Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - TEEN HOUSTON GIRL SEX TRAFFICKED, NOW MISSING, HEAR MOM’S PLEA

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Kristen Galvan was a typical 15-year-old girl, a good student, in JROTC and on the drill team.  Then, Galvan began a relationship with a 17-year-old boy. That boy, Galvan's mom says, was a recruiter for a sex trafficking ring. Galvan ran away with her boyfriend. She was found by police turning tricks on a notorious Houston street. After Galvan was rescued, she told her mom about the threats made against the family. As her recovery continued, Galvan earned cellphone privileges again. During a holiday trip with family, Galvan disappeared. Robin Cory says her daughter, missing three years now, has been trafficked again.  Joining Nancy Grace Today: Robyn Cory- Victim's Mother; Facebook: Justice for Kristen Marie; YouTube: Justice For Kristen Neama Rahmani - Former Federal Prosecutor-turned-Trial Attorney; Author: “Harvard to Hashtag;" INSTAGRAM: @Neamarahmani, TWITTER: @NeamaRahmani  Dr. John Delatorre - Licensed Psychologist and Mediator (specializing in forensic psychology); Psychological Consultant to Project Absentis (a nonprofit organization that searches for missing persons); Twitter, IG, and TikTok: @drjohndelatorre  Betty Simons - Family's Pro-bono Private Investigator and Founder & CEO of Valor Investigations and Co-Founder of NMA (a nonprofit focused on the recovery of missing and exploited children); IG: valor_investigations Kaitlin Monte - Journalist, Houston, TX; Twitter: @kaitlinmonte  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace Imagine your child, your girl, you think all your love, all your money, all your energy, your hopes, your dreams for them. And then suddenly they're gone. They're not just gone. They're trafficked your child is trafficked you know when you look around at the mall or the nail salon or the kitchen and restaurant people there have been trafficked they are being used much less girls now out on the street in motels and hotels turning tricks I mean young girls 12 13 14 15 today the story of Kristen is she still alive is she out there is she dead is she being raped right now where is this teen girl joining me her mother I'm Nancy grace

this is crime stories thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. How did the whole thing begin? Take a listen to our friend Fox 26. I just heard the stories that have met survivors of sex trafficking and I can't stop and look the other way because it's not just my baby. It's not just my daughter being sold, raped, and nobody can find her. My daughter has a price tag. How much is your child worth? I've got to find my baby. My daughter has a price tag.

My daughter has a price tag. How much is your child worth? My daughter is being bought and sold over and over right now. You are hearing a devastated mom telling her story in the search for her little girl still missing. Take a listen to our friends at KHOU. The last time she was seen was before going to bed on January 2nd. The next morning, Robyn says, Kristen was gone. Pain and agony of knowing what could be happening to my daughter. Kristen, Robyn says, had gone missing in November. Robyn says police picked her then 15-year-old daughter up on Bissonnette Street. She'd been a victim of sex trafficking. Kristen was not the same child when we recovered her. Kristen Galvan was 15 years old when she was last seen January 2nd,

mere weeks after a brief disappearance. I'm standing out. With a boyfriend. And she was gone for a week and a half. After a brief disappearance. I'm just trying to know. Look at it! With a boyfriend. And she was gone for a week and a half. I received a phone call from HPV and they had picked her up on this net. An area notorious for prostitution in Houston. This little girl out turning tricks.

Joining me right now, an all-star panel to make sense of what we know right now and hopefully give answers. The tip line is 936-760-5800. Repeat, 936-760-5800. Please join us in our search for Kristen right now. Straight out to Kristen's mother, Robin Corey. Robin, thank you for being with us. Thank you for having me. I'm having a hard time when I drop my children off to school. I miss them and I worry about them and I think about them and I pray about them. I don't even know what your life must be like, Ms. Corey.

When you go to bed at night, what is your prayer? That she is safe and whole at this point, really. Tell me about how Kristen goes missing. I understand she had a boyfriend, which was no boyfriend at all. This is a very, very common ploy to get little girls sex trafficked, teen girls, and in her case, just 15 years old. And the boyfriend promises a wonderful life, and the girl goes with them. The next thing you know, they no longer have a driver's license, a credit card, a cell phone. They're beaten horribly into submission. They start turning tricks, and they're fed drugs, and it's over. Tell me from your point of view, Robin, how this happened.

