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Welcome to episode 304 of Behind the Shield podcast.
As always, my name is James Gearing and this week I am extremely excited to welcome on
the show Tamir Najipane.
Now Tamir is originally from Hungary and was a victim of human trafficking forced into
the sex industry in Canada.
Was able to liberate herself and now is not only telling the story but is also an advocate
for victims of human trafficking.
So an incredible conversation.
We talk about how she started working with Deliver Fund and I had Nick McKinley on the
show about a year ago now.
So this is an area that I was really struck when I spoke to Nick as far as when you are
a first responder, how many of the men and women that you treat, that you deal with,
that come into custody may actually be victims of sex trafficking or human trafficking and
we don't even realize that that's actually happening.
So I think this is very pertinent not only for us, the first responders, but also the
rest of the community in identifying people that may be in trouble.
You will hear during this discussion how there were opportunities for these men and women
to be able to be rescued and they were not recognized.
So a very, very powerful episode.
I hope that everyone out there listens to the entire thing and really reframes the way
they look at men and women when they're out in the community.
So before we get to the interview, like I always say, please just take a moment, go
to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating,
the five star ratings and thank you.
I'm seeing more and more coming in.
They really do help make this podcast more visible.
And as I mentioned, this is a free library.
So all I want is to get everyone to share these episodes so they can get to the men
and women that need to hear them.
And this one with Tamir, as you can imagine, the more people on planet earth are educated
on human trafficking, the more of these young men and women that we can protect.
So with that being said, I introduced to you Tamir Najpain.
Enjoy.
Well, Tamir, I want to start by saying thank you so much for agreeing to come on the behind
the shield podcast.
It's absolutely my pleasure.
And I've been truly looking forward to it.
So thank you so much for having me.
Thank you.
Well, I know Nick McKinley, I asked him a while ago, I said, do you know any people
that have actually been trafficked?
I think that's a very powerful story.
And his story of being an advocate is incredible.
But I think that your story today is really going to really paint a picture of I think
what you went through, but also a lot of the myths that people think about trafficking
that you just grabbed by some dude in a van and pulled in and that's it.
But I think it's a lot more scary when you hear how vulnerable an average man or woman
is to some of these traffickers.
Yeah, absolutely.
Which is what I like to actually talk about the most is how it really happens and what
got me, what led me to being trafficked.
There's a lot of myth and that's why I was just really excited to do this interview because
it is different than what mainstream media would like to project and what usually ends
up in mainstream media, which is usually why I don't do mainstream media anymore.
Brilliant.
Well, I'm honored that you chose to come on here.
So thank you.
So where on planet Earth are we finding you today?
Right now I am in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
And just about four days ago, I took over this tiny, cute little basement apartment,
believe it or not, in a very famous area called Hyde Park.
In the middle of COVID, I was approached by a company to help them through the pandemic.
So I needed a home office away from home and my screaming cats.
So I am commuting here once a week and I conduct basically all of my calls for all of the work
that I do.
They deliver a fund with this organization and service providers around the world right
now.
So huge little basement.
I feel like I'm a university student, you know, eating craft dinner and being on the
phone all day.
But that's where I'm at.
Where are you at?
I'm in Ocala, which is right in the middle of the state of Florida.
So you stick a pin right in the middle of the little triangle and that's where we are.
So it's known for its horse farms.
Very beautiful part of Florida.
That's so beautiful.
Maybe one day when this craziness is over, I have to come in with it.
Oh, absolutely.
I'll be up in Canada at some point too, I'm hoping.
And it's interesting you said Hyde Park.
I know a lot of the story takes place in Waterloo and there's a lot of London themed areas of
Toronto.
Yeah, so it's actually called Hyde Park and most of my story, believe it or not, actually,
so actually the healing part happened here.
So after I was trafficked, I moved down here to Hyde Park and this is where the restaurant
is from the book called Medieval Times.
So I actually lived here from the age of 21 to 30, 32 and I'm 42 now, so 10 years later
I returned and it's a little bit of a full circle for sure.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well, clearly you were not born in Toronto.
So let's start at the very beginning.
Where were you born and what was your family dynamic?
What did your parents do?
Yeah, it was an interesting one.
I was born in Hungary, Budapest in 1977, so it wasn't yesterday.
And I was born into communism and my parents had an interesting background actually.
So I'm probably third generation of generational trauma, if you will.
So mom was coming from a white Caucasian-Hungarian family and they very much lived in cities
and served public.
I have soldiers in my family.
I had judges.
I had crown attorneys or prosecutors in my family and people who worked for the Royal
Hungarian media.
And my mom was a police officer or became one.
And then my other side of the family is interesting is my father actually was an orphan and he
came from a Gypsy family.
So he was one out of nine children.
But what was interesting about both of them is that they both grew up, they were both
born 1950 and they both grew up through very difficult times.
So just five years after the Second World War ended, so there was really no food, their
parents obviously were going through so much trauma from or just recovering through the
times when there's no psychiatrists or let's talk about your feelings, you know.
So then that the next thing happened was 1956, the revolution, when the Russians came and
basically there was a big war and a lot of people died.
And so my parents were six years old when that happened.
And so that just kind of carried them through their whole life.
Mom developed a lot of like deep mental illness due to trauma and dad also did, but he ended
up using alcohol to kind of soar that pain.
So the growing up in Hungary, Budapest in the 1970s was I already came into a family
that inherited a lot of trauma, not being able to communicate with each other.
Alcohol was the only solution, lots of domestic violence, and they did literally the best
they could to raise us.
We were very poor and you know, it was very normal.
That was our normal.
You look at anywhere and that's kind of was the normal.
Again, we grew up very poor, so until I was seven years old, I grew up in a house where
we had one bedroom and we slept four of us on one bed.
There was no bathroom, so my mom was bathing us in a kitchen sink.
And I would have to line up on the outside of the house to use the toilet at 3 a.m.,
4 a.m., minus 20, it doesn't matter.
So that was kind of my childhood in a nutshell.
And as communism kind of flourished and turned into socialism, mom was becoming more important
in her job, so we were able to kind of move out of the very poor area of Budapest and
we were moved into like an apartment complex where basically we started being raised by
you know, society, neighbors, teachers, and our parents.
But again, there was just a lot of trauma, domestic violence.
We saw suicide in Hungary is huge.
So it's just a culture, unfortunately.
So I wasn't even 10 years old until I wasn't even 10 years old and I experienced suicide
on different levels around us.
I saw a lady jumping out the window.
I saw a lady jumping right in front of us in a streetcar.
So yeah, interesting childhood, interesting dynamics, but there was some good to it too.
And if you want to hear about the happy moments, happy to talk about that too.
But definitely by the age of 12, I had enough trauma for, you know, 10 people to carry.
And I wasn't even aware of it.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I definitely want to get to the good side as well because it's amazing
how much joy people can find amidst tragedy.
But thinking back, and I'm not very good with my history, but Hungary was in the First World
War, wasn't it?
Austro-Hungarian War, they call that, I believe.
And so then you went right into the Second World War and then after that you had the
Russian invasion.
So it's horrendous, not only the wars, but I was watching Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary
and I just finished it yesterday and then it showed basically when everyone left, you
know, the country was ravaged and there was another war.
I think that involved the Russians and the Chinese as well.
And that's the thing we don't think about.
It's probably the same in the Middle East at the moment is once this war is done and
those soldiers all leave, the men and women that live there now and the children are in
a very, very different place.
But it sounds like poor Hungary was, you know, once it was finally probably starting to recover,
it just got battered again.
Yeah, it just really never ended.
And you're right, like my mom and dad, they were six years old.
And when the 56 Revolution ended, when they came out of their hiding places, their bunkers,
they walked through the streets and they walked by piles and piles of dead bodies.
My mom lost her father, so I never met my grandfather who got shot by the rebels.
So it's just, you know, and then you live in communism where you are completely stripped
away from your freedom.
You're in fear all the time.
You have to work for the government.
You can't have your own thoughts.
And then socialism and then all of the sudden, so when my parents were about, I want to say
30, you know, they lived their whole life being taught to become communists and you
need to do the right thing and work for the government.
They were 30, I was 15 or 35, I was 15.
And now there's no more communism, no more socialism.
Now we are all of the sudden, we love the West and now we are Democrats.
So everything that you were raised to believe in, you learn Russian, but now it's not cool
anymore.
Now you need to speak English.
You would go to jail one day if you watched an American movie or had a dollar in your
pocket, but literally the next day when the wall came down, now it's all good.
And now Americans are awesome.
I mean, how do you process that as an adult, let alone as a child?
So at 15, or I was about 14 when the wall came down, we were raised in a whole different
society, right?
You go to school, you get good grades, you go to middle school, you get your second education,
the government will pay for it and everything is free.
You just need to do the right thing and, you know, obey the laws and be a good communist
and learn Russian and your whole future is ahead of you and it's all planned out for
you.
You can be whatever you want within the sectors, right?
So I'm being raised to be a good little communist and do all the right things and only when
I'm 14 and I'm supposed to go into middle school, there's nothing there anymore and
I'm not qualified for anything because I speak Russian, not English.
We don't have money.
I can't learn computer.
I can't even buy a computer and now I'm left to my own devices, let alone like not only
that my family fell apart completely, the society that was there to cat me together
completely disappeared too.
So my generation gone through a huge identity crisis, which is when a lot of Eastern European
girls actually started to head out to the West, which is when all the huge sex trafficking,
you know, started.
Yeah, and that's the problem is that these predators prey on the weak, on the victims
and you see that so often with migrants from all over the place, whether it's sex work,
whether it's just basically, you know, manual labor, slavery, which I know you touch on
as well in the book and I want to make sure we cover that.
