November 23, 2025 • 16 mins
Dr. Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night, an organization dedicated to saving kids from sex work. Children of the Night, America’s first and most-acclaimed non-profit, social services agency dedicated solely to the rescue, stabilization and education of minors who have been sex trafficked across the United States, has kicked-off a new podcast series featuring intense interviews with rehabilitated, former teen sex workers. Take a listen.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Okay,
I promised you this is going to be a little
bit of heavy segment. It's one that's hard for me
to think about as a mother of daughters. My guest
is doctor Lois Lee, the founder of an organization I'm
sure you're quite familiar with, Children of the Night, America's
(00:24):
first and most acclaimed nonprofit social services agency dedicated solely
to the rescue, stabilization, and education of children who have
been working as prostitutes. Doctor Lois Lee, thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
You know, the first thing I have to get out
of the way is I have been trained and taught
not to use the word child prostitute, but instead to
use the words a traffic sex trafficked children. But you
don't use that term. Can you explain why.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, the kids don't use it, the children I work with,
the young people I work with, don't And if I
was talking about it, they'd never call me because they
don't see how that relates to them at all. They say,
quite frankly, they feel that it's a word that glamorizes
what happened to them, and there was nothing glamorous about
what happened to them. They prostituted, they were forced to
do it, and it was demeaning and it was awful,
(01:22):
and they just they feel like it's also a way
that the government makes it look like they're doing something.
And what happened was that I had trained thousands of
vice cops across the country, and then I trained a
lot of DOJ and FAI agents and it became a
really big issue, and the government came to the child
sex trafficking issue through Janet Reno in a town hall
(01:44):
meeting when we met, and I told her that her
people or federal people, refuse to prosecute cases against pamps.
At that time, on a federal level, the locals were
doing it, but on the federal level we wanted it
because the sentences were so much longer. And she said,
you give me the I'm going to give you my
private facts, and you give me the name of anybody
it's not working for not helping you. And I did.
(02:07):
And boys, she'd set people out and moved the government
like just moved them into action, and they thought they
were going to set up, you know, a child prostitution problem.
They thought they'd found a gold mine, so to speak,
and went back to Washington. And what they found They
got millions and millions, millions of dollars from Congress. And
what they found is there were not that many prostitutes here.
(02:28):
There's one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand that doesn't care
prostitutes well, but not for the millions and millions and
millions and millions and millions of dollars they got.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So where did they put the money? And they pardon,
where'd they put the money? If they raised all this
money to.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Put the money in the programs for young children who
are for children who were pregnant maternity homes. The other
thing is the term sex traffic They couldn't get professionals
to come work with prostituted children. But if they changed
the term to sex trafficking, then it was it was
power football to professionals. And they did a lot of
(03:03):
heavy handed stuff which needed to be done. For instance,
they forced them they changed the law in twenty eighteen
and forced the Department of Children's Services to provide services
to these kids. Because when I started forty six years ago,
they flat out refused to do anything.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So there were crafter you rescued these children, You couldn't
get them into foster care.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Oh no, I couldn't even if I couldn't even get
them in jail. At that point, I went to judges
and I asked judges to find them guilty of prostitutions
so we'd have money to stick them in treatment programs.
And they said, no, we can't do that because they're
not crimes against property and they're only hurting themselves and
it does not justify or warrant spending taxpayers funds on them.
So there were literally no services for these kids. And
(03:46):
so that's why I created Children of the Night. I
abandoned my career as an academic and started putting together
resources and building a program for them. You could imagine,
for like almost four over forty years, I was taking
children into my home. I was taking them into a program.
There was no oversight, nobody wanted them, nobody bothered and
(04:08):
there were a lot of people, you know, for different
for bad reasons, taking them in. There was no contributing
to the delinquency of a minor. When it came to
these children, they're considered repugnant and heartbreaking, heartbreaking, I said,
I ran a sex trafficking hotline. Not one of the
kids I work with off Figaro or any of the ghettos,
and you know, escaping tempts would be calling that because
(04:31):
they just don't see the parallel, and they often are
turned away by those organizations case after case because they're not,
you know, their children, and they deserve to be treated
like children. But they're not like then, I said, little
girl who just got pregnant because of daddy, or you know,
because of something else. You know, it's they're not so
(04:51):
compliant because they've been roughed up their entire lives.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I'm sure. So let's talk about Children of the Night.
