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I absolutely believe that from the bottom of my heart, the day she testified for the grand jury

if they had put her in protective custody or moved her to they had a, I guess, halfway house for teenage girls that had been trafficked and it was in California

and that's where they sent the other victim. If they had done that because I asked, I said, well, what about her safety?

And Kim Strickland would read that in the eye so that that won't be a problem until after he's indicted and arrested. She disappeared less than two weeks later.

Last week we brought you the first part of 18-year-old Kelsey Collins' story. A teenager who had been through more than most of us do in an entire lifetime disappeared in May of 2009.

Just nine days after she turned 18. Kelsey was involved with bad people, really bad people. But what wasn't known at the time was just help her family and long-term Kelsey had been victimized by much older predators and she was set to testify against her abusers but left unprotected by authorities.

Shortly after testifying before a federal grand jury, an indictment was issued and Kelsey vanished.

On Marissa and from Wondery, this is Episode 378 of The Vanished, part two of Kelsey Collins' story, underage, unsafe and unprotected.

Before we get started, I wanted to reiterate the warning I gave regarding last week's episode. The content you will hear today contains more potentially traumatic information than most of our stories.

If you choose to listen, you will hear detailed descriptions of adult subject matter, including violence, sexual assault and exploitation. Please take care while listening.

This episode contains interviews with family members that discuss criminal proceedings. We would like to reiterate that anyone accused of a crime in the United States who was not pled guilty or being convicted of the alleged offense.

Remains innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, with constitutional protections to a fair trial, and due process of law.

We hold no opinion about any person's innocence or guilt and are not qualified to give legal opinions or advice.

And one final note, you will hear some names bleeped in this episode. And that's because Kelsey's family members use their original names from prior to their name changes throughout much of their interviews.

This was done simply out of habit, but they asked us not to include them for their safety.

If you haven't listened to the first part of Kelsey's story yet, which we aired last week, we encourage you to pause here and listen to that first and then come back to today's episode.

There is a lot of information that we have covered and it will make more sense to you if you have the foundation we laid last week for the second part of Kelsey's story that you will hear today.

Now on with the show. In part one, you heard about all of the traumas that Kelsey's family had already been through before she disappeared.

And you heard mention of Kelsey's younger brother Nicholas. We had been told that Kelsey's disappearance was particularly painful for Nicholas to speak about.

And we always respect family members who find it upsetting to reopen those wounds and speak about their missing loved ones.

We had this second part finished and ready to publish when unexpectedly we heard from Nicholas.

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