Paul Mergard On Rescuing Children Living As Victims Of Sex Trafficking And Systemic Poverty
For two decades Paul has fought for the rights of children who are trapped in the most horrific situations both in Australia and overseas.
He has seen first-hand the impact human trafficking has on the lives of children and the exhilaration and sheer relief experienced by victims when they are freed.Trained as an accountant with KPMG, he has also worked in two of Australia’s largest charities, The Salvation Army and Compassion.
Paul joined Destiny Rescue as Executive Partnerships Manager in 2019, before taking the CEO role in April 2021.
Paul has a Grad Diploma in International Development and has spent many years in the developing world working with people who live in extreme poverty or have been sold into slavery.
Paul discusses saving over 13,000 children from the sex trafficking industry globally and how discovering your purpose will fuel your drive to become a changemaker.
Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)
[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?
[Paul Mergard] - I grew up with a real different view of the world. I had a grandfather who invented the sugar cane harvester, and he used to travel in the 1950s and 60s all around the world trying to sell these. When I finished school, I went overseas for a year as an exchange student, and again, it opened my eyes to the world. I came back, studied accounting, and then after doing that for several years went and spent a whole heap of time in the developing world. I began seeing poverty firsthand, and it just gripped my heart and made me realise I could do something about trying to end extreme poverty for people. In the early 2000s, I went with a friend to Mumbai, India. I'd been doing some campaigning around the issue of human trafficking for several years and felt I needed to go deeper and understand the issue more. We went and spent a week on holidays in Mumbai, working with different NGOs helping victims of human trafficking. It absolutely changed my life; I met people that week who had been trafficked at the age of nine, and I decided I need to dedicate my life to making sure this doesn't happen to other kids.
As the CEO of Destiny Rescue, can you tell us more about the organisation and its impact?
We were founded in 2001 on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland. Over the last 22 years, we've rescued over 13,000 individuals, most of those children (but some over the age of 18). We work in 12 countries around the world, going into some of the darkest places where children are being trafficked and sold. We work in conjunction with law enforcement to build cases to get children out to freedom, get the traffickers arrested and the establishments shut down. After, we work with the children and their families to get them on a pathway to freedom. If it's safe to put the child back into their families’ home, we will do so and then have social workers work alongside them. Where we can't do that, we have residential facilities and partner organisations we refer the children on to.
Our aim is to get kids out of the sex trade, exploitation and on a pathway to freedom. This is by making sure they've got jobs or can go back into schooling.
If they're go back to school, we work with the families to ensure they can generate an income and break that cycle of exploitation and abuse.
What do you think people need to know about the sex trade, and how can they help to fight it?
People knowing about it is something which has often been missing. It's a challenging topic, let's be honest; no one really wants to think about children being exploited. The sad fact is it’s the fastest growing criminal activity in the world.
One of the things we are passionate about doing is raising awareness of the issue, because unfortunately it's been perpetrated by Aussies, Americans, Kiwis, and other nationalities. It's men and women exploiting children, it's not just a male problem. In the Australian context, we need to make people more aware of it, because Australians are massively caught up in this trade, particularly in Asia. For instance, the UN Special Reporter on child abuse several years ago made a statement that over a period of 10 years, 31% of all arrests in Thailand for sex crimes were Australians. We were the largest nationality represented committing sex crimes in Thailand, and it’s a massive issue for Australians travelling on holidays, for business, end of year football celebrations. It’s people just having what they think is an innocent fun time, but unfortunately what you find is children are caught up in that. The other side to this issue is the fact so much of it now is happening online. Online sexual exploitation of children has absolutely boomed, particularly since COVID-19. There are more children every single day being exploited online, and that often happens because a trafficker will walk through an impoverished community, go to a poor family and say, "hey here's a brand-new phone, and for every video you upload you could make, $20, $40, or even $50," We need to bring awareness to this issue in Australia, so Australians don't perpetuate this crime. Then, we've also got to raise financial support, because from the point of view of Destiny Rescue, we're currently rescuing on average 16 children a day. We could rescue a whole heap more children with more funding. We have got over 150 rescue agents spread around the world building cases, identifying where children are, and working with law enforcement. We could rescue a whole heap more kids if we had the financial ability to. As Aussies, the more we become aware of these issues, people will choose to become change makers themselves. We can have a significant impact on the lives of kids globally.
What other projects do you know of that are doing remarkable things in this space?
