
Speaker 1: is instead of this glorified pick ture that you see
Speaker 1: on your videos. And this is what a pimp looks like.
Speaker 1: And we talk about some of the kids that we worked, right,
Speaker 1: we have a girl in our safe home, Alec, that
Speaker 1: is deaf and mute. The idea that somebody would first
Speaker 1: take advantage of a child who is living in abject
Speaker 1: poverty and a child who couldn't even cry out for herself,
Speaker 1: could not even say anything about it, is insanity. This
Speaker 1: is what a pimp has. This is what a trafficker is,
Speaker 1: This is what they prey on. Somebody said, you know
Speaker 1: these people are like animals, and I love I think
Speaker 1: it was dos Jevsky who said, don't ever compare human
Speaker 1: beings to animals, because it's an insult to animals, because
Speaker 1: animals would never come up with the artistic cruelty that
Speaker 1: human beings come up with. That's the reality. This is
Speaker 1: Alec Baldwin. You're listening to. Here's the thing coming up
Speaker 1: more from my conversation with Rob Morris, one of the
Speaker 1: co founders of Love on. This is Alec Baldwin. I'm
Speaker 1: talking with Rob Morris, one of the co founders of
Speaker 1: Love one forty six, an organization that works to prevent
Speaker 1: child sex slavery around the world. Rob's organization focuses on prevention,
Speaker 1: providing after care for victims, and also worked to pass
Speaker 1: legislation like the recent Safe Harbor laws. At the bottom
Speaker 1: line of Safe Harbor laws designed to create a situation
Speaker 1: where it redefines anyone under the age of eighteen in
Speaker 1: some cases sixteen, from being considered a criminal to being
Speaker 1: considered a victim. And so it's to protect so um
Speaker 1: instead of being the fifteen year old being picked up
Speaker 1: for prostitution and being arrested throwing at the jail and
Speaker 1: bailed out by the PAMP. This person now is to
Speaker 1: be perceived and looked at as a victim of human trafficing.
Speaker 1: According to federal law. Anyone or the under the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen years of age. According to the federal law,
Speaker 1: UM cannot consent to being commercially sold for sacks. That's
Speaker 1: you can't do it, and so anyone under the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen. A safe harbor law is supposed to be
Speaker 1: designs to say this person is a victim and not
Speaker 1: a criminal. And that's what the safe heart was it work. Um, well, absolutely,
Speaker 1: we helped UM push to get one past in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: There's only I believe four or five states that actually
Speaker 1: have one. So yeah, and it also increases the penalties
Speaker 1: for those purchasing sacks, pimps and traffickers. Talk about the
Speaker 1: the I mean for most people who are who look
Speaker 1: into this issue. Obviously, the Internet has made a huge
Speaker 1: change in the way the sexual trafficking and the whole
Speaker 1: cornucopia of a sexually illegal activity is conducted. Talk if
Speaker 1: you will about how your organization and similar organizations consider that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I actually spoke with UM member of the NYPD here
Speaker 1: and he deals with the trafficking issue here in New York,
Speaker 1: and he just he described the Internet as the new
Speaker 1: streets that the day of where you see prostitution happening
Speaker 1: on street corners and all of that is coming to
Speaker 1: an end, and it's happening now on the Internet. That's
Speaker 1: a big deal because then it be comes a situation
Speaker 1: where it's much more anonymous, much more difficult to see
Speaker 1: and to track. You did some of this investigative we're
Speaker 1: here in the US. The Korean SPA story you were involved.
Speaker 1: That was an accident. I was getting a tattoo and
Speaker 1: the place that I was getting the ink that downstairs
Speaker 1: was a sauna and acu pressure place with an Asian
Speaker 1: name to it, and the blinds were always closed. There
Speaker 1: was a one way glass mirror. Yeah, knowing what I know,
Speaker 1: I'm just like, this looks really shady to me. Asked
Speaker 1: the people in the tattoo place, Hey, what's going on downstairs?
