Voices for Voices®

Safety, Security, and Survival in the Public Eye | Ep 250

• Founder of Voices for Voices®, Justin Alan Hayes • Season 4 • Episode 250

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Safety, Security, and Survival in the Public Eye | Ep 250

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What happens when the shadows of the digital world creep into your family's reality? Amanda Solomon never expected to face threats against her child, deal with paparazzi, or navigate the dangerous terrain of online predators targeting her family. Yet that's exactly what happened when her husband's story thrust them into the public eye.

Amanda pulls back the curtain on digital safety in an age where five-year-olds connect with strangers through gaming platforms. "You hope they're children," she says about the unknown individuals interacting with kids online. Her family's experience with account hacking, suspicious messages, and direct threats offers a sobering look at vulnerabilities most parents don't consider until it's too late.

The conversation challenges the dangerous belief that "this doesn't happen in my town." Amanda grew up in small-town Ohio where human trafficking was considered something that happened elsewhere—until a family from her area was trafficked internationally. This false sense of security leaves children vulnerable everywhere, regardless of location or demographic. As she explains, "You never think it would happen to you until it does."

Most chilling is Amanda's account of how quickly privacy evaporates in the digital age. What began as excitement over her writing being noticed by production companies transformed into harassment, unfounded CPS investigations, and public threats against their son. She details how innocent photos shared online can be weaponized by predators, potentially facilitating identity theft or trafficking operations.

Whether you're raising children in today's connected world or simply concerned about your own digital footprint, this episode delivers crucial insights about protection in an age where the line between public and private has never been more blurred. Share your own digital safety tips or experiences with us, and don't miss part two of our conversation with Amanda where we'll explore legislative solutions to these growing threats.

#SafetyFirst #PublicSecurity #SurvivalSkills #StaySafe #PersonalSafety #EmergencyPreparedness #SafetyFirst #PublicAwareness #SurvivalTactics #CrimePrevention #SituationalAwareness #SelfDefenseTips #UrbanSurvival #CrisisManagement #SafetyInPublicSpaces #ProtectYourself #VoicesforVoices #VoicesforVoicesPodcast #JustinAlanHayes #JustinHayes #help3billion

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Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Hey everyone, I'm over here. I used the wrong hand away, so, hey, thanks for joining us on another episode of the Voices for Voices TV show and podcast. I'm your host, as always, Justin Alan Hayes, founder and executive director of Voices for Voices. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode, whether this is your first episode or whether you've been with us from the beginning. Uh, we have, you know, over 245 episodes on our way to 300 by end of county calendar year 2025, which includes studio episodes, um, as well as episodes like this, where current events and topics come up and, with the constraints of recording in the studio and episodes coming out in the future, sometimes we're not able to cover those in the studio, so that's a little bit of why you're seeing and hearing a lot of these shows in this manner, but they're all the same. They all get distributed. If you watch it on YouTube, on Rumble, if you listen on Apple for an episode, and then you're on Spotify, well, you can find us on there as well. 16 platforms that carry our TV show and podcast, and we're grateful to all of them, and all of you are reaching not only here, individuals in North America and the United States, northeast Ohio, but we're reaching in over 60 countries, well over 600 cities across the world. So you're tuning in, uh, outside the united states, welcome, and you can do us a big, uh, big favor, uh, something that's free. Give us a thumbs up like share, subscribe. Those are all free things you can do to help us out and continue towards that goal of mine and our organization of trying to help 3 billion people over the course of my lifetime and beyond.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

So, before we get started with our wonderful guest that is joining us, I just wanted to kind of give a refresh that this here is a let me see, it's not even 100 pages 79, 80 pages. It's called Prescription for Living. So that's there at the bottom, under the House of you, which is trademarked, and we now obviously are trademarked Voices for Voices. So we're able to have that R with a circle around it. So you'll see some branding that's older, like this, that we don't have that R with the circle around it. So you'll see some branding that's older, like this, that we don't have that R with the circle around it, but we are fully protected under the United States Patent and Trade Office, which is actually a step above a copyright and a trademark, and so it's a little bit backwards. I thought that you would be registered as an organization first and then be trademarked, but you can have a trademark and copyright and all that, but there's additional steps to have been taken of view.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Prescription for living what it is it's my mental health journey from as far back as I can remember. My crash ended up in for about five days in an inpatient psych ward to swallow my pride and ego and get some help, and so that's detailed in there, as well as the rebounding that was starting to occur once I was taking my energy and having to be more focused on positive, more positive things than partying and alcohol, et cetera. And so you can pick that up on Amazon. It is, you'll find it really, three ways. You can find it in paperback, you can also find it digitally and you can find it on audible. So I uh narrated on audible and so you can listen. You can check it out on your, your um, your device or devices, or you can even have a uh, a paperback copy that they have.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

