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Aug. 8, 2025 - Epoch Times
01:00:57
How Traffickers Prey on America’s Youth: Jaco Booyens
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So I'm telling you, this is 2024, a quarter to a half of the exploitation that's happening to our own nation's youth.
It's a caregiver doing it in the family.
Jakob Boyens is founder of Yaco Boyens Ministries, an anti-trafficking organization working to protect American children from predatory exploitation.
We're talking about a $52 billion industry of buying and selling predominantly women and children inside this country, American citizens.
The discussion about a migrant child or a migrant in the country is a completely separate conversation.
Boyens says laws against human trafficking are not being sufficiently enforced.
Why are cases continuing to increase while prosecutions decrease?
And how is pornography a gateway drug into the trafficking industry?
Porn is highly addictive because it alters the neural pathways in the brain.
This is science.
It's biology.
It's physiology.
The child's defenseless at this moment.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Jania Kellek.
Jakob Boyens, so good to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you, Jan.
It's a pleasure to be here.
Five years ago, we sat down and you exposed me to some of the really frankly horrifying realities of human trafficking, child sex trafficking and so forth, the things that you have been working on, trying to stop for decades.
We then looked at what happened during the pandemic.
And that was a whole different ballgame because there were these lockdowns, different policies, the border, online exploitation, huge increase.
And here we are today in 2025, where a lot of things seem to be back to normal.
What is the reality today?
Thank you for consistently tackling the tough subjects, Jan, and to the network as well.
You guys do phenomenal work.
Unfortunately, trafficking of persons continue to increase.
And with that, we see something very important that maybe we'll cover today later on, prosecutions decreasing.
So we're at this inflection point in our culture where it seems that things are back to normal, back pre-COVID.
People are back at work, systems, kids are in regular school schedules, because you know, a country runs around school schedule.
But things are not normal.
There's a very, very dark element underneath the surface.
I'd say the biggest change from when we sat down last when we discussed things like the impact of the border on human trafficking, online exploitation, would be that now, other than back then, human trafficking as a slogan, as a concept, has become easy to say and it's lost its gut-wrenching impact on the American culture.
That's particularly dangerous because if it becomes table talk or it's general speak at lunch hour and it doesn't have that guttural visceral imagery of what am I talking about, the pause effect of wait a second, human beings in 2025, predominantly children, are being enslaved through servitude.
Now debt bondage, labor trafficking, but mostly sex trafficking.
That's a big concern for me because when society grows numb to the definition and it loses its impact, society will easily allow it to blend in and that's what's happening.
Can you give me a picture first of all of the scale of this and then I want to get you to, I guess, remind our audience, especially those that may not have seen some of our interviews before, what you do and why you do it.
Yeah, thank you.
The scale is enormous.
And I wish I could tell you that it has decreased.
But we're talking about a $52 billion industry of buying and selling predominantly women and children inside this country, American citizens.
The discussion about a migrant child or a migrant in the country is a completely separate Conversation.
Those statistics are purely just on American children.
We are still, by a long stretch, the number one nation on earth where sexual exploitation is happening and it's commercialized.
Unfortunately, we're the number one producer of pornography, consumer of pornography.
American Gen Z is the societal category that watches the most pornography on planet Earth.
You're also looking at American Genesis.
Hold the presses for a second.
At 20 minutes a day.
I mean, what age group and there, on average, where do these numbers come from?
Well, these numbers are all collected from think tanks, the Department of Justice, FBI, agencies that collect data that we constantly are curating data.
Give you an example.
The average first exposure to pornography in America are now boys age eight.
When we met last time, the average exploited child was 12 to 14.
That's now 11.
So we're moving in the wrong direction.
Part and parcel because of technology and technology is rapidly advancing and putting tool sets in predators' hands to make it easier to conduct their atrocities.
But culturally, we're not frowning upon the details.
Can we talk about how many 16, 17 year olds in America today are walking felons?
When you distribute naked imagery of a minor, that's a felony.
Children are distributing sexual images of children among peer groups.
In our society, it's blending into everyday life.
There's a study that was recently done by a group that I'm an advisor to, phenomenal group, that is an Institute for Survivor Care.
Dr. Gene Allert.
And this study looked at 2,000 cases in law enforcement of human trafficking of children.
And the study proved the following: 22%, so a quarter, to 47%, a half, of all domestic trafficking cases is perpetrated by the caregiver.
So I'm telling you, this is 2024, a quarter to a half of the exploitation that's happening to our own nation's youth, it's a caregiver doing it.
It's a familial figure in the family.
We knew that was happening when we talked last, but those numbers are staggering.
And it's inverting to where the predominant force exploiting our youth is closer in proximity than it used to be.
That makes it infinitely more difficult for the victim to speak up.
Because when we use terms in this country such as grooming, desensitization, what are we really saying?
