Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark on the Georgia
and Use Network. The Unholy Tour is coming March the nineteenth.
On this tour, lawmakers, city councilmen, and other leaders, we
will hear from victims, nonprofits and law enforcement about the
harms of sex trafficking and what can be done to
stop it. The tour is hosted by Public Service Commissioner
(00:31):
Tim Eccles, who joins me today, you have the Unholy
Tour coming up. It's come. What are the dates for that?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
What's the date for Yeah, this year, March nineteenth. It
runs from about five point thirty to nine o'clock.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
So you are captive. You're on a bus. You can't
get off.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
There is a restroom, but we hold you captive so
we can take you to all of these places and
show you the horrific stuff going on out there.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
What type of stuff do you do? I mean, I know,
you ride around and you just who's in, who's on
the bus.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
So I have an MC who has basically m seed
every one of these I've done for ten years, and
she used to work in some of these clubs and
now has an organization called for Sarah the number four
Sarah named after her daughter, and she really works with
a lot of victims and because she's had that experiencing,
(01:22):
she came out of it and lived to tell about it.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I have her there.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We have other victims, and of course we don't let
the media film the victims, you know, they're very self conscious.
We have law enforcement on there, GBI, sometimes a Task
Force member, and then of course we have some of
the nonprofits that provide aid, safe houses, other things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Talk about where you go along the way as much
as you can talk about where you go, what do
you show them on the way.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So I've got legislators primarily on the bus and legislative aide.
So these legislators turn over at the Capitol. They'll serve
for two, four, six, ten years, and so we have
to keep this going because the new ones that come
in and we want them to see what's going on.
So a lot of them are are from outside Metro Atlanta.
They don't they don't know anything about these things. So
(02:17):
we'll go to Fulton Industrial and if you've never been
to Fulton Industrial, uh it it has a lot of
you know, trafficking related businesses there. There's been hotels that
have aided and abedding and human trafficking there that have
been sued. You'll see various women out on the streets there.
(02:40):
You'll see truckers stopping and picking them up. I mean,
it's uh, you know that road and Cheshire Bridge are
probably the two biggest.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So we'll go to the back of a strip club.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We won't we don't let anybody out of the bus,
but we stop and then we have one of our victims.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Talk about, Okay it was at this club.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Was that this was happening to me. We'll go to
an extended stay motel. We'll have someone tell a story
about that, maybe a law enforcement officer that had done
a stake out there or in the rest. We'll go
to massage parlors. These massage parlors often traffic Asian women.
Some of the women, we are told from some of
(03:21):
the folks on our tour of some of those massage
parlors with the women are actually sleeping in the back there.
So they are essentially indentured servants there until they quote
pay off their air, for their clothes, their food bill
and everything else. They just get trapped in the cycle.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Wow, do the law enforcement officers there go back after
you've already gone through and they say, oh, we see
a place, and then they go after that.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
The only time that we had this happen was on
our first one, where a grandmother had seen the coverage
on one of the TV stations that had been on
the bus since Collin and said, my granddaughter's missing. And
Sergeant Kennedy, who worked on the task force with the
Camp County, then took that information got a subpoena for
(04:11):
the back then it was backpage where these girls were
being advertised. They were being advertised as twenty three and
twenty five.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Year old girls.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They were actually fifteen, and so they did a sting.
They rescued the girls, and Casey with four Sarah helped
them finish graduating from high school and I was at
their ceremony. So it was at a great story and
those girls were rescued just as a result of the
media coverage on the Annharly tool.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
You know, so many of these girls with the airport here,
they go off to another country or something. Some they
catch them and take them, but there's so many here
at home still. I mean, this is a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, my daughter works for the Justice Department. I'm not
allowed to talk much about what she does, but she's
told me about these travelers.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
They're called travelers.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
There are men who come here to have sex with
underage girls in some of those airport hotels, and they
are lured here, oftentimes by a reverse sting that an
agent from the Justice Department is doing. So the man's
coming here thinking he's meeting up with a mother who's
(05:21):
selling her daughter at a hotel and he's going to
have her for an hour or two. But the men
are met by a federal agency as they're getting off
the plane with handcuffs and then they go to jail.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Wow. I didn't know they did that.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
It's happening at Hartsville. Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
What about the hotel owners, the owners of the those
hotels out there where you go on the tour, did
they bear any responsibility at all?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, according to one attorney, they do. And there's a
law firm here in Atlanta going after more and more
of these hotels when they can prove that the the
front desk manager or the management of the hotel knew
that this was going on and they were kind of
covering it up.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Okay, because they get paid for it. I guess get
some money.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I have no idea if they're getting tips or whatnot.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
But clearly, you know, these these pimps, they like these
open air hotels, not the ones that have corridors, but
the ones that face outside, and so.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
They'll have several rooms.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
They're moving these girls from Jacksonville to Atlanta to Charlotte,
you know, often around sporting events where men will be
and then the men are brought to that hotel. There's
a pimp maybe that has four or five girls. Some
of the girls are underage, some of them are not.
