Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Girl, 14, Raped, Found in Camp Pendleton Marine Barracks

Episode Date: July 12, 2023

The family of a teen girl says she was sex trafficked...sold to a marine. The girl was found in a barracks room at Camp Pendleton after going missing for 20 days. The 14-year-old's family says she was raped. An unidentified Marine was taken from the base in handcuffs by military police officers but has been released. Joining Nancy Grace Today: Joshua Ritter - Criminal Defense Attorney, Former Los Angeles County Deputy DA, and Partner at El Dabe Ritter Trial Lawyers; Twitter: @joshuaritteresq  Dr. Angela Arnold- Psychiatrist, Atlanta GA; Expert in the Treatment of Pregnant/Postpartum Women, Former Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Obstetrics and Gynecology: Emory University, Former Medical Director of The Psychiatric Ob-Gyn Clinic at Grady Memorial Hospital, Voted My Buckhead’s Best Psychiatric Practice of 2023 Sheryl McCollum - Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder; Host of New Podcast: Zone 7; Twitter: @149zone7 Joey Jones - Fox News Contributor, Former Marine, and Author: “Unbroken Bonds of Battle;" Twitter: @Johnny_Joeys  Alli Neal - Co-Founder, Executive Director, Revved Up Kids (fighting to protect kids from sexual abuse and exploitation); Twitter: @RevvedUpKids  Alexis Terezchuck- CrimeOnline Investigative Reporter See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace How does a little girl just 14 years old end up at Camp Pendleton, that's a Marine base in California, in the barracks, being raped. What? See, I thought that the commanding officers would make you spit shine your shoes and make your bed perfectly where a dime would bounce when they dropped it on top of the bed sheets. They didn't notice a 14-year-old girl allegedly getting raped in the barracks at Camp Pendleton. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories.

Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111 right now. I am so mad I could chew a nail in half. I just want to get my hands on whoever allegedly did this thing but first of all let's get to the facts take a listen to the little girl's aunt my name is cassandra perez please share this as a warning to the public to not jeopardize the ongoing investigation i will not be releasing the name of the victim however i will be releasing details to the public to help prevent harm and hopefully find others willing to share their story. My niece is under the age of 18 and has learning disabilities. On June 10th, she went missing. And on June 27th, she was found on Camp Pendleton.

She was found on Camp Pendleton. She was found on Camp Pendleton. But that's not exactly what happened. Take a listen now to our friends at GMA. This case began on June 13th when the San Diego County Sheriff's Office says a woman reported her 14-year-old granddaughter missing. The Sheriff's Office says military police found that teenager at Camp Pendleton two weeks after she disappeared and returned her back to her family. A woman in a TikTok video now claiming she's the girl's aunt says that her 14-year-old niece was raped on the military base. Investigators believe a 14-year-old girl who was found at Camp Pendleton may have been

a victim of human trafficking. The girl's family reported her missing last month out of San Diego. Then weeks later, military police found her at Camp Pendleton. Officers arrested a Marine who is now being investigated by human trafficking authorities. The girl's family claims that she has learning disabilities and was sold to a Marine for sex. That last report was from Melvin Robert our friends over at Fox 11. A 14 year old little girl sold for sex. That's bad enough right there military base? And the question is, not only did superior officers not, what, notice or do anything about it, the fellow Marines did nothing when they see a little girl there in the barracks. Nobody knew she was having sex with a marine and fyi it's impossible under our jurisprudence to have quote sex with a 14 year old girl because a child cannot consent to sex

that makes it rape that's why we have statutory rape um like a child can't walk into the Lamborghini outlet and buy a car. You can't buy a home. You can't buy tobacco or booze because you are not old enough to make that decision. Talk about not old enough to make a decision. Now, my twins probably would not want this out there. But they still have their picture taken with Santa Claus, whether they want to or not. This little girl has been raped at a Marine barracks here in the U.S. Again, thank you for being with us. And as distasteful as this is, as I would tell my juries, if we turn away, we're condoning it. We have to look at the facts and understand what happened. Joining me, an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now. But first, I want to go to not only a colleague, but who I consider to be a friend.

Fox News contributor, former Marine, author of Unbroken Bonds of Battle, Joey Jones. Joey, thank you for being with us. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for letting me join in on this. Well, you may not feel that way by the time we're done. That's okay. Joey. Yeah.

