held in and hiding

and how is it that life -
so quiet, so kind -
should turn to
show its face,
written in such extremes?

dark and light,
warm and cold,
sleeping and waking,
crowded and lonely.

a disgruntled spectrum of
strange polarities.
how peculiar,
the management of hands abstract.

From One Washington To Another

(my washington.)

After traversing to and fro throughout the large nation that is the United States, a few weeks ago I arrived back home, just in time for Christmas and other similarly festive occasions.  It has been a treat to be home this time of year.

(looks like someone didn’t rake their leaves.)

I last left off with our final stages of filming in the Washington, D.C. area.  Our itinerary did end up changing a bit from what we had planned – for example we didn’t get to meet this time around with Gary Haugen of International Justice Mission  – but we did have some enlightening interviews with former Linda Smith of Shared Hope International (who we also talked with in Vancouver, WA), Bradley Myles and Mark P. Lagon of the Polaris Project, and Senator Sam Brownback.  Also during this time, it is important to note that we also went through with our Washington DC fieldtrip – seeing many of the historical and iconic memorials of our nation, though it was often on a strict time budget.  I guess that’s what happens when you are trying to get things done with 10+ people, a 32-foot RV, and sometimes a car or two.  One could say our sightseeing was pragmatic.

(a sunny day for sight seeing.)

(abe lincoln’s statue lives here.)

(the man of the hour.)

(where the president lives.)

(capitol building.)

(iwo jima memorial.)

(i had to see the remnants of the sharp-tooth.)

After our business was complete in the District of Columbia, it was strange to watch as individuals slowly dwindled away, flying their separate ways for Christmas.  Some of us who didn’t fly away till later were able to make a quick trip out to Morgan’s family’s beach house in Nags Head, North Carolina for a couple of days.  It was some good time to cool our jets.

(broken fences.)

(a quiet beach.)

Since finishing filming for 2009, our group has undergone a temporary Diaspora of sorts.  Members of our crew have spread out to Greece, Switzerland, Virginia, Colorado, Pennsylvania, California, Washington, Hawaii, and New Zealand.  Needless to say, this makes things complicated when trying to arrange our Skype meetings.  Though we won’t be filming over these winter months, we will still have our wheels turning in other aspects of film production.  The film crew/production team will be sifting through transcriptions, piecing together a story line for the film, and deciding what still needs to be captured for the spring filming.  Another priority we have is viral marketing – trying to establish as much of an online presence as possible.  We got a good start at this when our trailer won a contest on Youtube – this took us from six thousand hits to over five hundred thousand hits, all in less than a week.  Though this is a good start, we still need to establish a following through additional social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace (yes, some people still use it), etc.  We are hoping this will also help bring in funding for the remainder of the film.  We are still piecing together a new website, which will be a sort of hub for our online presence: sexandmoneyfilm.com.  It is still in the process of being constructed, but keep checking back to find out about all the new goings on in the months to come.

We do have a good amount more work still to go.  In April, our group will again reunite, starting with a bit of fundraising before we set out to finish up filming in May and June.  The spring schedule is still in the process of being planned, but it will probably take us across the country once again (though at this point we’re not sure what mode of transportation will be most convenient and efficient.)

For now, I am in Ellensburg.  For those of you in the area, I would love to meet up at some point if any of you are more curious about the project.  Discussions over coffee are great.  Slightly more formally, I would like to see if it will work to set up a gathering to share more about what we’ve done with the project so far, and where it is heading.  This is still very much in the planning stages, so if any of you have any ideas or would like to help out with this in some way, please feel free to contact me through email…or mobile telephone…or find me.

While home, I hope to continue to post bits of information to this blog every now and then…I will do my best to keep you on your toes.

i’ll be home in time to feel like it’s christmas.

naked trees.

dead and soggy leaves.

grey skies amplify and deaden light.

local distributors by truck,

businessmen by car,

for me I wish an aeroplane,

as home to me is far.

fa la la la la, la la la la.

