Rebecca Bender, Author/Human Trafficking Survivor

Sports Spectrum Podcast

Sports Spectrum

Sports

5 • 661 Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 2020

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Episode 448

Rebecca Bender is a survivor. Growing up in a small town in Oregon, Bender had dreams of living a purposeful life. Rebecca thought she found her fairytale when she moved to Las Vegas with her boyfriend. But her dream became her nightmare when her boyfriend became her pimp at the age of 19. Trapped in a life of chaos, coerced into prostitution, abused and controlled by her trafficker, Rebecca was forced into sex trafficking for nearly six years. Many attempted escapes, two brandings, and several pimps later, Federal Investigators raided the home, allowing her an eventual avenue for escape.

Today she is the CEO & Founder of RBI (Rebecca Bender Initiative) and Author of the new book, In Pursuit of Love, releasing on January 28, 2020. Rebecca is passionate about telling her story but even more, helping others tell their own.

Rebecca has consulted on some of the largest legal cases and was the only non-law-endorsement person to receive a special operations, all-access pass to assist police in Minneapolis during Super Bowl 2018. She also assisted Dateline in an undercover operation in Houston during the Super Bowl in 2017.

On this episode of the podcast, we hear Rebecca share her powerful story of human trafficking, finding faith in Christ to help her move forward, how God showed her to forgive those that hurt her, and her passion and desire to help others.

If you or someone you know may be caught up in human trafficking, you can call the human trafficking hotline toll-free at 1-888-373-7888.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Sports Spectrum, the Sports and Faith podcast that brings Jesus back into the conversation.
0:17.5	Here's your host, Jason Romano.
0:20.4	Welcome to Sports Spectrum, everybody.
0:22.3	I am Jason Romano.
0:23.7	Today on the podcast, we talk about a topic that we've never talked about here on the show,
0:30.2	and that is human trafficking.
0:32.2	And our guest is Rebecca Bender, and she's the author of a new book called In Pursuit of Love,
0:38.4	A Woman's Journey, One Woman's Journey from Trafficked to Triumph.
0:43.1	Rebecca Bender is a sex trafficking survivor and her book released January 28th, 2020,
0:51.3	depicts her life in that human trafficking world, nearly six years being trafficked.
0:58.4	And Rebecca, she's went through a lot.
1:01.4	And she tells a lot of that story here on our conversation on the podcast.
1:06.8	And she's also been able to escape that world, though, too.
1:11.3	And so now she's an anti-trafficking professional and expert.
1:15.1	And she answers a lot of questions that I had, and hopefully you will too, about the world of human trafficking, how prevalent it is.
1:22.1	Why is a time like right now where the Super Bowl is getting ready to take place?
1:27.4	Why is that a time where the
1:30.6	awareness of human trafficking increases? So if we talk about that as well, she's got a powerful
1:36.5	story and she's really good. She's a good storyteller. I can't imagine going through
1:42.1	anything that she's gone through.
1:45.3	It really was an eye-opening and sobering conversation,
1:48.4	but it was a very inspiring and encouraging conversation as well.
	...

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