1215: Human Trafficking | Skeptical Sunday

1215: Human Trafficking | Skeptical Sunday

This transcript is yet untouched by human hands. Please proceed with caution as we sort through what the robots have given us. We appreciate your patience!

Jordan Harbinger: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptical Sunday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. Today I'm here with Skeptical Sunday co-host, writer and researcher Nick Pell. On the Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you.

Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker. During the week, we have long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks. From spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers. On Sundays, though it's skeptical Sunday, where a rotating guest, co-host and I break down a topic you may have never thought about and debunk common misconceptions about that topic, such as ear candling, reiki, healing the lottery, crystal healing, diet pills, energy drinks, recycling, and astrology.

If you're new to the show or you wanna tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on persuasion and negotiations, psychology, disinformation, junk science, crime, and cults and more. That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we [00:01:00] do here on the show.

Just visit Jordan harbinger.com/starts or search for us in your Spotify app. To get started today on the show, you might have seen a claim online such as there are 800,000 missing kids in America today with the implication that they've been trafficked for some nefarious purpose ranging from sex to an adrenochrome factory.

If you're old enough to remember the Satanic panic from the eighties, some of this is gonna look really familiar to you. Influencer videos rallies to save the children. Parents panicking about their kids in the IKEA parking lot. Now I've seen these online and as a parent and just somebody who cares about other people and kids, generally I'm concerned, but they also have my BS detector going off 800,000 kids.

That sounds like a lot. And while I know bad things can happen without them becoming international news, I just feel like somebody at CNN or Fox News maybe would've noticed 800,000 missing kids. Is there any truth to the claim that tons of kids have just disappeared? And if so, is the reason for it? In line with whatever [00:02:00] Q anon or you're crazy, but maybe still lovable Uncle happens to think here today.

To help me unpack this disappearing act is writer and researcher Nick Pell Nick. Let's just address the question up front. Is there some kind of massive child trafficking issue going on that the mainstream media refuses to report on? Well,

Nick Pell: it's complicated as are most of the topics we do here. Yeah, there's tons of kids getting trafficked, but the problem is not whatever people on Facebook are posting about it.

I think it's really important that people are informed about what's actually going on, who's actually at risk, and how to protect yourself and your kids. Why panicking and creating folk demons is actually counterproductive.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so before we get too deep in the weeds about the human trafficking that's actually going on, I think we should define terms because when we say trafficking, people might have a lot of ideas in their head about what that means.

So what exactly are you talking about? What are you referring to when you say trafficking?

Nick Pell: I'm gonna use the definition that law enforcement [00:03:00] uses and that is using force fraud or coercion. To move someone around for the purpose of commercial sex or other labor. So that's a very dry and

Jordan Harbinger: cold definition.

Nick Pell: Right. But I, I think we need to be clear and Sure. Let's throw in kidnapping children for meat or whatever it is that Q anon and. Q anon adjacent types think is going on for good measure. But the important thing is that these words mean things, and we have to be very specific about what we mean by trafficking and what we don't.

What would your definition not include?

Jordan Harbinger: Consensual human smuggling. So is that like when people. Hire a coyote to help them and their family get across the Mexican border or something like that.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Yeah. This exactly, this is a whole other issue. It has nothing to do with trafficking. It also doesn't include kidnapping

Jordan Harbinger: per se.

Why not? Though? It sounds like your definition from earlier is basically kind of kidnapping, adjacent

Nick Pell: some, but not all. Kidnapping is trafficking. Remember we're [00:04:00] saying that there's some purpose other than just taking the kid or the adult Kidnapping is rare. It's almost never tied to trafficking. North of 90% of all kidnapping is done by a non-custodial parent.

One parent who doesn't have custody, takes their own kid, or goes across state lines without permission, or there's just an attempt to weaponize the courts against one parent or the other. This gets reported as kidnapping. A lot of the times, it's not even what we would think of as kidnapping. Most missing persons are runaways, about 95% of them actually stranger abductions are 1% of all kidnapping cases.

We talked about this on the Sextortion episode. After Johnny GOs and Adam Walsh happened in the early eighties, kids just getting, you know, randomly grabbed off the street or from a park by a creepy man in a van. This is an absolute black swan event. It just doesn't happen anymore.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. I remember that.

[00:05:00] For anybody who doubts what Nick is saying here, I, I mean we always come with receipts. You can find those in the show notes, but yeah, you're right. The eighties was like kids were getting kidnapped randomly and then now we've got America's most wanted and it kind of doesn't really, yes, it's very, very rare.

Very rare.

Nick Pell: Part of it. It's kind of like a chicken egg thing 'cause like it's never been safer to be a kid. But how true is that? Because parents are. Helicopter. We, we go into all this on the Sextortion episode, so I won't rehash it here. That's right. The last thing that traffic isn't going to include for our purposes is consensual transactional sex or even necessarily survival sex.

What do those terms mean? Transactional sex is any sex act you're engaged in for some kind of remuneration, be it money, drugs. Whatever survival sex is when you're sleeping with someone for a place to stay or food to eat or something like that.

Jordan Harbinger: Survival sex is starting to sound a little like trafficking.

'cause there's kind of coercion there, right? Like, oh, you don't wanna be homeless.

Nick Pell: Yeah, let's go. And I think that's a fair [00:06:00] analysis. And I don't mean to like poo poo, this is like, oh, it's fine, whatever. But what I am trying to do is avoid gray areas for the purpose of this episode. Okay. I think we, we need to keep this episode as black and white as possible and to talk about it, uh, thoughtfully and seriously.

So I'm gonna exclude it for those purposes. I mean, it's basically coercion by circumstance, but I think for the purposes of this episode, we need to exclude it. It just starts blurring the lines again. It's not an attempt to hand wave it and make it Okay. I just want to keep our definitions bottled and tight.

