Anaiah Walker
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Voices for Justice is a podcast that uses adult language and discusses sensitive and potentially triggering topics, including violence, abuse, and murder. This podcast may not be appropriate for younger audiences. All parties are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Some names have been changed or omitted per their request or for safety purposes. Listener discretion is advised. My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

Today, I'm discussing the disappearance and death of 16-year-old Aniyah Walker from my hometown, Phoenix, Arizona. I first saw Aniyah's name when I was researching a different case, right there in the executive summary of a report by the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, titled Disappearing and Dying, Why 20,000 Kids Disappear from Foster Care Every Year, and How to End This Crisis. The first page of the report reads in part, quote,

Anaya Walker was 15 when she went missing from Arizona's foster care system in December 2019. Five months later, her body, shoeless and disfigured, was found discarded on the median of a freeway. It took the police 12 days to identify the child. Anaya was one of the estimated 20,000 children who go missing from the child protection system every year.

State agencies weren't required to report missing foster children to law enforcement until 2014. Since then, reports of children missing from care have more than doubled.

Protocols and best practices for the search and recovery of missing foster children are scarce, and laws outlining search requirements are virtually non-existent. Traffickers know that children without stable families are easy prey. Research overwhelmingly shows that most sexually trafficked children are from foster care. Some children, like Anaya, are found dead. Some are never found. End quote. This is the case of Anaya Walker.

It's hard to know exactly where to begin Anaya's story, and I'll warn you that it feels incomplete. Anaya spent many years in and out of group homes in the foster care system, which means she met and likely lost many people she developed relationships with. I imagine Anaya touched a lot of lives. She was considered to be a chronic runner from the system, so she was never in one place for very long. But let's start from the beginning with what we do know.

Anaya was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and lived with her parents until she was seven, but they eventually split up. Her father Adrian moved to San Diego, California, and her mother Sherika moved to Phoenix, Arizona. At first, Anaya was with her mother in Phoenix, but Sherika says her daughter's behavior got progressively worse until she was basically out of control. At that point, Anaya is sent to live with her father in San Diego, but Anaya's behavior did not improve.

Then, according to the Justice for Anaya Walker Foundation website, quote, end quote.

So, in 2017, Anaya enters the Arizona foster care system. By the spring of 2018, when Anaya was just 13 years old, she and another child, age 14, run from the group home. Unfortunately, like a lot of children running from the foster care system, predators found them pretty soon after.

When the kids went to meet up with who they thought were teenage boys, they say they were instead met by brothers Jamal Pennington, age 33, and Camille Pennington, age 26. It's not clear where they met, but both kids say they were stalked by the brothers before being held captive by them at the Payless Inn in downtown Phoenix.

Both children state they were instructed to walk the area to sell crack cocaine. They were also listed on Backpage and given a quota to make $250 a day. If they didn't meet the quota, they were beaten. For five days, these children were horribly physically and sexually abused.

Then, on April 4th, 2018, Anaya and her friend make it to a Circle K gas station, where they tell the clerk that they were forced to sell drugs and sex for the past five days, and ask for them to call the police.

The Phoenix police respond, separate the kids, and they tell the same story. Then, nearly two weeks later, on April 16th, both brothers are found near the Payless Inn and arrested for aggravated assault and child sex trafficking. 25-year-old Aaliyah Barganier was also arrested on charges of child sex trafficking and sexual conduct with a minor. This is all before Anaya's 14th birthday.

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Unfortunately, Anaya's story doesn't get much better from here. Her family says she never fully recovered from this. She would talk about being terrified that she would be found and punished for going to the police. From here, she's in and out of group homes. Basically, she kept running away, kept getting trafficked, and then found herself back at another group home.

We don't know who was grooming her or perpetrating the abuse, and statements from those who knew her are often vague and confusing. Sometimes blame is placed on Anaya for hanging out with the wrong group of friends or choosing a bad lifestyle.

