What if everything you thought you knew about human trafficking was just the beginning? Debra Graugnard sits down with survivor, author, and advocate Andi Buerger, founder of Voices Against Trafficking, and publisher Teresa Velardi. Andi shares her powerful story of familial trafficking and survival, redefining the crime to include the sex trade, labor, and debt repayment. They also uncover the terrifying commercial scale of human trafficking, the dangers of online grooming, and the urgent need for adults to speak up, listen to their children, and raise situational awareness around this alarming issue. If you are a victim, this conversation is your reminder that you are not alone in this fight.
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Raising Awareness Against Human Trafficking With Andi Buerger And Teresa Velardi
Welcome to the show. I am excited to have with me Andi Buerger and Teresa Velardi.
Thank you. I’m glad to be here.
I’m glad to be here.
Excited to have you. I am going to take a minute to read your bio. Andi Buerger is an international speaker, author, and advocate for victims of human trafficking and exploitation. Andi herself was a victim of child sex trafficking and unspeakable abuses by family members for seventeen years. Andi founded Beulah’s Place, which provided temporary shelter services to at-risk, unsheltered teens for fourteen years. Over 300 youths were successfully rescued and assisted, earning national recognition.
Andi later founded Voices Against Trafficking to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves, the voiceless victims of human trafficking and exploitation. Voices Against Trafficking advocates for the protection of every human’s rights, regardless of race, gender, culture, or socioeconomic status. Voices Against Trafficking, the strength of many voices speaking as one, gives a portion of proceeds from each sale to survivors of child abuse and trafficking, as does Andi’s first book, A Fragile Thread of Hope: One Survivor’s Quest to Rescue.
Andi launched Voices of Courage magazine in 2023. It is distributed internationally and accepted into the US Library of Congress. It honors everyday heroes who selflessly fight to protect human rights. These champions come from all walks of life to change communities and the world for the better. A television series by the same title debuts in 2025. Andi, welcome. Thank you so much. I am just amazed by all that you do.
Thank you. It is an honor to be here, Debra.
It is an honor to have you. I want to read Teresa’s bio as well and welcome her, of course. Welcome, Teresa. Teresa Velardi is the CEO and founder of Authentic Endeavors Publishing, a hybrid publishing company she launched in 2010 with more than 14 years of experience and hundreds of books published. Teresa is an editor, author, speaker, and passionate advocate for storytelling.
She is especially devoted to Christian and children’s books that inspire faith, hope, and purpose across generations. Teresa is the creator of the Daily Gift Book Series, a collaborative collection designed to encourage gratitude, peace, friendship, inspiration, and joy through everyday stories. A potter at heart, she believes storytelling, like shaping clay, is a process requiring intention, patience, and trust, as she guides authors through that journey with care and encouragement.
Authentic Endeavors Publishing began with multi-author short story compilations and evolved to support individual writers pursuing their dream of publication. Teresa is also the host of the podcast Conversations That Make a Difference, where she amplifies voices that uplift, inspire, and create meaningful impact. Teresa has been on my show before, and I have been on hers. Teresa actually introduced me to Andi. She did an episode with Andi and some of her supporters or collaborators for Voices Against Trafficking. You all have a project that you have done together called DJs Against Trafficking. Let me welcome you, Teresa. Welcome. Thank you for being here.
Thank you, Debra. It is always a pleasure to be with you.
Understanding The Different Forms Of Human Trafficking
It is always a pleasure to be with you as well. I am very excited about where this conversation might go. Let me just start with you, Andi, because I noticed as I was looking through your information. I was noticing that I had an image in my head or a definition that I had put onto trafficking on what it was. As I was looking through your site and reading your information, and watching some of your other interviews as well, I recognized that too is trafficking. I had different names that I had associated with different things, but I had a very narrow view of what trafficking is. Can you help us understand what trafficking is and what forms it takes?
It is a common issue that I find, whether it is in the US or abroad, because there are so many different versions or visions of what it could look like. What is in our imagination and what is real, what is in the movies, and what we know. The base definition is basically based on human trafficking. It is the act of coercing or forcing somebody into something they do not want to do, such as sexual activity, sex for money, known as the sex trade.
Labor trafficking is not just sweatshops in some foreign country. It is using people to do labor and treating them horribly, and not paying them or paying them 50 cents a day. They are basically chained to the people who do that. A third one that we do not think about a lot in the US is debt repayment. For example, let us say a mom and dad in Mexico really want a better life for their son or daughter, and somebody says, “I will take them over the border. We will get them in there. They will get to have this great life.”