You and I are friends, but I got to put to you a hard question. You're a former Marine, and I believe a former Marine is a Marine always, a Marine at heart. Like I will always consider myself to be a prosecutor, to be a lawyer, no matter what happens. So let me ask you, when you first heard about allegations, a 14 year old little girl had been raped repeatedly in the barracks. What did you think? Well, first I reacted as the dad of a four-year-old daughter, not only a Marine. So my first thought is, if that were my daughter, they wouldn't have a chance to send him to court. You know, that's just the reaction of a father. And so that's kind of

where I am with it, with the individual that's being detained and not even arrested yet. That brings questions of its own the other part of maybe you've seen information i haven't i haven't seen anything indicating for how long the girl was there or who other than the marine that that was holding her hostage essentially knew about it so if i apply the facts i have which is that when the duty officer in the barracks found out she was there they brought her into the duty hut and called PMI, military police, who then called NCIS. Then that makes sense to me. Makes sense to me.

You know, in my mind, if I'm developing this scenario, not any other facts. He snuck her in that night and the duty officer and checking the rounds either heard noises or or heard a Marine a marine say hey there's something going on over there went and checked found a girl and uh and that's to me that's how i've seen scenarios like this play out what i can tell you is you got to think about the fact kemp felton is the largest base in the marine corps both by land and numbers there's more marines there than anywhere and civilians navy other services there's just a bunch of people there. The reason why we're able to put thousands of Marines into a barracks and not have hundreds of people guarding it

is that we are trained and live by code and we have honor and we have an expectation to do the right thing. And by and large, hundreds of thousands of Marines every year do the right thing. And that's just in no way a defense of this specific every year do the right thing um and that's this is in no way a defense of of this specific marine or even the marine corps it's to say i can't sit here and say that this girl was there for days and everybody knew about it nobody spoke up because i've not seen facts that say that uh what i see here is that i know what it's like to sneak a girlfriend

into the barracks it's not exceptionally difficult to do. I've done it myself, but had anyone who was in charge that night seen me do it, I would have been in a world of hurt. And so the idea that this was lackadaisical, I don't see any evidence supporting that unless you just don't understand or haven't experienced how barracks are with five, six, seven, eight different entrances and exits. You're obligated to come in in front of the duty, let the duty know that you're coming in and out. And we have roving watches, depending on the barracks and the unit, that walk up and down the hallways to make sure nothing's going on. The opportunity to sneak past those is pretty prevalent.

But again, it goes back to if everyone in the building is living by a code of honor, then either you get caught or you don't try to do it, or somebody sees you do it and tells on you. If everyone in the building is living by a code of honor, then either you get called or you don't try to do it or somebody sees you do it and tells on you. And from what I know, I don't know someone didn't see him do it and tell on him. I just don't see facts in front of me that suggest otherwise. You know what, Joey? I hope you're right. And what you're saying sounds more plausible because I want to believe my father was a vet. He fought in the World War. He gave up a chance to rise out of poverty with a basketball scholarship. He gave that up to fight. So I want you to be right very, very much. I want only the perp that allegedly raped this girl to be responsible. I don't want to know that anyone knew it was going on

and failed to report it. I'm going to believe that until I hear differently. And I'm glad you told me what you just told me. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Guys, we're trying to figure out what really happened to this 14-year-old girl. Now, Leaked is a, I'm not sure what you would call this, a logbook, but I'm looking right at it. It's the purported barracks logbook. And it says a 13-year-old female minor is found in room ***. That is at 0915.