This has been our home for the last few days, thanks to Theocracy Christian Center.  Our beds L to R:  Josh, Isaac, Myself, and Scott.  We’re almost making a real pile…

NCMEC interview and beyond

This Friday we were fortunate enough to have a quick interview with Ernie Allen, the President of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), at the organization’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, right outside of Washington D.C. Though the time was brief, the time with Mr. Allen helped us to capture some key components regarding the specifics of the sexual exploitation of minors within our nation.

When first looking into crimes of human trafficking, whether domestically or internationally, you soon find that there are a lot of numbers floating around – not all of them accurate. The wide variety of statistics that are available makes sense as it is such a subversive, underground sort of activity. However, as we’ve tried to narrow things down for the film, much of our statistics and understanding of the severity of child sexual exploitation within our nation has come from NCMEC. Ernie stated that, conservatively, there are 100,000 American minors who are at risk of sexual exploitation in some form or another. This is not in reference to Southeastern Asian Children or Eastern European women who are tricked to enter our nation from afar – this number is in reference to American Youth.

You may recognize NCMEC from all the adds you see in different stores for missing children. Mr. Allen stated that there are approximately 800,000 missing children reported each year, and added, “Most kids aren’t running to something, they’re running away from something.” As there is no sort of love or acceptance for these kids at home, any sort of offer of acceptance on the streets often seems desirable – however, where the youth were expecting acceptance, they usually find themselves trapped by lies, drug addiction, and/or violence.

After our time with Mr. Allen, we were briefly shown to the a portion of the office where there is a group of people committed to sorting through material on the internet that is potentially exploitative of children. NCMEC is working with a network of several government agencies, including the Department of Justice and the FBI. Mr. Allen stated that NCMEC sorts through approximately 250,000 images each week for the purpose of building a case against perpetrators of child pornography and hopefully finding where the crimes are taking place so they can be brought to an end. Though I can’t imagine such a job as this – the material must certainly be very troubling to comb through – the workers find encouragement as crimes and abuse are able to be brought to an end through their observations.

Some things that struck me, perhaps surprisingly, were the photos of the perpetrators that were on a couple of bulletin boards in the office. Some individuals looked like the “creepers” you would suspect. Some looked relatively normal. But in all of the faces, it seemed as though there were only shells of people left over, used by something, someone else. Something, it appeared to me, had eaten away their insides. Maybe some of them had finally realized the severity of their crimes. Maybe some of them hadn’t yet realized the severity of their crimes. Upon leaving the office, I have continued to ponder. What parts of hearts and minds are remaining so unfulfilled that people are being driven to search for fulfillment through such abstract and obscene manifestations of “desire.” What really are people after? – because it seemed to me, looking in the eyes of each person on those bulletin boards, that they hadn’t really found what they were looking for.

As a group, we have about a week more of shooting to do in the Washington D.C. area. We still have more interviews this week with representatives from Shared Hope International, The Polaris Project, Former Congresswoman Deborah Pryce, and potentially Gary Haugen from International Justice Mission and Senator Sam Brownback. In addition to these interviews, we’re also looking to get some footage of some of the monuments and learn some thing about the historical content of our nation’s capitol. (Maybe it will be like a field trip?) I’ll try to find creative ways to keep you all involved along the way.

advent conspiracy

something we could all afford to consider this christmas season…

you can get more information or ideas on this at adventconspiracy.org

dirty streets, affluent suburbs, and a colonial thanksgiving.

As I left off the last posting, we had just begun our short stint in the greater Chicago area. Our time in Chicago proved to be very full, but provided for some new insights regarding human trafficking in our nation. Previously we had been told about some studies pointing to Chicago as the #1 city for human trafficking in the United States. As you will often find with statistics on this sort of topic, they are hard to verify; but nonetheless, there is much information pointing to Chicago as a definite hotspot within our nation. Though the current situation may not be enjoyable to stomach, during our few days in the area, we were encouraged to see many innovative strategies that are beginning to be contrived and enacted.

