A woman walks through the electronics aisle at a Target in Kent County, stashing video games in a bag. She isn't being subtle. She wants to be caught.
It happened in October 2019. The woman was Stacy Chambliss. She hoped that if she got caught shoplifting, "somebody... the right person was going to hear and get me the help that was needed."
Stacy needed help escaping traffickers. But as she would discover, the safety net for victims has holes big enough to fall through. We explore what happened in a special documentary, “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor.” This story updates and expands a five-part series that aired in the fall of 2023.
"Nowhere to Go" mentions sexual assault, violence and suicide. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, call or text the Lifeline at 988.
This story was updated on Jan. 29, 2024.
Transcript of WMUK's "Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor"
Part I
ANNOUNCER: This is “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor.” A look at the ways public and private institutions let one human trafficking victim down. I’m Gordon Evans. This program was underwritten with support from the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College.
In January of 2022, WMUK received a Facebook message. It was from a woman named Stacy, who said she’d been trafficked in Kalamazoo. She read a story on our webpage about an event to raise awareness about the crime. Stacy said she needed help. I directed her to the trafficking survivor program at the Kalamazoo YWCA, but she said she couldn’t go there, which was another reason she wanted to talk to a reporter.
I was skeptical, but passed it on. WMUK reporter Leona Larson looked into the story. What she found was originally reported as a five-part series in the fall. Now with updates and more information we present this documentary. Listeners should know it mentions sexual assault, violence and suicide. Here’s Leona Larson.
REPORTER: When I first spoke to Stacy Chambliss, the amount of information that spilled out of her was overwhelming. It was like she was trying to stuff an entire grocery store into a single paper bag. Because Stacy had often been dismissed and ignored, she tried to tell me everything all at once... before I could hang up.
I did not hang up. I knew enough about trauma to know her behavior was normal. We had many conversations over the next few months.
STACY: “I felt in danger all the time. I didn’t know what was going to happen from one minute to the next.”
Stacy told me she’d been drugged, kidnapped, and trafficked in the late summer and early fall of 2019.
STACY: “You start to like wonder if it was really a sexual assault because you’re not fighting back anymore.”
She said she’d gone to jail...and later, just when things were getting better she’d had a devastating experience at the Kalamazoo YWCA.
Stacy was frightened when she first reached out. She was staying at her mom’s, with her teenage son.
STACY: “They went after my child, first of all.”
She was terrified and hoped to get out of town.
Stacy was also angry. She said she told police in 2019 that she’d been given a glass of water, then blacked out and woke up in a strange place. But not much came of her calls for help. She says later when advocates asked police for it,
STACY: “They could not find a report from the day that I was drugged, and I was irate.”
She’d recently heard one of the same people that drugged and kidnapped her had just done it to someone else.
STACY: “How is he continuing to get away with this?”
And finally, Stacy was in legal trouble...facing charges for shoplifting and car theft – crimes she says she was coerced into committing.
Over the next year and a half, I gathered armfuls of police and court documents as I worked to verify Stacy’s story. I also went through hundreds of texts, emails, social media posts... and 46 hours of audio recordings Stacy shared with me. I built a timeline and made charts and maps to organize the information. Stacy sometimes confused the order of events. But otherwise the records back her up, over and over.
Here’s what happened to Stacy, how she escaped, and her ongoing struggle to clear her record and see her traffickers prosecuted.
Stacy’s 42. She’s got blue eyes and straight blond hair. She moved to Kalamazoo as a child.
Survivor advocates say trafficking can happen to anyone. And yet people with certain life experiences are more likely to be trafficked. Korin Arkin is with the National Human Trafficking Hotline. She says in a recent national study of survivors...
KORIN ARKIN: “The vast majority of them identified as experiencing poverty before they were exploited or experiencing abuse before they were exploited.”
Stacy was abused as a child. She spent eight years in foster care. And she has experienced poverty as an adult. Still, she never expected to be trafficked. In her late 30s she was living in Portage, south of Kalamazoo. She says she was working, hoping to buy a house. She cheered on her son at his middle school wrestling matches. Here’s one she recorded in 2016.
STACY: “(Indistinct) get ahold of him!”
But that same year, Stacy got sick. She says she thinks it was from exposure to carbon monoxide from a faulty furnace. She was in the hospital recovering when she met a guy. We’re not revealing his name. But public and private records back up her account of their life together.
STACY: “He made me feel...um...attractive and loved. Like in the beginning, there was like a really...you know, long honeymoon phase...um, where he said and did all the right things.”
He moved in with Stacy and she tells me things were OK...for a while.
STACY: “It got to a point with him where he had full control over finances. And so even when he was arrested for domestic violence it was like I didn’t want to follow through. Because I didn’t want him to lose his job, because then we could lose our house.”
Stacy says because of health problems... his work options were limited. And he did not want her to work. Eventually they were evicted. By July 2019 they were living in motels. Stacy’s then 15-year-old son was at her mom’s.