We're really just saying a predator is gaining proximity to a target.
Desensitizing to get proximity.
Well, what if you do not have to desensitize and the grooming doesn't have to happen because the predator is the provider.
The predator is already the caregiver.
The predator is already a coach or a figure with influence, real power.
Remember, human trafficking is at a ground level just the exploitation of vulnerabilities.
The predators are just really good at identifying vulnerabilities.
So when you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the bottom of the rung is food and shelter.
We see people trafficked all the way up to the top tier of love and belonging, of purpose, of identity.
So now let's ask that question of American Gen Z. If you take a snapshot of American Gen Z, arguably, they're the most identity-less members of our society.
They are very wide in information, surface-level deep.
There's evident vulnerabilities that's displayed online.
So the predators have their pick.
And this lack, you're basically saying that this lack of a strong developed identity makes someone much more vulnerable to being used by these people.
Absolutely.
Because if your deepest desire is love and belonging, we have real cases that we can discuss.
I'll give you a brief, brief example, a real case.
We'll call this girl Sarah.
Sarah's 13.
She has a deep desire to play on a soccer team.
She doesn't make the team, but she serves the team as kind of a water girl, right?
This predator notices this online because she talks about that.
She talks that her sister makes the varsity team.
The predator starts affirming her, encouraging her for nine months.
Until one day he shows up at her soccer game.
He flies two states over, takes a selfie with her in the background, doesn't introduce himself to her, goes back home.
Two weeks later, he sends her the selfie.
And he said, when your dad doesn't show up, I will show up.
You can trust me.
He's earning her favor.
She says to him online, you should have said hello.
There's such a deep desire for that child to be seen, to be affirmed.
So it's the exploitation of vulnerabilities.
Unfortunately, Gen Z display their vulnerabilities publicly.
It's not hidden.
They overshare publicly.
It's easy to read them.
And so that's why you see some of the movements in our country where it feels like, why would they just be swept up in a movement?
Because they can be.
Because they're looking for purpose.
If the purpose is nefarious and it's an exploiter, they will always implicate the victim in the crime.
And here's what happens, Jan, that we've now determined unilaterally.
The second sexual exploitation happens to a person, whether it's a rape, as egregious as a rape, or repeated violation or trafficking, right?
We have to do better in this country looking at EQ, not IQ.
The emotional health of our nation is not good.
The first thing that happens to that person is guilt, shame, and condemnation floods them.
They feel guilty, but they're not the perpetrator.
They're the victim.
But that's the nature of humanity.
It's in Genesis 3.
It's biblical.
It's literally in Genesis when Adam and Eve realize they're naked, they hide from God because of what?
Shame, guilt, condemnation.
So now you have predators that are so good that they coerce the victims to feel, it's my fault, I did something.
This is why sextortion is exploding with young boys in our country.
Because they don't talk about it.
They get trapped.
And so it's really just an assessment of vulnerabilities.
And the predators are excellent at it.
Very briefly, the connection between pornography and the trafficking, however it manifests, if you can kind of explain that picture.
Yes.
When we say pornography is the gateway drug to human trafficking, those who watch porn would say, well, I don't buy people, but you are engaging in the gateway drug.
Why is it the gateway drug?
Because it's the only drug that triggers an internal drug.
Sex is internal.
It's chemical.
When you go through puberty, your brain releases a hormone.
Your body releases chemistry.
When you bond trauma to the internal chemistry of your body, this is trauma bonding.
That's deep-rooted trauma that normally goes and gets hidden.
It gets suppressed.
Then disassociation happens.
So it takes years for someone to be willing to even recognize or talk about it.
So pornography desensitizes any individual to what could be and most often is not okay.
When men watch pornography, the average porn scene available to Americans on average is two guys and one woman.
I just told you that the average exposure to porn for the first time is a boy that's eight years old.
So when an eight-year-old boy sees hardcore pornography, we're not talking about a pin-up girl without her top on in a magazine.
We're talking about 2K, 4K cameras, multiple angles.
Two guys nude together with one girl.
Immediately, in a second, there's chemical reaction in his brain.
Neurons start to fire.
He's prepubescent, which means he's now starting to produce sex hormones pre-puberty.
You can never turn it off.
Immediately, love and belonging is shattered.
Consent is shattered.
What is conditional and unconditional love is shattered because it's all fake.
It's a scene that was filmed.
He's probably watching take 52.
This is not reality.
No marriage is pornography.
So there's a complete alter reality that it's in what we call imprinted into him.
It's internal.
It's not like you're taking alcohol from an alcoholic and he dries up, he sobers up.
Sexual violation stays with you.
It's internal.
So now that child is grappling with issues that married adults struggle with.
But he's eight or she's 12.
And when it becomes physical, now it's dangerous because that child can now very quickly develop an attraction to it because it's highly addictive.