It's just a matter of finding this out once the
(06:48):
arrest is made and you can find out, okay, who
is this girl, actually running her through a facial recognition
system if she's in the system, or maybe she's you,
And of course they're trying to find out, okay, was
she kidnapped, how does she get here?
Speaker 3 (07:05):
What's the situation?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Because it is a felony to pimp a miner, it's
not a felony to pimp an adult, so it's a misdemeanor.
So but you can go to jail for a long
time for pimping out miners.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Wow, I didn't know that. Really, I I didn't know
that you'd go you couldn't go to jail for adult
I didn't know you couldn't do that.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, unfortunately, you know, our laws are pretty loose on that.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah. Did these people, these girls, did they want to
be there? I mean, you know what I'm saying that
they seem like they they there, they go to Jacksonville
and Nashville or wherever they're going to go city the city,
it seemed like I guess they promised certain things if
they go.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, they're often promised drugs, okay, and they're addicted to
drug and the drugs and the pimp is they're a
drug dealer, and the way they're paying him is to
have sex with men, you know, wherever he takes them
and so. But other times we're told by victims, you know,
(08:09):
he threatened to kill my mother, he threatened to kill
my sister or my family's in Mexico, and they said
they would kill them if I didn't do this. Extortions
usually involved And to answer your question, no, no, they
don't want to be doing that. I mean, nobody wants
to be abused five, ten, fifteen times a day. Nobody
(08:32):
wants that. But these women get into this difficult situation
where they're being extorted or abused, or they've gotten strung
out on heroin or whatever, and they can't they can't escape.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Now, what do the people say when they see the
bus coming through on Holy Tour you get your bus
going around? Do they know what that bus is about?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I don't think they do, because our bus is donated
by Samson Trailway.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So we pull up in a really nice charter of us.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
We're not getting out right, and we don't have any
you know police, you know, escort with blue lights, so
you know, probably at these hotels, I just think it's
a tour group, some you know, sports team pulling in.
I don't think they think anything about it.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Really, they don't. Oh man, you just just right around there.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Two hours.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
We're incognito as we travel around. We even went to
a karaoke bar out in Gwinnette County because in the
Korean culture you have you have various levels of karaoke
bars and some of them are involved in prostitution. Some
of them are legit, but there was one in Gwinnett
(09:41):
County that was facilitating trafficking.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Oh really, did they close it down.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I don't think he closed down.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I mean I think they you know, they go in,
they arrest the you know, the people involved with it
and often the owners are are are insulated.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Hey, I didn't know this was happening. Da da dah.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What about this this time around? Anything special you can
say that we're going to do or what you're going
to do or on this trip.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
We always go to Fulton Industrial that's close to the capital,
you know, we'll go out towards some you know, the
battery out there. There was a hotel that that was
involved with some things out there. We'll go to Cheshire Bridge,
of course, I called Cheshire Bridge Human Trafficking Parkway.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
There's so many things.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And they go eat there a lot, not not the
tooman trafficking go and eat at regular paces there.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
There's some great old restaurants.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's great old school bakeries there, but unfortunately you've got
all those establishments around there. We've gone to truck stops
as well. We'll take folks to truck stops because there
are women that are working these truck stops. And when
I say women, there's always a man involved. There's always
(10:52):
some man that is using these women, uh who who
may be sitting in an escalade or some other vehicle
off to the side, and the women are crawling into
various trucks at at these truck stops.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Now you did this as part of your William Wilberforce
event the campaign, brother, when you started talk about that.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, William Wilberforce, folks may know, was a British parliamentarian
and he was credited with ending the slave trade. And
you think about it, the slave trade was human trafficking
at scale. So William Wilberforce, uh, you know, decided, you
know what, I'm going to end the slave trade in
Great Britain. And I was watching the film called Amazing Grace,
(11:38):
and there's a scene in there when he's on the
back of this big slave ship and he's holding these
shackles and and he's speaking to some fellow parliamentarians who
are in this little cruise boat that they were doing
in the in London and in the in the Thames there,
and he the ladies were covering their nose, the wives
of these parliamentarians were covering their nose because of the
(12:00):
stench coming off these slave ships that was there. This
slave ship was called the Madagascar, and he said, ladies,
take those handkerchiefs off your nose and breathe deep the
smell of death. So I got this idea that while
if Wilberforce was taking people on a harbor tour to
(12:21):
see the Madagascar, what if I put people in a
bus and take them to these places in Atlanta when
I've got a captive audience much better than a PowerPoint
in some room. Let's have a real experience out here.