Well, it started at her high school. We know now that there were paid recruiters inside of her high school scouting girls to be sold to the traffickers. Her behavior began to change when she was 15. What high school is that? I don't wish to put them on blast. It was in Cy Fair School District. You know, Ms. Corey, I understand that. It's Cy Woods High School. I don't have a problem with putting that out there. If your belief is that there are paid recruiters within the high school, I'm not going to shy away from telling what we believe to be the truth.

Now, why would you think, Ms. Cora, that there were paid recruiters within the high school? Because her boyfriend, she had a boyfriend, which was not her normal standard type of boyfriend. When you say it was a paid recruiter, what do you mean by that? The traffickers pay people to recruit girls. They pay off hotels. They pay off people to keep quiet. They pay recruiters in high schools to kind of scout out these teenage girls because they're worth so much money here on the streets of Houston. Let me ask you, when you say he was different from any other of the little boyfriends she had ever had,

what do you mean by that? Kristen liked athletic guys. Kristen was very active in her school, so she chose the, you know, athletic boys, if you would. She had a boyfriend before, met his family. You know, I have to meet them before she goes anywhere. And when she met this boy is when she began to start skipping school and stuff like that. Well, what was he like?

He was not good in my opinion. He was actually living with somebody else's family because his family did not want him. And he just wasn't good from my perspective. Okay. I'm trying to figure out when you say he's different from her other boyfriends, how was he different? It just didn't fit her profile. He wasn't in any extracurricular activities. He didn't have a family life. And he had tattoos, which was unusual for me for a 17-year-old to have. And he just, you know, red flags everywhere for a mother. I find it really interesting and concerning that his family had so much trouble with him that they kicked him out. So now this boy shows up covered in tattoos, not involved in anything at school, and suddenly wants to go out with your daughter.

I see your concern. So what did you tell your daughter, Kristen, about this guy? Did you try to stop her from seeing him? Yes, I did try and stop her. I noticed, you know, the messages, the new friendships full of empty promises, if you would. That's what I believe this new group of friends was giving her, you know, a new friendship full of empty promises. Louis Vuitton bags, this, that, and the other. And like I said, she began to skip school, and I saw her grades kind of, you know, deteriorate, and I addressed it.

What did you do? I sat down and talked with her. You know, hey, what's going on? You know what's the irony to Dr. John Delatore joining us? Licensed psychologist, mediator, specializing in forensic psychology and you can find Dr. Della Torre at resolutionfcs.com. Dr. John Della Torre, thank you for being with us. I know this is true, but I, as a lawyer, don't know the right psychological terms to apply to it. The more you tell your child, don't do this, that makes them do exactly that. I will never forget when my daughter made a departure. This is in middle school of her nice little friend group.

And I was practically doing a back flip. And something said, don't come down too hard on her. Because it will, you know, like a magnet if you put it on the wrong side it goes the other way and we would gently point out various bad behaviors the little girl had ultimately and it took a while many months before lucy figured out this was not right for her thank heaven because i noticed the more you especially lucy if i i tell my son hey you shouldn't do so and so he goes okay that's it fine but lucy is a very independent thinker and she digs her feet in like a mule so it's you can't make a child always do what you want them to do unless you want to beat them and lock them in their room

yeah definitely don't do that uh it's it's all a part of the normal developmental process of learning independence and learning autonomy okay first of First of all, first of all, Delatory, do you have children? Yes. Well, okay. I was about to really, you know, give you a black eye on that. How can you say that if you don't have children, but you do. So you know exactly what we're talking about. Go ahead. Yes. So you really are confronted as a parent with the idea that you can see the dangers that are out there and you can see how your child is falling victim to dangers that maybe you at one time were able to avoid or you got caught in and you see your child making those mistakes.

