When my daughter became old enough to go to parties unattended but still needed a ride to get there, I had a captive audience. I used this drive to revisit the dangers of opioids, pills and alcohol abuse. Even when her friends were riding with us, I’d talk about the issue while they all rolled their eyes.

“No one is passing out opioids at the eighth-grade dance,” she told me a few years ago. I often shared chauffeur duties with another mom, who had her own drive-time PSA campaign.

“She talks about sex trafficking the way you talk about opioids,” my daughter said. It seemed like a low-level risk to warn our girls about in this middle-class, suburban town in the middle of America.

In fact, it’s a bigger deal than many parents realize. The St. Louis County Police Department investigated 191 cases of human trafficking between 2016 and 2018. The St. Louis metro area is often used as a “stop-off” point because of its location in the center of the country. Some groups of children are far more vulnerable, such as homeless and runaway teens, but anyone can get entrapped. Recruitment typically takes place over a period of time and involves brainwashing, manipulation and grooming tactics before the abuse begins.

A window into this sick world opened when federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York charged billionaire Jeffrey Epstein earlier this week with sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy. He faces a maximum of 45 years in prison if convicted. The indictment alleges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls” between 2002 and 2005. Epstein allegedly lured girls as young as 14 to come to his homes in New York and Florida and sexually exploited them. Some of the children were used to recruit other minor victims.

The indictment describes an actual child-sex ring operation run by a man who is part of the wealthiest and most politically connected Americans. The case reveals how privileged men can avoid consequences for the most depraved acts.

In 2008, Alex Acosta was a federal prosecutor in Florida who made a secret plea deal with Epstein that allowed him to escape federal charges and a potential life sentence after being accused of sexually assaulting dozens of underage girls at his Palm Beach mansion. The Miami Herald reported last year that the plea deal essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes. Acosta’s office broke the law by not telling Epstein’s victims of the sweetheart deal, a judge later ruled.

The investigation involved at least 40 teenage girls. Epstein's plea allowed him to serve 13 months in jail, during which he was allowed to leave for work during the day.

Think about that: He was allowed to leave jail during the day to go to work. Did the lives of 40 traumatized girls matter so little?

And yet, there are those who have expressed more outrage about a black actress playing a fictional Disney mermaid.

Epstein’s social circles reached the highest levels of our government. President Donald Trump had called him a "terrific guy" he had known for 15 years and told New York magazine in 2002 that “(Epstein’s) a lot of fun to be with ... It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side.”

Former President Bill Clinton also had previously praised Epstein and had traveled on his private plane on multiple occasions. In the past several days, both men have distanced themselves from Epstein.

Senators knew about the secret sweetheart deal when they approved Acosta as Trump’s labor secretary.

Meanwhile, Trump picked an odd focus for his sympathy. “I feel very badly actually for Secretary Acosta,” he said to reporters.

Who feels very badly about the dozens of children who were sexually abused?

Meanwhile, Acosta has proposed 80% funding cuts for the government agency that combats child sex trafficking.

Parents can warn their children about all the potential dangers and risks they might face. But there’s no way to explain an even darker truth: Some adults are more invested in protecting predators than children.

Mia Daugherty, 36, is directing vendors where to set up free books and snacks, explaining how she ended up co-leading a volunteer organization, and rattling off the elementary school test scores and infant mortality rates of various impoverished St. Louis neighborhoods -- from memory.

One thing she knows for sure: Her 4-year-old daughter, Zara, running around the YMCA in a black tutu with sparkly bows in her hair, was not going to be one of the statistics.

Daugherty, who lives in one of the highest-poverty neighborhoods in St. Louis, joined forces last year with a handful of other moms from similar city neighborhoods to give other parents the same vision she has for her baby girl.

They call themselves Village of Moms.

Last weekend, they were attempting their biggest event yet. The O’Fallon Park YMCA Recreation Complex was bustling with activity. Nonprofit organizations filled the gym with tables to connect families with resources. A storyteller was set to perform. Free books and boxes of food would be given away. Their mission is simple: Tackle the city’s literacy challenges and set up more children to succeed in school.

Daugherty, who was raised by her father, has a single-minded belief in the power of education. She graduated from Jennings High School, then Lindenwood University. She’s raising Zara by herself and knows the challenges that single parenthood brings.

When she found out she was pregnant, she started reading to her unborn baby. She played Mozart for her. The day she brought her home from the hospital, alone in her home, she sang the ABCs to her. She did that every day until Zara could sing it back to her. She decided she would only expose her to characters in books and shows who looked like her and who were portrayed as positively as the white characters. Everything has been focused on learning.

“I didn’t let her watch ‘entertainment TV,’“ she says. She put her into an early Head Start program. She met with different preschool directors, asking about their curriculum and teaching approach.