Human trafficking does not only happen in sweatshops in some foreign country. It is also about using people to do labor and paying them horribly. Share on XLots of things happen before they get to the border. Even if they get through the border into the US, it does not usually work out that way. They do not get to go to school and have good clothes. They are usually sold or trafficked for money. The parents had good intentions, but a lot of times the coyotes, as we call them, will want money, and they will say, “You did not pay us enough, so we need more money.” If you want to see your children again, they will threaten the family. Yes, there are families all over the world that oftentimes do sell their children for whatever reason. They need money. They cannot feed them, whatever it is. Some just do not care. That is the truth.
Would you be willing to share a little bit about your story?
One of the things that is important in my life is for people to be able to understand from someone who has been there. I was trafficked from the ages of 6 months to 17 years old by male and female immediate family members, as well as a few extended family members. In the early 60s, they did not even have a term for it. The term is new, but the activity is not new. It has pretty much been around since just after Cain and Abel.
Romans, Greeks, and all kinds of cultures traded human beings for either sexual activities, labor, or debt repayment. In my case, my birth mother was the orchestrator of all evil. By the time I was five years old, Debra, the torture, the physical beatdowns, the mental, everything that was going on. I was a small child, even for five. There was no way out, no one to run to, nowhere to go. Nobody heard the screams. In those days, people did not even talk about child abuse.
I figured if I were dead, then I would be free. My thought was just jump in front of a car, and then they cannot touch you, they cannot hurt you, they cannot do all these awful things, or take you anywhere where those things can happen. I would be at peace. I trotted down to the curb of my house one day. I waited for a car to come by fast enough to jump in front of. No car came by. I looked up into this huge sky. It was so blue. I lived in Southern California, so it was just like this huge blue sky.
I thought, “I wonder how far it goes. How big is the sky?” I had never been anywhere else except LA. I just had these questions. In my heart, I heard this voice, which was just very resonant, very gentle, say, “This is not the plan I have for you, and suicide is not the answer.” In my life, that was God speaking into my heart. For other people, it might be something else, but I listened, and I trusted, which is one of the miracles, to be honest, because I had no reason to trust someone I could not see.
I could not trust the people I could see, but I did. I said, “Keep me alive. I will do whatever you call me to do.” That did not mean everything was easy or changed. It just meant that there was someone out there who knew why I was on that curb that day, Debra. That was enough for me. There were a couple more attempts before I was ten because things were that bad. I had been locked up. My birth brother tried to smother me to death.
My mother tried to kill me. I was just all these different things. At seventeen, it was the last time she tried to choke me to death. Finally, I had nowhere to go. There were no social services in the way that we have them now. There were no hotlines. The nearest police department was two miles away, and I was in a not very good neighborhood at that time. Trying to think about walking, I would not have been able to do it.
They would have sent me back because I was a minor. I was still seventeen. By the time I got into college and realized people lived a different way, it was a whole new world. I was terrified most of the time, but I learned to figure out how to survive. If I worked harder and faster than anybody else, then I might be able to make it in this life and be successful. I finished early. I finished in three years and then went to law school.
On so many levels, when you talk about being a five-year-old and recognizing that you want out, and even contemplating that you have a choice of suicide. When bad things happen to children, a lot of times they do not even imagine that there is another way because that is all they have known. Something in you had a broad scope of what hope might be, even though it looked like you were trying to take the out of suicide.
To me, that says here is someone who had something inside of her that knew enough to say, “This is not right, and there has got to be a way out. There has got to be something better than this is not what life has to be.” As you speak, what comes to me is just this voice of hope, a voice of perhaps divine inspiration that is living through you, speaking through you, that is here for divine purpose. That really touches a deep place. Thank you for being that and for answering that call and for saying yes to that.
God’s voice became my voice, and then my voice spoke to other voices. That is why collectively we are more powerful than just a single person in one place at one time. Being a voice of hope, being a voice for the voiceless. If we can be their voices, then eventually we are going to win. We are going to push back the predators, push back those who hurt children who are God’s innocence.
As Teresa always says, God’s children are not for sale, and they are not. That is not the purpose of children. They are our future of any country, any village, any town. Yet, we have gotten so far down the rabbit hole of not valuing human life, especially a child, that we have allowed this human epidemic to run. There is hope because if God can do that for me, he can do it for anyone. It is not easy, but it can be done.
Why We Forget To Stand Up For Ourselves And For The Innocents
Why do you think that happens, that it is so pervasive? Why does it continue? Why have we not been able to just stand up and say, “Stop?”
One thing is, we forgot how to stand up for ourselves and for people that we love and the innocent. Pulling it back even further, take a business principle, which is the supply and demand. If there were no demand for little children or organ harvesting or any of these ugly, evil, horrific things that we have in our society globally, then there would be no need to provide it, because if you cannot make money off of it, why get in that business? A lot of it is demand.
