Carlee Russell: anti-trafficking advocate casts doubt on theory that sex traffickers use toddlers to lure and abduct women

• Alabama police say Carlee Russell disappeared after calling 911 about a toddler on an interstate.
• Experts reject speculation that the toddler was a "lure" sex traffickers used to abduct her.

Carlee Russell, 25, called 911 on Thursday night from the shoulder of an Alabama interstate, telling police she'd seen a little boy — a toddler in a diaper — walking along the highway.

Moments later, while on the phone with a family friend, Russell was heard asking, "Are you alright?" She screamed into her cell phone, Russell's mother told local media. Then, she vanished.

It was a captivating national missing person story, culminating with Russell's yet-explained reappearance Saturday night on her own doorstep, just south of Birmingham.

Her boyfriend said on Instagram that she'd been kidnapped, and "literally fighting for her life," for two days.

Now — as Russell maintains her silence and her family asks for privacy— the internet wants to know: Did ruthless sex traffickers use a helpless toddler to "lure" an unsuspecting woman?

Probably not, one anti-trafficking organization says. That's just not how traffickers work.

"As far as we are aware, this is not a tactic that traffickers use," said Sabrina Thulander, communications director for Polaris, the nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline.

Russell's parents, too, told a local radio station the toddler may have been used as bait to lure her from the car. If that did happen, it would run contrary to how traffickers almost always operate in the US, Thulander said.

It's a common myth, Thulander said, that trafficking often involves kidnapping or physical force. The so-called "luring" of kind-hearted women is another fictitious trafficking trope, she added.

Two years ago, a TikTok video claimed that car seats were being left in public places in North Carolina, as a ploy to lure and abduct — and then traffic — women. The video was viewed more than 13 million times and shared on other social media platforms.

"These kind of rumors spread on social media quite a lot," Thulander said.

But only about 6 percent of the human trafficking victims who've contacted the hotline since 2007 say they were victims of abduction, she said.

Traffickers don't like to abduct their victims for good reason: doing so attracts attention, she said, "which is exactly not the point."

And they don't abduct because often it doesn't work. An abducted victim will keep trying to escape, she said.

Sex traffickers play a longer game, preferring to win control over their victims through trickery and manipulation rather than through upfront force — though threats are often used to keep the victim under control, Thulander said.

"Far more common ways that traffickers use to recruit is that it's a family member," she said. "You have a lifelong tie to them, and they will exploit that."

"Another is through an intimate or romantic partner who's exploiting a vulnerability — a need that you have," she added. "For example, if you are homeless. If you need food and don't have money to buy it."

Runaway teens and members of the LGBTQ community can have these kind of exploitable vulnerabilities. Drugs, too, can play a role, either as a lure or a way to maintain control control.

A legitimate-seeming job posting — a promising a modeling career or a temporary visa for an agricultural or other low-paying job — is another time-tested lure used by traffickers, Thulander said.

"Especially in the COVID and post-COVID world, a rising concern is recruitment over social media," she said. "It's a very easy way for a trafficker to start a relationship with someone."

A predator can scan social media profiles for the vulnerabilities of prospective victims, she said, offering housing to someone who has moved around a lot, for example.

Trafficking victims are found in legal and illegal industries, the Department of Justice notes online, including in child care, elder care, the drug trade, massage parlors, nail salons, restaurants, hotels, factories, and farms.

"Abduction is not completely unheard of," Thulander said. "But it's very unlikely."

Meanwhile, police in Hoover, Alabama, where Russell lives, say they have received no reports of a missing toddler from that location besides Russell's own report Thursday night.

Russell's mother and boyfriend didn't immediately return Insider's messages seeking comment.

On Monday, AL.com reported that more than $60,000 raised in Crime Stoppers reward money for Russell's safe return was being returned to donors.