passport, because i m done. then he said that it s not going to happen. he would never just let me go. mr. campbell had told her that he had police officers working for him, that he had government officials working for him. that if she went to the police, she was going to get arrested. she was going to go to jail then she would be deported after she got done with that. and that was how he had her under his control. but when another young ukrainian named masha mysteriously vanished, julia decided to escape. i didn t have any plans. i didn t know what to do, where to go. nothing. i just had this in my mind, i need to leave now or never. in her panic, julia suddenly recalled a phone number of a friend and waited anxiously for her ride. i was so afraid, any car that would hear passing by, it was just like freaking out, because i thought that was alex. can t you just leave me alone? you better bring a in here.
if not, they will have to pay for that. julia recalled she first witnessed campbell s brutality one night after campbell took his staff to dinner. they ended up taking pictures and in one of the pictures, one of the girls wasn t smiling to mr. campbell s liking. and he took them all back to the spa and proceeded to beat this girl and broke two pool sticks over her shins of her legs. a security system in campbell s office kept the girls under constant surveillance. the spa, there were cameras everywhere, so anything you say, anything you, like, do, that looks bad in his eyes, he would just call you to his office and then you will be punished. the girls at the spa were told never to speak to each other or to their customers. when julia broke this rule, she was called to campbell s office. she was stripped of her
alert cook county detective trained to look for signs of trafficking notified federal investigators. when i first met julia, she was a very scared young lady. julia reported her boyfriend had beaten and threatened her. he said many times that he would kill me and nothing would stop him. she feared for her life and she feared she could be killed by him and thought she would be killed by him for going to the police. vanhorn plugged julia s so-called boyfriend s name into the computer. before i started this case, i never even heard of alex campbell. once i put him in the system, i found an extensive criminal history. in 1986, campbell shot his way into a house, then held two women captive in a tense standoff with chicago police. convicted of attempted murder, home invasion and kidnapping, campbell served ten years. after his release, he was
arrested, again, for selling young women. and many of those women like julia sported that telltale horseshoe tattoo. i came up with several other girls with the exact same tattoos. when i started seeing all this come together, i had reason to fear this girl was in serious danger and i needed to get her in a safe haven before he finds her. julia, who had a master s in education from ukraine, struck vanhorn as an unlikely girlfriend to such a violent felon. she d come to the u.s. to become an opare. my plan was to improve my english and learn the culture of this country. after working three months caring for a family of six, the family let her go on thanksgiving weekend, leaving her homeless in a foreign country. the agency that placed her offered no help. my agency told me, you can call your parents and ask for money, and theoretically i could do that, but practically i could
then things start to change. he acted like a very jealous man, and every day it was getting worse and worse and worse. campbell s behavior becomes increasingly threatening and violent. it began to turn around where he started to keep the money and just give her enough money to get something to eat. he had gotten ahold of her passport and her visa and all her immigration documents. she had asked for that stuff back, and he refused to give it to her. so she didn t have no idea where to go, what to do. he started to even yell at me for just no reason, didn t know what was going on. it went to the point when i was really afraid of him. julia soon realizes she is not alone. campbell had four other ukrainian women working at the spa. all were young and all were in the country illegally. they have to totally obey him, whatever he says.