Jordan Harbinger: Got it. Okay. So you mentioned earlier that children are not just getting abducted from the local park. Doesn't that kind of just give the game away? I mean, aren't you basically saying that the child sex trafficking thing is a myth at that point? Child sex trafficking is absolutely

Nick Pell: not a myth, but the idea that children.

Are being abducted into sex. Slavery is mostly a myth. Okay. Largely. I mean, we live in a world with eight plus billion people, so if you say, if you make a [00:07:00] statement about people. It's probably gonna be true of somebody somewhere,

Jordan Harbinger: right? Just the law of large numbers. Okay, so thread the needle for me here.

If kids are not getting kidnapped for sex trafficking, but kids are getting sex trafficked, what is going on?

Nick Pell: Most of these kids who are being trafficked are being groomed or blackmailed or otherwise exploited. I mean, if you can stomach it, read the gory details of what happened with grooming gangs in the uk.

The kind of PG version of it is they found lonely girls pretended to be their boyfriends, which you need to teach your daughters that a 30 5-year-old man does not want to be her boyfriend when she's 10 years old. Then getting them hooked on drugs or getting compromising photos of them or something like that.

Jordan Harbinger: That is deeply unpleasant for a lot of reasons. But I, I suppose it's important to know because that's how it actually is working in practice, right? It's not some weirdo stuck in the park and throwing your girl into the back of a van. It's a creepy guy who [00:08:00] befriends your child and then takes his time, acclimating her to the idea of sexual exploitation, which is just gross.

Nick Pell: Yuck. Right. It's a boiled frog kind of thing. You have to get the child to feel as if they're a participant in the crime so that they won't report you. Mm-hmm. Uh, the Children's Commission are found over 2,400 confirmed victims of group-based child exploitation in over a year with over 16,500 identified as being at risk during the same period.

The Jay report about Rotherham alone documented at least 1400 children abused over 16 years. Was this confined to Rotherham then? No. Uh, Rochdale and Oldham, which were close to Rotherham, are sometimes kind of lumped together in the public imagination. Rotherham is just this shorthand term for the entire scandal.

Uh, hunters Field in West Yorkshire found dozens [00:09:00] of men running a sex ring. With girls who were already on the radar of social services. There's Halifax and Bradford. Bradford is like right outside of leed, Keely Darby. It was pretty concentrated in the north, which is one of the poor parts of the country.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, so right, so the million figure is almost certainly an exaggeration from political activists. What's that actual number?

Nick Pell: It's honestly hard to say. Much of the data we have comes from government commissioned reviews, which. I just think we should be extremely skeptical anytime the government is investigating their own failures.

Official figures are far lower than the millions sometimes claimed, but we do have a good reason to think that, you know, even the official numbers are undercounted.

Jordan Harbinger: And why is that? I know, I know you personally just don't trust government officials, but do we have any evidence that their numbers are off?

Nick Pell: So Sue Berelowitz, uh, I'm sorry if I'm pronouncing her name incorrectly, was a former deputy children's commissioner. Uh, she called the [00:10:00] 2,409 confirmed victims in 14 months. The tip of the iceberg. She led a commission that filed another report in November, 2012, which is very sadly called. I thought I was the only one in the world.

It's a government report that, if that's important to you, uh, there's a link in the show notes for anybody who wants to read it, but I, I will warn you that it is, it's grim reading. There are other reports questioning the numbers such as. The independent inquiry into child sex abuse, which is separate from the jail report, despite the fact that both were chaired by Alexis J.

Professor Liz Kelly from the London Metropolitan University has an extensive body of work showing that there were. Serious gaps in child services and police response.

Jordan Harbinger: I've heard wildly larger numbers for this phenomenon, by the way, which are also almost certainly inaccurate. People were, for example, talking about taking the 1400 from Rotherham specifically [00:11:00] and trying to extrapolate that number into every Hamlet in village in the uk, and that's just obviously not the case.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I've seen it estimated between 250,000 and a million, which, no, but it's more than 1400 or 2,400. These girls weren't missing. They were going home every night. In fact, there were tons of police reports about it from the girls or the parents, and nothing was done. But the official report from the children's commissioner was called If only someone had Listen more to the point for us, it shows us how.

Large scale child trafficking works in reality. You know, it's not some random woman or girl getting grabbed out of the Walmart parking lot. The UK had a a series of high profile scandals involving groups of men exploiting vulnerable girls. And while the exact numbers are highly disputed, the pattern is clear.

The girls weren't missing. They were still living at home or in care. They were gonna school. They were going about their lives. They were [00:12:00] groomed Over time, they were manipulated into thinking that they were making choices, uh, and in many cases were made to feel complicit in their own abuse. Parents and victims often reported what was happening, but the authorities were quite slow to act if indeed they did, and police frequently dismissed complaints.

Social services underestimated the degree to which these girls were in danger and the, the abuse carried on for years in plain sight. So yeah, it's a process of grooming, coercion, institutional neglect, uh, these things all kind of work in concert to allow predators to operate, even when warning signs are, are right in front of her.

You know, it wasn't just girls getting grabbed in the Aldi parking lot. It's not like the movie, take it. The reality is that most of the girls being trafficked both domestically and abroad, first of all, they're not girls who came out of central casting for a new [00:13:00] CW show about high school cheerleaders.

The communities most impacted by trafficking in the United States are African American girls, native American girls, Hispanic girls, and then internationally. Yeah, this is happening to the poorest people on Earth who, as you may or may not know, are generally speaking not white, but that doesn't mean

Jordan Harbinger: white people aren't at risk, right?

Oh,

Nick Pell: of course it doesn't, but it does tell us a lot about how trafficking works in practice. Gay teens are often at risk for, I think, a lot of complicated reasons, but one that's worth mentioning is. You know, you're from a house where your parents aren't supportive and they either throw you out or you run away 'cause it's not a super cool environment for you and you move in with some older creep that you think is a supportive adult.