But yeah, I mean, it's disgusting how these people are fleeing and some of them, you know,
don't even make the journey to where they're trying to get to or they get an even worse
life where they move to.
Right.
Absolutely.
It's just that evil is there to, you know, pick up any chance you get.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, just before we move on, so tell me, tell me the good things amidst all that, you
know, that gray oppression that you were raised in earlier.
What was some of the golden moments?
Well, I don't know why, but I was given some I don't know if it's a gift or not, but I
was given some talent and I really enjoyed kind of exploiting them.
So I love drawing.
So I entered into all kinds of competitions in school.
I loved singing and the school kind of recognized that I have a little bit of a voice.
So they sent me to competitions, national and regional.
And I loved I loved my community, even at the age of, you know, to believe it or not.
So I was always like very strong with justice and injustice.
And I always wanted to stand up for others.
So I actually became like an advocate in my school for a million things.
I got a million medals before I was even 10.
As a result, I was able to go to the parliament and I was able to do so many things that like,
you know, an average kid can't really say that they did.
But I loved every moment of it.
And the other thing that came with the fact that mom was a cop in Eastern European block
during the communism that you can actually go and go and use all of the police foundation
summer camps in Hungary and anywhere else in Eastern Europe.
So every summer I was gone.
Soon as school was over, we were done, gone out of the house and didn't come home till
August and learned all kinds of stuff, how to live in a vile wilderness, how to start
your own fire, you know, survival skills.
And I mean, there's so many great things.
So what I always say is and what I said in a book to when it was good, it was amazing.
And when it was bad, it was really bad.
And it just it was hot and cold.
Like one minute I was the happiest kid and everything was great.
But next minute something really bad happened at home and I just needed to find a way to
cope with it.
Yeah.
Well, so you've laid a great foundation.
So there you are.
You're thriving in the education side.
You have all these other outlets with your singing, the summer camps.
So you know, again, smashing myth number one, you weren't, you know, on the streets living
as a, you know, being raised by wolves kind of thing.
You know, you had that that household.
So kind of lead us through how you got to the point where you needed to to find the
money and ultimately looked at the advert.
Yeah.
So when I was 16, mom depression really started to come out and her other mental illness that
nobody really detected yet.
So she was actually sent to a sanatorium and also she hurt her back really bad.
So she went away to a sanatorium for I think it was three to four weeks and then she had
to go to another sanatorium for her back for another two weeks.
And then my brother who was 18 at the time, he was called into the army because back in
a day in Hungary, if you're 18, you turn 18, you get called into an army and you have to
serve a year and a half.
And just so that you know what to do if there is a war again.
Right.
So that was called and here I am all by myself, 16 years old.
Mom is in the hospital.
Zoli is in the army, my brother and off you go.
So I started kind of looking after myself as much as I could.
And at the time I didn't really realize that, you know, holy crap, like I'm alone.
I don't have parents.
Like I didn't really realize I had a boyfriend who was always with me, who was actually very
abusive verbally.
But I didn't realize that it was bad.
That was my normal.
And I started working for a TV station.
And so I was kind of happy as a pig, if you will.
And then my brother came back from the army and mom came back from the hospital.
And I just realized that like, hey, I didn't pay a lot of bills and we are going really
behind.
But I don't want mom to worry too much because she just came out of the hospital.
So anyways, for like another two years, we tried to like do our very best to pay the
bills and but it really wasn't working out well.
And then mom, thank God, met the love of her life.
And by this time I was 18 and they wanted to actually move in with us, her and her new
boyfriend.
She never bought any men to our house ever since dad left.
So it was kind of new and my brother and I said we said them down and we said, no, look,
we are going to be very responsible.
We're going to take care of the house.
We're going to take care of everything.
If you guys want to move out, good on you.
But we want to be independent.
So after a lot of struggle and negotiation, mom and my stepdad decided that they're going
to move into his house, not far from ours.
And we promised that we're going to take care of everything.
Well, little did we know that what is that really means, right?
So I'm 18, my brother is now 21.
And honestly, we made a lot of money.
I started making a lot of money.
Zoli was making money.
We were like swimming in dough, but we were young.
And I'm still like, I still have all the trauma from my childhood.
So even though we have money, they have a house to live in, we weren't homeless by all
means.
I didn't have the capacity that I thought I would to take care of everything.
I didn't have financial training.
So a lot of people said, your mom should have never left you.
I'm like, yeah, should have, could have, would have, it is what it is.
We can blame all we want on anybody.
At the end of the day, it is what it is that happened.
So by the time I was 19, 19 and a half, I lost all of my contracts from the TV station.
And we started drying out completely financially.
And mom had another heart attack.
And we just, we were really scared to tell her that we are falling behind on the bills
because we were concerned for her health and we didn't want to worry her.
We didn't want her to want her to move back with us and her husband.
So there's a lot of factors, right?
But truth is we were going broke.
Eventually we had nothing to eat and we really didn't want to tell mom because we didn't
want her to really worry about us.
So I thought that I'm going to fix this.
And while we were like really drying out financially, we got a notice that our house is going to
be taken away in three months if we don't pay the bills.
So that's when the panic set in.
And Azulie and I, my brother and I were both started looking for jobs and by then we owed
so much money.
We had no idea how much we owed until we saw all the bills.
And that's when it all started.
We were so desperate to save our home and to make sure mom will never find out and that
she doesn't die of a heart attack.
That's how I ended up finding the ad to come to Canada.
Yeah.
And just to put myself out there, I lost a home and obviously I wasn't a young man and
I wasn't in Hungary but I know that fear because I struggled to tell my wife that it was initiated
from my previous divorce.
So I was kind of behind and trying to fight to save it but in the end didn't.
It was a horrible, horrible feeling because you're drowning and those bills all add up
and there's no way of recovering by that point.
And yeah, that not wanting to tell someone, I completely relate.
Obviously, it's a different context but I totally understand the fear of telling someone
what you think is going to ruin them.
Oh, I'm so sorry you have to go through that too.
Yeah, well, things are good now.
Like you're talking about your basement.
I'm in a good place now but yeah, I want to be honest that I've lost one as well so I
can totally relate.
Well, you know what?
And that's where the full circle is.
I'm sitting in this cute little basement in High Park but I have a home.
I actually have a house which is about an hour and away from here.
And so I'm thinking to myself 22 years later after everything I've been through, I have
two homes now.
Who would have thought?
You know how lucky I am and I'm just so grateful but yeah, it was terrible.
And so that's where the desperation came from.
Yeah.
So, and then the thing is, so you found a solution which seemed like it would be a great
option which is to answer an ad where they were looking for nannies in Canada.
So lead me through again, I'm not wanting you to tell the whole book.
I mean, obviously that's what the book's for but just kind of overview of how you were
made to believe that was the case and obviously, you know, the story of how that wasn't the
case.
Right.
So the way I spelled it out in the book, the truth is in the book, in the article, and
it did say, you know, nannies, Hungarian girls, Hungarian families and general work wanted
to get $500 a month, right?
So I went to meet the agency and you know what?
She talked to me about being a nanny.
She talked to me about being a general worker at Hungarian houses cleaning toilets, but
she also talked about being a go-go dancer in a nightclub, right?
And she said, these are all the jobs we have available, whichever you think you want to
do.
But for us to get you into the country, we are going to have to get very creative with
your visa.
So that's how the whole conversation happened.
I didn't know what visa is.
I didn't know what immigration is.
We didn't have immigration at the time in Hungary because no one was allowed and I never
even heard of it, right?
So I don't understand what she's talking about.
All I heard at the age of, you know, 20 with all my background and being super desperate,
all I heard is that there's a job, I can get $1500 and I can go to Canada.
And the last one was important because by this time, by the time I read this ad and
you know, because you read my book, it wasn't just financial issues, emotionally, I was
going down in a very dark spiral.
My boyfriend was very verbally abusive.
I felt like a no one.
I had no support.
I had zero positive relationships.
There was no safe island around me.
By this time, my job wasn't there for me.
I lost everything.
Gradually, everything disappeared.
So I didn't just needed the money and save our home.
In a sense, I needed to save myself too.
And that is the truth.
Right.
Yeah.
And I think that's probably why they were able to manipulate you the way, you know,
we're going to hear in a minute.
So but this, what I found fascinating is, you know, so right now you're walking through
the door and it seems like an agency that matches you up with work overseas.
And when I was a young man, I actually worked for an agency that did the same thing on American
summer camps.
And that was completely legit.
I didn't have to dance or anything but you know, those agencies exist all the time.
So there's no reason for you to, you know, initially think that anything was wrong.
But tell me about, you know, when you got there and how that was actually not what you
were being promised at all.
So basically, I got to Canada that, you know, they're they paid for the ticket and, you
know, the paperwork they give me in English.
I got to Canada and when I got to the immigration and this is a very long story, so I'm going
to just cut through.
When I got to the immigration, they basically interrogated me for six hours and they just
really didn't like what they were hearing.
So they turned me around, but I couldn't leave that night because there was no more flights.
So they just handed me over to my agents, which ended up becoming the international
trafficking ring.
And that's when everything started.
I was taken to a motel and at the motel, I was told that, you know, I messed up really
bad and I owe them so much money and now there's no way for me to do babysitting.
Now I have to make this money up as fast as possible because we need to pay off our debt
because if we don't, then they're going to cut my brother's throat, my mom's throat,
and then they're going to leave me last.
So and that's when they took me to a strip joint and that was my first time being in
a strip joint and doing anything like that.
Yeah.
So again, just to paint the pictures, they basically created a fraudulent scenario that
made you believe that you are now already thousands of dollars in debt to these people
because they supposed visa fees and the new passport.
