Down the Rabbit Hole with Exodus Cry
**Please note: this article contains content about and with references to sex trafficking, sexual exploitation, CSAM, and arrest of minors.**
It started off by looking at a tweet complaining that Exodus Cry doesn’t do anything for victims of trafficking, and then by reading someone’s tweet regarding their tax filings. It turns out, 501c3's taxes are a matter of public record, and propublica makes them available online. And once I started, it became really hard to stop looking into just how corrupt, weird, and awful these “faith based” organizations are, and the bizarre charity “business” and politics they’re entangled in.
Exodus Cry is a faith based 501c3 tax exempt non-profit organization who states their mission to be “abolishing sex trafficking and breaking the cycle of commercial sexual exploitation while assisting and empowering its victims”. They were founded in 2013, and are by far the leader in raising profits towards “abolishing trafficking”. In 2020, Exodus Cry took in 1.5 MILLION dollars to help victims of trafficking. They gave out just 691$ in direct aid to individuals, an astonishing .05% of the annual budget, and $5,567 in “non-cash assistance” to individuals, or .36% of their annual budget, totaling less that one half of one percent of their entire budget for 2020 being spent directly or given directly to anyone who would have been a victim of trafficking. Despite this fact, they received grants intended for “after care for victims and trafficking survivors”. Don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself, as mentioned, they are available online for anyone to look at.
My friend Sierra, a much more studious and detail oriented person started to take a deeper look after reading some of the tweets. Benjamin Nolot, the president of Exodus Cry (who makes a nice salary I might add for running it, and pays for all of his very necessary travel to do this work through the organization, certainly more than he’s giving out to victims of trafficking) appears to be the owner and producer for several anti-sex films, such as Liberated about “hook up culture” and “Nefarious” about human trafficking. It appears, according to Exodus Cry’s tax records that between 2013 and 2020, they put over 6 million dollars into making these movies, and funneled much of this revenue into Magic Lantern Pictures, an LLC that appears to be owned and founded by Nolot. He introduces it here and has it tagged in all of his personal bios. He owns several other of the private LLCs that they funnel money into to make these films, including Nefarious 1, 2, and 3. Nolot and Exodus Cry seem to use these private LLCs to funnel donated money to produce these very salacious documentaries about why sex and hook up culture are bad. Most likely people donating do not realize their donations are used in this way, and when reading through the grants they’ve been awarded, it appears they are explicitly using grant money earmarked to help trafficking victims for this purpose. Some of the documentaries have been sold to Netflix. I do not know, but I would guess that these LLCs, and probably Nolot himself made a good deal of profit on this.
This practice is what people I know call “savior pimping” and Nolot and Exodus Cry do it well. They tell stories, masterfully I might add, put them on YouTube, Netflix, and more, and have big budgets (it looks like their last movie project asset was listed at 1.7 million dollars) and in doing so, they get people to sign on to their cause, and generate a great deal of money for themselves and the people in their organization, all while giving little to any victims of trafficking the organization was created to serve. The real winner here is anyone employed by Exodus Cry, and Nolot himself, who retains his CEO salary, gets to work directing movies, and runs a non-profit tax free while influencing national and international government policy with his personal religious beliefs; this last link is him addressing the UN.
Exodus Cry is only the tip of the savior pimping, self-serving, right wing Christian iceberg. Sierra, my aformentioned friend, an accountant with a history in computer forensics and investigative work was quick to draw together that the boards members of Exodus Cry, and Nolot, appeared to be connected to the International House of Prayer Kansas City, a church organization with international ties that stopped reporting it’s income in 2014. Here he is delivering a speech to IHOP-KC on purity. IHOP-KC seems to have the same address as Exodus Cry, Friends of the Bridegroom, Shiloh Ministries, and Forrunner Christian Fellowship, and are all connected to smaller non-profit organizations that claim to do everything from rescue orphans to aid in disaster relief, all with very questionable tax returns when it comes to giving direct aid to anyone. To date it appears 57 businesses have been listed under their addresses since they were established. Multiple 501c3 and auxiliary LLCs but also real estate companies, staffing agencies, and an oil / gas research company. Their Orphan Justice Center, just for instance, gave $2,868 in 2019 to individuals in need, $12,000 to their board members, and $148, 867 in “salaries and other wages” — to their employees all IHOP-KC members, and all of the tax returns for their charitable organizations look suspiciously similar. You can see all of their non-profit organizations here.