It's not. Some guy with zip ties in a van. If you're telling kids to watch out for that sort of thing, you're really doing them a disservice because that's not what they need to be on the lookout for.

Jordan Harbinger: It's definitely a [00:14:00] gross thing to think about, but check the show notes for anybody out there who doubts this, the whole kid or adult getting grabbed out of the Safeway and forced into sexual slavery thing.

That's always been one part of this that has just kind of always set off my BS detector. I mean, we live in an age where cameras are everywhere. I just don't see how this could be happening on any kind of mass scale. It just doesn't make sense.

Nick Pell: It's not happening on any kind of mass scale.

Jordan Harbinger: No Vlad or whatever in a panel van is not waiting at the Walmart to hog tie your kids, but you'll get tied up in knots if you miss the amazing deals on the fine products and services that support this show.

We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Rag and Bone. We've been fans of Rag and Bone for years. It's really cool they're now sponsoring the podcast. I've always thought of them as the brand you turn to when you want clothes that are sharp, premium built to last. And now with their new infused denim, they've raised the bar even higher.

So not just jeans that look great right off the rack. They're designed to move with you, hold their shape, actually get better the longer you wear them. Rag and Bone has been perfecting denim for over two decades, and you can feel that [00:15:00] experience. The moment you put these on, the fit is what really stands out.

Infused comes in, slim, straight, relaxed, athletic. So whatever your style or body type is, a pair that feels like it was made for you. And then there's the wash. Each pair goes through an eight step overnight process that gives the denim these rich dimensional shades. They've got depth texture. They even develop more character the more you break 'em in.

To me, these aren't just jeans, they're investment pieces as far as clothes can be, right? They look sharp, they feel premium and beyond Denim. R and Bone has the same standard across their tees, jackets, knits, you name it. They built a whole wardrobe of elevated essentials designed to last.

Jen Harbinger: It's time to upgrade your denim with Rag and Bone for a limited time.

Our listeners get 20% off their entire order with codeJordan@ragbone.com. That's 20% off@ragone.com with Primo Code Jordan. And when they ask you where you heard about them, please support our show and let them know we sent you.

Jordan Harbinger: This episode is also sponsored by Wayfair. Now that the weather's been cooling down and the days are getting shorter, we've been in that mode of making the house feel cozier and a little festive too.

Jen especially loves to keep things fun for the kids around Halloween, so our front [00:16:00] yard has to look the parts, and Wayfair has been our one-stop shop for all of it. We picked up some outdoor Halloween decor from Wayfair skeletons, the spooky cauldron. The kids love it. The neighbors notice it. Uh, I'm sure they do.

And Jen's happy. That's the beauty of Wayfair. They've got such a massive selection. With options for every style and budget, you can find pieces that match your vibe perfectly. And it's not just decor. Wayfair makes it easy to cozy your space for fall, whether it's warm bedding, cozy throw blankets, recliners for movie nights, even kitchen staples like a dutch oven for soups and stews.

They even have espresso machines, so you can make that pumpkin spice latte at home instead of waiting in line. What makes it even better is the free, easy delivery. Even on the big stuff. No crazy delivery fees, no running around to multiple stores. Just a few clicks and it shows up at your door. So if you're looking to make your home feel cozy and festive this season, check out Wayfair

Jen Harbinger: Co Fire Your Space with Wayfair's Curated collection of easy, affordable fall updates from comfy recliners to cozy bedding and autumn decor.

Find it all for way less@wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I r.com. Wayfair [00:17:00] every style, every home.

Jordan Harbinger: Don't forget about our newsletter. Wee bit wiser. It's a little tidbit every Wednesday delivered to your inbox. It's a two minute read and it's highly practical, something that you can apply right away that'll make your decisions, your psychology, your psyche, just a little bit better.

It's a nice little takeaway from the show, from us to you, Jordan harbinger.com/news is where you can find it, and it's a great companion to the show. Hope to see you. Now back to Skeptical Sunday. What about gangs though? I did read somewhere that they're involved in trafficking rings a lot of the time.

Or maybe that's human smuggling or maybe it's both. Sometimes specifically, I think it was gangs from other countries that were preying on the immigrant communities from their respective home countries. Kind of like old timey, you know, Italian mafia used to extort Italian businesses in New York, for example.

Nick Pell: Yeah. So they're not like, you know, transnational. Criminal gangs are not coming up here to abduct your daughters and send them to Venezuela or whatever. Trafficking, especially sex trafficking, is a very serious concern for [00:18:00] people who aren't in this country. Legally, it isn't necessarily, or even primarily people are getting kidnapped and sent north of the border for slavery, sexual or otherwise, though that does happen.

So it's not about international trafficking in the way people think of it so much as it is preying on the local community. I think the analogy with the mafia and Italian businesses is pretty good. So how

Jordan Harbinger: does that work? What's the process where they exploit

Nick Pell: their national community? Sometimes it'll be underage girls who aren't in this country legally.

And the gangs will offer protection or threaten their family back in the country of origin.

Jordan Harbinger: Right. And these girls may not want to talk because they're afraid of what'll happen if they go to the police. Right.

Nick Pell: That's true. In a lot of cases, in some cases, the girls or women, or even men or whoever it is, have a legitimate fear of any engagement with law enforcement.

In other cases, the traffickers just convince them that they can't go to the police. It's kind of all the same thing from the victim's perspective, if you think about it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. And [00:19:00] this is probably why law enforcement interventions can be a problem in the first place, I suppose.

Nick Pell: Yes. Because even when law enforcement shows up, they can be viewing victims as criminals, particularly with the current administration and it's focus on REMI and deportation.