But you're absolutely right, Nancy, when you're saying there are times in which you have to use a velvet glove and there are times in which you have to use a velvet glove and there are times in which you need to use an actual sledgehammer. But the problem becomes, particularly in these scenarios where the outside influence, the one that's influencing the child, has such a loud and persuasive voice that twists and turns the thought processes of the victims to make them believe that anyone who is trying to pull them away from each other, right? Those are the absolute bad guys. And that's called the Romeo aspect of sex trafficking. They may, the person using, right? The trafficker uses words to convince the individual that they are in a loving relationship when the reality is they are simply grooming the individual to engage in behaviors that they would not have done had they not been involved in that relationship.

I've never heard that phraseology, the Romeo aspect, but you're absolutely correct. And guys, with me is Christian's mother, who is on a desperate search to find her daughter, who I believe was absolutely sex trafficked and is out there somewhere right now. Also with me, in addition to Dr. John Del Torre, is Nima Rahmani, former federal prosecutor, prosecuted numerous human trafficking cases with the U.S. Attorney's Office, author of Harvard to Hashtag. Nima, thank you for being with us. How many times, Nima, have you seen a group, and it's typically boys get together and they do something they would not do if they were on their own. They are acting pursuant to peer pressure. Well, of course. I mean, it could be drug cartels, trafficking women, gang activity here in the United States. I mean, this is part and parcel of organized crime,

and this is how they exploit you. Hey, here's an easy one, Nima. Have you ever had a case of theft by receiving a stolen car? I guess you had that when you were state prosecutor. Of course. When there's four guys in the car, and one guy is like a straight-A student or a good kid, and the others are horrible.

And you're like, how did you get into this? That happens all the time. Of course. And they're all charged. They're all charged. Doesn't matter if one is good and one is bad. They're all in a stolen car. Of course.

Bam. There you go. It happens all the time. And that's just the beginning of criminal activity. This is really the time. And that's just the beginning of criminal activity. And this is really the apex. And it happens to thousands of women. And whether it's moving drugs or extortion or sex trafficking, this is what criminal organizations do. And they exploit these young women. And fortunately, this is something that the FBI handled and there are significant sentences.

Mandatory minimums, 10 years for girls as old as Kristen, but even 15 for younger girls. But the problem is you have three groups of people and none of whom want to report these crimes. You have the victims like Kristen, you got the traffickers and you got the John. That's what makes these cases difficult to prosecute. Really difficult. Nima Rahman, you could not be more correct. the john that's what makes these cases difficult to prosecute because really difficult nema romano you could not be more correct crime stories with nancy grace guys also with me, Betty Simons, the family's pro bono, that's for free, private investigator. That's how much she believes in this.

Founder, CEO of Valor Investigations, V-A- Nita Marie's Angels, NMA, a nonprofit for the recovery of missing and exploited children. Her sister trafficked and murdered. Betty, I'm so sorry about what you have gone through with your sister. The question I want to ask you is you hear christian's mom say he promised her a louis vuitton bag okay to a lot of people they may say you you'd sell yourself for a louis vuitton bag but for a kid that's a whole different thing right it is and the the thing is is these these traffickers are master manipulators and so it's not just the promise of a Louis Vuitton bag. It's the promise of, you know, I'm going to make you a model. I'm going to

make you famous. Um, you know, you're going to have your own house. We're going to open up your own business. These are, these are all things that we hear with a lot of our trafficking victims, even as, as young as Kristen. Um, and so it's a, it's a promise of this whole new rich, fancy life that they promised them. And then, you know, they tell them how much they love them and they prey on these weaknesses. And so when he said the Romeo effect, it's something that we're extremely familiar with because in almost one of our victims that we recovered, they have fallen victim to the Romeo effect where they're promised this world that's just not true.

That's just their way of manipulating them. And these traffickers are absolute master manipulators. Not only that, I just have to say, they look for a weakness in a child. So not in Kristen's case, but in a lot of cases that we've recovered, these children are missing, you know, a parent or they're missing a father figure or they're children of the system. So they're missing that love, that family. And so those are the ones that they also are preying on because they know they're more easily manipulated. I also want to rewind, sorry, one more time. When he's talking about, you know the the minimum sentences for for these

