Catalyst Ministries works specifically with adult women ages 18 and up. With national news of Gabby Petito coming to light and with Bloomington-Normal’s Jelani Day still missing…the community conversation surrounding the dangers that face missing persons
“My understanding is that in terms of men and boys, that is growing in terms of trafficking. I heard a statistic at a conference this past week where it’s now a third of men and boys are traffic,” said Catalyst Ministries founder Julie Ryan. “Women are the predominant victims still. I would say the abduction, specifically of men and boys, is less common in our country than places like India and Cambodia, where you can be stolen right off the street.”
Ryan said the Gabby Petito case is consistent with a human trafficking.
Ryan said in the U.S. it’s more common for the person to traffic them to have a relationship with them.
“Typically someone posing as a boyfriend or friend, or whatever it might be through Facebook and all kinds of means in terms of how they initially contacted them. They think this is a friend, good guy, boyfriend, and are slowly lured into this relationship that becomes a trafficking situation,” said Ryan.
Ryan said it’s not as common that someone be abducted, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t ever happen.
“In terms of Jelani, I don’t know, but I would say that there are things that make a person much more vulnerable to being trafficked and one is if someone runs away,” said Ryan. “The statistics are that within the 48-hour period they would be contacted by somebody trying to recruit them into a trafficking situation.”
Ryan said it is even more likely for someone who is missing to fall into a trafficked-situation if they have a history themselves of being physically or sexually abused.
In terms of helping them out of that situation, Ryan said in talking with survivors and hearing from people all around the country…they talk about how difficult and life threatening it is to leave this type of situation.
“They are being threatened often and even their family is being threatened. You work with law enforcement and never give up, I think prayer is the most powerful thing,” said Ryan. “PTSD brain is something that a survivor would have, healing is not a slow process after they’ve come back out of it. The wonderful thing is that it’s possible.”
On ISU’s campus there have been students rallying for more awareness regarding women’s safety specifically. Concerned students marched across the quad, responding to reports of a student in a sorority who says she was cornered by two men and nearly kidnapped while walking to her house.
Students say there have been other similar threats, but that authorities aren’t taking the victims seriously.
“The more that individuals are aware of the way that people are recruited and the methods used, I think that would help, and maybe they would be less likely to go down that road. We would love to work with ISU and Wesleyan on that as well as some of the schools,” said Ryan. “The average age that someone enters into this type of situation is 13. We would like to do more raising awareness in the schools out in Bloomington-Normal in junior high schools and high schools.”
Ashlynne Swan contributed to this story