So I just want to say, right here, right now, children do not choose to be trafficked. They do not have the ability to choose to be sex workers. They do not fall into the wrong crowd and do bad things. They are groomed by predators. And those predators come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and genders.

When I spoke with kids who ran away from the group homes I worked for, they would talk about how that abuse felt like love. How even someone just taking them to get their nails done was the most affection they'd felt sometimes in their whole lives. That's how grooming works. These predators don't tell these children that they will be abused.

They tell them that they'll be safe, that they'll be free, that they'll have all the money they need to buy whatever they want, when of course the darker reality is they're being trafficked, horribly abused, and threatened if they try to get out.

According to Dominique Rose-Seppowitz, sex trafficking expert at Arizona State University, about 80% of runaway children who are sex trafficked are in the custody of the state's child welfare system when they are trafficked. And according to a report from the Arizona Attorney General's office, the average trafficking victim in Arizona is 14 years old when they are first trafficked.

That's one year older than Anaya was when she escaped her abusers in 2018. Children who run from the foster care system are prime prey for predators. While some children are placed into loving homes and more ideal situations, many aren't. A lot of kids like Anaya are crammed into group homes with a lot of other kids, which means they don't get a lot of attention, and oftentimes are outright abused.

There's no privacy and very little freedom. The agency I worked for housed 10 children per house, and that was considered kind of luxurious for the industry at that time. So when one of these kids meets an adult predator posing as a teenager who says, come stay with me, you'll have your own room, I'll take you shopping, whatever line they use, that can be really appealing to these kids. So they run.

not knowing they ran right into the arms of someone who plans to traffic them. And once they're in, it's not easy to get out. These people will threaten them, their families, their younger siblings, whatever it takes to keep them quiet and making money. So again, for the record, these kids don't choose this lifestyle.

They don't make bad choices and end up there. Kids are groomed, abused, and manipulated into believing that that situation is better than the alternative. And by the time they want out, it's too late. But some do get out, some escape, like Anaya.

When that happens, when a child runs from a group home situation, often the agency running the homes will take the child back in. But in some cases, that agency can't take them back because they simply don't have an open bed for them. Or it's decided by their caseworker that after their experience, they need a higher level of care not offered by a traditional group home. That's when they go to a therapeutic or behavioral group home. There are a few different terms for these facilities.

Now, there's a big difference between a regular group home and a therapeutic group home. These are basically the group homes for kids who get kicked out of regular group homes. These therapeutic group homes operate less like a family atmosphere and more like an institution. They are often advertised as higher levels of care in a therapeutic healing environment. But that isn't always the case.

The timeline of exactly where Anaya was and when is fuzzy. And that's fair. These records for kids in the foster care system are sealed for a reason. But in a video Anaya's father posted to the Justice for Anaya Walker Foundation Facebook page, he mentions Anaya going to a facility called Mingus Mountain in northern Arizona. This

This is a facility I heard a lot about when I worked with kids in foster care. While I can't speak to the quality of treatment there or the conditions because I've never seen them myself, I remember a lot of staff telling the kids they were lucky to be with us and not somewhere like Mingus Mountain. So I wanted to dive deeper into Mingus Mountain. When you visit their website, the About Us section reads, quote,

Mingus Mountain Youth Treatment Center is a Joint Commission-accredited behavioral health inpatient residential treatment center for girls. Our ability to treat and motivate our clients toward a positive, healthy future results in long-term success for our clients and their families. Our

End quote.

So you can pay to send your child to Mingus Mountain. But they also offer placements for children in state custody, like Anaya. Now that we've heard how Mingus Mountain advertises itself, let's read some real reviews from people who say they've experienced the program. The facility currently has a 2.2 star rating on Google. One of the one-star reviews reads, "'I still have nightmares about this place. "'The way they restrain the kids.'"

Another one-star review reads in part, quote,

We almost never rode the horses. And any pictures sent to our parents of us happy wasn't the case. We were forced to take those photos. We were forced to act like everything was okay. There was multiple people who tried to kill themselves from how horrible the staff is. Please, for the love of God, if you want to send your child here, I promise that is not the answer.