Porn is highly addictive because it alters the neural pathways in the brain.
It literally shuts down certain areas of the brain and fires up other areas.
This is real.
This is science.
It's biology.
It's physiology.
The child's defenseless at this moment.
Now, let's just say that child doesn't engage with anybody.
A predator will see that child online because they speak a certain way.
They address themselves.
They present themselves a certain way.
So that's why we say porn is the gateway drug.
It desensitizes, it breaks down barriers societally, but definitely at the individual.
And it's the number one tool a predator uses to prepare a child for human trafficking.
They use porn to desensitize the child.
They use porn to train the child on how to perform.
Why would we allow a tool like that to freely impact our children?
It's a dangerous, dangerous game, which is, and I know it's contentious because you'll find that those who are pro-pornography will cite the First Amendment.
They want to make it a freedom of speech, freedom of expression issue.
This is me speaking for me.
I highly doubt that our founding fathers considered that we would get the freedom of speech in order to take our own demonic vices and impress them and express them onto children that are vulnerable under the guise of freedom of expression, freedom of speech.
So it's something we're grappling with a lot in this country.
I'll take a snapshot of the church.
In 2023 and 2024, only 22% of American pastors mentioned pornography from the pulpit.
It is this dark, dangerous dragon that is prowling amongst our youth.
And not even the church is addressing it for what it is.
I've heard argued that the reason for that is that just too many people are themselves become addicted and have their own shame and their own issues with it.
And they don't want to deal with it.
I've covered the issue of pornography specifically a number of times on the show.
And that's exactly my sense.
It's just something that is unbelievably impactful, but it's just something that's societally, you know, the thing you don't really ever talk about.
You're nailing it.
And to perhaps move on from pornography, but I'll say this to you.
This is how I explain it.
Asking a man to close the poison well he drinks from doesn't work.
He first needs to stop drinking from the poison well.
So when we ask fathers to step up and fight for the morality of children, but the father is living under guilt because he himself is addicted to pornography.
Very difficult.
So at the end of the day, it's always going to start with me.
Am I a contributor to the problem or am I part of the solution?
Let's go back a little bit and just tell me how you got involved in trying to Counter human trafficking.
Yeah, what a story.
I'm from South Africa, as you know.
Very proud immigrant to this country, very proud citizen to this country.
A momentous moment to stand in front of a judge and hear, welcome, newest member to the United States.
But in South Africa, in 1994, I was a senior in high school.
My sister Ilonka at that year was 12 years old.
She wins a national singing competition.
The record label delivers on everything they promised.
We are with her all the way, every step of the way.
And it ends up that Ilanka is trafficked through that record label.
Ilanka then goes on and she's trafficked for six years through the entertainment industry.
We don't know that she's trafficked while this is happening.
I'm an 18-year-old.
Ilanka is rescued in 2001.
I am, by God's grace, there for the rescue, part of the rescue.
Still, we don't know what she endured.
We made an agreement we would immigrate to the United States.
And we get to the U.S. and after arriving here, months after 9-11, Ilanka sits down with the family and tells us in great detail what men had done to her.
She exposes us to human trafficking, which wasn't even a concept on my mind.
She talks to us about hundreds of 12 and 13-year-old girls in sex trafficking rings across the globe that she was exposed to, particularly in Africa.
She talks to about the type of clientele or buyer, and the profile is not what people think, and your world shatters.
Your heart breaks for your sister, but immediately I condemned myself.
Like, where was I as the brother, the caretaker of the family?
There's no father in the family.
And the reality is, I had no chance.
Nobody had a chance because the predators are so skillful.
Yes, being raised without a father made her more vulnerable.
Yes, a single mother working two jobs and a brother that's in sport and a younger brother makes her more vulnerable.
So we learned firsthand.
Our entry into human trafficking was through the horrific testimony of my sister.
And that night, when the rescue happened on the border of South Africa and another country, I heard God's voice.
I'm walking across the street to part of this rescue and I hear God say, not another one.
And that's still our mission every morning.
One child at a time, not another one.
We will never stop.
We do not lose momentum or steam.
As a matter of fact, we are more gung-ho than ever before.
And gung-ho with what exactly?
Gung-ho to see the afflicted liberated, but not just see survivors restored, but to combat this thing before it happens.
By the time a child gets trafficked, society has failed that child.
We need to do a lot better at recognizing the vulnerabilities in children and shoring up those vulnerabilities before the predator exploits them.
Because that's all the predators doing.
Jan, I don't know if you know this, but the average predator in America invests nine months in a victim before they strike.
Ask the potential victim to self-expose or physically meet in person.
Nine months.
The average predator at any given time profiles and engages with 32 potential victims at the same time.
One predator, 32 potential victims at the same time.
At any given moment in America, there's three quarters of a million, 750,000 active predators online right now as we speak.
Times 32.
