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Advocate Series Ep. 3 | Made in God’s Image: Worth, Love, and Breaking Exploitation
22 Plays3 hours ago
About this Episode:
What gives a person their worth? In this episode of the Advocate Series, Francis Chan and survivors reveal how traffickers exploit broken identities—and how the truth that we are made in God’s image can restore hope, value, and freedom. Watch full series here.
Full Description:
Episode 3 of the Advocate Series exposes one of the trafficker’s most powerful weapons: distorted worth and counterfeit love. Survivors share raw testimonies of being dehumanized and coerced, while pastor Francis Chan reminds us that true value comes from being made in the image of God.
Through stories of pain, resilience, and redemption, this episode explores how unconditional, patient, and consistent love—rooted in Christ—can break exploitation and restore lives. It’s a call for the Church to not just recognize trafficking but to live out real, sacrificial love in homes, communities, and congregations.
🔔 Subscribe to Trafficking Free America and join us in defending hope for the hopeless.
🕒 Episode Timestamps
0:00 – Introduction
0:48 – Humanity made in God’s image
2:01 – The lies of worldly worth vs. God’s truth
2:58 – Love as Jesus commanded: turning away loneliness and evil
3:45 – How traffickers exploit identity and worth
4:26 – Victims who don’t see themselves as victims
5:09 – Why boys are often left out of the conversation
5:53 – Predators target the vulnerable and traumatized
6:42 – Recognizing the signs of trafficking in everyday life
7:44 – The Church’s responsibility: proactive, not reactive
8:47 – Trafficking myths vs. reality (not like Taken)
9:53 – Survivor story: a mother’s betrayal and cycles of abuse
12:10 – Discovering the truth: “It wasn’t my fault”
15:33 – The chase for love traffickers prey upon
17:24 – Families and communities showing consistent, unconditional love
18:40 – Group home story: consistent love that changed a life
22:15 – Choosing survivor identity over victimhood
23:12 – Oree's redemption story and the rarity of breakthrough
25:16 – Equipping the Church: showing true love in families and communities
26:22 – Valuing others—and yourself—as made in God’s image
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Transcript
Human Value and Divine Image
00:00:49
Speaker
The Bible says that you and i were actually made in the image of Almighty God. Whether you believe in Him or not, we were created in His image.
00:01:02
Speaker
In Genesis 1, when he created the first human, it was different from the rest of his creation. With everything else, he says, okay, that was good, that was good, that was good. But then he makes the first human being in his own image, and he says, that was very good.
00:01:25
Speaker
There is something so sacred about the fact that there is this holy God in heaven and somehow I am made in his image so that I can know him. Okay, that's why ah the psalmist says, i i praise you because I'm fearfully and wonderfully made.
00:01:53
Speaker
Like we are so amazing in the sight of God.
Exploitation of Vulnerability in Trafficking
00:02:01
Speaker
This is a crazy thought, but we so easily forget this. Why? because we're constantly measured by our worth in this world.
00:02:14
Speaker
From your talents, to your lineage, to your looks, some may even say your race or your gender. See, a lie that Satan wants us to believe is that our worth is defined by characteristics of this world and not that we have been made in the image of God.
00:02:32
Speaker
We even measure our worth based upon the amount of people that love us or show us love. And even this is a mistake because we were not made in the image of people, but in God's image.
00:02:47
Speaker
But let's be pragmatic. There's a reason why Jesus demonstrated tangible acts of love while he was on earth and commanded us to do the same.
00:02:59
Speaker
Being told you are made in the image of God might be true, but the overwhelming world we live in easily makes us forget that.
00:03:10
Speaker
So what has Jesus called us to do? Love. Love turns away evil thoughts. Love turns away doubts.
00:03:20
Speaker
Love turns away loneliness. True love even stops us from chasing what we think love might be. In today's video, we're gonna learn how worth is the largest tool that abusers, exploiters, and traffickers use to coerce victims of human trafficking, from adult women and men to boys and girls.
00:03:45
Speaker
But at the end of this video, we're going to provide proven ways for us to fight this evil. We're going to have a game plan that isn't much different than your mindset probably is right now, but it may give us the refocus we need to combat and advocate for the hope of the next target of these perpetrators.
