Rebecca Bender: Fighting Against Human Trafficking - Green Room S2E03

rebecca i i surround myself with the most powerful i know i'm kidding will surrounds himself with the most powerful women [Music] hey everybody welcome to the iris global green room podcast oh my god we are here with rebecca bender it's happening it's happening again again it's happening again but these guys don't know take two i got a lot of hate i got a lot of hate all you guys you gave me a lot of hate you did do you know why no women on your part no women on my podcast they don't know though the first podcast was with you and so technical all you people technical issues don't judge judgy judges a lot of you guys gave me feedback you said hey will you don't have women on your podcast and i say mildly accurate but inaccurate because you were the first you were the first one i was the first one and it failed i failed i asked horrible questions technical difficulties i called you i had people yell at me who might some of my staff because i told them i i don't know if you remember what i said i said something very horrible no i think i normally remember horrible interviews i was like hey so ah i don't want should i ever should i remind you because it was a it was a moment of if it was a bad question i would have told you like yo you can't ask me that you did oh i did yeah and i was like hey why did you do this and you're like uh i didn't do that uh what the heck are you talking about like this big no i'm sorry no it was good it was good and so i told staff and they all yelled at me and they were like how could you do that here's the this is why no women come on your podcast you're a creepy weirdo he doesn't know how to talk to the ladies and i say mildly accurate i mean i think that guys have a whole different perspective on this issue of sex for sale than women and so i get the craziest comments questions and responses from men in general men who have read my book have very different questions than women who read my book i think women we're used to talking about issues of domestic violence and abuse and perpetrators and aggressive behavior with like dating like we're all used to that but y'all maybe aren't and so i'm not used to that it's it's been an interesting uh mix to hear men's perspectives you live in that world so you kind of slide in and out of very easy like hey i remember like when we first filmed this i was like hey well how's your family how's your kids you're like sex trafficking rape and it just i was like i didn't even know how to talk to you about it and i talked to people about this stuff you were very comfortable talking about this stuff for those of you who don't know i have rebecca bender on she is the president ceo all the things of all the rebecca bender initiative things she's a author she is a mom she is a speaker she is a trainer and equipper of all the people on how to spot sex trafficking she is a former a victim former victim i don't even know how to say that i don't even know what it's either survivor uh not a victim you're a survivor we would call them victims when you're being trafficked but more than that she's a really really really good friend uh her and her family and uh i've known rebecca now for four years probably give or take and uh time every so often i might uh jump in on a board call too yes in your organization not so much lately though because i've been busy hey that's why it's great to learn from you and iris global because we're very small like mom and pop you are not small non-profit that's just trying to figure out how to do this thing and live life for jesus and it's not easy and i always make probably the inappropriate joke that's like my trafficker didn't teach me how to run a non-profit so when you kind of get thrown in to like want to go after your calling and take your lived experience and do something with it if people don't come around to help mentor you you're literally just out there floundering so yeah that's awesome when you can jump on the call well i've watched you treasure soar and make amazing decisions there's a lot going on in your life i want to talk about it because god's just done a ton uh we we might try to tiptoe around some of the past because i know people have questions and all the things you just said you were trafficked i'm sure people want to know about that we're going to get there um but read the book we're going to do that too there we go we'll just get right into it in pursuit of love you're actually in town for the launch or one of the launches launch parties here and uh this is gonna bless you and wreck you and i'm gonna we will talk about that um but before we get into it i was as as i was waiting for you because you're super duper late i want to say no i'm just kidding you were right on time uh i was looking at your instagram and i saw a picture of you and selena gomez yeah was that like what why are you hanging out with selena well selena it's not like i'm hanging out with her we're not like super great friends i don't call her at home or anything but um she selena gomez has been an advocate for human trafficking she's been a brand ambassador for a21 for a while so she's been a speaker at several galas that i had been a part of there's several people that are really using a lot of their influence to really help people sound the alarm about this issue yeah angela johnson has been a great angela johnson really well-known comedian okay um she makes the funny joke that her husband was a christian rapper and she's a christian and a comedian but she's not a christian comedian she says i love jesus but i'll fight a girl okay i know who i know that is so she's been a great friend and ambassador of trafficking ashton kutcher has probably been our biggest support on endorse the budget this book yes thank you okay cool yeah we talked about that ak for the win i i encourage you to reach out you're the one that told me yeah i want that no i was like bro ashton is not going to endorse my book he did rebecca is a true leader in the fight against trafficking she's an inspiration who is changing the world with action yeah when we were talking we were like who do i get just to do the things and and i think you asked me and i was like oh you need to ask catching aston kutcher because you are with him and you do things i'm like well who should endorse my book like my mom and my grandmother you asked me i was like no god no you did anyway you're in there i i know but it's not that good but anyway uh i say ask ashton is probably uh a better endorsement how he like people see him he speaks in the senate or you know he speaks on this stuff how did you get connected with him um ashton kutcher is the co-founder of thorn it's an anti-trafficking organization that uses technology to help scan online ads for victims of human trafficking and they archive them in this like rolodex kind of so law enforcement only are allowed to have memberships to this technology that thorne has created called spotlight if you have a spotlight account you