The US has a huge demand for a lot of these things. Genocide, all those things are part of human trafficking. It is all under that umbrella because of taking people forcibly, but back to the pervasiveness. We have the internet. The internet started out as a great idea, and it probably was, and it does have its good points.
The internet started as a great idea. But the greedy learned how to use it for illegal gains. Share on XSomebody figured out how to either get greedy or how to use it for illegal gains because you can do good, you can do evil, you can do nothing. Only two of those are bad because not doing anything, sitting on a fence as a national or a global community, is just as bad as doing the act itself, in my opinion. There were people who knew something was wrong in my life, but never stood up, never talked about it, until decades later. “We did not want to get anybody in trouble.” They were not voices of courage like the three of us here are right now.
We have to teach people how to speak up and feel good about it, feel safe about it, “I think I saw something, what do I do?” That is why we provide the tools. Pervasiveness, the other part of human trafficking, is what we hear all about the money and greed, and that is valid. It is also depravity. There are some people who are just out and out depraved, like my birth mother and everyone else involved. We are not going to get rid of human depravity because we are flawed innately, but we can at least put a dent in the commercial side of it.
The Commercial Side Of Human Trafficking
Can you explain a little bit more about the commercial side of it?
Take, for example, right now, one of the most dangerous places for a female, 18 to 24 years old, is a college campus. The trafficking ringleaders, the people who run a lot of agents, a lot of predators, and they have all of this. It is like prostitution rings. The traffickers actually recruit people on campus. A young man may find that the girl who is a little shy or maybe does not have a boyfriend or whatever is desperate for attention and invites her through.
There are female gang members, female traffickers who will do the same thing. There are guide-gal convos that will hold a party and invite college kids, and they will just figure out how to lure them into another room or another place, put them in a van, and take them away. “Here is a private room for you guys, come over here.” A lot of different things, not just putting a Mickey in somebody’s drink. The predators are so organized.
They are very organized, like any other multinational business. They are transnational criminal enterprises. They know how to use the internet. There are up to one million predators a day on the internet looking for your niece, your nephew, your child, or your sister. We have to be more diligent about watching and asking questions in an appropriate way. Not saying, “What are you looking at?” but “I am interested in what you are interested in, what are you looking at?” or “What is that about?” or “That game looks a little different than what we thought it was. What do you think?”
Have conversations with our children, age-appropriate ones. If you are not sure, then get people like us, anyone who has had any kind of training, or who has our book, and they can answer some questions or the hotlines and helplines that we have in our book or on our website. Call someone safely in a neutral way, and they will help you in your own area in the US, anyway, to get help if you are not sure.
I always tell people, go to your local law authority, ask them, “What do you do about human trafficking in my area?” If they say, “We do not have any, let me give you a couple of statistics.” In the US, every 40 seconds or less, there is a child eighteen or under who is abducted or lured into something unsafe, and they will be in a trafficking ring within 48 hours if they are not found. Minimal. The other part of it is child abuse, which we lose five plus kids a day, 80% of which are under the age of five in the US.
Those children died just from abuse. The ones that survive abuse, I was lucky in a lot of ways, did not end up in a trafficking ring. I did not end up in a non-familial trafficking ring because it was still the early ‘60s. Nowadays, someone who has been abused, violated and no one stepped in, they are going to be more vulnerable to someone being nice to them. “Why do we not have lunch?” or “I want to be your friend,” or “I have some other friends that are coming over tonight. Would you like to meet them since your parents are not home, or you don’t have any supervision?”
It is very simple, very subtle, how they get to our kids. Prevention packets are essential. Tips on how to keep kids safe and how to prevent child abuse. Simple things you can do that do not cost any money, but they may cost you a few minutes of your time. Is that not the best insurance policy for your kids or the kids that you are in charge of, even if you do not have your own kids?
That’s what I am going to ask you. What is needed to really have this conversation? I love that you gave an example. I know when a child has been abused or threatened, there is so much shame, so much fear, so much everything else that if you go at them with that suspicious, attacking, “you have done something wrong,” they are just going to retreat further away.
How To Listen And Protect Our Children From Predators
It is really hard to be able to come and say, “Wait, this is a bad thing that has happened,” without feeling like, “I have done something bad. It is my fault.” To give people those ways to actually speak to their children in a non-threatening, non-accusatory way is really important. Teresa, you have some resources there to share. Would you like to talk about those?
These are available on the Voices Against Trafficking website. One of them is tips and solutions to prevent child abuse. A lot of this is about being informed. That is what it says right here, “Be informed.” Know what is going on around you. Know what resources are available to you. There are resources on the Voice Against Trafficking helplines and hotlines. This is free. You can get this.
