MOMS OF THE MISSING-Steffen Hou

it's so scared. It's a little kid. When police arrived, they were met by a horrific sight. The girl was naked and had been positioned in such a way that detectives believes the murderer had seen his kill as some kind of a trophy, as if he were showing off his work. The little kid was Samantha Runyon, a five year old girl who had been abducted while playing in her parents' garden the day before. Samantha is just one

of too many American kids who disappear. Almost half a million children are reported missing every year, and all across America, parents are searching for their missing children, or, if the worst case scenarios come to pass, the person who killed them. Mums of the Missing investigates ten abduction cases through personal

and heartbreaking interviews with the victims. It describes how parents maintain their hopes of one day finding their children, some of whom were taken by a stranger, a family member, or human traffickers, and turs tell what it's like to be held captive. Mums of the Missing explores the principal types of adductions and not of least importance, who's most likely to become a victim of the epidemic of missing children. Finally,

the book describes how abductions can be prevented. The book that we're featuring this evening is Mums of the Missing, Living the Nightmare with my special guest journalist and author Stefan Howe. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for greenness interview.

human trafficking back then. Though it's you know, though it's only twenty years has passed, but twenty years ago it was something quite new, and there were these small blobs, these you know, unconfirmed stories, even within the European Union as an organization saying we believe that thousands and thousands of illegal immigrants are about to be trafficked into Europe from the Middle East, but also from a country like China.

And I read a report that was authored by the European Union and it clearly stated that this is what we believe, not necessarily that this is what we know. So I decided to go to Serbia to actually take a look with my own eyes, and it was very clear that in a certain part of Belgrade there was thousands of China, these illegal immigrants, waiting to be passed on further into Europe. And I went to a certain

mall where they had these small Chinese shops. All the I wouldn't say shop owners, that would be incorrect, but all the people worked. And I went there to investigate and to interview some of them, and it was very obvious that they were just waiting to be passed on. And as I was walking around in the mall around noon,

the mall was crowded with people. In all of a sudden, I realized within a split second that a man came from behind and he got hold of me in like a chocold, and he pressed a gun against the timber of my head and forced me out of the mall. There were plenty of witnesses there, and no one did anything as he took me away from from the mall

and down a dirt road. In this area that was like just being rebuilt after the Civil War and so on, it seemed very deserted, despite the fact that there were thousands of people in the area waiting to be trafficked, and he took me down the road and when we finally got to some workshaps he stopped and in a very direct way, he had commanded that I would stop my inquiries or these human traffickers, they would stop them for me, so to speak, you know, not to be

It couldn't be misunderstood in any way. If I was not leaving, they were going to put a bullet to my head. At least that was what the message she was trying to convey, and it really did so to speak a number of me on me having this experience right away, as he grabbed hold of me and pressed his gun against my head, I had this debt fear and I felt so extremely alone. I've never felt so lone in my life before and never after. But I just needed someone there next to me. It could have

been anyone. I just needed someone there. And it was because I realized that if I was going to live five minutes from that moment, it only depended on the kindness or willingness of this human trafficker. And it was in many ways extremely scaring realizing how you can lose control over your own life within seconds if there's just a guy or just a person in front of you with a gun, then in most situations you would lose your ability to defend yourself, and that feeling of being alone,

and this did fear. It stuck with me many many years afterwards. But when that was also the creation of the reason why I decided to write this book. It had something to do with the fact that previous to my experience in Belgrade, I had covered two abduction cases in Demark for a daily newspaper. One of the cases was a ten year old girl who was taken in

broad daylight from a beach. Her mom went swimming, and while she was swimming, you know, not far away from her daughter and where she could probably even keep an eye on her daughter, and she let down guards for probably just you know, half a minute, and this half minute was enough for a guide to grab hold of the ten year old daughter and take off with her. He took her to a wood where he raped this

poor girl and he choked her afford. His law enforcement believed that the only reason why he let her be, why he left her in the woods afterwards, was because he probably thought that she was already dead. And I also investigated and wrote about another. It was a fifteen year old girl who had been taken from the streets as well, and she had been held hostage for a few days in a rural area, and for some reason, the guy who grabbed her, he let her go and it led to his Both we the mean of the crime.