traffickers there is a minimum sentence however in arian jackson's case we were very disappointed because the judge gave less than the minimum for his charges less than the minimum that was his sentence now when we're talking about arian dupree jackson remember many people believe that Kristen's boyfriend had an association with Jackson and that Jackson was taking part in trafficking minors. That's why you keep hearing that name. So you get a little girl and you convince her of what life can be an adventure and you're going to give her a Louis Vuitton and you love her and come out and run away with me. Well, she did. This little girl runs off with the boyfriend, a boyfriend her age, unlike any of the other nice kids she had been flirting with and talking with. This kid shows up. He's been

kicked out of his own home by his family. He's covered in tattoos. He's not involved with anything at the school. He's a bad apple. And mom knows it. But all of her warnings fall on deaf ears. And Kristen is gone. Take a listen to our cut five Fox 26. Robin says Kristen was pulled into sex trafficking and was acting different after her return. Then she vanished. We had given her back her phone and then she went missing the day after. This time Robin turned to private investigators. She personally scoured the streets and dug to the bottom of Kristen's social media and everyone Kristen was connected to online. And so I followed their accounts and found out their games

and just this deep, dark world of sex trafficking, child sex trafficking. This mom, heartbroken. Robin Corey is with me. This is Kristen's mom. So Robin, she agrees to run off with the little boyfriend. And was he the same age as her? Was he 15 at the time? No, Kristen was 15. He was 17. Too old for her. He's practically a grown man. That said, how long was she gone before she was recovered? Now, she was gone about two weeks before she was recovered. She was still in contact with me the first two days after she, quote unquote, ran away.

She was calling me. She was actually calling me from a recording studio here in Houston. Oh, my star. So he told her she was going to be a recording star? Well, Arian Jackson is a, quote unquote, aspiring rapper here in Houston. Oh, my star. So he told her she was going to be a recording star? Well, Arian Jackson is a quote-unquote aspiring rapper here in Houston. His music is terrible, by the way. But he is a rapper here in Houston. So he probably tells your daughter,

oh, I can get you into the music scene. And she's a 15-year-old girl. She's going to run off with this wannabe. He gives her a baton. He promises her this big life that he loves her. And she calls you from a recording studio and says what? What does she say? Hey, Mom, look, I got your Louis Vuitton bag.

I'm going to get you a wallet. Like, almost as if, you know, she was doing okay. And I'm like, get your butt home. You're missing school, you know. And remember, I have Verizon Smart family. I knew her location. You know, I had her passwords for her Instagram. I was that mom, Nancy.

Oh, so this is your striking fear in my heart. So you can see where she is. And she's talking about she wants to get you a louis vuitton yeah right right um yes my little angel and then the next day everything goes blank i'm logged out of all of her social media accounts i can no longer pull up her location off of verizon smart family i start panicking and so i call police police, report her missing. And of course, they listed her as a runaway. I was so ignorant, Nancy. I thought human trafficking happened in poor countries. I never understood the magnitude of what could happen.

So how did you get her back that time? Houston Police Department called me. I fell to my knees and cried, thank you, Jesus. And they told me they had picked her up off of Bissonette Street here in Houston. Okay, that is not good. I'm familiar with Bissonette. With me is Caitlin Monty, joining us out of Houston. You can find her at CaitlinMonte.com. Caitlin,

thank you for being with us. Why don't you fill us all in for those that don't know about Bissonette? Sure. Nancy, thank you. And Robin, it's, it's, you're just incredible. Bissonette is notorious. It's a black eye on the Houston community because it is notorious for sex trafficking and human trafficking. And this is not hidden in the shadows. I went down there as I reported on Kristen's story and worked with Robin. And you can go down on a Tuesday afternoon in broad sunlight at one o'clock and you will see it right there in blatant daylight. These women and young men who are being put out on the streets and told,

you can't come back to safety, to food, to shelter, to life until you bring me my money, until you bring your quota home. I mean, that's happening every day in broad daylight. And it's notorious. And Houston is such a family-friendly and wonderful community, but you have this deep-rooted world of sex trafficking. And the problem, Nancy, is that if you go and you clean these streets up, if you were to go pick up all the girls and boys who are out there and, you know, clean it up, this industry is so deep that it will just pop up. The roots will grow and pop up somewhere else. So unfortunately, Bissonnette is where it's happening and where police are able to sort of monitor and look for girls like Kristen who go