So right away, they've got this giant hook in you where you were trapped.
I mean, geographically, you were trapped.
You were in another country, all these strangers are telling you that you owed them a huge
amount of money.
They were threatening your brother's life if it wasn't paid.
And then so that is why they basically took away all the other options and the only one
was to be able to make the money fast enough now was that you had to dance at the club.
Exactly.
And you know, there's another side to it too, right?
So when I'm sitting there and they telling me this and there is a I'm not going to give
away the part that who this guy is who picked me up from the airport.
When you read the book, you'll be stunned.
But let's just say that he's an authority figure from my past.
And growing up in a communism, you don't question authorities or I didn't anyways.
That's what and that's my personality to I obey authority.
If I'm given an order, I follow it for the most part.
That's how I grew up at home.
Right.
So if somebody an adult and a authority figure tells me that this is how it is, I don't even
have the capacity to question it at this time of my life.
Right.
So so, you know, I've been told many times like, well, why would you believe them that
you owe them and I'm like, oh, my goodness, where to start?
I'm 20 years old.
I remember when you were 20 and how naive you were.
And on the top of it, like me being brainwashed, I mean, the perfect combination.
I was the perfect, perfect, perfect victim mindset, like perfect, so vulnerable and not
even funny.
Yeah.
And then you were alongside many, many other women from Hungary.
So clearly it wasn't just you were naive and stupid.
No, that this was this is clearly worked on hundreds of women before you were ever even
approached.
True.
Exactly.
And not just Hungarian, but Eastern European girls.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So I think one area I think that was very interesting about the book and it's a horrible
topic, but that's the whole point.
We need to talk about it.
We need to talk about it very courageously in the book is when you start getting sexually
abused, which is basically day one when you walk in there, how even then your mind is
kind of questioning is this even rape?
Because again, you think you're just, is this person trying to be the boyfriend as it were?
So kind of lead me through your thoughts there because I mean, it's horrible to read it as
a reader because you're like, of course this is rape, but you know, you're you're being
told this fictional story and they're slowly breaking you down even sexually as well.
Yeah.
So that's the that's the crazy part that people just can't comprehend.
Right.
Like when we say in trainings that the victim doesn't even understand that she or he is
being trafficked.
This is what we mean by it.
Right.
So in that sense, like traffic, it does not match with the actual when you're in it.
It just doesn't match.
It doesn't make any sense.
But that's a whole other story.
So the first night I was taking to the club, I was taken down to the office to sign paperwork
coding code and the club owner and my Canadian, I guess, handler or manager.
I didn't speak English.
She didn't speak Hungarian, so you can imagine there wasn't a lot of conversation.
And he basically got me completely, you know, undressed and he helped himself with my body.
And the whole time he was doing it, all I was thinking is like, OK, so if he's kissing
me, does that mean he's going to be my boyfriend?
But is that mean I'm cheating on my boyfriend back home?
And why is he doing this to me?
And is this a rape?
And I'm like, no, it can be a rape because I saw rape in movies and the girls are screaming.
He's not like hurting me.
So I don't understand what's going on.
And at the end, I just my conclusion was like, it's kind of like when you go to a gynecologist
or a doctor, it's really uncomfortable for five minutes.
But if you just stay still, it will be over before you know it.
So that's what I that's what was going through my head.
The last thing was that went through my head that this I was 20, 21, 20, 20, 20, 21.
This guy was 43 at the time.
Right.
So to me at the time, he was old.
And so all I could think of at the end is that if my mom finds this out, I'm dead.
She'll kill me.
That was my mindset.
So I felt guilty.
I felt ashamed.
And I felt that this is all my fault.
And I did not recognize that I was sexually assaulted or raped in a sense, which is crazy.
So and moving forward through the next three months, this happened over and over it, not
just by him, but other people who just came to our motel, not just in the club.
And over there, too, when it happened, I would just, you know, lie down, close my eyes and
just imagine that I'm going somewhere else.
But never for one second did I thought of myself that I was a prostitute or that I was
being pimped.
I didn't even realize that that was happening to me.
Not until three months later until finally I was able to have a conversation with somebody
after I realized that I can.
They were asking me like, you do realize you are pimped out and I'm like, I'm not pimped
out.
I know what pimps are.
They stand on the street.
I'm not pimped out and I'm not a prostitute.
I didn't even know that I was a prostitute and that I was pimped out.
I had no idea until someone told me.
Yeah.
Well, and I've had people on several guests on the show, men and women who were sexually
abused when they were younger.
And it's the same thing that fear, you know, some of them were very young, some of them
were in their teens and they were completely frozen by fear.
And all it would have taken was to actually pull a family member aside and tell them,
you know, convince them.
But that's easy for the outsider to say, oh, you should have just told someone.
When you are terrified, especially when you're alone either as a child in a family home or,
you know, as you were in a foreign country knowing absolutely no one, not even knowing
the language to be able to communicate that that completely reframes it, you know.
And of course, now telling your story, it must be, you know, clear as day.
But at the time when you're in it with with the upbringing that you had and the only kind
of exposure to a lot of these was movies, I can completely see how the inability to
process it must have been incredible.
Yeah, it was.
I was completely blocked to it.
And the part that I missed out from my childhood that I was also sexually assaulted before
I was 12, two times.
So those experiences were that's when everything started.
And I always say is that especially a woman who I end up in the sex work or sex trafficking
world, not everyone.
But if we were molested before, you know, before, you know, 20 or 21, age of 21, we,
you know, we endured this split in our brain that just changed us forever.
And so if I had a proper family, if I had a father, if I knew what unconditional love
was from a man, like from my father, if if I had a stable home and self confidence, a
solid self confidence.
If I had help, if I had my surrounding, you know, adults, if they knew, and if I would
have reached out, there's so many ifs, I would have never came to Canada.
I would have never like the minute I would have gone to that interview, I would have
been healthy enough to recognize that this is a really bad idea, which is why there is
a lot of people don't get trafficked.
I have a stepdaughter who grew up in an amazing family.
She's gorgeous and stunning.
And when she was approached by a pimp, she taught him where to go.
And she taught him off.
And he'll never he never came back because they don't want strong, strong minded, not
vulnerable victims because they can't control them.
My stepdaughter, you cannot control her.
And you don't want somebody like that in your stable.
You can fully control me, which is why I was a perfect candidate.
And many of us are.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And I hear that a lot with with the abuse and even with with violence, even with the
school shootings, like these are all cowards.
So when in whatever situation it is, they are approached, whether it's, you know, in
a in a hallway where they're walking into the school or obviously in in a family situation
and someone's abusing them when they have the strength to stand up.
These people cower, you know, generally, you know, that the the the predator because they
are, you know, weak, cowardly pieces of shit, excuse my language.
But that's the problem.
That's the weak prey on the weak.
And so I think the more people like you and Nick that get this, you know, problem out
there, it knowledge is power and it will empower men and women that see the potential of this.
And my audience, when I spoke to Nick the first time, it was kind of heart wrenching
because I had a realization.
Did I ever miss a trafficked victim in all my time as a medic?
You know, did I have any any women or men who were being abused that I missed, you know,
because he some of the things that he told me about, I wouldn't have thought until he
educated me.
So I think, you know, what you're doing is incredible because you are empowering people
and you are educating them and hopefully some people will listen to your story here and
obviously read your book and your other interviews and and it will save lives and stop people
from even walking into that office.
I appreciate you saying that.
That is the whole goal of everything that Nick and Deliver Fund is doing.
And that's the whole goal of obviously my advocacy for the last 11 years, because once
you get into it, once you get lured in, I don't care if you were in it for a day or
10 minutes, it will shatter your life for years and it will take years to rebuild if
you can rebuild.
Yeah.
Well, another area that I think is very, very important, it was funny because it's something
that I talk a lot about on this podcast, but from a completely different perspective.
About the work, the workday, so tell me kind of, you know, what your week looked like when
they were keeping you guys together and then working you in the clubs as far as how many
hours a day you were working.
Yeah.
So typically we worked about 20, 21 hours a day.
We were dropped off at like 10 a.m.
They picked us up at 6 a.m.
And we would drive about an hour back to the motel and they would feed us once a day.
So I went down from 125 pounds to 89 pounds in two weeks, which is unbelievable.
Somebody said to me at the presentation, that's not possible.
And so I sat down and I explained to them what my day was, 20 hours a day, dancing on
a stage, on a pool and doing all kinds of like poses.
Trust me, it's like being in a gym 20 hours a day.
Plus you don't get fed, right?
You get fed once a day.
Trust me, you will lose the pounds like crazy.
And not only that, like at once we get back to the motel, they would come in and they
would, you know, collect the money.
Take all of your money with all kinds of excuses.
And sometimes they would buy drugs from drug dealers.
But instead of paying for their drugs, they would say, hey, if you want a blonde, go to
room 50.
If you want a brunette, go to room 51.
So we were told that between six to, you know, or seven to like 10, we could get a knock
on the door.
So sometimes I got knocks on the door and people would just walk in and I would just
have to do whatever they want me to do.
And then, but that's faster.
You let them go.
The faster you can get some sleep.
And then you take a shower and scrub off all that crap from you as you can and try to sleep.
And everything starts all over again within two hours.
And so after like a week of doing this, not sleeping, not eating, not knowing where you
are, you basically become like a zombie.
You have no nutrition.
You're exhausted and you are being brainwashed every single day.
They tell you how they're going to beat you.
They tell you what's going to happen to you if you escape.
They're telling you horror stories like one girl escaped from another group.
