By Caitlyn Nix and Kameron Court
Paula Boudreaux likes to know where her children are at any given time. To ensure this, she has installed trackers on their cell phones.
A private investigator in the Dallas-Fort Worth area who has handled about a dozen missing children cases, Boudreaux is all too well aware that “people are bought and sold every day.”
“A lot of the cases I work on involve three things: sex, money and drugs,” Boudreaux said.
Add social media, and it may be the cocktail parents’ worst nightmares are made of. In online interactions, human traffickers can easily pretend to be someone else, said Boudreaux, who has dealt mostly with runaway cases.
In the U.S. in 2014, 466,949 children were reported missing, according to an FBI report.
Missing TTU student Gordon Fang-Wong was reunited with his family earlier this year. Missing poster taken from Hong Wong’s (father of Fang-Wong) public Facebook page.
Of these cases, 84 percent were estimated to involve endangered runaways, meaning they left home voluntarily, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. One in six endangered runaways is considered a likely victim of human trafficking.
The National Human Trafficking Resource Center reports 330 human trafficking cases in Texas so far this year, making it second only to California within the total volume of cases in the U.S. Most often, trafficking is for the purposes of sexual exploitation, but there is also labor trafficking.
Dianne Taylor, social services director for Lubbock’s Salvation Army said that if the organization were to encounter an endangered runaway, it would immediately contact Child Protective Services.
A luring process often precedes a child’s disappearance.
Kim Stark, executive director of the nonprofit Voice of Hope in Lubbock, which shelters survivors of sexual abuse and sex trafficking, said she has never seen a case where someone was randomly snatched.
“We see the trafficker lure them in on social media and ask to meet them by sneaking out or running away,” Stark said. “Then they get them once they’re already a runaway.”
Voice of Hope in Lubbock does not publicize its location for safety reasons. Photo from the Voice of Hope website.
Voice of Hope handled 366 cases of sexual abuse or sex trafficking in 2014. Most trafficking cases involve runaway children, Stark said. Traffickers typically snatch them within the first 48 hours after children leave home by disguising themselves as someone who wants to help them.
The Texas Missing Persons Clearinghouse maintains a public website allowing anyone to search the list of not only missing and unidentified persons but also of known “abductors” and “companions.”
Denton County Sheriff William B. Travis, a father of two, said he always reminds parents to be parents by being fully involved and aware of what is happening in their child’s life.
“When we get a missing person’s case, we answer the call right away, but it raises the stakes when it’s a child,” Travis said, adding that his office follows the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure for these cases.
Mark ‘Anthony’ Ysasaga went missing on June 12, 2012. The Hub@TTU reported that murder charges were filed this spring.
J Hollinshead, owner of Elite Investigations in Lubbock and its lead investigator, agreed that parents can prevent disappearance by being vigilant about their children’s activities.
“Bug their phones and computers,” Hollinshead said. “There is software out there to do that so you can monitor who they’re talking to. That’s how a lot of them will get lured away. One day they’re playing a game online, the next they’re off meeting this person who is not that person.”
Hollinshead also advises parents to watch what they post about their child on social media. Once traffickers know where you live and what the child looks like, they can easily figure out where your child goes to school and follow them around from there.
Hollinshead also suggests that parents advise kids not talk to strangers, unless they use an agreed-upon code word.
“When my boys were younger, if somebody said, ‘Your mom and dad told me to come pick you up’ — great, they’d ask, ‘What’s the code word?’” Hollinshead said. “If they didn’t know it, they knew to run the other way.”
Allison Terry/The Hub@TTU
For law enforcement agencies, the gold standard in investigating missing children’s cases is to initiate a collaborative effort.
David Parker, a captain at the Texas Tech University Police Department said he has not dealt with one of these cases personally, but if it arose, the TTUPD would collaborate with the city’s police department, the sheriff’s office, the state Department of Public Safety, the FBI and other law enforcement partners.
The goal would be “to facilitate a comprehensive investigation,” Parker said.
Boudreaux said she recommends hiring a private investigator for missing people cases because it helps collaboration with law enforcement.
The sooner the better, she said, because as time goes on, the trail becomes colder and it is more difficult to find answers.
“It’s an emotional thing,” Boudreaux said. “When they’re close to their children, it’s harder for the parent to think clearly.”
But maintaining hope is important.
“Every day, there are frustrations and things you have to jump over, but the whole idea is the focus of bringing somebody home,” Boudreaux said. “Every day is a new day, and you go back and hit it again.”
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Thank you for your article. If the predators tempt children using Social Media, yet you can track their activities and conversations with a cell phone, can you do an article on “How you are doomed if you do – and – doomed if you don’t buy a cell phone for elementary school aged children.” Madison has a cell phone on her Christmas list. She says her fellow students in 2nd grade have them. By the way, a fellow co-worker’s child knew the young 6th grade girl who fought a predator by using techniques she learned in her Self-defense class and got away. I was told hit punched her in the face but because she was trained to take the blows, she kept fighting him – punched him back in the face – and would not stop fighting him. She was very fortunate. It could have turned out differently, but didn’t. Thanks again for the great article!