Jordan Harbinger: I think that language barriers must be an issue, right? A cop who speaks Spanish, sure there's a dime a dozen, but a cop who speaks the right local dialect of Chinese or Vietnamese or something more niche like Hmong, which we have in Michigan a lot, but maybe, probably not anywhere else. I mean, I see it in the Bay Area.

No, we had that where

Nick Pell: I grew up too.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, you do? Okay. So, yeah, I see. Which is, by the way, for people who are wondering what we're talking about, they're like a, a mountain dwelling minority from Laos and Vietnam, I think. Is that accurate?

Nick Pell: And, and I think also Cambodia, because like, and Cambodia, we had tons of.

We had a very large Cambodian population where I grew up, so

Jordan Harbinger: they basically, a bunch of 'em left during and after the Vietnam War because they were aiding the United States and so Cambodia, Vietnam, and that whole area. Well, not a great place to live if you, especially if you were on the wrong side of that thing.

Yeah. So they, a lot of 'em [00:20:00] came to Michigan and stuff like that, and they live in that movie. Grand Torino, remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the ethnic minority in that, and I, they have a lot of issues just with crime because I think. One of the sayings that I remember hearing growing up and that I heard from that movie was in the m hm population.

The girls go to college and the boys go to jail or prison or something, and it's like, Ugh, really dark. Are not doing well. Those guys in the United States, for whatever reason. In, at least in, in small part. So anyway, yeah. So you got cops and they can't really talk to the victims or they don't really know what's going on and they're not integrated in the community 'cause they're not from there.

And that would be a problem to solve to, to root this out. It's gonna be very difficult.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think that's a fair assumption. I mean, any language, you can't find a, a decent interpreter for. You're gonna have to overcome that barrier before you even start establishing the trust that's gonna be necessary to help these victims.

Um, kind of the weirdest form of coercion that I came across is in West Africa. I guess they make women think [00:21:00] they've put a curse on them and bad things will happen if they don't cooperate. Oh

Jordan Harbinger: God, they fall for this. Yeah. It's called a

Nick Pell: Juju

Jordan Harbinger: ritual. Look it up. Oh, okay. I will look in the show notes where you've hopefully provided a helpful link, but that sort of makes me sad that someone can be like, I've got a magic spell on you, and you're like, well, guess I have to do whatever you want me to do forever.

Like, okay.

Nick Pell: Yeah. The common denominator here though is that it's easy to exploit people with a shared background from a commonplace in the strange new land. It's definitely a lot easier than jacking someone from the parking lot. Another common denominator is your mom goes missing. There's gonna be tons of people looking for her.

A teenage girl here illegally who is potentially running around and only coming home half the time, who's gonna miss her? Oh man, that's cold. I really don't mean it to be, and I honestly feel bad for someone whose parents wouldn't even notice or care enough to call the cops if she just went missing. The point I'm trying to make is there are some teenagers who could just disappear because they don't have the best [00:22:00] parents and no one's gonna say anything.

And to get out in front of this, like no, I'm not like, oh, it's serves them right for not watching their kids. 'cause somebody is putting that together in their head right now. But it's like, no, I don't think that at all. It's just a reality. So not everybody, if you're listening to the show, you know you're intelligent, educated, and thus you probably came from a good family.

Lots of people did not. Lots of people listening to this show know what I'm talking about. You just came from a home where like, where's my kid? I don't know. I don't care.

Jordan Harbinger: No, I think that's a fair point. In artful way, you're trying to draw attention to the fact that people in marginalized communities are the biggest victims and probably the easiest targets.

Nick Pell: Exactly. But we've talked a lot about sex here. And it's another myth that's worth addressing, that trafficking necessarily means sex, and sex necessarily means trafficking. Didn't

Jordan Harbinger: you include that though, in your definition of trafficking?

Nick Pell: I said sex or commercial labor. Ah, the Or is is the important word here because, okay.

And the slavery episode is a good point of reference to dig deeper into this. [00:23:00] A lot of people aren't being trafficked for sex. There might be sexual violence happening to traffic labor. But that's not the purpose of their trafficking. The purpose of their trafficking is not sexual exploitation. It's financial exploitation.

And conversely. A lot of sexual exploitation. There's a financial element as well, but not everyone being trafficked is being trafficked for sex. Does that really make it any better? Well, in one sense, no. But I think most societies have established that there's something extra bad about sexual offenses, and I think that's correct.

Jordan Harbinger: So I know that the Sound of Freedom movie was a big hit, especially in red states. For those of you who aren't aware, this is a film that supposedly details the exploits of a network of government agencies rescuing small children from sexual slavery. How accurate is stuff like that? I mean, it's not a documentary nor does it purport to be, but it does claim to be sort of based on real events, right?

You know,

Nick Pell: man, based on is doing a hell of a [00:24:00] lot of work here. I see people were okay calling this the most important movie ever made. Okay. And honestly it's not. This was this huge quote unquote red pill moment for a lot of people where they just became convinced that guys were like, you know, leaving elite units of the federal government to embark on one man rescue missions in Columbia.

I haven't seen the movie, but. I believe that even in the movie, it's not, you know, the head cheerleader gets hog tied and thrown in the back of a van at the mall parking lot. No, I think it was kids getting taken in through some bogus child modeling scene, which honestly, there's kind of a little carnal of truth to that, but even That's silly.

Why is that silly though? Because, because a total stranger is like, Hey, your kid should be models and you're gonna be like, oh yeah, take them. In reality, the person doing this, this is one of the problems with stranger dangers. Like who Victimizes kids? [00:25:00] Is it strangers? No. It's gonna be a trusted friend, a neighbor, a family member, a teacher, a clergyman.

It's gonna be somebody that, you know,

Jordan Harbinger: what else in it is less than fully truthful slash totally fiction?

