Owen Army Episode 2: Ben and Jess Owen on Addiction and Fighting Crime, Trafficking in Memphis

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Ben and Jessica Owen are the founders of Flanders Fields, a veteran focused non-profit that aims to tackle the impact of opiate addiction in the veteran population, and We Fight Monsters, a 501c3 combatting the impact of fentanyl and crack addiction while simultaneously battling sex-trafficking in the mid-south.

Ben is a post 9/11 Army veteran and serial entrepreneur, Jessica is a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, and both are addicts/alcoholics in recovery who finally found rock bottom on the tail end of a series of drug-related arrests. After enduring homelessness together, Ben and Jess found purpose in carrying a message of hope and recovery back to the same streets they nearly died on.

Cutting their teeth during the evacuation out of Afghanistan, running one of the largest networks of safehouses in the operation, they have re-focused their safe house efforts into sober-living houses here domestically - closing down active dope houses and getting the addicts and trafficked women impacted by those houses into detox, treatment, sober living, and eventually enlisting their help in carrying the mission forward to the next man or woman, while renovating the trap houses into recovery homes using labor pulled from the streets.

Today, they work with many of the same agencies, and even judges and prosecutors, that wanted to see them incarcerated, and have forged unexpected alliances with local street gangs, making good guys out of those once-considered "bad" by many.