Carla, a single mother juggling two jobs in the service industry, faces a heart-wrenching ordeal: her daughter, Anna, vanished the day after her 18th birthday. Despite desperate calls to multiple police departments and even the FBI, Carla has encountered frustrating roadblocks, prompting her to ask, “How do I get a militia together to get my daughter out of the place she’s in?”
A Talented Soul With a Tumultuous Past
Anna, Carla’s elder daughter, shines with artistic talent. Starting at 14, she channeled her creativity into the furry community, crafting elaborate animal costumes and building a sizable online following through platforms like X, TikTok, and Instagram. Notably, these platforms cater to various communities including furries, anime enthusiasts, LGBT individuals, and transgender people.Despite her talent, Anna’s childhood held darker chapters. Homeschooled and sheltered, she faced bullying and social isolation from non-homeschooled children in a church group, where she was teased and called a boy. When the children played house, other girls played the roles of mom, daughter, and sister, but Anna was forced to play the role of family dog if she wanted to participate.
Carla pointed out that Anna was only 6 or 7 years old at the time, and the bullying must have had some deep-down effect on her psyche.
Additionally, Carla revealed disturbing experiences, including exposure to pornography at a church and a near assault. Later, Carla discovered that one of the youth leaders of the church was a transgender man. Carla was so devastated by what had happened in the church groups that she pulled Anna out of the church and ultimately distanced herself from organized religion.
A Pivotal Convention and Lingering Trauma
In late 2021, a local anime/furry convention marked a turning point for the family. There, Anna connected with several individuals, inviting them home for a sleepover. The next morning, one of her friends was throwing up, something Carla attributed to food poisoning. A year later, a harrowing truth emerged: the friend’s illness stemmed from a sexual assault Anna had attempted to prevent.
Anna revealed to Carla that the friend had tried to assault her sexually, something she narrowly prevented by hitting the friend in the stomach.
“I did not want you to know. It’s a shame. It’s very degrading. I was afraid [so] I blocked it out,” Anna explained. “You know, Mom, I wanted to kill myself.”
Carla later learned that all of the friends that Anna brought home that night were transgender. Deeply shaken and burdened by shame, Anna had kept the incident hidden.
The revelation of the assault and its aftermath—depression and suicidal thoughts—painted a complex picture of Anna’s struggles. Later that year, Anna also faced anxiety about a potential lawsuit related to her costume business. She had received sizable deposits for costumes, but after a car accident left her with a head injury, was unable to fill the orders.
A Baffling Disappearance
Anna’s decision to remain within the furry community and her online relationships with transgender individuals deepened Carla’s concerns. She urged her daughter to reconsider, wondering if the community provided solace and acceptance Anna craved due to the lack of a father figure in her life, or if something more sinister was at play.The day after Anna’s 18th birthday, a chilling emptiness greeted Carla when she returned from work. Anna, along with her bed, personal belongings, and a curiously large metal cage, were gone. The disappearance, occurring within an hour and a half of Carla’s departure, left her stunned.
“She’s gone. Her bed is gone and her stuff is gone … They took everything. One person alone [could not have done that],” Carla shared, her voice laced with worry. “That’s a mystery [until] today. How? Who moved her?”
The Desperate Search Begins
The disturbing conversation, coupled with her daughter’s sudden disappearance, fueled Carla’s fears. She contacted the police. Her reports of Anna’s abduction, her suicidal tendencies, and her significant debt, were met with chilling indifference. The police, citing Anna’s legal adulthood and perceived autonomy, dismissed her concerns. “She’s an adult,” they stated.Even more frustrating, when the police learned of Carla’s Christian faith, they said that Anna just didn’t share Carla’s values and religious beliefs. “She just doesn’t agree with your conservative values and you just have to let her be. At this moment, you’re becoming a harassing mother.”
The police not only refused to help Carla meet with her daughter, but also warned Carla that she would be arrested if she continued to try to make contact with her.
This dismissive response, amplified by the assumption of religious intolerance, left Carla reeling. Undeterred, she embarked on a relentless solo search, contacting every available resource: local police stations, the FBI, the National Human Trafficking Hotline, and anyone who might offer a glimmer of hope.
“[Finding her] became like a work for me. Although I have a full-time job,” Carla declared, her voice resolute.
A glimmer of hope emerged when a kind officer, delving into police records, revealed a significant detail. Anna, within an hour of vanishing, had contacted police departments in several nearby counties, notifying them that she'd run away from home. That rendered them unable to handle the matter as a missing persons case in the expected event that her mother sought help from them.
A Thwarted Encounter
Two months after Anna’s disappearance, a beacon of hope emerged: a nearby anime convention. Knowing her daughter’s passion for furry culture, Carla clung to the possibility of a reunion. As the convention concluded, she waited, heart pounding, for the familiar face to emerge.“I waited till the very last minute. Everybody came out and I was outside standing. I knew that she was inside. I didn’t want her to feel harassed,” Carla said.
When Anna did appear, accompanied by a group of people, the joy of seeing her was tainted by the change in her daughter’s demeanor. “Shoot, it’s my mom,” Anna said and looked down at the ground.
The way she averted her gaze, the silence when their eyes met, spoke volumes. In that instant, a mother’s intuition knew something was profoundly wrong. Her instinct told her clearly that her daughter’s disappearance had not been a free decision. “She had been taken,” Carla said.