They faced their biggest test -- literally -- last fall, when Zara took an IQ test to see if she could attend preschool at a gifted elementary school across town.

“I had to groom my daughter from the womb to pass that test,” Daugherty said. When she got the email results, she cried and called her father: Zara had passed.

He knew his granddaughter would, he said.

Before her daughter starts preschool in the fall, Daugherty met with the principal, her future teacher, the cafeteria workers and bus drivers.

“I wanted to talk to everyone who will be in contact with my child,” she said. Her daughter runs track and takes gymnastics and swimming lessons. Daugherty wants this for other children in her neighborhood, as well. Very few children from their part of the city will attend a gifted magnet school.

Daugherty understands that generational trauma plagues many people living in underserved neighborhoods. The fatal police shooting of Michael Brown shook her and led her to study the systemic and historical conditions that have led to such inequities in the black community. She took a tour with Generate Health, a local nonprofit, that highlighted the routes used for redlining, the practice of denying services and housing loans to poor, predominantly black areas.

She knows part of raising a strong black daughter also means building her confidence and equipping her to deal with racism. So as soon as Zara could talk, her mom had her repeat these words back to her: I am beautiful. I am black. I am smart.

That’s the message Daugherty and her Village of Moms want to share with the hundreds of children who will visit the YMCA for their free event. The test scores, which she rattles off so easily, for her local school break her heart. She wants more neighborhood kids on that long bus ride with Zara to her diverse, gifted school.

There a lot of organizations that come in to serve high-poverty areas, she said. But the community responds differently when it’s their own residents trying to make a change.

“We are the community,” she said.

The children wore clothes soiled with mucus, urine and feces.

None of the children had access to soap or toothpaste, reported lawyers visiting the border detention facilities in Texas. Some had not showered in weeks.

It’s hard to think about the hundreds of children -- scared, cold, sick, dirty, hungry -- held by our government in these conditions, funded by our tax dollars.

Angie O’Gorman, a 71-year-old retired worker for Legal Services in St. Louis, could not look away. Back in February, she called Annunciation House, which operates shelters in El Paso, and said: “I’m available. I speak some Spanish. Let me know when you need a volunteer.”

She headed to the border by herself in late March and stayed for two weeks at the shelter. Families arrived there after being released from the detention facilities run by Customs and Border Protection. They would get food, a clean set of clothes and help with travel arrangements to stay with someone they knew until their asylum hearing. She heard horror stories of the freezing “ice boxes,” where lights were kept on 24/7; of border patrol agents who threw away anything the refugees brought with them, including money and identification cards; of being called “animals” by the guards.

“I know from experience the reasons why people are fleeing Central America,” she said. “I’ve been there.” She’s seen the damage that American policies have done in the countries overrun by drug and gang violence.

The latest news of deplorable conditions in an overcrowded facility in Clint, Texas, didn’t surprise her.

“This situation has been going on for months,” she said. “What I find more intolerable than the suffering is the attitude that allows it to go on.”

People have a legal right to flee their country and apply for asylum. The crisis at the southern border is fueled by the problems happening in the migrants’ home countries.

“I have no answers on how to fix it,” she said. “Nor would I force them back home until we have repaired the damage we have done.”

She couldn’t sit back and simply read reports about what has been happening. After she came back to St. Louis, she asked a few friends if they would donate money toward sending monthly boxes of snacks that the shelter could give to families as they traveled to their friends and family members. Migrant families often spent hours or even days on buses with just a peanut butter sandwich per family member.

She didn’t have to try to convince people.

“People know enough of what’s going on down there to know it’s wrong,” she said. About 20 donors pitch in to send nine boxes of small snacks to the shelter each month. She knows it’s not the healthiest food, but it’s better than nothing.

It’s difficult for some people to understand why some parents are sending their young children alone on such a dangerous journey to the United States.

“It’s so the kids don’t get killed,” she said. “I don’t know if we can get our heads around that.”

For some, it’s easier to blame the parents. The vilification of the migrants and the justifications for the conditions in which they are being held is “a way of saying we can’t accept the responsibility for what we’ve done,” she said.

Providing basic sanitary conditions for migrant children is hardly a matter of resources.

American taxpayers have spent $102 million just on President Donald Trump’s golfing trips. Border facilities have so far rejected offers from Americans wanting to donate the needed supplies.

O’Gorman worked in a clothing storage room at the shelter, where she gave migrants something clean to wear when they arrived. She was surprised to see older clothes turn up in the same room later.

Many of the refugees would hand-wash the dirty clothes they had arrived in. These desperate mothers and fathers would return to the clothing room and donate their only other set of clothing for the next group of people who needed them.

A person’s humanity isn’t measured by what they own.

Rather, by what they are willing to give.