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human trafficking

Woman's experience reminds everyone to lock hotel door.

If you've ever stayed in a hotel, you know there's an additional lock you can latch as an added layer of protection. But sometimes weird things happen that make us rethink the comfort and security many of us take for granted. TikTok user TayBeepBoop had a disturbing experience when a hotel front desk person attempted to enter her room while she was inside. Some readers may find the story to be unsettling but it's a powerful reminder of exactly why situational awareness and caution are so important in today's world.



Tay, obviously frightened, uploaded clips from the event on her TikTok page, which has since garnered 6 million views. In the video, which is mostly the floor, door and bed, you can hear the man outside of her room knocking loudly asking to be let inside.

Tay asks the man repeatedly why he attempted to walk into her room using the hotel key to which the man explains there's a problem with the woman's car. There's only one problem. Tay doesn't own a car and is only in town on business where she did not rent a car to get around town, relying only on other modes of transportation. So, what the heck was the man doing at her door?

@taybeepboop

Replying to @dani klarić this was a really long and hard video to make, it was sort of traumatizing and I’m kind of freaked out about staying anywhere now and I dont leave my house much anymore tbh because I already was dealing with PTSD about my safety. I’m OKAY which is why im able to go through this footage now. I genuinely don’t want anything to do with this hotel, this is a PSA to stay safe and cautious. I don’t want people to go after this worker because I still don’t know what his intentions were and he could have just been trying to do his job

Tay was staying at the hotel alone and made sure to latch the additional lock on her hotel room door, which is the only thing that prevented this hotel staff member from getting into her room. Since the situation was so scary and went on for quite some time according to her video, she called friends on FaceTime to be a witness and help comfort her. Eventually the man leaves after repeated attempts to get the scared woman to open the door and Tay was able to get a male business partner to escort her safely to another hotel.

But the comments were filled with stories from women who have had similar experiences. Many people explained the danger of admitting you're alone upon check-in, while other commenters sympathized with the woman not thinking to call the police right away. With people traveling more as COVID-19 restrictions subside, there could be a greater chance for things like this happening so it's best to be prepared and err on the side of caution when traveling alone.

Women on the Road has several tips for hotel safety including making sure your door lock works, putting a chair under the handle of the door or buying a rubber door stop. The site also highlights the importance of locking your windows if they open and not opening the door for people you don't know.

Another site geared towards safety is Solo Female Traveler and it recommends getting a floor higher in the hotel to make it more of a hassle for someone from outside to break in. It, too, reiterates the importance of locking the additional lock in the hotel room while you're inside.

While it's statistically unlikely you'll be a victim of a hotel robbery or whatever was happening with Tay, her experience is a reminder to research hotels and practice caution when traveling. Always, always, lock the deadbolt or chain.


This article originally appeared on 09.13.22

Photo by Mahir Uysal on Unsplash

Two years ago, I got off the phone after an interview and cried my eyes out. I'd just spent an hour talking to Tim Ballard, the founder of Operation Underground Railroad, an organization that helps fight child sex trafficking, and I just couldn't take it.

Ballard told me about how the training to go undercover as a child predator nearly broke him. He told me an eerie story of a trafficker who could totally compartmentalize, showing Ballard photos of kids he had for sale, then switching gears to proudly show him a photo of his own daughter on her bicycle, just as any parent would. He told me about how lucrative child trafficking is—how a child can bring in three or four times as much as a female prostitute—and how Americans are the industry's biggest consumers.


But you know what he didn't mention in our hour-long conversation? Pizza, hot dogs, Hollywood elites, or any of the other child sex trafficking conspiracy theories raging around the internet. Not one of them. Not once.

You know who else doesn't mention any of those things? The organizations that have spent years and years battling child sex trafficking while most of us blissfully went along in our daily lives, largely oblivious to it.

No matter our political, religious, or ideological leanings, the unfathomable hideousness of child sex trafficking is something all of us should be able to agree on. But that doesn't make conspiracy theories about pizza parlors and Satanic pedophile rings palatable, or even remotely acceptable.

Did people learn nothing from the man who believed the Pizzagate conspiracy and fired his AR-15 inside of Comet Ping Pong in Washington D.C. because he believed a baseless pedophile ring conspiracy theory involving the pizza parlor?

There are still people who think that Pizzagate thing is real. (For those who have been blissfully spared from that lunacy, you can read about it here.) But that's not even the kookiest thing I've seen lately. There's a veritable laundry list of child sex trafficking posts going around, including:

- Oprah, Tom Hanks, Ellen Degeneres and other "Hollywood elites" have actually been arrested, and the pandemic is all a distraction to cover up the crackdown on these celebrities. (Fact check here. Oh and another one here.)

- Model and wife of John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, is a pedophile because she's tweeted a whole bunch about pizza and because she had a sardonic sense of humor about the sexualization of little kids on the show Toddlers & Tiaras back in 2013. (Fact check here and here.)

