SALT LAKE CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A new podcast interview of Tim Ballard, founder of Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) reveals details never before shared on sex trafficking rescue and after care operations in Ecuador, Mexico, The Ukraine, and, by extension, new information about the impacts of the international sex trafficking industry on children and families within the U.S. The podcast, a part of The School of Greatness series by bestselling author and business performance coach Lewis Howes, premieres December 26, 2022, and will be available here.
In the interview, Ballard shares new details of recent trafficking strategies and raids in the three countries, along with information on how the international trafficking sector is influenced and fueled by an ever-growing subscribership base primarily in the United States, which tragically serves to propel the kidnappings and sexual exploitation of children in other countries to serve its growing audience of U.S. customers.
Among the insights Ballard shares in this 70-plus minute interview:
- Because O.U.R. works in concert with law enforcement, experienced teams are often able to lead law authority to perpetrators without the need for trafficked children to ever be brought to the room. Skilled operations ensure the children are found, recovered and taken into after care programs with a minimum level of additional trauma.
- The collective effort of O.U.R. with law enforcement and government agencies allows for high precision and leverage of the interconnectivity among perpetrators in different regions of the world to expand the impact of capturing not only a key perpetrator, but also the perpetrators “bosses” from other regions. These increasingly networked and sophisticated operations capture far more perpetrators in the war against trafficking and prevent the kidnapping and trafficking of thousands of additional children who would have otherwise been victimized by these predator networks.
- In situations such as the war in Ukraine, additional precautions need to be taken in cases where vans of benevolent people claiming to be service providers are actually perpetrators using their offers of help to seize displaced or unsupervised children during times of war. “The Hidden War” docuseries covers these new varieties of danger in detail.
Ballard also shares personal notes on the ways he shores himself for high risk/high stakes situations by visualizing in his mind the child among his own 9 children who is most closely aligned to the child at stake by the predator for prospective abuse. This makes the situation personal – knowing he would take the risk to protect his own child, Ballard is able to marshal the courage to do what he must to protect the unknown children being offered to buyers as well.
How listeners and viewers can help
Ballard announced in the interview the ability to sign up for news on the release of the upcoming 4-part docuseries “The Hidden War” which outlines the trafficking raids he discusses on this show along with other stories from the organization’s near 10 years of operation since 2013. Viewers can sign up at HiddenWar.com (trailer available here). For ways to participate through donations to the organization’s operations, viewers can contribute donations in amounts ranging from $5 to $1,000 or more could help provide meals, groceries, flights to reunite families, after care counseling and vocational training via OURrescue.org/giving/.
About Lewis Howes' School of Greatness
Since its launch in January 2013, the School of Greatness podcast has grown rapidly to be one of the top-ranked Business and Self-Development podcasts in iTunes. It regularly appears in the Top 50 of all iTunes podcasts and has more than 150 million downloads. Viewers and listeners can learn more and can access a chronological library of all School of Greatness episodes here.
About Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.)
The O.U.R. (www.ourrescue.org) is a private organization founded in 2013 that strives to shine a light worldwide on the global epidemic of child sex trafficking, and in so doing rescue more children from slavery and assist law enforcement to seek justice for those who violate children. While our focus remains on children, we assist survivors of all ages to bring them safety and healing. We place survivors on a path to recovery by partnering with vetted aftercare providers or by placing them with families. For more information, visit www.ourrescue.org.
#EndChildTrafficking #ChildSexTrafficking #ChildSexualExploitation #TheHiddenWar