That's 915 in the morning. Then there's a late entry of 910 that says no positive ID available. So we're trying to verify this logbook and what we know. But now I want you to take a listen to more of the girl's aunt. She was found in the barracks by military police. She had been sold to a soldier for sex. The military is trying to cover it up they are trying to cover it up and place majority of the blame on her however the reality is the whole

facility allowed this to happen the security looked her in the face and allowed this man to bring a minor onto base where he then proceeded to have sex with her due to her age she could not have given this consent i want to go straight out to joshua ritter famed criminal defense attorney former la county deputy district attorney partner at l dab ritter trial lawyers joshua thank you for being with us explain why this cannot be under the law consensual sex. If that's their defense, they might as well go ahead and plead guilty. Thank you so much for having me. You're absolutely right. There is no defense to this if she's underage. The consent is only attributed to someone who is not a minor. And so a minor, no matter how convincing she may have been,

no matter how willing she may have been, no matter how much she may have cooperated with the whole thing. And I'm not saying any of that occurred. But I'm saying if that is an argument that anyone is trying to make, that's not going to go anywhere in a court of law, because if you're a minor, you simply cannot give consent. And the audio that we heard right then is absolutely right if you're under age um you cannot give consent and it is therefore per se right um and so it's going to be one of the things that's going to be really revealing about all of this is is any kind of knowledge of her age and that's really uh difficult and i'll put that in quotes, argument to make when you're talking about a 14-year-old. This isn't even close. When we're talking about the age of consent,

it's 18 years old. A 14-year-old is four years below that, but it's to the point where we start to add even further allegations for the age, which increased the exposure, meaning prison time that somebody is looking at. We're talking about the rape of underage individuals. The lower in age, the more kind of prison time and the more serious the law looks at it. You know, Cheryl McCollum, I only wish the defendant would try to say, hey, I thought she was 18, because that is the oldest defense known to man when it comes to statutory rape. Hey, she said she was 18. She had a fake ID. She whatever.

Fill in the blank. Sheryl McComb joining me, founder and director of the Cold Case Research Institute and now star of a hit podcast, Zone 7. You can find her at coldcasecrimes.org. Cheryl, I only wish to say, hey, she said she was 18. You know, Nancy, you and I have a friend in common that looks for child predators online. And the way that she does her training and gains her intel so that she appears to be a 12-year-old girl,

she sits in lunchrooms of middle schools and just listens. So I'm going to tell you, you don't have to do anything but talk to her for about two minutes and you know she's not 18. Even if you think she has a look about her that looks older, she's not. And I want to reiterate, it is your job to know her actual age, not what she says. And if you bought her, chances are you know because you bought what you wanted.

You specifically bought someone underage. So at this point, it doesn't matter if you put on lingerie, lit some candles, and put on Barry White. You raped her. You know, that reminds me of Dr. Angie Arnold joining us, renowned psychiatrist out of the Atlanta jurisdiction at AngelaArnoldMD.com. My first child sex trafficking case, the first one I had, we looked and looked and looked for the girl. She also was 14 years old.

And I would go out, I mean mean every day, and it was cold. I think I had the thinnest coat there was in the courthouse. We would go out every day going up and down what was then a hotbed of prostitution and vice with Stewart Avenue. Every day. Well, I got a call that they found the girl. They took me to a flop house. I went in.

There are a bunch of prostitutes in there, maybe five or six prostitutes. I looked at every one of them. I came back out. I'm like, what happened? Did she leave? She's not in there. They went, that's her in the white boots. I went back in.

This girl looked like a 35-year-old woman. She was 14. In fact, she had just turned 14. She had a weave in her hair like nobody's business. You remember how Julia Roberts was dressed up to be a hooker? That's how this girl was dressed up. Just like that. The fake eyelashes, the heavy makeup. I looked at her. I could not believe that was the child. When she got all that off of her and put on her regular clothes, she looked younger than my little girl, Lucy. I mean, it was so the argument, I thought she was 18. It's total BS. Well, also, Nancy, how many rules did this guy break to bring somebody in to a barracks situation? I mean, he's breaking rules all over the place. So at the end of the day, he's going to say that he doesn't know how old this little girl is. Let's start with all the other rules he's broken. You know, the other issue here is the onus, the burden is on the adult to know the true age. You can't just say, hey, I thought she was 18.

