Transcript:

Sander Dur (00:00.558)
Evelien, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. How are you? I’m pretty good. Thank you. Yeah. Could you share a little bit about who you are, what you do? Okay. That’s, that’s an open question. So, well, I’m Evelien, Evelien Hulske. I’m 53 years old and my background is I’m, I have a commercial background. So I studied international business and at the age of 30, 30.

I made a change towards the nonprofit sector. I’ve worked for a couple of international NGOs. And about 16 years ago, I started my own foundation called FreeGo. And what we do is we try to end sexual exploitation of children. And that’s still what I’m doing now. What made you start that foundation? Yeah.

It was a long journey because when I was around 30 years old, I really felt that I needed to do something meaningful with my life. So I was, I had quite a commercial job and a lot of pressure reaching sales goals and et cetera. And at a certain moment I thought, okay, this is not the life that I want to live. But I’m pretty good at sales. So maybe I can just join like,

a non -profit organization and see if they are interested in me. What I did is I had just quit my job and I thought, okay, then I can really focus on something else. And it took some time, I think a couple of months. It was not so easy to get an employment because you actually have to…

make an added value to the organization. And I was just thinking what so people think, I believe that, okay, I’m here. I want to join like a nonprofit organization, a charity. And why don’t you employ me, you know? But we, yeah, the sector is very professional. So you actually have to be able to be good at something.

Sander Dur (02:20.814)
So I was hired to do at the end, I could choose between two organizations. One was focused on children and the other one was focused on apes, monkeys. And I chose the children. And I worked there for many years at Plan International. I learned a lot and I tried in the sales. So I tried to sell like projects to the corporate sector. And after a year,

I did a job switch so I could live and work for one year in Asia. And after that, I was responsible for government grants from the Dutch government. So that had more to do with monitoring and evaluation of projects and programs. So not so much the marketing and the sales side anymore. And yeah, and there was for the first time I was confronted with the issue of sexual exploitation of children and Plan International is a very,

broad child rights organization. And I was so touched by what was happening to children, especially at a time that I found that out in Asia, sorry, in India, that along the way I decided that I felt more comfortable and more effective if I could just focus on one subject.

and not focus on the broader side of child rights because then you have education, sanitation, a lot of things that children have rights to. And I thought, well, I want to focus on this particular subject. You mentioned you were touched by the stories or the topic itself and the subject. Do you remember what the case was that touched you so?

Yeah, it was it was a newspaper article from that that was describing the situation for children. And they were kidnapped in India, brought to brothels and locked up in cages and raped 10 or 20 times a day. And I was just reading it and I could not believe it. And I knew about the issue of of of child exploitation, sexual exploitation. But I.

Sander Dur (04:45.774)
I didn’t know that it was so big and so bad and that there was such a huge need for help and support because the work that is done by local people, their local rescue organization, they don’t get a lot of funding because it’s really dangerous. So you have to infiltrate like in a criminal sector.

And there are not too many organizations that want to fund these kind of activities. So there was a really big need. And there are a lot of NGOs focusing more on prevention of sexual exploitation or rehabilitation of survivors, but not the part of finding out where they are, going undercover, arrest the perpetrators, and help the children. So I thought, OK, maybe.

I don’t know, I still remember that morning that I was reading the newspaper and I was so kind of frustrated as well that, there are so many NGOs that get a lot of money and why is not anybody doing something about this? And then I realized that I could also be the person to do something about it. And then in my head, already Freego was born with it, and it still took I think two years. Yeah. But it’s a really good question, isn’t it? If you can do it, why not governments in their own country?