You're talking about millions, millions of American children being profiled as we speak in everyday life.
And they don't Know what the wolf looks like.
They don't know how the wolf talks.
Where would he show up?
They're told that it looks like kidnapping, or you would self-evidently see it when it happens.
They don't know the wolf is in their DMs.
He's the one sending them emojis.
He's a coach, a pastor, perhaps, an elected official, a maintenance man.
The average buyer of sex with children in America is a father of two, married, earning north of $100,000 a year.
That profile is a staggering profile.
That is shocking.
That is genuinely shocking.
For a moment, I think you were saying earlier that it's important to be very clear on what this is, this human trafficking thing.
And it feels like I'm still not clear in my mind.
It's all the way from a single predator finding a single victim and abusing them in whatever way, all the way up to, you know, putting them online, all the way up to multiple people pimping, prostitute.
If you can just sort of give me that picture of what expresses this whole horror show.
What a question.
I'd say the lowest common denominator that people could probably relate to would be a father that engages in sexual abuse with one of his own children and then introduces a third figure where that child is then forced to perform for food, for belonging, for love, shelter, whatever, protection.
The buyer of that child or adult woman, man or boy, and boys are on the rise, the numbers are staggering, could be a janitor that has the affordability to do that once a quarter.
Or it could be a highly affluent member of their community that could engage in that kind of activity multiple times a week, or as a high-profile case in the U.S. we know that that individual engaged every two hours in the exploitation of children.
So it's disposable income on the side of the buyer.
It's their own addiction and level of addiction.
Because remember, this is regressive, right?
I mean, this, sorry, it's progressive.
You build up a tolerance.
So they have to consume more, like pornography.
Now, on the trafficker side, if it's a father, that's familial, or a coach or someone access to the child.
So that would be unorganized.
It's an individual that, at a whim, is exploiting someone else.
Then you have reasonably organized structures where an individual like that may become more of what people in the 50s and 60s saw in like a movie The Hustle and Flow that Terrence Howard was in.
This guy who runs four, five, six girls.
The conventional pimp trafficker, two bottom girls that are handlers, right?
And then a stable of women, right?
What is the American picture?
From there, it becomes into a networking of trafficking.
It's pimps sharing territory like cartels shared territory in Los Angeles.
And there's treaties.
You can cross into my territory at these times and I can cross into yours.
There's treaties with, will intentionally swap victims in order to evade law enforcement, to move victims around.
So now you're getting into organized crime.
You're getting into organized fashion.
American.
Then you bring actual cartel activity that is its own organized crime network, normally first through contraband paraphernalia, drugs, that have learned that the pathways and systems that they Set up trafficking drugs is extremely efficient to traffic people.
They don't have to rebuild a pipeline, whether it's into the country or domestically.
You're just now trafficking a product that you can sell over and over.
Sell a pound of cocaine one time, sell a child 10, 12, 15 times a day.
And so now you're getting into existing, pre-existing organized crime that has transcended from one product to another product.
That type of trafficking is interstate.
It is cross-jurisdiction, very difficult for police to fight because it is ever-moving.
Then you get to national syndicates where sex trafficking of children is a means to an end for power.
That's what's gotten most attention in America's eye today.
It's how the Senate in Rome used to exploit children.
It's why the gladiator games went on while policy and legislation was passed.
It's numbed the people and blind the people to one thing while we do something else.
The trafficking of persons of children at that level, for what we would call the elites, or what you would see the high-profile cases in our country, is literally children or a means to an end for them to gain power to either coerce or corrupt an individual,
compromise an individual, supply to a demand of a fetish or a sick desire to have sex with children.
It's a very different mindset.
It's a different human behavioral science at that level because now it is intentional.
It is intentionally profiling not just a child to traffic, but profiling a particular target to compromise and then putting those two together.
Either by force or by fraud or by coercion.
What does that look like in real life?
It looks like a political gathering, an event.
Some elected official is in a hotel room.
He goes to an event.
There's children at this event.
There's illicit activity going on.
There's a photograph taken surreptitiously.
He may or may not have engaged with that child.
There's a knock on the door, and there's, we'll leak this.
Or there's a profiling of this elected official has a pornography account.
We know that he has watched child porn.
Law enforcement doesn't know.
We'll coerce him and we'll provide him with actual children.
We'll move him from being a visual consumer to an active engager in sex.
Normally what they'll do is they'll sell sex with adult women to them first.
But they understand, like any other drug, it won't last.
Ultimately, every pedophile that I've ever interviewed, talked to, apprehended, helped law enforcement apprehend, has told me a couple things.
They're addicted to pornography, and none of them started with children.
Most of them tell me that they went out the first time they purchased sex to buy it from a woman that they thought were older than them because they did not want to run into law enforcement.
They wanted to buy what they would consider a prostitute.
And then they'll tell you how the desire wasn't met.