There's so many more efficient ways of helping your child. Anywhere but here. So many parents lost their children to this evil place. End quote. There are so, so many more reviews just like this. People allege that children go missing from the facility and are never found, that children are sexually abused, and a lot more. The basic theme is abuse. There are even people who claim to be former staff urging parents not to send their children there. End quote.

But I wanted to dig even deeper. And I learned a lot. Mingus Mountain is owned by Sequel Youth and Family Services. They are a for-profit, $500 million company out of California. They own many facilities across the country, including Mingus Mountain. In a very powerful expose done by reporters at The Imprint and the San Francisco Chronicle in 2020, a 15-year-old named Kayla describes her time at this facility.

Like Anaya, Kayla had some behavioral issues. She took her mom's car without permission, then got in trouble for cutting off her ankle monitor and running away. So, Kayla sent to Mingus Mountain for treatment. She says upon arrival, she was told she was not allowed to speak Spanish, which, according to the article, is her preferred language.

She was not allowed to speak to the other residents without permission, and says the staff hurt the other residents often, even giving one of them a black eye while another staff member held the resident down. After an investigation in the summer of 2020, Mingus Mountain was ordered to stop all admissions to the facility until they could address the safety concerns. They would later be fined for apparently not keeping the facilities clean, causing a COVID outbreak that affected more than 90 residents, including Kayla.

According to Kayla, the kids who got sick were quarantined in the gym, where there were just a bunch of mattresses set up on the floor. And apparently no one was coming in to clean. So all these kids were just laying there sick while food and garbage piled up around them. Which of course eventually attracted bugs and more germs.

Honestly, there's so, so much more. There is a website called unsilence.org that compiles stories from people who have been abused in facilities like Mingus Mountain, and there is no shortage of reports on there about this place. But this was the therapeutic, healing facility that, according to her father, Anaya was sent to at some point.

Now, I don't know if Anaya was abused or ran from this facility. Mingus Mountain is in the middle of nowhere in Prescott, Arizona. There's nothing around for miles, so I can't imagine running from the facility is easy. And I also imagine that's likely by design. But we do know that in 2019, Anaya is out of Mingus Mountain, and

and ends up at another facility called Devereaux Behavioral Treatment Center, now back near Phoenix. Devereaux also has no shortage of complaints from the children who have been housed there, in addition to a pretty major scandal where two teenagers went missing from the facility.

Anaya's mother has outlined her last conversation with her daughter while she was at Devereux. It wasn't long after Anaya was admitted. They discussed some clothing her mother sent her, and the possibility that she could visit when she progressed into another part of the program. In this call, Anaya was looking forward to the future. When she was younger, she and her sister spent a lot of time watching Grey's Anatomy, and her grandmother was in the medical field.

So, Anaya decided she wanted to go to school to be a phlebotomist. Before Anaya went into the foster care system, she excelled in school. She was studying DNA mutations at age 13 just for fun, and often found herself bored in class because she could easily ace the material. At this point, Anaya is just 15. I have no doubt that she would have realized her dreams of being a phlebotomist or whatever she ultimately wanted to do.

But that's just not how it worked out for Anaya. Apparently, while out on a trip to a skating rink with the facility in December, Anaya ran. But this time, Anaya didn't come back, and was officially reported missing.

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In January 2020, Anaya is arrested in California for loitering with intent to commit prostitution. According to her father, she gave her older adult sister's name and was released. They had no idea Anaya was a 15-year-old missing from Arizona, so she slipped right through their fingers.

Then in June, Anaya's mother got a phone call from the Buckeye Police Department. At first, she was excited. Sure, they were going to tell her that Anaya had been found. She'd run so many times before. But that's not the news they had for her. Instead, they explained that Anaya had passed away. She was the victim of a hit-and-run. Her remains were found along Interstate 10, on the median west of Watson Road. Basically, in a ditch.