Let's let them hear from victims and people that are
working in the space, especially these nonprofits that are having
(12:41):
trouble raising money. There's one nonprofit that removes the tattoos
that some of the women are given them that.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
We had brand showed them on the show. Were wonderful.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, So we have that group on there and we
really try to showcase a lot of the folks doing
the good work in this. Of course, I've got to
give a lot of kudos to Chris Carr, the Attorney General,
Marty Kemp, our first Lady, because they really have they
really spent some political capital on this.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
We had missus Kemp on last year talking about her
commission that she has the Grace Commission, and she I mean,
she told me things I didn't even know it existed,
that happen. There's so many things like that, aren't there.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, she's had a chance to talk with a lot
of the victims because that facility they set up up
there in Paulding County was the state of the art
for miners coming out of trafficking. It had a little school,
it had a little job training center, it had every girl,
had a little bedroom, and it had a fence around
(13:49):
it because you've got to protect these girls, one from themselves,
because they may come in there and they're addicted to
heroin and they need a fix, and so they've got
to dry out. And then of course the pimps that
are now upset that they're that their source of income,
you know, is sitting over here in this building. So
(14:11):
there's armed guards at those places.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Wow, do you get it? You get girls out of this?
When you do get some girls away from this, and
they but it's hard to get back into the norm.
What's get away from this?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It is?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
And my wife's a counselor, and she counsels some of
these women and she she doesn't tell me what they say.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I'm not privy to that.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But she said it is tragic and that they will
need counseling for the rest of their life because when
you're taken, you're extorted, you're forced to have sex, and
you know, and you know, the research has shown some
of the most common injuries to these girls is having
teeth knocked out. So these men are renting these girls,
(14:52):
they're hitting them, they're abusing them, they're knocking their teeth out.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
That's why having.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
First response triage nurses trained to know what to look
for it's so important because when that girl sitting in
front of them in that emergency room, away from that pimp,
that is the best time to get law enforcement involved
because she's intimidated. If she's sitting with him, he may
(15:19):
be in the car out in the parking lot. She's
in there trying to get patched up. That's the time
to help her.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Right, So you should call then if you see somebody,
see something, say something in that case, call the police.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, but hopefully the nurses already know that. Okay, well, okay,
got a tooth knocked out here, she's fourteen years old,
you know, also got wounds here there. I mean, it
adds up pretty quick.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, it really does, so you get them out of there.
And there are situations where they do get out.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Eventually they do get out. We've got you know, well
Spring living on the South Side. It just takes a
long time for them, you know, to be healed through this.
And I don't think we can under estimate the importance
of the of the spiritual part of this. While a
lot of faith organizations are involved, because you know, these
(16:12):
girls don't feel worth anything. So you've got to remind them. Look,
God loves you. You're rescued from this, your life can change.
My daughter who's with the Justice Department, I had a
chance to go up to Charlottesville when she got an
award for the care that she was giving to trafficking victims,
(16:33):
a special award that she got from the US Attorney
up there. And she's working every day in trying to
put some of these perpetrators, these perverts. And she tells me, Dad,
a lot of men in their fifties and sixties, white
men in their fifties and sixties, who are the perpetrators.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
It's not a good thing.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Wow, do you get men involved with that? Men get
trafficked as well?
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Not that not that often.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
There there are you know, obviously some going on, and
we we talk a little bit about that where but
we're mostly focused on the women because that's the most
the most common, is it it?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now we're talking about Atlanta, you do an unholy tour,
But it's all going on all over the state of Georgia,
all over statewide. It goes on. It almost every county
does it.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It does it even happened in some of these migrant camps.
But it's mostly where men are because they're the customers.
They're buying it and they're not asking for an I
d uh so uh. It's moving, you know, up and
down the expressway. They're trying to move away from law enforcement.
(17:47):
They're trying to be careful and not get caught.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
And and they are an audacious, bold group of men
who quote own these girls. And we've talked to a
lot of law enforcement about this. But these guys think
that they are indestructible and they're very difficult. They're careful,
but they're very difficult to prosecute.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
But they do get prosecuted, and they do get put
away for a while.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Right, And they do get put away for a long time. Yeah,
because it's often one felony on top of another. They've
got drugs, They've got heroin in their vehicle, because that's
how they're extorting the girl they've got. They've got these
girls who now come testify against them if they can
get them to testify against them. There's some assault charges,
(18:37):
there's taking girls over state lines, and there's all of
these things that add up. And so oftentimes my daughter says,
they'll they will settle with them, but you know, maybe
there's twenty felonies stacked up and they settle for eight
of them, and they'll spend thirty years in jail.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Okay. And what I talked about, we had the good
group on here who does the tattoo removal, and they
had we had one girl on and she she had
an assumed name, she didn't give a real name, and
she told us about this. She told us all the
tattoos she had and she had tend to remove. I
(19:17):
couldn't even believe it. I couldn't believe that she was fascinating.