And they go younger and younger and younger.
And I think our society is crying out for real solutions, justice.
If we do not do that, we're going to see prosecutions plummet.
If we do not shore up and prosecute accurately according to the law, federally and at state level, fantastic laws on the book, if we do not start prosecuting accurately, there's going to be an inversion.
Because a law that's not enforced means nothing.
It's as good as toilet paper.
Basically, you're telling me, and I know We've talked about this, that there's many states that have passed very good laws and regulations to deal with this, right?
But somehow that when it comes to actually prosecuting and finding guilty the perpetrators, there's a huge failure.
They walk.
Huge failure.
And I think culture now finally are seeing it.
They're crying out.
We're in the middle of society saying, where is the judge?
Because the vast majority of this, you know, you gave me this picture, right, all the way from the bottom to the top.
The vast, vast majority of this, of course, is not at that top, not that top level.
And what a great distraction for society to think, well, it's Hollywood.
Well, it's just the elites, where the majority is local in the communities.
Remember, the statistics of up to 47% is the caregivers, right?
So if you think of a high-profile case that recently we had and that survivor, well, Jessica in Lubbock, Texas, who is being trafficked, she doesn't get a news agency to cover her story.
She doesn't get a high-profile lawyer.
She is relegated to a county judge that has no experience on human trafficking, a prosecutor that doesn't know how to build these cases because they don't even know how to build it federally.
All 50 states now have phenomenal laws against human trafficking, but let me tell you how dismal the prosecutions are.
Distant studies said that we only prosecute and convict human trafficking cases at the highest at a 45% rate in the states.
A more recent study says it plummeted to 16%.
The district attorneys and the prosecutors plead these cases down because the judges do not know how to adjudicate this.
So they plead it down to a marijuana charge, a gun charge, a kidnapping charge, a transportation charge, like you saw in a very high-profile case recently.
RICO was dropped, trafficking was dropped, but transportation was there, right?
So what should be a 30, 40, 50 year sentence gets down to 18 months served.
Okay, so remember that.
At a federal level, with tens of thousands of cases of human trafficking a year, we've only convicted 148 cases in the last two years.
Prosecuted and convicted.
It is dismal.
When you look at any other felony outside of exploitation and human trafficking, right?
You're talking about 16% conviction rates in the states, 92% plus for other felonies.
So we are proposing, and for the last two years, we've been working on what we call human trafficking special courts.
It would be an Article III congressional court that goes through Congress, where if it's a human trafficking case, it has to go, it goes to that court, administered kind of like circuit courts in the state, in the county, with a judge being nominated and confirmed as a human trafficking judge, cross-jurisdiction.
We're not growing government.
The funding is already there, but we're funneling, channeling human trafficking cases to a judge that's proficient, to a judge that gets educated, to a prosecutorial class that gets educated down to the bailiff and the court clerk start to get a lot of repetitions on human trafficking, understanding the vernacular, the methods, the ways, and the means.
On average, a judge in a county may see one human trafficking case brought to his court in five years and they go, you don't even know how to deal with a witness that's still in trauma.
How do we take testimony?
How do you build this case?
And I would argue the two high-profile cases that recently was displayed publicly in the U.S., the cases were built very poorly by prosecution.
They're built on straw.
These are strawhouses that will fall.
And so when we have a designated human trafficking court system federally, but at the state level, it doesn't take the power from the states.
It doesn't take cases from the states, but it gives the state another arrow in the quiver to say, we don't have a judge in our county that has any proficiency on human trafficking.
Give us jurisdiction.
We want to go try this case in front of the human trafficking judge.
I believe what you're going to find is you're going to find that those cases are all going to go to human trafficking.
There's precedent for this.
In 1978, the U.S. is grappling with business law, bankruptcy.
So if you think of specialty bankruptcy court, the courts, the judiciary, said, we're having a problem.
The judges don't know finance to the degree where there's MA deals with tag-along drag-along clauses and shares and took 27 months for reorg.
They bring in specialty courts on bankruptcy and the cases increased with 100% proficiency.
The timeline for reorganization went from 27 months to 21 months.
Why?
Because the judges became experts in the field that they were adjudicating, which means they're more efficient, they go faster.
On average, a human trafficking case in America, if it's tried as a human trafficking case, takes 19 months.
Any other case of felony takes nine months to prosecute.
So, and that's proficiency, that is the lack of information.
If the DEA is taking a drug trafficker to court, one of the members of our legal team said, heroin doesn't need defense.
You're prosecuting on a substance that doesn't need defense.
Human trafficking, the victim needs defense.
There's a human being there with an emotional condition, a trauma profile, and no two are alike.
So in reality, it is unthinkable to think that our judges that get cases on a lottery system should just somehow become experts in human trafficking.
And we believe that this is going to have arguably one of the most significant impacts.
