TENNESSEE, USA — UPDATE (5:50 p.m.): Metro Nashville Police said authorities have located two missing Sevierville girls in Clarksville after a man was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
Police discovered the two girls, ages 14 and 17, were on an adult escort website, according to an affidavit.
The affidavit out of Davidson County revealed that police received information about two missing minors out of Sevierville. Detectives were able to find them on an adult escort website.
Some pictures showed a man lying in the bed and one of the minors sitting on top of him, the affidavit shows.
During an investigation, detectives were able to identify the man as Charles Woods.
He was arrested for outstanding warrants on Thursday, but the teens were not with him.
The affidavit also showed that in an interview with detectives Thursday, Woods admitted to posting the ads and taking the money via Venmo. He also admitted that it was him detectives were talking to through a texting app. Woods had directed detectives the day before to go to the InTown Suites at 2350 Murfreesboro Road.
Woods is charged with two counts of sex trafficking, and has four outstanding warrants. He is being held on a $118,000 bond.
The Sevierville Police Department thanked Metro Nashville and Clarksville police as well as the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation for helping find the two teens.
The teens ran away from a group home in East Tennessee on Oct. 20, according to MNPD. They were last known to have been in Nashville’s Napier-Sudekum public housing area before being found.
"It’s heartbreaking. Many of the children I work with are tricked by someone that loves them or that they thought loved them," said Lisa Bolton, the director of youth services at the Community Coalition Against Human Trafficking.
"A lot of people think trafficking is a snatch and grab that trafficker shows up to a park and steals your kid and takes them to a faraway country. But really what it looks like is a man usually an older man who will get on social media and start commenting on young girls' accounts," she said.
So far this year, she said the coalition has received 200 referrals of women who need help. For the youth she works with, she said the prime age for traffickers to begin grooming them is 12 to 14—but there are ways parents can help.
"Invest in your family, invest in your community, because if you can meet the needs that a child has you can almost get rid of their vulnerability and when a trafficker comes up to them and says 'I’ll be your everything,' they’ll say 'I already have my everything. I have my family.'"