Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Shutting Down the Routes: Ending Trafficking

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

Studies show that the child sex trafficking industry may be worth as much as $9.5 billion in the US alone. Now, research is showing links between human trafficking and animal trafficking. Today, Nancy Grace and her panel look at ways to shut down the routes that both crimes utilize.  Joining Nancy Grace today:  Neama Rahmani– Former Federal Prosecutor, Legal Commentator, and President of West Coast Trial Lawyers; Author: “Harvard to Hashtag;” INSTAGRAM: @Neamarahmani, Twitter: @NeamaRahmaniWestCoastTrialLawyers.com, INSTAGRAM: @Neamarahmani, TWITTER: @NeamaRahmani 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 2022” Sheryl McCollum  – Forensics Expert & Cold Case Investigative Research Institute Founder; Host of New Podcast: “Zone 7;” Twitter: @ColdCaseTips Joe Scott Morgan – Professor of Forensics: Jacksonville State University, Author, “Blood Beneath My Feet,” and Host: “Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan;” Twitter: @JoScottForensic JB Rice – Executive Director, Texas Counter-Trafficking Initiative; Facebook: @TXCTI Andro Vos -  Founder and CEO of the Wildlife Forensic Academy (based in South Africa) Nicole Partin - CrimeOnline.com Investigative Reporter; Twitter: @nicolepartin  National Human Trafficking Hotline [phone] U.S. Wildlife Crimes Tip Line: 1-800-344-9453.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. What, if anything, does human trafficking, sex trafficking, have to do with wildlife poachers? Repeat. What does sex and human trafficking, the sale of humans, have to do with poaching? Poaching animals. Guess what? A lot.

I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. Let me just jog your memory on the whole sex trafficking, human trafficking issue. Does the name Maddie McCann ring a bell? Because I'll never forget it. Take a listen to our friends at Inside Edition. Three-year-old Madeline McCann made headlines when she vanished during a family vacation in Portugal 12 years ago.

Her parents have returned home to England without their still-missing daughter. This age-progression image released by authorities to show what she might have looked like at age nine. Is Madeline still alive today? One theory is that she was kidnapped by a pedophile ring. Still another theory recreated in the Netflix program, a predator in a surgical mask took Madeline. Was Maddie McCann sex trafficked. This sweet, precious, beautiful three-year-old girl, the thought of her being sex trafficked across the borders from Portugal to the next, to the next, to the next. Would traffickers go to that effort, to that extent, to sex traffic Maddie McCann? Is that possible? Listen now to our friends at Crime Online.

As the investigation into the disappearance of Maddie McCann progressed, a U.S.-based think tank considered the possibility that the girl may have been taken by sex trafficking gangs. John Whitehead, an expert from the Rutherford Institute, says children go missing around the world similarly every day, often taken from their own driveways. Studies show that the child sex trafficking industry may be worth as much as $9.5 billion in the U.S. alone. And sometimes these victims end up in countries far, far away. How about this name? If you don't recall the Maddie McCandis appearance, what about this?

Take a listen to our friends at Crime Online. When Natalie Holloway went missing, many believed the Alabama teen was sold into sex slavery. The last person seen with Holloway was Jorgen van der Sloot. A Dutch news agency investigation claimed the Dutch national was involved in selling Thai women into prostitution. A hidden camera expose showed van der Sloot telling someone posing as a sex industry boss that he could get passports for Thai females who think they were going to the Netherlands to work as dancers. According to the report, van der Sloot made about $13,000 for every woman sold into prostitution in the Netherlands. Just how does sex trafficking work?

How can you be at home and then somehow end up in an entirely different country being forced into sex slavery where you have 12, 13, 14 or more customers, in other words, men raping a day. Well, what about the case of the girl next door? I'm referring to the documentary on cases just like this. What happened to the girl next door and where did poachers in some far off country come into this scenario? Take a listen. Kate was on a trip to visit a friend when a young man told her she was beautiful. They exchanged phone numbers, then started communicating often.

She told her parents he was her boyfriend. He showered her with clothes and gifts. Kate thought they were in love, and she would do anything to make him happy. That included selling her body. She was just 14 the first time he took her to a hotel room, gave her alcohol and marijuana, and then told her to have sex with a stranger. And from PBS Frontline, sex trafficking in America. Listen. In 2016, the unit picked up this teenager named Kat. She'd been abducted and trafficked by men she met online.