So, yeah, when we talk about voices or voices, I just like to from time to time refresh individuals who may say well, he might, justin doesn't say mental health in every single episode or trauma in every single episode, and so this book is the testament of mental health and how the organization got founded and we've built and we're continuing to build off of that. And we've built and we're continuing to build off of that. So it's important to share, and so that's kind of why I felt it was necessary to share. So let's jump into our episode. We are going to probably have two episodes, or two parts, I guess, is the best way to say it, because there's a lot of information to talk to her and it may even turn into three, just because the way time is, the way Zoom is and how I talk a lot. So joining us today from an undisclosed that shared, and that's, that's fine, that's okay with us, and so we're we're going to go on from there.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

So our guest is Amanda Solomon. She is really a jack-of-all-trades, she an author, which also includes the editing process, which can be very, very tedious. So putting stories together and ideas is one thing, but making sure things flow and you know, we all have this feeling that we all, we just all do, and so that's a big, big part. She is married to one of our prior guests that we've had on David, and they are married and have a nine-year-old son, and so, yeah, I'll let she wants to expand anymore. But, amanda, thank you for joining us on the show. It's really good to be able to get another perspective on some current events and some past events that are happening.

Amanda:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, so as a mother, right. So there's a lot of things that you know go on in the world and and I'm sure there's a lot of concerns that a mother like yourself has for you know, children, family, uh, career, all those types of things, and I would, you know, safety would be one of the big ones, and and so how does safety play a probably a larger role than maybe from other individuals?

Amanda:

Yeah, yeah, especially with our careers being in the public and being an author and you do got to take your safety more seriously. So when you think about it, you know you're just the normal average family. You have your children, you go to public school. You don't think about the safety because it's just part of your everyday life. Um, but then me, coming from an average family that was never um in hollywood, never in the. You know, in the eyes of the public you don't think about these things. And our son Ryan did attend public school at one point when we lived in Ohio, before I had ever met David, and so the only safety I had to worry about was the other children in his class. Um, so you don't think about it.

Amanda:

And then like, fast forward to two years later um where you're now in the public's eye and you now have um between paparazzi you then have public.

Amanda:

Um, you know now that he's going to be on Amazon, you've got more eyes and views. Then you have he's nine, so let's just put it out there. Six, seven, eight, nine, ten, up to teens your child probably plays Roblox or Minecraft or some game that involves the internet, which means you are going to be talking to not just kids in your class, but you're going to be talking to kids all over the world, or at least you hope. You hope they're children. Um, we have a little bit of an experience which I never thought we would have to experience, something like this. But he was really big on wanting to play roblox and I thought nothing of it, just the game. You know, um, we're about the same age. So back when we were kids, you know, the playstations were just coming out and there really wasn't much internet access to um game west. And now our children are growing up to they're five years old playing roblox with other children, which we didn't have.

Amanda:

That so, um, so yeah, ryan got roblox, and you know you, you realize you hear these horror stories of children giving their addresses away, which is why we don't give our location away and then you know, you're on TikTok and you hear this video of this mom answering the door and finding out her son son or daughter, I can't remember which one it was, but he gave the address and said oh, my mom is pretty, and this guy shows up at their house. And she didn't find out until the guy showed up and wanted to play with her son, which was like Ryan's age 9, 10. And that's absolutely horrifying, and there's been some other horror stories of adults talking to children and you sit here and think that would never happen, but then again, you never know it's happening until it happens. Um, I can give a little example um, and that's the one thing with ryan being homeschooled and we're like down his throat.

Amanda:

We're a helicopter parent. He doesn't do anything without us knowing and we get made fun of it. We get made fun of for it, but I would rather know what he's doing than not. I would rather know what he's doing than not. And so he had his account hacked and had stuff stolen from it and from an adult pretending to be a child, and he's had people message him trying to talk to him To I think they've mentioned his dad before. So, being in the public's eye, it's very scary that way, um, and that's why it is important to you know. It's not a problem to be like which hemisphere you're, in which location you're in, but to give your address, your phone number, your age, because there are predators out there that are going to use that information they do, and that is something that, uh, you know, there there's a whole saying of.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

You know, this doesn't happen in my town, this doesn't happen in my neighborhood or wherever you know. I turn on social media and look at news reports and, oh well, you know, I can just, you know, scroll right by it or click out, click on it and look at it and then continue on. And I think that goes hand in hand with this as well, that with with digital devices and the gps capabilities, on top of, if again, the vulnerability of a child, a youngster, that you know, as we know, the way the brain comes in is for development, development, the front lobe dealing with you know, reasoning, and and that doesn't really fully develop. So I believe in somewhere in the 20s yeah, I think it's 25 years old and I think that's that's huge for a lot of reasons.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

but what that really says to me is that there's just a whole lot of innocence and not knowing and thinking everybody is good and that's what we want. We want that for.