log in you can type any indicator phone number height weight tattoo and it pops up any ad of that of a hit all across the country and this has been phenomenal for law enforcement because usually those type of websites they delete all files after six months if you subpoena them for a court hearing it could be like you know oh we just never got the subpoena and now that whole account's deleted and so thorn has been paramount nationally because they're archiving in real time they've just created technology that's constantly just saving saving ads so law enforcement can find them you say ads what are you talking about ads on ads on different websites where sex is for sale okay and so it's not the black market it's just the regular web and it's really hard for people to identify whether it's an ad for someone who's being trafficked or if it's an ad for someone who's there as what would be considered a pro sex worker and there really is no way to tell the difference and so from an ad and so um that's hard because you don't know if a trafficker's posting not to sell someone or if someone's doing it by quote-unquote choice which we could still debate but um yeah so thorn has been a great fight because they've helped law enforcement save ads and it's been really useful during trial and investigation and so anyway ash and i've been booked to speak at several different conferences here or there and we were doing an event in atlanta at the mercedes center for international rotary about 45 000 people i was like yeah no pressure 45 000. yeah and so i had to uh i delivered a speech that was on teleprompters really it was my first time on teleprompters they forced you you couldn't go just no you have to pre-submit it in advance because it has to be translated to so many languages international rotaries you know unbelievably large so they have to pre-translate and so you have to stick with the script so to speak um and i can remember it was my first time doing teleprompters and i got a great word of advice from a friend of mine right before in the back in the green room and he said the teleprompter's job is to follow you not vice versa right don't feel the pressure right to like follow the lines you pause when you want to pause you speed up when you want to speed up it's their job to follow you and that was so much weight suddenly of like oh okay i can do this and so i threw a couple lines in there to make it feel a little bit more authentic and it's almost like you could see the teleprompter guy or girl it was like what is she doing what is she doing what is she oh thank goodness we're back on track what is she doing what does she do here is that your biggest uh group yeah for sure for sure super nervous wow so you did that with ashton so you connect and with a lot of people around the world on really doing whatever you can to stop as much human trafficking as humanly possible yeah it seems like i so i don't you know we've talked we've talked a lot about all this stuff before but i in the last few months i've been dealing with you know just a lot of this is coming it seems like it's coming up everywhere like more and more and more and it seems like a never-ending like highway that just gets bigger and bigger and bigger the more you actually look into it how do you not get overwhelmed because it's just non-stop and i think with what's happening at least in the world of pornography uh it's just globalized and it's non-stop like it seems to be getting worse it's so interesting i think everybody can feel really overwhelmed when you look at the whole issue of hypersexuality and sex for sale and pornography and then all the ways to fight it right it's like well do you do demand reduction or or do you do prevention or outreach or awareness or rest i mean there's so many things and the only the thing that i have learned that helps people is when we think about the issue of smoking 30 years ago right when you think of smoking in the 70s right your flight attendant he was walking around with a cigarette pushing a cart no one thought anything of it your doctor would like light up right in the room with your mom on oxygen no one batted an eye and it took 30 years of public health like really sounding the alarm about the public health concern for us all to think very differently of smoking today smoking is a community health risk it's very dangerous for your health it really impacts your body it's secondhand smoke all the things right um and so that's that's the perspective we have to keep with changing the issue of pornography in our culture with changing culture as it pertains yeah but how do you do like honestly that i get the analogy and i think it's beautiful but this is this has been an issue from the birth of humanity yeah people have been for sale for sex it's the oldest oppression i don't you know much more about all the things but in my limited opinion all i see all i see is it growing and i feel like at least with pornography the way that it was like years ago it was pornography was really very difficult to to get now it's thrust in front of your face everywhere you go that has to change something in the fabric of society where now they're like hey this is the way it is it's all good it it it seems like it's it's cheapening it even even 20 years ago 30 years ago it was like it was like oh the perverts that that go to the magazine section or whatever and now it's like it's all good it's great it's healthy we do it in our relationships like this husbands and wives are watching stuff together and i think if anything it's shifted the other way like i see it getting worse i think the issue of hypersexuality is definitely on the rise pornography is on the rise it is overwhelming sometimes to feel like how do we do this and the only thing that i continue to encourage people is this is a great time to teach us more self-control to teach our kids self-control right right we also you know technology is changing in general yeah you know we didn't used to have tablets and netflix and streaming and google and you know you can get information in this split second now we didn't have that when you and i were younger we didn't have that and it hasn't gone away and that's not changing but we do have to adapt and we have to create healthy boundaries and we have to figure out what's the line for us and when's good screen time for my kids and so you have to keep that in mind as we move into really hypersexual culture that we live in how do i teach my kids to look away when something comes on the tv how do i change the channel how do i let them know hey we're walking into this yeah shopping mall and there's going to be some crazy naked girls in the windows but i need you to know your identity is not with how you look and it's really about having open conversations with your kids okay so you're a mom how many of you have three or four gosh four daughters actually i don't think i met your oldest yeah she's i think she's always been off running she's at college yeah so but i do know you're you're younger