Nick Pell: Oh, there's this, you know, dramatic rescue scenes of children with gunfights and everything. This is America. After all, we do love a good gunfight and a good explosion, myself included. There have been some rescue attempts in reality, but they're, they're usually botched as you could imagine.

They traumatize the victims. They often violate international law. The other thing is there's just not some, you know, jungle compound where they're keeping child sex slaves. Again, this cannot be repeated enough. This is not what trafficking looks like. It looks a lot more like a farm staffed by people in debt bondage, or a runaway teenager with no other options who trusted the wrong person or someone who's been coerced through poverty [00:26:00] and or addiction.

And it's important that people know the truth about this so that they're not attacking straw men or getting some wildly inaccurate Hollywood version of what trafficking looks like.

Jordan Harbinger: There's also this weird kind of savior fantasy involved in all this. The movie. It's kind of not really about the kids who are getting trafficked, it's about the guy saving them, which is kind of weird and I think it appeals to a very specific type of middle class religious person largely.

Nick Pell: Yeah, I think that's fair. This version of, you know, this Hollywood version of trafficking has become such a cause de jore among certain types of American evangelicals, and I hate it because there's real people with real problems including being trafficked. You could be throwing your time and energy at bat rather than this artificial.

Fantasy of what trafficking looks like.

Jordan Harbinger: What about the guy that this movie was supposedly based on?

Nick Pell: Yeah, it's based on Tim [00:27:00] Ballard and his authenticity is questionable. Uh, he was on your show.

Jordan Harbinger: That's right. He was on the show way back in episode 360 9, which was sort of weirdly, I didn't follow up much with it after that, but it was like basically right after he did my show, he was just totally exposed.

As kind of a phony who was misusing the donations to like take luxury travel and hire his family and do all kinds of weird, semi shady stuff and get reported, you know, he had to leave that organization that I think he started.

Nick Pell: Yeah. Uh, he did. So Tim Ballard is a former department of Homeland Security operative, and actually, you know what, it would kind of be, uh, helpful if people revisited that episode.

Sorry if I'm directing people to like naked baby photos of you or something. But no, it's all good, you know, to like listen to this guy spew his nonsense. We'll give you a, probably a pretty good idea of what trafficking is not and who's not actually helping. But, uh, the group is called Operation Underground Railroad.

I actually did an art fundraiser [00:28:00] for them. Well, I participated in, I didn't organize an art fundraiser for them maybe three years ago, and it was two allegedly free kids from trafficking. He's testified before Congress sees on all kinds of anti-trafficking councils, or was anyway. The point here isn't to drag him personally.

There's allegations against him. I have no idea if they're true or not, but I do think that they're worth mentioning. There's sexual harassment allegations, which usually grain assault, but there's like civil suits and stuff, and police reports. People aren't just trying to smear him in the media, which makes it, in my opinion, significantly more credible.

He was telling women to pose as his wife or girlfriend as part of a cover for getting them to share a bed with him, allegedly. Ah, smooth.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Nick Pell: Allegedly.

Jordan Harbinger: We gotta make it look real. Okay. Be really loud. Uh, during our totally not real sex in when the, when the door locks.

Nick Pell: Yeah. I'm imagining them like jumping up and down on the bed and making like.

Animal [00:29:00] noises to convince people. Uh, yeah. He allegedly had women model underwear for him to show how far they're willing to go to save the children. I mean, I, I laugh, oh my God, I'm sorry to laugh, but it's just like, it's such a ridiculous, like, not because people did it, 'cause he had, you know, power over them, but it allegedly, but it's, you know, that this is his, like, this is where his mind goes with all this power.

I,

Jordan Harbinger: I, I'm only laughing because I'm like one, I gotta remember that line, but two. It can't be so cut and dry like, Hey, I wanna see you in lingerie. What? That's totally inappropriate. How far are you willing to go to save the children? I mean, it's just, there's no way that it went down like that. So I'm like, what are the other missing elements of what happened here?

Where we got from, let's kick down some doors and beat up some human traffickers to like your putting on a hotel room, runway show with Victoria's Secret Lingerie for this schmo. Yeah. Right. Like, come on.

Nick Pell: Yeah. The whole thing is really. Bizarre. Yeah. Again, like there's police reports at a civil suit, so I tend to take [00:30:00] that stuff a lot more seriously than I do.

Just like, you know, filing a brief with the court of public opinion. Also worth noting, not a smoking gun, but a lot of people who supported him, abandoned him. The church of Latter Day Saints. Ditched him. I don't know that he was a member, but they like stopped their support of him. Mm-hmm. Glenn Beck and Ballard himself was forced to step down from his own organization, so it was pretty serious.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. But like you said, he hasn't been convicted of anything. So at this point it's just on the level of accusation. Gotta be fair there. And even if he is guilty. What does that have anything to do with whether or not Operation Underground Railroad was actually saving children? Right. Because it was if the organization wasn't just him.

Right.

Nick Pell: That's true. I think it matters because the way the whole trafficking moral panic is presented to people who believe in it. It's just so ripe for exploitation. You create this lurid image of trafficking, that's just not accurate. You make it some kind of life or death struggle [00:31:00] between good and evil, and you have power over these people who are very emotionally invested in your cause.

It does not surprise me that among the accusations against Ballard are that he was spiritually manipulating people.

Jordan Harbinger: For the people among us who are not religious, what does spiritual manipulation even mean?

Nick Pell: He was setting himself up as some kind of religious or spiritual authority on a mission from God, which, you know, I'm a religious person and I don't think that's okay.

Um, if someone tells you that they're on a mission from God, you should be extremely skeptical of that. And I find it very cynical on his part that he's exploiting these people in this way. I think that all of this kind of save the children from trafficking stuff the like kids are getting grabbed and sent to the secret pedophile island.