He told me 15 minutes, 15 to 20 minutes was 100, 30 minutes was 120 to 150, and an hour was 200, but it depended. And, like, that was all he told me, but I'm guessing that it went up more and more if they wanted more time the night she left home kat was driven 30 miles to phoenix where she met a third man which she says was the most frightening of them all brian flamati brian's was more the enforcer you could say he told me i don't give a who you are. He said, I own you. I own your body. I own you. And you have no say in what you do. This little girl totally, totally under the control of a brutal sex trafficker. How many young girls, young people, young boys and beyond get sex trafficked in America today, every day. It's happening right now. And there's always the hope that you're going to find the perp. But what if the perp has taken the victim out of the country. Joining me now, an all-star panel to make sense of what we know

and how poachers in faraway countries have anything to do with victims that are kidnapped and sex trafficked here in America. First of all, to Cheryl McCollum, founder and director of the Cold Case Research Institute and star of Zone 7 podcast. Cheryl, explain. Nancy, if you remember when you and I were in Aruba on the Natalie Holloway case, we're sitting at dinner and we learn we're only 15 miles from Venezuela. 15 miles. That's a quick boat trip. So if Natalie had been human trafficked, she could have been in another country within minutes. So what happens here is these are organized criminals. They have

got the system down where they have trucks and trains and planes and boats. And once they get that victim, that victim is transported so quickly that literally from Africa, they can be in Asia within 48 hours. It's just as easy as having a boat at a dock. Can you imagine how quickly a boat can go from the tip of Florida to Cuba and beyond, in no time, your victim is gone. And the reality is she has no way to contact home. ID, phones, everything taken away from the victim. To J.B. Rice, Executive Director of the Texas Counter-Trafficking Initiative. You can find him at txtci.org. JB, thank you for being with us. How easy is it to move a sex trafficking victim who has already been beaten horribly, has her cell phone, if she has one, her ID, her money taken from her,

and she's moved from location to location until she's actually out of the country. How easy is that for a trafficker to do? It would be as easy as going on vacation yourself. A lot of times traffickers utilize commercial airlines, public transportation, private transportation. Any way that you can move, a victim can be moved. You know, to Nima Romani, former federal prosecutor, trial attorney, and president co-founder of West Coast Trial Lawyers. Nima, thank you for being with us. By the time I would get to a sex traffic victim to prosecute a case, number one, they're afraid. I had one 14-year-old girl run away the night before her testimony the next morning. And it was all night long. We were out

on the streets going everywhere we could think she might be because she was so afraid to testify against her traffickers. We found her. The case was successful. There was a conviction. But it's very hard because the sex trafficking victims have been beaten so badly and mistreated so badly, often given drugs. They are out of their minds and they don't have the strength to actually go to authorities or testify, even if they could get to a phone. And when you're in another country, who do you call?

I mean, when I was in Aruba with you, Cheryl McCollum, trying to get more answers on Natalie, they didn't even have a 911 set up. They don't have that there. So, Nima, what do you do? Nancy, it's hard. You know, sex trafficking, sex abuse, domestic violence, these are among the most underreported crimes. And even when the victims do report it, eight or nine times out of ten,

they recant or don't show up by the time trial rules are in. So they're not easy to prosecute. Some states do have laws that get around Crawford and the Confrontation Clause that allows that previous testimony to get in. California is one of them, but other states don't. So it's not easy to prosecute these cases when you have victims that don't cooperate. And Dr. Angie Arnold, a jury may wonder or people that haven't done this may wonder, well, why won't she come forward and tell the truth?

If this really happened to her, why won't she or he take the stand? Very often they're minors. Very he take the stand? Very often they're minors. Very often they're beaten. Very often they're drugged with me. Dr. Angela Arnold, psychiatrist, renowned psychiatrist out of the Atlanta jurisdiction at AngelaArnoldMD.com, who specializes in the treatment of girls and women. Why, Dr. Angie? Well, Nancy, as you just said, they've been beaten. They have no security left inside of themselves. They no longer know who to trust. Everything they've grown up believing has been destroyed by some stranger.

So how could they ever feel safe? I've treated girls that this has happened to, Nancy. They are so traumatized by this that it's difficult to even treat them. It's very hard for them to come forward. Sometimes people in their lives leave them. I have one girl that I've treated, and her husband left her after she was held hostage in another country. Who can they trust after that, Nancy? And everything they know at their core has been questioned.

And as you said, they've been beaten. They've been drugged. They don't know how to come forward, Nancy. They don't know how to come forward, Nancy. They don't know who to trust anymore. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joining me right now is CrimeOnline.com investigative reporter Nicole Parton. I'd like to explain, I'd like for you to explain, Nicole, before we go to Andrew Voss joining us. Nicole, the connection between poachers and poachers trails in faraway countries we may not even have on our radar. What, if anything, does that have to do with our girls and our boys, our American citizens that are being taken and sex trafficked?