Stacy says her boyfriend talked to everyone and started making friends she did not trust.
One morning in late July, four of these acquaintances burst into their room. One of them was a man we’re calling “Ed.” He was agitated and shouting.
STACY: “I was hysterical, crying, they were threatening me, at this time I didn’t have any idea what was happening, what their intent was, I just knew that it was not good.”
Ed corralled Stacy, her boyfriend and the others into the parking lot. Stacy later described this in a recorded call with her boyfriend.
STACY: “Do you remember me crying because I wanted to leave and you wouldn't let me leave? Do you remember me getting into my car and trying to get into my car and he wouldn't let me get into my car and he was taking my stuff?”
Stacy says when she did get in her car it wouldn’t start. Ed pulled her out and put her in another car. He then drove Stacy, her boyfriend and his crew to another motel. She says she was terrified, and shouted and stared into hotel security cameras.
STACY: “And then when we were in the room he was threatening to put my face into the floor because I was crying and you kept telling me to calm down.”
One of them handed her a glass of water.
STACY: “I drank some of the water and I don’t remember anything after that.”
She believes it was drugged.
STACY: “When I came to, I was on a toddler mattress in somebody’s house. And I heard, like, some voices. You know I was really, really sick. Like I had a severe headache and I was puking.”
When Stacy woke up, she saw Ed. He was naked and was with a nude woman Stacy did not recognize. Ed told Stacy to join them. He was angry when she would not. Stacy saw her phone on a table. It was close enough to the door that she had a chance to grab it and run. Stacy was in Westnedge Hill, in central Kalamazoo. This happens to be my neighborhood.
Stacy woke up in a block of homes down the street from a busy commercial strip. It isn’t fancy. But it’s not run-down either... reinforcing what advocates say, that trafficking can happen anywhere. Stacy fled down the street to a liquor store.
STACY: “I remember hiding in Sunny Mart.”
Dispatch records show Stacy called 911 at 4:19 in the afternoon. An officer came to meet her.
STACY: “I told them about being drugged. I told them about waking up in the house, right.”
As Stacy waited for the police at Sunny Mart... she spotted Ed driving by.
STACY: “But I do know when the officer got there that I told them that he, was circling, right. Because I'd seen the car pass twice.”
The officer called an ambulance to take Stacy to Kalamazoo’s Bronson Hospital for evaluation. She says she was in the waiting room... when she got a call from a man we’re calling “Jerry.” Stacy did not know it, but Jerry lived in the house she woke up in. Jerry said there’d been a misunderstanding, and he wanted to clear it up. He said her boyfriend was with him and he’d give her a ride to her car. But when Jerry picked Stacy up from the hospital, her boyfriend wasn’t with him.
STACY: “It was probably the stupidest thing that I did, was leaving and going and getting into the car with him. But in my mind at that time I remember thinking that I could get my car and come back.”
JESSICA TAPSCOTT MARKS: “What you’re describing is very, very normal.”
Jessica Tapscott Marks is a licensed clinical social worker with S.A.F.E. Place in Battle Creek. It’s a shelter for people experiencing domestic violence or trafficking. She told me...when a person is running on fear...reason and problem-solving go out the window.
JESSICA TAPSCOTT MARKS: “She probably heard ‘I have your car’ and thought, ‘great, I need my car.’ It was that simple. And that's really, really common for people who are experiencing trauma.”
Jerry did not take Stacy to her car. Instead he took her to another house. This one was in the Vine, a largely rental neighborhood near two college campuses and the downtown. At the house... Jerry wanted oral sex. Which he referred to as his “drug of choice.” Stacy was near a door. She got out, ran a few blocks and once again called 911.
STACY: “I'm hiding under a porch calling the police because I'm terrified that he's coming after me.”
Stacy says she asked police to take her to the station. While she was there, her boyfriend showed up and said Stacy’s car had been stolen.
Stacy says the police drove her through the Vine neighborhood to identify the house Jerry brought her to. Then her boyfriend’s mom picked them up from the station, and they spent a couple of days at her house. Stacy assumed the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety was investigating her claim that she was drugged and kidnapped.
STACY: “Why take me to drive past somebody's house and identify a house by address, if you're not doing a report? So yeah, I 100% felt like they were... there was a report being made and they were investigating it.”
Were they? I found no incident report on Stacy’s encounter with Jerry. I did find one for her stolen car. It includes references to her claim that she was drugged and kidnapped. It describes Stacy as quote “very upset and difficult to understand.” There is also an incomplete report from the officer who met Stacy at the Sunny Mart... where she ran after she woke up on the toddler mattress. Kalamazoo Public Safety Executive Lieutenant Michael Treu says the department assigned a detective to the case...who tried to follow up with Stacy.
MICHAEL TREU: “Letters and phone calls were made to both her and her boyfriend at the time. And we received no, no response back.”