- Wayfair—yes, the home goods products store—has coded listings for missing children being sold at exorbitant prices in a child sex trafficking scheme. (No, they don't. Fact check here.)

- Having children wear masks will make it easier for kids to be trafficked because no one can see the expression on the kids' faces or identify them. (As if child traffickers weren't already successfully trafficking kids without masks. Fact check here.)

- There's a concerted effort to make "age fluidity" a thing, and to make pedophilia an accepted sexual orientation. (There is one very small group called NAMBLA, which has been trying to abolish consent laws since the 1970s, but claims that there's some kind of "movement" to normalize pedophilia as a legitimate sexual orientation is actually an effort to harm the LBGTQ+ community. Fact check here.)

- Obama and Clinton are satanic leaders of a global child-sex-trafficking cabal—which includes most Democrats and Hollywood, apparently—who feast on children's adrenal glands in order to increase their power. (Fact check here, although if you seriously need a fact check for this you are already too far gone, my friend. On a related note, this article about the parallels between QAnon and "alternate reality games" is suuuuper fascinating and explains a lot.)

- Obama spent $65,000 on a "hot dog" party, which is code for little boys and pedophilia. (You know what? I'm not even going to fact check this, because come on.)

And that's not even all of them.

Of course, there are some legitimate questions to be asked about how much involvement certain celebrities and politicians, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, had with known pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Having watched a beloved figure like Bill Cosby fall from grace over sexual misconduct, we know what's possible. But none of those Epstein connections are a secret. It's all being reported on in the real news and has been since Epstein started being investigated. (There's also a lot of misinformation about who was involved with Epstein, and to what degree, and in what capacity, and none of these conspiracy theories are helping us get to the truth of the matter.)

The main problem is this: When you conflate the actual issue of child sex trafficking—which is absolutely real and serious and deserves our attention—with totally off-the-wall, debunked conspiracy theories, it causes people to put their energies in the wrong places.

The Polaris Project, a national organization that fights human trafficking, had to release a statement asking people to stop calling about Wayfair because it was overwhelming the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

"While Polaris treats all calls to the Trafficking Hotline seriously, the extreme volume of these contacts has made it more difficult for the Trafficking Hotline to provide support and attention to others who are in need of help," the group said in a July 20 press release. "We strongly encourage everyone to learn more about what human trafficking really looks like in most situations, and about how you can help fight trafficking in your own community."

What it often looks like is a family member trafficking a child, such as Melody Cholish's story she recently shared with us. Sometimes it looks different, and you can find all kinds of stories and information about child trafficking from the many organizations that have worked for years on this issue, including Save the Children, Operation Underground Railroad, the Polaris Project, Love 146, and Stop the Traffik. (Please use those sites for "doing research" instead of Twitter or QAnon or YouTube or memes that come through your feed.)

The other problem is that the issue of child sex trafficking is suddenly being used to deflect from every other important issue, because "Oh yeah? What about CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING???" is a fairly effective deflection. I mean, who doesn't think that child sex trafficking is the absolute worst of the worst things humans do? Black Lives Matter? What about CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING? Horrible pandemic situation due to inept leadership? What about CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING?

I mean, we can care about more than one thing at a time. The question is, why did all these conspiracy theorists not care this much about child sex trafficking until they thought it was "evil liberal elites" doing it? Why was no one calling child sex trafficking a "pandemic" until we were in the middle of an uncontrolled literal pandemic? Why were there no widespread protests against child sex trafficking until there were widespread protests for Black Lives Matter?

As I mentioned, Tim Ballard didn't say a single thing about Hollywood elites or pizza parlor basements or adrenal-sucking rituals or anything of the sort in our hour-long conversation about child sex trafficking. And he's an expert on this topic. He's also a conservative Trump supporter. He's not peddling any of these conspiracies, and neither are any of the legitimate organizations that are working to end child trafficking. Not one.

Either every major organization working to end child sex trafficking is a part of The Big Evil Global Elite Pedo Ring Plot or people who spend too much time on social media are being taken by baseless, politically-driven nonsense that's probably being pumped out of some guy's basement. My money is on the latter.

Stick with the organizations that have been doing this work for decades. Get your information from them. Stop sharing crazy internet conspiracies simply because you want people to know you care about children, or because it justifies your hatred of people you see as your enemies. We can—and must—unite to fight child sex trafficking without resorting to insane, debunked rumors that muddy the waters and distract from the real problem.

I saw this poster today and I was going to just let it go, but then I kept feeling tugged to say something.

Melanie Cholish/Facebook

While this poster is great to bring attention to the issue of child trafficking, it is a "shocking" picture of a young girl tied up. It has that dark gritty feeling. I picture her in a basement tied to a dripping pipe.

While that sounds awful, it's important to know that trafficking children in the US is not all of that. I can't say it never is—I don't know. What I do know is most young trafficked children aren't sitting in a basement tied up. They have families, and someone—usually in their family—is trafficking them.