Psychological Manipulation of Victims
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, I would say most the victims that we come across, they don't see themselves as victims. They will say, I'm not a victim. you know They'll tell you that I want to do this. you If they admit that they're involved in it they'll even tell you that they want to do it. there's There's not a trafficker or not a pimp that's forcing me to do this.
00:04:28
Speaker
They just psychologically have been groomed You know, they've they've been manipulated, whether they think if they left, they wouldn't have nice things, they'd have nowhere to go. What am I going to do? Where am I going to live? How am I going to eat? Things like that. What's going happen with my kids?
00:04:43
Speaker
There's a lot of control, whether it's a violent control or a psychological control that these traffickers have over these victims. The market adjusts. You know, the the police start looking for specific things and the people that are perpetrating start trying to camouflage it because they know what they're looking for.
00:05:03
Speaker
Boys are thought of a lot different because for years the conversation only included girls. And also we don't allow the boy to be the victim. When we have the conversation, well why did you tell anybody what was going on?
00:05:15
Speaker
Some of the things we would hear is nobody would believe me because they don't think of boys as victims of sex trafficking. Some of the other things we heard is if I tell them what I did, then they're going to judge me for what I did.
00:05:26
Speaker
I would say that the the predatory acts are working more on children with very low self-esteem, often already have mental ill health issues, already have been traumatized at some point in the home. Like I said, these guys are master predators. They're picking off the children on the edges of the of the periphery, right? That's what they're doing.
00:05:45
Speaker
And, know, so we're seeing more and more severely mentally ill children coming and still spending time in our detention because there's nowhere else to protect them. And in the part I would tell you that is probably the newest to me is that pimp bond that they've created, that totally unacceptable, socially you know corrupt bond with this child. These children truly believe that their pimps care about them. And they believe, they've been've they've been brainwashed to believe that law enforcement, social workers, all these different people in this space are are there to hurt them, not help them.
00:06:15
Speaker
And these children believe
Survivor's Story: Trafficked by Family
00:06:16
Speaker
that. For instance, it can start off in the home. I was actually groomed by my mother. At the time, she didn't know that's what she was doing, but I was taught to use my body and sex to get what I wanted out of men. I was taught to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate.
00:06:37
Speaker
Well, I think people are becoming more sensitive to to, you know, look for these kind of signs, but it's someone who can't look at your into your eyes and talk to you, or either they have someone answering all of their questions for them. It's someone who has stopped going to school. um They're not showing up.
00:06:58
Speaker
and different events like they used to. They are having problems with groups of people. There's so many different signs that now we can look for even in doctors' offices.
00:07:08
Speaker
That's what we're looking at. I mean, they're these children are becoming adults overnight. They're distancing themselves from their parents, right? They're not as open. Your 11-year-old overnight now is you know not talking to you, not being as open and sharing with you, spending more time on their text messages.
00:07:21
Speaker
We all know when when somebody's doing something on their so on their cell phone that they shouldn't be doing, right? The little giggles, the hiding of the cell phone, now we've got password locks, now we're being more, mean, it's all those things. Now they're wearing makeup where they never wore makeup, where they where they used to want to play softball after school, now they want to go hang out places differently. Obviously part of that is the normal maturation and of a child separating himself from his parents or herself from his parents.
00:07:44
Speaker
But the reality of is we've got to be asking. As parents, we need to stay engaged. We need to be asking, who are you hanging with? Why are you hanging with her? Online recruitment of our minors is up 105% in the last 12 months.
00:07:55
Speaker
The church mostly doesn't know that, right? So they're grooming our children. The church should be involved. One of the main challenges we're issuing to the church in this day and age is you have to learn. The church needs to know what's going on in their community. The church needs to be a place, a safe haven, in a hospital, a place of respite.
00:08:12
Speaker
But if we don't recognize the needs in our own community, then we don't know how to be prepared when they show up in our environment. church should have somebody on their staff that's researching trafficking, that's understanding recruitment, that's understanding grooming, that recognizes a sign. I mean, the church should be on the forefront of this battle and and being the ones going to war initially in their community, not just being responsive, but being proactive and going after what's happening.
00:08:42
Speaker
We sort of glazed over this fact in our last episode, and but we're going to bring it to light here. Trafficking in the United States does not usually happen like the movie Taken with Liam Neeson.
