What Officers Need to Understand

Blaine Phillips, a Special Agent with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, makes Jessika’s story a focal point of his AATTAP-NCJTC training. His core message: “There’s no such thing as a safe runaway. It’s a missing, endangered child.” Children run toward a groomer or away from abuse; either way, they are in danger the moment they leave. He frames the myth that victims “choose” prostitution just as directly: “It’s not that they’re not a child sex trafficking victim; it’s that we’re a decade late in getting to them.”

Fellow AATTAP-NCJTC instructor Heidi Chance—a former Phoenix police officer who spent more than 16 years investigating sex trafficking and has interviewed an estimated 1,000 or more victims—notes that Phoenix did not begin training officers on human trafficking until 2014. “In 1998, when I was in the police academy, I never had a class on human trafficking,” Chance says. “So you have a whole bunch of cops out there who have never learned about any of this, and the pimps are bragging that we don’t see them.”

During her classes she often plays a video of a trafficker doing exactly that to make the point hit home. Both instructors stress the psychology traffickers exploit. Many children they target come from foster care, neglect, or abuse; the trafficker may be the first person who ever showed them consistent affection—manufactured, yes, but real to the child experiencing it.

Chance puts the psychology of control starkly: “A pimp is the most reliable person you’ll ever meet. If they say they’re going to beat you up, you can count on that. That’s why victims are trapped.”

What Right Looks Like

The break from trafficking came not from a dramatic moment of disclosure but from a quiet act of desperation. Alone for a moment with Baruti’s computer, Jessika logged into her mother’s email account and deleted everything—then composed one message:

“It’s me. I love you. You’re never going to want me back. Don’t worry about me anymore.”

Her parents brought that draft to a detective. The IP address was traced to Backpage.com postings. Meanwhile a Bellevue Police Department officer who had encountered Jessika during a shoplifting run-in had quietly been building a case—obtaining warrants, confirming her identity from old Facebook posts, connecting the dots to where Baruti was advertising her online. He reached out to the Seattle Police Department Vice Unit.

Detective Bill Guyer got the call at home, tired after a long day, and by his own admission took it with a bad attitude. What happened next changed everything.

At the hotel, the undercover detective who met Jessika had no shoes on, which was strange enough for her to drop her guard. When they reached the room, he casually opened a drawer. There she could see his badge and gun.

“Jessika, we found you,” he said. She hadn’t heard her real name in months. This startled her, but she fell back into her trained persona. Then more officers arrived—and Guyer walked in.

While wearing lingerie, Jessika was calling Guyer every name she had learned on the street. He moved her handcuffs to the front. He draped his jacket over her shoulders. And once in his vehicle, he asked—asked—before reaching across her to buckle her seatbelt.

“I still remember him making sure I was comfortable—and his simple acts of humanity,” Jessika says. “Like I was a person. Like I was a kid. Like I was fragile.”

She kept throwing insults. He kept his composure—not in an aloof way, but with the quiet confidence of someone who could see past her performance to the child underneath. “At one point I told her, ‘Look, I can’t be all those things you’re calling me,’” Guyer recalls. “‘Pick one or two and stick with them. Otherwise you’re just losing your impact.’”

Talking the Talk

Years after Jessika’s rescue, Guyer came across a line in a business leadership book that stopped him cold: “People respond more to how you feel about them than what you say.” He’s used it ever since, in every trafficking case, in every conversation with younger officers.

His practical guidance: slow down, go at the victim’s pace, and start with basic needs—food, warmth, a jacket—before questions. He describes swinging through a McDonald’s drive-through at midnight, not because it’s ideal, but because something shifts when you sit and eat together. “These girls are not eating well, not sleeping well,” he says. “Start with the necessities. If they’re obstinate, they’re probably tired and cold. Try to go at their pace.”

Guyer remembers that night not as a hero moment but as a reminder of what is possible when an officer decides, even while tired, to actually care. “I’d like to say that I’m that way every day,” he says. “Some days I’m not. Two in the morning, dealing with a ton of things, you just want to go home. Then I wonder why an interview went nowhere. Because they could tell that I wasn’t into it.”

Phillips adds a case study he returns to often in training: a 14-year- old trafficking victim who was the most hostile witness he had ever encountered. With patience and time away from the trafficker’s control, she became one of the best. Her testimony led to 12 felony convictions, including 11 buyers. “Don’t let a rough first encounter define the whole case,” he says. “Get what you can the day of recovery. Then do follow-up interviews.”

Advocates Make an Impact

Recovery, Jessika says, didn’t happen in a single moment. It happened because of people who stayed in the process long after the arrest was made. A victim advocate named Noel—herself a survivor of 15 years of trafficking—gave Jessika something she hadn’t found elsewhere: being understood without judgment.

When Jessika said she’d run again if sent home, Noel listened. Within days she had arranged placement in a group home with other trafficking survivors—a soft landing for someone who had been running at full speed.

Chance points to embedded advocates as one of the most systemic changes law enforcement can make. The Phoenix Police Department now assigns one directly to its Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit. “Even if a victim doesn’t want to talk to law enforcement, the advocate can take them confidentially aside and talk to them about getting resources,” she says. “That is huge.”

The threat landscape keeps shifting. Chance notes the average entry age into sex trafficking has fallen to 13, and she recently helped recover an 11-year-old. Groomers no longer lurk near shelters; they work social media and online gaming platforms. Her book, Talk to Them, was written to bring parents into the conversation before law enforcement ever needs to be.

Be the Difference

Jessika’s trafficker was the first person convicted under Washington state’s commercial sex abuse of a minor statute. He received 26.5 years and was required to register as a sex offender. Jessika testified in two separate trials, helping put away not only him but a man who had posed as a police officer to assault her and others. And in 2018 she became part of the effort to bring down Backpage.com (detailed in the documentary I Am Jane Doe).

She and her mother now consult for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and volunteer with its Team HOPE program, supporting young survivors of trafficking, sexual abuse material, and sextortion. Both are also AATTAP-NCJTC Associates who bring their family’s story to training rooms whenever possible. And by the end of each session, Phillips says, “everyone wants to be Bill [Guyer].” Guyer attended Jessika’s wedding. He is the godfather of her eldest daughter. “You can be the hero in someone’s story, even through what can seem like a small action,” Phillips tells officers. “See the kid in front of you instead of just another case.”