It’s About Making Money!

 

by Ted Lyons

 

Why “Raid-Rescue” is a For-Profit Business

 

 

“Raid-Rescue,” is a term coined by the anti-trafficking community. The truth is it’s a program used by unscrupulous NGOs, namely The Exodus Road. The main goal is to raise funds and to create an image of heroism. The process uses a false narrative. They claim to have discovered victims being held in sex slavery.

 

The Exodus Road is heavily reliant on local and national police. They invest money into police forces, not to help people. They need the image of rescuing victims, and having the police involved gives greater credence to their work. Around the world, you will find police officers who work diligently for very little pay. Therefore, it is not hard to spend a little money on police officers in an attempt to solicit their help and create a narrative of “RESCUE.”

 

My initial work with an anti-trafficking organization was disturbing. I was shocked by a lot of things. However, I discovered on the first day that it was important to “traumatize” the narrative. It was unsettling to me how we were classified as rescuing individuals from “slavery.”

 

It’s unthinkable to refer to an individual you believe to be a victim as a “rescue mission.”  Unfortunately, there are real victims of human trafficking in the world. Unfortunately, some individuals need help. Communities need quality programs. They need educational programs to enhance their ability to attain better-paying jobs.  There are serious issues surrounding these types of anti-trafficking organizations. Rescue is a word that describes life-saving missions to pull people from dangerous surroundings. This false narrative is cultivated by Matt and Laura Parker from The Exodus Road.

 

The first avenue to their money-making scheme is to find good-hearted, well-intentioned individuals to fall prey to their orchestrated allusion. The Exodus Road uses the Evangelical Church to raise funds and solicit volunteers to collude with their well-defined, craftily written “rescue” narrative.

 

Matt Parker is the same as Tim Ballard. Ballard-Parker has taken the “rescue” industry to a financially prosperous level. An interesting story about the harm of “rescue raid” and the shame it brings to volunteers who serve with these organizations is described best by Meg Conley.

 

Meg writes, in an article entitled “Called by God,” published June 21, 2021 in Slate Magazine,

https://slate.com/human-interest/2021/05/sex-trafficking-raid-operation-underground-railroad.html

“I’d never heard of Operation Underground Railroad when its founder, Tim Ballard, called me suddenly in the summer of 2014. A former Department of Homeland Security special agent, Ballard said OUR had a child-trafficking sting planned for the Dominican Republic—and he wanted me to come along to document it.

Ballard explained the mission of the organization to me like this: Children in other countries were being trafficked. Local governments were overwhelmed or complicit. And the U.S. government was unwilling to jeopardize diplomatic relationships to rescue local underage victims. Ballard said he knew how to rescue these kids. He told me he’d been called to this work by God.

Ballard and I are both Mormon. He knew my parents from church. My dad, who loved my work, kept a few cards with my blog information in his wallet. He’d pass them out to friends, family, and even the nurses treating his leukemia. Maybe that’s how Ballard knew I was a writer.

When Ballard called, I didn’t ask many questions. I didn’t wonder why he thought it was appropriate for me—the writer of a mommy blog—to chronicle anti-trafficking work. At the time, I was a 28-year-old stay-at-home mother in Utah. I was lonely and grieving: My dad, my best friend, had died not long before. As I changed diapers, managed tantrums, and sat in the playground, I felt unmoored from my past and unsure about my future. I suppose, in my grief and my search for meaning, I wanted him to be called by God, because maybe that meant finally, I was too.

I accepted his offer quickly.

There were a few emails back and forth before I left with Operation Underground Railroad—instructions on what to pack, my plane ticket, the name of the person who would meet me at the airport. It wasn’t exactly training to join a military-style sting operation, but at the time, somehow, I wasn’t worried. I left my kids and got on a plane, arriving in the Dominican Republic the day before the sting.

(A representative for Operation Underground Railroad replied to detailed questions for this article: “Slate is rehashing old claims from nearly seven years ago during Operation Underground Railroad’s first year in operation. As any other successful organization does, we have evolved and are continuously working to professionally improve our standard operating methods and practices.”)

The traffickers thought we were Americans looking to have a sex party with underage girls.

I was the youngest person, and the only woman, on the “jump,” as they called it. A camera crew filmed everything, because Ballard seemed to intend to pitch a TV series about his anti-trafficking efforts, and they needed footage. The production company was based in Utah but reportedly had Hollywood royalty interested: Gerald Molen, the Oscar-winning producer of films like Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List. This was a rescue mission, but it was also reality TV.

We stayed in a big beige house with a bewildered local housekeeper. Once everyone arrived, we sat together to go over plans for the next day. I took notes. The traffickers thought we were Americans looking to have a sex party with underage girls.

I was told Ballard’s team coordinated with local authorities who were too overwhelmed or ill-equipped to do this work on their own. Members of the OUR jump team found people willing to traffic kids and set up a date to “party” with however many kids they could provide, the more the better. The authorities were told where and when the party was happening. When they arrived, the girls would be sent outside, where I would be with them, while Ballard and the traffickers would stay inside. The police planned to wait outside until the OUR team had undercover footage of a trafficker accepting upfront cash for sex with the kids. After the cash changed hands, Ballard would give a signal, and the authorities would rush the house to make arrests. They would be armed.

Operation Underground Railroad is now famous for its international sting operations. They are a big fundraiser: In 2015, a Silicon Valley man funded a sting with $40,000 and watched it happen in real time. With the help of OUR, a rich person can become a vigilante hero for the day, their living room transformed into a personal situation room. For those who can’t afford the situation room, Ballard carries the drama with him to every interview and every fundraiser. That drama, and a real desire to save children, moves a lot of donors, whether or not it’s accurate. Vice recently investigated a few of Ballard’s stories and found “a pattern of image-burnishing and mythology-building, a series of exaggerations that are, in the aggregate, quite misleading,” and has detailed “disturbingly amateurish” operations like the one I attended.”

Over the next several days. I am going to systematically define and outline the entire process of the “for-profit,” “rescue-raid” scheme.

 

 

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