Potential Human Trafficking Recruitment Spotted in Area

I hate when I see these stories going around Facebook, especially when they're local. Now, added to all of the other things you have to be worried about, there are now a group of people trying to recruit people for human trafficking.

My cousin first posted something on Facebook about being approached by two women at my local supermarket with her young daughter. She tried to get them to leave, but they were persistent, until she raised their voice at them. Apparently, she wasn't alone. They're approaching women all over the Capital Region! Now, there's another encounter being shared on Facebook that happened at a local mall just a few days ago.

According to a post by Madison Johnson on Facebook, she was approached outside of a Capital Region mall on August 8th around 9-10PM by a few women. One of the women asked her "Have you ever heard of GOD THE MOTHER?" She said that she looked up "God the Mother" and found information about them being a human trafficking recruitment group.

With a bit of research, I found out that these girls are from the World Mission Society Church of God and have been fighting human trafficking rumors for a few years now. To their credit, a few police departments have done research and could find no evidence of human trafficking by this group. Ex-members have mentioned that this group is dangerous and could be described as a cult and they force members to do not-so-great things, but have not mentioned anything about human trafficking.

That doesn't mean that we're safe, though. Johnson later edited her Facebook post and said: "I’m not saying that this Korean church group has anything to do with human trafficking its the fact that they (human traffickers) are portraying themselves to be a part of it when they have nothing to do with this church group at all." So, the group itself may have been cleared of human trafficking claims but note that people may be pretending to be a part of this religious sect and using that to get woman into trafficking.

All of these accusations are (thankfully) just alleged at this point but overall, please, just be careful. You know this but, especially women in this case, don't go with anyone you don't know, always travel in groups, and be aware of these women seeking out people all over the Capital Region.