Democratic candidate Rebekah Jones is running against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and recently revealed that she has already helped send one sex trafficker to jail.
While speaking to The74, Jones explained why she takes the sex trafficking allegations against Gaetz seriously.
"I sent my own grandfather to prison for sex trafficking in the Philippines before I was famous, before COVID. So I take that extremely personally," Jones said. "I’m much more concerned about the people who are being trafficked than I am whether or not Matt Gaetz — a rich, powerful, white man — ever goes down for it."
Jones recalled that she "contacted the Polaris Project, the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA" after learning that her grandfather was "using this English-speaking middle school in the Philippines to traffic young girls."
Jones pointed to 2020 news reports about the arrest.
"I didn't even know who I was supposed to contact, but I contacted all of them," Jones noted. "I know how difficult now that process is to actually hold somebody accountable and how long it takes to investigate. He wasn't arrested for another eight months after initially being reported."
She added: "They shut down the whole operation that they had going over there and he died earlier this year because of it. He had Type 1 diabetes and I imagine that prison in the Philippines was very hard on him. And I hope that it was and I hope that he suffered."