Well, we have to remember human trafficking, sex trafficking is the second largest organized criminal activity in our nation, second only to drug trafficking, followed right by gun trafficking, and then wildlife trafficking. So this is huge. This is, when we think of drug trafficking, we can kind of relate, because we know drugs are coming in and out of our country in numbers that are staggering to us. Those same minds, the same masterminds behind the drug trafficking in our country is behind the sex trafficking, is behind the wildlife trafficking. So now we have connections in these foreign countries, Africa. I've been there myself, Nancy, and I've seen poaching firsthand. These guys who are involved in the poaching also want the drugs, also need the weapons, also want the children. So it's all combined in this large,

organized criminal activity. It's estimated that every two minutes, a child is bought and sold into sex slavery. Every two minutes, it's happening. We're not just talking about money. We're talking about brutality, the extent to which they will go to get money, to get the exotic animals, to get the guns, to get the victims. Listen to our friends, S.A.B.C. Nicknamed the Queen of Ivory, Yang is currently serving a 15-year sentence for trafficking $6 million worth of elephant tusks. Although poaching has declined in recent years, Tanzania's elephant population has suffered a lot over the years, dwindling by up to 60 percent between 2009 and 2014. The PAMS Foundation says as a result of Mr. Lotta's anti-poaching work,

he had received a number of death threats. With Tanzania's last execution carried out almost 30 years ago, the death sentences for the 11 are likely to be commuted to life in prison. The verdict against Wayne Lotta's killers is being seen by conservationists as a significant win in the fight against poaching in Tanzania. Lota, co-founder of the not-for-profit PAMS Foundation, supported a number of anti-poaching initiatives across Africa. Prior to his death, many in the conservation community considered him a key figure in East Africa's battle against poaching. Through his efforts, the Tanzanian government was able to arrest Yang Fenglan in 2015, a woman behind one of the largest ivory

syndicates in Eastern Africa. For those of you that don't know, Wayne Lauder worked for a nonprofit called PAMS against poaching. He was gunned down by killers while traveling in a taxi to the airport. It was a designated hit to make him stop his anti-poaching activity. Did you hear what was just reported? Millions and millions of dollars of ivory and the form of elephant tusks every year. So valuable that the poachers would kill over it? What do you think they would do if it was over human trafficking victims? Joining me right now is Andrew Voss, joining us from the Netherlands, founder and CEO of the Wildlife Forensic Academy based in South Africa. You can find him at wildlifeforensicacademy.com. Mr. Voss, thank you so much for being with us.

Explain to me the connection between these poaching trails in faraway countries and sex traffic victims. Actually, you know, wildlife crime is one of the biggest forms of organized crime, you know, and the problem with wildlife crime is it's a facilitating form of organized crime. It facilitates all forms of organized crime, not only in Africa, but around the globe. And what you see it happening if a poacher, you know, if the poachers poach an animal and they have an asset within 84 hours the asset the horn or ivory will be on a market in Hanoi that means that the poachers have bribed the whole chain you know they bribed rangers

police officers customs officers the airport personnel here and in Asia and they have a route but the problem is that the route is not controlled by the police because wildlife crime is not a has not a high priority in the policing so but nobody controls the routes so human traffickers drug traffickers all kinds of traffickers from arms they use the same routes and they are free to traffic their goods around the globe and that's a huge problem and we have an academy it's just we are just two years open and if you see our clients are europe or our clients are us.S. Homeland Security. And that is an indication how big the problem is. How quickly can stolen goods be transported? Whether I'm talking about guns, money, drugs,

exotic animals. What about human sex trafficking victims? How quickly can it be transported to another country? They be transported to another country? They be transported to another country? Take a listen to Our Cut 16. This includes talks at The Hague. This talk is about animals, not about your cat or your dog at home, but wildlife. And to be more specific wildlife crime according to interpol wildlife crime has a turnover of 20 billion euro annually and wildlife crime is highly really highly organized the syndicates they have tentacles from politicians to local farmers in rural communities. The wildlife poachers, the rhino poachers, they kill two rhinos a day. And within 84 hours, you will find the rhino horn on the markets of Hanoi. Within about 80 hours, the animal is killed, the horns are cut off, and they're in Hanoi.