I asked for records to try to figure out when the detective reached out to Stacy. The records show one call and maybe one letter to Stacy’s boyfriend, as well as one letter sent to Stacy. But this attempt at contact came nearly three weeks after Stacy reported she’d been drugged and kidnapped. By that time, she was being trafficked. And then, not having heard from Stacy or her boyfriend, the department closed the case. The detective has since retired. Executive Lieutenant Treu says the record doesn’t tell the whole story. He says the officer may have made lots of other attempts to reach the couple, and just did not write them down.
MICHAEL TREU: “There's no requirement that a detective has to document each and every attempt.”
And he says Stacy knew how to reach KDPS.
MICHAEL TREU: “Once again, I go back to she knew how to get a hold of us originally. And if she wanted to, she could have always called us at any time.”
The thing is, Stacy did call again. Records show she called 911 several times in the week after she reported being drugged and kidnapped. And told dispatchers she was in danger. It’s not clear if the detective was aware of those calls.
Here’s what happened in the days after the incidents in Westnedge Hill and the Vine neighborhood. Stacy became estranged from her boyfriend. She started moving from motel to motel, trying to avoid Jerry and his associates. On August 6th, 2019 Stacy told the police Ed had put her son’s picture on Facebook and called him “leverage.” Dispatch records show officers did a welfare check. But they filed no incident report.
Then Stacy met a man we’re calling “Miles.” He said he had pull with the people she feared and could protect her and her son, who was still at her mom’s.
STACY: “He’s the good guy that swoops in and saves the day and it all appeared to be that way.”
To understand what happened to Stacy, I meet with another trafficking survivor. Her name’s Leslie King-Friday. We sit in her office in Grand Rapids while her grandson watches TV in the next room. Now in her 50s, King-Friday says she was trafficked when she was 15 years old. By her late 20s...
LESLIE KING FRIDAY: “When I got away from my pimp, I still trafficked myself. And people looking at me like huh? But how can you do somethin’ different if you don't know how?”
King-Friday did do something different. She escaped that life... published a memoir...and started a nonprofit, supporting victims of trafficking. In December 2022, she received a pardon from Governor Gretchen Whitmer for crimes she says she was forced to commit. The pardon made news across the state – including on Detroit’s WDIV-TV.
DEVIN SCILLIAN: “It's a story of second chances. THE MAGNITUDE OF WHAT THAT MEANS FOR ME THE MAGNITUDE OF WHAT IT MEANS FOR OTHERS. Trafficked, convicted and pardoned.”
King-Friday describes how traffickers choose their victims.
LESLIE KING FRIDAY: “Traffickers go after whatever is sellable. Whatever is vulnerable. Whoever is vulnerable. It's like a mold. You got a mold, and you got a few holes that are already filled to the top, but you got a lot of holes that are still empty and missing. A trafficker will come in and fill up all those holes. And become your knight in shining armor.”
King-Friday calls this the honeymoon stage.
LESLIE KING FRIDAY: “After the honeymoon stage, then here comes the force, the beatings, the fear.”
Stacy’s honeymoon was short. Maybe only three days. It ended when Miles told Stacy they needed to earn some money. And she could help by selling her body. When Stacy refused, Miles left her alone with one of his “business partners.” Later, Stacy told her ex-boyfriend what happened next.
STACY: “I got raped by, not even gonna go there. No, no, no, no, no, you don’t know. You don’t know.
In an interview, Stacy told me that during the rape,
STACY: “He was telling me that he was doing this for my own good, that I needed to learn how to take my mind somewhere else or I was never going to survive this.”
Now Stacy was also terrified of Miles. But she was afraid that if she ran from him, the men she fled in July would hurt her and her son. Over the next two months Miles repeatedly forced Stacy into sex work. She told her ex about one incident from September.
STACY: “He sold me to a drug dealer. He sold me to a drug dealer for a day.”
But Stacy was not as cooperative about being sex-trafficked as Miles would like. So, he also had her shoplift. He took Stacy and other trafficked men and women to stores in Kalamazoo, Calhoun and Kent counties.
STACY: “He literally would have all of us wear Adidas outfits because he wanted people to know that we were with him, belonged to him.”
She says he kept extras in the trunk in case he recruited someone new.
STACY: “He would go into the store and he would pick out the items that he would want and they'd be placed in a particular location. When I would not get him the things that he wanted, I would be hit, strip searched, had my head busted into a window.”
And sometimes Miles withheld food and other necessities.
STACY: “I would have to steal a pair of underwear from Target every day, just so I would have a clean pair of underwear to at least change in to. And I feel, I feel guilty about these things. Like I know that I was being forced to do it, but it doesn't change the fact that I did it.”
Stacy says Miles set her up in a trap house - that’s a drug house. It was in a mobile home park off Kalamazoo’s Stadium Drive, a commercial corridor near Western Michigan University. Stacy says she stayed at the trap house when she wasn’t shoplifting or working the motels. About a month into her trafficking, on September 1st, 2019 a fight broke out at the house. Stacy says a man hit a pregnant woman...so she called the police.
