A man who sexually exploited a teenage girl in the Midwest U.S has now been sentenced to six to eight years in prison.
Hope for Justice investigators played a key part in bringing this sentence about, collecting and analysing evidence for several weeks to locate the girl, who had run away from her foster family.
This case began in summer 2025, when our Iowa team carried out human trafficking awareness training for a group of foster carers. After the session, two foster parents asked our investigators for help to find the girl, who they suspected had been groomed and possibly exploited.
Our team set to work. The evidence they identified suggested the girl had been groomed online and then picked up by a man. Our investigators were able to identify that the girl was in another state, 12 hours away. They notified and then worked closely with law enforcement to locate the girl and bring her to safety.
Mark Herbst, Hope for Justice’s Senior Investigator in Iowa, said: “We are glad to see that justice has been achieved in this case, which shows the enormous value of delivering our trafficking awareness courses in the community. It provides people with an opportunity to learn and identify the red flags of trafficking and exploitation, which in this particular case, ultimately led to a teenage girl being brought to safety and her exploiter to justice.”