Similar to the work we saw in Phoenix, it was evident there is a notable amount of co-operation taking place in eradicating crimes of sexual exploitation in the Chicago area. Interviewing representatives from Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, Prostitution Alternatives Round Table, Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation, and End Demand Illinois, we became aware of the collaboration that is taking place to practically address the demand that is present for the use of sexual services. Often, with prostitution in most cities, there is often a cyclical pattern of arresting women involved with prostitution, and returning them back to the streets. However, Chicago is trying to take a stance of arresting the men who are purchasing such services – an approach that originated in Sweden. You can read more about the influence of the Swedish legislation here. This stance does NOT legalize prostitution; rather, it simply points to the need to get to the root cause of the prostitution, which is the demand for the supply. If there weren’t such a demand for prostitution, there wouldn’t be such a need for a supply (of human beings.) It is important to note that this has not been enacted into the written legislation of Illinois, or even Chicago for that matter, but for now this is the stance they are taking in actively, practically addressing the issue as they encounter it on their streets.

Our last night in Chicago we had the opportunity to partner with Breakthrough Urban Ministries – a group of people who basically take an RV out into some of the most impoverished areas of Chicago to open their doors to whoever may be in need of assistance, a bit of food, or just someone to talk to. Many of the women in the area have been victimized by prostitution at some point, and quickly came in to escape the biting cold of the breezy Chicago night. They were happy to have people to talk to who wanted to hear how they were doing, who wanted to hold their hands and pray, who wanted to take care of basic practical needs.

At one point, Autumn and I followed along with Brenda, the woman who leads the ministry, and Tom, another man from the group, as they went for a quick walk up and down the street (in a neighborhood I would never be able to walk through by myself) to see who else was out on that particular evening. We ran into one girl with whom Brenda had known from her previous years of work in the area.

I found myself looking at a face that had almost forgotten how to smile. When Brenda would ask how she was doing, the girl, probably in her mid-twenties, would bring her lips to smiling for a brief moment, only to have them revert once again into sadness. No matter how hard she tried, she could not maintain a even a guise of happiness for more than a split second. Her expression would continue to go back and forth, grin to gloom, hinting at an idea of happiness, only to return to the reality of depression.

And these are the people we are talking about when we talk about those who are victims of abuse, of exploitation, of human trafficking, of prostitution. Previously, it was hard for me to associate these stories to any sort of reality, when an overwhelming majority of what I come into contact with are numbers. Before leaving the girl, who told us she had to get going, Brenda gave her a small gift of some toiletries, her contact information, and then Autumn and Brenda prayed with her as Tom and I stood to watch their backs. It was a quiet moment – it wasn’t fancy, it wasn’t glorious – but it was so evident as we stood there, in person with someone who was so hungry for something real, that we belonged there, with her. Things made a lot more sense as we were standing on the run-down concrete sidewalk near this woman – a lot more sense than things make when you hear the estimates of 16 to 25 thousand people that are being prostituted on a nightly basis in the city of Chicago. She is just one.

We saw in that moment, that she, a single person, mattered. I must learn to see this epidemic not as numbers, graphs, or pie charts – but as individuals that matter. There are so many humans, dying to have someone come stand with them in the wind, in the cold, in the streets – where they are. Do we see them as people, or do we see them only as prostitutes, untouchables?

Briefly after our time in Chicago, we spent a couple days in Michigan, mainly for an interview with Theresa Flores, who, 23 years ago, when she was in high school, found herself caught up in a trafficking-ring in a wealthy, upper-class neighborhood in Detroit. She came from a middle-class family with two parents – by all means a normal looking family. She became caught up in a group of people who forced her to sneak out of her home at night to be used and abused at the hands of men who, judging by their large, elaborate, nice homes, were fairly well established in their communities. During the time, she was unable to speak out as she was held captive by the fear that if she spoke up, her family would be killed, abused, or expelled from their favorable social standing in their community. So she would endure the abuse, attending high school each day, no one around her able to imagine where she could have been the night before. After a couple years of being trapped into consistent abuse, when her father’s job took her family elsewhere, she was able to escape the abuse.