how do you as a mom who's been through what you've been through what does that conversation look like i know there's a ton of moms are like uh we don't even like talk to our kids about sex right you know like how do you like practically what does that look like i think especially for human trafficking what's really important for people to understand is human trafficking is not just a girl's issue this isn't like oh how do i keep my daughter safe from being exploited although that is a part of the issue i think the bigger issue is how do we keep how do we raise our young men in such a hyper sexual culture that we're not creating this huge increase of demand right how are we stopping that from happening because if there's no one to buy then there'd be no reason to sell it's right it's kind of a marketing equation for lack of better words and this pornographic culture is raising up a demand like never before right and so it's really it really is a boys issue this really is how do we shift the way our young men are seeing pornography and sex for sale really how are we teaching our young men to become defenders and protectors and not exploit and objectify and catcall and how do you do that in a nation where they're where i think where people are more like hey there's equality and and you know everybody's the same and women are looking at it just as much as men are well they're not looking at it just as much as men are okay because i've heard the stats and i please like that's why i submit all my uh uneducatedness to you but the stuff that i hear is like hey and actually even the stuff that i see i probably in the communities that i've ministered to around the churches when i talk to people it seems to be a semi-even struggle these days yeah porn i think definitely is on the rise for women i mean we are seeing women and young women see porn more than ever before especially because it's so easy for young people to get access to it smartphones you put all the filters on your phones and tablets all you want but that doesn't mean the person next door at the locker next door doesn't have the same filters and so i think it really is about making sure that we're just teaching our kids self-control and an identity so what does that look like a whole bunch of like i'm not an anti i'm not the anti-poor that's not what i do you live in this world you live i live in helping people change their lives that's what i do well okay we're in the same industry then well not yeah i mean all i want to do is see people get meet jesus and fall in love with him and let you know he is the self-control he becomes the holy spirit becomes that so right we're we're on the same page with those things i support groups that fight porn i support them but i'm not a non-profit that fights porn that's not my focus right so i support those that do and they have their own strategies and they go hand in hand though for sure like the trafficking and and all it goes hand in hand but what do i know i'm just a neanderthal uh it's good to have you here i'm i i how how is your family like how are you guys doing there's a lot going on in your life right now he last time you were here we couldn't really talk about it too much is still okay there's big things coming there's big things coming the way they're down the pipeline yeah but we can't talk about that i guess the book's been optioned to be turned into a television series by a major network but that's all i'm able to say okay until a press release was issued okay so how do you feel about that that's like a big deal this is and it's not when she said major network it's it's not uh it isn't it's a major network and that can shift your life how has it been processing that like it doesn't totally feel like it's real yet really i mean because projects take so long it's i've been working on it for four years yeah so it's kind of like all right call me when it's ready but it could be another two years so it's just life as usual okay so yeah it hasn't really shifted that much right now you're just continuing on yeah cause who knows it's so hard when you have this really ambiguous end date it's hard to plan so you just all right business as usual until you get a real actual so business as usual what does that look like for you oh so much right go for it we run a non-profit that helps um fight human trafficking we train first responders on how to identify and respond to victims of domestic exploitation so we're training law enforcement we're training medical professionals we're working cases so um i just got a call recently for a big case in um an undisclosed location of a district attorney that needs an expert to review all the evidence write a report take the stand testify at trial so that's really where a lot of my time and energy sometimes goes so you do that you go in and there's a there's a case going on and they just come to you as an expert yeah but how much of that do you do a year i didn't i didn't know this yeah several a year really yeah have you ever done any like high profile cases yeah really yeah can you you are you're not allowed to mention it we talked we did i worked with fbi on the um long island serial killer case shut up yeah you did very briefly what it is it's still an open investigation when when was this oh years ago what happened like tell me what it what did you get brought in for so um a private investigator actually reached out and sent me a whole bunch of information and i read through it and felt like i was seeing something that maybe wasn't being seen and so i trained fbi a lot so i reached out to my fbi contact and said hey i was sent this information by private investigator this is some of the things that i'm seeing from a human trafficking perspective because the long long island serial killer was targeting women involved in prostitution but when you look at the evidence all of those victims are actually trafficked victims and one trafficker actually drove his victim to a home that the lady never came out of and the trafficker called the police and it was like my like my girlfriend isn't hasn't come out of the house and he was a real witness in this which is really unheard of for a trafficker to go to law enforcement you know like that's serious when someone that's that insidious would call law enforcement with concern and so i wanted to kind of follow that trail because i know the human trafficking world and that is a big no-no for traffickers to call 9-1-1 you know and so i thought we need to we need to follow this because that's not normal and i was able to identify the escort service that the tr that the victims um who had been murdered were booked from really and so i gave called the f called my contact he put me in touch with there's one fbi agent who had been assigned to the long island serial killer case themselves and so when i had several conversations i sent him the information i had and and that's kind of it i mean unfortunately with law enforcement and open cases sometimes you don't get follow-up you don't get feedback