And discretion advice here, by the way, one girl, this is escaped from another group and
they had to bring her back and they tied her up naked and they washed her body with boiling
oil for five minutes.
And now, now she can't go to work and now she's going to owe them every single day,
$500 while she can, while she has to stay back.
So stories like that, how they're going to beat us with the baseball bat.
I mean, the list just goes on.
And after two weeks, you just stop questioning everything and you just stop wanting to feel
any kind of emotions and you just shut down and you become a zombie and you go on autopilot
and you just do whatever you need to do to get through.
And that's basically as long as you can handle that.
And eventually, you know, you start rambling or not.
You may start doing drugs or more drugs to hand birth if you can.
I didn't do any drugs.
I just couldn't.
I wasn't raised like that, but there are girls who did.
So you just do what you got to do to get through.
Yeah, well, the big area that really resonated with me, because like I said, I talk about
it a lot, is the sleep deprivation.
So we know that they use sleep deprivation for torture.
So that's another thing when people question, well, why did you believe it?
Well, after a few days of barely sleeping at all, you're not even thinking straight
anymore anyway.
And then you add, like you said, the one meal a day, which from what I read in the book
was a pretty shitty meal anyway, you know, it was a sandwich or whatever.
You know, of course, after a while, your any will that you did have is basically being
destroyed.
Pretty much.
Exactly.
You don't exist anymore.
And you start questioning your existence and you like you don't even realize how fast or
how you got here.
You don't even realize how bad it is until you do.
I remember after a couple of months, I was sitting in a window and I was looking outside
and there was a gas station by our motel and people were coming, families getting out,
getting ice cream.
And I'm like, how on earth is that possible that they can just come and go as they want?
But I can't even get out of my motel room and go get ice cream.
Like what happened?
What's wrong with this?
Everything is so wrong here, right?
So yeah.
And then and then, you know, it's depending.
Every individual is different how they live through this and how they decide, do they
decide to escape or not?
Or everybody has different stories.
I worked with over well over 300 survivors now.
Everybody have this different stories.
What was the breaking point?
How they got out?
Or were they just rescued?
And they were just ready by then.
It's so different for everyone.
I've started debating like, okay, I either try to escape and they kill me and that's
fine by me because I can't live like this anymore.
Or I'll just drop dead and die here because I can't move anymore.
Those were the two things that I was thinking.
So eventually I chose to escape.
Yeah.
Now again, I don't want to go too much into that because I think that's another great
part of the story and everyone listening needs to read it and hear it.
So what troubles me though, there's some really good things that came, you know, around that
time when you started helping other traffickers.
But what really troubles me and I want to make sure we highlight this because I, you
know, we're the first responders, you know, are listening is the police officers in, I
think it was the airport in Hungary, was that right?
The immigration police?
Yeah.
But if you're okay, tell me about that because that needs to be spoken.
I know that person was never caught.
So at least let's give it some airplay.
Well, in my story, they are the biggest monsters to be honest.
But the problem is that in every single survival story, things get so much worse once they
escape because they always end up walking into places where people don't believe in
them or just further exploit them.
So it is so important that when the survivors are ready to escape or being rescued, it should
be by the right, you know, organizations, the right police officers, everybody was properly
trained otherwise they just going to end up being in further problems, deep, deep troubles
like me.
So when I went back to Hungary, unfortunately, I ended up being interviewed by two Hungarian
police officers who not only didn't believe me, but as soon as they heard that I was an
exotic dancer in Canada, they wanted to, they wanted to have their own private show.
So just, I just finished telling them what I lived through.
I'm like, you know, 80 pounds soaking wet.
I'm sick as a dog.
I have fever.
I can barely talk.
I'm about to collapse.
I feel like I should be in a hospital not here.
And I felt like finally here is they going to be, you know, helping me.
I'll be rescued out, you know, not what happened.
They hmm, I don't want to go into details, but let's just say that the few hours that
I spent in that room was probably worse than what I was put through in Canada by our clients
that I met.
So after that, things got so much worse for me, right?
Because they didn't believe me, but then they did.
But so yeah, it's just, but again, I've never been the kind of person that if one cop does
wrong me, that means all cops are bad.
That's not how I work.
If one nurse wrong me, that doesn't mean all nurses are bad.
I don't have it out for anyone.
It is what it is.
It happened and it is very unfortunate what those two men done and they never got caught.
But you know what?
I believe in God and I believe that I'm pretty sure they got what they deserved.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, I just, and I want to highlight that because we've, I've talked about this
on the podcast a lot, not just police, any profession.
My profession, firefighters, just had one, a guest recently where there was a firefighter
that was one of the leaders of the KKK, you know?
So that's a very, very bad firefighter, you know, from my profession.
But the police that are over here are getting tarred with the same brush and you know, most
of them I think are incredible, but there are those toxic officers that we have that
does destroy it for everyone else.
And what they did with the trust that they had and you know, wearing the badge that they
wore to you after what you've been through was disgusting.
And you know, I believe karma is normally a positive thing, but in this particular case,
I hope they did get what they, you know, what was coming to them because it was horrendous
and nauseating and any member of any first responder professional listening would be
disgusted with what they did.
Yeah.
Thank you for saying that.
I appreciate that.
Yeah.
Well, so another interesting element, so you're at the other side, like I said, people can
read the book to see how that went.
And now you start becoming an advocate for the police in Toronto.
And what I thought was very different and another angle that we don't really hear of,
you know, we hear of women getting trafficked, you know.
Nick talked about some of the other things they use, getting them, you know, addicted
to drugs, even kidnapping their children, threatening to kill their kids if they don't
carry on the work.
But you talk about a group of men.
So, tell me about their story.
Yeah.
So around 2009, I started speaking out and sharing my story with law enforcement across
Canada, particularly the federal police, what's called the Royal Manchurian Police, RCMP here
in Canada, which is kind of like your FBI, if you will.
And so I traveled the country with RCMP and shared my story.
And at one of the conference, an officer came up to me and said, I hear you and I understand
your story, but we have 13 men victim and they're Hungarian.
They don't speak English.
I was wondering if you can come and help us out.
So I and that's what I started doing.
I actually ended up working on front lines as well, helping with rescue operations.
So of course, I said yes.
So I went to visit the 13 men and they actually were trafficked by a Hungarian operation.
There was, I think, 13 accused at the end of it.
And there was over 58 victims in like the past six years, but a lot of them couldn't
be found.
They tried, they got kicked out of Canada or whatever happened to them.
And, but their gig was, is that they went to small villages and particularly one, it's
called Papa in Hungary and they recruited very vulnerable, poor men, young and older.
And they promised them, you know, the world.
And they said, you know, come to Canada, we will offer you construction jobs.
And all you have to do is work here for three, four months and you can go home and buy your
mom house and buy, buy for pay off your mom's houses or take care of your family for the
rest of your life.
So on and so forth.
The problem was that the recruiters lived in, in, in a village as well.
And all of their hit men lived in a village as well.
So they recruited young men and, and, and older men who were literally their neighbors.
So they can watch their families, they end day out while the victim was shipped out to
Canada.
And if the victim were wanting to leave, he had nowhere to go.
He can't go home now because they find him and his family going to be harmed.
It was a really bad setup for the victims.
Um, and anyways, ended up becoming Canada's largest human trafficking case to date.
It was so big that by the time we were going to go to court, they were going to have to
build a, a new courthouse for $1.2 million.
Every single media from Canada was at the sentencing.
What really happened was that traffickers bought the victims over.
They took their passport.
The minute they landed, they took them to different houses.
They locked them in the basement.
They fed them with food that you wouldn't even give your pig.
I mean, green, more the crap.
Some of them were specifically house slaves to the, to the Kingpin.
So the coffee was too cold.
He gets beaten with the cable and the list goes on.
They worked on constructions from 6 AM to, you know, till the sun went down.
Then they were taken to minivans across the province or state, however you want to call
it in Ontario.
And they were asked to steal checks, mail fraud.
And so what happened was each victim, so the, the, the trafficker opened a bank account
for each victim.
He was the translator.
So obviously the banks had no idea.
They just thought this is his cousin, his brother, whatever.
But he went to all different banks.
So no one put the picture together.
So now he has about 25 bank cards with the PIN number.
And now he has thousands of dollars of corporate checks coming to him at the end of the day
from all companies that he's fraudulently cashing.
And now each of his victims are working in constructions and each victim can make up
to four grand and he has their identities as well.
So he made money from the construction.
He never paid his victims.
He made money from check and credit fraud.
He made money from buying trucks and stuff based on like the house slaves credit and
identity and sending them back to Hungary and ruining his credit completely and others
as well.
And on the top of it, he applied for every single individual that fair money.
So each and every victim was eligible for up to I think $1,200 welfare.
He made them go to the welfare office and say, hey, I'm diabetic.
I, you know, because the more symptoms you have, the more money you get for special whatever
needs.
So the guy ended up clearing just within six months when we looked at the financials, he
made about $1.6 million just in six months, but he was operating for over five years.
God, that's awful.
And you hit on the point, I want to make sure that we cover as well the passport.
So the other layer of vulnerability, not only threatening family like I did with these men,
is the immigration element too.
So they took everyone's passports away.
You're in this foreign country.
Every time, you know, that there's any notion that one of you is starting to get some courage,
they basically throw the you're going to get caught by immigration and go in Canadian jail
card at you.
Absolutely.
But so here's a story about that old man.
He was 62 years old and he was the house slave.
And his job was to clean the 10,000 square feet house every single day.
And but the slave owners kids were just such a punks and they just spit on him and beat
him and torture him and laughed at him.
And every time he would finish vacuuming, the kids would start to come back and throw
the Cheerios out of the cereal box, just start throwing it on the ground and say, hey, hey,
if my father comes home and sees this mess, he's going to beat you again.