The details about Naya's body are horrific. Investigators believe her body was there for several days, and it took 12 days to identify her. They had to rehydrate the skin of her fingers to get the prints for a match. In the end, the medical examiner determined her cause of death was high-velocity impact. It seemed like a clear hit-and-run.

Now, when Anaya's father hears the news, he drives straight from San Diego to Phoenix using the most direct route, which is the I-10, the freeway Anaya was found on. He pulls off the interstated Watson Road. There's a lot of desert around, but there are some businesses nearby and a neighborhood. He asks everyone he sees if they remember seeing Anaya, but says no one was able to help him.

At first, investigators figure that maybe Anaya was hitchhiking and just got struck by a car who fled the scene. But once they learned more about her past, they began to consider foul play.

Anaya was a victim of sex trafficking from age 13 until her death at age 16. She was also supposed to testify against her abusers in court not long before she lost her life. Obviously, there's a motive for abusers to silence victims who may plan to testify against them in court. But let's dig deeper. We don't know what Anaya was doing after she went missing from her last group home.

She was gone for five months. We know she was arrested in January 2020 in California, but she was released. Obviously, she somehow made her way back to Arizona. Now, unfortunately, there is no surveillance video from where Anaya was found, and the Buckeye Police Department has not been able to find a single witness. When Anaya was found, she didn't have a phone, purse, or any jewelry with her. She wasn't even wearing socks or shoes.

So how does someone find themselves on a freeway with no shoes, phone, or a purse? Wallet, money, anything? Was Anaya possibly kicked out of a nearby home? Forced to find her way to someone that could help her? Like I said, there is a small neighborhood near where she was found. Was Anaya kicked out of a vehicle and then struck by it? Was she hitchhiking? Was she murdered and moved to this location? We just don't know.

And unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the Buckeye Police Department does either, because Anaya's case just sits for a year.

Then, in May 2021, the Buckeye Police Department releases a statement. After an entire year of investigating, they say that they've recovered and finally identified three parts of a vehicle they believe was involved in Anaya's death. They have the driver's side door mirror cover, a portion of the left side of the front bumper, and the left front fog light cover.

They say these parts came from a 2016-2018 Honda Civic EX or LX in midnight burgundy pearl. They also emphasize that this was a rare color for the vehicle. So they release this description and ask the public to be on the lookout and submit any tips about people who may have replaced these specific parts on their vehicle around or after the time of Anaya's death. Then Anaya's case just sits again.

In November 2022, the Buckeye Police Department holds a press conference. Here, they announce that they're increasing the reward for information about Anaya's death. It's now up to $12,000. The month this episode airs, Anaya should be celebrating her 19th birthday. Maybe she would have been in school, working on becoming a phlebotomist, rewatching Grey's Anatomy with her older sister. Unfortunately, that's where Anaya's case is today.

The charges against Jamal Pennington in relation to Anaya were dropped. In October 2021, Camille Pennington was found guilty on the charges of possessing and selling narcotics and physical abuse of a child.

He was sentenced to five years in prison, with a credit for 1,289 days he had already served. He also got about $4,000 in fines and supervised probation for the rest of his life. The last I could find of Camille was from about a month before recording this episode. He was apparently arrested for monitor device interference. The documents for Aaliyah Barganier have been sealed, but according to the docket for her case, it appears that a plea agreement was made, and she received probation.

The website Anaya's traffickers used to exploit her has since been taken down and is pending legal action. As of recording this episode, no one has been named a person of interest in the death of Anaya Walker, and no charges have been filed. At the beginning of this episode, I warned you that Anaya's story would feel incomplete.

Because it is. No one knows what Anaya went through in those group homes, why she ran, who she ran to or from, and the abuse she suffered throughout it all. We almost have no information about how she died. You know, believe it or not, a lot of the time I keep my opinions about law enforcement to myself on this show. I understand that they're human and no one is perfect.

But I had questions about this investigation. Mainly how it took an entire year to identify these car parts. Basically, I was just trying to gauge the sense of urgency the Buckeye Police Department puts on a case of a black teenager with a history of being sex trafficked. Which, after what I saw in the Daniel Robinson case and the complete lack of urgency there, I think is a pretty fair question.

