Imagine going on vacation and “seeing” your missing daughter around every turn and in every teen girl’s face, imagine avoiding particular aisles at the grocery store because housed within the coolers was your daughter’s favorite snack, hot pockets. Can you imagine the agony of not knowing if your child was alive or dead, or if she was being misused and abused, and then living in that reality for over two years? This horror is the reality that Ebby Steppach’s mom lives with every day after her beloved daughter went missing from a West Little Rock park in 2015.  

Parents Must be Their Child’s Advocates

One lesson that Ebby’s family has learned throughout their nightmarish ordeal is that parents must be their child’s advocates. Without their efforts, and their constant force pushing, law enforcement municipalities are simply overwhelmed and understaffed to do the work necessary to solve these immensely complicated human trafficking cases. 

One organization aside from Saved in America that has provided help to Ebby’s family is the Morgan Nick Foundation headed up by Colleen Nick. Colleen said the following about the importance of a family advocating for their missing child:

“If you have a family who just sits at home, that case may just sit there as well. Law enforcement has a thousand other things to do. If a parent is out there pushing that envelope and demanding those resources and trying hard to work in conjunction with law enforcement, a lot more will be done.” 

Joseph Travers Brought in To Help

Saved in America Joseph Travers was sought after by Ebby’s father. Travers explains that cases like this are extremely hard to crack because traffickers are not lone-wolf operators. Instead, they have ties to complex networks that are successfully run by gangs, dealing in human flesh as their lucrative, highly mobile commodity. He goes on to explain:

“All pimps are gang bangers, whether they’re from black gangs, Hispanic gangs or white gangs, they just call it differently. Black gangs will still refer to themselves as pimps: the Hispanic and white gangs who traffic girls call themselves ‘protectors.” 

Travers further explains how gangs operate through recruiters who befriend their victims and hook them on drugs in many cases. The recruiting process is mostly done in schools, either junior or high schools. This is the reality of human trafficking in America and why victims like Ebby are becoming statistics every day. When they seemingly “fly away.”