I stood in the wood looking at the place this girl was raped and choked. I went to the house where this fifteen year old girl had been held captive, and I looked inside the windows of where she had been the prisoner of evil. And I remember, standing at both sides, I had this you know, chilling feeling, or this scary feeling actually down my spine because it becomes so realistic and something that you would normally only read about in fiction books or in true crime books or

watching the movie. And all of a sudden, it became so real to me that even kids can become victims of something that even the biggest, baddest grown men would

fear becoming victims of. And as I had my own experience in Belgrade, feeling alone, I could not help back then, but also afterwards, for years and years and years to come help, thinking about how alone these two poor girls must have felt the moment that a stranger came and took them away from their parents and so on, and unfortunately it happens to way too many kids, not only in the States but around the world. And the thoughts that I had had about this loneliness they must all feel,

and how scared they might have to be. I had to look into that by talking to some of the people who have actually experienced being abducted, but also talking to the left behinds, to the parents, to the relatives and so on. And that was the reason why I decided to write Moments of the Missing.

but it's so profoundly demonstrates this. There's a girl named Alicia and if I mispronounced Kozakowitch from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, doctor January first, two thousand and two, and her mother is named Mary. Tell us about Alicia because you say that miracles rarely ever happen, but in this book you provide a couple of those. Let's tell our audience about Alicia.

is online predators. She was a thirteen year old girl who in the beginning of the New Millennium, she started chatting like many kids that did back then, and they went into these chat force on the internet that was familiar to them and so unfamiliar to their parents, meaning that their parents had no possibilities of actually protecting their kids about the dangers that the internet represented to kids

back then. And now today we know a bit more about online danger than we did just back in two thousand and one when she started chatting and was taken by a online predator, but she believed actually that the person on the other side of the computer was a thirteen year old girl just like herself, and this person other young adults and kids on the internet, and you know, she talked about what school life was like, they exchanged school photos, they talked about fashion and so on, you know,

like thirteen year olds do. And they even talked about what was happening with the entering puberty and all the curious curiosity that comes with that. But in fact, she

was not chatting with a teenager. She realized that when this person she'd been chatting with for a long time invited her out of her parents' house just to come out for a brief hello, just so they could meet face to face after having been after been chatting online for months, it turned out to be a thirty eight year old man who grabbed her foster in her car in his car and took off from Pennsylvania and drove off to Virginia, where she was chained in a basement.

She was raped, she was tortured, and partner my friend. But this sick animal, he was so keen on his new trophy that he had taken in Pittsburgh that he had to brag about it. So while raping her, he actually live streamed it to a forum of other sick individuals who got off on watching child horn and so on.

And one of these viewers, a man in Florida. He actually afterwards became so nervous about what he had seen, perhaps not with the hum being done to the kid, but with the fact that if he'd been a viewer, if he'd been a witness, he might be an accomplished as well. So he called FBI and he gave up the username and the name of this chat room that these guys bragged about their trophies. And and with the help of ya who FBI was able to track down his IP address and and and who was actually the

man behind the profile master of enslaved teenage girls. I believe that was one of his many profile names. And they raided his house in Virginia, and they did that in the afternoon, late afternoon, And when they did, they found a thirteen year old kid that was scared to death, not only because in all of a sudden you have FBI agents coming through the front door, but when this guy, Scott left the house in the morning, he conveyed a

message to Alisha A grew some message. She said that he was becoming too fond of her, and therefore they would have to go for a drive when he came back from work. And though she was only thirteen years old, she decoded that message right away that this grown man was falling in love with her or was being too keen on having her in as a hostage in the basement,

and eventually that will create problems for him. So he had to get rid of these problems in the afternoon, and she imagined how he would come back and bring her out to perhaps the woods and killing her. But she was rescued last minute by the FBI, and her case became one of the cases that involved online predators for the first time in the US, and there's been

a lot to learn from that case. Afterwards, you could detect patterns of these online predators and then naturally study how they think and how they act and how they laud these poor girls and boys in in the worst case scenario, not only abuse them but also kill them. And we all know that online danger should they represents one of the greatest dangers to our kids, because kids, as it should be in many ways, they naively believe that if you say your thirteen year old schoolgirl interested

in descendance, movies and so on like you are. Then you feel that you have appear on the other side and not a potential danger to your own life. So that's why I decided to start the book with her chapter. I wanted to know to shed light on one of these new dangers, if I can put it that way. But also because to me it has been so important that you and I as onlookers bypasses people who have never been in this situation can only imagine what it's like.

I have wanted to give us much information about what is actually like to be a victim of an abduction, so we can not understand fully, but you know, hopefully understand a bit more than our imagination left us with in the first place. So in order to understand the following cases in the book, I wanted to give an idea about what goes through the mind of a child when being abducted. How does this child try to survive?