Now, let me say, for the record, I am not a car person. I've had my same car for 10 years now. I just don't care. If it gets me from point A to point B safely and with air conditioning here in Arizona, I'm happy. So I had no idea how easy it would be to identify these parts. But I had a feeling a year was a long time. So I reached out to my friends who are mechanics, one for over 25 years.

Every single one told me the same thing. There's absolutely no way it should have taken over a year to identify those parts. One said if he just had the fog lamp cover, it would have taken him two minutes. A day if they just had a piece of the bumper to do a paint match, especially with a rare color. He added that the fog lights on a Honda Civic from 2016 to 2018 grew in size each year.

He says any mechanic should be able to look at the cover and tell authorities exactly what year it came from. Now, I'm not bringing this up to slam the police department, honestly. I bring it up because I hope that makes you care more about Anaya. Because from where I'm sitting, it seems like her case is just not a priority.

I can't change what Anaya Walker went through, and I can't bring her back. I can't make the Buckeye Police Department act with urgency. But I can share Anaya's story, even if it is incomplete, and I can ask you to do the same.

Which, of course, brings me right to our call to action. As always, on our website and social media channels, you will find graphics that are very easy to share. These will have information about the vehicle law enforcement believes struck and killed Aniyah Walker. Again, that is a 2016-2018 Honda Civic EX or LX in the color Midnight Burgundy Pearl.

If we can help find this car, we might be able to figure out where Anaya was in the months leading up to her death. Please share for Anaya. As a reminder, 16-year-old Anaya Walker was found deceased on Interstate 10 near Watson Road in Buckeye, Arizona on May 22nd, 2020. Anaya was black, with black hair and brown eyes. Unfortunately, her height and weight before her death are unknown.

Anyone with information about Anaya's death or Anaya's whereabouts before her death is asked to call Silent Witness at 480-948-6377. You can also submit tips online at silentwitness.org. But as always, thank you, I love you, and I'll talk to you next time.

Voices for Justice is hosted and produced by me, Sarah Turney, and is a Voices for Justice media original. If you love what we do here, please don't forget to follow, rate, and review the show in your podcast player. It's an easy and free way to help us and help more people find these cases in need of justice. And for even more content, check out my other podcast, Disappearances, only on Spotify.

In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that everyone has a different version of events.

Hear the story on Where's Dear? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

All right, welcome to the secret after show. The door is open. I have turned the air conditioning on if you hear a slightly different hum now. It's Arizona. I can't keep it off for that long anymore, you guys. I also have popcorn on my lap, so we are ready to go. And I have a lot to talk about in this after show today. Obviously, you guys know I worked with kids in foster care and cases like this get me fired up.

I was also mad that I keep, like, I went to download this study because I do that. You know, I collect educational resources that I find when I'm researching these cases just so I can go back and reference them. And I was like, oh, this is a great study. And I downloaded it. And I was like, oh, I've already downloaded this before because, yeah, this is how often I'm finding it in these cases. And I just, I don't know what it's going to take anymore.

to get people to care more about these kids going missing in the foster care system and them being trafficked. So I actually have this study pulled up. This is the same one I read at the beginning of the episode, disappearing and dying, why 20,000 kids disappear from foster care every year and how to end this crisis. It is a great study for anybody who wants to take a look at it. And

When you find it, it's titled Gen Justice is the company who makes it, but they have since rebranded. And forgive me, I do not remember what they have rebranded to. But if you Google that title, you should be able to find it.

And, oh, you guys, I wanted to really keep riffing on this episode, but I wanted to keep the focus on Anaya while trying to explain to you kind of the background behind what she was going through, just in my experience working with kids in foster care. Of course, we don't know what Anaya went through, but I think understanding how these facilities work would probably give us all a pretty good idea of

And the other thing from the first page of this report, you guys, is they reference this woman who grew up in foster care, T. Ortiz Walker Pettigrew, and her quote says, No one looks for us. I really want to make this clear. No one looks for us. And from my experience in the foster care system, that is exactly fucking true. Right?