Getting phenomenal support in the Senate, U.S. Senate, and in the House, in the judiciary, on this matter, because it makes sense.
There is precedent for this kind of a court.
Not in human trafficking, we'll be the first in the world, the U.S., if we do this.
Well, what would that do for the survivors?
The second survivors of human trafficking see accurate prosecution and justice, they're willing to talk.
They're willing to come forward.
They're willing to share information.
Hope rises.
Nothing is more demoralizing than to see a bill pass on human trafficking and there's no enforcement.
If I may jump in, I'm sort of imagining this as a kind of a funnel because first you have like the actual bad activity, right?
Then it's identified.
And so that's a much smaller number of people.
But then actually prosecuted successfully is just a tiny, tiny number.
And so, I mean, effectively, that sort of massively empowers these perpetrators, right?
And what you're trying to do is kind of widen that funnel.
But you're saying it'll also have an effect in the other direction.
So just explain that to me.
Explain that to me how and why that would happen.
Ladies of hope, because psychology and human behavior, I would love to talk about that.
Right before I do, though, Lady Justice was built to be blind.
And she's built to bring justice, particularly for the least vulnerable, for the marginalized.
And if she's not, anarchy runs wild.
And predators are absolutely emboldened with a lack of prosecution because there's no deterrent.
They don't lose their lifestyle.
They don't lose their livelihoods.
Their name, fame, reputation stays intact.
They blend into society.
The recidivism rate is north of 80%.
Someone that has perpetrated a child before will do it again, even after short-term incarceration, 18 months of probation, ankle bracelet, whatever that is.
So it's completely emboldened, and the victims know this.
We have traffickers read the law, literally read the statutes of the state that they're trafficking in to the victim and said, and will say, they don't prosecute this.
I'm not going to jail.
But I've coerced you into a crime.
You've spread pornography of children.
You've committed petty theft, shoplifting because they were forced to.
You'll be criminalized.
They're going to criminalize you.
No one will believe you.
There's no case in our state.
They talk this way.
They're absolutely emboldened.
Texas, trafficking a child, 30 years.
When you start delivering those convictions, number one, you're sending massive signals to the perpetrator saying, 30 life is going to ruin your life.
You're done.
You're not out on the street.
You can't do it.
Hope rises with the victims.
Recently, when there was a poorly put together trial, in my opinion, and a bad actor basically was exonerated, it was demoralizing to the industry.
I had over 300 messages and calls from survivors and victims of human trafficking saying, see, no justice for us.
I will never talk.
I will never get help.
My perpetrator will always walk free.
I'm looking over my shoulder every day of my life.
I can't go to that state, that city.
The anti-trafficking organizations are demoralized because they're saying, what are we fighting for?
Because here's what happens.
The predator doesn't get convicted.
The predator walks loose.
The survivor runs for their life.
So here's a real case.
We are involved in a rescue of an adult woman.
We place her in what's called a safe house, an anti-trafficking shelter.
She received phenomenal trauma-informed care.
She learns that her trafficker that was arrested is out, nine months in.
She runs.
Now we have to go re-rescue her.
Law enforcement is demoralizing.
You say she runs and you have to re-rescue her.
Can you clarify what you mean?
She learns that her trafficker is out and he is looking for her.
And she panics and she literally leaves the shelter, the safe house, because she can't keep her against her will.
She's an adult.
Now she's fleeing.
She will be trafficked again.
She will be homeless.
She will be destitute.
She'll need shelter.
If he finds her, there's massive trauma.
If he doesn't find her, she is in another environment where she has to be re-rescued.
When you go to law enforcement, on average, adult women that are trafficked are rescued three times for this very reason.
Because their perpetrators walk.
They sleep in fear.
Now they're transient, but she's perhaps trying to get her own daughter back from the court system.
And the court's saying, but you're not stable.
It's this gigantic snowball effect that works in the opposite direction of what is good when we don't prosecute bad guys.
And you're seeing America right now saying, we want justice.
We want to see people who exploit people face justice.
We don't want to see them find lesser charges.
How many times must we be let down again?
And again, Congress has done an amazing job.
It took a while, but from 2015, they've done an amazing job.
41 task forces against trafficking funded by Congress.
State laws across all states.
Penalties.
Hundreds of millions of dollars spent on researching trauma-informed therapy, trauma care, building safe housing.
The judiciary has been left alone because there's a general assumption in America by Americans that if a bill, a law passes, the law enforces itself.
That just because this bill is passed, now magically the bad guys will say, oh my goodness, they just made a new law.
We better comply.
It's not how it works.
It has to be socialized.
It has to be educated on.
It has to be enforced.
You know, you're proposing a very detailed plan.
I've read your white paper, of course, on how to do this, but you're kind of creating another kind of bureaucracy.
So it would be good for you to address that part and how that would work.