There are lots of different organisations raising awareness in communities. There are also lots of education campaigns globally educating people on the signs of trafficking. But the trouble is, most trafficking happens by someone close to you. It could be a family member, it's a trusted person in your friendship circle or community who are grooming a child. People don't think there's anything happening, and suddenly, you're found in exploitation. There's a fascinating film I'd encourage listeners to watch called The Tinder Swindler. This film in many ways shows the modern rich version of human trafficking. It's about someone from Eastern Europe who fell in love with this guy who had a Rolls Royce, private jet, and all this sort of stuff. He started lavishing her with gifts and things, she thought she was in love and next thing she knew she was being exploited. People often say, "how can people be so silly to become exploited like that?" But that's the thing, it happens everywhere and all the time. Awareness for poor communities isn't alone going to solve the problem. We've got to achieve community change, and so there are lots of organisations like Destiny Rescue working to raise awareness of this issue, challenge community sentiments, and challenge the fact that when you're traveling overseas, you should think twice before going to that ‘ping pong show’ you might think will be fun. Often, in some of those places behind the scenes, there are kids being exploited. Then, you need to be aware of what our online habits are and how children are often caught up in activities we might think are harmless because it's happening on the internet. But the reality is, that's someone's daughter or son; nobody who ever has a child dreams of the day they’re going to end up on a website being exploited and abused. We've got to, as a society say this isn't okay. It's almost been normalised in our society. That's changed because of social media, different reality TV shows and other things. Yet, what keeps happening is children get exploited.
What gives you hope for a brighter future?
I'll take you back to when I was first in Mumbai back in the early 2000s. I met this lady Anita, and Anita is probably my driving force in so many ways. She told me her story, and when I met her, she would have been in her late twenties. At the age of nine, she was working in a garment factory in Nepal. She wasn't at school; she was already working full time as a nine-year-old. One day, a lady came into the factory and said to her and her friend, " if you come with me, I'll give you a job. You can earn more money to send back home." They thought, "this sounds good. Let's do it." Over the next couple of days, Anita was trafficked down to Mumbai. She ended up spending the next 15 years of her life in Mumbai's red-light district in a brothel, having sex with men many times a day. When I met Anita, she had been redeemed from that life. She had been able to escape from her trafficker and be rehabilitated. She was working with a not for profit helping other women come out of the sex trade and realise their pathway to freedom. Anita is a woman who absolutely inspired me.
There is nothing like meeting someone who has been redeemed; someone that has had everything taken away and been given a second chance at life.
In the work we do with Destiny Rescue, the thing that motivates and drives me is every single day, I get to hear stories of people who have overcome the most horrendous things that could ever happen to a person. They are resilient, powerful changemakers, and inspiring. They are like giants who have overcome adversity and want to make a difference in the lives of other people. Then you couple that with everyday Aussies who have also said, "you know what, we want to do whatever we can to change the life of someone." It's people who just want to have an impact, make a difference in the lives of people, and go about their lives living for other people. They're people that go about saying, "we can't do a lot, but we can do something, so we're going to do something to make the world a better place for somebody else less fortunate." That for me is the absolute drive to do what I do and why I do it, because I love seeing people come alive when someone stands alongside them to essentially become a door opener.
I often say to our donors and supporters, “there is a door labeled ‘rescue’, but that door only has a handle on one side of it.” Kids are often powerless to change their situation; all they need is somebody to come along and open that door, to let them come out of the situation they're in and rebuild their lives.
I love when I see Aussies realise, they can be part of this, we can all make change, we can do something to change the lives of kids spread across the globe. We'll never meet them, but that kid will never tell their story without thinking of you. They may never know your name, but you will be forever implanted in their heart. That for me is why as an organisation we keep doing what we're doing, because we keep seeing kids get free and kids rediscovering their destiny.
What is something people can do today to make a difference in the lives of these children?
We’d love to invite your audience to consider becoming a Rescue Partner with us. On average, it costs us $1,800 to rescue a child. We have a whole army of what we call Rescue Partners. They are the absolute heroes of Destiny Rescue’s work, and our Rescue Partners are people who commit to giving monthly whatever amount they can afford. It doesn't have to be people who have $15,000 to give every month. If people can afford $30 or $40 a month, we would love it. If all your audience decided to do one thing today, and that was to realise they can help rescue a child, collectively, we could rescue a whole heap of children by joining forces. We’ve got a whole army of people who have signed up to become Rescue Partners with us, and they are rescuing children every single month. It's just powerful, and we'd love to invite people to do that. They can do that on our website at destinyrescue.org. Just click the links to either donate now or become a Rescue Partner [Links provided at the end of the article].
To finish off, what books or some resources would you recommend to our audience?
If people want to understand the issue of human trafficking more, I'd encourage people to jump on our website destinyrescue.org.
We've got several documentaries, quite a range that talk through our border rescues, rescues in the Philippines and Thailand. You can start getting yourself educated on this issue, I love learning about real people.
I love documentaries and hearing the real-life stories of people who have changed the world or overcome obstacles. But also, there's a brilliant book by Simon Sinek called Start with Why. One of the things I say to myself and my team on a regular basis is, "what is your why? Why do we do what we do?" That's super grounding, and again, my why comes back to that story with Anita. I do the work I do because I want to honour her memory. I want to honour her legacy and the hardship she went through. I want to speak up for her, I want to be someone who can advocate alongside of her because she's doing that day in, day out, even now in India. She’s living out her why, but a book like Start with Why by Simon Sinek is brilliant for helping people think about why you do what you do to make your life count for something significant.
