Armchair14, do you have a link to support that the FBI has dismissed the photo? I haven't heard that.
Also, why do you say there hasn't been a shred of evidence supporting human trafficking in the US? I can think of many articles I've read, both here and on news sites, about women and children who have been forced into prostitution. Child *advertiser censored* is widely available and shared via computer. There have even been cases where children were sold by their own parents for drug money. Or am I misunderstanding what "human trafficking" really means?
Mr. Ed,
Nice to see you again!
In regard to the FBI dismissing the photo and that the girl was estimated to be 15-16 (while Tara Calico was 19 when she went missing), I derived that from this thread; posts #3 and #1 respectively. I have no independent verification as to the FBI having definitely dismissed it or that it was the FBI which estimated the age. The most I can come up with independently is that the FBI could not conclusively determine it was a photo of Tara Calico. Perhaps you might inquire of these posters what their sources are. Perhaps
I should have before repeating these claims as facts and that such was remiss of me.
(The estimated age of the girl is a re-post by the OP from The Doe Network. I don’t know whether that age estimate originated with someone at that organization or whether they got if elsewhere, perhaps from some agency of LE, perhaps the FBI.)
Nevertheless, since the FBI has definitely not confirmed that the photo was of Ms. Calico, there is absolutely no evidence that it had been her beyond a visual close resemblance. As my analysis on this thread indicates, the great bulk of the evidence indicates it was not any sort of abduction photo, but rather was a prank shot. If interested, you can read through my posts in the last few pages. I’m not going to repeat it all now.
In regard to human trafficking, perhaps we are not thinking of the same concept here. Of course there have been many kids, mostly runaways, who have gotten involved with drug and prostitution operations in a particular place, usually large metropolitan areas. These are the sort of youngsters that organizations like Covenant House try to rescue.
What I had in mind was of the type that people like Mrs. Noreen Gosch put forward on her website; bizarre, totally unproven allegations of organized rings abducting kids from their neighborhood environments and offering them as "merchandise" to the rich and powerful around the nation or even world. Some such outrageous and irresponsible allegations have implicated the military, the CIA and august figures like President Bush the Elder in their fanciful scenarios.
(Why don’t we throw in Pope John Paul II, the Reverend Billy Graham and Mother Teresa? It seems the more outrageous the allegation, the more likely many are to credit such.)
The psychological impetus for giving any credence to such absurd theories is simple: People with missing kids (quite understandably) desperately want their kids to have somehow survived. With such imagined conspiratorial organizations, there is at least a command and control structure of evil but rational people, and therefore kids might stand some chance of survival. Facing the thought of one’s kid having been abducted by the stereotypical lone pervert—and the absolutely horrendous statistics associated with such a scenario—is more than such parents can bear. As I said, I fully understand such a psychology and I deeply sympathize.
In regard to child *advertiser censored*, like yourself no doubt (unless you are or once were in LE and have had a legitimate reason for having viewed such), I have never seen films, photos or images of kids involved (willingly or otherwise) in sexual acts or with their private parts exposed. All I know about the subject is what I have read.
It is my understanding that the great bulk of such is of kids from Third (and perhaps now Second—since the fall of the Iron Curtain) World countries, especially (for some reason) Thailand. Any taken of kids from North America and Western Europe I would imagine did not involve abductions, but rather were taken by perverts (or those in it for the money) known to the kids, sometimes perhaps (as you suggest) with the complicity of drug addicted parents desperate for cash for their next fix.