And the other part is, how quickly could something like this be stood up?
Yeah.
Very interesting question.
We're not creating another bureaucracy because these cases are already in the courts.
They're just in the courts in front of judges that don't have skills.
So all we're saying is we're not adding judges.
These judges are already there.
You're tapping a judge saying, we have witnessed that you have a higher proficiency in some of these cases.
You have an aptitude towards this.
This is a heart's desire for you.
You get designated as a human trafficking judge, and we are going to pour resources into this judge saying, let's educate you, funneling cases.
By default, when you start funneling, channeling more cases to that judge, he becomes wiser.
But basically, you're saying you're going to keep people working where they work.
Exactly.
You're just going to help them be more effective at doing these things.
They get cross-designated where they can either try that trafficking case at a state level or choose to say, well, let's go to Judge X, which is a federal court.
And what judges are telling us, what prosecutors are telling us, former attorney generals are telling us, we would like all the cases to go there because that court will have expertise, will have services, and it will rule justly, swiftly.
There's not a budget increase.
There's not a financial ask of Congress because the courts are there, but they're highly inefficient on this issue, right?
Because it's on a lottery system and a judge sees it once in a while and it's much easier to say, look, let's get a conviction.
This guy is a bad guy.
But let's get him on marijuana.
Let's get him on a gun charge on an interstate transportation charge, whatever.
But not human trafficking.
But he's a trafficker.
And so you're seeing that play out.
So it's not a new bureaucracy.
It is embraced by think tanks, by bipartisan entities in the NGO space and anti-trafficking and on the Hill, in Senate and the House.
Bipartisan.
Yes.
Race, color, gender, creed, doesn't matter because this crime doesn't profile.
It doesn't care.
But there is a new structure.
It's special human trafficking courts system.
And there's, of course, people that are going to be doing the educating.
So there is some kind of a structure.
Yes.
Right.
For sure.
We're seeing judges raising their hands saying, I want to serve on that court.
Now they have to be nominated, confirmed, because it's Article 3.
This is not a court set up, Article 2 by POTIS.
This is Article 3.
It's Congress.
The irony is that there's a tremendous amount of will by the NGOs to educate.
There's a tremendous amount of resource available.
Trusted, vetted, and verified not-for-profits that are in the space of trauma-informed care, rehabilitation, technology.
Some of these are not not-for-profits.
These are for-profit corporations with incredible technology to serve the court, such as data maps, maps across the country of saying what are the tendencies.
Hey, Judge Jones, in the tri-cities area, here's what we're seeing on the ground as information shared by the anti-trafficking organizations.
There's, for instance, a particular increase in spiritual ritual abuse in your area of the country.
You need to shore up your knowledge and information on what is happening there.
Or a judge in Texas would learn that I have to invest time right now and draw from the resources available to me to learn about sex tortion because there's a sextortion explosion on young Texas boys 15 and 16.
Well, today that kid walks into a courtroom with a case and the judge has not even heard of sextortion, doesn't understand the intricacies of the crime.
He's behind the eight ball.
So part of the court that will be instituted through Congress, we on the private sector side are putting together over 500 different entities that have all said, here's best practice.
We want to share information and resources in a particular data center that judges can draw from at any given moment.
Much like our organization did this three times this year.
We write amicus briefs to SCODIS.
We wrote three amicus briefs to SCODIS on our one case that we supported, which was age verification, Hospital 1181 from Texas.
SCODIS received 28 amicus briefs from industry leaders, experts, that have real strong information to educate SCODIS because SCODIS can't be an expert on every level.
Someone I've had on the show, Michael Schellenberger, he documents something like what's described as a homeless industrial complex.
So there's a lot of nonprofits that are involved in something and they have, there's a weird, he argues there's this weird incentive structure.
You kind of need the homelessness to keep the money flowing.
You're talking about nonprofits that are actually achieving the tasks of what they do.
And I think it's important, if that's indeed the case, to draw that distinction and explain why you're confident that these groups are going to get the job done.
Yeah, 100%.
And look, it's the court ultimately that gets the job done.
The nonprofits are just there to educate, right?
And frankly, without these nonprofits, human trafficking would be completely out of control in our country because whether it is a safe house that takes care of four to six women a year to provide trauma-informed care and really by trial and error and by the sweat of their brow learn how do you work with a victim with this subset, there's no way the court can know that.
So bringing that best practice from the trusted and vetted organizations, and there's many that are not.
But the interesting thing is in the anti-trafficking space, the space self-audits.
And I don't see that in any other space.
Like we perhaps didn't see in the migration space, right?
In the anti-trafficking space, it is ultra-trust because those who truly care about the individual and who aim towards eradicating a crime, right?
They will not collaborate with organizations that do not produce results in human beings.
So if that particular safe house is allowing further exploitation, we will never send another woman to that safe house.
