“No. I just got you away from them.” I pulled out my phone. “I’m calling 911.”
“No!” She lunged forward. Tried to grab my phone. “No police!”
“Because they’ll send me back! To the group home! That’s where they took me from! That’s where this started!”
I lowered the phone. “Tell me what happened.”
Her name was Macy. Sixteen years old. Been in foster care since she was eight. Bounced between homes. Last one was a group home in Kansas City. Seventeen girls. Two adults supervising. One of those adults was selling the girls.
“Mrs. Patterson,” Macy said. Her voice was flat. Dead. “She’s been doing it for years. Takes the troublemakers. The ones nobody cares about. The runaways. Sells us to truckers. To men with vans. To whoever has cash.”
“The police—”
“Won’t believe me. I’m a foster kid with a drug problem. She’s a respected child care professional. Who do you think they’ll believe?”
She had a point. I’d seen it before. System protecting its own.
“The tracks on your arms,” I said. “They mentioned that.”
Three days. This sixteen-year-old had been trafficked for three days across multiple states and nobody had noticed.
“You said your mom’s looking for you.”
“I lied. My mom’s dead. OD’d when I was seven. That’s why I went into foster care.”
“Other family?”
“Nobody.”
Of course. That’s how they picked victims. No one to miss them.
I looked at this kid. Sixteen. Addicted. Trafficked. No family. No hope. The system had failed her at every turn.
“Macy Rodriguez.”Continue reading…
