Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. – Rita Mae Brown
You remember 8 Minutes, right? That awful A&E Network “reality” show whose utterly-ludicrous premise was that a cop-turned-preacher would trick sex workers into meeting with him by lying to them, pretending to be a client (you know, like cops do)? Then he only had eight minutes (he knew that was how long he had, ’cause he’s a hooker expert) to talk them out of their life of degradation before their pimps came busting through the door to shoot him or “traffick” him or something, and if the girl agreed he would “rescue” her and give her access to all kinds of nifty resources so she wouldn’t have to whore any more, and the pimp presumably would shake his fist and gnash his teeth while saying “Curses, foiled again!”, then skulk off to a mall or bus stop to abduct a brace of crying 13-year-old middle-class white girls. Of course, the truth was that Kevin Brown was the Pastor of Nobody, the sex workers were contacted ahead of time and agreed to be on the show, the “rescue” conversations were edited down to eight minutes, and the “pimps” either didn’t exist at all or were the sex workers’ husbands or friends waiting for them in the car, or else just some dude who happened to be in the parking lot at the time. And the “rescue resources” consisted of a couple of hundred bucks and the phone number of a social worker. Oh, and when that wasn’t enough to “rescue” a kitten, and the workers went back to work because the bills were due, the big brave hero cops were watching for their pics & phone numbers so they could immediately arrest them. Unfortunately for all involved, one of the women exploited by the show got in touch with my friend, the indomitable Mistress Matisse, who proceeded to stomp a big muddy hole in them and attracted so much negative publicity that the abomination was cancelled.
Now, one would think that given the high-profile failure of this monstrosity, AND the very public exposure of frauds like Somaly Mam and Chong Kim, AND the success of sex worker activists in causing other attempts to exploit real, living whores for entertainment value to belly-flop in spectacular fashion, AND the recent surge in mainstream media articles skeptical of the “sex trafficking” myth, that reporters would be wary of new tragedy porn masquerading as “sex trafficking” reality, or would at least temper their urge to publicly jizz all over themselves when thinking about the exciting fantasy of teen virgins in bondage, right? Nope:
…The Abolitionists gripped me from the start, giving me an inside look at O.U.R.’s (Operation Underground Railroad) child trafficker stings…Tim Ballard…founder of O.U.R and former employee of Homeland Security, leads his group of ex-spy/army/commandos…right into the thick of the child trafficking/sex trade world…He and his team spend weeks, sometimes months, buddying up to these traffickers, setting up deals to purchase kids, convincing them that they are dirty old guys who want to have sex with 14-year-old girls, and bartering/paying for as many girls as possible so that, when the traffickers arrive with their child-slaves, the bust can be as massive as possible…
“OK”, I hear you say, “but this reviewer is some clodhopper from Idaho (not to mention possessor of a liberal arts degree) who thinks Google is a word describing the eyes of a ‘pervert’ looking at a ‘child sex slave’. His opinion is ignorant and unintentionally hilarious, but ultimately unrepresentative of the zeitgeist.” Fair enough; surely urbane TV producers with big bucks to lose would do their research more diligently than Mr. Potato Head, yes?
The efforts of Tim Ballard…and his nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad team to combat child trafficking worldwide are being documented in The Abolitionists, a 10-episode hourlong documentary series being shopped by EveryWhere Studios…For 12 years, Ballard served as a U.S. Special Agent for the Department of Homeland Security, helping infiltrate and dismantle trafficking organizations that kidnapped children and forced them into sex and labor slavery. Frustrated by the red tape when chasing predators beyond U.S. borders, Ballard left his government job in 2013 to start O.U.R. Since then, he and his team of mostly volunteers — who call themselves the Abolitionists because of parallels to the movement to end slavery — have done missions with the cooperation of foreign governments and police departments in Haiti, Columbia, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, Mexico and other locations. Ballard recently testified before Congress in support of pending sex trafficking legislation…The process started with a feature-length documentary, The Abolitionists, produced by FletChet Entertainment, which chronicled the launch of O.U.R. and its first two “jumps”…
Is it just me, or does the idea of a TV show about Heroes of the Homeland fighting to rescue The ChildrenTM from evil dark-skinned foreigners have a vaguely goose-steppy, repurposed-Vedic-symbol sort of feel to it? And since that’s the case, maybe this isn’t a case of “They Never Learn” after all, but rather one of opening the collective mouth for insertion of the master’s boot.
The whole idea of calling the United States “The Homeland” gives me chills every time I hear it. There are already stops made in the border states where they say “Papers, bitte!”…stops made way inside the US. How long before checkpoints are set up between the states “for the good of Das Homeland”.
Or, if you prefer, for Mother Homeland, Da?
Ugh…sorry Maggie…you’ve hit a sore point with me.