So Children of the Night has employees and vans and
they go out at night and try to encourage kids
to get off the street. How does it work.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, we rescued over seventeen thousand kids. We don't just rescue.
We rescue, we stabilize that, we educate, and we have
a scholarship program to put them in college. We have
many kids are in college today. What happens is that
we're the only real hotline that knows what to do,
and this answers the phone twenty four to seven for
kids who need to get off the streets, who are
(05:29):
running away from a pimp, you know, because it doesn't
happen like in the afternoon between nine and five Monday
through Friday, and then it's a matter of manipulating the
situation to where she can get away from him safely.
Because you have to remember, these girls are out there,
their prostitutes, they're hopping in and out of cars. So
if we can get them into an uber, then we
can get them out of that area into a safe location.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And where do where are these safe locations? Like how
do you where do you put them?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
If?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Is it in foster care? And what kind of stabilization program?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
No, no, no, no, no, they're children. They have to
go to foster care. You're not allowed to touch them.
And that's they mandated that. The federal government mandated that
in twenty eighteen, which is a good thing. I mean,
it's not really an appropriate resource for them because these
are tough kids. And what do you do put them
on a foster's prome at four o'clock in the morning
when they're half naked, you know, drug scars and everything else.
(06:20):
So it's not a good workable program, but there are
services for them so that when they're older, when they're eighteen,
they can still get money for college. They can they
have their medical services if at any time they get sick,
and they have independent housing. So many of them will
resurf us again, and we will use that system to
help them when they're eighteen. But for us, it's a
matter of maneuving them, and even the police call us
(06:42):
because they need us to do a relocation because they've
got a girl who told them about a pampa. She
can't go back. So because we're dealing with growth eighteen
and over all we do is verify that there's a
responsible adult on the other end. It doesn't have to
be a parent. It can be a sister, a cousin,
somebody who's not involved in prostitution, who's got a job,
and so then it's a matter we do have. We
(07:02):
use domestic violence shelters a lot because they have the
same protocol as we had when we were running our home.
But our home is for children, and so now we
can't do that because of these new laws, which is okay.
So but we get them closed with the medical treatment,
we get them a plane ticket. By the time they
get to there where they're being relocated, and they can
(07:23):
be relocated in the middle of the night and put
on a plane. They've got food, they've got clothing, everything,
everything's been shipped to them, shipped for them through Amazon.
Thank God for Amazon. And we say that all the
time because it allows us to move very quickly, rather
than going to the garage and packing up things and
then shipping them in the you know, at the post
office the next day. It's just it's it's very labor intensive.
(07:46):
So once they're there and nurse stabilized, we get them
the medical treatment, We get them therapists because a lot
of therapy now is done through Zoom, and then we
sign them up for our tutoring program. We have a
Zoom tutoring program. We tutor for the is a GED,
We teach the tests, and we sponsor a high school
graduation every year when we fly them out. They get
to stay in the Universal Studios. They get to go
(08:08):
to the studios for their grad night. We have a
cap and gown ceremony. It's really a big deal.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Goodness amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Even if you go to the children the Night website
and you look at programs. You look at graduations. You
can see the kids we bring in and we have to.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Go to do a quick break kids that were Doctor Lee.
This is so interesting. We have to go to a
quick break before we do. I want to make sure
that we say the phone number out a few times.
If you want to reach out to Children of the Night.
The numbers one eight hundred five five one thirteen hundred
extension zero. That's one eight hundred and five to five,
one thirteen hundred extension zero. Welcome back to the Dr
(08:45):
Wendywall Show, the home stretch of the Doctor Wendywall Show
on kf I am six forty. My guest is doctor
Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night. It's an
organization I am sure you have heard of because it's
America's first and most acclaimed nonprofit and social service agency
dedicated solely to the rescue of child prostitutes across the
(09:06):
United States, Doctor Lee, Before we talk about your podcast,
I want to know about what made you create this organization.