One of the things you were talking about specifically and our person who put together the DJs Against Trafficking marathon that we recently did, and we will do again from July 30th to 31st. It is in conjunction with Soul 105.3. The person who is my producer, who has grandchildren, was very enlightened. We are learning more and more. Every time I talk to Andi, I learn more and more. There is a process called grooming.
This is a piece of information that each parent should actually really read and talk to their children about who they are having conversations with on the gaming apps, who they are having conversations with in chat rooms. As Andi said, a million people are out there trying to lure in somebody for their gain and the child’s loss. There is a lot of information. Typical stages of grooming, just to give you some targeting information.
They identify children who are vulnerable. We talked about that. They try and gain the trust. They are meeting a need. The trafficker uses information gathered to offer the child something they need, whether it is money, a place to stay. Andi touched on this. Isolation, exploitation, maintaining control. There are all kinds of things that are in this one particular document that every parent can use to help keep their children safe.
That is so important in the internet world, in the world of gaming. I am reliving all of the issues with my great-nieces and great-nephews, but they are constantly on the gaming apps. They do not want to be told that they cannot do it. They will just really fight you on it if you try to monitor what they are doing at all.
That is why the conversations are so important. “Let us have taco night and pizza. I want to talk to you all about something.” There is no judgment here. If you have questions, ask Mom, ask Auntie, ask whoever has the information. “I want to talk about these things because I want you to be safe. I am not trying to police you, but I am trying to protect you.” As a family, there are things we can do to help each other. Would that not be a great idea if we knew how to protect each other?
You have to include them in the process of decision-making, whether they are five or 15 or 20, in college, because it goes beyond stranger danger. They have no idea how slick these predators are because the average predator, yes, they can be Eastern European, they can be different cultures, but the average predator in the US looks like your dentist or your librarian or the coach. As adults, whether we are parents, foster parents, godparents, grandparents, daycare workers, if we are in charge of children, we must do more because it is that bad.
The average predator in the US looks like your dentist, librarian, or coach. Share on XWe gave up our rights, so to speak, when we said the school will take care of them, or the church will take care of it, or the daycare, this, or the sports people. “They got my kid. They’re safe.” That is very dangerous thinking. How many college examples do we have where things went terribly wrong because of either coaching or people who knew and never spoke up?
We have lots of examples, celebrities, non-celebrities, but we need to learn our lesson and say, “It is worth five minutes of my time to sit my kids down, my adult kids, whatever,” and say, “Look, I just want to bring this up because it is important for you to know. If ever anything happens, here is our family code word,” which is one of the things on that packet. “If I see that word, I am going to blaze out of here, and I am going to come help you find you, whatever it takes, but you cannot give that word to everybody.”
For the older kids, they should have a secondary word because a lot of times, something goes wrong with a 15-year-old or 16-year-old, they are going to tell a peer before they tell an adult, because they do not want to be yelled at. They do not want to be judged. They do not want to feel ashamed. I tell every person I talk to, if you have never made a bad judgment in your entire life, great, good for you.
You are probably the only one because we have little people and mid-sized people and growing into older people who are going to make poor judgments, not because they want to be bad or rebellious, a few do, but because they are human and they are not completely evolved yet. The predators are a lot smarter than most adults at this point. We need to jump in and say, “Let us just have a conversation. I heard someone speak, and this is what we need to do.”
They are experts at their game. All the more reason to study what is happening. I remember in 2012, I moved from Maryland to Florida, and I had worked for years in wellness centers and in medical spas, health spas, those kinds of things, as a massage therapist and a colon hydrotherapist, and nutrition and cleansing. When I moved to Florida, I lived about 45 minutes north of West Palm.
Florida was the first place where, in order to get a massage therapy license, it was a recent law. You had to be completely fingerprinted and have a file with the FBI because of the trafficking that was going on there. They had a statewide massage therapy association, and the police went to the mandatory meetings where we got to learn about the trafficking that was happening there. I recognize it now.
I was just north of Epstein and what was going on there. They did spell out what was happening. They had no idea how far up this goes, and it runs between Florida and New York. They basically spelled out all the things that are really in our faces right now in the news. At the time, I actually appreciated that they were taking those steps. I have no problem giving my information and my fingerprints and having a file, especially if it would protect me.
I think of the people. I have worked with women who have experienced childhood abuse and adult rapes as young adults, and not specifically trafficking, but sexual trauma, sexual abuse. The majority of people will tell you that they tried to say something in whatever words they could eke out and were told, “No, that is not true. No, that is not happening. No, that is your imagination. It is in your head. That did not really happen. That person would not do that.” They went into silence and never spoke again. That is another place where, when part of what you are doing is to specifically educate people, not just to speak to the children, but also to listen to the children.