What about our girls and boys? Cheryl McCollum, the poaching trails themselves are critical. And the absconding, the kidnapping, the moving, the transporting of sex trafficking victims. Explain. Nancy, you have someone kidnapped. They can be put on an airplane within hours. They can be in another country or another city. All of their personal property, their IDs, their cell phones, everything is taken from them. They are placed somewhere. They are drugged. They

are immediately at work for their captor. You mean being raped? Being raped, absolutely, repeatedly. And this can happen from the moment somebody's kidnapped. They can be in another country and being assaulted repeatedly, working for somebody else within eight hours with no ID, no way to contact family. They can have their hair dyed, cut, and given a different identification, and that's it. They're done.

They're lost. They're gone. No trails. Nemo Romani, the trails, the trails, the poaching trails, that's what I'm asking about. So, Nancy, when you're dealing with any type of trafficking, right, you have drugs, you have animals, you have animal parts coming from other countries into the United States. I prosecuted cases at San Ysidro, the busiest port in the world. And I would see primates, I would see reptiles, I would see animal parts used by the same traffickers through the same means. They would hide them in tunnels, vehicles, boats.

And of course, coming down into Mexico, we would see the money, we would see the guns, we would see the people. So there is a direct connection here. These are criminal enterprises. They are in the business of making money. It doesn't matter whether it's people, it doesn't matter whether it's drugs, guns, or animals.

They will participate in this criminal activity. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. Joining us now is Professor of Forensics, Jacksonville State University, author of Blood Beneath My Feet on Amazon and star of a new hit podcast, Body Bags with Joe Scott Morgan. Are the poaching trails for the animal trafficking, the poachers, the drugs, the guns, are the same trails being used to transport human victims. Yes, yes, they are, Nancy. And here's the thing, and it's from an investigative standpoint, it's rather simplistic.

There's no need to reinvent the wheel because, unfortunately, humans are commodities, just like animals, just like the tusk, for instance, of animals. Or, you know, they're all any number of different body parts that are kind of piecemealed out relative to these animals that are sent far and wide. But here's one of the really insidious underlying things to this. After the victim of human trafficking, the sex trade, there's no more utility for them, Nancy. You know, when you have an animal, you can piecemeal this animal and make it go further. Say if you're going to take an animal and have it intact and send it to, I don't know, somewhere for display or some person wants to have it in their personal collection, that's one thing. But at the end of the day, you can harvest from an animal. What do you do with the sex trafficking victims? Because there's nothing really that they have value any longer. And so the really dark side to this is that they are essentially killed and then disposed of.

And these families never really know. You've got a very little chance of finding someone to begin with in this murky world. But then you make them disappear and the family winds up being left alone with no answers in the long run. Cheryl McCollum, what about it? The sex traffickers and the poachers use the exact same route. So whether it's an ivory tusk or a human, they get them from A to B the exact same way. So what Andrew's boss is doing, if we can reduce poaching by proxy, we're going to reduce human trafficking if we can bust up these routes. I'll give you a for instance, Nancy.

In Africa, they pay children with cocaine to steal sea life and poach sea life. So you follow that cocaine, it goes back to the human traffickers. It's all connected, the drugs, the guns, the people, and the poaching. Andrew Voss joining us from the Netherlands, founder, CEO of the Wildlife Forensic Academy. How do you see poaching being connected to human sex trafficking? Nancy, my answer is 100% yes. Poaching is actually the root of a lot and a lot of problems. The biggest problem is that just between 5% and 10% of all poachers brought to court are sentenced, just 5% to 10%. That means 95% to 90% gets away. So you can kill an animal and get away with it. And the chance of being caught is very small.

And the resources, the revenues are very, very high. So what you see, you can kill an animal and get away with it. And the problem is there's a lack of forensic knowledge. There's a lack of forensic knowledge. There's a lack of forensic knowledge. I spoke to prosecutors, to judges, and they are all centering on marine crime. They have all the same problem in the whole of Africa. And what's the underlying problem? The underlying problem is there are no training facilities. The brutality and the vicious nature of poaching in other countries, specifically Africa,

was brought to the forefront with a major motion picture where the crawdads sing. Now, how did that happen? Take a listen to our friends at the Today Show. Jumping from the page to the screen where the Crawdads sing is a highly anticipated film based on the best-selling novel. A marsh girl, she killed him. It's a fictional story about a murder in North Carolina in the 1960s, but in real life, author Delia Owens is facing questions about a deadly shooting in Africa in the 90s. In the mid-90s, Delia and her then-husband Mark ran a conservation center in Zambia, protecting elephants from poachers. In 1996,

they were the subject of an ABC documentary called Deadly Game, where one scene shows an alleged poacher being fatally shot. The victim is not identified. Neither is the shooter, a mystery that was never solved. And another case of poaching violence. As you hear these examples, imagine what these poachers would do to a sex trafficking victim all alone from the U.S. Take a listen. Somewhere around sunrise when I heard the tracker, Neme, and a few others waking me up and saying in Swahili that Diane Fossey was dead. And I said, what? And they said, come with me now.