I'm pretty open about my story. My father trafficked me from the ages of about 5 or 6 until I was a teenager. Knowing this, I can say, I was never once tied up in a dark place such as this picture. It's important for people to educate themselves on what trafficking can really look like.

Many, many times I walked into an amusement parks dressing room—Hershey, Dorney, etc.—with my father, told to wait in the stall, and a few minutes later another man came in acting like he was looking for his daughter. And that easily, a "drop" was made. Out I would walk holding his hand, nothing anyone would think twice about. Usually I'd be given something like an ice cream cone, etc.

And like me, these children are often not treated "badly." I mean, yes, they're treated awfully and violated beyond words. I mean they're are not hit, tied up, or beat up. Most of the time, they're treated with fake kindness (which really fucks up children's trust later on in life). But they're often praised, given treats, and made to feel like what is happening is a good (and normal or because they're special).

How many vacations we went on where I was left for a minute at the pool, until a man came and I left with him for a while. Airports where I was passed over to another man in a crowd, looking like any girl going from her dad or uncle to her dad or uncle. Again, a public drop and nothing suspicious.

Most children trafficked in the US are so conditioned they don't know anything else. It's their normal. I think back as an adult and think, "Why didn't I scream out for help? Make a scene?" But I had to forgive my inner child. There was no reason I knew to scream out for help. I wasn't in danger; this was just my normal life.

I say all of this to simply say, it's really important we bring attention to child trafficking in the US. VERY important. And posters like this can get the conversation going, but we also need to educate people that it doesn't all look like this. I lived in Robesonia, a tiny nothing town. My father was a little league coach. My mother knew and helped some with these happenings; and she was just a stay-at-home, small town mom. These things happen everywhere and can look very normal.

Best thing we can do is talk to children. We don't need to be graphic; but teachers, schools, need to talk to children about things like this in a child-safe way. Assume these children aren't being taken to doctors. Teachers can make a huge difference. Talk to children. Go with your gut. Schools need to not be scared to act on what they feel. Conrad Wesier had a social worker in the elementary school who pulled me out of class on more than one occasion after teachers noticed "things" and it went nowhere. Social services were never notified. And they should have been. Period.

And what you can do is watch. Pay attention. Be mindful. If you're waiting in line at a park, notice who goes in and out with what child. If you see something; speak up. If you're wrong, fine you ruined someone's day, apologize. If you're right, you saved someone's life.

This post originally appeared on Melanie Cholish's Facebook page. It has been edited lightly for publication.

When three young women and a man boarded his flight, Wesley Hirata had a bad feeling.

The seasoned flight attendant, who has been with Hawaiian Airlines for the past 16 years, was concerned when he noticed an older man walking onto the plane with three young women. They didn't seem like they belonged together.

While this usually wouldn't be cause for concern — families come in all different shapes and sizes, after all — Hirata couldn't shake his instincts.


He talked to the group (though what he asked wasn't specified) and still had more questions. So he spoke to his fellow attendants, and they decided to check the manifest. What they found was shocking: All three women were traveling under the same name. One of them, reports stated, was visibly underage.

Hawaiian law enforcement met the plane when it touched down in Honolulu. After questioning, they labeled the situation as human trafficking and referred the case to the FBI. Airline officials and media at the time quickly reported Hirata had uncovered human trafficking for certain.  

As it turned out, the FBI's investigation determined human trafficking had not taken place, but they still praised Hirata's actions.

"We do appreciate Hawaiian Airlines employees for speaking out and saying something and bringing it to our attention," said Jason K. White, spokesman for the Honolulu FBI field office. "We encourage people to remember that if something seems strange or doesn't feel right most times something is wrong, however, that was not the case in this incident."

The FBI eventually confirmed the man was authorized to take the girls on vacation.

Flight attendants are trained to make these kinds of appropriate notifications with a specific aim to curb human trafficking.

In 2015, Congress made it mandatory for flight attendants to be trained in spotting human trafficking. Airline Ambassadors International — a nonprofit made up of airline employees who "travel to make a difference" — holds a yearly seminar on trafficking for flight personnel on an annual basis. And the Association of Flight Attendants, a union with over 50,000 members, has also made stopping the horrible crime of human trafficking an integral part of its mission.

Human trafficking is a global crisis we can all work to end.

According to UNICEF, there are approximately 21 million trafficked people all across the world. 5.5 million of those people are reported to be children. It's not just a crime; it's a business that brings in billions of dollars a year. And that means it's up to all of us to fight to stop it.

So what can you do if you're on a flight and are concerned that someone might be in trouble? "Trust your gut and prior experience [and] report the situation without alarming or confronting the passengers in a suspicious manner," Hirata told KITV 4.

Of course, that doesn't mean you can or should report everything you find suspicious — we've all got to think critically and everyone's got biases — but we should all keep an eye out for signs of trafficking in our communities.

Here's a list of signs to watch out for.

Correction 7/28/2018: A previous version of this story reported Hawaiian law enforcement had confirmed the case as human trafficking, per the airline and on-site media accounts. We have since updated this story to reflect the FBI's announcement.