00:08:54
Speaker
There isn't this unlabeled van driving around ready to snatch your children. It's also not typically someone being tricked, like an older man or woman acting younger to then kidnap an adult or child into trafficking.
00:09:10
Speaker
It's mostly coerced by someone gaining trust using that trust and exploiting that trust. And sadly, this happens more in the family unit than anywhere else.
00:09:25
Speaker
And when it's not family or relative, it's usually someone who's pretending to love the person, as someone that is supposedly in a significant relationship.
00:09:54
Speaker
but I can remember back to like around the age of five. Back then I felt like it was normal because it was the only thing that I knew. had two older brothers that are eight and 10 years older than me.
00:10:08
Speaker
And so it was kind of like I was an only child.
00:10:14
Speaker
But both of my parents, as far back as I can remember, were drug addicts and alcoholics. Like I was told before i even started school that if I talked about the things that happened at home, I would be taken to a bad place. and even though I didn't know what I wasn't supposed to talk about, I just knew i couldn't talk about anything that happened at home.
00:10:37
Speaker
Then I started being sexually abused by a neighbor around the age of five. And my parents knew about it, but they didn't do anything um about it because they were afraid of the police coming in because they also, they not only did drugs, but they sold them. And so they were all over our house.
00:10:56
Speaker
And it was after that, that my mom got involved in more drugs and started going out to the bars and um i would go with her. It was called Blue Jeans Lounge or something.
00:11:09
Speaker
And a lot of times if I was with her, she would just leave me in the car. And there were some times when she would come out and leave with somebody else. And so then i had to walk home in the middle of the night by myself.
00:11:22
Speaker
And then she eventually started prostituting herself um for her drugs.
00:11:29
Speaker
I went with her one time because I didn't want to stay at home because I never knew when she was coming back. And so I was with her and her drug dealer offered her a $10 piece of crack for me instead of for her.
00:11:43
Speaker
I even asked her why she did it and she said, because now I can get what I want and I don't have to do anything.
00:11:50
Speaker
After the first time I was sold, it happened more on a regular basis to where she would either take me to her drug dealer or he would come and get me either from the house or from the bus stop.
00:12:04
Speaker
And he would take and sell me to other people um probably a couple of times a week. And like in that time, I got pregnant twice and was given two abortions.
00:12:19
Speaker
I would ask my teachers
Cycle of Seeking Love and Trafficking
00:12:20
Speaker
for detention so that I wouldn't have to go home right after school because I never knew if he was going to pick me up from the bus stop or if my mom was going to be home.
00:12:32
Speaker
Like, it was bad, but would have done anything to make my mom want me.
00:12:51
Speaker
I would be moved from group home to group home because they didn't deal with kids like me. And I was eventually placed in a group home that was a residential treatment center for kids in foster care.
00:13:03
Speaker
And when I got there, I eventually learned that the staff were friends with my trafficker. And so I continued being trafficked while I was in foster care.
00:13:17
Speaker
you try to get help with foster care? There wasn't any help. Like, these were the people I lived with.
00:13:32
Speaker
He got temporary custody of me. But I still, like, I didn't want to be with him. wanted to be with my mom. And so I didn't want to go to school.
00:13:44
Speaker
um i felt like that was pointless because nobody in my family graduated high school. So I ended up spending a lot of time with my high school guidance counselor. And then i ended up living with her and her family.
00:13:58
Speaker
She would spend time with me and she never like pressured me to tell her anything, but she said that she could always tell there was more that had happened to me than I told her.
00:14:10
Speaker
So she just wanted to be there for me. Well, graduated high school and started going to college, but I still like wanted a relationship with my mom. So she would resurface every now and then. and any time that I went to see her,
00:14:27
Speaker
I would end up being trafficked again. i think the thing that like had the biggest impact was when she tried to commit suicide, she told me that she hated me, never loved me, and never wanted me, and that's why she wanted to die.
00:14:41
Speaker
And so anytime that she would contact me, I felt like if I did something to upset her, she was gonna commit suicide and it was gonna be my fault. I finally decided good to go to counseling and I started going to a support group for survivors of sexual assault.
00:14:58
Speaker
And some of the people there, we went to a um human trafficking awareness day. And I had heard about human trafficking, but I didn't connect it with anything that I experienced because most of the stuff that I saw, it was like people tied up and stuff.