You were only twenty five years old and you were
in graduate school and how did this all come about?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Well, I was seeing the police for not arresting customers
and so I was meeting prostitutes young women in the
courtroom because it was part of the defense for their arrest.
And I met a young woman who was a heroin
attic and running an escorts service, and she called me
one night about a girl that was missing and foul
play and I tracked it down and it was a
Hillside strangler. She turned out to be victim number eleven.
She's a seventeen year old girl. And the fact that
(09:46):
nobody would help her and that the police wouldn't even respond,
they said things to be like, aw she's just a horrie.
She changed trick houses wings in the car out there.
It was awful. So I just I went on the
news and I said, if you're involved in the prostitut
business and you think you know that the Hillside stranglers don't,
and you don't want to talk to cop, don't call them,
call me. And thank god for ABC, NBC and KFWB.
(10:08):
They gave me full time reporters and we ran with
the tips from my home phone because that's where they came.
The calls came in and I refused to work with
the police because of the way they behaved, and we
chased them down. It ended up that I ended up
putting together the key witnesses to prosecute them, and I too,
testified as an expert witness. So that changed my life.
That took me from the lush of the Ivory Tower
(10:32):
into the streets and I began to find twelve and
thirteen eleven year old kids and the police go, nah,
she's not you know, she's got a record. I'm going,
you better look at this, and I go get birth
certificates from the parents and finally they said, oh my god,
she's telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And you know, so heartbreaking work. So you decided this
year to create a podcast to bring greater awareness to
this problem to everybody. It's called The Lewis Lee Show.
You can find it on the iHeartRadio app as well
as on YouTube. Why did you decide to create the
podcast and what can people expect by listening to it?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, I mean, I've been doing this for forty six years.
I've helped seventeen thousd I've rescued seventeen thousand kids, and
it's just it's hard to get to do all the
things that really need to be done. I really need
to teach other people who want to do this job,
to do this kind of work, and I also want
(11:30):
people to understand what happened to these women and that
rehabilitation is is something that is possible and it's not
going to be done with a crash pad or you know,
something really cheap. But it takes work, it takes time,
and it takes understanding. And so it gives me an
opportunity to let the women talk about where they are
today and to talk to them about how we met
(11:52):
and what the childun Night program was like. And a
lot of stuff comes up to where like if they're
teaching moments for people who want to do sex trafficking
programs of how to ate, what programs are relevant, and
then what happened to them, And that's fairly brief. There's
no need to go through detail because many of them
have children. And one of the things that came up
with in the podcast is many of them do have children.
(12:12):
I said, what do you tell your kids? And you know,
you always know there's some jerk in the family or
someone in your life is going to tell the kids
what you did when you were a teenager. So it's
best if you get there first. And so they all
have different ways of dealing with it, and I asked,
you want me to put together a monthly zoom meeting
with a top notch psychologist to work this out, and
we'll call it what to do with What to tell
(12:33):
the kids? And so that new program will kick off
in January. It's already in motion in terms of development.
It's pretty much developed. It's just coordinating schedules now.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
And all the money that you raise for Children of
the Night is private donations, correct, You're not government funded. Now.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I've raised sixty million dollars in the last forty six years,
all private. I don't want to be tied to government
because well, first of all, I'm dealing in an area
to where they want access to the kids, and I'm
happy to you know, if the kids want to talk
to them, that's fine, and many of them do. But
at the same time, I don't work for them. I mean,
they will tell me things like head of the FBI
(13:11):
in New York tried to tell me they wouldn't send
me any kids because I was not going to take
them to the beach and I was not going to
take them to the movie, and they would not be
leaving the facility. And I said I'm not a prison.
Go find some other place for your kids. I'm sorry
I can't help them, but you don't run me, you know.