FACEBOOK LIVE POST: “She’s telling, she’s snitching, she’s definitely snitching.”
That’s from a video posted on Facebook. It shows police cars parked on a street. You can’t see Stacy, but the narrator of the video says she’s out there talking to the police.
FACEBOOK LIVE POST: “She’s a cop man, she’s a super cop.”
The narrator is outside the trap house... describing the scene.
FACEBOOK LIVE POST: “The whole world's gonna know that this woman is, she's working with the police.”
STACY: “After they caught me talking to the police and recorded it, and played it for everybody, it made things like 10 times worse.”
Stacy says it was harder to keep Miles happy... and not violent.
Stacy says a few weeks into the trafficking he sold her to Jerry. The man Stacy ran from in the Vine neighborhood...the one who calls oral sex his “drug of choice.”
STACY: “That was literally the moment when everything changed for me. He had never been protecting me from him. It was like all just part of this sick game that they're playing.”
Stacy says when it was over, she injected herself with drugs he left in her car, hoping to die. Instead, her arm got infected. She says about two weeks later Jerry sexually assaulted her again, leaving her with more injuries.
Stacy went to Bronson Hospital on September 9th to seek care. And again, the next day.
If Stacy could go to the hospital, why not tell a doctor what was happening? Or run away or go straight to the police?
Well, for one thing, Stacy had gone to the police. She told them in July she’d been drugged and kidnapped. An accusation so serious she assumed it was being investigated. The whole time Stacy was being trafficked, she was waiting for the police to arrest Ed and Jerry. She did not know the case had been closed.
As for running away, Stacy says she tried...and it made things worse. Miles sent friends to scare her.
STACY: “He was intentionally doing things so that he could turn around and say, ‘I told you, you didn't have my protection if you weren't with me.’”
The National Human Trafficking Hotline’s... Korin Arkin... says traffickers use psychological manipulation.
KORIN ARKIN: “Force, fraud and coercion paired with those vulnerabilities, those are the tools that traffickers are going to use in order to make that person stay in that situation.”
Trafficking survivor Leslie King-Friday says force, fraud and coercion are all traffickers need.
LESLIE KING FRIDAY: “See a lot of people think it's snatch and grab. No, it's not. When it comes to trafficking they get your mind, then your body follows.”
Stacy says Miles made it clear to her that he’d have no trouble killing her if she crossed him. But most of all she feared for her son. She says Ed had called him “leverage” on Facebook. And Miles knew where to find him. So, getting away wasn’t so simple.
Stacy says while she was at the hospital, Miles was texting her. He thought she was talking to the police and ordered her back. Outside the emergency room... Stacy spotted an unlocked car idling. She got in... and drove to “Miles.”
Stacy says Miles was delighted to find a semi-automatic pistol in the trunk of the car. Later, he would hit her in the mouth with it.
STACY: “He cracked the tooth all the way up to the gum line, but then across like this. So, I have to get it fixed.”
Stacy was arrested that evening for taking the car. She says at the jail, the nurse who examined inmates saw her infected arm and told an officer to take her to the hospital. Medical records place her there in the wee hours the next day. Stacy says she went from the hospital back to the jail. And then back to the hospital again when the nurse at the jail saw her other injuries. Stacy says after her release from jail the next day, she realized she may be able to escape her traffickers...by getting caught.
STACY: “When you get caught on purpose, you're not the one calling the police. So, you're not getting this negative response from... YOUR TRAFFICKERS? Traffickers. They, almost to some extent, will praise you. Because you're like, taking the fall for them.”
Nine days after she took the car, on September 19th, 2019, Stacy was detained at a Target in Calhoun County...for trying to steal video games.
STACY: “And I told the Target employees what was happening.”
When an officer arrived...
STACY: “They told him what I reported. And he told me to shut up. And then if that was the case, then I know I would know how this works. And I'm going to jail. ‘You’re just trying to get out of going to jail.’”
A couple weeks later, she tried again at two different Targets in Kent County. At the first one she left without getting caught. But she was taken into custody at the second one. And then arrested for the first theft while at the Kent County jail.
One of the police reports notes...Stacy was arrested twice for shoplifting years before she was trafficked. In 2015... she took two dolls... and clothes from the children’s department. In 2017... two hoodies and a T-shirt. Stacy says she was broke... and trying to get a present for a child the first time, and later, school clothes for her son. She says she’s not proud of this.
STACY: “But I didn't really have anybody either at that time that I could ask for help for any of that kind of stuff.”
It’s unclear from the police reports whether the Kent County officers believed Stacy was being forced to steal. But in a sense, her plan worked. Her last two arrests landed her in the Kent County jail. After two months of being trafficked, she was finally away from Miles.
ANNOUNCER: If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, call or text the Lifeline at 988. When we come back...Stacy finds refuge at the Kalamazoo YWCA. But then she learns something that upends her life there. That’s next on “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor.”