Yeah, because they have other things on their mind. There’s a lot of gender inequity in a lot of countries. Governments are corrupt. They profit from the trade in children as well. So there are a lot of factors that contribute that this big crime is still continuing. Yeah. Now I can imagine it’s quite a big change from going from sales.

to a nonprofit, especially this case, how did you handle that? Because I can imagine, I’ve got two girls myself and a young boy, aged nine and five. This has a massive mental impact as well. It’s a very heavy subject. Yeah. I don’t know how I deal with it, to be honest. I think that I have a kind of separate, like, chamber in my head or something that’s, I don’t know. I just do. And I think that there’s a lot of…

Sander Dur (07:04.846)
I get quite emotional as well, but there’s also a lot of frustration maybe and anger. And I try to change that into power and to be able to help. And that’s why I find so many other issues in the world difficult to watch or to read because then I think I want to do something and I don’t know what to do. And for me now, it’s still very difficult, but at least I think, okay, I try my best to…

to help ending it. Yeah, but the stories and the situation, they are devastating. It’s, yeah, sometimes too difficult to even talk about it or to realize it, to be honest. What has been the impact of your foundation so far? The direct impact, the outputs, the results are the rescue of almost 8 ,000 children. Most of them are…

girls. So that’s already pretty an impact, I think, 8 ,000 lives. Even if I could like save like one life in my life, I would have been happy. So, but, but the, so, so that’s the direct, I think, impact. And what we also do, we don’t accept that it’s happening. So we continue to fight it. I mean, if you stop fighting it, you just accept that.

It’s like the second biggest criminal sector in the world. But not only that, because, and it’s sometimes difficult to measure, is, for example, there are a lot of girls that we train to become aware change agents or watchdogs within their communities. So what they do is they…

raise awareness at schools, at police stations, just everywhere. So they work for Freegal. So that’s also the prevention part. Yeah, and we try to give them back their lives. So to rehabilitate them, reintegrate them within the communities. I mean, this has also a huge impact if your daughter…

Sander Dur (09:26.734)
is lost, you cannot find her anymore and she’s back. I mean, this also has a huge impact on the families as well. I spoke once to families in Nepal whose daughter was still amiss and those families, they don’t function anymore. It’s all about the girl that cannot be found and people lose their jobs, they get traumatized, they get stressed and yeah, so.

I think that’s also beautiful to do, to reunite children back with their parents. So this also has an impact on the direct family. Yeah, we do a lot of campaigns also to prevent it from happening and just to ask a lot of attention. Firstly, only in Holland, and now we try to do that also internationally. And also…

train a lot of law enforcement officials as well to see how we can cooperate with the government, to see how we can change their way of thinking. And yeah, it’s a lot that we are doing, but the most beautiful, I think, result is the almost 8 ,000 children that have been rescued. Yeah. Yeah. It’s not just 8 ,000 children that you save. It’s their extensive…

an extended environments as well. So you save their families coming back to their jobs and being able to perform again and, you know, function as a family. Now coming back to you started the foundation. Now what, how do you start doing this? Cause I can imagine that you’re not just running into these areas where these girls are kept captive. How do you deal with that? First of all, it’s always like, okay, I didn’t start it.

all by myself, so I started with three other colleagues. Rudolf van Laar, Jolantika Bouw and Arjan Erkel. And I had a lot of faith from the beginning because Arjan Erkel and Jolantika Bouw, they were already, not kind, they were like well known in Holland. So that gives a platform, you know, because you need to raise funds.

Sander Dur (11:36.622)
And in the countries involved, I mean, I’ve been working in the, I had already been working in the, in the sector for quite some years. So I know where and how to find like good organizations that we can support. So, yeah, we just started with one big rescue organizations that we found in India. And, yeah, and we, we just started a collaboration. And then,

then the second and then the third. Those are organizations that really need like support and help. And our role is not only giving money, but we also in the years after we also train their capacity. We see if they can be trained by teams from other countries. We organize learning sessions. We help them also with local fundraising. We do a lot. But they are their heroes, yeah.