How does this child try to maintain hope? And you know, it's so brutal because all she was left with Alicia as she was chained to the flow of a dungeon in a basement, that was hoping that her parents would come and save her, because you know, that's the point you're at when you're a kid. When you're a child, you pray that your parents will come and rescue you. Grown ups they would hopefully or not hopefully, they will

probably be praying that law enforcement will come. But you know, it even shows so much more to me how cruel these crimes against kids are because kids, when they become the victims, they haven't even realized the possibility of becoming.

had no relationship with computers and meeting anyone online. But you also talk about afterwards, it's very important this story that some people were questioning either her parents' supervision or also what she was doing a thirteen year old talking to an older man. So people didn't understand grooming at that time at all. Now we understand, we've heard the term.

It's also a very good example of how this person groomed this young girl picked the vulnerable person you talked about Alicia being maybe not top of her class or the most popular girl, and he fed into that. And also, as you say, the most important thing is for this predator to gain this child's trust.

nick cleft your own man. And when you meet someone face to face in the street, you know if things are right or wrong. But as a teenager or doesn't even have to be as a teenager. Also when you're twenty, when you're thirty, and you're forty, you just don't know what's on the other end of the computer in another household than yours. And that's what's really scary about online danger and grooming. And in my opinion, there's only one way to protect our kids against this, and that's by

talking to them about it. And before we can talk about it, we have to educate ourselves, for instance, through a book like this or many others, what grooming is about, What warning signs should we be looking for? How should we guide our kids so they know what to look for themselves without you know, naturally scaring them from also being a part of life in twenty nineteen, which to not only teenagers but by all of us, is an online world. But what we do we look for and

it goes in many cases involving abductions. Not only that relates to online predators, but in general, we need to empower and educate our kids to be aware of the danger and if they come to meet the danger, because no one knows who will or when, but if someone would meet this danger, we need to empower the kids to protect themselves by resisting. And these days, you know, the online world, the online universe is represents a huge

danger to these kids. So that's why I've been so focused on also portraying this kind of day in the book.

on the streets. And they've been going through the court system trying to force Affords Hiss to redo their decision of releasing him into a safe house in Pittsburgh. And to me, you can always discuss how long a sentence a person should have and if he should do a full sentence, that is one discussion. Another discussion is actually the way we as a society protect the victims afterwards, and at least with the courtesy of informing the victims that a person of such a brutal crime away from

the victim and where the victims' relatives still live. So they've been struggling in an alicious family and not least herself through twenty nineteen. As she says, this month's to being back in what used to be a safe haven to her but was not. But what is now a place that she almost do not dare to go. And I can only imagine what he must feel like for a victim to suddenly stand face to face with his

or her perpetrator unexpected in the street. Imagine what that would do to both your mind and not least physically to your heart.

her hometown because he's there. There's so much wrong about that story, and it's ending.

the perparators have been convicted. And there's a cruesome story in the book, and every time I think about it, you know, it always more or less brings me to tears. Certain parts of this story, which is about a five year old girl. She was sitting in front of her parents' house in the garden playing with a friend when a monster drove by and she grabbed her, uh raped her and and and and molested her and killed her. And she's actually the girl that the introduction you gave

that you read from was is about. But today the perpetrator he's on death row. But as her mom, Samantha's mom Aaron told me, one thing that really disturbs her and really annoys and makes her angry is that once you get the conviction, especially you know with these death row cases, and it's like, we put more focus as a society on the person on death row, because there's something intriguing about what is it like being on death row, what kind of people on death row? What do they

look like on death row? What is it like to be asked for your last meal? And so on. It almost becomes a movie to us, but not to the victims. And Erin once looked on a online site for newspaper and she saw this kind of slight show portraying some of the death row inmates in California, like all focus was suddenly on them. It was on the victims that

they so brutally had raped, tortured, molested, and murdered. And in another case with a young girl, a young student from Tennessee, she was stepped to death through her mom. It really was painful seeing how you know, the killer, if he was gonna go on trial, how he's gonna sit there during in his own but that they had bowed for him so he could look nice during the case while they looked at pictures of her daughter with all the step wounds, where she was portrayed through the

high trial as a bloody victim. Instead of the beautiful girl, the beautiful student college student that she had been just before she was stabbed. And this means that this mom has fought for perpetrators to be presented in court in the prison jumpsuits because to her that's who they are. They are people on trial and not people in a board suit. Nature, you always have to take into consideration

that you're innocent to proven guilty. But I do understand where she comes from and where all the other victims they come from, that we have a way of sensationalizing the perpetrators rather than remembering the victims for the beauty that they posus until it was taken from them.

forever by an incompetent doctor. Doctor Death host and reporter Laura Beale broke the story and is now reporting on this very important story about stem cell therapy and a bad batch that affected patients disastrously. The Bad Batch podcast investigates the multimillion dollar underregulated industry stem cell therapy, an industry that claims to treat pain, autoimmune diseases, infections, and even autism. It's a cautionary tale discussing a very important issue.

