Yeah, about her…

Remember this “white” girl?

Yeah, a blog reader contacted the NCMEC about this and she’s black.

Now they’re going to have to correct their little boo-boo that has filtered down to multiple other databases.

Garbage in, garbage out.

Awesome Indianapolis Star series on human trafficking

I just wanted to give a shout-out to a wonderful ten-part series exploring human trafficking around the world that the Indianapolis Star did early this year. Here’s all ten parts in order:

• Who buys a trafficked child for sex? Otherwise ordinary men.
• ‘The smile on our face is fake’: Shattering the Lolita fantasy
• The sex trafficking victim who needs training wheels
• Boys — the silent victims of sex trafficking
• ‘It lights up the brain like crack’: Why men buy sex
• These are the ‘choices’ that lead girls into sex work
• Where sex trafficking and toxic masculinity collide*
• Inside a Mumbai brothel, with a 5-year-old boy
• ‘The police harassed me enough to save my life’

*A Latin American follower on Facebook tells me that, contrary to the information in that part of the series, prostitution isn’t legal in Bolivia, merely tolerated. She referred me to this Spanish language article about Bolivian sex workers organizing and campaigning to legalize sex work so it can be regulated and they can get protection under the law.

This was his life

Irven Thomas Kuykendall disappeared three and a half years ago at the age of 79. In spite of his age he had a LinkedIn, and the details of his accomplishments, as told by Kuykendall himself, are touching:

When I went into the ophans home, 1-3-1942, I wasn’t made to go to school.. I had rather helped with the care of the livestock, cows, horses, mules, hogs goats, chickens. All except the horses and mules, were slaughted for food. Left there in 1-31-1953. Went into the Army. In those years, a person only had to be in excellent [health] and make a score of 31 on the entrance test. Today, a person has to be in excellent health and a high school graduate. I stayed in the Militery, intil 12-8-61. In 1986, while I was a patient at the V A Hospital, I took the test for GED and passed it on 2nd try.

R.I.P. Irven, wherever you are.

[EDIT: Kuykendall was also active on Ancestry’s message boards.]

Shaking my head…

Remember my entry of June 6? Yeah, it just happened again.

The NCMEC says yet another young girl has been missing for over two years and it turns out she got found quite a long time ago, something the NCMEC itself is aware of, so…

It makes me wonder how many OTHER kids on their site were actually recovered a long time ago.

Ima have to write them a letter or something because this is just stupid.

Pride Month: Katelin Akens

In honor of Pride Month I’m featuring a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer missing person every day for the month of June. Today’s case is Katelin Michelle Akens, a nineteen-year-old who disappeared from Springfield, Virginia on December 5, 2015.

She was supposed to take a plane to Arizona that day, where she would live with her girlfriend and go to cosmetology school, but she never made her flight and her luggage was found in a ditch.

The police seem to be focusing on Katelin’s stepfather as a suspect; her suitcase was found just a few miles from his home, and he was the person who supposedly gave her a ride that day.