And so that's how he lived.
And he just after two and a half years, he couldn't take it anymore.
He worked 20 hours a day, not just in the house, not just cooking, cleaning and doing
stuff, but he had to build a fence outside.
The neighbors thought he was the grandfather.
He didn't speak English.
He was given one cigarette a day.
Every so there was this was the main slaves house slave owner.
So he had a basement.
He had seven people in his basement and they were only allowed out when they went to work
and then they were locked back in.
So what what the slave owner did specifically with this guy, so they only feed them once
a day, but with crap like disgusting food, right?
And he would bring up this old man every night and have him sit at the table and watching
them have a feast and just watch them.
He wouldn't get a plate.
He wouldn't.
They wouldn't let him eat.
And every time he would try to reach for a piece of something, they like take your dirty
slave hands away from our food.
You're not here to eat.
You're here to watch and when we are done, you need to clean it up.
So that's how he lived for two and a half years.
And after two and a half years, he's like, I can't do this anymore.
He saw an opportunity.
There was a broken bike that was tied to a post on his street.
And he saw that every morning when he had to walk the kids down to the bottom of the
street for the school bus.
So he walked back and one day he's like, that's it.
I'm getting on that bike.
Listen, the bike didn't even have air in the wheels.
It was just or the tires.
It was broken.
He biked with that bike for two and a half hours down to the bottom of the mountain where
they lived.
He waved down a police officer and a police officer checked him out.
He didn't understand what he was saying and he let him go.
So his only option was now to go back as fast as possible before they found out that he
was missing.
And that was his first attempt to escape.
And after that, he tried two more times and he just stopped.
And then eventually he was rescued by RCMP.
Amazing.
And this is a Hungarian family in Canada?
This was a Hungarian family in Canada.
They're all gone now.
And this man specifically that I described, he was rescued.
They took a very good care of him for about three or four years.
And unfortunately, he had cancer and passed away two years ago alone in Canada without
family.
Oh my goodness.
So that's such an important picture to paint.
I'm so glad you told that story because this is, you know, in a suburb where I'm sure people
around that house were thinking they were an idyllic community and that kind of horrendous
torture was going on in their neighbor's house.
Exactly.
And a lot of forced labor in America happens in suburbs or in very distinguished communities
and very elite areas.
You wouldn't know because, you know, people don't care anymore.
Mind your own business, you know.
That's the kind of attitude we have, especially now with COVID, just stay away, right?
Yeah.
People are just sitting around at the moment, they're all behind closed doors.
That's right.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, then I want to transition.
So, you know, you got out yourself, now you're helping the police in Toronto.
Obviously, you were able to stay in Canada, which is phenomenal.
What about your own journey?
How did you start to be able to rebuild mentally after what you went through?
Honestly, I do really appreciate that question.
And that is going to be my second book because it's so comprehensive.
The short version is that I reached every possible book, material, self-help book.
I turned to God, I turned to music, art.
But I guess the only thing that I can say is that I just, I never give up on myself.
I've gone through some pretty dark times alone.
I never really had help.
I just try to get as many self-help books.
I try to keep myself as busy as possible.
And each year pass by, something new comes up to heal.
I mean, so much has happened in, you know, not just being trafficked, but after that,
and even my childhood.
So the last 20 years is nothing but just focusing on healing all the stuff that keeps coming
up.
I give you an example.
Just when I think I'm doing well, you know, and I think I'm in a relatively good place.
Like I lost my father five years ago and my mom, they passed on five months apart.
And I was not in Hungary to see them getting old because of everything that happened.
Right.
So it was really, really hard to go back and see them dying and realizing that I wasn't
here.
And, you know, we never had the time to kind of figure things out.
So it was very, very difficult.
And but then also with my dad, for example, he left when I was nine.
So I never really had the chance to go back and rebuild that connection because I was
trafficked and I had to stay in Canada for safety.
Right.
So there's a million layers.
So a week ago, I'm sitting in a chair, we are talking with my husband and we're going
through Spotify and we're looking through music from our childhood.
Right.
And the song pops up that I haven't heard in 35 years.
I have a very distinguished memory about my dad.
We didn't have a long time together, obviously, but the times that we had together, I cherish
them the most.
I miss him.
I always did.
But there was this thing when he took me on a bike ride and we went to a lake and given
that he was a gypsy, he just knew his way around nature.
So we would get some food and put it on the fire.
And we had a beautiful summer day.
But while we were on a bike, the radio was playing and there was this song that he started
singing along and he loved this song.
And I never heard that song since then.
And I'm sitting there looking at my Spotify and this song just pops up.
I started bawling my eyes out.
I couldn't breathe.
And I was out for days because it wasn't just that I'm grieving my dad.
It brought up the whole other that I didn't have time for with him.
And you know, it's painful and so on, so forth.
So I allowed myself to go down for two days, couldn't get out of bed, cried my face off.
My husband just let me do my thing.
And then I was done, you know, clean my face off, fix my crown and back to normal, you
know.
But so there really wasn't there is really no way of fully healing.
It's an ongoing process.
I have a lot of really good days, months, weeks, and then things happen like when was
it six, seven months ago, I had to cross the border, go to the States to help out, deliver
a fund.
And because of my story and how I crossed the border the first time and how I got interrogated
and I was so scared the very first time.
It just stays with me.
So every time I cross any borders, I get a horrible anxiety, but it's part of my job.
So here we go.
We go.
I go through New Jersey and I don't have an American visa, but I'm not going to America
to work.
I'm donating my time, so I'm basically a volunteer, but it doesn't matter.
It gets pretty difficult or started to get pretty difficult to cross the border in the
last few years or like a couple of years.
So I'm going through New Jersey and I get pulled over and I get pulled over and I get
pulled over to be interrogated.
And honestly, I it took every bit out of me to keep it together.
And I was like, I was in bits and pieces by the time they let me go.
And of course, there was nothing wrong.
I didn't do anything wrong.
I'm not breaking the law.
But, you know, two hours later, I had to, you know, go and help a victim.
So and, you know, off you go.
Just you know, you don't have time to do this right now.
So it's a it's a breaking progress.
That's all I have to say.
So I think that's one of the misunderstandings of this kind of trauma is that you go through
therapy and then you're quote unquote cured when obviously that trauma is going to stay
with you regardless.
But hopefully we're able to kind of move it back to the part of the mind where it's a
memory rather than a constant trigger over and over again.
So what are some of the the tools that you've been able to use as far as therapy, as far
as outlets that have helped you when you have some of these flashbacks or anxiety attacks?
I think it was more of materials, books and seminars that talks about the mindset and
the how powerful your mind is and your brain and your thoughts.
And if you can start controlling your emotions or thoughts, then that that that became my
coping mechanism.
So I also what was really helpful is learning those materials.
I also became a counselor.
So I actually done 350 hours of training on, you know, trauma.
So that was also very helpful for me to understand how my brain works, what trauma is, what happens
when I'm traumatized, how does it come out.
I also done training on grief counseling, which is very similar to releasing trauma.
So I think understanding what happened and understanding how the brain works and the
chemical reaction and all that helped me the most.
And so what I really understood at the end of the day is that the triggers will come
like it or not 10 years later, 20 years later, 30, 40 years later.
And it's going to feel like just like it happened yesterday.
Right.
So it's not a matter of whether you can put it behind and just kind of make it feel like
it's just a dream now.
But it's a matter of how do you handle it when it happens to you.
So I guess that was like I created my own coping mechanism, which is when it comes,
I need to let it out.
And if it comes when I am not in a place, but I able to let it out, I have to be able
to control it, shove it aside for a minute.
And then when I'm alone, I have to be able to kind of let it all out because it's really
not good to keep it in.
But you know what?
I'm not going to lie to you.
I have times when I could not control it and I was in an environment where I really shouldn't
have let it all out.
But it is what it is.
You know, I was doing a corporate event and we just got off the flight and I'm not even
going to get into it.
But I started crying so hard.
This was just two years ago.
I couldn't even see what I was going at the airport.
Literally, I could not see what I was going.
And I was with the company.
I was consulting with and I couldn't pull it together for like four or five hours and
I couldn't explain what happened.
I could not explain it.
And next day I just pretended like the crazy never happened.
Nobody's done anything.
I never heard back from them.
But it's this that other layer as well.
So you get people like yourself.
I had another guy on Ishmael Bay who was a boy soldier in Sierra Leone, you know, so
had a huge amount of trauma.
His parents were murdered.
He was forced to fight for several years, made to be addicted to drugs.
And he overcame that and is now a UNICEF ambassador for boy soldiers.
But I think that's what people forget is that you've got that trauma but then layered on,
you've got everyday life.
And I bizarrely myself had about three months ago, this inexplicable, I wouldn't even call
it depression, just sadness where I would cry in the shower.
I had no reason.
I couldn't understand.
I had no explanation other than some invisible pile of stress had just reached that final
breaking point.
But again, I just kind of observed it.
I'm like, all right, this is going on.
This is really weird but whatever.
And allowed myself to go through that journey and then came out the other side.
And I think that's an important thing that you said is sometimes you're not going to
be in the right environment, but recognizing it and acknowledging it and definitely not
having any shame about it is very, very important to then come out a little bit stronger once
it's over.
Bless your heart, first of all, I'm really sorry that you have those moments too.
And anybody who's done any frontline work or had trauma in their life, they understand
what post-traumatic is.
And yes, I think and that's why I think it was important for me to understand what's
happening to me.
Because if I understand what's happening to me, then I can label it.
Okay, this is what's happening right now.
It's coming all out.
