Child sex trafficking and abuse ring uncovered in Bibb County, Ala., leaves community stunned

Bibb County, Ala.
(Wikipedia map)

 

After their county sheriff, Jody Wade, announced his office had uncovered an alleged child sex trafficking ring that included at least 10 children ages 3 to 15 years old, residents of Bibb County, Alabama, were at a loss for what to think or do, so they met at a small Presbyterian church and prayed.

"There were Baptists and Methodists and some who claimed no denomination at all, heads bowed and eyes closed in a rare show of interfaith unity amid criminal allegations considered so evil that some openly wondered if Satan himself had taken up residence here," reports Holly Bailey of The Washington Post.

“We can’t assume that just because we’re in small towns that everything operates like it did in the days of ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’” Robert Turner Jr., the district attorney for Alabama’s 4th Judicial Circuit, which includes Bibb County, told WAKA-TV.

The closely-knit rural county was shocked to hear a child sex trafficking ring 
was operating on the outskirts of town. (Ala. Conservation photo)

At the center of the finding was an isolated, underground storm shelter on the "dusty outskirts of Brent, an adjacent town of about 3,000 people located an hour south of Birmingham," Bailey explains. For at least the last three years, children were taken into the bunker and "allegedly drugged and abused in an operation that included sex trafficking [and] torture."

After the bunker was discovered and one of the defendants agreed to cooperate, "seven people were arrested and charged with a laundry list of crimes, including numerous charges of rape, sexual abuse, trafficking and kidnapping," Bailey reports. "The defendants include the parents of at least four victims."

Wade warned the community that the initial "revelations are probably only 'scratching the surface,' with additional victims and more arrests expected," Bailey writes. He told her, “I know God’s forgiveness is boundless, but if there was a limit to it, I think we reached it.