And we actually see them as our colleagues, as our teams. And yeah, it started in India and then we found out that a lot of children were trafficked from Nepal and Bangladesh as well. So we try to find their good rescue organizations and sometimes they are good in rescuing and we have to find another organization who was doing the rehabilitation and reintegration. Yeah, and then we expanded and expanded and…

Yeah, it’s, it’s still only like in seven countries. I mean, child trafficking is happening in every single country, but at least we are doing something. Yeah. It’s never enough. No, of course not. Part of being a credible organization is knowing and really understanding what these kids are going through. And to a certain degree you can, but especially for Arjan, that comes very close. Now this is an international podcast. Listen to widely, widely over the world.

sort of famous in this country, but he’s not famous in the other ones. Could you share his story as well? Yeah, you should invite him next time. I would love to. yeah, I will tell him. All right. Yeah. Could you just give us a high, just a high overview? Yeah, he’s a yes. But it’s already, I think since 2002, if I’m not mistaken, he was kidnapped when he was working for Doctors Without Borders in Dagestan.

Sander Dur (14:01.774)
And he was held captive by Muslim rebels for more than 20 months. And he was actually locked up in a kind of room space under the grounds. And yeah, how he survived this is really incredible. I mean, he’s, yeah. I remember when I first met him, I was, I could remember that I was.

also having this button at the time with free Arjen Erkel. So I still remember that I was a kind of nervous first meeting him because I thought, wow. And yeah, and when we, his reason why he wanted to cooperate also with me and start the Free Go Foundation was that he said, everybody try to get me free. I mean, it was…

I didn’t know that at that time, but it was like Putin, it was Bush, it was Angelina Jolie, it was even the Pope. I mean, his parents did everything and they went on every news station everywhere around the world. And he says, well, the parents that we help or support, they don’t have this network, they don’t have a voice. So…

We tried to be the voice for the parents who also lost their children and tried to find them. And I think that’s a beautiful story. That’s his background, his why. And yeah, I’m still very thankful. And we are still collaborating still now after 15 years already. So yeah, that’s quite amazing. Yeah. I’m really curious about his story as well and his perspective because it’s…

I just finished another recording about empathy and these are things that you can just not empathize with unless you’ve been in that situation. So for me, from this side, it’s really hard to empathize with that and to truly understand what he’s going through. Luckily. Yeah. And he says, well, I know how it feels when your freedom has been taken away, but he was never abused or raped, you know? So that’s why in a sense he can imagine it because you’re alone.

Sander Dur (16:17.102)
You feel that nobody cares about you. You don’t even know if they still remember you, you know? And you think this is my fate and you don’t know if you will survive. And it’s the same. And we are working with children. I mean, they are only children. They have no clue what’s happening to them. Most of them, they didn’t even know about sex, you know? It’s…

What’s the age of these kids that are being held captive? Yolanda was recently in Nepal with our team, the youngest that she rescued herself. 13. Yeah. And there were also, there are also children of 11 that are already exploited. Yeah. And they give, most of the time they give them hormones so they look like older. So it’s not like,

The clients are pedophiles. It’s just about sex and it is easy to traffic children more easy than grown up women. So because yeah, you can easily fool them, but it’s not that the clients are especially looking for children. Sometimes they are looking for a virgin, but most of the time people always think, those are all pedophiles looking for children. That’s not the issue. No. Now I want to get into that in a bit. Yeah.

But for Yolanta, she’s well, she’s known in this country, but she’s also been in movies with Mark Wahlberg, The Rock. So I can imagine she has a more public face. Isn’t it extra dangerous for her to go into these areas where people might know you? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, she’s, yeah, but she’s quite a badass. She just doesn’t care and think about that. No, it’s no, because I think like in Asia,

people don’t know. No, they don’t know. And it would be very difficult if people would actually recognize her. So she’s doing quite well now. Also in, so she’s, she lives in the US now. So yeah, the more popular she gets, the more difficult it gets as well. That’s true. To do the undercover operations yourself. But most of the time, like 99 % of the time our local teams are doing it only when…

Sander Dur (18:41.454)
She’s visiting a country she wants to feel and see everything with her own eyes. So that’s why she’s, she’s not like a famous star just visiting a shelter. I know she’s really going undercover and yeah. Remarkable. That’s crazy. Yeah. Now you just mentioned about these people that are, they’re not pedophiles, but I can imagine that they, they have some issues going on as well. Now the fact that this happens mean that there is supply and demand. Yeah.