[Break – 1 minute]
Part II
ANNOUNCER: This is “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor.” In October 2019, Stacy Chambliss of Kalamazoo escaped trafficking by getting arrested for shoplifting. But the arrest also landed her in the Kent County jail. Leona Larson takes the story from there.
REPORTER: Stacy was arraigned for felony retail fraud. She was in jail for nearly half a year...until mid-March 2020...when she was able to make bail just as the pandemic arrived in Michigan. Stacy headed back to Kalamazoo and reunited with her son. A few days later, her main trafficker, whom we’re calling “Miles,” found her outside her mom’s. Stacy says he had a gun and she went with him to get him away from her family. They spent a few frightening days together. Then he disappeared. But Stacy was terrified he’d come back.
Meanwhile, Stacy faced charges in three counties from her time being trafficked. And...a stack of bench warrants from having missed various court dates. In some cases...because Miles would not let her go. Stacy says he used the warrants as another way to control her. So when she came back to Kalamazoo, she could have been arrested any time. She says she attempted suicide that summer. And again, in October 2020, when she was admitted to Kalamazoo’s Ascension Borgess Hospital. That’s where Stacy learned about the Kalamazoo YWCA.
STACY: “When I attempted suicide, and um, was at Borgess, it was like a staff member was talking to me about it.”
Helping trafficking survivors is a core part of the nonprofit’s mission...as former CEO Grace Lubwama explains in this promotional video.
YWCA PROMOTIONAL VIDEO: “We care for victims of abuse. You know, any individual in our community who has faced domestic violence, sexual assault, or human trafficking should be able to come to the YWCA and receive services.”
Stacy says she moved into the YWCA in October 2020.
STACY: “I felt like I had support for the first time. People that understood, and then, safety was huge, because while I was there, I didn't have to worry about anybody being able to come in or find me.”
Stacy began to work through her trauma with therapists. She also started to work with the YWCA’s legal team.
STACY: “That is when I made a decision to live and I was going to follow through.”
But...in mid-December...a 28-year-old woman named Amber Walker was murdered in Richland Township, northeast of Kalamazoo. Her accused killer was a 24-year-old man, Chad Michael White. He would be convicted of the murder the following year.
Stacy says she knew Amber Walker and Chad White from the motels during her trafficking days. She says...White was friendly with her main trafficker, “Miles.” She adds, Walker’s murder reminded her of the threats Miles made against her life. Telling her that...
STACY: “I would never get away from him. I would end up in a body bag or in the trunk.”
Stacy says at the shelter she talked about Walker’s murder... until an employee pulled her aside around Christmas.
STACY: “And asked if I ever had an issue with this staff member that worked at the Y. And I said, no. And she told me to never talk about my case in front of her.”
A couple months later, Stacy learned: the staff member she was not supposed to discuss her case with...was Chad White’s mother.
Stacy was surprised this was kept from her. Suddenly the shelter felt less like a sanctuary.
Sarah Turner is a former YWCA employee. I met her at a library. She says the stress began to affect Stacy’s health.
SARAH TURNER: “She was struggling a lot at the main shelter. Because it was so triggering.”
Stacy began to have seizures.
SARAH TURNER: “Which is really scary. And she was having a lot of those.”
A spokesperson says the YWCA does not discuss current or former clients, even ones like Stacy, who are willing to give their permission. So, this is Stacy’s account of what happened next.
The YWCA’s administrators decided to move her to one of its other facilities. Stacy was worried about this. She says previously, the shelter team considered that other location unsafe for her. Stacy’s traffickers were known to frequent the area, and it had less security than the main shelter. They told her it was safer than before because Miles was in prison. He’d been arrested a few months before after leading police on a two-county car chase.
But Stacy was worried about her other traffickers. When she pushed back on the plan, it put her at odds with administrators.
KAILYN ALDERMAN: “It almost was like a taboo topic of conversation.”
Former YWCA employee Kailyn Alderman says lower-level employees knew about Stacy’s distress, but their hands were tied.
KAILYN ALDERMAN: “Lower staff would talk about it amongst each other. And upper staff would talk about it amongst themselves, but we weren't really supposed to like, talk about it on a formal account, like at staff meetings or things like that.”
Stacy says one staff member who thought she was getting a raw deal told her to record her conversations. That’s how Stacy has this recording.
STACY: “No, you will not be helping me move my stuff.”
YWCA STAFF MEMBER: “Yes, I will be.”
STACY: “No, you won't.”
The YWCA had cut off Stacy’s legal services, telling her their relationship had broken down too much to continue. And after weeks of being pressured to leave the main shelter, Stacy lost the battle. On the recording she’s speaking with a staff member tasked with moving her into the other facility.
YWCA STAFF MEMBER: “Hon...”
STACY: “The EMT’s asked me...”
YWCA STAFF MEMBER: “I can’t have you slandering...”
STACY: “I wasn’t.”
The staff member who’s helping with the packing...refers to Stacy “slandering” an employee as she was being treated for a seizure. Stacy says the employee in question is Chad White’s mom.
