Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Human Trafficking: It's in your town!

Episode Date: June 28, 2017

When daughters go missing, investigators consider the possibility that human traffickers were involved. Children and young women have been kidnapped and forced into sex slavery. In this episode, Nancy Grace talks to Memphis journalist Shane Deitert about what is being done to fight the problem in Tennessee. You may be shocked to learn how there may be slaves in your community. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Meet a typical teen from a wealthy Virginia suburb. I was about 13. He started off as a nice guy. But her dream boyfriend turned into a nightmare. He drugged me up. He started off as a nice guy. Courtney found herself caught in the dangerous and terrifying world of human sex trafficking.

This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. At 13, when she should have been worried about homework, she was being branded, bought, and sold by a friend of her drug-addicted father. I was scared he might kill me or he might kill my dad because he always used drugs like that and he always had guns. They've been called all sorts of names over the years, from ladies of the night to prostitutes. But when they're underage, police now have a different name for them. We have come a long way in recognizing that these children are victims.

Human trafficking. What is it? Is it real? We hear about it all the time and now reports surfacing that little Maddie McCann may have been a victim of child trafficking, human trafficking. This is Crime Stories. I'm Nancy Grace. Thank you for being with me. Very special guests joining me today, in addition to the Duke, Alan Duke, joining me out of LA, Shane Dietert joining me. Shane, thank you so much for being with us. He is joining us from, give me your formal title, Shane. I'm the assignment editor, social media web producer here at WTN in Memphis, Tennessee. Shane, you have had a lot of experience in covering human trafficking cases. Tell me what's happening. I think just

recently the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations ran a three-day sting here in Memphis where they set up ads on Backpage.net. They set up ads on Craigslist. They rounded up 42 men who showed up after setting up what they thought were meetings with underage kids for sex in hotel rooms. Even a local leader, Ron Garrison, was caught up in this. He was head of MATA, the mass transit in Memphis. He just took an Alford plea, which I've never heard in a case like this, and pled guilty. Well, hold on. Let's say what an Alford plea is. An Alford plea is based on a case, State v. Alford,

in which Alford essentially pled no contest. It's the equivalent of a guilty plea, except you never come out and say, I did it. You basically are saying, I don't admit guilt, but I'm pleading guilty under Alford because the outcome will be better if I plead guilty than go to trial and get a worse sentence. That's basically what an Alford plea is. Okay, so this guy with the transit system pleads guilty to what exactly, Alford? Yes. If he stays out of trouble for six months, it'll go away.

He lost his job, obviously. Well, you know, human trafficking goes beyond just underage sex, okay? Right. Human trafficking is not only underage sex, but it's a lot more. Explain that for me, Shane. You talk about Maddie McCann. There are other young people who will be picked up wherever they're at, online, at a mall or whatever, and then they will be sold in what is modern-day slavery world.

They may go somewhere in a house and be a nanny. They'll have awful hours, basically 24 hours a day. They're beaten by some people. They're threatened. Their families are threatened if they escape. They feel like there's no way to get out of it. They get so beaten down, Nancy, that they feel like they have no self-worth. And people don't realize this is going on right under our own noses. As a matter of fact, the biggest hub of human trafficking, including children specifically, believe it or not, is the Atlanta Hartsville-Jackson Airport, because there's so many international flights there. There have been

times when passengers and or flight attendants notice something off, like there'll be a man or a woman with a child, and they see something is just not right with that real interaction. And it turns out, they turn them in, it's human trafficking. Let's talk about that, Shane. Crews that serve on airlines are trained to spot this. A lot of times, it could just be a person, a child on a plane, who gives just a look to one of the crew members. They might get up and go to the bathroom and pass a note that they need help, or they might leave a note in the magazine and put it on the back of the seat that's in front of them.

I've talked to stewardess and pilots. We see them at the beginning and in the flight standing up and looking, and yes, they're greeting us, but they're also looking for signs of, you know, is there any traffickers on that plane or things of that nature. Now, you brought up the sting in your jurisdiction. Why do you equate that with human trafficking? One of the things I've learned since getting here to Memphis is human trafficking in this area, in the Mid-South, is a huge problem. And this comes from talking to federal prosecutors, talking to district attorneys here. One of the things is Memphis has I-40 that runs from east to west in the country,

and then we have I-55, which goes north. You can be in St. Louis within five hours. You can hit Interstate 57 and go to Chicago or Indiana or Minneapolis or Detroit. People are picked up. You know, bus stations. We had a report of a trafficker at a local galleria. And before these people realize it or their families, they could be anywhere in the country.

And we're also only five hours from Atlanta. I had a prosecutor tell me that this was a human trafficking hub. You could also pick someone up and be in Mississippi in 30 minutes, Birmingham in two hours. It's just set up in such a way that unfortunately some of the street kids get labeled as throwaway and no one's going to miss them. You know what, you're so right because particular children are targeted. Children that are runaways, children that are snatched in areas where apparently when they go missing, it's not a priority, especially in other countries.