Do you deal with that part as well? Yeah, and that’s the most frustrating part to be honest, because there’s lots of impunity. So perpetrators are arrested, they are hardly convicted. So that’s something that we, I think over the past three or four years, we tried to change that. But it’s difficult because there are a lot of victims, survivors who don’t want to report a case because they feel afraid.

there’s a lot of stigma going on. So at the moment that they are free and they go back to the community after day, after periods of trauma healing and rehabilitation and et cetera, they just don’t want to talk about it anymore. And then there are a lot of court cases still that are still pending. And then after four years, they feel, okay, I’m not going to testify anymore. I have a new life now. And we, we never, we will never push them, but we really try to convince them.

to participate because in that way you can prevent other children from ending up in the same situation. So that’s really a difficult part to be honest. A lot of the perpetrators, they get themselves bailed out. Why? A lot of time because yeah, they just have the money. It’s a corrupt system. So…

But there is also some really good news when they are actually convicted. So there was like a case also in Thailand and people, that was like a big network. I think they got all like between 15 and 30 years of prison. And that is also published in the local newspapers. And that’s also important for us that people think, okay, it can be dangerous. Maybe it’s not so clever to…

Sander Dur (21:04.286)
or to, yeah, that it’s, they still think, okay, I get away with it, okay, there’s no risk, I will be arrested, but I will be free again. So it’s very difficult to break the cycle, to be honest. And what we also started five years ago is called the School for Justice. So what we do is we educate survivors to become lawyers themselves, or judges, or.

prosecutors or other kind of professions that have to do with human rights. Also to change the system from within. And we still hope that one of the girls will be like the future president of India. And then the cycle is round and then I can retire. Something like that. You’ll keep going until you retire. Until these…

Women are empowered. Yeah, that’s really, yeah, because the question that you just asked me is also the one that I’ve been asking myself for many years. I mean, we can continue and we will with rescuing these children, but at the legal part, the justice part, there’s lots of work to be done and that’s a big challenge. Yeah.

try it very hard. I also thought, we also had a meeting recently with the Indian team and I said, okay, what is it? Do the survivors need better lawyers? Is it something about money? Is it, I don’t think get convicted, but it’s more complicated than that. It’s a stigma and it’s the fear and it’s the corruption. And, but we hope that’s also the school for justice.

students, they are also part of becoming a change agent in their communities. What I told at the beginning, that hopefully, like in the future, more and more children there to stand up for themselves, you know? But this can take a long time. It’s also very much embedded in the culture. Now, from this side of the table, I can imagine this is a whole process of hope,

Sander Dur (23:29.806)
sadness, rage as well, anger, fear. What’s your biggest fear in this context? That’s… I mean, the biggest role that we have as Free Your Girl is raising funds and that’s getting more and more difficult to be honest because of the international economic crisis. There’s lots of things going on internationally.

people, there are so many issues and causes that you can give your money to. So the challenge always is if we can continue funding our operations. And that keeps me awake sometimes, to be honest. Yeah. And to, I mean,

I’m still now doing sales all the time, you know, like in the beginning. So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s okay. But it would be really nice. If there was, it was more like consistency or more, sometimes you have like, like an agreement with a sponsor for three years, hopefully, and then you have to start all over again. So it’s every time you have to also like, give yourself the power again. Okay. Just go for it. But it’s.

Sometimes I get also a little bit tired of myself asking for money all the time. But then I think, okay, it’s not for me. I mean, it’s for the good cause, but yeah, that’s still challenging. Yeah. Yeah. And imagine in these days of where the whole world seems to be on fire. How do you deal with that? How do you transfer this purpose into other people understanding it and really donating money? Yeah. Because there’s so much going on.

I know. Yeah. And it is, it’s, I mean, during the time of, of, during the, let’s talk about that now. yeah, I think what our, what our, what our added value is, is that, that’s, that’s, that we are very transparent. And, and I mean, what we also do now, we, we, we had a charity event, last year in, in, in.