So I just need to let it all out regardless and I know better days will come.
So I don't get scared and I don't lie down and say, oh, when is this going to end?
I understand what's happening behind it.
So that's why I chose to actually read psychology books and trauma related books and sign up
to a million seminars and classes so that I understand at least and at least I can be
my own nurse, if you will.
Yeah, now another thing that I've noticed is a very strong common denominator with Ishmael,
with many of the men and women I've had on the show is when they were through their own
worst part and then they've started realizing that they were able to help other people,
not only was that very powerful for the people they were helping, but it was very powerful
in their own self-healing.
Was that something that you found too?
Absolutely.
So what I realized is the way I felt is that I'm going to give you a visual.
So the minute I was trafficked, every single day the trafficker was reaching to my soul
and my being and ripped out a piece of me and took it away.
And every day they chipped away more and more of me until there was nothing left.
And so like I couldn't go back to my family for Christmases.
I couldn't open a bank account.
I couldn't have my own house.
I couldn't have my own job.
And the list just goes on and on, right?
My parents died.
I couldn't be there for them.
But every time when I was on front line and I was able to do something for the survival
that made it right for them, it also was like a piece of puzzle that was missing and I could
put it back.
So the very first case when you remember in my book, it was a girl that I had to drive
home seven hours away from where it happened to her and take her home after Christmas,
two weeks after Christmas.
She was taken before Christmas.
She was held for almost two months.
And the police rescued her and I was able to take her home.
And I was able to watch her walk through that door, be reunited with her family, which I
never had the opportunity to do.
And then they invited me in and her gifts from Christmas was still under the tree untouched.
And I was able to see her reuniting with her family at Christmas.
I never had the chance to do that.
So but when I walked out, I wasn't crying for me and say, oh, I never had a chance to
do that.
It was in a way, it was healing that piece of me that was missing.
Yeah, that's beautiful.
And I'm just about to interview a guy called Johann Hari and he's written two incredible
books that you probably love, Chasing the Scream.
And I am completely blank on the second one.
I'm reading it now.
It'll come to me in a second.
And he talks about lack of control and mental health.
And it's funny because we had a conversation before and then I read this book and then
now we're talking again.
When you were trafficked, you had no control over your life whatsoever.
And I think that one of the elements of that healing part when you're able to give back
is now your control.
You're waking up every day and I am going to make someone's life better.
So I think that the vulnerability that having no control makes the other side of the spectrum
is how empowering it is when you realize that you are now part of the solution and you are
protecting other men and women from these predators.
100%.
And, you know, there's so many things come out of the fact that you were controlled,
like every aspect of your life was controlled.
And then you remember what that felt like.
And so as a service provider, those are the things you think about right away.
And that's how you are able to give back.
And that's why most of the survival led service provider agencies tend to be the most effective
when they attempt to cause because they know right away how that survival feels.
So like I was denied food, obviously I was starving all the time.
So now I am very picky about my food.
It has to be like a big deal.
I'm super picky about my food.
When we eat, how we eat, is it the right setting?
Is it too loud in there?
Is it too bright?
Like it's just, unfortunately it is what it is.
Thank God my husband, you know, is putting up with it for 10 years.
But comes with that, like when I walk into a situation, the first thing I will ask, are
you hungry?
And not only if you're hungry, I got a sandwich for you.
So what would you like to eat?
Because I know they probably haven't ate whatever they wanted in months or years, right?
And the minute you do that, you are able to not only offer them to say, hey, I know how
you feel, trust me, without saying that, because you shouldn't say that, but at least you're
able to like break down immediately a wall and there's a million walls.
And then it's a victory in a way for you.
It's like, okay, another one is not going to have to suffer for too much longer, you
know?
And another side of doing services for others, to me, I don't know if others feel that way,
but it really is for me, it's about if I can help you today, that means maybe you don't
have to suffer for another 12 years like I did.
And the truth is, the survivors we ended up working with, you know, instead of taking
them 12 years to write, to learn English and speak English and get education, they got
it in less than two years.
Instead of waiting 12 years to get permanent status, they got it in three years, going
to school, so on and so forth.
And those are the goals that I have that they could have a real life after this.
There is such a thing and you don't have to wait until you're 40 to feel like that you
are worthy like me.
It took me 20 years to get to where I am.
So if I see a victim who's 20 years old, everything that I do today is about making sure that
she doesn't have to wait till she's 40 to feel like that she's worthy and start her
life.
She can start her life at 25.
Do you know what I mean?
Oh, absolutely, absolutely, and I think like you said with the food thing, I mean, as you
mentioned in the book, something as small as that is the first act of kindness that
they've seen.
And so I can imagine how if you're slowly able to build up the trust that yeah, you
can begin that healing process as soon as possible and get them on the path to not only
recover but then be resilient and really thrive the rest of their life.
Right, yeah, yeah.
Right.
Well then, speaking of helping others.
So tell me about how you started Tamir's Cause then.
So before Tamir's Cause, I had a charity called Walk With Me Canada Victim Services and I
ended up doing victim services, which we've been talking about a lot.
So I've worked with police agencies, we break down doors, rescued victims.
I did that for almost six years.
I ended up working with a lot of police agencies.
And so we started a victim service, like a safe house specifically for victims of human
trafficking.
And we got really, really good at it.
And we started to have like the biggest case load in Canada at the time, which was great,
sad, but great.
Great as in like we were able to get to the victims.
It's terrible that we had to do that kind of work, obviously.
But what happened was we ran out of funds and nobody wanted to give us the money to
be able to continue.
And we were way before our time, way before human trafficking was a buzzword or people
even knew what it was.
So it was really hard to raise funds for it.
So we closed and I was dead inside.
It was just heartbreaking.
I worked so hard on that and everything be done.
But anyways, it's life, it is what it is.
But I wasn't ready to stop.
So I actually started a for-profit company because my dream was that in the next 10 years,
I will create sustainable revenue stream models where we're going to make our own money.
We're going to employ survivors.
We're going to create schools where they can get certificates.
We can offer them employment opportunities, training opportunities.
We are also offering educational packages.
So we will continue doing all the work that we were doing except the emergency rescue
operations.
And instead of begging for funding, we will make our own money.
And that's exactly what we ended up doing.
We started with $3,000 a year to I think last year, we were almost $300,000 company.
And yeah, so it's been extremely successful.
We have a lot of different departments.
And one of them we started two years ago, Temeo's Market, which was a soap and bath
product, handmade organic locally sourced.
Survivors were making the products with professionals.
And it was actually very successful.
It was a two years pilot project.
It was financially and in any other way successful.
We had a trauma informed employment program.
We ended up employing up to nine survivors.
We had our own production facility and showroom and created our own products.
So it was great.
And then we were scooped up by an investor.
And just this year, April, we were going to roll our products out in Canada and North
America in large retail stores.
These were going to be like high end spa products.
So anyways, COVID happened.
So everything is on hold right now.
But when COVID is back and when people are more comfortable spending money and not just
on food, but like maybe even luxury items, we're going to roll that back out.
So that's just one of the things.
The other side of the company is a consulting agency and the educational firm.
So TMEAS Cause is partnering up with various large financial sectors, private sectors,
the hospitality hotels and other organizations, tech companies.
And what we do is we offer them consulting and education on human trafficking.
We assist software companies, money laundering software companies, how to create a great
software and find human trafficking through the banking system.
We also assist the United Nations and we also assist financial sectors on a global level.
And just most recently, we asked to partner with the financial company who is offering
bank accounts around the world for survivors of human trafficking.
So we are going to take up on that.
But what I'm very excited about is our partnership with an American organization called Deliverance
Fund.
Deliverance Fund is made out of former CIA agents.
I believe you had them on your show, former CIA, NSA and Marines who came together in
the United States and started an organization to hunt traffickers.
So about two years ago or three years ago, I met the founder in Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Nick McClemmie, and we just happened to have a meeting that day to see if we can work together
down the road.
And that night he asked me if I'm free by any chance because they had a victim and their
victim advocate was out of town.
So I ended up staying.
I was supposed to fly out that day and I ended up staying to take care of the victim for
five days with Deliver Fund.
And that was that the rest is history.
We became family since then.
So I also work with Deliver Fund training law enforcement in the States and helping
the analytic team and a whole bunch of other stuff.
So we are very busy, but our core mission is always every single mission we take up
on is two things.
One, can we make money on it and put it back into the cause?
Or two, will this help eradicate human trafficking and help us to make us go out of business
in the next 10 years?
And if the answer is yes to both, then we are game basically.
That's amazing.
Well, firstly on Deliver Fund, yes, I had Nick McKinley and also Greg Jackson, who does
a lot of work with them too.
And what they're doing is incredible.
And as you said, the software side, the IT, helping support law enforcement agencies in
areas so they can actually make the arrests.
So such an incredible organization themselves.
But it's very interesting what you said about the fundraising, because I just released an
interview with a gentleman here where I live called Ryan Chamberlain, and he talks about
social business.
So you get the nonprofits, and they're always relying on donations to keep the doors open.
And then you have regular businesses.
So he uses Tom's Shoes as an example.
But getting a business where every time you buy, let's say, the soap, then you get the
soap, this company makes a profit, but every single purchase, a dollar will go towards
to Mayor's Cause or whatever it is.
I think that's the future of a lot of fundraising for these kind of organizations, that you
should create your own business that supports your cause, but also is making a profit.
So you're not relying on people that some years may be extremely generous.
And then sometimes like this, the money dries up.
And I think you're right.
When I started researching what kind of company I want, the frame social enterprise was keep
coming up.
So my company is actually registered as Tomiak's Cause Inc.
Social enterprise, because that's what we do.