00:15:16
Speaker
But at the awareness day, they talked about what human trafficking is. And that's when I realized that everything that had happened to me was human trafficking and that it wasn't my fault and that I could talk about it.
00:15:34
Speaker
Savannah mentions in her story I would have done anything for my mom to love me.
00:15:45
Speaker
And there's a lot to unpack there. What I'd like to focus on right now is to notice the power behind what someone will do to chase love.
00:15:57
Speaker
It makes you question, does everyone chase love so strongly? I'd argue that, yeah, we do. Maybe not in the extreme case such as this, but this vulnerability of chasing love is exactly what traffickers prey upon.
00:16:17
Speaker
Let me share an example that was once quoted to me by someone who interviewed a trafficker. When they're looking to recruit, they approach it this way. If they stop a teenager, usually a female, at the mall and say, wow, you're really pretty.
00:16:33
Speaker
If the young lady says, thanks, The perpetrator will leave her alone. But if he says to a young lady, wow, you're really pretty, and she responds, no, I'm not, that's their target.
00:16:47
Speaker
I'm not just talking about having confidence in oneself. This is deeper. We find ourselves so, so often looking for affirmation that we are valuable, we are talented, we are good looking, we are loved for who we are. Why is that?
00:17:09
Speaker
I'll let your group discuss that amongst yourselves later, but I think we can all agree that we currently live in a society that easily shows someone that they either are valuable or they're not.
Healing Through Stable Relationships
00:17:24
Speaker
While the family unit seems to be an easy place to hide exploitation, it's also the place where it can be the strongest influence on someone's life to prove truth over lies.
00:17:37
Speaker
The truth is that each person is so valuable, no matter their past, circumstance, or choices. The only way to show this is to love unconditionally, patiently, and consistently.
00:17:57
Speaker
That's a strong approach we must carry in our own families. But we must also carry that through our daily interactions. And no, not just in our groups or in our church trips.
00:18:10
Speaker
I'm talking about wherever you go. Are you helping someone feel loved and valued without anything to gain for yourself?
00:18:24
Speaker
Once my mom took the court, she no longer won me, I became a ward of the court. So I had to live in a group home until I was 18 years old because I was not eligible to be fostered by any foster parent or foster family.
00:18:36
Speaker
That took a toll on me a lot in my life because I felt like I was just another number. But honestly, My experiences with group homes really changed my life, honestly. You know, staff would always look out for me. Staff was always teaching me things.
00:18:51
Speaker
And those very same staff were actually still in my life today. And actually been at my baby showers, been at was at my graduation. And when I allow people to love me, healthy people to love me this time, when I chose to allow healthy people to love me, it started changing the way that I seen things.
00:19:10
Speaker
It's not about the institution, it's about the people. It's not about the group home, it's about the people that are working and serving youth there. And so for me, a lot of the impact in my life who came from the relationships. What made it so special was the authentic, consistent, stable relationships.
00:19:28
Speaker
I would literally tear up a building. When I say tear up a cottage, break all the windows out, flip the refrigerator over, pour all the milk out, break all the plates, and literally be talking to someone and being like, you need to clean this up, because yeah, this is what you're getting paid for.
00:19:42
Speaker
Yeah, clean it up, this your job to clean up after me. I was so angry and yet, even though it was very demeaning, it was very disrespectful, those staff still loved me.
00:19:54
Speaker
Like they would clean it up and be like, we know it's not your fault. You just got off a phone call with a woman who don't want you to come back home. You just got off a phone call with a cousin who said she can't take custody of you. Of course you're angry. And so love showed up for me in my life.
00:20:11
Speaker
It was just consistent relationships. Like I needed people to look at me like I wasn't just this victim too. I didn't want people to just see me as a sex trafficking victim. I didn't want people just seeing me as, you know, this kid had been through all this trauma. Like I'm a human being, I'm a child. Like I never had really a good chance to really be a kid.
00:20:28
Speaker
And I had no idea that all this stuff was literally planting seeds in my life to prepare me for when it was time for the real restoration to happen. Like I had to be in a space where when I entered into this group home, I felt unsafe.