you're just have to trust that they're taking the information and running with it come on it's kind of hard because you don't get to see the fruit right but i think that's a lot of all of us we all plant seeds you know you're doing work with someone and they may backslide and next thing you know five years later they're saved and they're doing great and you're like awesome and they're like hey that one thing you said and that's all you can do is continue to plant seeds and trust that you're just the seed planter you're not always the harvester and yeah and sometimes you get to harvest and that's what keeps it going for yourself and your own like you know this is worth it but it's not always going to be the case with every person that you help wow so when you work with fbi what is what are you training like give us a crash course and what to look for for somebody that's being trafficked because you go in like super bowls like you like before super you you actually do this like what do you give give me your like top five points what are you like what are your training no pressure what are people training and five yeah um i think the the true the reality is you know i was trafficked for nearly six years and during that time i was traded and sold between three different traffickers and so i learned a lot of tactics that multiple traffickers employ i used to be really ashamed of that part of my story because people in the in that life are kind of looked down on if you have more than one trafficker then they call you names you're really ostracized a little bit and so for a long time i didn't want to talk about it publicly yeah and then i started just feeling like just god just continued to remind me that he i had three more types of there was three more ways that i could identify and relate with people if i was just really vulnerable with the fact of all that i had been through and so knowing how these three very different traffickers operated gave me a lot more insight than i realized i had and and so after that kind of watching how they work watching how they move victims how they recruit how they groom how they keep victims in compliance different coercive tactics that are employed that aren't always physical violence helped me to just realize that maybe i could if cops knew this would they investigate differently would they treat victims differently and then in 2006 uh the feds raided our home my trafficker was indicted on over 4 million of tax evasion and so that gave me this whole other perspective of how like a federal a federal case is investigated and i can remember when the feds came to one of the houses in dallas and raided the home in them really early in the morning and they had an arrest warrant for one of the victims that wasn't there and so we were in vegas and we knew at that point that it could be any minute that they would show up and we were around you know just a little bit away from her and about i don't know six maybe nine months later uh us marshall surrounded her apartment and i remember getting that phone call and that's actually the opening of my book getting the phone call like five or six in the morning of her on her just saying they're here and me grabbing the kids and hopping the fence and sitting in my neighbor's backyard and i can just remember like holding my daughter and this other little boy and crouching down in the backyard of some lady's house you know i had to be 26 at the time maybe and i can just remember thinking like i'm afraid the neighbor's going to see me yeah and now in hindsight now that i'm 38 and i'm healed first that's probably debatable if you ask my husband but um i can remember thinking though like the the scariest moment for me was what the neighbor was gonna think not that there's a federal raid that's taking place not child welfare child custody services possibly from for the kids like that i'm worried about than what the neighbor yeah if you're a man yeah yeah and so that was really scary so i just walked around the neighborhood um i was told not to come back until i got a call that it was safe but that's what my traffickers said to do and so that's what i did and then i came back packed up everything and we lived in a hotel for wow this summer wow afraid the feds would come again and so you detail your whole story in this book you you beginning middle and end and i do want to encourage everybody watching to reach out and grab this i we when we talked before we spent this whole time going through your story and it's a lot like it's a lot i i told these guys afterwards i was like i don't know how to like i don't know what to do with my hands or my face when you're telling your story it is a story of redemption it's a story of eve finding god in the middle of it um yeah you got teary-eyed a lot like yeah and i and i told myself i wasn't going to go there today um unless we go there but then i'm fine with that well a lot of the book the funny part is and you well know this right when you write a book you're contracted for a certain number of word count right and i was contracted for about i don't know 55 or 60 000 words and i turned in 93 and they were like oh so we have to cut half your story and so even still it was like this still isn't everything but i thought when i got the book deal finally i'm gonna get to tell the whole story because usually you got 20 minutes on a stage or 45 minutes you're not getting it all in you're picking and choosing specific stories to tell that will help that demographic walk away with some call to action and um so i felt like this was going to finally be my chance and it and it still isn't so what do you do right just keep going yeah keep keep having the conversations uh every time that i've chat with you we met at a darren wilson filming uh in orlando orlando florida and uh and to this day everybody there said that your your time sharing was the most powerful out of all the all of the sharing and that's i and i didn't actually hear it but that's when i that's when i first met you and started listening and hearing your story and every time every time we connect i get to hear more and more and more it is a crazy story i do you all of you know watching this we don't pitch product this is not like me pitching a product i i don't have it in our bookstore i where can they get it you can get it anywhere books are sold amazon barnes and noble the audible is me reading it myself so i'm the narrator so you'll get to really hear the sarcasm i was afraid if someone else read it like no she's gonna read that like a real line and that's i'm being sarcastic there but it's hard to write sarcasm into writing i'm really sarcastic i'm really i i so when i wrote my book i like have it i wrote myself the other half i used a ghost writer and she said the hardest thing was capturing like my my cadence my sarcasm yeah yeah it's very difficult but i want to encourage you go out and grab this book you can get the full story give it to yeah just get it get it in the hands of anybody i think that this is a