We make money.
And most of it, over 80% of it goes right back into the cause.
And I have not applied for a grant or raised funds in six years, not a dollar.
Now we did have some small sponsorships, but those sponsorships actually went towards directly
to victim care.
But for today's funds for me to operate, no, we paid for everything and we gave back as
well.
So that's one.
And the other side that I wanted to tell you is that I think it's psychological.
And this is what I was suffering, like I was rustling with this when I had to close walk
with me.
Because for six years, here I am, this strong service provider who survives everything.
And I'm supposed to be a role model to the next generation of survivals and show them
that you can.
While every single month I have to go to some rooms of people and literally cry and beg
for money.
And it wasn't healthy for me.
It's not a healthy model, I don't think.
And at the end of the day, I still felt like that I'm getting a handout and I have to beg
for my victims, right?
So it wasn't healthy for me personally.
I didn't feel good about myself.
I did not feel good about going and asking for money.
So when we actually closed walk with me and the story how we closed is actually is in
the book.
I don't know if you remember, but we got denied by the last organization that we went to beg
for money.
And the lady it was actually a large company and a VP was on her phone the whole time.
And we just finished telling her how the last victim was 12 years old just from around the
corner.
And we don't have enough services to provide her.
She didn't even look up from her phone until the end.
And she said, Yeah, I'm sorry, we don't have this kind of money right now.
But you know what?
On your way out, you can talk to the receptionist and you're welcome to use our printer anytime.
Okay?
Oh, my goodness.
I cry if I get frustrated when I punch the wall.
And so I couldn't punch anything.
I haven't punched anything in a long time, probably 18 years.
But I was surrounded with very professional people, the mayor and so on and so forth.
So I didn't want to punch anything or anyone.
But I started crying.
And a man looked at me and she goes, I cannot believe that just happened.
And I said, I'm going to promise you mayor right now, that in 10 years, I will be a multimillionaire.
And I will never, ever ask for money ever again.
And that was about six years ago.
And that was the last time I asked for money.
And I will never do it again.
I am not a millionaire yet, but I still have about 40 years to get there.
I would have said the same thing, but I would have also punched the printer on my way out.
But you know what?
I can use your printer.
So you want me to feed the printers to my victims?
Yeah, exactly.
And that's what the next generation means to you, that they can use the printer.
Are you kidding me?
It was such a slap in the face, not just to me, but to the entire victim generation and
population.
It's like, are you kidding me?
Unbelievable.
But anyway, we closed a very successful year last year.
And of course, COVID is not helping right now, but it is what it is.
We will get through and we will keep on going.
Absolutely.
And this is going to go out right, I think, when we're starting to emerge from the other
side.
So I'm hoping that when people have kind of had some time on their own and really think
about priorities, that they will be more wise with their spending too, and hopefully be more
conscious about the companies that they use their dollars on.
So if, for example, they're buying products that are also supporting the fight against
sex trafficking and supporting the victims of that, then why not buy that instead of
the company you used to use that doesn't do anything with their money?
Right.
I mean, one of the things that they started to do here in Canada for us, like police officers,
they started to, they went to their accountants, like at the police station, and they said,
our entire unit would like to redirect our money that we usually donate to whatever charity
to walk with me.
So next thing you know, we have 2000 police officers donating us portion of their salaries,
which was unbelievable.
And so if there is law enforcement out there who's listening and you're already donating
some money, just please look in to see if you can donate to organizations such as Deliver
Fund, who basically is working for and with law enforcement for the last five years and
trying to put the traffickers on silver platter.
So there's a million kind of, I mean, I feel differently about those donations because
it's not like you're not begging.
It's like, hey, we are working together.
We are on the same team.
If you're already donating and you feel like that, you know, you want to shift or change,
like maybe this is, and trust me, every dollar counts, like, and they are so respectful of
it, every single donation.
I work on a team so I know how the money goes a long way and it does not go to like high
end salaries.
It really is going to the people on the front lines.
Yeah.
And I see that there's a friend of mine, Ryan Parrott, who has Sons of the Flag, which helps
on the mental health side, but specifically burns.
So whether it's military veterans or first responders, they get the best care so that
they don't just get the burn barely taken care of, but they actually get the plastic
surgery so they can get as close to what they looked like before and as mobile as possible
as well.
But obviously that's a very expensive thing too.
But I think what you observed is something that I hear so many of these men and women
talk about.
The problem is Ryan and you and Nick are so passionate about what you do because you get
it.
You understand the why.
You've seen the traffickers, I mean, the victims of trafficking in front of you and
Ryan's seen these burn injured men and women in front of him.
So they know how hard they have to fight.
And the problem is you go into a boardroom full of people that are so disconnected, many
of whom just don't care.
You're just a number.
Which part of my budget are you going to try and take from today?
So to be able to turn that fire and that passion into a business where you generate your own
funds I think is incredible.
And then letting the public say, vote with your dollar.
This is an organic, natural beauty line that when you buy the soap, you're actually making
a difference to the world too.
I honestly think that's the answer to so many nonprofits and I'm really excited to see how
this whole concept takes off.
I thank you so much for understanding and appreciating the concept.
I really do appreciate that.
That's half of the battle usually to make people understand what the concept behind
social enterprise.
So thank you.
Thank you so much for validating that.
No problem.
Well, I think it's incredible.
So, well, I want to transition to some closing questions so I can let you go.
Before I talk about other people's books, so let's talk about your book.
So the book is called Out of the Shadows.
Where can people find the audiobook and the actual print version?
Yeah, so you can get it on Amazon.
I do understand that it's in some bookstores in the United States too and it was in bookstores
when the book came out.
Not sure if it's there now.
So your best bet would be Amazon for sure.
And same with the audiobook.
You can get it online.
Just type it in.
Out of the Shadows by Temei and Agi audiobook and you'll find it.
Yeah, and I actually listened to the audiobook and the narrator that you chose is very good,
I thought.
Thank you so much.
So then the first closing questions then, is there a book written by someone else that
you love to recommend?
It can be about what we discussed today or something completely different.
Yeah, it's a little out there though.
That's okay.
Two books that actually started me on my journey.
One of them was, well actually there's several books.
You know what?
I wish I remembered the very first one.
I don't know if I'm going to find it.
It was a book that was released in 1957 or something and I had it with me for like years
and years.
It's something with the mosaic of the mind but I can't honestly tell you for sure.
Okay, so the first book that really got my attention and I am a believer of God and I
grew up Catholic slash Christian, right?
Well, I didn't, I wasn't raised Catholic but I grew up in a Catholic country.
So for the most part of my life I was following the Christian rules, right?
So this book is a little bit outside of that but it's called Laws of Attraction by Esther
Hicks.
And it was really just like the second version of like the video called Secret and the movie
called The Secret.
When it came out it's about understanding how your mind works and how you attract stuff
and whatever.
I don't fully agree with the entire mindset of how you attract everything to yourself.
I think there's a lot more to it.
But what my top takeaway was from Laws of Attraction and The Secret is there are certain
elements to your mindset that you are responsible for and you have every capability to retrain
your mind to start thinking positive and get out of the victimhood.
So that was the most favorite part of those books and that literally kind of set me on
this whole new journey where I wanted to know more about how much I'm responsible for, how
much is my past really responsible for my childhood and all that, how much generational
trauma I'm responsible for and how can I heal them.
So that was very interesting.
And then later on what changed my mindset about money and how much I worked and how
much money will I ever be able to make and kind of get out of poverty for real and that
helped me to stop being further exploited financially and emotionally was Secrets of
a Millionaire Mind and the writer was T. Harv Eker.
Yeah.
T. Harv Eker.
That was absolutely life-changing, that book.
Fantastic.
All right.
So then what about a movie?
Are there any movies that you love?
Yeah, it doesn't match with who I am though.
I'm almost embarrassed by it.
There are movies that I absolutely love that has nothing to do with my emotional spiritual
journey.
That's fine.
Okay.
Well, I do have a favorite movie that has absolutely nothing to do with my spiritual
journey or who I am and if you knew me, you would be like, huh?
How is that movie makes any sense?
So it's The Heat with Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Vaughn Kilmer and a couple of others.
I don't know if you ever seen it, but I think that is the most amazing movie that has ever
been made in the history of the world.
The acting is outstanding.
It's about a bank robber and a cop and how they kind of chase each other through the
whole movie, but it's so intellectual and there is a shootout scene that's happening
in LA and it's just so real.
The guns are real.
It's such an action movie.
No woman that I ever heard or met who would like that movie.
I think it was totally made for men, but I love it.
I think it's my thing.
So there you have it.
Guns, robbery, cops.
I mean, what can possibly go wrong?
You know, now, you know, I've got to go back through my notes because I had that recommended
a little while ago and I could have sworn it was a woman that recommended it too.
So I'm going to have, I'll get back to you on that, but I think it was a woman that recommended
it.
Are you serious?
I think so.
Wow.
Then okay.
That's awesome.
That, that is honestly the best movie ever made and I'll tell you why they give you a
real background on the cop and show the world he lives in, right?
On the streets, always out chasing, chasing the bad guys.
Right?
And here he is meeting this bad guy who has values and morals and all he's bad about is
that he does bank robberies, which is bad and it's illegal.
And I get it.
Terrible, terrible, whatever.
But he never kills no one and he loves art and he has a beautiful condo and he's clean
shaved and very intelligent.
And so they chase each other.
He is the best bank robber and, and Al Pacino is the best cop that is.
And the whole movie is about learning about each other.
And then there's this big shootout scene and I'm not going to give it away at the end,
but there's one scene where they finally meet and they end up just sitting down and talking.
