Christian rocker goes undercover to expose child sex trade
His wife just kept saying, "No way."
David Zach was fired up. He'd just gotten out of a meeting with some men who battle child sex trafficking overseas, and he wanted to join them.
Zach told his wife he wanted to jump in right away, to go undercover to Southeast Asia to help the group, The Exodus Road, expose the trafficking.
She shook her head. Anna Zach said her Christian rocker hubby could talk about sex trafficking all he wanted from the stage. But no, she didn't want him skulking around criminals who run brothels where men pay to have sex with children.
David Zach, front man for the band Remedy Drive, shrugged. "Well," he told her, "they're coming for breakfast tomorrow."
At breakfast, Anna Zach teared up as Matt Parker from The Exodus Road talked about what they do. She changed her mind, declaring to her husband: "This is our legacy."
Operative training
David Zach didn't go in with a ton of confidence.
"My brother told me, 'Man, you've gotta take acting classes because everyone can read you like a book.' "
Still, just a few months later, he was in Southeast Asia, training to be an operative in a complicated system to rescue children being sold for sex.
The guys in The Exodus Road painted a bleak picture. In about half the raids, the targets get tipped off. Lots of times, police and city leaders get bribes from traffickers, so it's hard to know whom rescuers can trust.
In one city, mob members who ran sex trafficking had killed an undercover operative.
"That scared me to death," Zach said.
And he reviewed case files in which he finally saw pictures of actual children who had been kidnapped and forced into prostitution.
The Exodus Road leaders gave Zach simple, relatively safe tasks to do like following people. While it sounded simple, though, Zach found it was hard to trail people in crowded markets, harder still to do that without the target figuring out he or she is being followed.
Meeting June
In his two 10-day trips last year, Zach found himself in several brothels and sex clubs in the Thailand-Cambodia-Indonesia-India area of the world. Those who battle sex trafficking rarely mention specific cities so they might protect secret operations there.
The first time he remembers seeing a 14-year-old girl on stage, and his stomach turned.
"She's a product," Zach said. "It's not sexy."
Sometimes the girls stood behind glass and held up numbers. Other times, girls walked around and flirted with customers. All the girls would claim they were at least 18 years old, but few were.
In all the places — some elaborate neon-filled clubs, others dirt shacks — there was a mama-san who would take the $15 to $60 fee for customers to take the girls or boys to a private area. Zach never did that; he would only go in posing as a buddy of a customer.
The Exodus Road people gather information from such scouting trips to try to persuade local authorities or other international agencies to act to shut down brothels and other sex trafficking of children.
But Zach saw enough to be deeply troubled and saddened — especially by a girl named June.
"Jesus, where are you? That's the way I felt most of the time."
He saw June, about 13, in a barn-sized karaoke bar with a dirt floor, in a rural area about 20 miles from a city.
She wore cut-off denim shorts, a T-shirt, flip-flops.
"Her eyes," he said, slowly, "I thought maybe there was a defiance there. All my heart wanted to do is take that girl."
Days later, mission over, Zach flew to Japan, then Denver and Nashville, and he made most of the trip by himself. June's face was in his mind the whole way.
"I kept thinking, man, maybe we raised suspicions. Maybe the raid won't work. Maybe, June, she's still sitting there and she's stuck."
The feelings came out in a song called "June" on the band's latest album, "Commodity," dedicated to child prostitutes and child soldiers around the world.
Zach sometimes feels like the problem of child prostitution is overwhelming, but that's not stopping him from returning to Asia next month.
"I don't think it's about winning. I think we all lose if some of us aren't fighting," he said.
During his trips, Zach shared some Facetime video with his wife, and she got to see firsthand a man walking into a hotel with a girl.
"Until you see it, you don't really get it, and it doesn't hit you in the gut," Anna Zach said.
Now, she really gets it, and Anna Zach has planned a trip to go herself in the fall, to spend some time in rehab centers for rescued child prostitutes.
"We have two little girls, and that's what makes me want to fight harder."
Reach Brad Schmitt at 615-259-8384 and on Twitter @bradschmitt.
The Exodus Road
What: The Colorado Springs-based group works to end child slavery in Southeast Asia, India and the U.S.
How: Organizers raise money to fund undercover investigations to find victims of the sex trade and exploitation, gather evidence and present it to local authorities.
So far: The group's website says it has helped rescue 326 sex slaves in three years, and it has 33 investigations under way.
More information:theexodusroad.com