She has to be. She is living through every mother’s worst nightmare.

Glendene’s second oldest child Jessica Edith Louise Foster has been missing since April of 2006. It’s been more than four and a half years of living hell for her family.

Jessie is a suspected victim of human trafficking.

Trafficking is modern day slavery and a growing business. An estimated $40 billion dollar a year, global business. Most victims end up sold as sex slaves, selling their bodies in exchange for their lives. Many are beaten, starved, threatened, or hooked on drugs, forcing them into submission.

Trafficking is not gender or age exclusive. Some victims are sold for labor, but the majority is put to work in the sex trade.

The sex trade makes more money.

Jessie’s descent into a nefarious underworld innocently began when she met a man named Donald Vaz while living with her father in Calgary. Donald approached her at a club where her boyfriend Jon was a disc jockey. A tall, well-built, attractive African American, 23 year old Donald was easy on the eyes and charming. They became friends.

Jessie and Donald didn’t see each other again for another two years until Donald called her cell phone and invited her to go to Florida.

A short time later they flew to Fort Lauderdale and Key West. Three weeks after their return from Florida, they were back on a plane, traveling to Manhattan and Atlantic City.

On their return, Jessie called home while en route.

Plans had changed. They were going to Las Vegas first. Jessie’s 21st birthday was exactly 14 days from the day she landed on May 13th. Afterward she would return to Canada.

“Nothing felt right about it. The free trips to the USA, then taking her to Vegas, her staying there. I got a lot of red flags which were the types of intuition I talk about now, and I tell people to NOT ignore them. I did tell Jessie I wanted her back in Canada over and over and over.” Glendene reported.

Two weeks stretched out into ten months. Donald left Jessie with “friends” just before a Jamaican national twice her age named Peter Bertrand Todd entered the picture.

Jessie told her parents that Peter was rich, a reputed trust fund baby whose parents owned a string of McDonald’s in New Jersey. She said he received a $5,000 check each month from his trust, and lived in a posh half million dollar North Las Vegas home. Peter assured her that he had enough money so she didn’t have to work.

It wasn’t long before Jessie informed her family that she and Peter were engaged.

However all was not as it appeared.

Jessie’s fiancé was a pimp.

He forced her into prostitution, as a top-level call girl through an escort agency. Her average daily haul for the agency was $3,000.00.

On two different occasions, she was arrested for solicitation of prostitution, was regularly beaten and was hospitalized for her injuries.

Those who knew Jessie in Las Vegas reported that she was terrified of what might happen if she tried to leave him.

And her family hadn’t a clue what was going on. They thought she was involved with a wealthy older man.

Jessie called, emailed and sent text messages; several times a day to her mother, her sisters and several girlfriends she’d known all her life. Their conversations were peppered with clubs she’d been to, who she had seen there, appointments and shopping – normal every day banter.

The only negative calls placed to Glendene were when Jessie and Peter were fighting.

“I would talk to Peter and try to convince him to let Jessie go, saying stuff to him like Jessie is too young for you. She is immature and you have been married before, so she is jealous. He didn’t listen to a word I ever said. At the end of the call Jessie would tell me that it was okay. I now know I should have raced down there and brought her home.”

The last time the family saw Jessie was over Christmas of 2005. She seemed happy and looked good. Her parents tried to convince her to reconsider returning to Las Vegas, but she insisted on leaving.

Jessie phoned her sister Crystal on March 28, 2006. The phone call ended with “talk to you tomorrow.”

After that, silence.

Glendene was frantic.

“I started leaving message after message and I filled up her voice-mail box. I emailed her and my emails were getting more and more frantic and pretty soon I was yelling in them. I went to work the next day and told one of my co-workers, ‘I think my daughter is missing in Las Vegas.’ He said, ‘What are you doing here then?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’ I left and didn’t go back for a year and a half.”

Peter Todd acknowledged seeing Jessie on April 3rd, 2006, however each time Glendene grilled him she received a different story. He also claimed he wasn’t allowed to report her as a missing person, even though he was her fiancé. Glendene asked for the police department phone number he’d called so she could file the report herself.

The number he gave her was for the Fire Chief.

Heartsick, Glendene filed the missing person’s report on April 9th, 2006 in Canada as well as with the North Las Vegas Police Department (NLVPD) who assigned the case to Detective David Molnar.

Since the beginning, Glendene said she believes that the police have done very little investigating.

 “I personally have given so much information to the police working on Jessie’s case. But it is only given to them by me – the mother – because the people who have called me with this information had no other choice but to call the mom. I am told over and over, that they are calling me personally, because the police haven’t got back to them. But even when I call or email this information to the police myself, they still do NOTHING with any of it.”

Despite the plethora of leads Glendene has forwarded to NLVPD for follow up, there are other disturbing aspects about the lack of attention given to Jessie’s case.

“Why has the house never been gone over for blood and DNA, such as checking under carpets and behind baseboards or whatever it is they do during an investigation such as this?”

And Glendene doesn’t mince words when it comes to her feelings about Detective David Molnar and his handling of the investigation.

“He has not contacted me in any way for almost two years – nearly half the entire time Jessie has been missing, except for one 15-word message in 2009, when I literally had to demand to know who the detective on Jessie’s case is now. It was obviously not him, or he would be doing something, anything (like returning messages to people calling with tips, who end up calling me, the mother, because they get no response from the police. He replied ‘Glendene, I am still the Detective on the case. Who told you I was not?’ It was not that anyone told me. It was that he had no contact whatsoever with anyone in Jessie’s family. I am the family contact person. He never replied to any of my pleas for him to return my phone calls or reply to my emails. So to me, Detective David Molnar is simply the detective on record who is ‘handling’ Jessie’s case.”