STACY: “I didn’t slander her. The EMTs were here.”
YWCA STAFF MEMBER: “YES, YOU DID.”
STACY: “No, I did not. The EMTs were here. They asked what was stressing me out. I said I lost my attorney and this, this, and this. They pulled their service away from me...”
We’ve edited out the name of the other facility.
YWCA STAFF MEMBER: “You’re not going to be able to talk about the staff at (facility). Anything about any of the staff, okay?”
Stacy moved into the other location. But at that point her relationship with the YWCA had broken down. After a few weeks she sent an email revoking her permission for the staff to discuss her case. She had done that once before. But this time, the same day, she was told to leave. The staff member who’s on the recordings arrived at the other facility.
STACY: “Said I had 10 minutes to pack my stuff and get out and she had the police waiting in the driveway. And I ended up in Bronson Park with all my belongings, terrified, with nowhere to go.”
It happened on May 3rd, 2021. Former YWCA employee Sarah Turner says that day she got a call from Stacy.
SARAH TURNER: “And she was crying and she was frantic.”
Stacy was in a police car, having been told to pack her things. The police offered to take her to a homeless shelter in downtown Kalamazoo or her mom’s apartment. Turner says Stacy was afraid to go to either of those places.
SARAH TURNER: “She didn't feel safe because her traffickers were still in the area. And she was afraid they're gonna find her.”
Instead, Stacy had them take her to Bronson Park in downtown Kalamazoo.
SARAH TURNER: “And I went and got her. And I had a list of other resources and shelters.”
Stacy says the Kalamazoo YWCA should have told her about the employee’s connection to the murder. And let her determine what she wanted to do.
STACY: “They made that decision for me.”
Stacy says she felt betrayed.
STACY: “You have an organization that builds you up, takes you out of a situation, gives you safety, helps you to find your voice. Literally sends you things every day to remind you that you're worthy. And (snaps) just like that, it's gone.”
Over the next few months, Stacy moved between a couple of shelters and her mom’s house. She kept using the recorder...even while walking her dog.
(NATSOT: Stacy walking the dog)
She hoped that if Miles’ associates found her, she could drop it and the police would find it and investigate. Recording also helped her process what she’d been through. Stacy did not put dates on the recordings, but they provide a kind of audio diary of her thoughts at a difficult time.
STACY: “I'm able to like talk and vent. On my little recorder.”
She says this helped her get past more suicidal thoughts. One time she says...
STACY: “I was so afraid of being judged because I'm so ashamed of everything that happened and everything that I did.”
And another time...
STACY: “Even with all the evidence and my statement, proof, and everything. They said I had a solid case, this, this, that and the other, it’s still not enough. It’s still not enough. Shockingly. I mean I’m not shocked because nothing I do is ever enough.”
Another way she worked through her feelings was by writing. Stacy wrote to anyone she thought could help...pouring out her story in long messages. Sometimes she wrote to people who told her they could not help her, and had asked her to stop. One organization told Stacy it was hesitant about working with her because she had had a quote “conflict” with the YWCA. And one lawyer told her, quote, “If you can’t get along with the YWCA, and we volunteer with them, I am concerned you and I may not work well together.”
STACY: “I didn’t know who to trust. I felt like everything was out of control internally and externally.”
But when Stacy isn’t overwhelmed and discouraged, she is tenacious.
STACY: “I don't just fall into the crack and sit there and cry, I will fall into it and I will bust it wide open, and I won't stop talking about it. And I won't forget about it. Because this does not need to happen to somebody else.”
She wants you to know her name.
STACY: “I'm not hiding behind anything. People need to come out and be bold and not be fearful because we're not going to make changes when people are afraid to use their name because they're afraid of the repercussions.”
Former YWCA employee Kailyn Alderman was initially reluctant to talk to me. But she wanted to support Stacy telling her story.
KAILYN ALDERMAN: “At the end of the day, like, I think that Stacy is doing something that not a lot of people are able to do. And I think that her sharing her story, and just being so open about the whole experience and everything she's gone through just shows that she is so brave.”
ANNOUNCER: Next on “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor,” Stacy presses to clear her record...and to see her traffickers brought to justice. But one charge in Kalamazoo County still hangs over her head. Once again, the number to call or text if you’re struggling with suicidal thoughts is 988.
Part III
ANNOUNCER: This is “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor.” In early 2022, Stacy Chambliss was trying to leave Kalamazoo so she’d be safe from her traffickers. She was determined to see them prosecuted and get her own record cleared. That last task has proven most challenging in Kalamazoo County. Here’s Leona Larson.
REPORTER: Stacy says she was trafficked in 2019. She got away by getting arrested, spent half a year in jail, and later, several months at the Kalamazoo YWCA. Being forced to leave the shelter turned her life upside down once more. But in early 2022, around the time she reached out to me...Stacy was able to meet with a detective from the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety. The department started an investigation into her case.
Around the same time, Stacy met with the FBI.