I think that really lends itself to Q Anon type conspiracies. The nonsense, like the Wayfair Furniture company [00:32:00] is shipping children and advertising them as couches uhhuh. I remember that. Yeah. I mean, this is a real thing for anybody who's mercifully unaware. Ballard did push the Wayfair conspiracy. He talked about baby farms.

There are no baby farms. People are not breeding children to be sex slaves or any other thing for shadowy pedophile elites. Yeah, and this isn't some extremely stupid but innocuous belief. This takes attention off real child trafficking and discredits the credible accounts and makes them seem fantastical and frivolous.

But you know, America loves a good moral panic.

Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of grooming and coercion, let's hear from the amazing sponsors that support this show. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Better Help Ever Catch Yourself Unloading on the Wrong People, like Suddenly you're trauma dumping on your dental hygienist.

Shout out to Charles Best Dental hygienist in the game. He listens to the show, and I love my dental hygienist. I talk to 'em about everything. But [00:33:00] anyway, you're not supposed to do that. You're not supposed to unload about your childhood while they're elbow deep in your plaque. As much as these folks are polite about it, not everybody's a therapist.

That's where better help comes in. Instead of relying on random captive audiences in your life, you can connect a licensed, clinically trained therapist, somebody who actually knows how to help with anxiety, relationships, depression, whatever's on your plate better help's been around for over 10 years.

They've already helped more than 5 million people with over 30,000 therapists. It is the world's largest online therapy platform. They've earned a 4.9 rating across 1.7 million session reviews. It's all online. It's totally flexible. You can start a session at the click of a button. No traffic, no waiting rooms.

No more trauma dumping on your barista while they're just trying to steam your latte. That's why I like better help. Real help. Made easy. No soccer coach has to hear about your existential dread ever again.

Jen Harbinger: As the largest online therapy provider in the world, better Help can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise, find the one with better help.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com slash Jordan. That's better [00:34:00] hlp.com/jordan.

Jordan Harbinger: This episode is sponsored in part by the defender. We all have those big goals that seem just outta reach, right? But the truth is that's what keeps us moving forward. For the people who embrace challenges and explore their way, there's the defender.

The defender is built to handle whatever comes its way with legendary capability on road or off. It's engineered with a tough, rigid body, tested to the extreme, and built with durable, lightweight architecture for strength and confidence. But it's not just about ruggedness. It's an icon reimagined with a design that feels modern, yet honors.

Its adventurous roots. Plus, there's a defender for every kind of explorer from the defender 90 to the one 10, and even the one 30 which seats up to eight people. So whether it's just you or the whole family, there's a model for your journey. If you're ready to embrace the impossible, the defender is your perfect partner, beyond capable and ready to go wherever you're headed Next, build your defender@landroverusa.com.

Thank you all for listening to the show. Your support of our sponsors keeps the lights on around here. All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the podcast are searchable and clickable [00:35:00] on the website at Jordan harbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show now for the rest of skeptical Sunday.

That's a good point. I suppose at the point where organizations that are maybe not really doing anything are they're, you're starting to get a bunch of donations and so they're not donating to the Center for Missing and Exploited Children or whatever other charity. I don't think that's a charity actually, but like other organizations that are doing real work in this area that it's maybe less sexy, like, oh, I stopped donating to the place that runs a safe shelter for gay runaway kids.

Because I donated to the ones where they go and kick down the door at this place where, but it's like, well, they're not actually doing that in the center with all the gay kids now. Can't afford to stay open, so like, ugh. And yeah. Then somebody reports that they've been trafficked and it's like, oh, whatever the, I saw a sound of freedom.

It's a bunch of bs. It's not really happening. And it's like, no, no, no. My parents are doing it to me. And it's like, P, come on. Yeah, kid, get outta here. So that's what I worry about with this stuff. We've talked a lot about what child trafficking is [00:36:00] not, though. What does it look like? How widespread is it?

Nick Pell: Most of it is debt peonage or kids who fell through the cracks. The debt peonage is more of a global phenomenon, but you know, and here in America, in your backyard. Kids are falling through the cracks every day. Traffickers do not need to grab kids off the street. They just find kids who are hungry or homeless or neglected or even just scared and they offer them what they're lacking.

And a very disturbingly common scenario is parents exploiting their own children, like you just said, which a lot of times drugs and drug addiction are involved in that. So mom's an addict and she's got a 13-year-old daughter she can use to get drugs. It's morally outrageous. It's also very, very sad. How widespread is it?

5,000 cases tops in the United States, which is absolutely 5,000. Too many. Yeah. But it is just not what is being claimed by these hysterical people claiming that there's a groomer behind every door. There's not. These numbers [00:37:00] come from Polaris project reports. They collect hotline tips and NGO referrals.

You know the point isn't, oh yeah. It's not that big of a deal. It is. It's just not the same big deal that your weird uncle, you're weird but lovable uncle's. Facebook means say that it is. Yeah. You know, police busts where they find a bunch of traffic kids, these are super rare. It's usually the victims reach out for help or social workers notice something is not quite on the up and up.

And. That's when you know something happens.

Jordan Harbinger: That's true. That was one of the big critiques that we got on our homeschooling episode was that it's harder for stuff to get reported because when kids go to school and they're acting weird or they got bruises or whatever it is, it tends to come out faster.

But when kids are homeschooled. There can be all this kind of hidden abusive stuff. It's not that the majority of homeschooled kids are abused or anything, but it's like people who abuse their kids certainly are gonna try and play the homeschool card. 'cause it just keeps prying eyes away from them. I remember we got a lot of emails about that.

Nick Pell: We actually talked about that on the episode. Oh we did? Okay, good.

Jordan Harbinger: [00:38:00] Well, I only remember the things people hated about my show. I've You say something nice, it's in one ear and now the other. You tell me how much you hate the show and remember it for the rest of my life. All right, so what about, I wish I were lying.