Hey, guys, joining me right now from CrimeOnline.com, investigative reporter Alexis Treschuk. Alexis, thank you for being with us. I want to explore what Joey Jones said. Joey Jones, Fox News contributor, former Marine and author of Unbroken Bonds of Battle on Amazon. Alexis, the reason many people are arguing she had been in the barracks for a period of time is that she had been missing from her grandmother's home for a period of time. But Zoe may actually have a really valid point. She may have been in the barracks maybe overnight or for much less a period of time than she had been missing. I mean, how do I know she

wasn't kidnapped and then sold to this Marine and she had just gotten there? I don't know that. What do we know about the period of time that she was in the barracks? Or do we know? We don't know how long she was there. We just know that she was found there. The military police located her there. But that's exactly true. And her aunt sort of gave a clue. She said, we don't want to identify anybody and we don't want to talk about people responsible. So is that the Marine's name or did they know the person who sold as they claim her niece

the child to them because the nieces she has a learning disability but it doesn't say that she doesn't communicate or anything like that so she could very clearly say she went missing on June 9th and so she was gone for almost three weeks well 21 days she was found on June 28th. Yeah. So they had, she could have said, I was here, this person had taken me and then he sold me to this person.

We don't know, but we do know that this is what her aunt believes has happened. And she is saying, and in fact is being investigated by human trafficking authorities. So this is not just the ant spinning a tail. There's an actual investigation into this. Guys, joining me right now, Allie Neal,

co-founder and executive director of Revved Up Kids, which is an organization I really respect. You can find them online, fighting to protect children from sex abuse and exploitation. And you can find it at revvedupkids.org. Allie, it's great to talk to you again. My concern here, well, I've got so many concerns. As a prosecutor, you don't have to prove how long she was in the barracks. It could have been, she could have been there 10 minutes. If she was raped is the only concern. Was she sex assaulted in any way? Number one, by the alleged perp, who I might add has been released.

And if so, did that occur in a military setting there at Camp Pendleton? Now, that would be more of a civil liability. Who else knew about it? Who should have known about it? Who did not follow protocol and find this girl earlier or who allowed her in? That's a whole other can of worms. What I'm trying to figure out is, was she raped by this Marine? And you got to think about it, Allie.

He can't claim, oh, I took her there to protect her from the trafficker, because if that were true, he would have taken her to the police or to her home or somewhere else. There's no good reason he would take a 14-year-old girl into barracks full of men. No, no good reason. My concern is this girl not only is just 14 years old, she has some type of a learning or mental disability. How can she communicate? What happened to her? So I have been speculating on this for days since the story broke. And I am I'm just going to let you guys hear all my speculation.

And then we don't like speculation because i cannot introduce that into court if you have a an educated theory i'd like to hear that okay all right i'll say educated theory based on based on what i know about human trafficking so let's posit that yes this was a human trafficking case uh children and teens with any sort of intellectual developmental disabilities are three times higher risk. Hey, could you slow down? What did you just say? Oh, sorry. I said children who have intellectual disabilities, who have developmental disabilities, face three times higher risk of sexual abuse and exploitation than children who are typical children. So we know that.

We know that they are easier to manipulate. My, I won't say speculation, but if I were writing the front end of this story, I would suspect that this is a girl who spends time online on social media. Even though she's disabled, do you think she can go online? Yes. Okay. I believe that she likely has some sort of, we haven't had that defined. So even if she is mildly developmentally disabled, socially awkward, all of the things that set a child up for low self-esteem.

She goes online. She's interacting with people online. She encounters a trafficker because that's what they do. They fish all day, every day online to try and find teenage girls that they can manipulate. Hey, hey, hey, once again, could you slow down? Because you just said they fish all day online. And I just want you to, yes, explain what you mean by that. And again, everybody on this panel, did you just hear Allie Neal describe traffickers fish?

And that's what they do they are on their computer all day long trying to find a child victim they go into sites like fortnight or whatever game everybody's playing right now they get onto snapchat they get into every platform social media platform you can think of they They pretend they're a child. They go, hey, do you play soccer? That could apply to a boy or a girl. What league are you in? Where do you play?

What field? So they figure out where you are. They get the kid's picture, and then they're off. Explain what you mean, Allie, by fishing. It's horrible. Yeah, they build relationship, and especially with a child who has an intellectual disability of any kind, it is easier to more quickly build that relationship, get that child to believe that this is their boyfriend. This is somebody who loves them.

They either get that child to send a sexual photo. Wait a minute. I just want to point something else out. And I can't believe Dr. Angie Arnold and Cheryl McCullen have been quiet this long. You must have, somebody must have broken into their studio and gagged them. Because do you know, my daughter has, and I can't reveal any names here, had a crush. she had a crush on a boy the entire ninth grade do you know she never said one word to him do you know how we practiced in the car about asking to borrow a pencil we practiced that for I know two months every day did you ask to borrow the pencil? No. Finally, after two months, she said, Mom, I found out he's writing with a pen.

