It had been a long, exhausting day; Mondays usually were when I was a full-time professor and advisor at Coastal Carolina University. Students often waited until the last minute to complete their assignments for the week, rushed in with questions or needing extra assistance, or they were seeking advice after a weekend of balancing long hours studying and partying and working – like many young people often do who are experiencing living away from “home” and becoming adults for the first time. I was just packing up my bags of books, papers, and leftover lunch when two of my students breathlessly arrived at my door.
“Dr. Breede, we really need to talk to you. You won’t believe what happened to us. It’s an emergency!”
I had learned that the emergency could be anything as seemingly trivial as a bad break-up or an argument with a roommate, or something as serious as suicide ideation or substance abuse issues. I sighed, put my book bag down, and said, “Come on in. Andrea, Christine, how are you ladies doing? Need help with the readings?”
“No, Dr. Breede, you won’t believe what happened to us this weekend! We almost got kidnapped!”
“What?” My first thoughts were a misunderstanding – a driver whose directions had gotten skewed, or an exaggerating teenager. “What do you mean, you almost got kidnapped?”
“No Dr. Breede. KIDNAPPED. So, we went to “The CLUB” (one of the many popular hangouts along the Intercoastal Waterway here in Horry, Georgetown, and Charleston Counties), and we sat at the bar. We had a few drinks (I felt sure it had been more) and we were just having a blast. We’d had a great weekend so far – lots of parties and cookouts – and after a while the waitress came over with two drinks, nodded toward a guy sitting down at the end of the bar, and said he’d bought them for us. We toasted him and motioned him over.”
“Oh, Dr. Breede, he was soooo cute!” Christine exclaimed.
“Really adorable!” interrupted Andrea. “Just this adorable surfer boy, with blond hair and blue eyes. He wore a blue t-shirt and had this gorgeous tan. And just the sweetest thing! He had been to one of the parties we had been to that Friday night, and he knew several folks who’d been there. We all really hit it off, and after awhile he said, “Well, ladies, I’m late for a party and need to get going.”
“Yeah, and then he sorta’ stopped and turned around and said, “Hey y’all wanna’ go?” Christine continued. “We sort of looked at each other, and then he sorta laughed and said, “It’s not far,” and pointed out toward the water.”
“Dr. Breede, he was pointing at this beautiful yacht! I mean like a mansion! I’d never seen anything like it!” Andrea exclaimed.
“Yeah, and then he said, “Don’t worry. We’re not going anywhere. Some of us are still bar hopping.” And I looked at Andrea and I said, “Hell yeah!”
Christine didn’t seem happy. Neither did Andrea. I furrowed my brow and said, “What happened?”
“Dr. Breede we’d never seen anything like it. The yacht was beautiful, and it had a bar on the deck, and everybody was out there drinking. There was music and dancing, and all kinds of different people, and then Cute Surfer Boy asked us if we wanted to go below deck where the ‘real party’ was happening.”
The girls looked at each other, Christine imperceptibly nodded, and Andrea said, “Dr. Breede, they had all different kinds of trays with different kinds of weed, and lots of folks were snorting lines or pretty much hooking up…”
“Yeah,” Christine interrupted, and there was another pause. “I started feeling kinda’ scared.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Well,” she continued. “The women were just beautiful, like I mean model beautiful, and they were dressed to the T…”
Andrea exclaimed, “I’ve never seen jewelry like that, and they were all kinda’ skinny, but I didn’t think much of it because, you know, models and all!”
Christine continued, “But most of them didn’t speak English.”
“What did they speak?”
Christine looked over at Andrea, who shrugged. “All different languages. They smoked a lot of cigarettes and did a lot of drugs, but they didn’t seem happy. But it was the men who were clearly foreign.”
“What do you mean, foreign?” I was starting to get really worried.
“Euro-trash!” They both responded in unison.
“Euro-trash?” I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“Yeah, you know Dr. Breede,” replied Andrea. “They had on what looked like really expensive clothes, like silk shirts, and tight pants, and they smoked like crazy too, long cigarettes. Really nice leather shoes, but no socks.”
“So gross,” muttered Christine.
“Right?” agreed Andrea.
“None of ‘em spoke English, and we were getting sorta nervous, and we couldn’t find the cute surfer boy anywhere…And then we felt the boat move!”
“WHAT? What do you mean ‘you felt the boat move’?”
“The boat was moving, Dr. Breede! The boat was moving. And I looked at Andrea, and she looked at me, and we walked back up on the deck, and we started trying to figure out what to do!”
I was stunned. I could not believe what I was hearing. Had they somehow stumbled on drug traffickers having a party? I had heard that drugs were trafficked up and down the waterway. Were the women prostitutes and these men were trying to kidnap my students?
“My God, what did you do?” My voice had gotten loud. I lowered it and repeated, “What did you do?”
The girls looked at each other, shrugged a little bit, and said, “We jumped.”
“You jumped?” I felt ill. “You jumped? Into the water?”
“Yeah. We jumped,” Christine looked at Andrea.
Andrea paused, then said, “Yeah, we jumped. And then we swam to shore.”
We were all silent as I tried to process what I had just heard. “Did you call the police?” I asked.
“NO!” they responded in unison.
“Hell no!” re-iterated Christine.
“WHY NOT?” I didn’t realize my voice had risen. “Why not?” I asked more softly.
There was a long pause as the girls looked at each other, looked down, looked at each other, fiddled with their fingers, and finally Christine almost whispered, “The drugs Dr. Breede.”
I waited.
“We knew they’d come bust us. We were scared.”
“We’d go to jail, Dr. Breede. We’d get kicked out of school. We CAN’T call the police!”
The girls looked at each other. Their fear was palpable. There was another long pause.