I remember kids would go missing and some of the biggest concerns were, oh my gosh, how's this going to look in the media? No one cared when these kids went missing. I mean, I will say that staff members cared, but in terms of an overall organization, I

From where I was sitting, it was more of a PR cover-up. They didn't want people giving interviews. They didn't want to report the kids missing. It's a really messed up system. But let me read you the three key takeaways from this report.

So it says,

The next one says, an unknown number, but easily in the thousands upon thousands of kids who disappeared from care are trafficked. Children who have been recovered from sex trafficking report that they were given a quota of up to 15 buyers per night. This means a sex trafficking victim may be raped thousands of times a year. Here's the last one.

On an average day, 55 children will disappear from the U.S. foster care system, the very system charged with keeping abused children safe. The state should make every effort to keep foster care children safe, and when a child goes missing, spare no effort in finding him or her.

Now, I do want to read some of the critical reforms that they suggest. So they say educate foster children about sex trafficking and related dangers. And I will say that the agency I worked for did that. We would, you know, I would personally talk to the kids. They knew, you know, the owners of this company knew that I had a missing sister.

And this is long before I was fighting for Alyssa, long before I knew what the reality of her situation was, right? When I believe that she was a runaway who never came back. So that's often what I would talk to the kids about. You know, I have a sister who ran away and she never came back. And I want to make sure that you understand that's something that could happen to you. So not only were there actually official presentations where they would talk about the dangers of being trafficked and, you

I mean, some of these stories, you know, because I worked with staff who I didn't directly care for the children. I was an event manager. I was in charge of creating enriching opportunities for them. Things like soliciting tickets for Disney on Ice, taking them to the zoo. I had the easy part of it all. And I will admit that.

But I learned a lot from the staff who directly cared for these children, who were with them every single day in these houses, at school, whatever it might be. And some of these stories are horrific. And we really didn't sugarcoat it a lot with the kids. In these presentations that I would watch, you know, along with the kids, they would talk about, you know, I cared for a child who ran away and they ended up locked in a cage underneath somebody's bed for years until they were finally able to escape.

So, yeah, back to the critical reforms. Educate foster children about sex trafficking and related dangers. I will say the agency I worked for did that, but I have to assume that others don't if they consider this a critical reform. Also, it says, you know, give teens a reason to stay in school by establishing a personal foster care trust for each teen. That would be amazing. Appoint an attorney for every kid in state care. Also amazing.

require photo identification cards for foster children, require searches for missing children, and keep court cases open. Seems like that's absolutely something that should be already happening. Utilize 21st century technology and the private sector. Provide law enforcement with the resources to conduct full-fledged searches for missing children. Provide them with the resources. I would argue they have the resources. Um,

Amend state confidentiality laws to allow disclosure information about missing children.

These all seem really obtainable. I mean, some of these things, right? Like, you know, establishing a trust for a child. That is creating resources out of thin air. But something about this provide law enforcement with the resources to conduct full-fledged searches for missing children rubs me the wrong way. Because I would argue that that happens all the time for, you know, the blessed cases that actually get those resources and attention. Now, I – you guys, I could go through this whole report with you. It's fantastic. Okay.

But I just wanted to highlight some of those things, you know, talk about the efforts that could hopefully help change this, because that's what I'm hoping for. I don't want to just keep screaming into the void about these kids. I want to see some reform and some change. So again, I hope that all of this, Anaya's very incomplete story, at least makes you more aware. And, you know, best case scenario, just makes you care and share her story.

And like I said, I have a lot to talk about here. So I do want to talk about why kids run from the foster care system. And I touched on it briefly, but I just want to reiterate that

A lot of the times, even the company I worked for, which touted itself as the Hilton of foster care, and by social workers, it was seen that way. Our agency was seen as one of the best places that these kids could go because, honestly, the houses they lived in were beautiful, better than any house I've ever lived in my entire life, including right now.