But she had been in trouble in Arizona and now
she was somewhere else and she's having to start all
over again. But she's having to be careful who she
tells that.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
She is a lot of these kids come out of
the foster system. And I'm told by law enforcement that
ninety percent of prostitutes were in the foster system. And
i mean, if you're out there and you and you're
a foster parent, thank you, thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
We need more more like you.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Can you go down and run down your nonprofits that
are benefiting from this, can need to benefit from this
where people can give money to.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, you think about Wellspring Living that provides a
safehouse for these girls for Sarah, which basically takes girls
that have coming that are coming out of the adult
entertainment industry, because I'm told by for Sarah that about
half of those girls that dance at these clubs have
(20:26):
a pimp, so they are they may be dancing, but
that's that's a way to get business after after the club.
So we got for Sarah there. We've got a number
of law enforcement agencies, including the Polaris Group. This a
federal basically a federal task force. So you know, there's
(20:49):
so many different groups that are out there that are
providing care and we still need more.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And these companies they accept donations or people.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
They're all five O, one C three organizations. So if
you want to find out more about that, you can
just call my office and talk to my assistant who
organizes the End Holy to re Form me Faith Henting,
and or just email me Tim at tim ecles dot
com and I can just give you a list of
these nonprofits if you want to.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
If you want to provide some help.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Let's talk a little bit more about your William Wilberforce group.
You're meeting later on this year again, right.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yes, I have an annual event called the William Wilberforce Fellowship.
It's at Jackson Lake. We take thirty guys. You were
one of our speakers last year. Thank you for that.
And it's really taking young men in their twenties and
thirties and really helping them to see some of the
things going on in the culture. To be, you know,
(21:51):
to be a strong leader out there, willing to stand
for those that you know that that are having a
difficult time. I'm willing to you know, be a good
family man, take care of your family and you know,
raise your children in the way that you need to.
So it's a fantastic event. I'd love to have folks
(22:13):
tend is Wilberforcefellowship dot com and you.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Can go on there and if you want attend, just
right on there which you want to attend and go
from there.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, we have a little interview to make sure you're
right for the for the program, but it is a
faith based program.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
But we would love to have you.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's a great organization. I really enjoyed speaking to him
last year and I really got a lot out of that.
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You know, John, I love what I do on the
Public Service Commission and our grid is important, but these
other things are important too, all right. And so you know,
whether it's the teenpac group that I started, it's in
all fifty states now working with high school kids taking
to the capital, or the Wilberforce Fellowship or the Unholy Tour.
(22:56):
These really I think will be my legacy more so
than anything that I do on the Power Grid.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well, I know the Wilberforce is doing great, and of
course you got the Unholy Tour coming up. To go
on the Unholy Tour, it fills up quick, but they
can still go to it. Where do you go to
find out?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Well, we're probably going to put you on the waiting
list because we prioritize legislators, right, but if six legislators
don't show up, we'll, you know, we'll call you and
say it looks like you know, we're going to have
six openings your next So, but we do want the
legislators going and city council people elected officials who are
(23:35):
actually passing ordinances making laws, because that's how we, you know,
can go after these guys.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
So we we.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Really need them to be aware. But we have others
on there who who say, you know what I want
to I want to learn more about this, I want
to donate to some of these charities, and we and
we get them on the bus as well.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Well, I'm going with you. So I'm going to be there.
It's will be interesting and uh, I'm looking forward to it.
I went lookle for and saw some things that has
still stuck with me, and I hope something else doestick
with me. I really, I really do. I ready do
I want to see something? Yeah, I think to do something.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
You'll be touched, you know by these these victim testimonies. Uh,
it's heartbreaking, really it's heartbreaking, and and I think you
know what what our media does and helping get the
word out is so important because people may have someone
(24:35):
they know that Okay, this, this girl is being invited
to be on this you know this music video.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
This doesn't sound right.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Uh, you know, I need to get somebody involved here,
because that's often what these guys do. They'll lure these
girls goes into some music video, some modeling opportunity, and
you don't want the parents involved and or and that's
why they love going out after foster kid to run
aways because there's no one to watch over them.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Well, we're going to see how it goes up. Lave
it this month on the Only Tour. And I thank
you very much for coming in and talking about this today.
I really do.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
That's Public Service Commissioner Tim Eccles talking about his Unholy
Tour coming on March nineteenth. For more information on the tour,
you can email f Henning at PSC dot g A
dot gov. For questions and comments on today's show, you
can email me John Clark at Georgeannewsnetwork dot com. Thanks
for listening. I'll talk to you next week right here
on your local radio station on Georgia Focus
Welcome to Georgia Focus. I'm John Clark on the Georgia
and Use Network. The Unholy Tour is coming March the nineteenth.
On this tour, lawmakers, city councilmen, and other leaders, we
will hear from victims, nonprofits and law enforcement about the
harms of sex trafficking and what can be done to
stop it. The tour is hosted by Public Service Commissioner
(00:31):
Tim Eccles, who joins me today, you have the Unholy
Tour coming up. It's come. What are the dates for that?