What about outside the United States? Because I'm willing to bet. That this is a much bigger issue in parts of the world without such a strong

Nick Pell: rule of law. And you'd be right as we discussed on the slavery episode, which people should go listen to 50 million people worldwide or modern slaves. 12 million of them are children.

17 million people are enforced labor. 6 million of them are being sexually exploited, and that includes 1.7 million children. These are horrifying numbers. It is a comparatively small amount of people in a world of 8 billion, and they're mostly concentrated in places other than suburban Minneapolis. So the chances of you or your child being trafficked are extremely low.

Neither one of you is getting grabbed at Waffle House and shipped to Cambodia.

Jordan Harbinger: Do you think these are accurate numbers or are they [00:39:00] under or over reported?

Nick Pell: It's complicated. On the one hand, there's pressure to under report. These are just the ones we know about. It's like roaches. You see one, you can bet there's probably more.

On the other hand, this is just conjecture on my part, but I do think it's worth bringing up as a reasonable postulate. There's a lot of pressure, I think, on NGOs to over report because they are gonna get more funding for an exaggerated problem. It's a hard thing to accurately measure for a lot of reasons.

Under reporting overreporting, fear of law enforcement, the blurry line between consent and coercion. I think though that. Ultimately we can, you know, we can use these numbers and kind of price in that they're buzzy. I see. Okay. You talked earlier about how you think panic does more harm than good. Why is that?

I think in general, panic does more harm than good. Every bad law is based on one emotionally driven premise. If we don't do something, a kid might get hurt. [00:40:00] Okay,

Jordan Harbinger: so devil's advocate, what's wrong with that? Right? We don't want kids to get hurt.

Nick Pell: Well, no, we don't. But I think at a philosophical level, it's just a very silly guide to

Jordan Harbinger: law.

But specifically with regard to children and other people getting trafficked, what's the issue?

Nick Pell: Okay, so let's look at Bad Law and Practice. Congress passed two laws in tandem in 2018, CESTA and Fossa. CESTA stands for Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, and FOSSA stands for Fight Online Sex Trafficking.

I'm instantly suspicious of any law in the name, like Save the Puppies or Everyone loves ice cream.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Okay. I know, but what, what about these laws specifically?

Nick Pell: Sure. So basically this was during the golden Age of Craigslist as a platform for commercial sex. It made platforms that enabled sex trafficking criminally liable, and that sounds great, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, sure. I don't really know enough about it, but yeah. Okay.

Nick Pell: So the unintended consequences for these specific laws [00:41:00] were that these platforms either shut down entirely or else banned commercial sex from the platform, and that might sound great, but the issue is that a lot of these platforms allowed people to vet their clients and communicate with each other about who to avoid.

It also helped them to avoid street work, which is very, very dangerous. Yeah. It helped them to maintain financial independence. IE not work for a pimp. This was sold as a way to end sex trafficking and save the children. The reality was that it just pushed the sex trade underground, which makes it harder to keep an eye on, and it did nothing to address the core issues.

It was just a moral panic law. Like most moral panic laws, it was not written in an intelligent and thoughtful way.

Jordan Harbinger: Sure. But isn't sex trafficking kind of something to get panicky about? Well, I don't think

Nick Pell: so. I think it's awful, but I just don't think panic ever helps. And I think it can also, you know, panic can [00:42:00] enable bad actors looking to take advantage of the situation.

Like these bogus rescue organizations we talked about, they're good at pr. They don't seem to be very good at actually helping victims. I'm not aware of any evidence that they are. Anyway, I think that there are victim centered support organizations that help but the savior organizations, I'm unaware of any evidence that they're helpful, though I'm sure the comment section will correct me.

We need to start with talking about what the reality of trafficking actually looks like and not some Hollywood slash Q Anon fantasy about what's happening.

Jordan Harbinger: We know that the person shopping at Target after dark is not at risk, so who is, we mentioned marginalized communities speak to that.

Nick Pell: Trafficking actually looks like migrant farm workers in California who have their visas manipulated.

It looks like young gay kids who felt like they had to run away from home and now they're living with some creep. Who's doing whatever to them. It also looks like a nanny from the Philippines who had her passport confiscated [00:43:00] debt bondage, threat of deportation, coercion through family threats. These are called invisible chains.

These are all factors. The risk factors are real and identifiable. It's not just random people getting grabbed off the street because they're cute or pretty. People at risk are homeless or at risk of being homeless. They're addicted to drugs. They're in the foster care system. They're extremely poor or they lack proper paperwork or id,

Jordan Harbinger: it seems almost like the human trafficking anxiety people have.

It's like a semi sophisticated version of stranger danger. All the risks that you're talking about are failures of the system in general, combined with a heaping dose of human frailty.

Nick Pell: Yes, this is stranger danger for adults.

Jordan Harbinger: There's also a kind of way that trafficking gets hijacked by far right?

Influencers and conspiracy theorists. It takes the focus off of real victims and real perpetrators and puts it onto, uh, drag queens or gay people in general, or maybe immigrants or something. And there's this whole panic about how groomers are everywhere. Remember, okay, groomer instead of Okay, boomer. Yes.

For a [00:44:00] few months. There it, they like, oh, they're everywhere. It just, it doesn't match up with reality. It seems like this would lead to allocating resources in the wrong spot, perhaps if everybody sort of fell for this.

Nick Pell: I think that's very well put. I mean, I make no bones about the fact that I'm politically on the right.

Well, yeah. I

Jordan Harbinger: had no, I had no idea Nick. Didn't notice,

Nick Pell: obviously, but I just, I hate internet influencers in general. Well, let me, let me stop you right there, pal. Yeah. Lemme finish. I hate influencers who are just grifting by hopping onto the latest and greatest outrage. That's fair. I hate outrage porn because even if there's some truth to what they're saying and in this case, yeah, there is, people get trafficked.