I saw the trailer and it's fascinating and hooks you immediately to want to watch more, listen more. Subscribe to Bad Batch on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you're listening now. You can also find a link in the episode notes. Now, Stephen, you offer a particularly horrible story to demonstrate so many things that are evident in this book. And you have a story of a Marietta yeagers and her daughter, Susie, which was seventy years old, seven years old and abducted

by a serial killer. This is important because we're talking about an FBI the very first no profile used for a murder. I imagine you can tell us more about this distinction. This is in nineteen seventy three, Missouri had Headwater State Park in Montana. This is a particularly frightening story sounds like a horror story. Tell us about Heidi and Susie and this dream vacation that her and her parents were on.

someone did. They had just gotten there and the parents they were sleeping in a candle van while the kids were in a tent. And in the middle of the night, Heidi woke up because there was this breeze coming in to the tent. And it's surprised that your sister Susie. And Susie was at the end of the tent at least when they went to sleep, But Haidi realized that they had been caught this hole in the tent and that was where the breeze came from, and Susie was

nowhere to be. Seen, so she rushed to the camber van, woke up her parents, and Marietta she tried to calm her daughter down, because if your daughter comes running at three thirty in the morning, you think she has had a bad nightmare. So she tried to calm her down, and she walked back with her, you know, just a few feet to the tent and saying, listen, your sister's right here. But she wasn't. And naturally, Marietta she thought this is odd, but in the middle of a beautiful,

quiet national park, So what could actually have happened? At least not anything harmful until she found the teddy bear of Susie laying in the grass, and immediately she knew that something had happened. This was in the beginning of the early seventies, no cell phones, no computers, no nothing around. So the husband had to drive to a nearby town where he informed the local sheriff about what had happened, and immediately they launched a search, the biggest search for

a human being in the history of Montana. And today we know there's probably a reason why the search immediately became so at such a large scale as it did, because Susie was unfortunately not the first child that went missing from that area. A few years earlier, boy scout that was out camping with other boy Scouts was taking as well. There were crimes that were prevented, but there were also kids and teenagers that went missing and that

could not be found. Quite early into the investigation of what happened to SUSI, the local law enforcement and FBI got a suspect because when they met these agents for lunch at the local diner, they would always be sitting a young man close to them, listening in on their talks, and you would always approach them asking about how the investigation was going, what law enforcement was, what the agents were thinking about, who might be the perpetrator, and so on.

Probably not because he felt that risk, but because he was curious if he could outsmart law enforcement. And we see that again and again and again. We all know the story about the guy who actually said the fire would be one of the guys in the crowd looking as as the fire department would try to extinguish the fire, because you know, he would be so proud of his work, and the same thing goes with a lot of serial

killers and perpetraders. We know that throughout history and back then they had the hunt that something was wrong with him. They just could not prove it. They did not have the smoking gun on this case, they did not have the body, and they had to let him go this by investigating him. One year after Susie was taken through the minute she was taking the phone rings back home

in Michigan, where Marietta and her family lived. Marietta picked up the phone at three thirty and at night, and on the other end of the line was the abductor. He called to seize her. You know what, Marietta, I have your daughter. Now. She calls me Dad. She's very happy to be with me. Actually right now, she's playing in a room with me. A very smart woman, she knew that she was not going to be terrorized or bullied or past most importantly, tricked in to anything by

this evil person who just called to taunt her. She actually did something that he didn't expect. She said, you know what, I forgive you for what you've done. The only thing that I need to know is if Susie is well, if she's fed, if she's happy, if you're taking good care of her, and you know what erin and I want to go to bed. I pray for you. I pray if you go driving with Susie that you

must be safe, that no harm will occur. And he was so surprised that he would be had the other hand when he called to taunt her, but she actually overcame him with the kindness and forgiveness, and she kept him on the line for more than an hour, long enough for the FBI to actually profile him, mainly based on that conversation and where he gave so many informations that they could lead back to this guy who had been so curious about the investigations in the diner in