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, we don't ask any questions. Didn't take
Speaker 1: rocket science. You know, you looked it up in the
Speaker 1: phone book and it's got hours of operation at three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning. When it gets up at two
Speaker 1: o'clock in the mor I think I'm gonna go get
Speaker 1: some accu pressure is sort of no brainer stuff. One
Speaker 1: of my co workers went on a site. There are
Speaker 1: there are websites where John's can rate their experiences with
Speaker 1: women that they've been with in a prostitution situation. And
Speaker 1: so they typed the name of this particular spa and
Speaker 1: and split up. Oh exactly, it's like a Yelp for
Speaker 1: these kinds of services, and this place lit up all
Speaker 1: over the place. So we reported. We had an advocate
Speaker 1: within the police department in in Connecticut who understood the
Speaker 1: trafficking issue. It took a long time, but they eventually
Speaker 1: ended up doing a raid and sure enough, there were
Speaker 1: all kinds of funky things going in there, and specifically
Speaker 1: Korean women. None of them spoke English. The women were arrested,
Speaker 1: then the John's were let go. They used the Johns
Speaker 1: for evidence, um, and the women were the ones that
Speaker 1: were arrested. And this is why even the safe harbor
Speaker 1: law is such a key thing for children, so that hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is not a criminal, this is
Speaker 1: a victim, and that changes the perception and how we
Speaker 1: deal with them. About six months later, the place opened
Speaker 1: up again under a new name, and basically it's doing
Speaker 1: the same thing again because of the priority this is
Speaker 1: not you know, there's people getting killed. We got to
Speaker 1: deal with that. Talk with you would about the Penn
Speaker 1: State scandal. You know, in my mind when this happened,
Speaker 1: if Sandusky is proven guilty of a crime, which obviously
Speaker 1: it's simply there's a lot of it's the point in
Speaker 1: that direction, what's the best thing to do with people
Speaker 1: like that? Like, wouldn't you love to get a guy
Speaker 1: like that in a conference room and grill him for
Speaker 1: about a month about everything he did and why so
Speaker 1: we can learn more about it. I wonder if just
Speaker 1: taking these people and having the our indignation at the
Speaker 1: four and just shuddering them away somewhere and punishing them
Speaker 1: and making sure ever the world knows how we deal
Speaker 1: with these people. You get them out there and we
Speaker 1: try to kind of we try to have some kind
Speaker 1: of forensic examination of him and what he did so
Speaker 1: we can learn from that. What do you think about
Speaker 1: that kind of thing? Well, I think I think there's
Speaker 1: some power to deterrence in Hey, you know what, you
Speaker 1: can face life in prison. I know Massachusetts just passed
Speaker 1: along where a trafficker now can get life in prison.
Speaker 1: I think there is a good thing with that is
Speaker 1: there's the deterrence factor, like, oh, you know what, when
Speaker 1: I think about profit versus risk, the risk just went
Speaker 1: up quite a bit. I'm gonna go sell drugs now
Speaker 1: instead of selling human beings. A lot less risk involved.
Speaker 1: I won't get, you know, twenty years to life. The
Speaker 1: good thing is, I think it can act as a deterrence.
Speaker 1: As far as stronger laws, that's a great question. As
Speaker 1: far as, like somebody asked me the other day, have
Speaker 1: you ever met anybody that's been rehabilitated somebody that has
Speaker 1: actually been a trafficker. I have not. I would love
Speaker 1: to find that person and find out. But I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about rehabilitating Sandusky or using Sandusky's testimony to rehabilitate
Speaker 1: any other traffickers. It's in order to help other people
Speaker 1: recognize what to look for. I'd love to get Sandusky
Speaker 1: into a study as a part of his sentence where
Speaker 1: we can learn about this were then, because I'm assuming
Speaker 1: when this thing happened with Sandusky, the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought to myself is, oh God, the next thing we're
Speaker 1: gonna hear is how prevalent this was that we didn't
Speaker 1: know it that coaches are are sexually abusing, if not
Speaker 1: outright raping or pimping players on their own teams. What
Speaker 1: do you think of that idea? It would be certainly
Speaker 1: interesting to know what goes on inside a person's head
Speaker 1: like that and what that looks like and how it
Speaker 1: ends up, how he sees the world and how he
Speaker 1: how does the predator to think so we can help
Speaker 1: the prey avoid some of these pitfalls? Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: prevention is the bottom line, right, what I think we
Speaker 1: can do. And these are the complexities for me. What
Speaker 1: will this brings me back to is this notion of
Speaker 1: and we get honest about sexuality, we get honest about ourselves.