IHOP-KC also has something in common with Exodus Cry besides their interchangeable board members, address and influence from Nolot: film appearances. Despite Exodus Cry’s statements about inclusivity, it’s easy to see their affiliation online with IHOP-KC. Nolot and other IHOP-KC members prominently and infamously appear in “God Loves Uganda” about Christian ministry work in Uganda, and the influence they had there on the Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act of 2014, which included the death penalty for people commiting “repeat homosexual acts” before being struck down by the Ugandan high court. IHOP-KC is credited with much of the cultural anti-gay sentiment currently in Uganda and other nations in Africa. In a MotherJones article from 2013, the group apparently declared their mission to be “ to secure a million new souls and a billion dollars for Christ by 2020”. It’s of note that while IHOP-KC claims to have had no influence over the government in Uganda, the film shows otherwise. They have a massive history with anti-gay propaganda in the mid 2000’s, especially with youth, through their university programs and have some interesting beliefs about sex, homosexuality, demons and exorcism, and Nolot and the board members for Exodus Cry, their spouses and children are frequent players, listed on their tax returns and in the board filings and meeting minutes. Exodus Cry publicly, and understandably, attempts to distance themselves from their incredibly homophobic and misogynistic founders, sponsors and board members, but it comes across as disingenuous when the founder is obsessed with pushing Christian right-wing ideas around sex, the nuclear family, and gayness. In an article from Open Democracy, linking him to anti-LGBT hate groups, dooms day cults and anti-sex education efforts Nolot defined “sexual immorality as all sexual activity outside of the marriage covenant between one man and one woman and said that ‘toxic sexuality’ was to blame for abortion, teen pregnancy and the ‘implosion of the nuclear family’, along with rape and sex trafficking.” You could google Nolot, Exodus Cry and the words homosexual together and come up with a good idea of the organization’s actual beliefs, or you could look at this absolutely unhinged application to become a chapter that someone obtained an published, much to their ire. Exodus Cry, has written a statement of “inclusivity”, in what I can only assume is a lackluster attempt to appear to be a sensible organization — but a short bit of research shows a founder, connections, and funding that are deeply entrenched in radically anti-LGBTQ propoganda.
If there is one thing these groups are good at, it’s leveraging a cause: poor people, homeless people, orphans, trafficking victims or otherwise for their own profit and power. IHOP-KC has a mission around anti-trafficking work stating they’re “committed to raising awareness of modern-day slavery and human trafficking and to helping victims of these injustices”. It’s tough to see how prayer or making documentaries does much for anyone who’s ever been exploited and needs concrete demonstrable help, like food, shelter, and trauma counseling. Exodus Cry gives out “hope bags” which appear to be mostly make-up, to trafficking victims. The FAQ section on their own website states directly that they do not, despite getting over 1.5 Million in donations a year, provide any type of shelter or housing services, which are critical for someone fleeing trafficking, which is frequently a type of domestic violence. They do not have in-house counselors/therapists, but refer out to others (likely faith based, as they are a faith based org) and help people pay for this through them, meaning that they do not offer crisis services. It should be noted that less than 25 people recieved direct or indirect cash type assistance in 2020, so certainly less than that would be receiving any type of counseling benefit, and certainly 5,567$ split between 24 people (an average of 231$ per person) won’t get you too many counseling sessions.
