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CARE Conference 2025: A Night of Fire, Testimony, and Unified Resolve Against Trafficking

Las Vegas, NV – December 6, 2025 – Peace Way Christian Center became holy ground Saturday night as the Stop the Traffic Foundation hosted its inaugural CARE Conference 2025: “Becoming a Traffic Fighter – Wherever You Are.” Dozens of pastors, parents, survivors, law enforcement allies, and concerned citizens filled the sanctuary for an unapologetic, Spirit-charged confrontation with the darkness of child exploitation and human trafficking.


What began with worship quickly turned into a full-scale spiritual offensive. Every moment carried the weight of Ephesians 6:12: “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities…”



The Lineup That Lit the Room on Fire

Joseph Charafi (Founder) opened with a gut-punch keynote that set the tone: “Tonight is not about politics. Tonight is about children.” Charafi exposed the predatory playbook: grooming, isolation, and spiritual manipulation. He also laid Nevada’s crisis bare: second in the nation per capita for reported trafficking cases, average entry age 12–14, over 80% of victims groomed by someone they already knew. The only shelter in the entire valley (Safe Place) that can take unaccompanied minors, is already at maximum capacity and unable to expand. Charafi’s voice roared with righteous fury: “We are outnumbered, outpaced, and under-resourced, but anger without action is useless. Evil is not afraid of silence. Evil is terrified of people like you. People who show up, who say ‘enough,’ who shine light where darkness thought it could hide forever.”


Marlon A. Medina (PR Director) followed with the night’s most raw testimony, publicly naming his own father, Bolivar Guillermo Medina Carrion, as a decades-long serial predator who hid behind charm, manipulation, and fear tactics. “Predators don’t break into our lives, we let them in,” Medina said. He walked the room through the chilling red flags: children flinching at sudden sounds, forced smiles, sudden silence when the abuser enters, obsessive surveillance, and the counterfeit “righteousness” of forced church attendance used as camouflage. He recited Matthew 5:30: “If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off," and closed with a rallying call “Together we can vanquish evil. The Lord will not be mocked. Justice will be served, whether in this life or the next. Be the adult who listens. Be the person who notices. Do not be the bystander.”


David Gleason (Vice President) took the stage with a calm but unrelenting focus on the organized, ritualized side of trafficking that often hides behind symbols, groups, and multi-generational rings. Gleason connected the dots between ritual abuse, child pornography production, and the trafficking networks that profit from it. He warned that media and academia often strip the supernatural element out of these crimes, rebranding them as purely psychological or criminal, when the reality is far darker. “These aren’t just bad people doing bad things,” Gleason said. “There are principalities at work. And the church has to stop being afraid to name them.”


Tony Benton (Secretary), a technology expert who survived childhood family abuse himself, followed with a chilling deep-dive into the digital battlefield. Benton unveiled the foundation’s in-development 24/7 AI-powered hotline (target toll-free number: 1-833-KID-SAFE) designed to give scared kids an anonymous, always-on lifeline that escalates real threats to authorities in seconds. He laid out the numbers that keep him up at night: over 300 million children facing online sexual exploitation annually, one child every single second; AI-fueled child sexual abuse material exploding from 6,800 reports to 440,000 in a single year; sextortion cases surging as predators migrate kids from gaming platforms like Roblox to private apps. “This isn’t distant,” Benton warned. “It’s happening tonight on the phone under your child’s pillow. We’re building the tool to fight back, but parents and churches have to use it.”


Pastor Tau Felise took the microphone with the authority of someone who has walked through the fire himself. Having been groomed and molested at 14 by a trusted coach, he spoke straight to every survivor in the room: “Forgiveness is the key that sets you free.” Felise, along with Charafi, led the entire sanctuary through a live, out-loud forgiveness prayer, confessing the hurt, and choosing to release it in obedience to Christ. “When you refuse to forgive, you drink the poison...” he said. “Tonight we choose freedom.”


