I agree completely. I just can't resist the urge to rant about this language.
She lied* about girls being sex trafficked at least 2 other times that I'm aware of.
I just get caught up in how mind-bogglingly dehumanizing it is to refer to people the same way we refer to a forbidden treat like cocaine.
I know there is a sad world refugees fleeing persecution and whose situation criminals take advantage of. In the book
The Girl with Seven Names the author describes fleeing horrible conditions in North Korea, travelling illegally in China, and facing torture, jail, or death if the Chinese authorities found her and repatriated her to North Korea. She narrowly escapes several criminals trying to take advantage of her misfortune. She was a person seeking freedom and security, not something like cocaine.
Applying the phrase to someone going about daily business in their own neighborhood is just absurd. It sounds like it should be something from ancient times or rural places still run by religious nuts, where women aren't supposed to do anything in life without being escorted by a male family member. When people talk like that, I don't know if it's something they mean it at face value or if it's just a euphemistic way of saying maybe the person got involved with the drug trade or prostitution. It's a euphemism that to me sounds more offensive than saying aloud that they had mental/spiritual trouble and they lost control of their drug use and decided to get involved with prostitution and drug dealers.
From the Disappeared episode and what I read here, it
doesn't sound like that happened to Ali Lowitzer. She may have been troubled and taking risks, but I don't think she was into drug dealing or prostitution. It sounds like a criminal murdered her, possibly because was taking risks like going off alone with people she didn't know well or possibly just from the misfortune crossing paths with a rare evil person.
As much as I rant, I think if it happened to my daughter, I would want a weird explanation over the likely explanation that it was a freak crime. We want horrific events to have complicated and horrific causes. Humans, including me, just hate the notion that random accident or random mutation of our DNA could take everything away.