EC states that they call law enforcement on youth trafficking victims if they encounter them in their FAQ, and that they provide them the services they have available for adults, which as far as I can tell, appear to be a potential counseling referral and bag of make-up. It is beyond the scope of this article, but it should be noted that in many states, youth trafficking victims (minors who cannot consent to sex or sex work in any form) are typically arrested, taken to juvenille detention centers, and frequently prosecuted and tried as minors for prostitution despite not being old enough to consent. Around 30 states have some form of Safe Harbor Laws, and this has been growing over the years, but often there are big resource gaps, and a near complete lack of services, and as a result minors “rescued” from trafficking are “rescued” right into adult jails and juvenille detention centers.
This is where you’d hope an organization that people give millions a year to fight trafficking might step in to care for and house critically vulnerable people with their expertise and massive resources, right? But Exodus Cry doesn’t house trafficking victims, or give them much of anything. They do make money from their image, and from making “trauma porn” around trafficking, driving in donations to help them stop it and care for victims, something they’ve never actually done. Instead of doing much of any concrete work for victims, they spend their time fighting to get porn removed from the internet, and repeating the lie that platforms like pornhub are big offenders for CSAM imagery, when in fact more than 91% of child sex abuse images are shared on Facebook, which the company doesn’t seem interested in attacking.
If it was really about helping anyone but themselves, they’d probably give money to victims, they’d build a safe house, provide basic income while people recovered, they’d do in-house trauma informed counseling, crisis care, provide transitional housing, they’d do job placement/training programs for victims, they’d do street based harm reduction, they’d literally do anything except line their own pockets. One of the more helpful things any organization with the money and political reach like Exodus Cry and IHOP-KC could do would to be to help stop the arrest and prosecution of survivors of trafficking, a recommendation from the UN and what several decades of research on the subject suggest. They also claim to care about the exploitation of children, but have not worked in any way to stop children who are victims of trafficking from being arrested and charged with crimes in trafficking busts. It appears frankly that they seem to help less than 30 people a year directly in any way, despite being a multi-million dollar charity, and to have either very little knowledge, or very little care what a victim of trafficking might actually need. Ask yourself this- even if you believe their mission is good, or that they’re misguided people with good intentions- maybe you even believe that pornography or sex work are harmful things and they’re attempting to stop potential harm- ASK- why do they not use all of their money, power, and platform to do the basic work that many other orgs are trying to do and attempt to decriminalize youth victims of trafficking? They have every ability to do this work, the loudest voice and the highest impact, a massive infrastructure, staff, connections to government, lobbyists, police membership in their organization, and millions behind them. They don’t want to, because there would be no benefit to them, and everything they do is about their own personal benefit.
Exodus Cry doesn’t appear to have any interests in changing law or policy for victims in a way that would benefit them or help them have better futures — for instance helping them to not have a criminal record or obtaining stable housing so they might not be exploited again or providing basic income until they can recover. This isn’t surprising because in order to work well with any population, a charitable organization would actually have to be made up of people from that community, be people who had contact with that community, or actually just care more about their needs than making money off of them. But they’ve learned savior pimping really pays dividends, and they’re riding this fear-based, pearl clutching cash cow right to the bank with donor dollars and tax free government money in hand. And why wouldn’t they? It’s the best of both worlds, they get everything they want: a world with increasingly more restrictions and censorship, laws and government structure that serves their conservative ideology and religious beliefs and millions of dollars. What a grift.
NOTES:
If you’re wondering how you can best help survivors of trafficking and exploitation, you can begin by learning how incarceration, raids, and Christian so called anti-trafficking groups don’t help, and why people in the sex trade believe that decriminalization helps trafficking victims and marginalized people involved in sex work. Often, sex worker led organizations help trafficking victims, and are made up of individuals who can offer the best guidance. Police are particularly bad at finding trafficking victims studies show, and when they do, they traumatize them. It’s a complicated subject, but the short of it is that incarceration and penalties keep people trapped in the work, and make them more likely to be exploited whether they ever chose to be there or not. Below are some resources for this complicated subject if you choose to read on. And I hope you do. Research help for this story was provided by Darlingsierra , twitter.com/DarlingSierra85