That is one of the biggest areas, even still, in the courts. We need to listen better and trust and verify the information. Let us say a child eighteen years or under comes to you and mentions something. Let us trust that. Let us get some more information. Let us verify that. In truth, only about seventeen percent of all law enforcement in the US are trained. That is not a big number. We need to do more about that. Listening to people.
Look at the Olympian, the girl who was hurt with all the other girls, and the FBI listened to her, and then all of a sudden turned on her. We have to take this more seriously. It infiltrates every level, every culture, every socioeconomic status, every religion, everything, because human trafficking is not about right versus left. It is about right versus wrong. It is not about whether you are Catholic, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, any of that. It is about the human being.
A human being is being taken, sold, coerced into things they would never have chosen to do, or did not think that that was what they were going to have to do. Take the example of gangs. It is easier to sell a human being than it is drugs because there are a lot of steps to, first of all, making a drug. All the ingredients, putting it together. You have to package it, then you have to distribute it, then you have to find people who will do that for you, and then you have to manage money.
With a human being, a gang member can have a party, invite his girlfriend over, “We are going to have some fun, you want to come?” There are twenty of his friends there waiting to have sex with her for money. Do you think that girl is going to go home the next day and say, “Guess what happened to me last night?”
No. The shame, the humiliation, for decades, until I had counseling and therapy. “I thought there was something wrong with me, or I was too stupid, or I was this, or I was that, because I was ugly. Whatever it was, I thought it was me who was the problem because I was told that so many times. Why would anyone do that to me when they are supposed to be parents? They are supposed to protect you, love you, all that stuff.”
It took a lot of counseling and a lot of work to get to the end of that tunnel where I could see that it was not me. I was not the problem. How many victims get that? One sexual assault as a child can literally create up to one or more of 73 different diseases and ailments over their lifetime. How many doctors are trained in understanding that? How many teachers, anyone? We have to really make sure we are doing the background checks.
We are doing the training. We are getting as many resources, which is why we put out this third book from Voices Against Trafficking called Voices Against Trafficking: Courage is Contagious, because if you stand up and I stand up, and Teresa stands up, which she does, we can make a difference in Ending Human Slavery. That book has nineteen chapters, all of different kinds of information, so people can pick it up, read a chapter, and think about it. There is one about PTSD.
There is one about an actual “I saw something and said something” from one of our members at an airport that probably prevented that toddler from being sold that day. Would you not like to read that chapter so you could say, “I travel. I will learn something from that?” Coming up on January 22nd, we are going to have a great opportunity for the ebook readers. We are going to offer our ebook for less than a dollar because we believe everyone on that day, as January is Human Trafficking Awareness month in the US.
There’s an international awareness in July for another event that we’re having. We want everyone to have a chance to get the info. Our desire is between the books, the magazines, and the music CDs we put out. All of these things are so that you, the audience, the listeners, the viewers, can learn about human trafficking without being terrified. I speak to people so that they can know the truth, but also the hope of it, without scaring them to death. When you are scared, you are not going to listen. You are not going to hear anything. You are not going to learn anything.
Raising Awareness About The Fight Against Human Trafficking
There really is a fear of making a mistake. When you are suspicious of something that you do not know for sure, I can hear all the voices in your head saying, “You are going to cause a scene, and you are going to look like a fool.” That’s all in your head. I really appreciate the resources that you have. I know you have a lot for families, you have resources for victims, and you also have a way for people to join you in some of the things. Do you guys want to say anything more about the DJs Against Trafficking? I know that’s something that you’ve worked on together.
Teresa, you go ahead, tell them how fabulous it was.
It was so good.
Are you doing another one?
Yes. We started off with a two-hour panel, and we had Andi, me, Eric, and Karen. Now Eric worked as a government worker, and he had a lot of hands-on experience with this particular topic. He will tell you that you asked, “Why does this go on?” It is over 150, ready for this, billion with a B, dollar per year industry. Some statistics say it is much higher than that. It is not just in the United States. It is all over the world.
We brought a lot of information in that two-hour panel, and the station that we were on, the Soul 105.3, got a tremendous amount of feedback about how awesome the conversations were that we were having with the people who were there. BQ is there. BQ is one of the partners in Voice Against Trafficking, and she had a lot of information. We had people throughout the day who came on. There would be a set of DJs from around the world.
Started in Thailand, went through Europe, into Argentina, and the States. I think we were on four continents that day. Every hour and fifteen or an hour and a half, we would come together again with somebody else talking about awareness. Mostly, it was bringing information about awareness. The grooming situation. We talked about resources that are out there and how to spot things. We also talked about a movie that might help some people called Sound of Freedom.
Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, played the main character. There was a lot of information. It was very tastefully done. There was nothing that would be detrimental to a family viewing the movie. It just brought a lot of awareness. “God’s children are not for sale.” That quote came from that movie. I totally believe that if people are educated and trained to see certain things, if people can go ahead and educate their children and give them ways to say no to the party that is going on down the street, where there are people that they do not know, or staying over someone’s house whom the parents do not know.
A lot of times, it is a free-for-all. “Friend in school? No problem, go ahead.” Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, that may have been appropriate because mom and dad were home. That is not the case anymore. Usually not the case anymore. I am sure that some families are still aware of what is going on in their children’s lives. For the most part, they go off to school, and you do not know what is going on for the next eight hours of the day. You have no idea.
Give people the opportunity to speak. If they do not feel like sharing, simply being there for them is enough. Share on XThat was true in the ‘50s and ‘60s, too. I was not around in the ‘50s, but I was in the ‘60s.
Even like in Andi’s situation with a familial situation, you never know.
When it comes to not necessarily the trafficking for money, but just the in-home abuse. I know for myself that happened, going to stay at a friend’s house with the older sister’s boyfriend and with the cousin over here. You just never know where those things are. You just never know were those things are going to happen, even with the parents there.
What about the siblings of the friend that you are going to stay overnight with? What about their friends who are like, “You have a little sister?” It all seems like fun and games. How many friends or how many people have said, “Yeah, my brothers did this, or this happened. There were eight of us, and nobody cared. We tried to tell, and then everyone turned against the person who was trying to tell.”
I hear that a lot with the people that I work with. That is the common story.
Get over yourselves because this is real, this is tragic. The victim lives with that event, with that residual, no matter how much counseling, how healed they are, how much they grow. I have an amazing life after six plus decades, but it was creating a new normal. It was learning to love myself. It was my faith. It was a lot of trial and error with all kinds of things in life.
It was hard, but you do it because you believe that there is a purpose, that there is a reason for that. We need to give people that opportunity to speak. We need to include them in our churches, in our social groups. If they do not feel like telling you every little gritty detail, do not push them. Let them share what they feel comfortable with. Just be there for them. More ears and less mouth.
Giving people an opportunity. My last predator died just a year ago. That was after another attempt by another familiar predator, friends of that predator. After 40 years, they found me. It is never over until they are in the ground or they are truly locked up for life in an isolation cell. There are a lot of people who are like, “Inhumane.” I say, “Really? Ask the victim how they feel about that.”
The PTSD that they go through. This creates in the life of the victim is where I have a family member who came to me about something that had happened with somebody else in the family, and I had no clue. She felt safe enough to tell me about it. People ask, “Why are you involved in this?” That is just one reason why I am involved in it. Nobody is safe from this.
I do not want this to sound doom and gloom, but just because you look a certain way does not mean that it is not going to happen to you. It is prevalent. As parents, as aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters, whatever, as human beings, I believe we are all connected and that we are all in one way or another responsible for each other. We are responsible for each other. We have to take on other people’s staff, but we are responsible. If you know something, say something.
If you can make a difference, make a difference. If something that you say causes somebody else to think about a situation that they might have seen, you have done something good for somebody else. You have made a difference. Conversations that make a difference are just that, having a conversation that makes a difference in somebody else’s life, regardless of what the topic is. This topic is top of the list.
As you were saying that, what if you had said, “I am not going to get involved in this,” and that person confided in you and trusted you, and then once again got left hanging?
Literally could have been left hanging. You never know what is going to happen. There are horror stories out there, and the imagination could run wild on what those horror stories might be, and you would not be wrong.
I just want to say some simple things. We have to be more observant, more situationally aware. We have a program for that. We have a great guy, retired Colonel Brian Searcy has an amazing program where a family can learn four minutes a day how to be more situationally aware to protect their family. Here is a quick example.
We just went through a lot of holidays, went to the New Year, and how many people go to a big-box store or a hardware store and say, “Go ahead and look at the toys. Mommy will be there in a minute.” Probably 6 or 8 months ago, there was a story about eleven children who had been rescued in a container. They were already going to be shipped out, and all of those kids were under the age of twelve, and they were taken from three big-box stores.
A few of them were taken from one, a few of them were taken from another, and a few were taken from a different one. Where were the adults watching? Just because a kid is 10 or 11 years old, they are not an adult like you are. The back doors of a big-box store think about all the ways, all the exits, all the bathrooms, all the places that a child can get distracted by, get lost in, or get taken from, especially if they do not see an adult. If you are a mom with a baby in one arm, a baby in the basket, and another child, bring somebody with you to be the guardian. Just say, “Can you just come with me and just make sure the kids are safe while I get all the groceries?” That is not so hard.
