Alleged sex slave ring mastermind Matthew James Markcrow to fight charges
15 Mar, 2021 12:51 AM
3 minutes to read
The tattoos that allegedly show the man s name on the women. Photos / Supplied
news.com.au
An Australian man accused of drugging and branding women he allegedly kept as sex slaves will fight his charges, his lawyer has confirmed.
Matthew James Markcrow, 35, faces more than 20 charges relating to the alleged sexual slavery ring uncovered in Brisbane.
He has spent the past month behind bars on remand after police searched two properties in South Brisbane and Mount Gravatt East.
Crystal Marie Sawyer is charged with carrying on a business of prostitution. Photo / News Corp
A retired Milligan University professor has completed work on a book that he hopes will call attention to an important figure in Johnson Cityâs development as a regional hub for education, faith and medicine: Dr. Hezekiah B. Hankal.
âHezekiah Hankal took it upon himself to uplift our communityâs African Americans during the era when Jim Crow laws severely restricted their lives and their opportunities to get ahead in the world,â Donald Shaffer said recently. âDr. Hankal had never been a slave. But when freedom came for the slaves, he soon married one, and he devoted the rest of his life to serving the physical and mental and spiritual needs of his fellow African Americans. He identified with them and strove to empower them to prosper to the extent possible in the face of societyâs array of measures to hold them down.â
Before the Civil War, the Underground Railroad was a network of hundreds of safe houses throughout the North and South that served as hiding places on the road to freedom for tens of thousands of runaway slaves who risked their lives in a long, hazardous journey, often on foot, that frequently stretched more than 1,000 miles.
It is also the story of perseverance, bravery, and humanity in which thousands of whites risked social scorn, business setbacks, arrests, fines, prison, and even death to assist runaway slaves.
Because of its dangerous and highly secretive nature, there were no records of the âconductorsâ on the Underground Railroad nor was there a list of the âdepots.â No one really knew (or knows) how extensive it was. The Underground Railroad became legendary when the war ended and newspapers and magazines reported its success in glowing detail. Some claimed that over one million slaves escaped to freedom on the Underground Railroad, but todayâs