Tag: kidnapping
Report: Funder Of Right-Wing Anti-Trafficking Film Busted In Child Abduction

Report: Funder Of Right-Wing Anti-Trafficking Film Busted In Child Abduction

One of the funders behind Sound of Freedom, an anti-trafficking film that was widely embraced by right-wing media this summer, was arrested in July on felony child kidnapping charges, according to Newsweek and a Missouri court website.

Fabian Marta appears to have referred to himself as an “angel investor” in the film, according to a screenshot of a since-deleted Facebook post. (Media Matters has not independently verified the Facebook post.)

Newsweek reported:

Fabian Marta was charged with felony child kidnapping in July, while since-removed Facebook posts appear to show the same person revealing their pride in funding the film. Marta's name appears in the movie's credits among the "investors [who] helped bring Sound of Freedom to theaters."

St. Louis Metropolitan Police confirmed to Newsweek that Marta, 51, from Chesterfield, Missouri, was charged on July 21, and was arrested on July 23.

Police also provided a booking photo of Marta, which appears to show the same person pictured on a Facebook account of the same name. Screenshots of since-removed posts from multiple online sources, seen by Newsweek but which could not be independently verified, show Marta speaking about his involvement with the film.

Sound of Freedom stars Jim Caviezel, who pushed several QAnon conspiracy theories while promoting the film earlier this summer. Caviezel claimed that centralized cabals of pedophiles were torturing trafficked children to extract adrenochrome from them — what’s known in QAnon jargon as the “adrenochrome empire.” He additionally said Ukrainian biolabs were involved in the conspiracy and that the CIA and FBI were implicated in a cover-up.

Marta’s arrest isn’t the only controversy surrounding the film, which is based on the life of Operation Underground Railroad founder Tim Ballard. Ballard has long claimed that his organization saves children from trafficking rings, but critics allege that most of OUR’s work has been in service of glorifying Ballard and building his brand.

Following the film’s release, Ballard and OUR parted ways “after an internal investigation into claims made against him by multiple employees,” according to Vice News. Ballard was later removed as CEO of The Nazarene Fund, an anti-trafficking group funded by Glenn Beck. He had previously been ousted from the same position in 2021.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

Michelle Knight — Call Her Lily, Please

Michelle Knight — Call Her Lily, Please

Her name is Lily now, named for her favorite flower.

To appreciate how startling it can be to first meet this confident, effusive young woman, consider this excerpt from her memoirs, written under her former name, Michelle Knight:

“Do you have any idea what it’s like to wake up and realize that no one is going to rape you that day? How wonderful it is to see the sunlight pouring through your window? How great it is to just walk around without a heavy chain on your wrist or ankle? It feels amazing.”

She wrote that in her 2014 book, Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness, a Life Reclaimed, which chronicles more than a decade of captivity, rape, and torture at the hands of a man whom she identifies in the book only as “the dude.”

Let’s leave it at that. Anyone paying half-attention in 2013 knows he was the man in Cleveland who kidnapped Knight in 2002, Gina DeJesus in 2004, and Amanda Berry in 2003 and imprisoned them in his hellhole of a house until police rescued them in May 2013.

To avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty to 937 counts — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — and was sentenced that August to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Unable to endure a captivity that was far more humane than he had ever allowed for these women, “the dude” hanged himself the following month.

Knight’s ordeal will reach a new crescendo of national attention later this month, when Lifetime debuts the movie Cleveland Abduction. Taryn Manning, one of the stars of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, plays Knight.

They are fast friends, Knight says. She is “nervous but excited” about the movie. Her constant mantra: “If it can help others…”

I first talked to Knight three weeks ago at the Cleveland Rape Crisis Center. I had agreed to interview her onstage for the center’s annual luncheon fundraiser, but she needed to meet me first. Trust is an issue, always — starting with her horrific childhood — but I was struck by how easily she made conversation. She is doing the hard work of healing. For that, she gives much of the credit to psychologist and television personality Dr. Phil — Phil McGraw — whom she calls her hero.

The admiration, McGraw told The Plain Dealer via email, is mutual. “When you listen to her describe the horrible living conditions and how she was treated, you wonder how anyone lasted a day let alone more than a decade. In the 12 years of doing the ‘Dr. Phil’ show, no one has changed me like Michelle Knight and her story of survival.”

Knight’s agenda is as simple as it is relentless. “I’m a trauma survivor,” she said. “I don’t want to be sheltered by what happened to me. And as long as telling my story can help others, I’m going to keep doing this.”

The CRCC event Wednesday broke records of attendance and fundraising. When Knight walked across the stage in the Renaissance ballroom, the crowd rose to its feet in prolonged ovation. She looked out in amazement, tears filling her eyes.

There is a giant grace to this physically tiny 34-year-old woman. She is quick to laugh — to giggle, really — and never tires, it seems, of thanking others for caring about how she is doing.

On that day when we first met, she talked a lot about what she has learned about herself and about the process of starting over.

“For years, I didn’t have any faith,” she said. “It took this situation to help me find my faith. Despite everything I was going through, I didn’t die. I realized there was a reason God wanted me to live.”

She is used to people dismissing their own problems in light of what she has been through, but she rejects the comparison. “All pain matters,” she said simply. “It’s not a contest.”

When Knight finally escaped her captor, some news outlets depicted her as mentally impaired. It still hurts, she says, to know that. Her captor had rammed a barbell into her jaw, which is why she struggled with speech in the immediate weeks after her release.

“The media could have taken the time to do their homework,” she said. “They could have taken the time to report the facts.”

Yes, indeed.

A few more facts about Lily Knight:

She has recorded her first song, “Survivor,” which she plans to release next month.