Devin Praicharnchit made a fiery call for the church to function like a military training camp. “Soldiers don’t sit around between battles, they drill, sharpen weapons, run team exercises. That’s us: Scripture memory, prayer, fasting, discernment, and worship are our live-fire ranges.” He declared the greatest weapon of spiritual warfare is conversion, filling people with Gospel light until darkness has nowhere left to hide. Echoing his pastor, he proclaimed Las Vegas is no longer Sin City but “pre-Christian.” The church must move as one unbreakable unit, discipling the next generation, guarding one another’s children, refusing to turn a blind eye inside our own walls. “It takes a village, and the Body of Christ is that village,” he said. His final charge: find or start a real church, disciple and be discipled in an endless chain, love fiercely, and together turn Sin City into Faith City.


Yadusha Jones (Moms for Liberty Clark County Chair) brought the fight straight to the school system. Jones declared that parental rights are the first—and non-negotiable—line of defense against grooming. She exposed Clark County School District regulations 5160 and 6161: policies that allow counselors to withhold a child’s gender-identity decisions from parents and permit outside adults (vendors, nonprofits, activists) into classrooms without guaranteed parental notification or consent. “More than 300 students have already socially transitioned in CCSD, often hidden from mom and dad,” she revealed. Jones showed graphic library books and perverse material still on shelves despite parent protests, then issued a battle cry: “Your tax dollars are funding the grooming. You have every right to walk into any school, any meeting, and demand accountability. We are taking our district back, one seat, one voice, one child at a time.”


Lena Walther (co-founder of Awareness Is Prevention and former Swedish honorary consul) brought the room to stunned silence with the new face of online evil: sextortion. “This isn’t about sex, it’s about money and total control,” she warned. Predators target good kids from good families, especially boys ages 9–17, catfishing them at night, coercing one nude photo, then threatening to blast it to every contact unless payments keep coming. “In June alone we had forty sextortion-linked suicides; it’s probably doubled by now.” With AI, predators no longer even need the real photo, they deep-fake it and the shame is identical. Walther pleaded with every parent and grandparent: “Talk to your children tonight. Tell them explicitly: ‘You can come to me with anything, no shame, no judgment, and we will fight this together.’ One conversation can save a life.”


Trenton Brisco (Vegas Traffic producer and foster-care advocate with the National Youth Advocate Program) stood up and made everyone else stand with him, just to shake off the weight of what we’d heard. He reminded the room that trafficking doesn’t always start with a kidnapping van; sometimes it starts the day a foster child ages out at 18 with a trash bag of clothes and nowhere to go. “All they want is family,” Brisco said. “Predators know that hunger and offer a counterfeit ‘Come party on my yacht, you’re one of us now.’ Next thing you know they’re trapped.” Having fostered 42 children himself in seven years, Brisco begged the church to open homes and hearts: “Give them real family, real skills, real Jesus, before the counterfeit steals them forever.”


Laura Nowlan (co-founder of Nevada Hispanic Business Group) closed the formal sessions with a holy surprise. Fresh from nearly losing her business, God released long-delayed funds that she immediately turned into seed for the Kingdom. She handed Joseph Charafi an envelope, an unexpected love offering and a full-year sponsorship for the foundation, then unveiled her family’s new calling: purchasing properties near 9th and Stewart to create transitional housing for aged-out foster youth. “We’ll teach them how to work (I own a staffing company), how to pay bills, how to live, and most importantly, how to be loved by Jesus,” she declared. “We’re breaking the Jezebel spirit and the spirit of poverty off these kids, one job, one Bible study, one restored life at a time.” The room erupted; the Holy Spirit had just tied every thread of the night together.


The Spirit Moved

Extended clips and scenes from the award-winning film Vegas Traffic played throughout the night, including a powerful live appearance by actor Johnny Molinaro, who led the room in a spontaneous “Happy Birthday, Jesus!” cheer that brought laughter through tears.


The conference ended exactly as it began: in worship and commitment to action. Attendees filled out “Traffic Fighter” pledge cards and left carrying resources, contacts, and a holy fire.




By Marlon Medina

Public Relations Director, Stop the Traffic Foundation December 8, 2025

A note from Marlon: As a speaker and participant at the inaugural CARE Conference, I wrote this recap in journalistic style so it can be shared widely. What happened in that room wasn’t just an event. It was a battle cry, and the world needs to hear it.

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