00:20:48
Speaker
I felt like I wasn't even a human being. I felt abandoned, rejected, unloved. I didn't feel heard. I didn't feel seen. And so at first people had to build trust with me.
00:21:01
Speaker
And so a lot of the adults in my life understood that though, that trust has to be earned. It has to be earned. Just as much as respect has to be earned, trust has to be earned. And so that had to take place. I had to be in a place that would, a place with people that would not give up on me when it got hard.
00:21:24
Speaker
That would not give up on me when they felt like all hope was lost. that That will continue to show up no matter how hard it got because it's not about them. And so it was all those things. And so I'll never forget it was a moment where I was gonna run away from the group home because I was a runner. I ran away my whole life. I ran away from every other group home that I had been in. I would run, I would run, I would run.
00:21:46
Speaker
you know, I would go back to traffic and I would go back to the life because that was comfortable. Because something became so normal to me, it becomes comfortable. I got up the street, I had everything in my mind. I was gonna turn a trip.
00:21:58
Speaker
I was gonna get in a car. i was gonna turn one last date or I was gonna rob somebody from they phone, right? It was all this stuff that going through my head. I got up literally to the Del Taco. I couldn't eat, I started crying. Cause I was like, what is happening to me?
00:22:10
Speaker
Like, I just can't hurt another human being. I can't do this. I don't wanna do this no more. And that was because people in my life was showing me
00:22:21
Speaker
I was worthy of more. and that I could do it, and that I could have a better life, that I could make better choices. The one thing that one of my mentors in my life, Jim Carson, told me was, it wasn't your fault.
00:22:35
Speaker
It wasn't. It wasn't your fault that you was raped. It wasn't your fault the time that you'd gotten beat. It wasn't, none of it was your fault. It was not your choice, but you have a choice now.
00:22:48
Speaker
You have a choice to make a better decision for your life so you can continue to be a victim, or you can move into becoming a survivor and becoming an overcomer.
Unconditional Love as a Tool Against Trafficking
00:22:57
Speaker
And that stuck with me for a long time. Like I didn't want to be that, like that, that really started my transition.
00:23:12
Speaker
Unconditional, patient, unselfish and consistent love is so powerful. And when it's placed next to coercive, manipulative love, it becomes so evident what is real and what is counterfeit.
00:23:33
Speaker
Ori is actually a very gifted communicator. The way she describes her story with such accuracy, don't know how anyone could not be moved by that, but the redemption in her story sadly isn't something that we hear about that often.
00:23:58
Speaker
This is our lives, like we we go out and we try something. We try to share the gospel. We try to share this good news with people. We try to rescue people.
00:24:10
Speaker
um But honestly, 90 something percent of the time, it doesn't happen like we had hoped. And most people get frustrated in that process. And I gotta admit, there's times I've gotten so frustrated.
00:24:29
Speaker
You just wanna give up because it's so rare, to be honest, to see the positive outcome. And I don't know, i don't know if God's gonna have a time in our lifetimes where suddenly there's this huge return of fruit for everything that we do and we just see like this revival taking place.
00:24:52
Speaker
Or if it's just like the way it usually where we just keep doing what God's called us to do, keep loving people, keep having our hearts broken. Then every once in a while,
00:25:06
Speaker
There's an Ori story that makes it all worth it.
00:25:16
Speaker
There's some educational points to discuss, and we left those in your study guide. They're good tools to learn and understand now, but keep researching.
00:25:27
Speaker
keep seeking to know how perpetrators are coercing our society as technology and communication tools change their tactics. How can we show this true love inside our own family, church, and city?
00:25:44
Speaker
How can we show love so that it's not being sought elsewhere? And how can we speak and show truth into someone's life?
00:25:56
Speaker
How can this be done for those who don't have the same family unit that you might have? What groups can you begin ministering to and show personal, unconditional, patient and consistent love to, regardless of how they respond?
Self-Love and Divine Recognition
00:26:13
Speaker
Can you demonstrate this love and help foster children and teens who statistically are extremely exposed to these perpetrators? Again, showing unconditional, patient, and consistent love that is the opposite of selfish.
00:26:32
Speaker
Next, and this honestly may be the hardest, how do you show that same love and value to yourself as much as others? because you too are made in the image of God.
00:26:48
Speaker
Let that speak into others' lives as well.