From the Perspective of the Bandersnatch
By Detective Mike Miller
Vacaville Police Department, VICE Unit
8 May, 2018
As a police officer for 20 years, I have seen how bullies like “the Rabbit” commit crimes that slowly erode the peace of our communities. Worse, I have seen close up, the terrible and intimately personal destruction his crimes leave behind in the lives of victims and their families.
The most frustrating thing for a police officer who encounters a victim of human trafficking will always be trying to help someone that does not want help. For the family members of a victim, there never seems to be a sufficient answer to the questions, “What can I do?” or “Why doesn’t she just come home?”
Feelings of helplessness in these cases are the result of seeing clearly what “I would do if I were Alice, so why doesn’t she just do that?” But that is the very problem that faces well-meaning (albeit clumsy sometimes) law enforcers and family members; we are not “Alice”. We cannot understand what happened to “Alice”, let alone why she now resembles “Jane”. We certainly don’t know how to reach or communicate with “Nobody”.
But what if? What if we could see through the voided soul of “Nobody”, and past the protective barrier of “Jane”, to find “Alice”? What if we understood that all three of them are actually “Alice” trying to find her way out of Wonderland? Would we recognize her? Would we then help her even if she stumbles in a “normal” world that is not very friendly to “Jane’s” and “Nobody’s”?
“Jane Doe in Wonderland” offers the best explanation I have ever seen as to why a victim of human trafficking remains a victim of human trafficking. It also offers to law enforcers, family members, and friends, a sense of hope... that although we see “Nobody”, we can find “Alice”.