But what they're doing is not, even if it was neutral, it would be like, who cares? It's not, it's actively harmful to the people who are the actual victims. It acts as a shield for the actual criminals behind it.

Jordan Harbinger: We talked about what doesn't work, so what does and don't say nothing, [00:45:00] please.

Nick Pell: No, I think things work.

I also think you just kind of. You have to accept that there's a non-trivial portion of the population who we're always going to make bad choices to the point where they feel like their own exploitation is consensual. You can't help somebody who doesn't want your help.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it

Nick Pell: just doesn't seem rational to me that you can help somebody who doesn't think that there's a problem, but for everyone else.

You need to remember what we talked about in terms of what drives this kind of exploitation, and then you have to heal the underlying cause. Housing for people, mental health care, trauma care, legal aid, vocational training. These are the things that can actually benefit people being victimized by trafficking and help them out of the bad situations that they're in.

Jordan Harbinger: Are there any organizations that are actually out there helping?

Nick Pell: Polaris, who I mentioned earlier, they run the National Human Trafficking hotline that connects people with services around the clock in a whole bunch of different languages. [00:46:00] They also have the largest database of information about trafficking in North America, and they train advocates.

They're doing something. Cast la, the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking, they offer direct services like legal advocacy, emergency shelter. They help set people up with long-term housing. They give them life skills training. This addresses the problem SWOP. That helps people who are currently involved in commercial sex, both in and out of prison, and their kind of main cause is reducing prison recidivism.

The thing is people want there to be just this magic wand that they can wave that's gonna make everything better, and that's just not what the situation looks like. There's a lot of really unsexy grunt work and you, you're helping one person at a time.

Jordan Harbinger: That's why people love this fantasy of kicking down a door and rescuing 40 kids, right, who are in some sort of yes warehouse.

I totally understand people wanting something done [00:47:00] about this, right? But I also get that you really do have to be realistic about what the situation actually is and what can be done about it. The panic driven version that we are often sold in the media and on the internet is not just false. It's actually counterproductive.

People aren't saved by these daring rescue missions in the jungle. They're saved through long-term care and support, and as unpleasant as it is to think about, some people don't actually want help, and there's nothing you can really do in that situation. For parents, there's no value really in trying to instill stranger danger in your kids.

Your time is gonna be better spent teaching your kids how to protect themselves against adult weirdos, pretending to be their friends or people in positions of authority who might be using their power in unethical and criminal ways. Make sure you know what they're getting up to online and foster open lines of communication so that if they do get into a bad situation or the beginnings of one, they won't make it far worse for fear of how you are going to react.

Thanks again to writer and researcher [00:48:00] Nick PE for helping us rescue reality from the clutches of panic. Nick, this is kind of a gross one. You're my gross topic guy. Did you know that?

Nick Pell: Yeah, no, I, I've definitely noticed that like, I don't get bananas or like, you know, the teddy bear industry, I get the most depressing topics on, on human earth, but they also tend to be like, you know.

Things I know about because I actively seek out depressing information because I'm that kind of person.

Jordan Harbinger: It's funny, I think we mentioned this before, like you are never gonna get the, like, do aluminum cans really get recycled? It's gonna be like, how about fentanyl? Right. Or whatever. It's like, oh, okay.

Thanks Jordan.

Nick Pell: Our puppies cute. Yeah. Today on the Jordan Harbinger show with Nick Powell. That's right. We unpack the truth behind whether or not puppies are cute.

Jordan Harbinger: Exactly. No, you're outta luck, man. But I thank you for, uh, occupying that niche. Somebody's gotta do it. Thanks to everybody else for listening.

Topic suggestions for future episodes of Skeptical Sunday to meJordan@jordanharbinger.com. Advertisers deals, discounts, and ways to support the show. All searchable and clickable Over at Jordan [00:49:00] harbinger.com/deals. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn.

This show, it's created an association with Podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Tadas Sidlauskas, Robert Fogarty, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Our advice and opinions are our own. I am a lawyer, but I'm not your lawyer. Also, of course, we try to get these episodes as right as we can. Not everything is gospel, even if it might have been fact checked.

So consult a professional before applying anything you hear on the show, especially if it's about your health and wellbeing or that of others. Remember, we rise by lifting others. Share the show with those you love. If you found the episode useful, please share it with somebody else who could use a good dose of the skepticism and knowledge that we doled out today.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time. What happens when you speak out against Vladimir Putin and the KGB starts showing up in your life outside of Russia? Constantine, Sammo Love didn't just flee his homeland to avoid conscription.

He's now exposing the regime from abroad with a target on his back.

JHS Clip: I was [00:50:00] growing up on the impression that the USA was the cradle of all evil in the world. Okay? It was bad, and then the world started opening up and I understood that the communists were lying. Imagine for 70 years you are told that nothing good for people in the west.

It's darkness there none. And Russia thought that we could invade Ukraine and then I was absolutely caught off guard. That's unbelievable. The Russian state didn't care about what. Was being said about it on the outside. All they cared was on the inside. But now the focus has shifted on telling the truth about Russia, how things are, and my YouTube channel started growing.

The numbers exploded 'cause everyone wanted to be a part of a community support group. And I think that I'm becoming a bigger and bigger danger to them. So they're trying to neutralize me one way or another. And knowing that I am on the radar is one thing. When you see actually an [00:51:00] agent in real life that's different ball game, I'm not stopping.

I keep on talking because I was silent for 15 years. I was looking at my country going down to hell and I wasn't doing anything about it. So there's no way they're gonna shut me up even if I put myself into more danger. I think that's more important right now to. Tell the truth of what's really happening in Russia, if not me, then who

Jordan Harbinger: to hear more about life under dictatorship, the myths of Russian strength and what it really costs to tell the truth.

Check out episode 1021 of the Jordan Harbinger Show.