Sander Dur (25:56.238)
in the House of Jolanta. And what we did, we did not auction only like standard things, you know, that you’d have at a charity event, but we also auctioned a rescue operation in your name. And that’s something that really resonates with people. So we now rescued, I think, 20 children out of the name of a family with the whole report. And then people think, okay, wow.

I paid like 5 ,000 euros and I actually rescued these kids. So I think if you can make it very personal, then you also have the feeling that you are doing it together. So, I mean, we are not such a big organization because we also want to keep it like personal, you know? We know all the donors, not maybe the ones that are giving like the monthly fee, but we…

try to stay in touch through social media, but all the other donors, yeah, we have known them for years and it’s really personal. Yeah, and I think that’s the way how we try to do it. Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s part of the reluctance of the general audience is if they donate money, it goes into the wrong hands and either corruption or too much overhead. How does that work with an organization or a foundation like yours?

Yeah, there are certain… In Holland, you have certain kind of rules that a certain kind of percentage has to go to the goal and certain percentages can go to fundraising and administration costs. And in America, that’s not the case. And I like the way that Americans think in this perspective, but it’s very difficult to explain that in Holland, I think.

In America they say, okay, you have charities, but those are like important social issues that we want to solve. And we don’t want to work with volunteers or with people who just think like me in the beginning, okay, I want to do something good, I’m going to work for a charity. Actually, you need the best people, the best people.

Sander Dur (28:17.422)
But the best people, they will choose to work in the corporate sector because they will earn like four or five, six times as much. And people choose to work for a charity, like voluntary when they are 60 or 70 is always what I hear. And when I retire, then I come to work for you. And I think, okay, now why don’t you come to work for me now? So that’s really an…

An issue and we have like a beautiful sponsor in America who says, I don’t care how much you earn, you are my hero, you know? And it’s still not, I mean, we will not exaggerate that because it’s, but there are no rules. But we want to give as much money to the cause. I mean, we are not here to earn our own, only for our own money. But the…

idea is that I like very much, you know, if you can have like the best people in this sector, would we be better like in fighting the problem? Not too much on the project or program side, but more on the fundraising and the marketing side.

And sometimes we work with very good advertising agencies and they do it for free for one campaign because they can also send it to international competitions and they can be really free because we don’t pay them and they also want this freedom to make something. And actually the School for Justice idea came from an agency and they won like…

very big advertising awards all over the world with it. So then it’s a win -win situation. But then we really had a couple of people who really were the best, you know? And yeah, that would be something that we would really like working with people. But then it’s always a challenge how you can pay them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But not everyone’s looking for.

Sander Dur (30:27.534)
having themselves paid, people want to contribute to the cause, to this transcendent purpose. What kind of people are you looking for? If you’re talking about the best of the best, what kind of best people are you looking for? We really are looking for people, also internationally really good marketing people who have like excellent ideas how we can be, how we can, yeah, the creative people to raise funds. I mean, we have…

really a good team on the ground and also in Holland and in Harlem who are dealing with project management and monitoring and evaluation and that’s all going well. But it’s really about the question that you also asked me. There are so many charities, the world is on fire. How are you able to, that people will at least read your message or see your message and…

But we have one very good guy, so we are really happy with him. And he just recently really thought about a really great campaign. I cannot tell a lot about it, but we need more people like that. How can people volunteer or sign up to contribute to your cause? Yeah, volunteer is difficult. Once we had a social media post, it says, no volunteers.