She’s no longer afraid of grief because she’s learned that inviting it in is the quickest way to usher it out the door.

And when she sings, as she so often does, she closes her eyes and smiles like the little girl she never got to be.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate. To find out more about Connie Schultz (con.schultz@yahoo.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. 

Photo: Michelle Knight speaks at Ariel Castro’s sentencing hearing, August 1, 2013. (Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer).

Kidnappers Demanded $132.5 Million For James Foley, GlobalPost Chief Says

Kidnappers Demanded $132.5 Million For James Foley, GlobalPost Chief Says

By Alana Semuels and Maeve Reston, Los Angeles Times

NEW YORK — Before executing James Foley, the militant group Islamic State sent an email demanding $132.5 million in exchange for the return of the kidnapped journalist, the director of the website GlobalPost said Thursday.

Foley was working for GlobalPost when he disappeared in Syria in November 2012. A video surfaced Tuesday showing him kneeling in the desert and then being killed. The video explained that the killing was retaliation for U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State.

Philip Balboni, president and chief executive of the website, did not comment on how GlobalPost responded to the ransom demand. However, he has said that the demand was forwarded to the proper authorities.

The United States and Britain have a policy of not negotiating with militants, and the Group of 8 industrial nations has also issued a statement saying its countries reject the payment of ransom to such groups.

But the policy is being questioned in the wake of Foley’s killing. Although U.S. special operations forces had tried this summer to rescue hostages held in Syria by the Islamic State, the mission was not successful. And though the Foley family expressed gratitude to President Barack Obama for the efforts to rescue James Foley, his parents hesitated Wednesday when asked whether the U.S. government had done enough to bring him back safely. “No,” his brother Michael interjected.

More than 80 journalists have been abducted in Syria, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, which says that is an unprecedented number, going back to the group’s founding in 1981. CPJ estimates that about 20 journalists, the majority of whom are Syrians, are missing in the country.

The issue of ransom has become increasingly divisive because groups such as the Islamic State are financing their operations through such payments. Earlier this year, the Islamic State released several Spanish and French journalists, reportedly in exchange for large ransoms.

“Four French journalists were released in #Syria today. Very happy for them and their families. Hoping #James_Foley and the others will be next!” read a statement posted in April on the Free James Foley Facebook page.

Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula has extorted $20 million in ransom money in the last two years alone, according to Alistair Burt, a former British diplomatic official for the Middle East.

The United States’ policy of not paying ransom puts Obama in a difficult situation because the Islamic State also showed on video that it has kidnapped another missing American journalist, Steven Joel Sotloff.

“The life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision,” a masked man on the video says, according to SITE Intelligence Group. It was originally thought that that decision meant whether to continue airstrikes in Iraq, but it could in fact refer to the decision on whether to pay ransom.

In a news conference Wednesday, the Foley family asked the captors to let Sotloff go.

“We beg compassion and mercy of Jim’s captors, for Steven Sotloff and the other captives,” John Foley told reporters when asked whether he had a message for the militants behind his son’s death. “They never hurt anybody; they were trying to help and there’s no reason for their slaughter.”

Standing on the lawn outside the family home in Rochester, N.H., his wife, Diane Foley, added that her son was an “innocent” and his captors “knew it.”

“They knew that Jim was just a symbol for our country — and it’s that hatred that Jim was against,” she said.

In a statement referring to the Islamic State by one of its several abbreviations, Secretary of State John F. Kerry vowed to “confront ISIL wherever it tries to spread its despicable hatred.”

“The world must know that the United States of America will never back down in the face of such evil,” he said. “ISIL and the wickedness it represents must be destroyed, and those responsible for this heinous, vicious atrocity will be held accountable.”

Semuels reported from New York and Reston from Rochester, N.H.

AFP Photo/Aris Messinis

Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!

Islamist Militants Kidnap Wife Of Cameroonian Official

Islamist Militants Kidnap Wife Of Cameroonian Official

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG — Islamist militants believed to be associated with the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped the wife of a Cameroonian vice prime minister Sunday, in a worrying sign that the violence in northeastern Nigeria is spreading beyond its borders.

Militants mounted an attack on the village of Kolofata and killed three people according to Cameroonian officials, Reuters reported.

The gunmen also abducted a traditional leader and his family in an early morning raid on the community near the Nigerian border, following attacks in recent days that left several Cameroonian soldiers dead.

News agencies reported the gunmen seized the wife of Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali while Ali managed to flee, Cameroonian officials said.

The attacks occurred just across the border from Gwoza, where extremists have mounted many Nigerian attacks since last year.

The militants have been active in the region for some time, carrying out attacks in Nigeria and sometimes fleeing into Cameroon. Last year, Boko Haram or a related group kidnapped a French family of seven, who were later released.

Others abducted last year and later freed include a Canadian nun, a French priest, and two Italian priests. Ten Chinese construction workers kidnapped in Cameroon in May remain in captivity.
Tens of thousands of northern Nigerians have fled into Cameroon in the last year.

But militants suspected of being with Boko Haram or a similar group have in recent days launched attacks in Cameroonian villages. Cameroon has deployed soldiers along the border but there has been little regional cooperation between Cameroonian and Nigerian forces until recently. Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger agreed to set up a regional force of nearly 3,000 men to confront Boko Haram and other Islamist militant groups.

In northern Nigeria’s biggest city, Kano, an attack on a church Sunday by unknown assailants left five people dead and others wounded. No group immediately claimed responsibility.

Boko Haram, which opposes secular education, Western culture and democracy, is staging an insurgency in northern Nigeria in an attempt to establish an Islamist state. The group is still holding around 219 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted in April.

AFP Photo

Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!