And you see a lot of NGOs in the anti-trafficking space closing because there is a self-audit within where we do look at one another daily with an accountability saying there's a standard that we have to uphold and advance.
Those are the type of organizations, but not just NGOs.
There's for-profit organizations, a particular organization in the tech space that is producing groundbreaking solutions in data and data analytics of what can we learn from survivors?
What does it mean?
What are trends and tendencies in different areas in the country?
How does the geopolitical climate in the Northeast vary from the Southwest?
And maybe perhaps that's an indicator for the different mechanisms and methods of trafficking.
And that's for-profit technology that's saying, we believe we can contribute.
And I have seen these for-profit technology companies donate their services, saying, how can we step into this fight?
It's our duty.
Yes, we're successful in the for-profit space by commercializing our technology, but man, if this can help a child, if we could build a database, if we could build a tool set for judges to learn an LMS platform where judges can, at will, 24 hours a day, get their finger on the pulse of what is happening, right?
Those are the organizations we're talking about.
There's always bad apples.
Yako, the reason that I'm asking about this is that, you know, for example, we've had a lot of work with Doge, with this particular administration, and Doge has found a lot of money flowing to NGOs that didn't seem to make sense or wasn't going in the right places.
You know, whole departments have been dismantled.
That's why I want to get you to kind of weigh in on why these organizations that you're talking about are different.
One thing I think to highlight is the instituting these human trafficking courts through Article III, through Congress, produces zero financial gain for any NGO.
There's no financial attachment for nonprofit organizations in the fight.
The gain is a victory in prosecution.
The gain is hope rising in your staff, in the survivor group, saying it's working.
Perhaps if there was justice for her, there's justice for me.
Remember, survivors will tell you, my sister Ilonka will tell you, justice for the survivor where their perpetrator is prosecuted is a cornerstone of their healing mechanism.
Even in my sister's case, the man that was her main perpetrator and her trafficker has not been brought to justice.
There's a healing element missing.
It's vacant.
So the NGOs that say, yes, we want this court, there's no financial gain.
There's not a financial draw for them.
It is, we've been hoping and praying for a judiciary that will start dropping the legal hammer and bring consequence to the perpetrators.
Because we know how that impacts the survivors, the victims that are currently being trafficked, how it emboldens them to break free, to ask for help, to speak up.
Only 1.7% of child trafficking victims self-identify as victims.
Under 1% speak up.
When you start seeing in the news that predator after predator, not just online CSAM profiler, but through the court, there's a conviction of human trafficking, 30 years, 50 years, life.
Victims are going to be willing to be forthcoming with very valuable information to law enforcement, which then reinforces the whole victory cycle.
So the NGOs that want to support and the for-profit entities that want to support have nothing to gain other than justice, which arguably is one of the things we need the most.
How quickly, ultimately, I asked this earlier, how quickly could this be stood up?
I guess, you know, through Congress and ostensibly with the support of the administration, that's what you're hoping for.
Look, it would be phenomenal if the administration was to support it, but this is Congress.
So it doesn't really matter who the administration is, although I believe it's a more favorable climate right now to get it done.
So for that matter, it does matter.
But it's going to go through Congress.
We released the white paper.
It's now in the public and the public can go read the white paper.
We're releasing subsequent opinion pieces from survivor voices, law enforcement, judiciary Around the subject matter, other strong entities, reputable entities writing their own supporting opinion pieces.
Here's the mechanisms, the steps.
We are gearing up and moving towards a Senate judiciary hearing where we have curated expert testimonies that, and I would say, Jan, that America has not heard.
They've not heard this plight explained to the American people and to the Senate judiciary this way.
Subsequent subcommittee hearings, and we are presenting the bill, the legislation that then has to go into a vote in the Senate.
The Senate would vote on it.
Prayerfully, the Senate passes that bill.
It would go to the House.
The House would vote on it.
And you have Congress enacting a brand new Article III Human Trafficking Court.
Fastest possible way is it doable in 2025.
That is my prayer.
And one of the things that is coming through from our conversation, and I certainly sense this from other people that I've spoken with on the issue of human trafficking on this show, that there's a lot of will among people broadly.
It's an issue that there's just a lot of will and a lot of interest and a lot of desire to see action in.
And so, you know, I wish you Godspeed.
A final thought as we finish?
This is a unique moment where we can turn this evil of human trafficking on a dime, when we can finally see justice come to the most afflicted, the most vulnerable of our society.
It's an opportunity for the public to partner with elected officials and hold elected officials accountable to say, here's a real solution.
We're demanding that justice prevails.
And I believe success begets success.
And I still see a flickering light in the American people that they have hope for justice.
And I want to say, keep hope.
Here's a real solution that will positively impact the most vulnerable.
Well, Yako-Boyens, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you, Jan.
Thank you all for joining Yako-Boyans and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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