Who's taken our daughter? 

Clint Van Zandt • Profile • E-mail

Where's Amy?
Twenty-three year old Amy Bradley was last seen by her parents in her room on a cruise ship bound for Curacao. It was the morning of March 24, 1998, and Amy had been up most of the night dancing in the ship's disco. She returned to her room and then went out for a cigarette, never to return. As the ship was close to Curacao and Amy was a strong swimmer, her family thinks it unlikely that she fell overboard and drowned. Two passengers on the ship thought they saw her that morning on one of the ship's elevators, further indicating they last saw her at about 6 a.m. in the company of a musician who played on the ship.

No one saw Amy leave the ship, although a Curacao cab driver would later tell her father that she approached his cab on the morning of her disappearance and said she needed to get to a telephone. Other people have come forward to say that they too had seen Amy, to include a U.S. Navy Petty Officer who said he had seen her in a Curacao brothel and she had asked him for help, even telling him her name. He said he had decided not to report the incident at that time, fearing that he would get into trouble with the Navy for having been in a brothel, and only contacted Amy's family after he had retired and saw her picture, and perhaps information of a reward, in a magazine. The sailor's report has never been substantiated, and the reward of $260,000 remains unclaimed.

There are those, however, who believe that Amy may have been assaulted, murdered, and thrown overboard while still on the cruise ship. This possible explanation for her disappearance is said by some to be the most obvious and, therefore, the most likely explanation for her disappearance. Notwithstanding this alternative explanation to a kidnapping, Amy's parents still keep the emotional porch light turned on at night, hoping beyond hope that their missing daughter will somehow return to them. As a parent I share their hope

  
White Slave trafficking
A common theme that I've noticed in many of the e-mails that I've received after my two recent "Profiler's Perspective" articles concerning the now three-week-old mysterious disappearance of 17-year-old American Natalee Holloway in Aruba is the belief that she might have been kidnapped and sold into white slavery. I admit that I initially dismissed this idea as both far-fetched and highly unlikely. As a former FBI Agent and criminal profiler, I know that most crimes are solved by determining who had the opportunity and the motive to commit the crime, and that the "right answer" is usually the most obvious the most likely one. In the case of Natalee Holloway's disappearance, I continue to agree with her mother in that the three and perhaps now four local men in custody probably know what happened to Natalee, but have so far not told what they know about or what they did to her. Still the potential, no matter how remote, of a white slave kidnapping is something that the authorities must consider, the potential of which they must rule in or rule out by investigation in Aruba and other nearby countries, while they continue to hammer away at the stories of the men currently in custody.

Watch what you drink in clubs
Many news reports and statements from visitors to certain Caribbean island nations have suggested that bartenders or patrons of these bars have been known to use so-called "date rape drugs," e.g., GHB and Rohypnol (roofies), to take advantage of unsuspecting female patrons, with others suggesting that such drugs are used to render specifically targeted women unconscious in order to facilitate their transportation as victims of white slavery kidnappings. The truth of such allegations of drug-induced white slavery are unknown, and the statistics to support this belief as directed against American women in these bars are nonexistent. We note, however, that these drugs are available around the world and have previously been used to gain advantage of otherwise innocent women, although to be fair to the islands, such usage with illicit sexual intent has been reported a number of times in the United States.

How traffickers get their victims
The victims of white slave sex trafficking across the world are usually women and girls, although young boys are also victimized. Depending on the country and the age and sex of the potential victims, there are common methods used to lure them into white slavery, to include 1) being sold or traded by your parents, spouse or boyfriend; 2) being provided with a false promise of employment in another country; 3) traveling in furtherance of a fictitious promise of marriage; and, 4) being kidnapped and carried away by human traffickers. No matter the ploy or method used to get a victim to descend into this kind of living hell, once there they face the prospect of continual rape, beatings, emotional abuse, lack of proper food and medical care, the forced consumption of drugs and alcohol, and other vile punishments. Related physical health issues are as bad if not worse. To survive, a victim must learn to separate her mind from her body, convincing herself that she is not really there as she is continuously victimized. That is probably the only way someone could emotionally survive such a horrific ordeal.

There is a psychological phenomenon known as "identification with the aggressor," one that differs from the "Stockholm Syndrome" that I discussed in a previous article. This is a form of survival behavior in which the victim responds to the threat and fear of injury or death. She is "grateful" not to be severely injured or killed by her captor, and may believe that her captor is the only one that can protect her. Therefore, she does whatever she is told to do in a very compliant manner, perhaps even ignoring the opportunity to escape for fear of losing her captor's protection.