I'm like, Lucy, it doesn't matter. Just ask to borrow a pencil. Do you know she never asked? She never asked. Never did. That's the level of sophistication, sexual sophistication. We're talking

about, my baby girl, this age, we're not asked to borrow a pencil. Nancy, can I jump in for a second? Is this Joey? Who's jumping in? Yeah, this is Joey. This is Joey. Jump in, man.

Yeah, listen, one thing I want to point out, one, a lot of the information we have is coming from the aunt of the victim, who, in my opinion, herself is also a victim, the aunt herself. I've been the victim of car wrecks and things and the amount of emotion that takes over and the lack of response from police, the lack of answers from police, the lack of resolution immediately causes you

to want to get as much information out there as possible to say your side of things. The reason why I point that up is we're taking the term learning disability and we're treating it as though we know it's a mental disability. Those are two very different things. For example, my niece can't take a standardized test without extra time and help because she has severe anxiety in those situations, but she is cognitively very functional. As a matter of fact, she's clever and intuitive and smart and brilliant in so many other ways and the reason why i point that out is not to

downplay the idea of learning disability but to say if this young lady was completely fully aware and in full of faculty of her capabilities that doesn't make this any less egregious it doesn't make it any worse um because ultimately what's happened is a grown man who has been asked by the United States military to carry himself with honor has done the opposite in the almost worst of ways. And so like to hone in on the learning disability without even knowing what that means, considering the information came from the ant and not uh not law enforcement officers or or some sort of doctor that's assessed the young lady i don't know that that's the most important part of this or a part we're speculating about when we don't know what it means i think

what's important here are two things one the young lady was found in marine corps barracks and by all all the information we have was sex traffic and, and rape. Two, there's an underlying accusation from the Yant that the Marine Corps or military is trying to cover it up. Everything I've read about it, I don't see that substantiated whatsoever, but that creates a narrative to where people start to second guess, can we even trust these people that are in our backyard?

And I think that's worth discussing at some point in the conversation. Hold on. I don't know that I read learning disability. I thought I read developmental disability, which to me is a different thing. That's an intellectual. I read learning disability. I agree with you about learning disability. I've actually seen both. I've actually seen both. Ritter, Josh Ritter, did I hear you jumping in? Yeah. One thing that we haven't talked about, and I think kind of fits in nicely to this part of the discussion that we're having, is that one thing that really stood out to me was the idea that the girl had been missing for four days before her grandmother reported her.

Oh, yeah, you're right. That's what I was going to say. That's what I was going to say. And that she, that the grandmother, according to the grandmother, that she had previously run away before. So I think that really gives us an insight to kind of go along with Allie's thoughts about was she a high risk child? Was she somebody who was, you know, like she pointed out,

maybe perhaps searching the internet, perhaps has some sort of learning, cognitive disability, whatever you want to call it. But she was also a behavioral issue to the point that she had run away before and it wasn't so alarming that the grandmother's not calling within hours of her being missing, a behavioral issue to the point that she had run away before and it wasn't so alarming that

the grandmother's not calling within hours of her being missing but within days of her being missing because she had run away so many times before that they were just expecting her to come back so i thought that was that was something that really jumped out to me and gave i think a little bit of insight of who this young lady may have been, not to add any kind of excuse or defense to anything. To me, it makes me feel worse for her. Correct. Because you've got a young girl with some type of a disability. We can't identify it. crime stories with nancy grace interesting how we're all coming from a different angle uh joey's coming from the angle as a dad and a former marine josh is a lawyer we all have this different angle mine was as a mom why was

she gone four days and nobody knows that she's missing? I mean, I know or I think I know where my twins are at this exact moment. Who's jumping in? Who is it? Carol McCollum. Jump! The number of adults that failed this child is staggering. The fact that anybody

would give a perpetrator a four-day head start on whatever was happening to her. They knew she had whatever disability she may or may not have. They knew she was freaking 14 and out there with no money and no adult and no help. You've got a child that was found on a military base. This Marine swore to protect this country, but he won't protect a child. There's a bigger issue here. When we look at the past, we've had Fort Hood, a sergeant that was pimping females on that base. We've had a reserve officer in North Carolina that was sex trafficking. We've had Fort Lee

having a prostitution ring. This is not new to us when it comes to the military bases. And to me, you've got a perpetrator online. You've got a perpetrator that bought her. You've got somebody at a front gate that allowed her in post 9-11, did not ID her. We've got all kinds of problems. Well, we don't know that.

