https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=PowDLmBKv4I
So, let’s go back in time to before you worked as a security agent for the Homeland Security Investigations Unit. How were you trained to do that? What was your background before you became employed as an agent? And what was it about you that made you capable of engaging in this sort of operation? So I got a graduate degree in international politics and I always wanted to be in federal law enforcement. My first job was CIA. I was there during 9-11 working in the operations center. In the wake of 9-11, I found out that I studied terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. That was actually the degree I got at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. And so, it was an easy recruit into the CIA because, you know, 9-11 had just happened. And I found out that one of the terrorists, Mohammed Atta, had staged his attack from Mexicali, Mexico and crossed the border. And I speak Spanish. I wanted to go fight terrorism on the southern border. So I ended up jumping ship from CIA and I joined the newly created Homeland Security Department and became a special agent. For six months, I was tracking those kind of movements, you know, not human trafficking But money, guns, terrorism. Six months into that endeavor, I was called into the office of a supervisor and they asked me if I would please forgo everything that I wanted to do with my career and help them start a child crimes unit. I do not know why they asked me. One thing he did say to me was, you’re a young agent, but you’re a person of faith. And we know that about you and that’s a requirement or your soul will be crushed. Yeah, well that’s something I want to zero in on. Yeah, absolutely. So I would like you, if you would, to tell us to the degree that you can, what you were typically dealing with when you started working for the child sex crimes unit. Let us know what you saw. Let us know what that did to you. That sort of thing, that changes people’s conceptions of humanity per se. Let’s say the nature of the cosmos and what it means to be human, right? When you’re in contact with people who are capable of that level of darkness, you start to understand something about the nature of the human soul that you can’t understand any other way. And that can be, I mean, that’s the sort of thing that gives people post-traumatic stress disorder when they’re soldiers. And now you said also your supervisor had an inkling that you might be protected against that at least to some degree because of your faith. So let’s walk through what you learned and encountered first. What did you see when you were working as part of this child sex crimes unit? What I saw was so shocking, Jordan. I thought child sex crimes would be 15-year-olds, 16-year-olds. My brain couldn’t comprehend something more evil than abusing that age. The very first case I worked in 2002, I believe, I was given a bunch of VHS videos, some hard drives to look at that had been seized and then weren’t. The very first image I saw were… There were three little boys that were probably seven, five, and three. And they looked like my children. They had blonde hair, blue eyes, and they were being just raped, raped, these three little boys by this pedophile. And I was so shocked. I fell to my knees. I dry heaved, thinking I was going to throw up into the wastebasket. I jumped into my car. I drove to my children’s school, my three oldest kids. I checked them out. I still remember in my mind, I can still see dentist, dentist, dentist appointment. And I grabbed them. I took them home and just sobbed on the floor. My wife came in and I just, I wouldn’t let the kids go. I was just holding them and shaking. That was my very first experience. You talk about PTSD. I absolutely deal with PTSD to this day. I took too long to actually deal with it. That’s another story. And I thought, I can’t, I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I started getting help immediately because I didn’t want to quit. And that’s, that’s, that’s what this is. That’s what this is. And those kinds of videos have increased over the last couple of years by 5,000%. Yeah. Well, in, in, in Canada, we just had a report from an organization called the Western Standard that 1 million child sexual exploitation photos and videos have been identified in an Alberta child porn investigation. 1 million photos, eight arrests made. Okay. So that’s some indication of the widespread nature of the problem. Now you said that when you first encountered this material, it made you physically ill and also terrified for the safety of your children, but then also it necessitated you seeking help, I suppose, or aid. I mean, I’ve worked with people who’ve had post-traumatic stress disorder. Generally what happens is that tragedy is not enough to give someone post traumatic stress disorder, even if it’s rather severe, it has to be a combination of tragedy and malevolence. And the real trauma comes as a consequence of contact with evil, with malevolence and what people generally have to do in order to recover from that is to develop a rather profound philosophy of evil. And, you know, a religious faith in its most fundamental essence is a philosophy of good and evil. It, it does detail out the heart of darkness among human beings. Point out to people, this is particularly, although you’re not, not uniquely true of the Christian tradition, but particularly true that, that capacity for evil lurks in the heart of everyone. And that our fundamental moral obligation as we sojourn here on earth is to overcome that proclivity within and also to stand up against it in the external world. And so you said you received some aid after you had been exposed to this first set of videos. What, what is it about the way you looked at the world that had to change in order for you to adapt to what you were encountering? Well, I had to come to grips with an idea that I had never been confronted with before, that there are people and not a few, but millions of people, only millions of, of pedophiles could justify a demand of millions of child exploitation, uh, material, videos, and so forth. Uh, the first person you see arrested in the movie, it’s a real person named Ernst Lupe Oshchinsky in Sound of Freedom. He had over 2 million pieces of child rape material in his house. So, um, to, to, to be confronted with the reality that there are people on this planet and like I said, not a few, but, but millions who want to indulge in watching five-year-old children be raped and sexually assaulted in ways that, and I’m sorry to be so raw, but I feel comfortable with you, Dr. Peterson, but, uh, to, to, to watch children’s bodies actually break in the act of sexual assault, acts that your mind couldn’t conjure up if you tried to conjure it up and that it’s real. That is so shocking to the system.