Theresa certainly had a lot to work through before getting to the point where she could share her experiences with others. Eventually she graduated college, and over the last couple years, she has published accounts of her experiences in her books, The Sacred Bath: An American Teen’s Story of Modern Day Slavery, and The Slave Across the Street: The True Story of How an American Teen Survived the World of Human Trafficking.  Furthermore, she is also touring throughout the states to share her story in whatever venues are open to having her share. Soon she is looking to launch a new, licensed restoration facility by the name of Gracehaven, by which she intends to bring physical, mental, and spiritual healing to mainly under-aged kids who are escaping lives plagued by sexual exploitation. This definitely looks to be a facility that is worth watching in the years to come as they seek to establish a holistic system of care and rehabilitation for the children who are fortunate enough to escape the snares of such a dark industry.

As a team, we will be residing for the next week or so in Toano, Virginia (a suburb of Williamsburg) at the home of our producer/narrator, Morgan Perry. So far, we have presented the project to Morgan’s home congregation, which was a very well attended event, and provided a lot of outlets for further discussion, prayer, and brainstorming on the topic. Also, there are a couple opportunities for us to present our work to the entirety of the Communications Department at Regent University, as well as Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). I will try to post some links if we get videos from either of these engagements. In addition to celebrating Thanksgiving, we will also be processing and transcribing footage we have captured up to this point (a task that is most often extremely tedious) until we head to Washington D.C. on December 2nd.

For now, please enjoy any turkey and/or any family get-togethers you may be attending this week. Extra points may potentially be awarded for those of you who dress up in 17th century Pilgrim or Native American attire.

a lot of things i should have mentioned sooner…

I realize it’s been quite a long duration of time since I posted last, so I’m not so sure I can update you on the entirety of things that are going on, but I figured I would quickly skin the surface so as to recap the last couple weeks. Since our time in Los Angeles, this is more or less what we have been up to:

In San Diego, we were able to interview a fifteen-year-old girl who, this last spring/summer was kidnapped and taken to Mexico. She was trafficked throughout Mexico before she was able to escape her trafficker, and escape back to her family in San Diego this last September.  It was definitely an emotional interview, but as we watched and listened to her story, it felt like we were watching her gain new healing.  Surely it is a horrific story that won’t be easy to work through, but we saw bits of hope as she brought her uncomfortably real story into the light.

We also took a brief excursion south of the border into Mexico, specifically the Red Light District of Tijuana, Mexico. Many Americans (along with tourists from other nations) have contributed to a growing sex industry in what is known as La Zona Norte (The North Zone) of Tijuana. We were also able to visit a couple of the exact locations where the girl from San Diego was trafficked.

From San Diego, we made a quick late night drive to Phoenix Arizona. An organization called Branded, who is working to network several of the key players in human trafficking in the greater Phoenix area, helped us to get interviews with local prosecutors, vice agents, restoration programs, and former victims from the area. It was encouraging to see the progress that was taking place here, as so many spheres of society are functioning together in such an organized and strategic manner.

Moving on to Las Vegas, a few of us met up with XXX Church, and headed up to Ely, NV to follow along with them on one of their outreaches to a legalized brothel in the area. It was definitely a new perspective on the issue – it challenged my mind to see a church taking the love of Christ literally inside of a brothel, as they repaired the living area of the girls who spend most of their lives inside of the crude business.

Returning to Las Vegas, as a team we felt it was time to take some time to process what we had seen so far in the trip. So, through the web of connections that is YWAM, the Lord provided a cabin where we could head to the hills, in the Mt. Charleston Wilderness Area to be precise, thus granting refreshment and renewed vision for the journey that is still to come.