the first place. Still nobody no evidence that could put him behind boss. So they convinced, or actually did. It didn't take much convincing Marietta. She flew out to Montana where he had volunteered to meet with Marietta and she said, David, as his name was, I know you did it, Please confess, Please tell where Susi is, Please tell what you've done to her, and so on. Still he wouldn't. He even you know, voluntarily signed up for a polygraph and he

passed without any problems. And later we would find out that The reason why he passed this polygraph was because he was schizophrenic, so while being questioned and asked, you probably didn't know what reality was. But they kept searching, and one day they brought him in for questioning. They

had to let him go. Afterwards, there was an attempt of another abduction, and this group of kids that evaded the adoption abduction attempt, they could actually give quite a good description of the guy who who tried to abduct a kid. And I don't know whether to say funny enough strangely enough, but the guy was wearing the exact same clothes as David had been during an investigation a few hours earlier. So we were dealing with a person who was suspected by police to have abducted a seven

year old kid. He refused, he was released, and right away he drives out trying to take abduct another kid. Imagine how sick such a person is and how you know, untouchable he is when it comes to reasoning and admitting his crimes. So they put him on constant surveillance, but he managed to escape and suddenly Marietta had another phone call, this time from a Salt Lake City youth and it came from a motel a guy pretended to be someone else and David Mainhoff and we never or law enforcement

never found out. But he put a girl on the phone who said, Hi, Mom, this is Susie. Naturally as a mom, as a dad, you would be able to call right away whether it's your daughter or not. And no one knows who that girl on the other uh one certain. When he came back to his house in Manhattan, Montana, law enforcement knew we need to strike now, no matter what.

And when they did, they found remains of another girl that had been missing in the same area not a long time earlier, and it turned out that she had actually been a girl dating the perpetrator. And once they had these remains that they found in his freezer, you know, he had to confess. But the only reason why he confessed was because Marietta, the mother of Susie, out of her good heart, promised him that she would fight through her victim impact for him not to be sentenced to death.

And once she convinced prosecutors that they were to promise not going for the death penalty, he finally confessed to having killed at least four kids in in in the area and before unfortunately he could confess to more killings, he managed to to uh kill himself, to commit suicide in in in the jail cell. But that's another gruesome story. But from that story, from that case, law enforcement learned a lot about how to profile these criminals.

and sixty degrees around these genius crimes. And the most important thing about the book is that I want to express through these cases how the victims are often what we believe to be the most unlikely victim Because who would imagine that a sixteen year old girl stepping off a school boss at free in the afternoon in spring Texas would never come home to see her parents again At free old'clock in the afternoon, stepping off a school bus.

We're not talking about us portrayed in many movies late at night, walking down a dirt road, walking to the car in a parking lot at the mall, where there's only one count one person walking. No, this was a sixteen year old girl who's on her way home from high school. Another of the cases in the book is about an eighteen year old girl who was actually taken

on graduation night. And it's just to show all parents that this could happen to anyone, and also when it seems most unlikely, and the most unlikely time for many people, for many parents, and for many of the victims, will be broad daylight, when kids are hitting either to school or back home from school. That's when a lot of these strange abductions they actually happen. It's not late at

night when it's dark. And my wish by writing this book is that people they will parents, that they will actually pick up the book in order to protect the kids. That's why a huge part of the book is actually given guidance on how to protect your kid your children against online danger. What do you do if kids singing? More concept, who do you seek help? Where do you seek help? What do you do if your child is gone? Where can you find support? What do you do if

you can't find your kid in your own house? Do you go through the laundry? Do you call law for enforcement? What do you tell and so on? I try to give guidance because you know, these abductions, as I said, can happen to anyone at any time, and therefore we

need to be prepared for the worst case scenario. And an important part of being prepared for the worst case scenario is educating our kids about what to do if they meet a man passing by in a car saying have you or asking have you seen my little dog? Or could you actually tell me how to get to the mall? Have you seen my kid? Would you please come into my car and help look them? Because you know, no adult with a good heart and with the mind and forcing the right place would ever ask a kid

to step into a car. We all right know as an adult you don't do that. You might be needing help, but then you go and you ask another adult. So if you, as a kid, experienced a guy stopping in his car or a woman stopping in her car next to you, what do you do well? You never approach the car if the person comes out and grabs you. We normally teach our kids not to scream, not to hit another person, but in these types of cases, the

most important thing is actually if he grabs her. If he grabs you or she grabs you, is to scream, is to kick, is to fight for your life. That is how these auction cases or attended abductions are normally evaded. But we need to teach our kids that it is actually okay to defend yourself by kicking, by hitting when it comes to this type of crimes. And not only that, how do you as a kid actually react physically, How do you hit, how do you kick? And so on?