Come immediately. And I followed them down to her house. And as we approached, you could see that the whole metal hut on the side was bent and torn over and everything. And when I went into the place, the first thing I noticed was that literally everything in the house was destroyed. I mean, it looked like somebody was going through the entire house looking for something. You get between those poachers and their money, whether they are transporting drugs, guns, or people, and you die. Take a listen to more. All the drawers were pulled out, papers thrown everywhere, suitcases undone, chests that had things in it were all ripped out.

Everything was a total shambles. And I went into her bedroom and the mattress was kind of tilted and her drawers were all ripped open and I saw her gun hanging out of one of them. And then I saw her lying next to the bed. And as I got closer and I looked at her face, I could see this large gash in her face. Next to her body was this panga or the machete that you frequently see the trackers with next to her with blood on it. And her face was just, literally her face was split open. The anti-poaching crusader meets a horrible, violent death. You were just hearing Wayne McGuire in his discovering Diane Fossey. Imagine a young girl like Maddie McCann, like Natalie Holloway. Of course, I believe the two of them were killed locally. But a great deal of investigation has gone into the possibility that they were in fact sex trafficked and even removed to another country.

What chance would they stand against poachers like this? To Andrew Voss, joining us from the Netherlands, who has spoken to The Hague, at The Hague, about this matter, founder of the Wildlife Forensic Academy. Why the brutality amongst the poachers? The brutality is, of course, because the chance of being caught is very, very small. And the revenues are very high, very high. And just 5% or 10% of all poachers are being sentenced in court due to a lack of forensic knowledge. So they are free to do whatever they like. And there is a bunch of corruption there in government.

So they are backed up with hard politicians or police officers. So they have a lot of chance to do what they want. You know, it's a free game. Guys, we're delving into the connection between poaching trails and violent poachers in other countries, specifically Africa, and sex trafficking victims in the U.S. They purportedly are ending up there. Take a listen to Jeffrey Goldberg, The New Yorker. The bodies of the poachers are often left where they fall for the animals to eat. Conservation. Morality. Africa.

It's not every day that television news magazines show the killing of another human so bluntly, so directly. One of the many odd things about this shocking video is that we, the viewer, are not told by ABC where exactly this happened, and we're not told who is doing the shooting. This video, which is quite a short piece of this film, is so decontextualized that it opens up many more questions than it answers. The questions that I was left with when I first saw it included, was this man really a poacher? Why was he alone if he was a poacher? Who did the shooting?

The violent activity, the violent way of life. Mr. Voss? The problem with the killing of poachers is that anti-poaching teams got a military training for military from Great Britain and the U.S. So they didn't get a police training. So if there's an incident, they start shooting. And poaching is not an act of war. Poaching is a felony. So you need actually policing to bring these guys to court.

And that's the reason why there's a lot of shooting and no police investigation. To Nima Rahmani, a high-profile lawyer joining us, Nima, how do we stop it? You've seen the same thing happening in Mexico. But how do we in the U.S. stop what's happening there with our citizens? Nancy, we need to be a lot more aggressive prosecuting pimps, prosecuting johns. I mean, a lot of this conduct, unfortunately, has been decriminalized here in this country, but there are real victims that are trafficked. There are victims that are being trafficked all over the world. These are young girls, sometimes boys. So prosecutors need to be

much more aggressive, focusing on these cases. If law enforcement arrests these individuals, and it's just a catch and release, that's not going to work. No, it's not. And to Joe Scott Morgan, professor of forensics, how can we prove this case? It's beyond our jurisdiction, but they are our citizens. Well, you know, even if they are, if it's outside of our jurisdiction, if it's in some foreign country, the FBI still can get involved in these cases and bring their resources to bear with the nationals that are investigating this case. This has happened time and time again.

But to this point, it's critical that one of the problems is that you lose evidence along the way, critical forensic evidence that can be tied back because any of these individuals are going to be utilizing the same thing over and over and over again as far as methodologies go. And as you know, Nancy, with these patterns that we develop in forensics, that's how we tie things back scientifically. And so it's important for our federal government to get involved because they have the resources to examine. And they've got to go beyond our borders. Yes, they do. Guys, if you have any information regarding human trafficking, 1-888-373-7888 or the U.S.

Wildlife Tip Line, 800-344-9453. Thank you, Mr. Voss, for joining us from the Netherlands. Goodbye, friends. This is an iHeart Podcast.