STACY: “I don't give up like, I really, literally don't give up. Obviously, you can tell.”
The meeting with the FBI paid off. The agency helped Stacy get out of Kalamazoo and find housing assistance. Her son (and her dog) were able to come too.
Stacy’s letter-writing campaign to advocacy groups began to pay off as well. Several wrote to prosecutors and public defenders on her behalf. By July of last year, all five of her bench warrants were dropped. And that wasn’t all. Calhoun County dropped Stacy’s shoplifting charge. And Kent County 17th Circuit Court Judge Mark Trusock dismissed the charges there. In March at a hearing in Grand Rapids he told Stacy...
JUDGE MARK TRUSOCK: “When I read this pre-sentence report, ma'am, I felt very bad for what you've had to go through being trafficked. I think this is a very appropriate resolution of this matter.”
The Kent County Sheriff’s Department started its own investigation into Stacy’s traffickers in 2023.
JASON RICHARDS: “I believed from the beginning that, that Stacy was a victim of something.”
Captain Jason Richards oversees the Kent County Sheriff’s Human Trafficking Task Force. He understands why the officers that arrested Stacy for shoplifting may have doubted that she was being trafficked.
JASON RICHARDS: “It could be interpreted that she’s trying to maybe get out of something.”
But he adds, that’s why it’s important to know how trafficking works.
JASON RICHARDS: “The longer I've been in this position, the more the way that she acted, and the way that she reacted, is more understandable to me than it was when I was a younger police officer.”
Michigan laws offer some relief for trafficking victims convicted of crimes related to sex work. But the law doesn’t have much to say about shoplifting. Even though survivor advocates say it’s common for traffickers to force their victims to steal.
Attorney Ashleigh Pelto specializes in human trafficking law. She’s from Michigan but now works in Boston.
ASHLEIGH PELTO: “When we limit the number of offenses, that's really just punishing the victim, for not having been exploited in the way that lawmakers decided was, was relevant.”
Pelto adds,
ASHLEIGH PELTO: “A best practice statute would affirm that they should never have been convicted in the first place by focusing on the traffickers' actions as opposed to theirs.”
Kelly Breen is a Democratic state representative from metro-Detroit. She says she’s drafting legislation to expand criminal record relief for trafficking victims. Proposals include making it easier for victims of trafficking to get relief if they’re convicted of a crime like shoplifting as a direct result of human trafficking.
But Stacy says lawmakers should consider what they can do to protect trafficking survivors before they’re convicted. She still faces a felony charge for taking that unlocked car idling in the Bronson Hospital parking lot in 2019. [Editor's note: on 1/29/2024 the charge was changed to a misdemeanor. See update at the end of the script, in the credits.] After her trafficker Miles ordered her back as she sought medical treatment... related to two sexual assaults. Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting, who’s on the state’s human trafficking commission, is pressing charges against Stacy.
REPORTER: “Hi. I’m here to see Jeff Getting.”
PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE STAFF: “Okay. Is he expecting you?”
REPORTER: “He is. I’m Leona Larson...”
I met him at his office soon after the New Year. He says he cannot talk about Stacy’s case directly.
JEFF GETTING: “No, it’s an open pending case.”
Getting says he has some discretion in cases where the crime was committed because of trafficking. But he says leniency is easier in victimless crimes, like drug possession. He says when there is a victim, it’s unjust to ignore them.
JEFF GETTING: “So we try to balance between those victims and the person who committed a crime who may also be a victim of a different crime.”
In Stacy’s case of course, the other victim is the car owner. A police report indicates he got the car back within 12 hours of the theft. But items were missing – a gun Stacy says Miles beat her with, but also things like a GPS, and keys for another vehicle. Stacy says Miles took those things.
Getting’s office has offered Stacy a chance to pay restitution...rather than going to trial. But that would likely involve pleading guilty. The prosecutor’s office could then withdraw the plea...meaning, for most purposes, Stacy would not have a felony on her record. But it might still turn up in some background checks. Stacy has struggled with what to do. She doesn’t want to plead guilty for something she says she did under duress.
STACY: “If you’re going to charge me then why haven’t you charged my trafficker?”
In July, as Stacy waited for her turn before the judge, she sat through a hearing for a 21-year-old man who had hit and killed someone while driving earlier in the year. The charges included operating under the influence causing death...which is a felony. But the prosecutor offered the young man a deal. Judge Christopher Haenicke announced it.
JUNDGE CHRISTOPHER HAENICKE: “We’ll dismiss the felony and plead to two misdemeanors.”
But Stacy’s felony charge hasn’t been dropped. She told me later that in her view,
STACY: “I’m being punished way harsher than somebody who took somebody else’s life.”
Lynelle Morgan from the Survivor Law Clinic in Okemos is Stacy’s legal advocate.
LYNELLE MORGAN: “Our position is that Stacy really shouldn't be held accountable for the crime that she was arrested for, because she wasn't in control. Somebody else was, somebody else was pulling the strings at that time.”
