The discrepancy between her Mom saying she didn’t hear from Tavia on Dec 31st, but her missing date on Jan 26th, is suspect. I don’t believe the Mom is being untruthful. I suspect since Tavia was a prior runaway, and eventually returned home, that her Moms report was not taken seriously. After 26 days, maybe LE finally took the missing child report seriously.
It sure sounds like Tavia was being trafficked, if she was being groomed and plied with drugs by older men. Nowadays, this is easily recognized but in the mid 1980s, there wasn’t a great awareness in the general population.
If she was trafficked and unable to escape, she could still be involved in prostitution, unable to break away. Mentally she could be so “beat down” by the verbal abuse and lies, maybe that her family didn’t care, doesn’t want her, etc.