And I think that it's okay that we teach our kids how to protect themselves when it comes to these awful crimes, because that's what's actually the difference between life or death in many of these cases. Thank god, these stranger abductions, they are am the least likely to happen normally.

Those are the ones that we hear about. Right now, we're missing some really young kids at the age of three and five in America that has been taken from a birthday party and a playground, and right now as we speak, no one knows what has happened to them, only that they have been taken by strangers, and we can only hope and pray that they will come back alive. But normally, in ninety nine percent of all cases abductor kids,

they do return home. The ones that are most unlikely to return home are the ones grabbed by strangers, and that's why they make media headlines. And naturally we need to, you know, put awareness on this, but we all need to put attention and awareness on family abduction cases. As another fact, hundreds of thousands of American kids are every year becoming the victims of abduction, kids of family abductions. And then many people they ask, how bad can that

actually be? Still there with a dad or there with a mom, But that is brutal as well, not going too fine to these types of cases. But you know, if a mom, and normally it's most likely that it's actually a woman, that's the perpetrate of these cases, in

almost sixty percent of all these family abduction cases. But if you go as a there was a reason in the first place why you didn't get custody, it might be because you're not able to take care of the kid, if you're suffering from some kind of abuse, if you've been abusive to the kids, or if you're actually before committing the abduction, harming your child in another way. So for to say, this child is going to go and

stay with the father or with the mother. So in all of a sudden, the purple the parent that is not supposed to have the kid has the kid. And if you have a kid that you're not supposed to, well, how you're going to send them to school, how you actually make sure that they're provided with the medical care that they deserve. On the other hand, you have to hide your kids. It means that some of these kids

they never see daylight. They're only being taken outside at night night where it's most more unlikely that they will be discovered. There are examples of kids becoming victims of family abductions that are actually portrayed as a girl, though they were born and raised in the first place as a boy. They try to change the gender of the

kid in order to hide it from authorities. They don't get medical, social care, they don't go to schools, and even in many cases, these kids are killed in high speed car chases, and so an abduction case that involves a family member is serious business and seriously harmful to the child as well. And if you take off with your child, how you're actually going to go to work, how you're actually going to maintain a life, whether the

child does not live up grow up in poverty. So there are so many harmful side effects to the child also when it comes to family abductions, So I want to shed light on that as well. And then also as we started out talking about, I really want to shed light on a huge problem that we're facing all around the world today, that is human trafficking. And when we talk about human trafficking, we're not talking about that is another side of human trafficking, but it doesn't involve

a immigrant, illegal immigrant being trafficked into America. Human trafficking in this aspect is extortion of the child, where it's either forced into you know, manual labor that no one wished to do, but more in one and more cases also where these poor kids and young adults and naturally also grown ups are forced into prostitution. There's a case that there are two cases in my book about human trafficking. One of them is about a twenty one year old

girl from Hannibal, Missouri. She had a six month old child back home and this was the first night after giving birth that she was actually going to go out and have a few drinks with their friends, and on her way home, something happened. The only thing we know is that in November this year, she's been gone for ten years. There has been numerous reports, and law enforcement also believes that she has been forced into a prostitution

now in Peoria in Illinois. So one thing that I would like to explain briefly to people, because many people are unaware to how these things they actually happen and why it is so difficult for the victims to come back home once they have been abducted. The first thing that the human traffickers would do to a abducted child, an abducted adult, and so on would be getting them

addicted to drugs. They would feed them severely, They would rape them again and again and again, because then they destroy their view of ki the you, your addiction to drugs, to heroin, so on, would be stronger than your desire to be back home with your family. I think we can all easily imagine how Heroin, as an example, can overpower anything within you. But if you're also beaten daily, if you're tortured, and if you're rate, you might start thinking, as a victim, that this is the life I am

meant to have? And how would I ever dare to run away? Though I walk the streets on my own trying to get clients to provide me with the money that I have to give back to my human traffickers on my pimp, how can I be so afraid of them that I home runoff?

of putting their power and evilness on the victim. So you start to think, I have to protect not only myself but my family in a worst case scenario, my kids against this human trafficker by obeying the orders that forgive me. And you know, there's not one single state in America where child sex trafficking has not been reported. There's not one single country in the world where human trafficking has not been reported. And let's go back to

where we started. What happened after I was taken in Belgrad was naturally I reported the incident to the local law enforcement. I contacted the Danish embassy in Belgrade and they said, we need to get you out of here right away. But I was young, I was stupid looking back, and also eager on getting my journalistic career going by actually uncovering something that many people at that time did not know anything about in Europe or probably around the world,

this new phenomenon, this new crime called human trafficking. So I went on to Bosnia Herzegovina and I checked into a disgusting hostel in Sarajevo. And in this hostel I met both victims of human trafficking and the human traffickers. And I remember how I said with this group of young men from mainly a, Syria and Turkey waiting to being trafficked into Europe in order to make more money they could send home to their families living in policy.