story of redemption uh it's a beautiful story of redemption and and and even like the pitfalls along the road it's going to wreck you it's going to break you i i i asked you a question and i do want you to answer it we i think we got caught in the weeds on what are some of the things that people can look for in their community uh about like spotting trafficking like what are some of the things you go in and teach and i know i know it's long but like give me something what i would teach law enforcement is very different than what i would teach community people to look for so i want the law enforcement okay well like we don't want to give away investigation tactics on youtube i want the good stuff i said all of the weeds part to just say that from all of that experience yeah i usually just teach law enforcement what traffickers are doing behind the scenes and i think from there it's given them so much more perspective oh i didn't know that i didn't know that was happening i didn't know that was happening um how to follow the money how did how did we launder four million dollars right how did we do that and so obviously that's what they could prove so usually that means there's a lot more that they could improve right and so just teaching law enforcement various investigative tactics and what to look for and where to go um but it's always a little scary because you're fighting evil right and like you know oftentimes there's gang ties and you're sitting on the stand at trial and there's gang members right in front of you and you're testifying you don't know them personally but you're just you know sharing with the jury um tactics that are employed by traffickers in general and if this case happens to match those then that's not my fault that's i'm just sharing what traffickers do in general and that's been it's been intimidating sometimes you're being threatened no since you've been coming out and doing this you've never experienced any threat from the groups that are you know in the process of selling people or trafficking people have you ever had anybody come after you only people that have threatened me have been pro-sex workers i get a lot of threats from pro-sex works workers what do they say you're ruining our money not everyone hears traffic this is our body our choice what do you think about that because there is a group of people that is i've had them take pictures of my kids and repost it on their own social media and say go get them stop what'd you do cried you're scared you don't like call the cops or nothing you can do i mean it's like it'll be gone in 24 hours it's on an insta story like what do you do what do you what what do you say to the women that are like hey this is my body this is good like i love this nobody's forcing me into this that are the vocal ones i know there's this probably the small community that that believes that i think the bigger issue is how did you get involved in sex work in general if there's a lack of options and a lack of choice and a lack of opportunity a lack of seats at the table then our real fight together needs to be how do we create opportunities for marginalized people how do we create options for people that don't have opportunity to get an education to get a great job we have the same fight in that right i don't want someone to feel like they're in danger every single day and it's like playing a game of russian roulette when you knock on a hotel room door you don't know what's going to be behind that and some people don't make it out and and we pro-sex work and anti-trafficking survivors and advocates we all agree that there's some inherent danger in this line of work and if we can have opportunities of similar income and flexible schedule would you still choose it and if the answer is no that you wouldn't still choose it you'd choose the safer option if it still gave you flexible schedule and still give you the same same income then for me that's the answer like then you wouldn't choose it if they weren't paying would you still do it right and and is that normally the answer i mean the the fact that money's involved in is inherently coercive all in itself yeah because if i didn't have to pay you to do it then that that in itself is showing that there's something that's being held over someone's head um to comply to conform and i mean i'm sure people will say here's the thing there's five legally there's five things of there's five lanes of of prostitution in america and for the longest time at prostitution just been criminalized right and so there's human trafficking buying selling pimping pandering procuring and brothel say that one more time buying selling human trafficking yes buying yeah selling pimping pandering procuring it's one lane one pillar and then brothel owning those are the five categories in our legal system right now in regards to the crime of prostitution okay okay so what a lot of pro-sex work communities and let's do this and other countries have done is they've pushed to legalize prostitution we see that in red light districts amsterdam all the things right and so what that's done is it's kept human trafficking illegal but it's fully decriminalized brothel loaning pimping patterning procuring selling buying and what do you mean by selling buying just um selling being like the the woman's being arrested for selling prostitution and the john the buyer is being sometimes slapped on the wrist for buying sex even if it's a minor right and so this whole category of buyers john's is very different than selling which isn't necessarily always considered the trafficker since the victim is continually arrested for prostitution does that make sense i feel like i'm kind of doing this no i get it go go for it i'm equality model 101 legal class yeah okay go there so the thing though that people don't realize is that there doesn't have to be just one or the other there's this other third option that a lot of people are putting on the ballot in the u.s which is the equality model it's partial decrem it's where human trafficking remains illegal selling can be decriminalized so victims stop getting arrested for prostitution but buying pimping pandering procuring and brothel owning remain criminalized and that would allow some protections and some teeth for law enforcement to continue investigations for those that are really exploiting another human being whether they're minors or adults and would stop the arrest of those that are involved in prostitution um in general whether they're there by choice or force it would stop the arrest and and we are all on the same page in agreement with that and so we're pushing for this third option of equality model because it would allow um all of us to be on the same page with at least that without launching these three other social justice experiments on our nation at one time i mean could you imagine if like your neighbor is a brothel and you don't have any say over it so your kids are doing sidewalk chalk and riding their bikes and buyers are coming in and out and you know