missing. And girls do show back up, but unfortunately, sometimes they don't. And it's very dangerous. These girls have no protection. Houston can be very hot, 100 plus degrees in the summer, and they are out there told, you are not coming back inside, you are not coming back to safety until you get what I want from you, which is the money you're going to get from the men and people who come and unfortunately, for whatever reason, frequent these streets. And enough that there is enough money going into this industry, enough people willing to pay for a child that there is an industry. As you heard Robin say, there are recruiters, there are layers to this,

and this and that is where you can go on any given day and see it. And I wouldn't recommend it. It's not safe. You should not be going around there. But it is there, and it is not hidden. It is very much out in the open. I'm thinking about what Robyn Corey said. Robyn, you said that you went out on the street, scouring the street, looking for her, that you had false alarms that people would,

what, pretend that they were Kristen? Oh, yes, ma'am. So when Kristen disappeared the second time, I didn't wait on police. I went out to Bissonette Street myself and scoured these streets of Bissonette. I had a private investigator show me the ins and outs of Bissonette Street. He told me I don't normally take parents. I said, you're going to take me today. You're going to show me Bissonette. You know, I grew up in Houston. I love Houston. But we're number one. We have the number one baseball team, right?

Go Astros. But we are literally number one in child sex slavery. Enough of the trafficking. This is slavery. So when I went out there, I was not expecting to find girl after girl and a line of cars waiting to buy these people to have sex with teen girls and I was so ignorant what was the youngest girl that you found you can ask Betty 12 years old Betty is that true with me is Betty Simons is that true correct um that well the youngest girl that I found was 11, but the youngest girl, Robin, was actually with me that we recovered a 12-year-old little girl.

She had just turned 12, by the way, yes. And that was actually on Bissonette. And she was out turning tricks. Correct. We saw her get into multiple different cars. I think we saw her get into about four different cars before we could get law enforcement out there. It took us a while to get them out there. But, I mean, just right in front of our eyes, we saw her get into four different cars, do four different dates.

And she's 12. She was, I mean, she was a baby. Why are you calling her dates? They're raping her. She's having full-on sex or oral sex with grown men. Absolutely. It is rape. Giving her money that she gives to a pimp. They are having regular full on sex, anal sex, oral sex, you name it, with a girl that has just turned 12 years old.

That's what's happening. I mean, there's really no nice way to put it. What was this girl, this little 12 year old story? How did she end up there on Bissonette? So she did ended up on Bissonette because her her mother had a drug addiction problem and child protective services had stepped in and they had placed her into a home on Chimney Rock and Chimney Rock is notorious for children coming up missing and ending up on Bissonette and so it is is a CPS-run facility. And so she had ended up at Chimney Rock. And from there, she had been recruited by another child. And then we actually see traffickers sitting outside of Chimney Rock waiting on these little girls to jump the fence.

So that is how she actually ended up on Bissonette was being recruited. So they're in a facility that's so bad they run away from the facility and then they get into sex trafficking and there's nowhere left for them to go right they've run away from the system and they don't have a family they've got nothing left Betty isn't it true you have recovered nearly 50 girls little girls from being sex trafficked that's correct okay guys back to Kristen so you get her back the first time Robin from being with her so-called boyfriend what happens when you get her to when you you see her again for the first time so like I said HPD picked her up they went and

interviewed her with Vice in Houston and then the the police officer told me to meet them at Texas Children's Hospital. I went to Texas Children's Hospital and there was my daughter in the shortest skirt and a tube top. And she also had on like this sweater shawl, if you would. And my daughter had $4,000 cash on her. Long nails. And, you know, the staff at Texas Children's, I said, give her a drug test, you know, rape kit. Oh, no, we don't normally do a drug test unless she's incoherent. I said, she's just in traffic.

