America Speaks Ink is a sponsor of our National Amber Alert System. When the Haleigh alert first sounded off and I witnessed for the first time on television the family who was in this nightmare, a few things hit me about them. I realized that the way this family carried themselves on TV and in nationwide interviews did their child a disservice. I realized quickly that the way they dressed and the way they spoke and handled themselves under this pressure would determine how many people would tune in to this story or help at all.

I was yelling at the TV screen at the father telling him to take out his earrings and put down the cigarette and put on some nice clothes. It’s wrong, but people will look at this family and not be inclined to help because of their appearance. Everyone wore t-shirts day after day while this unfolded. They were smoking cigarettes on camera and just carrying themselves like trashy people. Now just because some of the family has little to no idea about etiquette, doesn’t mean this child who is missing should be affected by lack of help from the public, but reality is indeed that and this is what is happening. We were all watching this man walk around with his seventeen year old girlfriend wondering when the cops would arrest him for statutory rape and watching on camera the seventeen year old girl smoking cigarettes under legal age to do so. The whole scene with the rented trailer and the cursing and creepiness, I knew would work against this missing child.

Then Geraldo from Fox Newsshows up and uncovers allegations by the biological mother about the father that went from his participation in the illegal drug trade to the allegation that he was violent and beat the biological mother while she was pregnant. One allegation after another, such as, the father does cocaine and meth, he was 75% sure who had his daughter, he had gun and said he’d use it, all the times he was arrested before, whether he was a police informant and on and on. All of these allegations just kept pouring out of the woodwork about the father and all about this entire family and their drama just turned off the few people that were tuned in.

Anyone who felt for these people at one time, would for sure be gone now. This poor little girl is gone and now this entire family has degraded into some trailer trash cartoon. The whole thing breaks my heart. From the very beginning I felt something was off about all this. Unfortunately, it didn’t take much time to have my intuition validated. I’ll just pray for that lost little girl and her safe return to that cartoon graveyard she lives in.          

C. Rich

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