Anna was immediately pushed into a van by the group accompanying her. The group—all of whom seemed to be transgender, according to Carla—appeared to deliberately hem Anna in on all sides, preventing the possibility of escape.
Within minutes, Carla’s phone buzzed with a cryptic email from her daughter’s account. Its menacing tone, accusing her of “harassing him” and vowing she'd “never see him again,” sent chills down her spine. The sender referred to Anna as “he,” a detail that further fueled her fear. This wasn’t Anna’s voice; this was a calculated manipulation.
The contents of the email, which clearly came from the people who had surrounded Anna and pushed her into the vehicle, were perverse and aggressive, Carla said.
Nonetheless, Carla clung to a sliver of hope: the possibility of genuine communication. She yearned for Anna to speak her mind, to express any desire for a new life, anything but silence. But there was only further manipulation—another email, vulgar and uncharacteristic, reinforcing her conviction that someone else was pulling the strings.
“I emailed back … I said this is not my daughter. I did not raise a daughter with this type of language,” Carla described.
Disturbing Clues
Fueled by desperation, Carla embarked on a whirlwind chase, visiting each of Anna’s known friends. But instead of understanding and empathy, she was met with hostility and veiled threats. The families—all except one—warned her away, threatening to report Carla for trespassing and replacing Anna’s name with a jarring “John.”Carla arrived at one house to find someone there, but the occupant wouldn’t open the door. She spoke with a woman neighbor and showed her a picture of her daughter. The woman told her that her daughter lived in the house next door and that they now called her “Raven.”
“I know where she is, but I cannot go get her because I don’t have any law enforcement help,” Carla said.
Standing before the house, a heavy oak door barring access to her flesh and blood, Carla’s heart cracked. The walls of denial and deception felt suffocating.
Haunted by the neighbor’s words, Carla grappled with the disturbing suspicion that her daughter was trapped in a web of human trafficking, potentially drugged and brainwashed.
“She was probably drugged. She was not probably herself. And that’s very sad because that’s how they keep these kids. They give them drugs and they keep them. That’s how the human traffic happens. You know, they keep them under drugs, and they continue to abuse them,” Carla said.
The thought of Anna, her loving child, being turned against her own mother was a crushing blow, the unanswered questions a gaping wound. “It seemed like she hates me now,” Carla choked out tearfully.
Adding to her growing suspicions, Carla discovered a hidden phone that her “groomers,” as Carla called them, had secretly procured for Anna. The phone had been left behind when her daughter left home, smashed. She put it together and recovered some text messages that she described as using threatening language.
The phone had access to Netflix and other online resources. Carla felt that it had been used to infiltrate their family and influence Anna.
And then there were the threats, the phone calls, and the car tailing Carla’s every move.
“I do know that a lot of these groomers/predators pick up the kids to put them into nefarious businesses,” Carla said, with fear and determination battling for dominance in her eyes. She mentioned that Anna’s large social media following, once a source of pride, now loomed as a potential weapon in the hands of her daughter’s captors—particularly because it attracted a large number of minors.
News of Anna’s online activity, whispers of hormone therapy circulating on Instagram, sent another tremor through Carla’s already ravaged soul.
America’s Dark Underbelly
Carla’s search for answers led her to a local anti-trafficking organization, which reinforced her worst fears. The red flags were unmistakable and painted a grim picture of a young person caught in a predatory web. Added to that was the tattoo her daughter had gotten within days of disappearing, despite her lack of ID—possibly the “brand“ of a human trafficker.Now, a dark but coherent picture emerged in her mind: a young woman, already at risk from abuse and suicidal tendencies, groomed by members of a community that may have seemed like a safe and welcoming space to a lonely, suicidal teenager. The threat of being sued for a large debt had given the unknown groomers even more control and allowed them to coerce Anna into running away from home.
Was she being trafficked? Was she being used as a middle-man to attract minors through her large social media following?
Was her daughter drugged? Was she being psychologically manipulated to isolate her from her family? That seemed very probable: Carla had received a graphic and disturbing email revealing that Anna had been told that her family had killed one of her beloved pets.
Complicating the situation was her daughter’s new transgender identity and the “furry” world in which she might be hidden behind a “fursona”—an anthropomorphic persona complete with a new name, species, and possibly a costume.
“This is no joke,” Carla declared, her voice hardened by resolve, “We think we’re safe in America. But people don’t know [the] hubs for human trafficking. That’s the reason why I become active and I’m voicing things out. We need to do something about this!”
The legal system, however, offered little solace. Lawyers, bound by the limitations of existing laws, could offer only platitudes and empty promises. “When the kid turns 18, that’s it,” one said, his words a cold slap in the face, “It’s an adult.” But to Carla, her daughter was still a child, lost in a labyrinth of deceit and exploitation.
The hopelessness fueled a search for alternatives. A desperate suggestion emerged: a militia, a band of ex-military or intelligence operatives, capable of breaching the walls of this insidious underworld and bringing her daughter home. The idea, though unorthodox, resonated with a grim reality. This wasn’t a playground spat, it was a fight for survival against an unseen enemy.
One attorney suggested to Carla: “You need to go rogue. You need to find a militia, maybe an ex-Seal … people that can go inside and bring your daughter out.”
The path ahead is fraught with uncertainty, but to Carla, one thing is clear: she won’t rest until her daughter is safe. She will continue to try to rip the veil of darkness away from America’s hidden underbelly.