We don’t look for volunteers. Instead you say like, we are not looking for volunteers. Because if you have volunteers on the marketing side, you have to supervise them. And that’s an issue. I mean, we are really a small team. We are internationally, I think, with eight people. That’s all. And volunteers in the countries is not possible.

because those are really traumatized kids. So we don’t invite people to work there or to give classes or things like that. We prefer to work with local staff, local people, and just pay them, you know? But what you can do is think about ways how you can help us raising funds. I mean, and that’s the way that sometimes people come with excellent ideas of their own fundraising campaigns and we…

Sander Dur (32:43.278)
Yeah, we see how we can support that as well because we have a lot of famous ambassadors and maybe they can also highlight their efforts. And so it’s more like become a donor, follow our social media channels, TikTok and Instagram and spread the message. And yeah, and we are really grateful if you would.

people can think about other ways how they can also help us raising funds. Yeah. We’ll make sure to include those links in the show notes as well, so people can check them out. Now, did you go to these situations yourself as well to inspect what’s going on and talk us through the most impactful story you’ve seen? There’s so many. Yeah, there’s so many. And the thing is, is that a lot of stories are…

a bit the same, the way that the girls get trapped into the situation. So that’s always sad. I mean, in the beginning, it was more like that the parents thought that they were offered to, that she was offered a job and they were very poor. And then they were just brought directly to her brothel. And then that did not work out anymore because there was a lot of like awareness raising. So people were more cautious than the children were just kidnapped.

and now it’s more under the, how do you say that? the girls are approached by boys and, they, they pretend they fancy them. And then at a certain point they say, I want to marry you. And then it just run away. That’s how it’s happening now every time. So she fell in love with a guy and this guy sells her directly to her brothel. I mean, your whole faith in human being is just.

is really gone. And what is also really sad is most of the time the children don’t want to be rescued in the first place because they think it’s a setup that will be sold to another brothel. They say, that’s really hard. One girl that I talked to, she said, okay, I didn’t have, my parents didn’t care for me and I was working, but at least those people gave me clothes and every day,

Sander Dur (35:07.118)
a piece of chocolate and she thought this is just my life, you know? She had no idea that her rights were being violated. She thought, okay, I have to work, I have to do this terrible work, but these people are nice to me, that they, that they, that she didn’t have any clue that she was exploited and those people were selling her every time. And this was also when I talked to a couple of girls in Brazil, they were 12 when they were just…

raped by and exploited by a guy, a very rich guy who owns a very big hotel together with his brother. And they were invited in his room. And he had these parties with girls of 12, 13, and 14 years old. And it was terrible what they had to endure. But then I said, but still, you’re now 17 or 18, you can still report a case. And then she said, no, I received money for it.

So they don’t have the idea that these men are really evil. They think, okay, I received three or four dollars for it. They paid me. It’s not the life that I want to live. So that’s also very difficult that they don’t have a clue what’s going on. And at a certain point, they think this is my life. So yeah. And I think what was…

very difficult was meeting parents whose children are still lost. And one mother told me that her daughter could get a hold on the telephone and she phoned her and said that she was locked up in a brothel and then no connection anymore. So the mother knows what is happening to her daughter every day. And for me it was very difficult also to talk to her because I think that she thought,

that I was a kind of Jesus, a white woman coming to find her girl, you know? So that also felt very, very bad. And the way that she cried, I never heard a human being cry like that. It was like a wounded animal. It was so, so difficult. But at least I talked to two mothers and one of the girls have been found. So that’s great. The other one’s still not. But yeah.

Sander Dur (37:33.774)
lot of heartbreaking stories. Yeah. How do you mentally cope with that almost role of being like a female Liam Neeson in Taken? Again, sorry. Like Liam Neeson, have you seen the movie Taken? Yeah. The way that you describe this image of you that this mother had, it feels to me that you’ve…

are perceived to be like the female Liam Neeson in this movie. How do you manage these expectations? Yeah, that difficult. Yeah, it’s I mean, traveling and also going to the projects is necessary and also to film certain aspects of our of of our work. But preferably we don’t do it, you know, because.

Sander Dur (38:24.974)
It feels a little bit like double because also with talking to this mother at a certain point I felt, okay, just switch off the camera now, you know, because she’s crying too much. And then my colleague said, no, now we have to continue. And then you think, my God, I don’t want to do this. But if we don’t do it, we cannot share it with the world and nothing will change. So that’s, yeah, that’s hard. Yeah.