Well, Tim Ballard nearly had me and then, in a world where evangelical abolitionists are apt to sprout under gooseberry bushes fully formed and forged, to my surprise, I found this http://ldsmag.com/article-1-11683/
Yes, that’s right, proof of life *BEFORE* O.U.R
…and what a life…have you ever wondered what the world’s covert operatives do in their spare time…now you can “go know”.
Or course, Tim Ballard could well be a drop dead gorgeous former CIA/homeland security op rescuing trafficked children from the tenderness of his heart….
…or it could simply be that his last venture as a Prophet didn’t totally work out so now he is rebranding as a Messiah.
Either way he is a class act.
Oh dear God.
Um…when drug warriors buy a lot of drugs, it just encourages drug cartels to make more drugs. No big deal. But do Ballard and his team realize how child traffickers get more children?
If Ballard and his team are “setting up deals to purchase kids, convincing them that they are dirty old guys who want to have sex with 14-year-old girls, and bartering/paying for as many girls as possible,” doesn’t that mean that the traffickers will have to go out and kidnap as many girls as possible?
Can they really be that stupid? And if they’re not stupid, and they know what they’re doing…that’s much, much worse.
I have a feeling that Ballard’s stated methodology will prove to be flawless. If it wasn’t for his previous part time job as a prophet he would have got past me on his stated methodology.I would imagine the children he rescues really need rescuing, but what about the other 50% who are not children? Where is that coming from? (see DR here http://ourrescue.org/blog/43-rescued-and-20-arrested-in-4-countries/ “at least 50%”) and what is that about?
I have to say this adult outreach initiative is threatening to give my beloved Cupcake Girls a run for their money:
http://ourrescue.org/blog/the-red-light-district/
But…
WHY are they calling themselves “The Abolitionists” and inviting others to join them under that umbrella term that has come to stand for the unique cocktail of bigotry and bullshit that offer a licence to make constant assault on the ordinary, decent people who work in the sex industry in general and those most vulnerable through economic coercion in particular?
Wasn’t the main criticism of Ballard’s 2013 version of “The Covenant” it that it distanced itself from his first offering “The American Covenant” aimed at LDS readers to take the same message to a non LDS audience:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2013/04/05/the-covenant-a-mormon-mission-tool/
…mostly by blurring the Mormon origins of his propositions so that they have wider appeal.
It this what Tim Ballard has been tasked, (or self-tasked) with doing in respect of abolitionism?
After all, which of us here does not want to abolish the sexual abuse of little children?
Also…WTF does homeland security need a child trafficking unit for???
Anytime some conservative bluenose rails against some moral wickedness, it is a pretty sure bet that they themselves are guilty of doing that thing. There are almost no exceptions. They campaign against whatever-it-is to try to expiate their own sense of guilt.
There’s a reason why Mr Brown wants to spend time in the company of (preferably young) women dressed like prostitutes. He gets a thrill from the fact that he *could* have had sex with ’em, but doesn’t have the guts (or the honesty) to actually do it. And what he is doing is not only free, he is getting paid!
There’s no question that he used to do a lot of commercial sex, and only a little doubt that he still does.
You know: God hates gluttony, too. And there’s a lot more of that. Why don’t these moral crusaders do something about all the obesity?
They are. But aside from extreme nannyist places like New York City and San Francisco, the “war on obesity” is pretty much conducted only against juveniles, so most voters don’t care if they even notice.
If you are interested, Pastor Kevin Brown “in his own words” can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhWNVMhvw8
But beware, there are TWO WHOLE HOURS, not just 8 minutes.
Of course, we are all entitled to be subjective about our own lives (and if not then what?) but it is curious to note the huge detach between his memories of a forward thinking, enlightened Marine Corps and these two concurrent accounts of the same training base at the exact same time:
http://wesclark.com/am/marines.html
http://www.presentfocus.com/Articles/My_Process/The_Split/The_Split.html
There are other significant more personal anomalies in his career if you dig but, in fairness he is perfectly honest about his functional alcoholism and makes no serious attempt to deny his capacity for being an asshole until he became a Christian after which he was clearly a reformed character who loved everybody, wanted to heal them with his hands and bring them to share his joy in the Lord. This is one of the ways he set about that:
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-25/local/me-868_1_santa-ana-police-officer
…and the end result:
http://articles.latimes.com/1991-08-20/local/me-1366_1_santa-ana
I am so glad *8 minutes* was canceled, I do not believe people should be taken advantage of by means of a television show. Ballard and his team where paid, for their “documentary” their time and effort, etc. If not paid in full certainly the fact that people know there name has made it so that they can now spend more in a “gentlemen’s club,” from time to time.
The fact that those who participated in *8 minutes* where thoroughly abused and exploited is disgusting and they deserved everything they had coming to them. I am glad Mistress Matisse has a way with words.
“These boots where made for walkin’, and that’s what I’m gonna do, These boots where made for walkin’ and I am goin’ to walk right over you.”