prostitution is not an isolated crime so you're going to get violence you're going to get domestic violence robbery drugs organized crime it's all going to be your neighbor if it's all decriminalized and that can be scary for communities community health community concerns and then that's when they say well then just create zones like also create red light districts and communities we see what happens with that we see the poverty we see the health risk stds um so it's it becomes very it's very nuanced it's very complex it's a lot i'm in favor of equality model also known as partial decrement nine other countries have passed equality model it's where has it worked in the other countries yeah it's israel uh france i can't remember the other ones off the top of my head i'd have to google it but um there are a lot of countries that where they've taken the stance that prostitution is gender violence it's violence against women since that's predominantly those who identify as female are targeted and it it's creating a culture where they see prostitution inherently as violence against women and so it's shifted the way nations see the issue and and that trickles down it how the way you see pornography how the it's the way you see sex for sale hopefully it can make a difference it's a big fight it's crazy i i don't even know where to begin i did a little bit of research and i feel like i have no idea about how to even talk to you about this stuff but you have a question okay uh do you do work with uh in like the pedophile world because that has to be a part of human trafficking it is but you don't do any work in it my so here's the thing with human trafficking there's so much you could do right i mean but you we all can't do it all right like i can't do everything i'm a small mom and pop shop i'm i'm what's considered a survivor leader survivor leaders we don't have we're stepping into this field with nothing we're not stepping in with degrees we're stepping in literally with nothing and so you are building from the ground up and so you just don't have the social capital you don't have investors coming in you don't right you don't have that as survivor leaders and so we you can't do it all you'll be spread too thin you'll burn out and so it's it's been hard to stay mission focused laser focused to just really stay in my lane and one of the things that i've helped people do in my fight is to help people find their lane so we have a really great tool that's called finding your lane it's a quiz that people can take it's funny i tried to make it fun and light-hearted because humor makes hard topics palatable and then it just explains these nine different ways that you could fight human trafficking and it points people to the anti-trafficking organizations that that lane is their focus so it's not just me doing everything i'm like get involved with them get involved with them you want to fight porn you want to fight prevention and demand reduction there they are those are the guys doing it go go be with them go do go support them because everybody needs help but we all can't do it all find the lane that really makes your heart come alive and then get involved and do something and so your lane is in the survivor say it again you're a survivor at leader leader yeah and that and so you're basically just working in getting women out of prostitution rehabilitation i literally you look at me you're like you are dumb as a bad camera as well have you sat at a board meeting do you know we helped train law enforcement how to get them out no we've had major conversations okay i took people in that's it this is i'm like i get the call when it's in my own town okay so you do do that yeah i do pay attention to board meetings i do i just not i don't try to make that my that's not my focus so i don't want like the world calling me to help them with an escape just call rebecca she'll help you with an escape no yeah uh if you're in my city right like how can you be in your tiny little town and you're the only one that fights trafficking and you get a phone call you have to help yes but that's not the focus of what our nonprofit does our focus is to teach at conferences of all different sorts helping train law enforcement first responders and other people that want to have a message of hope and resiliency that you can't overcome anything that parents can have hope that if their kids lost like it's still so i preach a lot yeah i write a lot of curriculum rebecca is an amazing not just speaker like we we haven't really gotten a lot into your faith but all of this everything that she is saying is done on the backdrop of a radical faith with jesus and uh and i love that because we've had that conversation we're like where's the crossover you know like because you are an amazing preacher i've watched you minister uh here locally to and move in move in your gifting god's gifting on your life really powerfully thank you so you're not like you're not just a this is all done in the backdrop of loving the lord and going after his spirit and uh i mean we're we're iris we're a missions movement and that i love watching you navigate how do i do this thing that the lord is calling me into which is very secular isn't the right word but it's like i'm in the world right like i'm dealing i'm not dealing within the church i work within the church for the most part um and how do i navigate that i think you navigate that beautifully going in and out of those two it's so hard and you get a lot of pushback on both sides right where it's like if you know if people know that i my master's is in biblical studies and christian thought and so and i write bible studies and so then sometimes cops were like whoa who's coming in to train us you're not gonna push your faith on anyone here right and i'm like nope it's just a show me the money training today guys don't worry about it um but it's if people ask in those secular trainings and you're able to say like this is what helped me it's not to say that's gonna help everyone so you just have to be really thoughtful to not make people feel like you're forcing your faith on everyone and that's not what jesus would do anyway jesus doesn't force himself on anybody and so why would we come in and do that to others and quite frankly i think it repels people so i find that if you just love people and you let the holy spirit do it do its thing then you don't have to right i'm always like we're not crowned holy spirit today like oh i'm crowned convict convict and save like that's actually not my job i'm just supposed to love people and and let the holy spirit do do do his thing well any time i've watched you minister you know in in that in your preaching gifting the holy spirit moves so beautifully so powerfully uh it's you know even when we were in darren's thing you're like you're in a room with some of the biggest movers and shakers in in dude it was crazy in the church you know in our at least in our character like kind of in the charismatic movement yeah and like they all walked