You know, they had and I was a part of those processes. Right. So I would see, you know, the things being bought for the houses. They were decorated. They had pictures of the kids up. But that's just looks. I will say that also. A part of my job also was every day I had to read IRs, which were incident reports, which were.

When you're a child in foster care and you do anything, they make an incident report. If these children cuss, you're supposed to write an incident report. Part of my responsibilities would often be driving the kids to and from enriching activities. So me in a bus full of 10 children, and I would often say, please don't curse so I don't have to write a stupid incident report about it.

Because I also know that that affects kids' chances of getting adopted and getting fostered. You know, they kind of come with this rap sheet, if you will, so that these adults know what they're getting into. They understand the specific concerns for each child, perhaps a behavioral problem, which I would argue cursing is not.

But either way, I read these reports every single day, and a lot of them were not pretty. Unfortunately, like in any industry where you're caring for children, it does attract, you know, some bad people who want to be around kids for the wrong reason. And I'll leave it at that. I'm sure you can fill in the rest with your imagination because sometimes these kids were horribly abused, even in, you know, the facility I worked for, which, again, was considered one of the best. Yeah.

So why do kids run from foster care? Because a lot of the times it's horrible, even in the best case scenario. You know, I would often see teenagers acting out because they couldn't do things like just get some privacy. I can't imagine being a 13, 14, 15, whatever, any type of teenager and not being able to have a space where I can close a door and just chill out and

Like I said, you know, the agency I worked for, there were 10 children per house, which means nobody had their own bedroom, right? You know, even in a four or five bedroom house, these kids don't have their own rooms. And oftentimes, well, I believe if I remember correctly, it was a rule. They're not allowed to shut their door, right? The staff has to be able to see them all the time, basically.

So kids run for a lot of reasons. It's not always just abuse. Sometimes it's just that lack of freedom. And again, you know, when you're talking to somebody online who says, oh, that sounds horrible, come with me. You can come live with my family, whatever it might be.

you can't blame kids for running. Like that is ridiculously appealing. Can you know, when you look at their situation, so why do kids run all sorts of reasons? And I don't think they should be punished for that. Um,

And yeah, the lack of media these kids get when they do run is astounding. These organizations have every reason to cover that up or just not focus on it in the media. So oftentimes when kids go missing from these group homes, there's no advocate out there in the media for them. You know, their house manager or their staff, whoever it might be, their caseworker, you know, they're not...

you know, it's not a good look for them to advertise that these kids are running, not for the facility or for the state. So yeah, it's a really scary, different situation that I just wish more people knew about. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about cases like Anaya's. You know, her family has been very vocal in the media. I will not say that she has no one out there fighting for her because that's not true. But a lot of times these kids don't have anyone. I'll

I'll tell you right now, I'm trying to track down a girl that went missing from the facility I worked at when I worked there. You know, she ran a few times. She'd come back. I mean, I can tell you that I was looking on sites like Backpage and Craigslist and all that trying to find her because we knew. We

I'm literally still trying to find her. And when I look up her name, all I can find is a single sentence from Arizona DPS about her being missing. So I'm trying to get the records. I'm trying to find out what is happening with her case, if anybody even cares, if anybody is looking for her. But that's the reality. And that's why I wanted to cover Anaya's case too, is

You know, I think I found one podcast that had covered her case before, and it was, you know, mostly an interview with her father, it seems. And it's hard because how do you cover a case like this when there's not a lot of information? If I wouldn't have included all the stuff about, you know, kind of explaining what foster care is like, this episode would have been like 10 minutes long. And, you know, I know a lot of people will listen, but a lot of people also see a 10-minute episode and go, meh, not for me. Yeah.

And that's hard. Balancing what you as a listener wants with, you know, cases I care about is difficult. So like I mentioned, this, this, I'm so rambly today. I hope you enjoy it. This is why I say thank you for tolerating me every single week.

