North Carolina Mom Allegedly Pimped 4-Year-Old Daughter Into Sex Trafficking
She's accused of the unthinkable.
Fayetteville Police Department A missing child is a parent's worst nightmare. There is something particularly gripping and awful about a child just vanishing from plain sight.
Until families get the answers they need and in the best cases become reunited with their children, they are left to let their imaginations go to the darkest places imaginable.
For one family in North Carolina, this was their unfortunate reality when their little girl vanished while visiting her mother.
Who is Carmen Lowe? She is the woman accused of failing to return her 4-year-old to her husband's custody as mandated by the courts and, instead, taking her over state lines and giving her, allegedly, to a group of sex traffickers.
Lowe's daughter was found during a sex trafficking investigation.
In August 2019, a missing little girl named Aubriana Recinos, age four, was found over 1,000 miles away from her North Carolina home. FBI agents located the little girl while they were in Texas investigating a potential sex-trafficking ring.
When they raided the house of suspects, they found her and believed that her mother gave her over to these criminals. The Fayetteville Police Department in North Carolina said that the little girl was found and she was safe, located in the town of Lewisville, Texas on Friday of last week.
She has since been returned to North Carolina where she was happily reunited with her father, Mario Recinos, who was doubtless worried sick about his little girl.
Lowe was arrested the day prior to the raid.
Recinos's mother, Carmen Lowe, age 24, has since been arrested for her alleged role in her child's disappearance. In fact, it's more than just that — she was charged with prostitution, theft of under $1,000, and of having an out-of-state warrant.
The day before her little girl was recovered, Lowe was arrested by the police in New Orleans. Now, Lowe must face up to what authorities believe she is guilty of doing to her innocent child: offering her up willingly for sexual slavery.
It's extremely tempting to think that someone like Lowe should be thrown to the proverbial wolves, but at this point, not much is known about her motives or her mental state. Still, you'd like to think that regardless of either, she'd know better than to do something like what she is accused of doing.
It is believed that Lowe was the one who handed her daughter off to a sex trafficking ring.
Aubriana's disappearance had rocked her family and her local community. The little girl had been missing for a few months after her own mother failed to return her to her father's custody after their usually scheduled visitation together.
“Lowe is believed to have traveled to New Jersey and Louisiana after leaving North Carolina with Aubriana Recinos,” police said at the time.
So how does the sex ring in Texas factor into all of this?
Well, the police believe that during these travels with her mother, at some point, Lowe handed off the little girl to sex traffickers. It's shocking, gut-wrenching, and appalling to consider, and yet, child sexual slavery and trafficking in the United States is a reality.
The FBI concluded that Recinos was given to people involved in human trafficking.
I can't imagine what it must be like to lose a child and to have no idea where they might be. On one hand, her family must have been ecstatic that Recinos was found, but on the other hand, they now have to deal with the reality of what her situation had been like for those few months she was missing.
“The child was pretty much given to a pimp, an associate of a pimp or family of the pimp for keeping,” said Robert Ramirez of the Fayetteville police. “The individuals involved are not cooperating.”
He also revealed that Recinos was "recovered at a house of individuals that were involved in human trafficking activities. It is a ring, it’s a human trafficking ring that the FBI was investigating and these individuals have other children as well.”
Recinos is back with her family.
Right now, there are several factors that still need to be examined in this case, and one of the major ones that the authorities are investigating is when exactly Carmen handed over her little girl.
While the police work on those details and help scrounge up the evidence required for the state to bring a case to the court, Mario Recinos, Aubriana and the rest of their family are still relishing being reunited after all this time.
When Aubriana was found, Mario flew to Texas immediately. They then made their way back to North Carolina, where they hoped to begin the slow and steady process of healing.
“Going on 53 days, it’s been hard,” Mario said. “We didn’t know where she was at.”
Currently, Carmen Lowe has issued no statement.
The judge increased Lowe's bond.
In September 2019, Lowe's bond was raised to $20,000. Mario has said that he still fears for his daughter's safety.
He said about Lowe, "She's still harassing us. She's worried about revenge. She's scornful. There's no other way for me and my daughter to feel safe and sane aside from her being behind bars."
The district attorney also made a statement, saying, "They're keeping us posted on that. As of now, it hasn't led to any additional charges here but we won't foreclose that as a possibility in the future."
The sex trafficking of minors is a serious, real issue.
The problem of sex trafficking of minors in the United States is a serious and very real issue that isn't talked about nearly enough as it should be.
According to Ark of Hope For Children, "The (UNODC) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reports the percentage of child victims had risen in a 3-year span from 20 percent to 27 percent. Of every three child victims, two are girls and one is a boy."
When we think of sex trafficking, we usually don't think of children, but tragically (sickeningly) we absolutely should, because the same statistics from Ark of Hope have found that of the people who are transported over state lines as victims of sex trafficking, 50 percent are children.
Rebecca Jane Stokes is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York with her cats, Batman and Margot. She's an experienced generalist with a passion for lifestyle, geek news, pop culture, and true crime.
Editor's Note: This article was originally posted in August 2019 and was updated with the latest information.