We don't know she wasn't hidden in the car. We don't know she was let in through the gate. We don't know that. And you can't search every single car that comes on base when the person driving it has a military ID. If you want to, get ready to pay millions and billions more in taxes, have higher security at these bases, and ultimately treat the people that live on them like prisoners. That goes to another point, Cheryl. I think he's right and you're right. I mean, how many times, well, every morning did I walk into the courthouse, flash my badge and walk around the metal detector every single

morning? Why? Because most ADAs, assistant district attorneys, were carrying a gun and no one thought you would, what, unleash and start shooting people? The same way here. Somebody comes in, you've seen the person a million times, they show their military ID, you wave them in. How would you know to check their trunk or to check the back seat even? Guys, take a listen to our cut to our friends at NBC7. Somehow, between the busy comings and goings at Camp Pendleton,

Cassandra Perez says her underage niece with a learning disability was found in the marine barrens. The security looked her in the face and allowed this man to bring a minor onto base. Due to her age, she could not have given this consent. Some of my family is scared, but I'm not. Why would she feel scared? Does she feel scared? And then you have the legal issue, the probative, or does it prove something, issue of actual records. Take a listen to our cut. See our friends at crimeonline.com. The teen's aunt claimed that the girl was sold to the Marine for sex by someone she met online.

That has yet to be confirmed and while the marine was questioned he has been released no charges have been filed yet the new york post has posted what looks like a duty log for the marine barracks some of the entries read as follows 8 10 dnco dnco means duty non-commissioned officers barracks contractor works on fixing laundry room third deck washer 0 8 40 dnco goes to battalion to replace old master key 0 9 15 13 year old female minor found in room 0 9 16 the barracks manager is notified of possible underage female in room... 0930, PMO, the Provost Marshal's Office, arrives to building... 0945, DNCO opens room... PMO escorts minor to duty hut.

0951, PMO enters duty hut to speak to minor. 0957, PMO steps off the deck. The minor remains inside duty hut with DNCO. 910, late entry, no positive ID available. 1053, PMO steps off the deck. Minor remains in duty hut with DNCO. Okay, first of all, Joey Jones, what is a duty hut? Yeah, so I just want to lay out a couple of things here really quickly. That's the duty non-commissioned officer. One person of a rank of E5 or E6, sometimes higher, is appointed by the hour, you know, for shifts, but 24 hours a day, to be the person in charge of securing the Marines in

the barracks. In other words, making sure they know what's happening in the barracks. Now, I want people to think about this for a minute. These barracks have 18 to 24-year-olds that put through boot camp and had a lot of faith and trusted in them, in the Corps especially and when people start talking about well this is a huge problem in the military and we need to have a more secure barracks well listen the difference between these 18 to 24 year olds and your kids that are 18 to 24 year olds is that we entrust these 18 to 24 year olds with making the most important decisions at the lowest level that is the only way we have ever won a war and the only way we ever will. So the gap in the military here is are we still doing that? Are we still creating the type of men and women out of these kids we send to boot camp that we need?

That's a legitimate question. But to say that we need more security on military bases or in barracks is a misnomer, and it's coming from a place of inexperience and understand that but it's certainly not the answer we don't have maximum security at the barracks for a reason because if we can't trust those men and women in those barracks to do the most simple things that are decent and ethical and moral then we can't trust them to fight a war and the entire premise of that place existing is no longer on the table. And so what's difficult for me to sit and listen to is pontificating on what security

at the Marine Corps base is, if you don't already understand it and the ethos behind it. What we can talk about is a severe lack in leadership across the board that is not creating 18 to 20 year olds that wouldn't do something as atrocious as this. And that's, I think, a more important part of this. Also, the family saying that there's a conspiracy to cover up. Nancy, I don't know about you. I've never seen a conspiracy to cover up where the authority that would want to cover it up, i.e. the Marine Corps, invites in NCIS and local authorities. So I think there's a little bit of holes in that part of it, too. You mentioned earlier, Joey, that there are thousands of civilians on this base as well.

