Corrections_Today_May_June_2020_Vol.82_No.3

ACA’s General Session

Ballard began his presentation by talking about the Underground Railroad, the historical path abolitionists like Harriet Tubman used to free slaves during the 19 th century. These activists, called “conductors,” were the people Ballard wanted to emulate with his organization. Ballard stated that “slavery is still around,” with more people sold to- day than ever in world history. Ballard described the work of OUR and even gave the audience a preview of the film “The Sound of Freedom,” a film adapta- tion of Ballard’s life starring Jim Caviezel and Mira Sorvino, that will be released later in 2020. After the trailer, Ballard spoke about how he began working in stopping human trafficking as a special agent and described some of the traffickers he stopped in California, including in San Diego. These included finding 12 children in the Los Angeles home of a man who abducted them from Mexico and one incident where a fake monk tried to lure Ballard to Mexico thinking Ballard was a 13-year-old boy. “Who are these guys?” Ballard asked of the traffickers. “What’s wrong with them? What is going on in their heads that they’re looking for this horrific crime to commit?” Ballard spoke about how ACA understands these queries, and that with the rise of human trafficking and more and more traffickers being incarcerated, this called for the start of a massive research project with ACA and other organiza- tions, including the Kansas University Medical Center, Kansas Department of Corrections and Texas Department of Corrections. According to Ballard, the U.S. is one of the top destinations for traffickers, thus necessitating the need to seek solutions and empower law enforcement. “This is the fasting growing criminal enterprise in the world. There are more people enslaved today than in the history of the world,” Ballard declared. Ballard discussed how U.S. laws began to change in 2006, with Congress permitting U.S. special agents to go overseas and stop Americans who were abusing children overseas. The issue Ballard saw was that they could find the children, but had no authority to find Americans, and if he

couldn’t find them, he had to go home. Ballard’s wife, Katherine, suggested he leave the Depart- ment of Homeland Security, which led to the creation of OUR. This allowed Ballard to travel to other countries to work with their governments and police agencies to combat trafficking. This involved establishing digital forensic labs, work- ing undercover for these nations and providing research with organizations like ACA. One of the most notable instances was when Ballard and his team went to Colombia, one of the leading nations in combatting human trafficking. There were over 100 children identified in need of rescuing in the city of Cartagena alone. With the support of the police and the CTI (Colombia’s equivalent of the FBI), they were able to identify the traffickers and conduct a raid during a “sex party” the traffickers were having on a beach to pimp the children out. Over 120 children were rescued, 54 at the party, and five traffickers were arrested. One of the traffickers was Kelly Johana Suárez Martínez Moyam, a former Miss Cartagena pageant winner, who had been using a “modeling school” to traffic children.

76 — May/June 2020 Corrections Today