Andrea Swanson will always regret the day she gave her daughter’s boyfriend a second chance.
Because it was the day she lost her child a second time to a dark world of violence and prostitution. Today Andrea, 50, who lives in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a vocal campaigner raising awareness of sex trafficking.
Earlier this week a television interview was aired in which Andrea shared the full horror of how a predatory pimp ‘tore apart’ her middle class family when he started dating her daughter, 16-year-old Hannah.
She told of her devastation when the truth about boyfriend Kobe Hogue tumbled out with Hannah’s arrest for soliciting two years later in June 2010.
She recalled how an arrest and brief imprisonment for car theft had only strengthened Hogue’s hold over Hannah, who is now 22.
And she spoke of her regret that, on his release, she had let Hannah slip back into the relationship, deeper into his control and out of her parents’ lives.
But now, MailOnline can reveal that since giving that interview – filmed seven months ago - Andrea has been reunited with the daughter she feared she had lost for good. And today she is in the process of rebuilding their shattered relationship.
It is not easy. She admitted the situation is ‘fluid.’ She does not know where her daughter lives. She does not know if Hannah is still in contact with Hogue – who goes by Kobe D**kinmya** Hogue on Facebook.
But she takes heart that, she said, Hannah and he are ‘no longer going out.’ Above all she knows that her daughter is alive and with contact comes hope that one day the damage done across the past four years can be repaired
Speaking of the battle to win Hannah back Andrea explained: ‘These girls are almost like addicts, her drug was not drugs: her drug was the attention of a pimp.’
The daughter of a nurse and FBI agent, Hannah Swanson was a bright 16-year-old at Centennial High School, Las Vegas when she became the target of classmate Hogue’s attentions.
According to her mother: ‘During her senior year at Centennial High School, our daughter was systematically manipulated and stolen from my family.’
Pictures of Hannah back then show a smiling healthy girl, happy in the bosom of her family. Her brothers, Jake and Rollie, have both served in the military and her parents had high hopes for their youngest daughter.
But she had a vulnerability which Hogue exploited. However pretty she was, Hannah suffered from low self-esteem and wrestled with a lack of confidence. She was easy prey. But at first all her family saw was that her new boyfriend seemed to be making Hannah happy.
Her mother said: ‘In the autumn of her junior year at High School she met this boy. All of a sudden, she’s not angry anymore and it all seems to be because of this new boyfriend.’
According to Chris Baughman, the former Las Vegas vice officer who investigated Hannah’s case and who brought her story to public note with television show, Ross Kemp: Extreme World: ‘The girl was from great stock, but that doesn’t stop these people playing on her weaknesses, her hang ups.
'They don’t care what sort of family she comes from. He treats her like a princess, but eventually he gets them away from the family.
‘He then turns her into a prostitute, promising it’ll only be for a few months, then a bit further down the line says they can make lots of money from it, make it a business, and it goes on and on until it’s too late. That’s what happened here.’
Looking back, Andrea admitted, the signs were there but she and her family were too trusting, too naïve, to even begin to see them.
Hannah, who once dressed conservatively and modestly, began wearing more and more provocative clothing – all of it bought by Hogue.
He paid for her to have her nails and hair done. He designed a tattoo which she had inked on her back for him: a rose surrounded by a heart. And there were the bruises her parents occasionally noticed, for which Hannah offered no explanation.
In an interview with the Las Vegas Sun, Andrea said: ‘We thought we had the most rebellious teenager we could have. We didn’t know if you tied the tattoo to him getting her hair and nails done…it points towards prostitution.’
But then Hannah’s seemingly ideal boyfriend, who lavished gifts and attention upon her, was arrested for stealing cars.
Andrea and her husband were shocked. She said: ‘All of a sudden he ends up in prison for stealing cars. That’s where the grooming happened.
‘He was writing her letters, filling her head with all these promises…Writing me letters, telling me he cared for my daughter.’
On his release Andrea and her family cautiously allowed him back into their lives.
She said: ‘We spoke to his parole officer. I felt in control of the situation but that only lasted two to three weeks.’
Andrea had laid down house rules in an attempt to claw back control of her daughter. She recalled how Hogue was ‘as sweet as pie for about two weeks.’
‘Then they stopped following the rules,' she said.
Andrea recalled: ‘About two days before she graduated high school, I came home from work early and Hannah was there. I said, “I’m worried about you Hannah” and she flipped out.
