A Tacoma Pastor Played Detective and Freed a Girl Locked in a Room for Ten Days
Rev. F. H. Groom of the Central Christian Church did the detective work that released a 16-year-old girl from what the paper called 'involuntary white slavery'; her alleged captor, 18-year-old Tony Millioa, sits in the city jail.
TACOMA — Through detective work by Rev. F. H. Groom, of the Central Christian Church, a 16-year-old girl was released from a life of involuntary white slavery, and Tony Millioa, age 18, is in the city jail charged with her abduction. The girl claims she had been locked in a room daily for ten days while her captor was at work.
“The girl claims she had been locked in a room daily for ten days while her captor was at work.”
The era's 'white slavery' panic often inflated ordinary cases, but the core here — a teenager confined to a room while her captor worked — is a recognizable pattern of coercive control. That a clergyman, not the police, did the rescuing says something about how thin the safety net was in 1910 Tacoma.
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