Who's to say one of them isn't the trafficker and had to pass this girl around to multiple people and this one Marine was the last one to have her and he got caught. Yeah, I want to point out that, first of all, you're right. We don't know when she got there. Did she get there the night before? Did she get there an hour before? We don't know that. And both you, I think that's Allie Neal speaking, and Joey Jones are right. We don't know how long she had been there.

So that, we can't rely on the two-week period. Who took her? How did she get there? How long had she been there? We do know she's there and someone reported her. Someone reported her to the duty officer because at 9-16, the barracks manager is notified of a possible underage female in room. So somebody noticed it and somebody did say, this is wrong.

I'm reporting it. So where do we go from here? take a listen to our cut nine the ant speaking out we've just had an interview with someone referred to us by the military in this meeting we were told by the affiliated personnel that the military detective assigned to the case is trying to cover this up as you can imagine this is upsetting and absolutely unacceptable i have the lead detective's name and phone number and will be releasing it to the to cover this up. As you can imagine, this is upsetting and absolutely unacceptable. I have the lead detective's name and phone number and will be releasing it to the public pending confirmation from our attorney.

Our hope in doing so is to both bring attention to my niece's case and to ensure that this does not go away upon release of more details. Again, we have no evidence that anyone is taking part in a cover-up. And right now, I'm more concerned about finding out, was the girl raped? Take a listen to our friends from Crime Online.

A 14-year-old girl was reported missing to the San Diego County Sheriff's Department four days after she disappeared from her Spring Valley home. The girl went missing on June 9th. Her grandmother called police June 13th. A deputy with the Rancho San Diego Sheriff's Station responded that same day. The girl's information was entered into multiple missing person databases. The San Diego Sheriff's Office says entering the information into databases let other law enforcement agencies know about her disappearance. Family Protection Detail Detectives continued working on the case,

following up on potential leads. On June 28, military police discovered the teen at Camp Pendleton and informed the Sheriff's Department. And more in Cut B. The teen was discovered inside the barracks by military police almost 20 days after she disappeared. So the question on most everyone's mind is how? How did she get on base? How did she stay on base? How did no one see her or report her

visitors to camp pembleton like all military bases are stopped at the entrance visitors are required to show authorization to enter marines are allowed to bring visitors on base and even into the barracks until a certain hour the time allowed is different in each building the barracks are a combination of common areas and individual spaces. Single junior Marines are generally assigned to share a room with at least one other Marine. Inside the rooms are most things you would find in an apartment or a dorm room. Two single beds, a small refrigerator, eating area, secretary desk, closet, and wall lockers. The common areas have pool tables and TVs. So it's not like what you saw in the movie Stripes with Bill Murray, where there's a lot of bunk beds. This sounds more like a dorm setting.

And in a dorm setting where you've got two beds in each room, it would be, executive director of Revved Up Kids. How do you help a child that has some sort of a disability relate what happened to them? How she got into Camp Pendleton? How long had she been there? Was she raped there? Because we know the guy that was arrested has been released. I'm certain that they are doing forensic interviewing. And I know that Dr. Angie would probably say that if she was raped, if she was trafficked, if it was multiple perpetrators, we don't know any of this. It's going to take a lot of therapy to getx of this. It's just another layer. There are a lot of very high functioning young girls who are lured by mastermind criminal traffickers online. So and in person.

Yeah, I agree with that. I'm just trying to figure out having dealt with child rape victims, and several of them did have disabilities. Sometimes it's very difficult for them to explain verbally what happened to them. Alexis Tereszczuk, CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter, where does the case stand right now? Well, the case is the Marine has been released and he has not been charged with a crime yet. But the girl, according to the aunt, has told the aunt that she was raped. That is what the aunt is saying. So we are waiting to find out if there are going to be any charges filed by the local police, if the military will take the action because it happened on their base and they have that jurisdiction. If you have information or think you have information, please dial the tip line 619-531-2468.

Repeat, 619-531-2468. We wait as justice unfolds. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.