I remember that, you know, they were not frilled with life, but they would sing, they would tell jokes. Eventually they would give a smile till the second human traffickers showed up, and you could see which have never seen in the same way before or ever since, how scared they were of other people. They knew that their lives were totally in the hands of the human traffickers. And if the human traffickers decided to take them out back, putting a bullet to the head, they would and they would not

bling one single time before doing so. And these illegal immigrants who would be missing them, It's not like, you know, it was the son living down the street that everyone would go looking for, because in the first place, no one was supposed to know that he was in that hostel. So I've seen how scared these victims are of the human traffickers. So I can easily understand a sixteen year old or twenty one year old young American girl who was on her way home from high school would be

of these human traffickers. And then just you know, you started out also by mentioning, you know, parts of them. Of the statistic. My book is full of statistics. I tried to put in the statistic in a good way because you know, I want people to not understand the statistics of these different kinds of abduction cases. I want to portray the problem by giving it a human face

through you know, these stories. But one thing that I have to give you a bit of statistic about is actually this human trafficking, because it is believed that today human trafficking is the type of crime that is most beneficial through criminal organizations because you see, you can only sell drugs once, and you can only sell or at least often a gone once, whereas with a human being, you can sell that person again and again and again.

And today it's estimated that every year human traffickers they earned profits of roughly one hundred and fifty billion dollars a year worldwide from human trafficking. Just put that into perspective. In twenty sixteen, Microsoft, Wells, Fargo, Sangsung, Samsung, JP, Morgan, and Apple that they had an annual net profit of

one hundred and thirty six billion dollars combined. We all know these huge companies that are influential all over the world, but combined their annual net profit in twenty and sixteen was way lower, way lower than it was estimated. The earnings human traffickers taken from this new kind of crime. And as you know, I've walked in concerning another book that I put out in Denmark in twenty and fifteen, I walked into Brothels on Lexington Avenue, on Madison Avenue

in New York. I walked into Brothels in La I walked into Brothels in South Beach, Miami, and the girls working there, mainly naturally Asian girls, they were being human trafficked as well. Many of them. They had dreamed of coming to America as the legal immigrants working there, shipping money back home to the families who often lived in poverty in mainly China, but the way of paying off a debt, they didn't know that they actually had was

by working at these massage parlors. So you know, who doesn't know Lexington Avenue, Park Avenue in New York, But how many actually knows what's going on in some of these parlors. And it's not only in America, it's all over the world. You'll find these people being trafficked. And it's so strange or not strange. It's so difficult for

law enforcement actually to deal with these cases. First and foremost, because the victims often try to hide their own destiny, and therefore they're so scared of the human traffickers that they don't tell the truth about what is the crimes being committed to them. And secondly, this is also a new kind of crime that I believe, though law enforcement will never admit it, but that law enforcement is actually

finding their way around dealing with time it evolves. It has changed from being illegal immigrants forced in to labor into sex trafficking and so on, to now being American boys, American girls being taken on their way home from school.

And as I said at one point, I really wish that if you care about your child, you pick up this book and you educate yourself about the danger, not that you should live in fear, but you actually should face reality and the new types of crimes that represent the danger to our kids today, because that's the only way we can protect our kids. The worst thing we

can do is close our eyes. And unfortunately the book and and and and and I'm very grateful form it has had really great reviews so far, but I have also experienced reviewers writing me back saying thank you so much for sending the book. This is an important topic, and I wish that I could review your book, but I don't think that I'll be able to get through it. And as you'll see really read in many of the

reviews that's online on good Reads and on Amazon. On the book's page on Amazon Amazon, you read the review saying it was so difficult getting through this book because you know, reality is much more cruel than I expected it to be, and that it's even you know, at times portrayed in movies. But I'm glad that I read the book and reviewed it, and it should be mandatory

reading for all parents caring about the kids. And I accept that it is, you know, so difficult, not least to parents reading about reality of the danger that you know that our kids are faced with today in the worst case scenario. But what is even more or the worst thing that we can do to our kids is actually closing our eyes and denying it. No matter how tough it is getting through these cases.