Isn’t those those moments indeed that a lot of people just turn the blind eye to? And these are the moments that people have to see to this play and to really. Yeah.

Understand what’s going on and how this impact these these people and their families is especially in this part of the world and Especially this country. I think a lot of people do not realize how good they have it Then how you convey that message? Yeah, but this is even also happening in Holland is happening everywhere there are a lot of pimps also traffic or deal in in in in underage girls and boys and

It’s also very, very sad and it’s becoming a bigger and bigger problem because in the past these girls were approached like face to face, you know. Those guys just went to schools and so okay, she’s always alone and blah, blah. I tried to make friends with her and things like that and before you know, you’re in a brothel, you’re exploited.

And now it’s all going through Snapchat and Instagram and sharing your pictures. And then saying, okay, I have your picture now and if you don’t cooperate, I will just publish it and your school will see it. And before you know, they are just trapped into…

Sander Dur (40:28.366)
criminal business and in situations of exploitation as well. And it’s happening in Holland as well. So we have to educate our children very, very well. Yeah. What’s worse that the whole school sees this? Yeah. Or what if you just say, all right, fuck it. Yeah. Just show it and not deal with lifelong trauma. Yeah. The children, they choose not to publish it because that…

There are also children who just feel like they want to end their lives because that’s even worse, like showing it to your peers, to your friends, or at school, and doing this work and just hope that they will never share your pictures or images or videos or, I know. And that’s something also interesting if you mention it now, if we could just.

take off the taboo of that, that if it would happen, that that’s, that’s all children of everybody would not make a fool of that person. And also see that person as a victim and not share it among each other. If you receive it, don’t share it, you know, yeah, that has, there’s still, lots to do. Yeah. Cause a very famous case of that is Amanda Todd, the American girl, I think she was 13 or 14 and she got cyberbullied by.

A Dutch virtual lover boy got approached through social media and ultimately he was also threatening to share all of her pictures and well, she sent naked pictures, et cetera as well. He was threatening to expose her and she killed herself at that age. And then they found out this guy was working, working, quote unquote, with over 300 other kids, mostly mostly girls and.

Obviously he got captured and put in prison. But it’s a Dutch guy, right? Yeah, it was a Dutch guy. I know about this case. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But he was approaching like the girls like internationally. There were a lot of them also in the US. And I think there was cooperation between Dutch law enforcement, FBI, etc. And this guy happened to live in Holland. Yeah, I remember. Yeah, it’s insane. What are the symptoms or signals that we as general public or as parents should be?

Sander Dur (42:52.174)
look, taking an eye out for, because as mentioned, my kids are slowly growing up. My son is luckily he’s not into social media yet. And I tried to keep him away as far as possible from that until it’s sort of a reasonable age to work with that. But what can we take an eye out for to see what’s going on? What pimps are doing most of the time, because what they do is then…

the girl is taken to a place and they think that she is going to school and then will send back to their home again, they try to isolate the child very much. So if you see that he or she has no contact anymore with friends, is not going out, is spending a lot of time when she or he is at home alone, yeah, that’s already a big sign, I think. Because…

They don’t want you to speak with about your issue with others. So they try very much to, to isolate you all the time and being very nervous, looking at your telephone all the time, because then you think, okay, I have to show up somewhere, you know, I’m not going to school. things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Doesn’t this make your mother too? Doesn’t this make you lose faith in humanity? No.

How do you deal with that? because I think that there are still much more good people than bad people. Yeah. I like that attitude. Yeah. If there’s last question for this episode, if there’s one thing that would be the most impactful that our audience can help you with, what would it be? Cool.

Yeah, I think then spread the word, I think it would be really good if people, that’s not a lot of, not so difficult, I think. Just follow our social channels and share the message. I think that that would be really helpful. All right. Yeah. So everyone listening, make sure to share this message, to share the mission that Aveline

Sander Dur (45:05.998)
and colleagues are on, let’s try to prevent as much as possible. Prevention is always better than rescue them. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for being here and thank you so much for sharing all this information and horrible stories. Thank you. Yeah.