FAIRLAWN, Ohio — You may have seen similar stories circulating on social media about a mother confronting women at a mall who drugged and were trying to kidnap her daughter.
The Fairlawn Police Department is sending a warning: Be careful what you post.
“She heard it from her husband’s co worker’s friend of a friend and a long list of other people that had told the story and that’s where she got her information,” says Officer Allison Ross.
“If this is a story that maybe got misconstrued along the way from all of the people that told it, we’re doing a disservice to society but also the victims of human trafficking because we’re putting false information out there on what human trafficking is and that’s going to make it more difficult for people to detect something like that.”
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There have been reports of other social media posts circulating naming other shopping centers and cities.
Ross says she was alerted to the Fairlawn post Monday night and began digging.
“No incidents that were reported (over the weekend) that even match anything like this and our mall is very good about calling us about any activity going on.”
She says traffickers are looking for victims who are vulnerable.
“While this is a way that someone can go into human trafficking, statistics and facts show that there’s certain risk factors that these trafficking victims have, be that the substance abuse, past sexual, physical, emotional abuse, being a runaway as a juvenile or truancy from school,” Ross explains.
“All these things combined create these vulnerabilities these traffickers exploit and that’s what they’re looking for.”
Police are urging you to call them first to ask if a situation is true before posting potentially false information online.
“What they don’t realize is, again, if they heard it from someone and someone else and someone else, if there’s no facts behind it, be careful what you post because now we’re giving people a false sense of reality,” she says.