ARTICLE #149) Mother's Day Sadness on Someone Knows Me

Mother's Day Sadness
Link to story on Someone Knows Me: http://beaconhell.com/b/blog/?p=1208#more-1208
Mother's Day - Sunday, May 10, 2009

Mother’s Day is supposed to be a time for joy and happiness: a day devoted to mothers everywhere. It is a day that sons and daughters let their mothers know how much they truly appreciate them and the sacrifices they have made to insure that their children were happy and safe.

This year, and for the past four Mother’s Day, Glendene Grant has celebrated this day minus one child. Glendene has been forced to celebrate her daughter, Jessie’s birthdays without her. Jessie is missing. She disappeared without a trace from Las Vegas three years ago on March 28, 2006. Glendene, nor has anyone else heard from Jessie since.

Glendene later found out that her daughter was forced into moving to the United States and working for an escort service operated by Peter Todd, a Jamaican citizen. Jessie was said to have been engaged to Peter Todd. Glendene believes that Jessie would not just stop communicating with her family unless something were terribly wrong. And something is terribly, terribly wrong. Glendene believes with all of her heart that Jessie has been taken underground and is a victim of human trafficking.

Before I ever knew of Jessie Foster, I had NO clue about the severity of human trafficking worldwide. Sure, I had heard things, but really didn’t put much thought into actually how bad the problem is. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” as:

(a) sex trafficking in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person is induced to perform such an act has not attained 18 years of age; or (b) the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.

It is not just adults that are trafficked for sex or labor. UNICEF reports that every year over one million children are forced into the sex slave industry or into slave labor. Those numbers are heartbreaking! Human trafficking affects every country in our universe. It exploits innocent people, and violates every fundamental human right that a person may have. Human trafficking occurs GLOBALLY (http://www.humantrafficking.org/uploads/publications/2007_TIP_Report.pdf). “Vietnamese—They Don’t Run Away!—International Marriage Specialist” proclaims the billboard on a South Korean roadside. Tours are booked for South Korean men to go to Vietnam, Cambodia or Mongolia to purchase a bride. It is estimated that 14,500 to 17,500 people, primarily women and children, are trafficked to the U.S. annually. Modern day slavery is the second largest and fastest criminal industry in the world! How can this be? The Polaris Project (http://www.polarisproject.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=86) reports that “every year traffickers generate billions of dollars in profits at the expense of victimizing millions of people around the world.” Sex trafficking is one of the most lucrative crimes with regard to the illegal trade in people. I just cannot fathom some of the numbers. We are a modern society, and I don’t understand how this could still be happening. I asked Glendene if she would write something about her daughter, Jessie. She has made finding her daughter her fulltime job. I commend her for how much time she puts into getting information out there. That is how Jessie will be found - by sharing information and keeping her story and photos out there.

My name is Glendene Grant. I am the mother of 4 daughters, 1 granddaughter and 1 grandson. Sounds like it should be a perfect life and it would be if my 2nd oldest daughter, Jessica Edith Louise Foster were not missing. My daughter, Jessie is an international endangered missing person but even worse, she is probably a human trafficking victim.

On March 29, 2006 my 21-year-old daughter went missing and we have not heard from her since. We are from Canada and she went missing from her home in Las Vegas, USA.

After she went missing we hired a PI in Las Vegas who gave us some very bad news. He found out that Jessie had been beaten so badly she had to be hospitalized, she had been forced to work at an escort agency and she had even been arrested WITHOUT TELLING A SINGLE PERSON.

We since then found out that Jessie was taken to the USA and forced into everything that has happened to her, she is listed as an international endangered missing person and a possible victim of a human trafficking ring. It is believed that Jessie was taken away, taken underground, because she was planning to come home.

On March 28, 2006, Jessie (who’s 25th birthday is May 27th) talked to her older sister Crystal (now 26) on the phone and text messaged with her over a dozen times about their stepsister Jodie & Michael’s upcoming wedding. The wedding was going to be in Mexico, but the reception was going to be in Calgary, Alberta, where the girls dad Dwight Foster, stepmom Tracy & Jodie live (they now have a daughter & Crystal & Jessie’s other stepsister, Alisha lives in Ontario, Canada with her husband Reg and children). They ended the last call with “I’ll talk to you tomorrow”.

No one we know of has ever heard from Jessie since then. It is like she simply dropped off the face of the earth. But she didn’t. Jessie was not just beaten by a man who was originally thought to be her fiance, but his ex-wife also threatened her. There are witnesses to Jessie have been cut with a knife on her hand by the ex and for some reason the police have never questioned her about it.

We have got Jessie’s case quite a bit of media attention, it was on Geraldo at Large on April 24, 2006; the Maury Povich show on October 11, 2006; the Montel Williams show on May 24, 2007 (this one they took me to his studio); the Montel Williams show on July 8, 2008 (this one they sent the producer and cameramen to our home for an update for one of his final shows); a full page article was in the National Enquirer magazine in August 2008; her story was told on America’s Most Wanted (November 15, 2008 - link to page http://www.amw.com/missing_persons/brief.cfm?id=60803); E! Entertainment was at our home in March to film part of their documentary “Young Beautiful & Vanished” to air on August 28, 2009; there have been hundreds of newspaper articles, radio & TV news interviews, internet radio & posts all over (pretty well every time I find a missing persons site, I post Jessie on it) and her case has brought attention to our country on the subject of human trafficking.

The RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and Crime Stoppers have got together to educate our country on the crime of human trafficking.

AND, Jessie’s case is going to our Nation’s Capital in a bid to get a National DNA Database activated. I have been communicating with the Executive Director for the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime in Ottawa, CANADA and they are taking the submission in this week!! Jessie’s case is making a HUGE difference in many things - I guess the 2nd best thing, next to my daughter’s return.

We have many sites set up, here are just a few – there are tons more and you can Google her name to see how much is out there on her case.

WEBSITE: http://jessiefoster.ca/ - check it out

FORUM: http://findjessie.com/ - sign up and post

BLOG: http://jessiefoster.blogspot.com/ - sign up to follow blog

TWITTER: http://twitter.com/MissingJessie - sign up for my tweets

MY SPACE: http://www.myspace.com/jessiesmomglendene

NOW PUBLIC: http://my.nowpublic.com/jessiesmomglendene

FACEBOOK: search for Jessie Foster or Glendene Grant (the reason for that is our accounts are constantly being disabled there, so I have had to set up over a dozen of them).

Wow, there is just so much to say; yet I have already said so much. Please help us spread the word about Jessie’s case. Her poster is available to print and there are thousands of pictures if you do a Google search [Results 1 - 20 of about 3,300 (0.18 seconds)].

Sincerely, Jessie’s mom Glendene.

jessiesmom@jessiefoster.ca or glendene@telus.net

If that didn’t make you sad, then this video message to Jessie from her mother will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb_GX7C5_5s&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Esomeoneknowsme%2Ecom%2Fblog%2F%3Fp%3D4&feature=player_embedded

Hug your children and hold them tight. There are terrible people out there who don’t care that mothers go to bed crying for their lost sons and daughters. I ask that everyone say a prayer tonight that all of the missing children and adults can find the light that guides them home.