So I've had to stand down a lot of very
powerful people in order to do what I do, and
very much for you. And I'll like a mother him
(13:32):
and these are my children.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
And I also think that your voice has gone a
very long way, even using the legal system to change
the laws. We can celebrate the fact that prostitution is
now not illegal, but it is illegal to be a customer.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yes, that is correct, And so adults women are no
longer arrested, and children are immediately given access to Department
Children's Services or who their program need to be overhauled
to deal with kids who are not So you know,
we're no longer dealing with kids on the farm where
mom died. I mean, we're dealing with, you know, kids
who've been roughed up a lot in their life, not
just prostitute kids, but lots of kids.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I recently saw the interview and interview on YouTube I
think it was Australia sixty Minutes with Virginia Guffrey before
she passed away, talking about you know, our first sexual
abuse happened at seven and then fourteen, and by the
time Gerline Maxwell with her posh accent came along, you know,
she knew no boundaries because people had abused her her
(14:36):
whole life. It's so sad to think about. How can
people donate to Children of the Night.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Just go to Children Ofthnight dot org the website and
you can donate right there.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I think, as we go ahead.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well there's an address there too if we want to
mail in a check. You know, people have different ways
they like to transport their money.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Children Offthnight dot org. As we head into the holiday season,
it is a time of course we should all be
giving all year long, because not only does it help others,
but there's research to show it supports and improves your
own mental health to donate and give and improve the
lives of others. So childreno Thenight dot org might be
(15:17):
a place for your holiday giving. Doctor Lois Lee, thank
you so much for joining us on KFI. I'm so
excited to listen to the podcast again. It's the Doctor
Lois Lee Show. You can find it on the iHeartRadio
app as well as on YouTube. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Wendy and thank you for joining us on The Doctor
Wendy Wall Show. A reminder next week we have a
very special three and a half hour Doctor Wendy Wall Show,
and I have an entire hour devoted to a very
interesting interview with doctor Justin Garcia, the director of the
famed Kinsey Institute, So you're not gonna want to miss that.
(15:55):
I'm here for you every Sunday from seven to nine pm,
but we're starting way earlier. Next tweet check your local listings.
You've been listening to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show on
KFI A M six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
app
Welcome back to the Doctor Wendy Wall Show on KFI
AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Okay,
I promised you this is going to be a little
bit of heavy segment. It's one that's hard for me
to think about as a mother of daughters. My guest
is doctor Lois Lee, the founder of an organization I'm
sure you're quite familiar with, Children of the Night, America's
(00:24):
first and most acclaimed nonprofit social services agency dedicated solely
to the rescue, stabilization, and education of children who have
been working as prostitutes. Doctor Lois Lee, thank you so
much for joining us.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
You know, the first thing I have to get out
of the way is I have been trained and taught
not to use the word child prostitute, but instead to
use the words a traffic sex trafficked children. But you
don't use that term. Can you explain why.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, the kids don't use it, the children I work with,
the young people I work with, don't And if I
was talking about it, they'd never call me because they
don't see how that relates to them at all. They say,
quite frankly, they feel that it's a word that glamorizes
what happened to them, and there was nothing glamorous about
what happened to them. They prostituted, they were forced to
do it, and it was demeaning and it was awful,
(01:22):
and they just they feel like it's also a way
that the government makes it look like they're doing something.
And what happened was that I had trained thousands of
vice cops across the country, and then I trained a
lot of DOJ and FAI agents and it became a
really big issue, and the government came to the child
sex trafficking issue through Janet Reno in a town hall
(01:44):
meeting when we met, and I told her that her
people or federal people, refuse to prosecute cases against pamps.
At that time, on a federal level, the locals were
doing it, but on the federal level we wanted it
because the sentences were so much longer. And she said,
you give me the I'm going to give you my
private facts, and you give me the name of anybody
it's not working for not helping you. And I did.
(02:07):
And boys, she'd set people out and moved the government
like just moved them into action, and they thought they
were going to set up, you know, a child prostitution problem.
They thought they'd found a gold mine, so to speak,
and went back to Washington. And what they found They
got millions and millions, millions of dollars from Congress. And
what they found is there were not that many prostitutes here.
