A social media post has alleged that a sex trafficking attempt was reported at Dillard’s in Albany Mall in Georgia this month.
In the Facebook post, Holly Weathers King said her daughter was approached in a dressing room first by two women with a foreign accent, and then a man, but did not share exactly what they said to her daughter.
While King suggested both the Albany Police Department and Albany Mall Security were informed of the incident, WALB said a report was not made with either mall security or Albany police. Dillard’s management told WALB that they were informed about an “incident” and sought to “make the customer comfortable.”
Unfortunately, sex trafficking is known to plague the area of Albany as it does the U.S. as a whole. Just this past year, WALB reported that an Albany gang member was convicted for trafficking a 16 year-old girl, and that a mother was charged with sex trafficking after she instructed her daughter to have sex with a man for money.
Albany serves as a hub of sex trafficking, according to mother and military wife Leah Dee, who told WALB in 2021 that she has rescued dozens of women in the city.
The covert nature of sex trafficking makes its true scope in the country difficult to assess, as a 2025 congressional report has noted. The sexually exploitative criminal activity is considered the “fastest-growing illegal industry in the world,” according to the Office of the Attorney General. The average victims of sex trafficking are barely post-pubescent girls in sixth to eighth grade.
Almost 900 calls from Georgia were made to the National Human Trafficking Hotline in 2024. About 300 of those calls were reportedly made from victims of human trafficking themselves.
To report suspected human trafficking in Georgia, call:
- The Statewide 24-Hour Human Trafficking Hotline at (866) 363-4842
- 911 and file a report with a police agency
- The National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888