Speaker 2 (00:37):
What's the date for Yeah, this year, March nineteenth. It
runs from about five point thirty to nine o'clock.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
So you are captive. You're on a bus. You can't
get off.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
There is a restroom, but we hold you captive so
we can take you to all of these places and
show you the horrific stuff going on out there.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
What type of stuff do you do? I mean, I know,
you ride around and you just who's in, who's on
the bus.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
So I have an MC who has basically m seed
every one of these I've done for ten years, and
she used to work in some of these clubs and
now has an organization called for Sarah the number four
Sarah named after her daughter, and she really works with
a lot of victims and because she's had that experiencing,
(01:22):
she came out of it and lived to tell about it.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
I have her there.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We have other victims, and of course we don't let
the media film the victims, you know, they're very self conscious.
We have law enforcement on there, GBI, sometimes a Task
Force member, and then of course we have some of
the nonprofits that provide aid, safe houses, other things like that.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Talk about where you go along the way as much
as you can talk about where you go, what do
you show them on the way.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
So I've got legislators primarily on the bus and legislative aide.
So these legislators turn over at the Capitol. They'll serve
for two, four, six, ten years, and so we have
to keep this going because the new ones that come
in and we want them to see what's going on.
So a lot of them are are from outside Metro Atlanta.
They don't they don't know anything about these things. So
(02:17):
we'll go to Fulton Industrial and if you've never been
to Fulton Industrial, uh it it has a lot of
you know, trafficking related businesses there. There's been hotels that
have aided and abedding and human trafficking there that have
been sued. You'll see various women out on the streets there.
(02:40):
You'll see truckers stopping and picking them up. I mean,
it's uh, you know that road and Cheshire Bridge are
probably the two biggest.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So we'll go to the back of a strip club.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
We won't we don't let anybody out of the bus,
but we stop and then we have one of our victims.
Speaker 3 (02:57):
Talk about, Okay it was at this club.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Was that this was happening to me. We'll go to
an extended stay motel. We'll have someone tell a story
about that, maybe a law enforcement officer that had done
a stake out there or in the rest. We'll go
to massage parlors. These massage parlors often traffic Asian women.
Some of the women, we are told from some of
(03:21):
the folks on our tour of some of those massage
parlors with the women are actually sleeping in the back there.
So they are essentially indentured servants there until they quote
pay off their air, for their clothes, their food bill
and everything else. They just get trapped in the cycle.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
Wow, do the law enforcement officers there go back after
you've already gone through and they say, oh, we see
a place, and then they go after that.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
The only time that we had this happen was on
our first one, where a grandmother had seen the coverage
on one of the TV stations that had been on
the bus since Collin and said, my granddaughter's missing. And
Sergeant Kennedy, who worked on the task force with the
Camp County, then took that information got a subpoena for
(04:11):
the back then it was backpage where these girls were
being advertised. They were being advertised as twenty three and
twenty five.
Speaker 3 (04:19):
Year old girls.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
They were actually fifteen, and so they did a sting.
They rescued the girls, and Casey with four Sarah helped
them finish graduating from high school and I was at
their ceremony. So it was at a great story and
those girls were rescued just as a result of the
media coverage on the Annharly tool.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
You know, so many of these girls with the airport here,
they go off to another country or something. Some they
catch them and take them, but there's so many here
at home still. I mean, this is a perfect example.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Yeah, my daughter works for the Justice Department. I'm not
allowed to talk much about what she does, but she's
told me about these travelers.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
They're called travelers.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
There are men who come here to have sex with
underage girls in some of those airport hotels, and they
are lured here, oftentimes by a reverse sting that an
agent from the Justice Department is doing. So the man's
coming here thinking he's meeting up with a mother who's
(05:21):
selling her daughter at a hotel and he's going to
have her for an hour or two. But the men
are met by a federal agency as they're getting off
the plane with handcuffs and then they go to jail.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Wow. I didn't know they did that.
Speaker 3 (05:36):
It's happening at Hartsville. Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
What about the hotel owners, the owners of the those
hotels out there where you go on the tour, did
they bear any responsibility at all?
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, according to one attorney, they do. And there's a
law firm here in Atlanta going after more and more
of these hotels when they can prove that the the
front desk manager or the management of the hotel knew
that this was going on and they were kind of
covering it up.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Okay, because they get paid for it. I guess get
some money.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
I have no idea if they're getting tips or whatnot.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
But clearly, you know, these these pimps, they like these
open air hotels, not the ones that have corridors, but
the ones that face outside, and so.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
They'll have several rooms.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
They're moving these girls from Jacksonville to Atlanta to Charlotte,
you know, often around sporting events where men will be
and then the men are brought to that hotel. There's
a pimp maybe that has four or five girls. Some
of the girls are underage, some of them are not.