Speaker 1: People will say to me in my business, do violent
Speaker 1: films disturb you? And I'll say, to a degree, they do,
Speaker 1: But I said not really, because violence, I think is
Speaker 1: something that people don't feel they have a right to.
Speaker 1: If you go in and see a film, you know,
Speaker 1: if you go watch Charles Bronson and Death Wish Kill
Speaker 1: all the bad guys and you feel motivated and authorized
Speaker 1: to go out and commit some act of violence, you
Speaker 1: have some other pathology going into the film. Sexuality is
Speaker 1: different because sexist. Some people feel entitled to have, they
Speaker 1: feel they should be having. It's like there's a lot
Speaker 1: of men out there, because we tend to think of
Speaker 1: this more of a man on woman crime. Who they're
Speaker 1: predisposed to do this kind of thing if they're not careful.
Speaker 1: Do you agree with them? Yeah, Well, again it comes
Speaker 1: back to things that have shaped They're thinking you have
Speaker 1: shaped their psyche. I don't. I don't because I'm not
Speaker 1: a psychologist. I don't understand all of that. But when
Speaker 1: we talk about what we deal with, specifically with children,
Speaker 1: it doesn't have anything to do with sex. It's it's
Speaker 1: violence against children. It's interesting say that, that's a very
Speaker 1: good point you make that what is perceived as as
Speaker 1: a sex crime with this child sex slaverything, it's not
Speaker 1: sex at all. It's a violent act. It's violence. You're
Speaker 1: a father and you have two of your own You
Speaker 1: and your wife have two of your own biological children,
Speaker 1: and you've adopted four children and how many boys? How
Speaker 1: many girls? I have two boys and four girls? You
Speaker 1: have four daughters or any of them biological? My oldest daughter,
Speaker 1: your oldest daughter is your biology. How old is shame?
Speaker 1: She's twenty four. So your oldest child is twenty four
Speaker 1: and your youngest child is how old? Six? So some
Speaker 1: of your children you have brought into your family and
Speaker 1: adopted during the course of your years doing this work,
Speaker 1: where any of them as a result of doing this
Speaker 1: word none, not even from regions that this that from regions? Yeah,
Speaker 1: from some of yours. So one of your daughters is
Speaker 1: from where For example, my daughter who is going to
Speaker 1: be sixteen this week is from China. And then my
Speaker 1: youngest trafficking situation like their same kind of situation. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's bad, and my my youngest daughter is from Vietnam.
Speaker 1: One thing I do wonder is how much does the
Speaker 1: role of a very very strong and very very effective
Speaker 1: history of feminism change things in certain countries. Is feminism
Speaker 1: prevented this from becoming worse in parts in the world
Speaker 1: that it might have been. Absolutely? I mean, where there
Speaker 1: is vulnerability, there will be predators in many countries of
Speaker 1: the world and in many communities by design, Yeah, marginalized
Speaker 1: women and girls and many times children. But I guess
Speaker 1: my point is that your daughter is twenty four years old.
Speaker 1: So when this organization, your work with them started ten
Speaker 1: years ago your daughter was fourteen, So you've raised your
Speaker 1: family from a certain point in many of them for
Speaker 1: their entire lives in side that timeline, And I'm wondering
Speaker 1: what do you talk to your children about it at all?