Like what? And they still wouldn't give her a drug test. And they finally gave her a SANE exam. And I went in there for that. So all the bruises on my daughter. She lost about 15, 20 pounds. And she cried during the whole SANE exam. What did she say to you

when she saw you? You don't know what they made me do. Screaming. So you have her at home and then suddenly she's gone again. Nancy so when I when we recovered her I had to get her away from Houston I pulled her from that school so

quick and my mom she's a retired civil engineer bless her heart she was actually taking care of my sick dad who passed away since then and I had to get her away from Houston because as I had to get her away from Houston because as I began to uncover these Instagrams and these men and Kristen, you know, she didn't come forth in the beginning, but about a week and a half later after we started the trauma counseling,

the psychiatry appointments, you know, her running down the street, they're going to kill you all. Her brother running down and chasing her. She finally started to come forth, Nancy, and said, Mom, I want to start talking about who and what did this to me. I said, baby, you're so brave. That's going to help everybody so much to get these men off the streets. She knew it wasn't right, Nancy. So Kristen started to come forth. We called Vice, had them come out, interview her.

We handed over her phone. And so the holidays, you know, came, and, you know, we were looking for facilities for human trafficking victims. There's ultimately zero in Houston, or you have to pay $1,500 a day for your child to get the treatment she deserves. And, of course, nobody works during the holidays.

You know, everybody's so busy. And I have my victim child who, you know, night terrors, screaming. She wasn't the same child. And I could virtually get no help. What happened then? Christmas passes and you know you try taking the phone away from your 15 year old you know it's their lifeline they'd use it for school and so we gave it back and she was only allowed to have it you know in the kitchen where everybody could see her and then we went to take my sister my sister's a general in the army and we went to take my

sister back to Fort Hood after the holidays January 1st and my dad was left there to watch Kristen and she was gone that night when you got back and realized she was gone what went through your mind tell me I what happened. I needed Amber Alert. You know, I knew, you know, at the time even, I didn't know that children ran back to their traffickers, Nancy. I had no idea. And, you know, I was handed a resource sheet with a bunch of 1-800 numbers for my traffic child. You know, what? You know, it's a phenomena people don't get. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. You know, too, Nima Rahmani joining us, former federal prosecutor who has prosecuted countless human trafficking cases in the U.S.,

it can be a number of things. The perp can threaten a child. The perp can say, I'm going to kill your mom. Now I know where she is. Or just any number of ploys used to make the child so afraid they go with the captor. I've seen it so many times. It's hard for people to understand, but you got to realize this is a child, a child. Yeah. And we're talking about these commercial sex acts. I mean, the federal statute, they talk about fraud, force, coercion. But this is all presumed when you're dealing with a minor. A girl as young as 15, like Kristen.

I mean, the statute presumes that these young women, they cannot consent to these sex acts, that they are being coerced. The fraud is presumed. The force is presumed. The force is presumed. So if we get the victims that are cooperating, if we can identify these johns, if we can arrest these perpetrators, they're very good cases to prosecute.

But unfortunately, they're just really tough to find these women. They really are. And, you know, jumping off what Nima is saying, Dr. Delatore, a lot of people don't understand, but it's akin to an abused woman that has lived in the cycle of abuse. They're afraid to get away. They're afraid not to go back. They're just living in fear. Can you explain it?

Yeah. And it's not only just the living in fear, it's the threat that violence can happen, not only to you, but to your family members. The victim in the case, they don't want these things to happen, but they are forced to do them because they're force-fed drugs and they're force-fed the idea that aggressive acts are going to be happening to their family if they don't do these things. Well, and we heard that Dr. Delatory when Robin described her daughter being 20 pounds underweight, covered in bruises, crying about what was done to her and what she was forced to be done when she was sex trafficked. And isn't it true, Robyn Corey, that your daughter told you that your life and your family was threatened if she did not go with a sex trafficker? Yes. She said they had pictures of all of us. And she also described, and I have it in her journal, she hand wrote it, you know, that they had people in a house controlling their social media. You know, this is organized crime at its finest, Nancy. It's not just the traffickers.

It's the men inside controlling their social media, making the dates, all of that, too. It's also a family affair. You know, not only is Arian charged, his mother is charged as well. Yep, his own mother. So they're all in the child sex trafficking business it's like a family business for pete's sake guys take a listen to our cut six uh from fox 26 robin even flew to atlanta after the district attorney showed her a picture that they thought was kristin that picture was 100 like my daughter. Where was the picture from?

It was taken in Atlanta. So I then scoured the web and found my daughter on an escort website. I flew up there. There was a few other girls listed in the same ad as her. I found them as well. She wasn't there. Okay, Robin, I'm trying to take in what you're telling me, and I've had other parents tell me the same thing, and their desperate attempt to try to find their children, their missing girl or boy. They go online and find their teen child on an escort website, a hooker site.