After a story about Jessie’s disappearance appeared on April 21, 2006 in the Las Vegas Sun newspaper, Geraldo Rivera’s “Geraldo at Large” contacted the family to do a segment, giving the case a much larger audience. Maury Povich posted Jessie’s missing info on October 11th of that same year. And Montel Williams asked Glendene on his show in May 24th, 2007.

Hoping to jolt the NLVPD into action, Glendene made plans to return to Las Vegas two weeks prior to the Montel Williams show’s air date to promote the episode. However when she arrived at the Vancouver airport, she was shocked to learn that United States Immigration denied her entry into the U.S.

Their reason?

Glendene had been charged with possession of a controlled substance 20 years earlier in 1987 when a friend who was in trouble with the law left a duffel bag at her home with a minute amount of pot and cocaine inside. However she was later cleared of any criminal wrongdoing. As far as Canada was concerned, she was as clean as a whistle.
United States Immigration didn’t agree.

Hoping it would be easier to enter the U.S. by car she tried to cross again and was turned away once more.

Pleading, arguing, showing immigration officials the binder of Jessie’s articles and the urgency of going to Las Vegas to search for her missing daughter; it all fell on deaf ears. There was an appeal process, but if denied she would have to wait an additional five years to petition again.

It is interesting to note that Glendene had made a number of prior trips to the United States since Jessie’s disappearance without incident.

Until this.

One would think there was a conspiracy afoot to keep Glendene Grant in Canada and far away from Las Vegas.

The question is who, and why? And that’s not all.

Glendene opened a Facebook page. It was disabled. Then another was also disabled.

There were a total of fourteen Facebook pages disabled.

Facebook’s explanation?

“I have never so much got even an auto reply from Facebook about any of this. I emailed and sent comments via Facebook and others messaged them and no one heard a thing back. So, no – never a reason for this at all.”

It may be that whoever doesn’t want Glendene traveling to America doesn’t want her attracting thousands of contacts on the internet either.

But they didn’t realize who they were dealing with.

Jessie’s mom is one tough cookie.

Glendene not only persevered in getting Facebook pages for Jessie, but she also took the internet by storm.

In addition to Jessie’s official website www.JessieFoster.ca, Glendene runs three different blogs, posts videos, and posts on other people’s forums and blogs. She has appeared on Canadian television, given interviews for newspapers and radio programs, speaks for groups and at awards presentations. Additionally Jessie’s story has appeared in the National Enquirer in 2007 and twice on the television show America’s Most Wanted in 2008 and 2009. And five separate books have been written that have included Jessie’s story; four currently in print, one to be released in January 2011.

Glendene is tireless in her efforts to spread the word about Jessie, and to educate people about human trafficking.

“I have reached tens of thousands of people about Jessie’s case. She is the most well-known unknown missing person in the world, and she is Canada’s poster-child for human trafficking.”

The word is definitely out.

Then there is her involvement in promoting a human trafficking bill CR263 introduced by Canadian Parliament MP Joy Smith. It received Royal Assent on June 29, 2010, amending Section 279.01 of Canada’s Criminal Code to include a five year minimum sentence for the trafficking of a minor and a six year minimum sentence for more serious cases.

“I met Joy Smith in April 2010. She came up to me and told me she was very proud of all I have done in my ‘crusade’ to find Jessie and raise awareness of human trafficking. She told me about her bill CR263 going to the Senate at the end of May beginning of June (it was to fall on Jessie’s birthday May 27) and she wanted to know if I would come to Ottawa to speak at the Senate Meeting. I told her I would be honored to. I told all my networking and media ‘friends’ I have (thousands) and we got a lot of media.”

In spite of her growing impact in a world combating human trafficking, Glendene remains humble.

“I may have had an influence on some people to sign petitions and give their support for the bill in every possible way, but when people have said to me ‘you are responsible for this bill to pass into law,’ I cannot take any credit because Joy and many others did so much more than me.”

Although she has taken a horrible situation and turned it around to help others, it has come with a price.

“Financially, we’re hanging on by the skin of our teeth. I was working at Convergys for over six years, when a year ago I was let go as they were shutting down the Kamloops office. What used to be a full-time job for my husband Jim is now two maybe four hours a day” Jessie’s tireless mother reports.

“Emotionally, I am a roller coaster, but I am the mom and I comfort others, even strangers who tear up when they hear about Jessie. I decided long time ago to take ‘this’ on mostly by myself and save my kids from too much turmoil. They still need to live their lives – they are in their early to late 20’s and the younger ones have become mothers since Jessie went missing. I am stronger than them – besides, Jessie is MY daughter. Jessie’s dad is doing the poorest of everyone. It has really taken a toll on him, emotionally, physically and every way possible.”

Glendene believes that she will see Jessie alive again but she is open to the possibility that she won’t.

“My heart just isn’t telling me she’s dead. I only have one wish – I wish I could find Jessie soon – alive or not, she needs to come home.”

And unless someone cuts Glendene Grant a break and allows her into the United States to search for her daughter, she may never know what happened.

Especially since private investigators aren’t cheap.

For a loving, devoted mother who spent nearly five years of her life raising global awareness of the human trafficking epidemic, and saving thousands of lives in the process we should find the brick wall that Glendene is up against totally unacceptable.

Finding Jessie may depend on our willingness to join Glendene’s fight for her daughter, and thousands like her who are missing, desperate and simply want to go home.

Michelle Close Mills©

Human Trafficking Resource Center
1-888-373-7888

Department of Justice
24 hour hotline-1-888-428-7581