“You won’t go to jail. You are the victims of a possible kidnapping. Please let me call the County Solicitor. He’s an acquaintance of mine, and I know he can help. You don’t have any drugs on you now, do you?”<
Both girls shook their heads, and I called the County Solicitor.
That was my introduction to human trafficking in South Carolina. I was shocked and horrified.
Sadly, human trafficking is a problem in many beautiful resort areas just like ours. The transient population tourism destinations often add to their attractiveness to human traffickers. Folks often don’t know their neighbors, and seasonal rentals and our large college population that comes and goes every two to five years makes for even more folks who many longtime residents don’t know. But those aren’t the only reasons this area has been a hotbed for human trafficking.
We have access points to multiple transportation routes such as major highways that quickly take you south, west, and north; an accessible airport whose carriers, routes and connections can get you anywhere in the world within a day; and AMTRACK trains that stop in Florence, South Carolina, just an hour west of us on a good day. The hotels and motels that the tourists love require low wage labor to make a profit, and the area is rapidly developing which provides the need for skilled and unskilled laborers.
In almost every public bathroom that you visit in Myrtle Beach, whether it’s at a hotel, a restaurant or the airport, you will see signs warning folks about human trafficking that provides a phone number for people to call if they feel as though they have been or are being victimized. Whether you call it human slavery or human trafficking, it is still an abomination.
Human Trafficking is relatively common all over the world. The Global Report on Trafficking in Persons, published bi-annually by the United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime (2024) asserts that 60% of all female victims are “taken” for the purposes of sexual exploitation, with 45-47% of male victims taken for “forced labor,” generally “begging, thievery, or other “criminality.” Most trafficking appears to be the work of “organized crime groups,” whether loosely connected or a more formalized organization, while about 20% appears to be what the UN calls “non-organized criminals.” From 2020-2023, the UN documented 202,478 victims globally, with 38% being children and 62% being adults.
I was a bit surprised but felt reassured to learn that according to the World Population Review (12/10/25), South Carolina is not in the top five or even the top ten of in cases of human trafficking. California (1,138 cases), Texas (900), Florida (680), and New York (412) are the United States who claim that dubious honor. According to World Population Review, we “only” had 64 cases, with 235 in North Carolina and 263 in Georgia. Keep in mind trafficking is notoriously under-reported, it is challenging to arrest and prosecute human traffickers, and each arrest poses incredible danger for the survivors.
Our former County Attorney, now a South Carolina legislator, Greg Hembree, began the charge by using repeated alcohol violations to clean up some of the bars where there had been reports of human trafficking. Local legislators assisted us in working to pass legislation that outlawed human trafficking and provided asset forfeiture and jail time for convicted offenders.
Our current County Attorney, Jimmy Richardson, has done the same with bars closer to Coastal Carolina University. Our Attorney General’s Office, led by Alan Wilson, and his office have continued these efforts, and now provides a variety of crime victim/survivor services, including advocacy, counseling, residential shelter, and forensics services that include interviews and a nurse’s exam. These services are funded by multiple grants, such as The Victims of Crime Act (1984) which levies fines, fees and assessments; Title 4 of the Violence Against Women Act (1994) funds violent crime control and law enforcement; the State Victims Assistance Program applies the 1986 Omnibus Criminal Justice Improvement Act; and we have a one-time appropriation (2022) for a supplemental allocation for victims’ services. But that’s not all!
Horry County continues to be a leader in Human Trafficking prevention, prosecution, and humane care of victims and survivors. Just Recently Russell Fry, Representative for the 7th Congressional District, authored a bill that has already passed the house with “Broad bipartisan support,” according to Mr. Fry. Called the Trafficking Survivors Relief Act, it allows absolution for survivors of crimes that survivors may have been forced or coerced to commit while being victimized. As recently as November 14, 2025, WMBF News reported that a North Carolina human trafficking investigation led to multiple arrests spanning Horry County, South Carolina; Scotland County, North Carolina; all the way to Las Vegas, Nevada. Registered sex offender Carl Campbell is being held for engaging in a sexual relationship with a twenty-year-old person who is disabled; and Donald Meicht, Wanda Newlin, and Anna Henny were arrested for human trafficking, 2nd degree rape, and felony conspiracy. Sadly, there will be more.
We can all help in the fight against this scourge. Last year in March I taught a workshop on human trafficking in Wilmington, North Carolina at The CUE Center Missing Person’s Conference. CUE stands for Community United Effort, and the conference lectures, classes, and events were attended by local, state, and federal law enforcement, activists and advocates, family members of missing persons, and many others. The Community United Effort (CUE) website provides resources, services, volunteer opportunities, news, and the opportunity to file a missing persons report. Consider donating to them or to another organization such as The Rape Crisis Center of Horry & Georgetown Counties in Myrtle beach, SC – as rape is endemic to human trafficking.
Local soup kitchens, homeless shelters, faith-based institutions and many others provide services to folks from all walks of life. Many victims and survivors of violence make use of these services. Donate and/or volunteer for one of these organizations. Don’t be hesitant about calling the police should you have concerns about a neighbor you do not wish to confront. Such a situation occurred in a neighborhood bordering Coastal Carolina University’s campus a few years ago. Neighbors concerned about the constant traffic going to the house at unusual hours called the police who uncovered a human trafficking operation. The neighbor across the street, an employee at Coastal and an old friend of mine, called me while it was occurring. I have been unable to locate news stories about this event during my research for this article.
January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month. What time could be better to possibly save a human trafficking victim? As the CUE center’s motto asserts, we can only solve community problems through united community effort. Let’s be one of those states where the human trafficking statistics are as minimal as is humanly possible. Lots of victims out there could become survivors. We can get South Carolina’s human trafficking statistics lower. Let’s do it!