‘She said “Okay, okay, I f***ing trick-rolled! Is that okay now? You find the drunkest mother***er on the strip, you proposition him, you take his ass up to the room and you tell him to clean up. Then you steal him…you steal him blind. You take his wallet, his watch, whatever. I did it, Mum. Get the hell out of here!"’
Andrea continued: 'They started coming in a little later and we didn’t always know where she was…Three weeks later, Hannah was gone.’
The desperate mother's fears exploded to the surface the day her mother received a phone call from Clark County Detention Center.
Her daughter had been arrested three days earlier. She had languished in jail rather than call her mother for help.
Hannah finally admitted to her parents that she had been working as a prostitute and Hogue was arrested.
It transpired that she had been working in strip clubs along Boulder Highway, giving her earnings to Hogue.
By all accounts she was the only girl he prostituted – a situation that led authorities to believe that Hannah would have become his ‘bottom,’ slang for a pimp’s most prized girl.
According to the Las Vegas Sun, Baughman told the Swansons he had a three-inch binder with Hogue’s name on it and told the appalled couple that there was enough evidence to build a case against him as a pimp.
Baughman knows all too well how lucrative and brutal an industry selling sex is. He told Ross Kemp: ‘With three girls, pimps can make $1million a year. One of the reasons they’re so violent and protective of the women that they’re trafficking is that they have so much to gain and so much to lose if the girl should try and come to the police or run away.
I’ve seen everything from women sexually assaulted, group raped, burned with irons, tattoos burned off them with irons, water boarding…The violence that we see here is unreal.’
Hogue pleaded guilty to attempted pandering and served time at Three Lakes Valley Conservation Camp. But jail-time second time round did no more to break the bond of pimp and prostitute than it did the first time. Within weeks of his release in January last year they were back together.
Hannah was already hooked. Baughman said: ‘I can tell you we’ve locked up a lot of bad guys and they can continue to keep in touch behind bars. They have access to money that police haven’t found, they’ve got friends who are willing to help them.
‘So by the time they come out, they’re often reunited. It’s not uncommon. Sometimes the girl wises up and they don’t want anything to do with it, other times they’re not so lucky.’
Today Andrea admits she is not certain just what her daughter’s situation is with regards to Hogue.
According to her Facebook page she is working at the Village Bar in Las Vegas. But when MailOnline contacted the bar staff said she had left six months ago.
In one picture posted last February a friend asked if she and Hogue are still together to which Hannah responded: ‘He and I aren’t together anymore…but he probably didn’t show up because he no longer has the luxury of my car.’
Hogue responded to this comment: ‘I don’t need your car to get around I’m good…’
And on his Facebook page which gives his release date from prison as January 2013 he posted a status update that suggested a far from contrite man.
He said: ‘Aye man I’m tired of these faget ass n**** and bitches with my name in they mouth. They so worried about what a fly n**** doing. They might as well suck a n**** up s*** I hate when mf stating false info. But I’m done with that. Anybody that got a problem with me n**** bitches who ever can catch my fade..I promise I’m done talking on this sight. On me..Done.’
Whatever Hogue’s activities he is only a tiny fraction of the problem of drugs, prostitution and sex and human trafficking that plagues Sin City. The glitz, bright lights and shimmering façade of Las Vegas’s casinos and shows brings $15billion in revenue from tourists every year. But that is far from the bottom line. Beneath that bubbles a multi-million industry built on corruption and destruction.
In the years since her family’s devastation, Andrea has channeled her energies into doing all that she can to prevent others going through anything similar.
She has toured high schools and addressed conventions. Last year she was a keynote speaker at a sex trafficking summit held by Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto at the University of Nevada.
There, she added her voice to that of dozens of groups including law enforcement, lawmakers and nationwide non-profits who fight sex trafficking, such as the Polaris Project to support a proposed bill to tackle sex trafficking and pimps like Hogue.
Her deeply personal campaign is not one she has any intention of stopping – however desperate her own situation may be.
According to Andrea the, ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas attitude’ is allowing people to turn a blind eye to the truth.
She said: ‘We need tourist money in this town, we just don’t need it off the backs of our daughters.
‘The attitude of Vegas is, do what you would never do anywhere else, and leave and you don’t ever have to think about it again, but my family is ripped apart.’
Source: Mail Online
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