And I can't even, I can't even repeat the conversation, but a, that's the best acting
that I have seen yet to see.
I have never seen better acting or scenes since then, since that movie ever.
And some came close, but that is literally the best acting.
But it's also about how the two sides are actually capable of sitting down and having
a conversation and how much they learn from each other and how much they realize that
they have the same past and they're living the same life just on a different side.
So in a way, that movie was actually very helpful to me when I started working in human
trafficking and I started to see human traffickers as well, because that movie kind of always
reminded me of like, there's two sides to every story.
And while I want to just lock away all the traffickers, believe me, but I also want to
know where did it start?
When did it start?
Which is why I had that interview with the pimp, if you recall it, right?
So, but that movie was a huge, it really influenced me on to this day, I always want to see the
other side of the story.
Yeah, I saw it a long, long time ago.
So between whoever it was that recommended it recently and yourself, I'm going to have
to put it back on the top of my list because I remember it being phenomenal.
I think I remember the gun battle being like one solid sequence through the whole thing
as well, if my memory serves me right.
But what you said about reverse engineering, that's a lot of what I try and do with this
podcast too, is perfect example is the drug crisis that we're in now.
When you reverse engineer how drugs became illegal, when you reverse engineer the mental
ill health that causes addiction, that's the root of the problem, not the addict or the,
you know, that you said the trafficker even.
How did that little cute giggling toddler, does one day become a human being that would
actually do that to other people?
Right, right, exactly.
I love your thought process.
Well, good, thank you.
Yeah, I mean, that's the goal for me is that we're not going to fix it putting band-aids
on boo-boos, you know what I mean?
We have to get to the actual root of it.
So this is why the conversation that I'm having with you now is so important because there
are going to be men and women hopefully listening to this, that either as a responder will notice
something that might alert them to stopping trafficking or God forbid, even be a warning
sign for someone that was about to enter into trafficking.
So you know, it's that's why I love talking to people like you because you guys have the
solution as simple as that.
Well, I like to think so, but it's not always the one.
But yes, thank you so much.
All right, well then stand on movies.
Is there a documentary you've seen that you've loved?
Okay, so here's the secret.
I can't sit down for longer than five minutes to watch anything.
And I tell you why.
From back in the day when I was on frontline, my phone could ring any minute and I was on
front lines for six years and on cause 24 seven.
And I think I had usually one day off one.
So my system is still after six years not being on front lines.
I still check my phone every two minutes and I can get comfortable.
So if I sit down and watch a movie and if the first 10 seconds doesn't get my attention,
I'm done.
I can't.
In my mind, I can't afford to spend an hour and 20 minutes to find out if I'm going to
like this movie or not, because I may need to go to see a victim, even though I have
not seen a victim in, you know, three years or the odd times I go out, we deliver a fund
and we do cases, but that's a different story.
So truth is it's really, really hard for me to sit down and watch something.
And if it doesn't get my attention in 10 seconds, usually my husband says I'm a little bit of
a harsh critique.
I should give you a few minutes.
Usually I give it about a minute and I'm done.
So I honestly don't remember when was the last time I watched an entire documentary
because nothing really got my attention in less than two minutes.
Yeah, well, I think a lot of people can relate to that in the first responder community.
I think, you know, it's the hypervigilance for a start.
That's one thing I'm learning now during this whole virus thing is to stop looking at my
bloody phone because I'm not that important, you know.
But then the same as well.
I don't want to waste 90 minutes of my life.
I just watched Backdraft 2 a few months ago and I literally felt like I was robbed of
two hours of my life.
So yeah, I can actually totally understand what you're saying.
That's awesome.
For so long, I didn't understand.
For so long, I just thought that something is really wrong with me.
I can't eat properly.
I'm so picky and I can't watch TV or movies and I'm really like very strong opinionated
if the acting is bad.
And then just the other day we talked about this and just the other day my husband and
I kind of figured it out.
Why am I like that?
Why is it that I'm like that?
I'm very impatient.
Same with food.
If my food is not out in two minutes, I'm out.
I'm gone.
I don't have time for this because what if I get a call?
Not that I would.
But, you know, I don't have time to sit and wait for my food.
I need my food now and I need to eat in case I have to go.
So it's unfortunate.
But you know what?
Yeah, unfortunately, I can't give you any documentaries.
No, no, that's fine.
That was a great conversation about documentaries.
So that's the point really.
So the next question I love to ask.
Is there a person that you recommend to come on this podcast as a guest to speak to the
first responders, military and associated professions of the world?
I have a million.
Yes, I have obviously a lot of law enforcement friends who are first responders and work
with victims of human trafficking or just first responders.
Not just, you know what I mean?
Like first responders.
I have a friend who's a probation officer who's doing such an amazing work with his
clients, which would be actually I think it would be very interesting to listen to.
I met him 10 years ago and he was we were working on a case where the girl actually
saw other girls being shot in the head.
And unfortunately, she disappeared after that.
And then two years later, she died and terrible cases.
So he had he is amazing.
He's been a probation officer for I think 15 or 17 years.
And her his ability to help the young people to turn their life around, no matter where
they come from, with the little resource he has is just unbelievable.
So I think he would be amazing.
Yeah, I have several suggestions.
If you give me some time, I can think more.
But yes, I definitely do.
Excellent.
I agree 100 percent that I haven't had a probation officer on here yet.
And I think that would be a very, very interesting perspective.
So yeah, whoever whoever you would want to connect me with, I would love that.
Thank you.
All right.
So then the last question before we make sure everyone knows where to find you, what do
you do to decompress when you're not looking at your phone every two minutes and helping
helping victims?
I love decorating.
So you probably would find me at IKEA or antique stores, a side of the road and and trying
to help my friends and myself and anybody I know to decorate their interior decoration.
So that's my that's where I go and calm down and in the kitchen.
I'm not very good at it.
So I don't want to promote that part.
I definitely home decor.
What's yours?
That's a good question.
So my and if you heard a little bumping, that was my German shepherd pushing away into my
office and she's lying at my feet now.
So walking her, we live on a community.
So I do like a half hour walk with her around the lake.
So yeah, I leave my phone at home.
No matter what happens, they can wait for 30 minutes.
But yeah, that's that's one of my big decompressions and then exercise as well.
Wow.
How long did it take you to leave your phone at home for 30 minutes?
Actually, I really think that the mindful practices helped.
I've started jumping back into yoga a lot more since this covid thing and my monkey
mind has definitely settled down a little bit.
So I think that hyper vigilance, whether it's the journey you've been on or a lot of the
police and fire and EMS that's out there, we are constantly waiting for a tone to go
off and then we go running into a vehicle and turning lights and sirens on.
So I think that really helped settle everything down where you're just trying to be present
and then the more mindful practice I've done, the less I think about stuff like checking
my phone because you and I were both of the generation that there weren't cell phones
once and you just left a voicemail or even before that, there wasn't a voicemail.
You just either got someone in the house or you didn't.
So I think that's it.
If it's that important in 2020, they'll get a hold of you regardless.
So it's just trusting that.
That's fair enough.
Well, that's a great answer.
And are you going back to frontline work once covid is over?
I am not.
I actually retired out about a year and a half ago to focus on this because like the
Special Forces men and women refer to the force multiplier.
So just like Nick, Nick could be on the ground as a PJ helping one downed airman at a time.
Well now he's running deliver fund helping thousands of people and that's kind of how
I see the podcast is I'm able to bring people like yourself on and thousands of people will
listen to that story.
So I just feel like that now having been a fireman for 14 years, that's the next level
for me is not to promote in a fire service, but get away from the fire service so I can
be a voice that can speak freely and hopefully find some solutions to some of the problems
in the world.
I think it's absolutely incredible what you're doing.
And I think every human being who is frontline workers, they can do this for only so long.
And then after that, the tour starts to take and you just need to know when you can get
out.
And people can do it for the rest of their lives, which is absolutely amazing.
And if my organization didn't run out of funds, I would be still running around with victims
in my car, which would be just as well.
But I guess God had different plans for us, but I still admire the frontline workers and
I would do anything for them.
And when I'll be a multimillionaire, I will find a way to give back to any frontline agencies
as well.
And so yeah, what you're doing, I think is absolutely amazing.
And it's such an honor to be on your show, honestly.
Well, thank you for coming on.
Like I said, Nick and I spoke quite a while ago now because I was looking for someone
on the other side of the trafficking coin, as it were.
And your name was the first person he talked about.
So I'm so glad that we were able to do that.
I want to make sure that people know where to find you and where to find the book.
So where's the best place online to reach out to you and find your work?
So they can just Google me.
It's Timmy and Aggy.
And then they'll find my website, which is timmyandaggy.com.
They can also connect me through Deliver Fund, deliverfund.org.
And the book is on Amazon.
Brilliant.
All right.
Well, Tamir, I want to say thank you again.
Your story is incredible.
You are leading from the front.
The trauma that you went through to overcome that and then turn around and immediately
start helping people, you know, either that are in it or stop even getting in the first
place is so admirable.
And I just really appreciate you taking the time because I understand the toll that takes,
you know, telling the story again.
So I hope that us spending the time on this is going to make a big difference.
But I really, really appreciate you being so generous.
It's absolutely my pleasure.
And just closing, there's one more outlet you can find me if you're a frontline worker.
And if you have questions, my door is always open.
That's what I've done for 10 years.
I still train law enforcement.
Please reach out to me.
You can find me on LinkedIn as well.
And on LinkedIn, it's Timmy and Aggy.
And my my married name is Payne, P-A-Y-N-E.
So Timmy and Aggy Payne, MSM.
That's my that's my credentials.
So please reach out.
I'm always happy to help anyway I can.