On Tuesday evening, I hosted an online radio show for Columbia Southern University. The topic was human trafficking and my guest was CSU criminal justice instructor Barry Goodson.
Human trafficking is a serious issue in the United States and from big cities to small, rural communities. The crime is growing, generating $9.5 billion annually in this country. Only drug trafficking is a bigger criminal industry. Many of the victims are children forced into prostitution, average age is 13-14 according to the Department of Justice. Three of the top 20 cities for human trafficking are within driving distance of Pensacola–Atlanta, New Orleans and Tampa.
According to a report by the Polaris Project on the National Human Trafficking Resource Center hotline, 41 percent of sex trafficking cases and 20 percent of labor trafficking cases referenced U.S. citizens as victims. In 2013, Florida ranked third in the nation in number of calls received by the NHTRC.
Goodson, a criminal justice professor at CSU, is a military veteran–Special OPs squad leader in Vietnam and Central Region Commander in Afghanistan, former lead investigator for the Parker County, Tex. Sheriff’s Office and former member of the Crimes Against Children Investigation Task Force.
He pointed out that kids – boys and girls – from small towns are very vulnerable to human trafficking predators. “Human trafficking is a local issue, not just international trafficking,” he said, “People think their children are safe in rural communities, but offenders rely on the Internet to entice children to leave their homes in the early hours of the morning to ensure that no adults will be around to stop the children from leaving or to stop the offender from picking up the child.”
Goodson talked about one case that still bothers him. “The offender chatted online with a 12-13 year-old girl for a number of months before making the move to kidnap the girl. She convinced her that he was a young girl, too, and that her life was great. She told the girl that she would have her mother come by and pick her up at 2 AM one morning and that all she had to do was watch for a car pulling up outside. The victim was excited about getting out from under a very domineering parent. The girl took the bait and discovered that a car did show up and a woman was driving. The woman gave the girl a coke laced with drugs, which was all the girl remembers. The woman owned a hotel in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area where she kept teenage girls locked up and under the control of drugs and ran a teenage prostitution ring with the girls. I managed to close the net around the offender to the point that she panicked and dropped the girl off in front of a local PD. The PD officers found her lying in the parking lot.”
That case was similar to one we reported in 2007 involving Shauna Newell who narrowly escaped being sold into prostitution. Read Shauna’s Story of Slavery.
During the show, Rodney Daniels called. His family is coming up on the anniversary the disappearance of his daughter, Tiffany Daniels. The family has set up a Facebook page: Help Find Tiffany and is still looking for leads.
Goodson encouraged the father to not give up hope.
“When children go missing for any reason, the public rises to the occasion immediately, but interest tends to dissipate rapidly as time goes on, when in reality, that is when the offenders become lax,” he said.”Offenders know we are going to launch an immediate search for our beloved children. Therefore, they lock the child away and keep that child sedated for months before they begin to loosen the tight grip on the child. The child then becomes inundated with assurances from the offenders with stories relating how disappointed and condemning that child’s parents will be when they find out their child has committed such terrible sins. The child then wants to hide as much as the offenders want to hide the child.”
Goodson said that the criminals do get careless over time. He told the father to consider getting the word out once again. “I am confident that someone out there has seen her,” he said.
“If she was kidnapped by someone in human trafficking, there is good reason to believe she is alive. All it takes is one person to recall seeing her at a party, which would enable us to close in on the location, the offender, and secure Tiffany’s freedom”