(02:28):
There's one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand that doesn't care
prostitutes well, but not for the millions and millions and
millions and millions and millions of dollars they got.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
So where did they put the money? And they pardon,
where'd they put the money? If they raised all this
money to.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Put the money in the programs for young children who
are for children who were pregnant maternity homes. The other
thing is the term sex traffic They couldn't get professionals
to come work with prostituted children. But if they changed
the term to sex trafficking, then it was it was
power football to professionals. And they did a lot of
(03:03):
heavy handed stuff which needed to be done. For instance,
they forced them they changed the law in twenty eighteen
and forced the Department of Children's Services to provide services
to these kids. Because when I started forty six years ago,
they flat out refused to do anything.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
So there were crafter you rescued these children, You couldn't
get them into foster care.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Oh no, I couldn't even if I couldn't even get
them in jail. At that point, I went to judges
and I asked judges to find them guilty of prostitutions
so we'd have money to stick them in treatment programs.
And they said, no, we can't do that because they're
not crimes against property and they're only hurting themselves and
it does not justify or warrant spending taxpayers funds on them.
So there were literally no services for these kids. And
(03:46):
so that's why I created Children of the Night. I
abandoned my career as an academic and started putting together
resources and building a program for them. You could imagine,
for like almost four over forty years, I was taking
children into my home. I was taking them into a program.
There was no oversight, nobody wanted them, nobody bothered and
(04:08):
there were a lot of people, you know, for different
for bad reasons, taking them in. There was no contributing
to the delinquency of a minor. When it came to
these children, they're considered repugnant and heartbreaking, heartbreaking, I said,
I ran a sex trafficking hotline. Not one of the
kids I work with off Figaro or any of the ghettos,
and you know, escaping tempts would be calling that because
(04:31):
they just don't see the parallel, and they often are
turned away by those organizations case after case because they're not,
you know, their children, and they deserve to be treated
like children. But they're not like then, I said, little
girl who just got pregnant because of daddy, or you know,
because of something else. You know, it's they're not so
(04:51):
compliant because they've been roughed up their entire lives.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
I'm sure. So let's talk about Children of the Night.
So Children of the Night has employees and vans and
they go out at night and try to encourage kids
to get off the street. How does it work.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Well, we rescued over seventeen thousand kids. We don't just rescue.
We rescue, we stabilize that, we educate, and we have
a scholarship program to put them in college. We have
many kids are in college today. What happens is that
we're the only real hotline that knows what to do,
and this answers the phone twenty four to seven for
kids who need to get off the streets, who are
(05:29):
running away from a pimp, you know, because it doesn't
happen like in the afternoon between nine and five Monday
through Friday, and then it's a matter of manipulating the
situation to where she can get away from him safely.
Because you have to remember, these girls are out there,
their prostitutes, they're hopping in and out of cars. So
if we can get them into an uber, then we
can get them out of that area into a safe location.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
And where do where are these safe locations? Like how
do you where do you put them?
Speaker 2 (05:55):
If?
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Is it in foster care? And what kind of stabilization program?
Speaker 2 (05:58):
No, no, no, no, no, they're children. They have to
go to foster care. You're not allowed to touch them.
And that's they mandated that. The federal government mandated that
in twenty eighteen, which is a good thing. I mean,
it's not really an appropriate resource for them because these
are tough kids. And what do you do put them
on a foster's prome at four o'clock in the morning
when they're half naked, you know, drug scars and everything else.
(06:20):
So it's not a good workable program, but there are
services for them so that when they're older, when they're eighteen,
they can still get money for college. They can they
have their medical services if at any time they get sick,
and they have independent housing. So many of them will
resurf us again, and we will use that system to
help them when they're eighteen. But for us, it's a
matter of maneuving them, and even the police call us
(06:42):
because they need us to do a relocation because they've
got a girl who told them about a pampa. She
can't go back. So because we're dealing with growth eighteen
and over all we do is verify that there's a
responsible adult on the other end. It doesn't have to
be a parent. It can be a sister, a cousin,
somebody who's not involved in prostitution, who's got a job,
and so then it's a matter we do have. We
(07:02):
use domestic violence shelters a lot because they have the
same protocol as we had when we were running our home.