out like hey i'm the worst i'm not doing anything with my life rebecca just cruises through the room yeah okay yeah so just you you carry it let's say though so i get this call like hey do you want to come be a part of this series i'm like sure that's cool i show up and on the door is like the agenda and it's like the biggest names and i was like oh no yeah oh no don't fan girl out don't fangirl like people that speak to millions i was like hey trying to be cool and then i was like inside like trying not to freak out but we had so much fun we did have i'll give people a little bit of a picture so we're talking about i think it was conversations with god no what was it yeah adventures with god season two look at how do you remember this stuff i just see that awgs too on my agenda i'm a visual member i guess so uh but we basically darren rented two like massive houses in orlando i think i had friends actually came to him but filmed set up in the kitchen uh slash dining room this place where we would just sit around have these conversations about really hard and challenging topics and i loved it because you put all that you put so many people from so many different backgrounds there was a dude i think it's from iran or living in canada and ministers and leaders in the movement literally preachers of to millions of people and and missionaries and uh and we saw we had so much fun we led people to the lord we you know it was it was just such a great time but that's where i met you for the first time yeah and where i was like oh my god god is on this one i just want to do whatever i can to stay connected and we've stayed connected ever since i i i'm so grateful for it what you've what you've brought into my life has been amazing you're you're such like just watching you be a mom being a leader and doing navigating all those things like this incredible difficulty that we didn't even really get into but you do it so well you do with so much poise and you do it and i watch you do it with such humility and maintaining your love for the lord and love for your family the whole time every time that we've talked um you know your heart is not for how do i advance my my movement more or what what i'm doing in my life you're just all you want to do is just be a better mom better wife and and serve the lord with everything that you have not missing out on him i love it i just want all people to go after the call of god on their lives that's that's my mission and it's been hard to navigate for myself of like i escaped this crazy this crazy life um really intense things right like i've been things that you don't generally live from right and so it's made me so incredibly grateful and i can remember the moment god called me to talk about it i was at my kitchen table and i was drinking cup of coffee and doing my morning devotionals and the sun started to come up and i felt sick i felt like time to go in was the feeling i had from just years of you coming at sunup right right and that's your that's your shift sun down to sun up and you bring in as much money as you can or you're beaten and that's your life for so many years and so sun started come up and i felt sick and i can remember the lord saying how can you sit here and do nothing how can you sit here in your nice comfy surroundings with your warm cup of coffee when you know what it's like to be more afraid to go home than you are to get in a car with a stranger and that really hit me like home the place that should be the safest the place you should feel the most secure was the scariest place of all for me and i thought you're right how can i how can i do nothing and so i started just sharing my testimony i really have a plan just like i just want to sound the alarm that trafficking happens in america i didn't really know what to do with that and god blew a lot of favor and stumbled trying to figure out how to make it into a business along the way just because i wanted to full time talk about the issue but he also i've been doing this almost 12 years now and and so grateful and you also get to this place where you're like but i'm also more than my story yeah i'm more than one bad thing that happened to me 20 years ago and i have fresh manna today i have mana to help that teaches women how to find balance amidst living for jesus right i have more insight from the lord on how you do navigate your story publicly how you know that your story matters right your story matters to god it matters to your legacy to your children to the next generation your community stories change culture like stories matter and whether you can or can't relate with being trafficked i think everyone has a story to tell and that's really where my heart's been shifting a lot lately is like just helping everybody know that your story really matters like yes you run iris global in your mission center and that's great but you have a story of when you came to christ as a teenager and you and your wife have a story and and people need to hear it because it gives them hope that's where my heart's really at and so figuring out in this this end of a decade and kind of moving into this next one even with the release of the book it's just it's kind of like this movement helped me heal and it did what it was supposed to do and now i'm ready for what god has next in my life and i don't know that i know what that is yet yeah you do girl but i'm in you totally i'm ready like let's do it i said it beautifully your story you want to tell your story your story i mean it's told all over you can go online you can go on youtube look up all the things it's there uh it's in this book in in crazy detail in pursuit of love and then it's about to be told to the planet and uh god's just using you so powerfully listen rebecca i love you girl i love your family thank you you're so amazing thank you for coming down hanging out with us today on on our little green room do you notice the difference from when we first filmed i the plants they were actually we didn't have plants when we first it was just it was just a white wall oh i was like do you know the difference no uh my kids always say when are we going back to the candy cotton candy guy's house okay best thing ever best thing ever a little girl oh joel toss my bag a little girl today just came up to me i was sitting in my office and uh she came in and uh she said i had a something to give you yes and so how old is she i don't know maybe four and she drew this for me is it cotton candy she i'm the kin well she's she was she's from the uk she goes so they call it candy floss i think so she was like you know the candy floss man i wanted to give this oh so cute and so now i'm the dude that gives little children uh cotton candy yeah that's not it had an impact on your children it did actually that's that's and now my husband wants his own cotton candy machine i'm surprised he hasn't bought one so much fun already it's pandemonium out there we're not buying anything right now [Music] i get it well so if you're going to be watching this