It's just a matter of finding this out once the
(06:48):
arrest is made and you can find out, okay, who
is this girl, actually running her through a facial recognition
system if she's in the system, or maybe she's you,
And of course they're trying to find out, okay, was
she kidnapped, how does she get here?
Speaker 3 (07:05):
What's the situation?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Because it is a felony to pimp a miner, it's
not a felony to pimp an adult, so it's a misdemeanor.
So but you can go to jail for a long
time for pimping out miners.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
Wow, I didn't know that. Really, I I didn't know
that you'd go you couldn't go to jail for adult
I didn't know you couldn't do that.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
Yeah, unfortunately, you know, our laws are pretty loose on that.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
Yeah. Did these people, these girls, did they want to
be there? I mean, you know what I'm saying that
they seem like they they there, they go to Jacksonville
and Nashville or wherever they're going to go city the city,
it seemed like I guess they promised certain things if
they go.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Well, they're often promised drugs, okay, and they're addicted to
drug and the drugs and the pimp is they're a
drug dealer, and the way they're paying him is to
have sex with men, you know, wherever he takes them
and so. But other times we're told by victims, you know,
(08:09):
he threatened to kill my mother, he threatened to kill
my sister or my family's in Mexico, and they said
they would kill them if I didn't do this. Extortions
usually involved And to answer your question, no, no, they
don't want to be doing that. I mean, nobody wants
to be abused five, ten, fifteen times a day. Nobody
(08:32):
wants that. But these women get into this difficult situation
where they're being extorted or abused, or they've gotten strung
out on heroin or whatever, and they can't they can't escape.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Now, what do the people say when they see the
bus coming through on Holy Tour you get your bus
going around? Do they know what that bus is about?
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I don't think they do, because our bus is donated
by Samson Trailway.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
So we pull up in a really nice charter of us.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
We're not getting out right, and we don't have any
you know police, you know, escort with blue lights, so
you know, probably at these hotels, I just think it's
a tour group, some you know, sports team pulling in.
I don't think they think anything about it.
Speaker 1 (09:18):
Really, they don't. Oh man, you just just right around there.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
Two hours.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
We're incognito as we travel around. We even went to
a karaoke bar out in Gwinnette County because in the
Korean culture you have you have various levels of karaoke
bars and some of them are involved in prostitution. Some
of them are legit, but there was one in Gwinnett
(09:41):
County that was facilitating trafficking.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Oh really, did they close it down.
Speaker 3 (09:45):
I don't think he closed down.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I mean I think they you know, they go in,
they arrest the you know, the people involved with it
and often the owners are are are insulated.
Speaker 3 (09:54):
Hey, I didn't know this was happening. Da da dah.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
What about this this time around? Anything special you can
say that we're going to do or what you're going
to do or on this trip.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
We always go to Fulton Industrial that's close to the capital,
you know, we'll go out towards some you know, the
battery out there. There was a hotel that that was
involved with some things out there. We'll go to Cheshire Bridge,
of course, I called Cheshire Bridge Human Trafficking Parkway.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
There's so many things.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
And they go eat there a lot, not not the
tooman trafficking go and eat at regular paces there.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
There's some great old restaurants.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
It's great old school bakeries there, but unfortunately you've got
all those establishments around there. We've gone to truck stops
as well. We'll take folks to truck stops because there
are women that are working these truck stops. And when
I say women, there's always a man involved. There's always
(10:52):
some man that is using these women, uh who who
may be sitting in an escalade or some other vehicle
off to the side, and the women are crawling into
various trucks at at these truck stops.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Now you did this as part of your William Wilberforce
event the campaign, brother, when you started talk about that.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
Yeah, William Wilberforce, folks may know, was a British parliamentarian
and he was credited with ending the slave trade. And
you think about it, the slave trade was human trafficking
at scale. So William Wilberforce, uh, you know, decided, you
know what, I'm going to end the slave trade in
Great Britain. And I was watching the film called Amazing Grace,
(11:38):
and there's a scene in there when he's on the
back of this big slave ship and he's holding these
shackles and and he's speaking to some fellow parliamentarians who
are in this little cruise boat that they were doing
in the in London and in the in the Thames there,
and he the ladies were covering their nose, the wives
of these parliamentarians were covering their nose because of the
(12:00):
stench coming off these slave ships that was there. This
slave ship was called the Madagascar, and he said, ladies,
take those handkerchiefs off your nose and breathe deep the
smell of death. So I got this idea that while
if Wilberforce was taking people on a harbor tour to
(12:21):
see the Madagascar, what if I put people in a
bus and take them to these places in Atlanta when
I've got a captive audience much better than a PowerPoint
in some room. Let's have a real experience out here.