Amanda:

That's what we hope for.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

yes, we hope that where we're living is in an as safe can be area area, that things like this aren't going on. But there are shadows and the shadows. With the advent of the digital devices and netbooks, iPads, what have you has really?

Amanda:

Yeah, they share your location too.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, and we know that we would say like, oh, big Brother's watching us and you know we can't really control that. But when we, in good faith, you know, whether it's Roblox or Minecraft, we want our you know, want our children to learn, to try, experience, try to, you know, think about reasoning and strategy and all those things. But then on the back end is somebody with a spreadsheet somewhere and they have access to that location data which can be used for many good things. There could be, maybe, advertisements that are actually appropriate and local enough. But then there's also the things again, the shadow the shadow, yes, are are getting bigger and bigger and sometimes, and and actually more than we we want, uh, it's hard to find those individuals that are in the shadows, and so that's kind of like that first step.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Okay, well, we want safety, we want security, we have these devices, we're being tracked at some level all the time. But to have, like you mentioned, somebody show up at a house unannounced and the parents saying I didn't know this was going on and they didn't know until it happened, and say, well, this doesn't happen in my town, and I think one of the big first lessons is just having that awareness that it doesn't matter where you live, doesn't matter what income class, demographic, that nobody's immune to these types of potential events and bad experiences. So as a parent, it takes on a whole new level because at least you know when I grew up and I don't know about you and your husband, but you know we would be playing outside a lot and we wouldn't have we didn't have these devices, and now it. It's the first thing that children want to do when they get in the car, they get home from school or get home from an event even being at school even being at school.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

It's good, it's well. This is a requirement. Once you get to, you know a certain grade, you know that assignments are going to be on here, and so that just drove in even further.

Amanda:

Yeah, we didn't have laptops when we went to school.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Yeah, yeah. And so with that it was all book work. Yeah, like real pages, like they can touch and feel. Yeah, like real pages that you can touch and feel. I mean look, at us.

Amanda:

We were told to buy calculators because we were told you would never have a calculator on you, so you'd have mental math. And now, look, we literally have a phone that carries a calculator.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

It's one of thousands of features that children and everybody adults too you know can get lost in, you know spend more time on than we would like, and but you know that's a that's another conversation with the blue light and and how you know that these devices are obviously meant to be addicting. And even Reed Hastings I believe he's still the CEO of Netflix and talking about strategy, he said that you have your competitors and things you do well and things that you want to improve on. And he said one of the biggest competitors that Netflix has is people sleeping, because that's time that they can't be on Netflix. They're sleeping or resting, and so that, right, there is not helpful as well. But anyways, let's bring it back into your experiences and circumstances.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

And so, coming from an all-American family and growing up, like I said, not in the spotlight, not in Hollywood, not paparazzi around, and then having that transition where again, somebody might be unexpected, like you didn't know until, like you saw the first, the first cameraman, or you didn't until you find out that, oh, this particular work is gonna be on a show or in a, in a book or and you meet, you know people and like they're famous and celebrities, and when that happens, that that can have a lot of adverse effects as well, of putting that microscope on what you do and when you do it and how and where. Uh, can you talk a little bit about that, as you were kind of learning, but like once you it kind of kind of showed up at the door yeah.

Amanda:

So, um, yeah, you don't think about that until, like, it happens. So, um, I remember what, uh, david and I having a conversation about my book and the very first book I was writing, um, I'm just I guess it was more just writing just to clear my head, and you know the mental health, and so, um, I'm like nobody's gonna want to read this. And well, I found out, david took it behind my back and pitched it and they decided that they wanted to produce it. And this is all before the writing strike. So, um, it was exciting, like they were emailing me back and forth on, um, who I wanted to play who, and I'm like this is so real, like, really, like I'm sorry, like starting to think, like, is this like happening? And, um, because you know, when you're an average person, what the only emails you get are mostly spam advertisements.