It is seen why it is so hard to talk about. It is painful to even acknowledge that it exists. When the police officer came to talk with us, I think it was a big eye-opener for me. When I was in Florida as a massage therapist, and the police came to talk to our statewide group, he was just talking about the difference between drug trafficking and human trafficking. The drug, once it is used, it is usually has to produce another one. A human being can be used multiple times a day and multiple times the next day, and you have one asset there that you can use over and over and over again and continue to make money.
Up to 25 times a day. My stomach goes like this when I hear that. I’m sorry, but sometimes we have to say it.
That really embedded in my brain when he said that. It is hard to think about it. It’s hard to imagine. All the more reason if you take that difficulty and that shock, you take that, and you dig a little deeper underneath it, and you pull that conviction out and stand up, and as my little nephew would say, “Hell to the no.” We are not going to let this happen to our children.
I even think of Gisèle Pelicot. She’s the woman from France. As an adult, her husband drugged her and, while she was passed out, sold her. He did it repeatedly and then gaslit her when she said, “I think something is wrong with me.” Gaslit her into thinking that it was all in her head. Her famous quote, which I love, is “Shame needs to switch sides.” When she found out what was happening to her.
Her husband actually had videotaped and recorded all of this on his computer. A hundred men were convicted for what he did to her, who had participated over the time that she was being trafficked. This is familial trafficking. He would drug her, and she would pass out. She never knew what was going on until she found out and took it to court, and said, “Shame needs to switch sides,” and they are all going down.
How To Work With Andi And Teresa
That is a great, great line. You asked how people can coordinate with us. First, go to the website, take a look at the information there. Contact us through the contact link and get that prevention packet. That is so key if you’re a newbie to this whole thing. As you were saying, Debra, things happen. We wonder why when a survivor, which is usually maybe one out of every 100 victims will survive, which is still a very small number, tries to re-enter society and people say, “You were on drugs,” why do you not find out why that poor person was a drug addict or an alcoholic and how much pain they are trying to erase because we do not listen?
We are so quick to judge. What you’re talking about is being a voice of courage means speaking up, standing up to the best of your ability. If you have $5 a month, then great. We can use that to help a victim. Everything we do goes back to the victims. We do not keep the money from the books or the magazines. Partners like Teresa with her publishing company and our folks on the panels, we are all volunteers. No one gets paid. We are a 501(c)(3). There are no staff payments. Everything is done so that the next victim, the next starfish, can be thrown back into the ocean of healing and hope.
Back into the ocean of healing and hope. I know you also have something on your website where organizations that want to partner with you can join your efforts.
It is so easy to be a member. We do not have any meetings per se, but if you want to put your name on our roster, just say, “I want to join. I want my voice.” You can do that for as little as $50 for a lifetime membership. That’s really not much. There are different levels and different things you can get.
If you go to the tab that says Join Us, you can look at all those things, but really, you can say, “I do not have a lot of time or a lot of money, but what I can do is get a lot of people to like your social media.” That is a great thing to help us with. We need likes, we need follows, we need our social media posts to be shared. We need people on January 22nd to buy an ebook for $0.99. Tell your friends about it.
We have materials and promo things in July, our DJs Against Trafficking, which I like, has doubled in its expansiveness is going to make world awareness a priority. Our first time around, I think Teresa, it was fifteen different countries plus the US that listened to that whole fifteen hours. More DJs could not get on that one who said, “We do not want anything, we just want to be part of the next one.” That is why we have to do two days, so we can give everyone a chance to be part of the movement, because that’s what we’ve done. We started on Capitol Hill in 2019, and we are not stopping until we cannot.
As you’re speaking, more people are in the hell to the no camp. There are predators, as shown by the way they operate, that conceal it, and bringing this awareness brings so much to light. Bringing all the hell to the no people who are ready to stand up and say, “You all are not God’s children, and we’re all God’s children no matter what our age is.” As my teacher used to say, “We’re all children in the eyes of God, no matter what age we are.
We’re here to be advocates for each other and to care for each other, and to standup for each other.” The more that we can bring the people of conviction and the people of hope together to say no and to raise awareness and take the blinders off and come out of denial. Take the blinders off. I will say to everybody tuning in, get the information that Teresa shared that is on Andi’s website, VoicesAgainstTrafficking.com.
Go and get those resources. See what you can put in place to raise your awareness. I feel like I still have some blinders on. I want to go and get that information, take my blinders off, shut the blinders, raise the awareness. Heighten my sensitivity to what is going on and just become more courageous, as courage is contagious. A willingness to stand up and to be an advocate and to join you in what you are doing in spreading the word.
Do that for yourself, do that for your family, do that for the people that you may be able to impact through your life. There is nothing more rewarding than having an impact for good in someone’s life. Share it with as many people as you can, because the more that those of us on the hell to the no side can share with each other and stand up together, then that is when we can stop those that operate in the silence and in the darkness in the shadows that are doing the unthinkable things for those that we love.