Let's let them hear from victims and people that are
working in the space, especially these nonprofits that are having
(12:41):
trouble raising money. There's one nonprofit that removes the tattoos
that some of the women are given them that.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
We had brand showed them on the show. Were wonderful.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Yeah, So we have that group on there and we
really try to showcase a lot of the folks doing
the good work in this. Of course, I've got to
give a lot of kudos to Chris Carr, the Attorney General,
Marty Kemp, our first Lady, because they really have they
really spent some political capital on this.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
We had missus Kemp on last year talking about her
commission that she has the Grace Commission, and she I mean,
she told me things I didn't even know it existed,
that happen. There's so many things like that, aren't there.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, she's had a chance to talk with a lot
of the victims because that facility they set up up
there in Paulding County was the state of the art
for miners coming out of trafficking. It had a little school,
it had a little job training center, it had every girl,
had a little bedroom, and it had a fence around
(13:49):
it because you've got to protect these girls, one from themselves,
because they may come in there and they're addicted to
heroin and they need a fix, and so they've got
to dry out. And then of course the pimps that
are now upset that they're that their source of income,
you know, is sitting over here in this building. So
(14:11):
there's armed guards at those places.
Speaker 1 (14:13):
Wow, do you get it? You get girls out of this?
When you do get some girls away from this, and
they but it's hard to get back into the norm.
What's get away from this?
Speaker 3 (14:22):
It is?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
And my wife's a counselor, and she counsels some of
these women and she she doesn't tell me what they say.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
I'm not privy to that.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
But she said it is tragic and that they will
need counseling for the rest of their life because when
you're taken, you're extorted, you're forced to have sex, and
you know, and you know, the research has shown some
of the most common injuries to these girls is having
teeth knocked out. So these men are renting these girls,
(14:52):
they're hitting them, they're abusing them, they're knocking their teeth out.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
That's why having.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
First response triage nurses trained to know what to look
for it's so important because when that girl sitting in
front of them in that emergency room, away from that pimp,
that is the best time to get law enforcement involved
because she's intimidated. If she's sitting with him, he may
(15:19):
be in the car out in the parking lot. She's
in there trying to get patched up. That's the time
to help her.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
Right, So you should call then if you see somebody,
see something, say something in that case, call the police.
Speaker 2 (15:33):
Yeah, but hopefully the nurses already know that. Okay, well, okay,
got a tooth knocked out here, she's fourteen years old,
you know, also got wounds here there. I mean, it
adds up pretty quick.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, it really does, so you get them out of there.
And there are situations where they do get out.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Eventually they do get out. We've got you know, well
Spring living on the South Side. It just takes a
long time for them, you know, to be healed through this.
And I don't think we can under estimate the importance
of the of the spiritual part of this. While a
lot of faith organizations are involved, because you know, these
(16:12):
girls don't feel worth anything. So you've got to remind them. Look,
God loves you. You're rescued from this, your life can change.
My daughter who's with the Justice Department, I had a
chance to go up to Charlottesville when she got an
award for the care that she was giving to trafficking victims,
(16:33):
a special award that she got from the US Attorney
up there. And she's working every day in trying to
put some of these perpetrators, these perverts. And she tells me, Dad,
a lot of men in their fifties and sixties, white
men in their fifties and sixties, who are the perpetrators.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
It's not a good thing.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Wow, do you get men involved with that? Men get
trafficked as well?
Speaker 3 (17:02):
Not that not that often.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
There there are you know, obviously some going on, and
we we talk a little bit about that where but
we're mostly focused on the women because that's the most
the most common, is it it?
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Now we're talking about Atlanta, you do an unholy tour,
But it's all going on all over the state of Georgia,
all over statewide. It goes on. It almost every county
does it.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
It does it even happened in some of these migrant camps.
But it's mostly where men are because they're the customers.
They're buying it and they're not asking for an I
d uh so uh. It's moving, you know, up and
down the expressway. They're trying to move away from law enforcement.
(17:47):
They're trying to be careful and not get caught.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
And and they are an audacious, bold group of men
who quote own these girls. And we've talked to a
lot of law enforcement about this. But these guys think
that they are indestructible and they're very difficult. They're careful,
but they're very difficult to prosecute.
Speaker 1 (18:13):
But they do get prosecuted, and they do get put
away for a while.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Right, And they do get put away for a long time. Yeah,
because it's often one felony on top of another. They've
got drugs, They've got heroin in their vehicle, because that's
how they're extorting the girl they've got. They've got these
girls who now come testify against them if they can
get them to testify against them. There's some assault charges,
(18:37):
there's taking girls over state lines, and there's all of
these things that add up. And so oftentimes my daughter says,
they'll they will settle with them, but you know, maybe
there's twenty felonies stacked up and they settle for eight
of them, and they'll spend thirty years in jail.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Okay. And what I talked about, we had the good
group on here who does the tattoo removal, and they
had we had one girl on and she she had
an assumed name, she didn't give a real name, and
she told us about this. She told us all the
tattoos she had and she had tend to remove. I
(19:17):
couldn't even believe it. I couldn't believe that she was fascinating.