Yeah, so the Houston DA is trying to convict these men in jail that we have that Kristen told on. And I get a call from the Houston DA and they sent me a picture of Kristen, her face and her hands. And I know my daughter's body like the back of my hand, every freckle, every birthmark, and especially Kristen's hands. And I was sure that was Kristen. I'd seen a lot of Kristen's and this was her. And so they would not give me the website. So we found the website. On a hooker site. Yes, ma'am. An escort website.

And what did you do? And the ad was listed out of Georgia. And that's when it became an FBI case as well, by the way. So it had proven that she had crossed state lines. that's when it became an FBI case as well, by the way. So it had proven that she had crossed state lines. That's when it became a federal case. And I just couldn't hold back, you know. I had to go to Atlanta. And, oh, my God, Atlanta is just as bad as Houston, if not worse.

What happened when you got to Atlanta and you searched for your daughter? I was handing out flyers, desperately searching. It was actually when they had that killing at the spa that was human trafficked. You know, that huge building they had at Atlanta? Yes, that was at that time. And I went up there, and she just wasn't there. Nobody was given any information. When the killer went on the rampage and started shooting up spas in other words um

locations for sex trafficking and hookers guys take a listen to our cut to our friends damali arian jackson previously pleaded guilty to sex trafficking minors with force fraud or coercion and today a federal judge sentenced the 24-year-old to 27 years in prison. Now, Jackson was a local rapper who investigators say kept 12 girls and women in a house here in Houston. And they say he trafficked them for sex. Now, according to the judge, Jackson gave the ladies drugs and used threats and beatings to force them to comply with him. Now, one of Jackson's victims, according to court records, was 15-year-old Kristen Galvan. She went missing from her home in spring, and her loved ones have been searching for her ever since.

She still hasn't been found. Kayla Monti joining us, Houston journalist. What can you tell me about this guy, Jackson? Jackson is not, unfortunately unfortunately an uncommon story. As you've heard Robin say, this is a very common MO of this sort of ringleader who's got the power and is part of this machine. Jackson's mother was involved. Jackson pleaded that he, you know, life was hard for him. He didn't mean to cause all this, this you know he tried to sort of play a pity card once it got down to the 11th hour um but it's just you know you just struggle to to think about the

girls in that house and i think it's very telling could he tell us anything about where is kristin no and his i believe his father said if we knew we would tell you but tell you, but take that for what it's worth. And it says a lot that Kristen had all that money on her when she was found the first time and rescued the first time. $4,000 can get you out of town, but it shows you just how powerful individuals like this become, that Kristen felt watched. It felt like she couldn't leave, felt like the danger was right over her shoulder. As you heard Robin say, she was paranoid. So you've got this young man who is choosing to use his life for this purpose, and that's not uncommon. And the cycle of this system that pulls in individuals and makes them part of these gangs and part of this system, I mean, it's horrifying to see just how many young lives are being ruined

and just how many young people are participating in this at a young age. This is not some guy who'd been around for decades and learned how to do this. He was young. His mother was involved, so he was being influenced into it. It's horrifying.

And yeah, he was trying to be a rapper at the same time, thinking he was going to rise up in the music business while he was also on the side, ruining lives and taking part in something like this. It's horrifying. And it is alarming for parents. As a mother of three myself, it scares me. Robin, do you believe in your heart Kristen is still alive? I pray she is. I pray she is because I don't even want to think

about if she's not. When was the last time you heard from her? January 1st of 2020. Kristen would not do this. Kristen would not not leave her brothers. She has two little brothers. Kristen would not, you know, her aunt, it would not, you know, she wouldn't do this to her family, Nancy. Kristen just, and she doesn't have the capabilities to, you know, she was just barely getting her permit. She was in driving school. Do you believe that there have been credible sightings of your daughter? Oh man, there's been so many, Nancy. But they all were not Kristen. We get curly haired leads all the time. They're just not Kristen. The tip line is 936-760-5800. Repeat, 936-760-5800. The search for Kristen goes on. Goodbye, friend.