But our home is for children, and so now we
can't do that because of these new laws, which is okay.
So but we get them closed with the medical treatment,
we get them a plane ticket. By the time they
get to there where they're being relocated, and they can
(07:23):
be relocated in the middle of the night and put
on a plane. They've got food, they've got clothing, everything,
everything's been shipped to them, shipped for them through Amazon.
Thank God for Amazon. And we say that all the
time because it allows us to move very quickly, rather
than going to the garage and packing up things and
then shipping them in the you know, at the post
office the next day. It's just it's it's very labor intensive.
(07:46):
So once they're there and nurse stabilized, we get them
the medical treatment, We get them therapists because a lot
of therapy now is done through Zoom, and then we
sign them up for our tutoring program. We have a
Zoom tutoring program. We tutor for the is a GED,
We teach the tests, and we sponsor a high school
graduation every year when we fly them out. They get
to stay in the Universal Studios. They get to go
(08:08):
to the studios for their grad night. We have a
cap and gown ceremony. It's really a big deal.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Goodness amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Even if you go to the children the Night website
and you look at programs. You look at graduations. You
can see the kids we bring in and we have to.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Go to do a quick break kids that were Doctor Lee.
This is so interesting. We have to go to a
quick break before we do. I want to make sure
that we say the phone number out a few times.
If you want to reach out to Children of the Night.
The numbers one eight hundred five five one thirteen hundred
extension zero. That's one eight hundred and five to five,
one thirteen hundred extension zero. Welcome back to the Dr
(08:45):
Wendywall Show, the home stretch of the Doctor Wendywall Show
on kf I am six forty. My guest is doctor
Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night. It's an
organization I am sure you have heard of because it's
America's first and most acclaimed nonprofit and social service agency
dedicated solely to the rescue of child prostitutes across the
(09:06):
United States, Doctor Lee, Before we talk about your podcast,
I want to know about what made you create this organization.
You were only twenty five years old and you were
in graduate school and how did this all come about?
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Well, I was seeing the police for not arresting customers
and so I was meeting prostitutes young women in the
courtroom because it was part of the defense for their arrest.
And I met a young woman who was a heroin
attic and running an escorts service, and she called me
one night about a girl that was missing and foul
play and I tracked it down and it was a
Hillside strangler. She turned out to be victim number eleven.
She's a seventeen year old girl. And the fact that
(09:46):
nobody would help her and that the police wouldn't even respond,
they said things to be like, aw she's just a horrie.
She changed trick houses wings in the car out there.
It was awful. So I just I went on the
news and I said, if you're involved in the prostitut
business and you think you know that the Hillside stranglers don't,
and you don't want to talk to cop, don't call them,
call me. And thank god for ABC, NBC and KFWB.
(10:08):
They gave me full time reporters and we ran with
the tips from my home phone because that's where they came.
The calls came in and I refused to work with
the police because of the way they behaved, and we
chased them down. It ended up that I ended up
putting together the key witnesses to prosecute them, and I too,
testified as an expert witness. So that changed my life.
That took me from the lush of the Ivory Tower
(10:32):
into the streets and I began to find twelve and
thirteen eleven year old kids and the police go, nah,
she's not you know, she's got a record. I'm going,
you better look at this, and I go get birth
certificates from the parents and finally they said, oh my god,
she's telling the truth.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And you know, so heartbreaking work. So you decided this
year to create a podcast to bring greater awareness to
this problem to everybody. It's called The Lewis Lee Show.
You can find it on the iHeartRadio app as well
as on YouTube. Why did you decide to create the
podcast and what can people expect by listening to it?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Well, I mean, I've been doing this for forty six years.