After a few days in the mountains, we returned back to the bustling urban area of Las Vegas. I personally don’t know that I would ever chose to spend much time in such a city for leisure’s sake – however, in regards to the topics of the documentary, there was certainly a lot to document.

As we proceeded eastwards from Las Vegas, we ran into a bit of a hiccup. Since LA, we have been making use of a large, white, 15-passenger van that we have been referring to as The Big Ugly, thanks to the family of a certain Sarah-Jo Sampson. Let’s just say that the alternator hadn’t been functioning to its full potential, thus leaving us at a gas station in a town by the name of Washington, in Utah. Thanks to a generous gas-station attendant, we received enough of a jump start to drive to the local AutoZone, where were able to replace the alternator at no cost, due to a lifetime manufacturer’s warranty on the previous alternator. We saw that God’s hand was certainly working in the process, as it could have potentially been a very costly stop. I’m thankful that the Lord is practical, even in regards to the shortcomings of our own automobiles.

We were back on the road in a matter of hours. Thanks to large bags of sunflower seeds and a large selection of music, we drove through the night to get to Denver by the next morning. All things considered, it was a very beautiful drive, as the barren desert landscapes were illuminated by a full moon.

After a couple days in Denver, we made the ever-so-straight drive to Kansas City, mainly for the purpose of meeting with people from the International House of Prayer (commonly referred to as IHOP…though, unfortunately, there is no established connection with the pancake-distribution giant.) We’ve been hearing that IHOP, in an attempt to address the issue of human trafficking on a domestic level, has begun a ministry known as Exodus Cry. This ministry is still in its developing stages, but we hope to keep in continued communication with them as they work to develop a successful restoration model for the victims of this crime who reside in our country. Though we weren’t able to connect with the ministry this time around (the leader of the ministry is currently in the Philippines) it looks like it would be well worth our time to shoot in the Kansas City area when we begin shooting again next spring.

Proceeding eastwards from Kansas City, we soon arrived in our next destination of Nashville, Tennessee. One definite highlight was a reunion with my original DTS roommate, Jean-Michael Vissepo, who is studying film as Watkins University. It was refreshing to run around a bit with Mr. Vissepo, as he is thoroughly immersed in the artistic culture of the Nashville area.

Besides meeting up with an old friend, we also made some solid connections with a group of students in an organization called SIFE – Students in Free Enterprise. Basically, these students try to come alongside non-profit organizations to help develop business models so that such organizations can continue in their work in a sustainable manner. The group of SIFE students at Belmont are helping to develop a model for the distribution of our Sex + Money books that will first of all get the word out about human trafficking on a global scale, and secondly, help in the financing of the film we are now making about the trafficking of humans domestically. Beings as we have so many books printed, it would be a huge blessing to have people helping us to get them out in a larger scale. It will be fun to see what will happen with such plans for distribution.

Currently I write to you from the Chicago, Illinois area.  I’m sorry this is such a bland, photo-less entry, but I figured it was better to post some information with no photos than to not post at all.  I’ll try to make up for this short-coming in one way or another in the days to come.

adifferentkindofmaster

it’s easy to be gaudy
when all you have is plastic.
lights and billboards-
they tell you what to keep inside,
and what to look for
with your hands.

it’s hard to feel loved
when your master is flashing,
rhythmically,
voice blaring,
on repeat.
who ever knew success would be such a tease?

but truth won’t be shut off with a plug
or a power outage.
and a different master is there,
listening,
speaking a voice that settles
wind & waves,
wants & desires,
successes & failures.

West Coast + Teaser Bonus!

Ending my last post, I spoke of how we had just arrived in Tacoma, Washington to interview some former victims of trafficking.  We ended up just interviewing one girl, who was first trafficked when she was only 14 years of age.  She is now 18 years old, and on the morning of her interview, she had just been released from a juvenile detention center.  She was very open to sharing in detail about her former life in prostitution, and it was surprising to see how far she has come as she continues to receive healing.  Hearing of her experiences, it became evident how a majority of the girls ending up in the industry are victims, rather than criminals.  Brought up in a culture where all I knew of prostitution was the criminalization I saw on cops, this is a concept I have had to rearrange in my mind as I have been learning more about trafficking.  An overwhelming majority of these people are victims, not willing participants.