Amanda:

You don't really get very many people contacting you that unless, like, maybe it's an appointment or something but, um, yeah, so I'm getting emails from production companies and, uh, it's like, oh my gosh, this is so for real and nothing ever really happened until david's story came out and we started getting harassed for it and I never really thought anything of it. I was probably what like four, five months that I had moved, moved out of Ohio, you know, reminding you like I grew up in a small town, in Streetsboro. Not a lot of people know about it and my mother was the one to tell me human trafficking does not happen here. You know it doesn't happen. So, just like we stated in the beginning of the episode, um, you know it doesn't happen and you know um, which is ironic because a couple months ago I found a family and her two children from Canton Ohio, which is where Ryan was born and raised, and um to a woman and her family was like taken from Canton Ohio and taken to um.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Ireland, I think, or yeah, iceland, or Ireland, iceland, I think that's what it was.

Amanda:

I knew it started like with an eye and so, um, yeah, iceland, and it's like you. Oh, that could have been me and and I never thought I'd have to worry about Ryan's protection until when David came out with his story and then we had paparazzi and everything going on and we have one of David's enemies. You could say, go on a YouTube video and state that he needed taken. And this is an average boy who didn't grow up anything special. All we did was come in contact, have a relationship and then all of a sudden, the harassment starts and you never think, which. I mean that can happen on roblox too, just like the whole conversation where your child is just conversing, thinking it's another child, and they, the adult, shows up and, um, but I guess when you think about it, there's no difference because there's a common interest and it's an adult coming in contact with a child on gaming.

Amanda:

But if you look at david's story david, because back in our day, remember we didn't have the internet.

Amanda:

I mean very little if you did, but we were outside, we didn't have technology. But then at this time there was the holy worlds, there was forums, there was stuff that children could do for hobbies, and that's where they would meet their mentors and that's where they would meet their other people that shared the same hobby interest. I mean, if it was, what is it? Uh, fantasy, the christian, I mean. So a lot of people would just meet at church, so you have the whole church, you know. So it's not just video games, there's other topics and themes too that can be involved, that you have to watch for public safety, and so you never think it would happen to you until it does. And after hearing this, this man tell random strangers that my child, which we're a blended family, it's not David's blood child, but again, that you know it, you don't have to be blood to be a family correct and so, and sometimes you know they say blood is thicker than water, but sometimes you're more safer outside of your blood.

Amanda:

So, toxicity and all so, um, david loves this little boy with all his heart and he would do anything to protect him. And the fact that these people go and make a public video to take my son and we never had any problems. We never had, we never had to deal with anything. And all of a sudden we you have CPS showing up, you have your whole privacy is just out there and you don't think about it until it's too late yeah, I think it's more common.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

We got about maybe like two minutes on this. This episode it's going, it's going really well. We're getting um the right direction. I think the best way to uh close out this is to get to that point that you know that exploitation, not just of the children but of the adults, and so you have had also different types of, you know, hackings and people getting in and doing, doing things, but you you've also, with that, individuals without your permission, take, find whatever some type of photo that may be out there, and if you can just really just touch on that really briefly, um what happened, and then when we do part two, then we'll jump right into into the legislative side of this then yeah, um part two.

Amanda:

I'll discuss more on my information, but like, we have ryan, who's just a child, and um, you know that's another thing too. Like people with facebook, it's important to not like yeah, you want to share photos of your children but at the same time, they can be used against you.

Amanda:

I mean, how many times I've seen so many threats of people using images of other children to claim that they're theirs and they're not? And I guess that's where, like the trafficking stuff happens too, because you find the child, you take them and then you start stealing their images and you claim that they're yours and change their name, change their birth certificate? Yeah, you change all their info. You. You then claim they're theirs and you're living this alter life where the child doesn't even know who they are yeah, yeah and that's yeah.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

And that really comes back to you know that public safety concern. How important that is that if you or somebody you know, any viewer, listener has experience reach out. We're talking about you know trafficking, national human trafficking hotline uh, make sure you get reported. Reach out to law enforcement, reach out to uh media outlets.

Amanda:

Reach out to anybody no crime is too big or too small exactly any.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

yeah, yes, that's a a perfect way to share that, and while it might start as children, there's adults like us, that one reason or not, where those types of things in a little bit of a different way sometimes.

Amanda:

How it?

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

happened and we just have to be again, just be cognizant of the surroundings, what's going on and if you see something, say something. Not everybody's going to listen, but you got to share it.

Amanda:

You got to let people know Never keep anything inside.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

That's right. Someone else?

Amanda:

might be going through it as well.

Voices for Voices, Justin Alan Hayes:

Absolutely, Amanda. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode. We invite our viewers and listeners to tune in to our part two of our conversation with Amanda Solomon, where we'll dig into some more events.

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