I've helped seventeen thousd I've rescued seventeen thousand kids, and
it's just it's hard to get to do all the
things that really need to be done. I really need
to teach other people who want to do this job,
to do this kind of work, and I also want
(11:30):
people to understand what happened to these women and that
rehabilitation is is something that is possible and it's not
going to be done with a crash pad or you know,
something really cheap. But it takes work, it takes time,
and it takes understanding. And so it gives me an
opportunity to let the women talk about where they are
today and to talk to them about how we met
(11:52):
and what the childun Night program was like. And a
lot of stuff comes up to where like if they're
teaching moments for people who want to do sex trafficking
programs of how to ate, what programs are relevant, and
then what happened to them, And that's fairly brief. There's
no need to go through detail because many of them
have children. And one of the things that came up
with in the podcast is many of them do have children.
(12:12):
I said, what do you tell your kids? And you know,
you always know there's some jerk in the family or
someone in your life is going to tell the kids
what you did when you were a teenager. So it's
best if you get there first. And so they all
have different ways of dealing with it, and I asked,
you want me to put together a monthly zoom meeting
with a top notch psychologist to work this out, and
we'll call it what to do with What to tell
(12:33):
the kids? And so that new program will kick off
in January. It's already in motion in terms of development.
It's pretty much developed. It's just coordinating schedules now.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
And all the money that you raise for Children of
the Night is private donations, correct, You're not government funded. Now.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
I've raised sixty million dollars in the last forty six years,
all private. I don't want to be tied to government
because well, first of all, I'm dealing in an area
to where they want access to the kids, and I'm
happy to you know, if the kids want to talk
to them, that's fine, and many of them do. But
at the same time, I don't work for them. I mean,
they will tell me things like head of the FBI
(13:11):
in New York tried to tell me they wouldn't send
me any kids because I was not going to take
them to the beach and I was not going to
take them to the movie, and they would not be
leaving the facility. And I said I'm not a prison.
Go find some other place for your kids. I'm sorry
I can't help them, but you don't run me, you know.
So I've had to stand down a lot of very
powerful people in order to do what I do, and
very much for you. And I'll like a mother him
(13:32):
and these are my children.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
And I also think that your voice has gone a
very long way, even using the legal system to change
the laws. We can celebrate the fact that prostitution is
now not illegal, but it is illegal to be a customer.
Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Yes, that is correct, And so adults women are no
longer arrested, and children are immediately given access to Department
Children's Services or who their program need to be overhauled
to deal with kids who are not So you know,
we're no longer dealing with kids on the farm where
mom died. I mean, we're dealing with, you know, kids
who've been roughed up a lot in their life, not
just prostitute kids, but lots of kids.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
I recently saw the interview and interview on YouTube I
think it was Australia sixty Minutes with Virginia Guffrey before
she passed away, talking about you know, our first sexual
abuse happened at seven and then fourteen, and by the
time Gerline Maxwell with her posh accent came along, you know,
she knew no boundaries because people had abused her her
(14:36):
whole life. It's so sad to think about. How can
people donate to Children of the Night.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
Just go to Children Ofthnight dot org the website and
you can donate right there.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
I think, as we go ahead.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
Well there's an address there too if we want to
mail in a check. You know, people have different ways
they like to transport their money.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Children Offthnight dot org. As we head into the holiday season,
it is a time of course we should all be
giving all year long, because not only does it help others,
but there's research to show it supports and improves your
own mental health to donate and give and improve the
lives of others. So childreno Thenight dot org might be
(15:17):
a place for your holiday giving. Doctor Lois Lee, thank
you so much for joining us on KFI. I'm so
excited to listen to the podcast again. It's the Doctor
Lois Lee Show. You can find it on the iHeartRadio
app as well as on YouTube. Thanks for being with us.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Wendy and thank you for joining us on The Doctor
Wendy Wall Show. A reminder next week we have a
very special three and a half hour Doctor Wendy Wall Show,
and I have an entire hour devoted to a very
interesting interview with doctor Justin Garcia, the director of the
famed Kinsey Institute, So you're not gonna want to miss that.
(15:55):
I'm here for you every Sunday from seven to nine pm,
but we're starting way earlier. Next tweet check your local listings.
You've been listening to The Doctor Wendy Wall Show on
KFI A M six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
app
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