Please, we want to hear from you. We want to know if you are a company that has not done much philanthropy. We can partner with you. Maybe you are a business that would like training. We can offer that. We put these panels together, and we bring everybody together with people from the media, publishing, the US government, and people from other countries. In our book, we have 2 or 3 international chapters.
People should take their heads out of the sand to shed light on the things happening in the darkness. Share on XYou definitely want to get the information because it will not bite you, it will only help you, and you will be glad when you know you are part of the solution, whether you buy a book, a CD, a magazine, or you say, “I can do this monthly. I can do this one time. I will be a voice of courage in my own neighborhood. I’m going to figure out how to do it.”
It is time for people to take their heads out of the sand and really come to the light of what is actually happening in the darkness.
Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words
I want to thank you both for what you are doing. I have gone to your website and joined your organization, and I hope to have further involvement as things go on. I am going to be watching for events that I can get involved with, at the very least, sharing with my community and the people that I know to help them take the blinders off, take their heads out of the sand, and just learn the tools. Learn how to listen and how to speak. Thank you both very much for what you are doing. May your actions be blessed and multiplied many times. Thank you so much.
It is an honor and a pleasure. Thank you, Teresa.
I am just grateful to be able to be a part of something that is not just making a difference for each of the three of us, but making a difference for the victims.
For the world in general to take the blinders off. That’s part of what I’m committed to doing with making the change. This is the beginning of a change I am making to my show. I have a number of guests who are going to be helping us take blinders off and recognize how our culture, at least for a century, we’ve been indoctrinated to a certain level of complacency and expectancy about what is okay and what is not. That is changing now. The more that we can pull back the curtains and take our heads out of the sand, take our blinders off, we can recognize all the things that are right in front of our eyes that perpetuate this unhealthy culture that we have lived in. God willing, turn it around.
Thank you so much. Blessings to everyone. Thank you for being part of the solution, Debra, and putting this out there to your audiences. I hope that they will magnify your efforts by sharing them with other people and by getting involved wherever they are. God bless each and every one of you. If you are a victim, it is not your fault, and you are not alone.
Shame needs to switch sides. Thank you so much at VoicesAgainstTrafficking.com.
Important Links
- Andi Buerger on LinkedIn
- Teresa Velardi on LinkedIn
- Voices Against Trafficking
- A Fragile Thread of Hope: One Survivor’s Quest to Rescue
- Authentic Endeavors Publishing
- Daily Gift Book Series
- Conversations That Make a Difference
- Voices Against Trafficking: Courage is Contagious
- Authenticendeavorspulishing@gmail.com
About Andi Buerger
Andi Buerger, JD is an international speaker, author, and advocate for victims of human trafficking & exploitation. Andi herself was a victim of child sex trafficking and unspeakable abuses by family members for 17 years.
She founded Beulah’s Place, which provided temporary shelter services to at-risk, unsheltered teens for 14 years. 300+ youth were successfully rescued and assisted, earning national recognition.
Andi later founded Voices Against Trafficking(VAT) to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves — the voiceless victims of human trafficking and exploitation. VAT advocates for the protection of every human’s rights regardless of race, gender, culture, or socio-economic status. Voices Against Trafficking-The Strength of Many Voices Speaking As One, gives a portion of proceeds from each sale to survivors of child abuse and trafficking, as does Andi’s first book, A Fragile Thread of Hope – One Survivor’s Quest to Rescue.
Andi launched Voices Of Courage magazine in 2023. It is distributed internationally and accepted into the U.S. Library of Congress. It honors everyday heroes who selflessly fight to protect human rights. These champions come from all walks of life to change communities and the world for the better. A television series by the same title debuts in 2025.
About Teresa Velardi
Teresa Velardi is the CEO and founder of Authentic Endeavors Publishing, a hybrid publishing company she launched in 2010. With more than 14 years of experience and hundreds of books published, Teresa is an editor, author, speaker, and passionate advocate for storytelling. She is especially devoted to Christian and children’s books that inspire faith, hope, and purpose across generations.
Teresa is the creator of the Daily Gift Book Series, a collaborative collection designed to encourage gratitude, peace, friendship, inspiration, and joy through everyday stories. A potter at heart, she believes storytelling—like shaping clay—is a process requiring intention, patience, and trust, and she guides authors through that journey with care and encouragement.
Authentic Endeavors Publishing began with multi-author short-story compilations and evolved to support individual writers pursuing their dream of publication. Teresa is also the host of the podcast Conversations That Make a Difference, where she amplifies voices that uplift, inspire, and create meaningful impact.
