A concerned father took to TikTok to alert viewers about a weird detail he found on his daughter’s car that he believes could be a sign of sex trafficking.
The man, who is on TikTok as @boogeyman0302 posted a clip captioned “Pay attention” which racked up over 26 million views.
@boogeyman0302♬ original sound – Boogeyman0302
“So listen, I don’t care if you agree with a lot of my videos or not. But I definitely want you to pay attention to this one,” he says as he walks around his daughter’s car.
He explains that his daughter works in the city until 3 AM and then drives home. He reveals that he discovered a zip tie fastened to the handle of her rear car door the past three mornings.
“I didn’t know what it was, I just kept cutting it off,” he says, showing viewers the zip tie.
“I asked her, I said, ‘What’s the deal with the zip tie being on your back passenger handle every morning? For the past three mornings, I’ve cut it off.”
“She said, ‘I don’t know what in the world I was talking about’,” he said.
Then the man had a discussion with his brother who works in law enforcement. That’s when he realized the ties could mean something sinister.
“I mentioned the (zip ties) and he got extremely silent,” he describes before mentioning that his brother told him to cut the ties off immediately.
“(He said) sex traffickers are people that basically steal vulnerable women put that on a car somewhere where it’s not easily noticeable for them. But other people who do the stealing know exactly what they mean.”
Basically, it shows abductors that the person is alone and an easy target.
Zip ties have previously been linked to human trafficking. In 2018, in San Angelo, Texas, posts about black zip ties and sex trafficking went viral. However, when no cases of human trafficking were reported in the area, the posts were written off as ‘viral scarelore.’
The Polaris Project, a non-profit dedicated to fighting sex and labor trafficking, stated that human trafficking rarely starts with a case of abduction. Rather, the person is typically groomed by someone they are in a trusting relationship with who eventually exploits the relationship.
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However, every case is different. Boogeyman0302 remains vigilant about his daughter’s safety. “If you’ve got teenage girls that are out late at night that are driving, check their car every morning. Look for a black zip tie or anything that stands out, and immediately remove it,” he says in closing.