Speaker 1: Or what do you and your wife talk about with him?
Speaker 1: But how do you handle the subject of sex as
Speaker 1: a father with your children? Yeah, I think it depends
Speaker 1: on the age obviously being age appropriate. Even like my
Speaker 1: youngest kids don't know what daddy does. I mean, other
Speaker 1: than daddy helps children who are in big trouble, they
Speaker 1: understand slavery. Like my fifteen year old knows what the
Speaker 1: situation is. We've had great talks about it. She's actually
Speaker 1: started to love one forty six stass force in her
Speaker 1: high school. I think it's important, But at the right age.
Speaker 1: Are you ever thinking of having any more children or
Speaker 1: adopting more children? Probably you are. Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: good possibility. Yeah, we've just talked about it recently, actually
Speaker 1: adopting one. Why we just feel like, as long as
Speaker 1: we can provide a home for somebody that doesn't have one,
Speaker 1: if we could provide a family for someone that doesn't
Speaker 1: have one, and let's do that. What does your wife
Speaker 1: think about this work you're doing. My wife's a rock star, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and especially because I travel so much and
Speaker 1: everything often time, she's become the left six kids. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's doing the hard work. So um. But I remember
Speaker 1: with the first phone call that I made that night
Speaker 1: when I came back from the brothel the first time,
Speaker 1: and I called her up and she could tell right
Speaker 1: away on the phone and she's like, are you okay?
Speaker 1: What is this done to you personally? What has it
Speaker 1: done to you? Because I will tell you that I've
Speaker 1: had things happen to me in my life and they've
Speaker 1: made me lose my faith in people. I've had to
Speaker 1: battle with that. I'm not an optimist. I'm hopeful, and
Speaker 1: I think those are two different things. I've seen literally
Speaker 1: the worst of humanity, yeah, and so it it would
Speaker 1: be really easy to become super jaded, super cynical. But
Speaker 1: at the same time, I've also seen absolutely amazing things,
Speaker 1: great people. I remember I met the director of a
Speaker 1: human rights agency and Kimbodi, and she looked at me,
Speaker 1: you know what your problem is as Americans? And I
Speaker 1: looked at it sort of I started wins, thinking, Okay,
Speaker 1: I can think of some things, but I know you're
Speaker 1: gonna fill me in. And she goes, you don't think,
Speaker 1: you react, and I'm like, what do you mean? And
Speaker 1: she says, a lot of times you see some human
Speaker 1: rights abuse or whatever and everything, and instead of taking
Speaker 1: the time to think through solutions that are going to
Speaker 1: be effective and sustainable, you just react to it. And
Speaker 1: because you haven't put thought into it, sometimes your reaction
Speaker 1: causes more harm than good. And I kind of took
Speaker 1: that as a mandate as an organization to say, you
Speaker 1: know what we need to be thought that it has informed.
Speaker 1: And the difficulty though with that is I live with
Speaker 1: this daily tension. We live with this daily tension of
Speaker 1: the emergency factor of children being sold and time what
Speaker 1: it takes to and the time that it takes to
Speaker 1: create thoughtful solutions that are gonna work. Rob Morris is
Speaker 1: the president and co founder of Love One. There are
Speaker 1: many other people fighting to abolish child sex trafficking. Rachel
Speaker 1: Lloyd runs GEMS Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, a New
Speaker 1: York based organization that helps girls and young women leave
Speaker 1: the commercial sex industry in this country. Like it's not
Speaker 1: this foreign, strange Amlien population, it's women and girls who
Speaker 1: have experienced credible amount of trauma and hardship in their lives,
Speaker 1: who have the same hopes and fears and dreams as
Speaker 1: everybody else. You can hear Rachel's story, learn more about
Speaker 1: Rob Morris's organization, love one, and other resources at our
Speaker 1: website Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin
Speaker 1: and you're listening to Here's the Thing