months after it happened but like probably as we're shooting this kind of time stamp it no is that bad good somebody yeah as you're watching this is like the first day or the second day of like things starting to shut down because the coronavirus so people will know whenever this is launched how it all went yeah god has been the last time i see you no just kidding god god brings revival from the midst of chaos like when you look at church history over it it comes i got people going amen it does i mean look at the american revolution people were jobs lost globally or not globally nationally from the american revolution and what that did was it caused people to draw near so you never know god has a plan let's all not panic don't have to go buy out all the toilet paper you're we're all going to be okay i maybe it's just because we you've been through hell right we've been through seasons on the missions field of crazy and war-torn stuff and it's like there's tomorrow's a new day yeah tomorrow's a new like my faith is not in the stock market it is not in whether there's a sickness going around when you don't when you don't have faith though that's so hard that that perspective is really hard to hold on to you do feel like i actually don't know what's going to happen tomorrow and this dread can i mean i've had those i've had so much of that in my especially in my time being trafficked where you're like i don't know if i'm going to die tonight yeah this is it yeah and that can be so consuming of your thoughts that that's what real freedom real freedom is knowing god so relationally that your hundred percent trust is in him right that's so like peace weight off your shoulders it's not in my control god has a plan yeah man that faith doesn't come easy though it's it's you guys you've got to build yourself there's a lot of christians that are scared right now yeah and i and at least well i shot a video yesterday and i we sent it out or it's being sent out i think today to our team and i was like our core values are we suffer if necessary you know we we find joy in the middle of everything like it doesn't matter what's going on joy is not an option and as i was praying for our team and around the globe i was just going this is when we shine like this is when our tribe shines right like and so and i i haven't heard a bad testimony from any of them they're all like yay we get to do stuff you know we get like really this is when the body of christ needs to rise up and be the body of christ bring peace and and and uh it's so very easy to lose that um i struggled i struggle with it you know most most believers do the struggle isn't the issue it's what you actually end up doing with it god doesn't mind a little fight or a little struggle it's it's what you actually end up doing it at the end of the day but you rebecca you're amazing thank you vice versa if people want to follow you do all the things that that people do yeah what would they do join us on instagram boom monogram i'm rebecca bender i you are rebecca bender i at i'm rebecca bender that's it all the things are on there the link tree bio all the things that's all the things i'm sure after this you're so impressed you want to follow me too on instagram people why are you laughing if they're watching this they already follow you i'm not good at the gram uh we had that discussion in another podcast at will hartman boom don't you have an intern that works in social digital uh actually they're both sitting in this room and they're not that good at the job instagram's about to blow up them because they are amazing okay i don't know i'm trusting ah by the time this is launched they won't be a part of our organization anymore this is awkward uh they're not posting anything um listen uh thank you guys for watching which camera would you like me to look at that oh you pointed to different cameras that guy hey thank you for watching it has been a pleasure to have my my good friend rebecca bender here on the iris global green room podcast listen you hear me say it we don't do this stuff uh for money we don't do it even to sell anything this is this is done purely because we have the most amazing people in our lives and i want to share them with you guys and i know as you pass it around as you share like this testimony alone there's there's people that actually need to hear this they actually need to read this book and and we love opening up a door and bringing these conversations into your life and if you like it and i know you really like this one because uh first female on the irish global agreement podcast boom yes wait we're supposed to have social distancing no we're not no not in my green room we're not and uh go and like subscribe hit bells d things and uh that will remind you to watch this share this honor i'm going to be the first lady you are the first lady uh better get moosie on here oh it's in the works okay it's just we have to do it in a good moment you know there's like seasons you're like hey i really want to put my wife on and let her talk freely and then there's other seasons where you don't or or she's like stop interrupting me and just give me 60 minutes with the mic the reason why i don't want to do it is because of what people will say about me they're gonna be like oh you just interrupted everything and that's that's me so i don't have self-control you should co-host i should she should co-host with you okay so we've thought about that we've thought about like doing panels we've thought about doing my mom and dad getting my mom and dad on here actually ask them they're they're not really no no your niece gosh maybe her that's a good one all the time you have so many strong women that need a platform and a seat at the table bro every lady has a seat at the table i know i'm just being funny you are making me i'm stirring the pot listen rebecca i i surround myself with the most powerful i know i'm kidding will surrounds himself with the most powerful women and soon and soon enough there will be more at this table green room is the only time i not around powerful women this is my man cave it kind of is but anyway i really do know you have incredible women in your life that's why we can joke so freely because of the comments or like if they actually knew how many women you support and how strong and you join my board and continue to push me to be all that god can be and yeah yeah that's where your daughter and your sister and your nieces i mean that's all just natural part of it and you work for a woman yeah like with with great joy yes most days no i'm just kidding all day i love you okay listen love you guys thank you for watching the iris couple green room podcast you're a woman we got a woman on we love you guys we'll see on the next one that's okay right it's totally okay i think it's good

Channel: Iris Global

Views: 1,841

Rating: 4.9595962 out of 5

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Id: LgAPsENLIZ4

Length: 54min 48sec (3288 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 03 2021