But, yeah, you know, that's why I kind of put that disclaimer that Anaya's story was going to be incomplete because it is. Because we don't have all these pieces about what happened to her. You know, the state's not going to give it up. These individual facilities are not going to give it up. You know, I'm sure a lot of the kids that she was with might still be in care. You know, Anaya would be 19 now. And some kids do choose to stay past the age of 18 for a variety of reasons. They're given the opportunity to.

You know, so they can still develop their lives and try to get out with at least a little bit of money and a plan. But, yeah, so I'm sure there are kids out there. I'm sure there's a lot of people who know more about Anaya than I do. And I hope someday, you know, they're able to speak out in a way that's meaningful and helpful. And I really hope the Buckeye Police Department has spoken with them because I am...

this investigation is lacking in my opinion. Again, I hope there's more behind the scenes. You know, we never know what they really have and what's just public, but everything I found, there's like nothing. They have nothing on Anaya's case, which is really scary. I will also say something I omitted from the

Because I got some different opinions about this. And I'm not a car person. I am not a car person. But basically, we know on Anaya's official poster, we have these car models, right? A Honda Civic EX or LX in Midnight Burgundy Pearl. And in at least two posts from the Buckeye Police Department, they're saying that they're not a car person.

They called the model a Honda Civic LE. And so I was confused, right? This happens all the time when you research. You find conflicting information. And I was like, oh my gosh, did I get it wrong? You know, I go to look it up and it doesn't seem like the Honda LE is a real thing. You know, these are trims apparently we're talking about. Again, I'm not a car person. Please forgive me. The only thing I could find is there is an RLE, which is a really rare model. Um,

But that's not the point. The thing is, the car they're looking for is not an LE, according to the official poster, according to most of the reports I read. And in one of the posts on the Buckeye Police Department's Facebook page, somebody points that out, which is where I was first directed. I was like, oh. But it says, hey, there's no such thing as a Honda Civic LE. And they never corrected it. Yeah.

So when people go to look for the information about Anaya, there's all these different models. And again, you guys, when I was talking to this mechanic and he was like, oh no, every single year from 2016 to 2018, that fog light gets bigger. And he says that on these fog lights...

The numbers are 3D printed in multiple places with barcodes. And he said he has no idea why they don't know exactly what year it is. And unfortunately, from the pictures I was able to provide him of the actual covers, it's just the outside. So he doesn't have dimensions. He doesn't have these numbers. So he can't tell us what year it comes from.

But yeah, so not to slam the Buckeye Police Department, but after Daniel Robinson, after living in this state, I was pretty disappointed by that. It does seem like they could probably figure out what year this is. It seems like it was very likely that they would have been able to figure out what they've given the public before a fucking year, you guys.

But yeah, I will also say that Anaya's case has inspired me to do a new Patreon episode. So if you guys know, over on Patreon, I do a new series called Dark Truth, where sometimes it's a little bit lighter. One time I talked about a reality TV show, and sometimes it's a little bit darker. This year I'm talking, or this month, I'm talking about Pornhub and basically how it's

fucking built for trafficking. So really, really dark. And Anaya's case inspired me to do one on the troubled teen industry, which was all those facilities I was talking about. And also, you know, the people in the fight for that, you have people like Paris Hilton and Bad Baby from the Dr. Phil show, who want to talk about their experience and talk about how messed up that industry is and rampant with abuse. So yeah,

Yeah. Anaya's case really inspired me because it outraged me so much. And again, I hope from anything from this very, very long, this might be the longest after show ever, you guys, from these very long rants that it makes you care too. Because in my experience, these kids who, you know, are missing from the foster care system need some extra attention. They tend to go a little more unnoticed, especially Anaya's case. And

I would love it if you would share. I would love it if you would join me and stand up for these kids because they really, really need it. But as always, thank you for tolerating me here in my very rambly, very, very rambly today after show. I love you and I'll talk to you next time. Popcorn, do you want to say anything? Do you want to say goodbye? No, Popcorn still hates podcasting confirmed. Sorry, guys. Why are you so rude? Why are you so rude to our friends?