Just coming back to Kalamazoo for the hearings has been wrenching for Stacy. Boston attorney Ashleigh Pelto explains why.
ASHLEIGH PELTO: “There’s safety concerns for survivors in having to appear in court, in part because in a lot of cases, their traffickers have not been charged. So, they are in a location that they were in at the time that they were a victim. Even just being physically in that courtroom is creating an additional traumatic experience for those survivors.”
It’s apparent to me too, each time I see Stacy at a hearing. In December, we sat in a conference room in the airy new multimillion-dollar courthouse in downtown Kalamazoo. Stacy had just finished a meeting with her public defender.
STACY: “I don’t know. I’m really not okay to talk today.”
As of this broadcast, Stacy’s still deciding whether to risk a trial or take a plea-and-restitution deal. [Editors' note: this changed on 1/29/2024; see update at the end of the credits.]
What about the men Stacy accuses of trafficking her?
My own search through public records turned up three other mentions of trafficking in connection with the man we’re calling “Jerry.” The first was from a few months before Stacy’s encounter with him. Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Deputies reported a “terrified” woman said Jerry was involved in bringing her to a drug store to cash a bad check. Instead of going through with the scheme, she hid in a bathroom until deputies arrived.
The two other victims are from after Stacy was trafficked. Raising questions about how things might have been different... if the police had connected with Stacy in the days after she said she was drugged and kidnapped. The first is a woman we’re calling “Amy.” Stacy says they met at the YWCA. Amy told me she had a similar experience at the house in Westnedge Hill.
AMY: “Yeah, a plastic little toddler, maybe baby-mattress thing.”
I told Amy I would not reveal her identity. So WMUK Reporter Jessi Phillips is reading what she told me in an interview.
AMY: “I don’t remember at all how I got there.”
Amy was in the house longer than Stacy, possibly for more than a week. She says eventually her ex-boyfriend found her, and took her to the hospital, where she learned she'd been sexually assaulted. And possibly injected with cocktails of drugs... that left her with severe injuries to her arm. She had to have several surgeries.
AMY: “I was using heroin at the time. So, I was already kind of out of it from that. And so, I think they were taking advantage of that in doing the hot shots while I was already out of it.”
Jessica Tapscott Marks of Safe Place in Battle Creek says a “hot shot” is a potentially lethal cocktail of injected drugs.
JESSICA TAPSCOTT MARKS: “They lace it with some, something you are unaware of, leaving you either in a state where you are incapacitated or potentially really, really ill, or possibly worse.”
The police record I obtained on Amy’s case is heavily redacted. But the detective’s note says it’s – quote – “indicative of human trafficking.”
When I interviewed Amy in 2022, she said she would like to help the prosecutor bring charges. But Stacy says more recently, Amy told her she just wants to move on with her life.
The third woman... filed a sexual assault complaint against Jerry last year. Nearly three and a half years after Stacy ran from him in the Vine neighborhood. In the police report, the victim said Jerry had been her drug dealer a few years before. And at that time, he was - quote - “trafficking women.” Jerry pleaded guilty to 4th degree criminal sexual conduct and unlawful imprisonment in June.
JUDGE PAMELA LIGHTVOET: ...Probation, three years’...
He got a year in jail with time served, and three years’ probation. He was released from jail in January.
Stacy’s main trafficker Miles is in prison for a different crime. So is Ed, who was there when Stacy says she was drugged and kidnapped.
Kent County’s investigation into Stacy’s trafficking found Kalamazoo had jurisdiction over most of her claims. Captain Jason Richards says the department sent its findings to the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety to help with its case. And in mid-January, KDPS confirmed it is working with County Prosecutor Jeff Getting’s office to move the case against Stacy’s accused traffickers forward.
Many trafficking cases never get prosecuted. In part, it's because pursuing a case is often exhausting for victims. It'll be five years this summer since Stacy was trafficked. She’s found it discouraging to wait so long for justice. Just coming back to town is traumatic for Stacy. The prospect of facing her abusers in court is even more daunting. But Stacy will be waiting to see if her traffickers are finally charged for what they did to her.
I’m Leona Larson.
ANNOUNCER CREDITS:
[UPDATE - January 29] We have an update to this story. On Jan. 29, 2024, the Kalamazoo County prosecutor's office agreed to reduce Stacy Chambliss' felony car theft charge to a misdemeanor. Stacy agreed to pay restitution. She does not know the amount yet; it is expected to be settled in February. The prosecutor's office says in exchange for restitution, it will dismiss the charge, leaving Stacy's record clear for most purposes.
“Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor” is a production of WMUK, at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. This program was underwritten with support from the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership at Kalamazoo College. This documentary expands and updates a five-part series that aired in the fall of 2023. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts call or text 988. “Nowhere to Go: How the system failed a trafficking survivor” was reported by Leona Larson, and edited by WMUK News Director Sehvilla Mann and reporter Jessi Phillips. I’m Gordon Evans.
