Surprised and saddened
Yesterday I had a truly bizarre experience. While chatting on the phone, the doorbell rang. I got up to answer and saw an older gentleman at the door. He had our business card in one hand and a badge in the other. I said “I’ll have to call you back.”
He just wanted to ask questions – there were some general ones about our new business, and about our paperwork (oh crap! Did we miss something?) and then the questions got WEIRD.
Turns out he’s a detective in charge of human trafficking cases in this area, and due to some wording on our business cards that refer to “models” red flags were raised and he had come out to investigate. Big WOW.
After being satisfied that our business was legit, and our use of models was for promotional purposes at events (totally fine, he said) he explained that there are some bad scams out here right now, with people claiming to be modeling agencies and instead running an underground you-name-it ring. As I understand it, it involves escort services and the like, and preys on the young/stupid/insecure southern girl, but even more prominently, on the young foreign girl who came here to work and gets trapped.
I’ve never in my life been accused of something so heinous. And while the weirdness of that whole conversation pretty much takes the cake, afterward I was just struck very hard by the grevious fact that he had to ask at all.
Why is this going on in our community?why are we largely unaware of it? What are we (the ambassadors of peace and mercy, the followers of God) doing about it? I’ve been plenty aware of the human trafficking going on globally – Africa, India, Asia…but in Destin? I really didn’t know. And now that I do know, I want something to happen. Something should be done.
I don’t know what – I guess I should start researching that, and start praying for steps of action.
So weird. And so horrible.