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The girl who helped the convicted felon trap Shauna Newell was very likely a previously trapped girl as well, either forced to help trap new girls or be beaten, or promised to be let go if she brings in a new girl because she's gotten to the end of her usefulness anyway. That the police refuse to help for 72 hours is tragic and very, very wrong - the laws must be changed. Dr. Brodsky says all the time that every minute matters - the girl he just rescued in India who was being sold by her sister had another buyer lined up for the next day if the JOY team didn't come through and the first, and then ongoing, sexual experiences that 12 year old would've had would be brutal, traumatizing, and demoralizing. Not the life an innocent 12 year old, or any child, deserves.Like Newell, many are treated by law enforcement authorities as runaways, said Marc Klaas, who founded the advocacy group KlaasKids after his own 12-year-old daughter was abducted, raped and killed. When they are forced into prostitution, the young people are the ones who are prosecuted, Klaas told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira Thursday in New York.
A typical 16-year-old in a middle-class home in suburban Pensacola, Fla., Newell’s nightmare began innocently enough: A new friend she had met in high school asked her to come to her home for a sleepover. Newell’s mother, Lisa Brant, didn’t like the idea, but after weeks of lobbying by her daughter, Brant met with the girl and the man she said was her father to make sure her daughter would be safe.
But the girl’s “father” was really a convicted felon, and the girl, who had a record of prostitution in Texas, was an accomplice in the abduction. “Her dad took us to this house and said he'd be right back and he left us there,” Newell recounted in a taped interview. “And I asked for some water because I was thirsty. And I drank the water and I blacked out... And I blacked out a few times and I kept coming back to. And I was still being raped every time I woke up.”
[Her mom] called police, but they told her that Newell had probably run away from home, and they wouldn’t be able to treat it as a missing-person case until 72 hours had elapsed.
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RAVEN UPDATE: Raven as of 4/22/2013 has been reunited with her family. Thank you to everyone that helped our family find her. Although Raven remains in Venice, CA; we respect her wishes to remain living in Southern California.
The website is [url=http://www.RavenFurlong.org;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;]http://www.RavenFurlong.org;[/url] the Facebook page name will need to remain the same because we cannot change it to reflect Raven was found since we have over 200 likes (this is a FB issue). This site will be deleted first week in May.
Thank you for your support in keeping her face and case visible! Please remove the flyer and website links from any further PSA’s and/or websites.
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