While we were in Washington, we also took the time to meet up with a handful of representatives from local human-trafficking NGO’s who were able to explain more specifically about how trafficking is affecting the greater Seattle area.  It was encouraging to see all the organizations that are partnering together to address the issue within their community.  Representatives were present from JustOne, One Voice To End Slavery, and The Sold Project.

After our short stint in Washington, we drove south to Salem, Oregon where some local friends had helped to arrange a human trafficking awareness event, which included  some different artistic performances, and a local authority who was able to share with the audience how to get active in combating the issue in their community.

Aaron Cowan

David Stefanik

While we were in the area, we also had the opportunity to meet up with former Congresswoman Linda Smith, founder of Shared Hope International.  As she has previously been involved with arranging reports on the topic of human trafficking for the US government, she was able to share with us a plethora of information about the causes and effects of human trafficking within our nation.  We also went out with Linda for a truck stop campaign with Defenders USA, where a group of men was putting on a peaceful demonstration to spread awareness about the harsh realities of the sexual trafficking of minors at truck stops around our country.

While we were in the Portland area, we were also able to meet with the head of the Oregon Task Force for Human Trafficking, Keith Bickford.  Mr. Bickford was able to share a lot about the involvement of the local law enforcement in dealing with issues of trafficking.  It became evident that there is an overwhelming need for funding and manpower in order to prosecute those who need to be prosecuted, and restore those who need to be restored.  See more information at the Oregonians Against Trafficking of Humans (OATH) here.

After a few days in Oregon, our next stop was San Francisco, where we spent a couple days exploring the tenderloin district – basically the rough side of town – known for drugs, homelessness, and prostitution, amongst other things.  The amount of homeless people lining the streets was overwhelming.  I’m used to seeing this type of thing in third world nations, but I am blindsided when I come face to face with it in the USA.  Sadly, this level of poverty does exist in our nation.

Through the local Youth With a Mission base, we were able to make connections with a girl who has done a lot of work exploring the area and mapping the locations of potential undercover brothels.  She was able to walk us to a few locations to familiarize us with the appearance of the brothels, which seem to most commonly be disguised as massage parlors.  Unfortunately, this is becoming a fairly common sight in many larger cities throughout the country.  We also explored San Francisco a bit ourselves, asking locals – many of them homeless – what they knew about human trafficking in their city. We received a wide range of responses and opinions, which provided for some good discussions.  Our time in San Francisco exposed us to some new sides of the issue, which is productive from a film standpoint, but it was difficult to see how far we still have to go in working against this cancer of exploitation that is plaguing so many of our cities.

We have spent the last week or so in the Los Angeles area, which has provided us some key interview opportunities, including:                                                                                                                                                                                                  -Dr. Lois Lee, founder and director of Children of the Night;

-Dr. Steven C. Schoger, a psychologist who counsels victims of sexual exploitation, as well as recovering sexual addicts

-a recovering victim.

We also were able to attend a fundraiser event for Aaron Cohen, author of Slave Hunter, and founder of the Abolish Slavery Coalition.  We also shared a bit at Open Bible Fellowship, the home church of Sarah-Jo, one of our narrators.  It is encouraging to hear of another church body that is coming behind this project with their prayers and support.

Also, our film crew recently finished the initial teaser for our film, which is comprised mostly of footage shot during our time in New York.  Have a look below:

We are now heading down to the San Diego area for the next few days, where we will be meeting up with a victim restoration project.  We will also be working a bit with the Justice House of Prayer (JHOP) while we are in the area.  With this things though, we would value your prayers for us to see the opportunities and stories God is putting in our paths.

Thanks again for continuing to follow our progress in this.  It is always an encouragement to know we have people who are believing with us that these problems can be made right.