But she had been in trouble in Arizona and now
she was somewhere else and she's having to start all
over again. But she's having to be careful who she
tells that.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
She is a lot of these kids come out of
the foster system. And I'm told by law enforcement that
ninety percent of prostitutes were in the foster system. And
i mean, if you're out there and you and you're
a foster parent, thank you, thank you for what you're doing.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
We need more more like you.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Can you go down and run down your nonprofits that
are benefiting from this, can need to benefit from this
where people can give money to.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
Yeah, yeah, you think about Wellspring Living that provides a
safehouse for these girls for Sarah, which basically takes girls
that have coming that are coming out of the adult
entertainment industry, because I'm told by for Sarah that about
half of those girls that dance at these clubs have
(20:26):
a pimp, so they are they may be dancing, but
that's that's a way to get business after after the club.
So we got for Sarah there. We've got a number
of law enforcement agencies, including the Polaris Group. This a
federal basically a federal task force. So you know, there's
(20:49):
so many different groups that are out there that are
providing care and we still need more.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
And these companies they accept donations or people.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
They're all five O, one C three organizations. So if
you want to find out more about that, you can
just call my office and talk to my assistant who
organizes the End Holy to re Form me Faith Henting,
and or just email me Tim at tim ecles dot
com and I can just give you a list of
these nonprofits if you want to.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
If you want to provide some help.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Let's talk a little bit more about your William Wilberforce group.
You're meeting later on this year again, right.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yes, I have an annual event called the William Wilberforce Fellowship.
It's at Jackson Lake. We take thirty guys. You were
one of our speakers last year. Thank you for that.
And it's really taking young men in their twenties and
thirties and really helping them to see some of the
things going on in the culture. To be, you know,
(21:51):
to be a strong leader out there, willing to stand
for those that you know that that are having a
difficult time. I'm willing to you know, be a good
family man, take care of your family and you know,
raise your children in the way that you need to.
So it's a fantastic event. I'd love to have folks
(22:13):
tend is Wilberforcefellowship dot com and you.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Can go on there and if you want attend, just
right on there which you want to attend and go
from there.
Speaker 2 (22:22):
Yeah, we have a little interview to make sure you're
right for the for the program, but it is a
faith based program.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
But we would love to have you.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
It's a great organization. I really enjoyed speaking to him
last year and I really got a lot out of that.
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
You know, John, I love what I do on the
Public Service Commission and our grid is important, but these
other things are important too, all right. And so you know,
whether it's the teenpac group that I started, it's in
all fifty states now working with high school kids taking
to the capital, or the Wilberforce Fellowship or the Unholy Tour.
(22:56):
These really I think will be my legacy more so
than anything that I do on the Power Grid.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Well, I know the Wilberforce is doing great, and of
course you got the Unholy Tour coming up. To go
on the Unholy Tour, it fills up quick, but they
can still go to it. Where do you go to
find out?
Speaker 2 (23:13):
Well, we're probably going to put you on the waiting
list because we prioritize legislators, right, but if six legislators
don't show up, we'll, you know, we'll call you and
say it looks like you know, we're going to have
six openings your next So, but we do want the
legislators going and city council people elected officials who are
(23:35):
actually passing ordinances making laws, because that's how we, you know,
can go after these guys.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
So we we.
Speaker 2 (23:44):
Really need them to be aware. But we have others
on there who who say, you know what I want
to I want to learn more about this, I want
to donate to some of these charities, and we and
we get them on the bus as well.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Well, I'm going with you. So I'm going to be there.
It's will be interesting and uh, I'm looking forward to it.
I went lookle for and saw some things that has
still stuck with me, and I hope something else doestick
with me. I really, I really do. I ready do
I want to see something? Yeah, I think to do something.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
You'll be touched, you know by these these victim testimonies. Uh,
it's heartbreaking, really it's heartbreaking, and and I think you
know what what our media does and helping get the
word out is so important because people may have someone
(24:35):
they know that Okay, this, this girl is being invited
to be on this you know this music video.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
This doesn't sound right.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
Uh, you know, I need to get somebody involved here,
because that's often what these guys do. They'll lure these
girls goes into some music video, some modeling opportunity, and
you don't want the parents involved and or and that's
why they love going out after foster kid to run
aways because there's no one to watch over them.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Well, we're going to see how it goes up. Lave
it this month on the Only Tour. And I thank
you very much for coming in and talking about this today.
I really do.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
That's Public Service Commissioner Tim Eccles talking about his Unholy
Tour coming on March nineteenth. For more information on the tour,
you can email f Henning at PSC dot g A
dot gov. For questions and comments on today's show, you
can email me John Clark at Georgeannewsnetwork dot com. Thanks
for listening. I'll talk to you next week right here
on your local radio station on Georgia Focus
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