met this victim through another predator online. So this evil is these people are friends and are willing to cooperate with each other, and they understand why the child is vulnerable and what to do with that vulnerability, and they have enough time to groom them. So it's incredibly important for people to find out through these very illustrative and demonstrative stories how it can happen so easily to a

great family. On New Year's Eve and the kid slips out, family didn't even know she slipped out of the house.

thirty eight year old predator. And as she said that these sick persons, they passed these kids around online to each other as trophies, and they brag about it. And that was also why he in the first place, the abductor of Elisha, I think because he wanted to brag about his trophy, that what he had said that he would be doing getting you know, his teenage slave was no longer something that the other ones online might be downing with capable of. Now he had his trophy to prove.

And you know, naturally, I'm not saying by any means that parents they should sit back now after listening to the show here or after reading the book living in fear of the kids being taken. You know, it's a human thing that we need and should believe in the best in each other. And you know, wake up in the morning and believe that it's going to be a

beautiful day. And it remains a beautiful day when we go to bed, but it's more likely to be if we prepare ourselves for the worst as good as we now can, and not only ourselves as parents, but you know, also prepare our children for it without scaring them naturally as well. But it is a fact of life that cruelty exists, and it could be committed against anyone. So you know, let's be aware of that fact and by our knowledge and awareness, be more likely to evade it

or you know, not becoming victims of it. And again what I've learned, because you know, with my experience, I have a stake in this matter. And that's also why probably I'm personally i would say offended or I'm at least touched by when reviewers say that it's too hard for them to review the book. To some extent, I accept that. But there's a necessity for a book like this, and other books like this, other documentaries like this, there's a necessity for show like your stand putting focus on

this right now, this minute. But I can't help. Also, you know, I sent the book to one of the largest newspapers in America, and I spoke to the book editor there. I've spoken to to this editor previously on other occasions, and I said, you know, I'm putting out

this book. I would really hope on behalf of the kids, not least the kids that are still missing and that are portrayed in the book, that you would put focus on this book, write a few lines about it, letting your hundreds of thousands of readers know about that this book exists and what it can actually bring them in

order to protect the kids. And she said, you know, we don't portray the kind of books only if you can reveal in one of the cases that there's something new, like law enforcement didn't do the job right, or if you can reveal where the remains of one of the kids missing is actually ad or if someone would and you know, and I'm just like, it really went to my heart, because you know, I think that if that is how media sees this problem, then it's extremely unfair

to children in general, and not least to the kids that are still missing. And as I mentioned a bit earlier, we have right now kids three five years old and nobody knows where they are. We just know that a girl was taking from a park in New Jersey a month ago roughly, and this little girl no one has heard from her since. Sorry Dan, sorry for you know, putting this on you. But if you'd take a minute to dwell on this together with your listeners, can you

imagine where that girl might be right now? Can you imagine what this five year old girl might be going through right now, hopefully, and let's pray that she's still alive at another playground somewhere, you know, And this is reality of life. And in my opinion, there's nothing you know, more horrible than crime is being committed then against children, you know, at least in many ways as an old adult, we shouldn't, you know, have been drinking that much in

the bar. We should have gone home, or we should have this, or we should have that, or we would you know, have had our cell phones have been able to call, we would have perhaps had the love of getting a punish in these kids, they don't have a cell phone. Often they don't have the physical capability of reacting. And you know what, the worst thing, Peraps says, they don't even know that this cruelty exists. So, in my opinion, That's why there's nothing more important than protecting our kids.

Because our kids, they didn't ask for it. When I wan't to Belgrade in Serbia and I stuck my nose in the business of human traffickers some way or another, I kind of asked for it. At least I knew that there was a possibility of this happening, but I believed in the greater good of doing so. But the girls that I had been investigating as a journalist a year before, the ten year old girl who was saying and the fifteen year old girl, they had no stake in the fate that they suffered. So that is why

I'm gonna say we can close our eyes. The only way of helping our kids, keeping them safe and protecting them is accepting on their behalf that this cruelty exists and that we need to shoulder them from it.

And I'm gonna say in the book, I portray cases where the kids have been missing for years and years and years and they haven't been found yet. So let's this still alive. But read this book, read this case because perhaps you actually realize that it's you that knows something that can bring them back home.