And they come through the U.S. international airports and get trafficked. And Alan and I have really learned a lot about this recently from women getting abducted in California and all the little girls that have been abducted in the D.C. area. Alan, we've been talking about Maddie McCann and the theories that she was sold into human trafficking or sold to some couple that wanted a child for hundreds of thousands of dollars. What do you think about that, Alan? This is the 10-year anniversary of her disappearance, and what we found is this week, Scotland Yard says they've got a new suspect in the case, a woman they're not naming that was spotted near that rental villa where she was last seen, where she vanished from in Portugal. And according to sources that have

told London's Telegraph newspaper, the investigators are about to move in, interview that woman. They call her a hugely significant line of inquiry. And again, there's no evidence that she is dead. So there's every reason to assume that she is alive someplace and perhaps a victim of human trafficking. Well, a former Scotland Yard detective says the quote, most likely incredible scenario for Maddie McCann's disappearance is a targeted kidnap, possibly to replace a grieving parent's dead child. Now, those are carefully selected words, Shane. Very carefully selected words. And it leads me to believe that it's coded for she was a victim. There's a very strong working theory that she is the victim of human trafficking. What do you think about it,

Shane? Does it fly? I think it does, Nancy. And the first news story I ever did was a little girl in Alma, Arkansas named Morgan Nick. She was abducted from a ballpark right along I-40. She was five years old and has never been seen or heard from since. No clue found anywhere. So, you know, just like Maddie, I mean, where are they? Where are they going? And I think you have people that have the means when they lose a child, they can pay someone like this new suspect in Maddie McCain's case to travel to these resorts.

We think now I would never leave my kid alone asleep when I'm, you know, on vacation in a room that I'm not in. But we get lulled into this false sense of safety. Maybe it's gated or whatever. And while you're gone, someone walks in and they've watched you for a couple days. And they know where you're at. And they see you leave and they snatch your kid and there's never a trace.

Well, it's been asked, if it is human trafficking on Maddie McCann, why didn't they take one of Maddie's baby siblings, the little, you know, baby sisters who would not have any recollection of a previous life with their real parents? And a simple answer is traffickers, more likely than a lone pedophile, because you want to take someone that fits the criteria the traffickers are looking for. For instance, has a young blonde little girl similar to Maddie just

died? Do her parents want to replace their basically a child lookalike? Is there a reason to kidnap a particular looking child? And I get it.

I never thought of it that way before, Shane. These people are hiring these traffickers to get, you know, the clone, for lack of a better term. What's interesting is, Alan, people don't have human trafficking on their radar. It is big and I really found out about it through my old alma mater Mercer University has a human trafficking task force and they're doing a lot of work regarding the ladies that you think are working voluntarily at these massage parlors. Yeah, not always so voluntary. Following up on what Shane just told us, the detectives on the Maddie McCann case say traffickers, as Shane just said, could have been watching the McCann's rental. So they were aware of the family's, quote, what, a football field length away from the home that night

having dinner with friends where they thought they could keep their eye on the apartment where the children were asleep. But they were a football field length away. I think it was outdoors having dinner, which really, you know, that's what, 300 feet? I'm not sure exactly that they were. And you think, well, my goodness, that's not that far at all. But it was enough leeway for somebody to see them at a distance, wait till they weren't looking, till they were pouring a glass of wine or whatever they were doing, and get the girl.

Madeline's parents were dining at a table about 60 meters, that's about 180 feet away from the villa where their daughter went missing. I've closely followed in recent years some of the efforts to educate people about how human trafficking is in your own backyard. For example, Cindy McCain, the wife of U.S. Senator John McCain, created a non-profit group that does this, also educating lawmakers as part of the job, pushing for laws that don't punish the women who are forced into being sex slaves, but instead going after the people who are doing the forcing and the customer who's paying for them to do it. Delta Airlines requires all of their employees to undergo annual training to spot human trafficking at airports and

on their planes. It's called the Blue Lightning training. It's been developed by the federal government and other companies use it. And each of us can be on the lookout for it too. You might be shocked to know that it's in many of the small towns across America. There are networks of massage parlors staffed by sex slaves, people who were smuggled into this country illegally, thinking they were coming here for real jobs. But then the smugglers take their documents and force these women into sex slave jobs and men into restaurant jobs. They're routinely moved from one town to another so that they don't get so comfortable

with one location that they might be emboldened to another. Alan, that is exactly correct about these so-called massage parlors. Those are sex slaves. Those are, some of them have been human trafficked. And I don't know if you've seen the most recent reports. They were conducted by the Field Center for Children Policy at University of Pennsylvania and the Modern Slavery Research Project at Loyola. Nearly 20% of 911 homeless youth say they've been victims of human trafficking.

15% say they've been trafficked for sex. 7% say trafficked for labor. This is happening right under our noses. So, Shane, what do we do about it? We've got to be vigilant. We've got to watch out. Wherever you stop, look. One of the worst places also are truck stops.

If you're traveling, look around the trucks because some girls are kicking around and past the different truck stops. Just wherever you're at, even at the mall, the supermarket, keep your eye open. You know, it just breaks my heart. It breaks my heart, Shay, to think that these children have been torn away from their loving parents. And so many kidnappings and missing children, missing teens could be solved.

And human trafficking is at the root. It's almost too hard to believe. I remember when I was little, my mom would tell me that I had to stay close to her or the gypsies would steal me. I didn't even know what a gypsy was, but I was so afraid, okay? You know what? How close to the truth she was, not about gypsies, but about being stolen. Right?

Yeah, exactly. I was terrified of hobos. A hobo? Yeah, my grandmother would say hobos. And I did not know what a hobo was. And I did not know what a gypsy was. But I was convinced they were going to try to steal me. Okay?

That is a light note. But the truth is the hell that these people are living through that have been trafficked. And let me give you one more important way to combat this, and that is to look at the sex slave as the victim and not the suspect. It was in the past more that when they would arrest one of these women, they would charge them with prostitution, put them in jail for some time, and would arrest one of these women, they would charge them with prostitution, put them in jail for some time, and they'd have a criminal record, whereas actually they were the victims. And there are laws changing all over the country where when they identify

what's really happening to them, that they are sex slaves, they are treating them as the victim. And that really helps go a long way in solving this problem. Here is the 800 number. 1-888-373-7888. Toll free. 888-373-7888. Shane Dietert, keeping up the good fight. Thank you, friend. Nancy Grace, Crime Stories, signing off.

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