Mother: Missing 16-Year-Old Daughter Was Victim of Sex-Trafficking

Mother: Missing 16-Year-Old Daughter Was Victim of Sex-Trafficking
Police car. (Nick Starichenko/Shutterstock)
Bowen Xiao
7/3/2018
Updated:
7/3/2018

A 16-year-old victim of sex-trafficking has finally been returned home after she was lured to Chicago by traffickers, her mother said.

The teenager, Armoni Chambers, was declared missing by Milwaukee Police on June 18.

“Please RT/share! MPD is searching for critical missing 16-year-old girl Armoni Chambers. She was last seen near 78th/Van Beck,” the department wrote on Twitter at the time. “She may be in the area of 29th/Lisbon or between the 1700 block and 2100 block of W. Lincoln Ave.”

Chambers’s mother, Bonnie Bruno, and Milwaukee activist Tory Lowe went to Chicago to search for her. Bruno said her daughter was trafficked by several men she had met online.

“The trip to Chicago, someone lured her there from social media, told her they were someone that they weren’t,” Bruno told the Journal Sentinel.

Lowe, a well-known activist with over 50,000 followers on Facebook, often posts about missing people and is estimated to have helped find about 130.

Just days after the pair’s trip, activists got a tip about a disturbing video posted on Facebook showing Chambers being assaulted by a man. In the footage, the teenage girl seemed to be under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Chicago police are investigating the video.

During the next few days after the video was found, Chambers’s family members used every lead they could find to track down the missing teen. Chambers was later found by local activists before being taken to a hospital where she was reunited with her mother.

She had been missing for around one month.

“Her entire time in Chicago was trauma after trauma after trauma,” Bruno told the newspaper. “She was afraid. She thought she was going to die.”

But now, Bruno said, her daughter is safe at home.

Both Chicago Police and Bonnie Bruno did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bowen Xiao was a New York-based reporter at The Epoch Times. He covers national security, human trafficking and U.S. politics.
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