The Masculine Wilderness Podcast · Epik Project

The Weight of Telling the Truth: A Survivor’s Journey to Advocacy with Kathy Bryan

·52 min·3 clips

Kathy Bryan says a child is 1,499,175% more likely to be trafficked for sex than hit by an active shooter.

Tom Perez opens by introducing Kathy Bryant as a guest whose leadership shapes the show’s wider conversation about how men show up in the world. Kathy talks about founding the Genesis Project in Heber Springs, Arkansas, and keeps the focus on how her own experience led her into this work. She describes the organization as more than a place that reacts after the damage is done. The conversation moves from personal history into the day to day shape of advocacy. Tom asks about the reactive side of the work, and Kathy explains that much of their recent focus has been on prevention and training. She names law enforcement, medical professionals, children’s advocacy centers, and CASA workers as core audiences. She also talks about close relationships with FBI partners and the Arkansas human trafficking council. The council, she says, has helped bring people to the table across the state. Kathy describes that coordination as seamless in the best sense. She does not call it easy. She calls it necessary. The discussion then widens to housing. Kathy explains that the organization provides emergency housing and long term housing for people who need a safer place to land. She also introduces a medical division called Reclaim, which she says was added in January. What comes into view is not one program but a network of response. Tom keeps coming back to the human side of that labor. Kathy answers by staying close to the work itself. Later, they address the idea that trafficking is only a big city problem. The conversation pushes back against that without turning theatrical. It stays plainspoken and specific. Kathy’s answers keep circling back to minors and to what children need from adults now. The final stretch focuses on parenting and technology. She argues that parents cannot keep raising children as if they were growing up in an older world. Instead, they have to teach them how to use phones and move through the present world with care. Tom responds with appreciation and gives her urgency room to land. The ending makes the emotional weight of the work hard to miss. It is hard. It is heart wrenching. It still matters enough that she would not trade it away.

As heard by us

A clear, hard conversation about practical anti-trafficking work and what real protection asks of adults.

Kathy Bryant and Tom Perez keep the discussion grounded in practical anti-trafficking work, moving from Genesis Project's reactive response to training law enforcement, medical professionals, children's advocacy centers, and CASA workers, with FBI coordination and housing plus…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a grounded look at how advocacy turns into daily action.

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