Sherri Papini Latest Kidnapping Update: Sex Trafficking Statistics And Reports In California Suggest Widespread Crisis

The ongoing case involving the three-week disappearance and reappearance of California mom Sherri Papini has opened questions surrounding the possibility of sex trafficking in Redding, California. Over the span of a couple months, three women were reported to have “vanished” in the area, according to media reports this week.

Papini, 34, made headlines when she was reported missing by her husband after going for a jog near Redding on Nov. 2, 2016. After getting picked up weeks later by a motorist on a highway in Yolo County, authorities began to investigate the motive of Papini’s alleged kidnappers. Investigators have considered sex trafficking as one potential motive. Since then, the news of three missing women, all of whom went missing in from nearby areas in Northern California over the past couple months, has made headlines.

Stacey Smart, 52, was last seen Oct. 12; Amy Snow, 25, was reported missing as of Dec. 1, and Jessica Roggenkamp, 44, was also reported missing Dec. 12, the Trinity Journal reported Dec. 28. All women were said to have been in Trinity County, about 50 miles outside of Redding. The women were still missing at the beginning of January.

Sex trafficking reports in Shasta County (where Redding is the county seat) are not a new occurrence. A man and woman, Melvin Baldwin-Green and Tanisha Williams, both from Redding, California, were convicted of “multiple sex-trafficking, pimping, kidnapping and pandering charges” in early February, the Redding Record Searchlight reported last year.

The pair were first arrested in March 2014 after being suspected of abducting and pimping a 16-year-old girl. Six additional victims were lated added to the couple’s case, the Record Searchlight reported. All victims were from California’s Sacramento area.

So far this year, more than 5,748 cases of human trafficking in the U.S. were reported, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline. California currently ranks as the state with the largest number of reported human trafficking cases, with 1,012, thus far.