Carlee Russell Case Only Strengthens My Resolve

Carlee Nicole Russell lied about seeing a toddler on an Alabama interstate and being kidnapped by a white male, according to police in Alabama. Courtesy of Hoover P.D.

Carlee Russell is not the first nor is she going to be the last woman to lie about being kidnapped or sexually abused. Any woman who does this should face the full consequences of their actions, including and not limited to, paying restitution and/or going to prison. Carlee deserves all the smoke she is getting from the public right now and she also deserves to get the mental health treatment she obviously needs. However, getting treatment does not absolve her from being held accountable to the public, the law, her sorority sisters and by her family. She messed up with her selfish illegal actions and for that I have little empathy for her but will grant her grace as she seems to be a young, bright, Black woman who made the biggest mistake of her life on a national stage.

Russell’s actions put a lot of people at risk and caused unimaginable heartache for her family and friends. She gaslit a community that is already on edge about missing Black women and how they don’t get the media coverage they deserve. It is why I fully committed to writing about missing person’s cases when I started jcoydenreports.com two years ago.

There were people volunteering time out of their lives to search fields, the interstate, waterways and God knows where else for Russell and a toddler who she claimed was walking down the highway. Media companies spent resources covering this story, in terms of assigning journalists, photogs and others to alert the public about what we were told happened. Those limited resources could have been assigned elsewhere. Police and Fire personnel put in hours of taxpayer funded manpower into this case, all the way up to the United States Secret Service. This is one case where the community cannot say, nobody cared that a Black woman went missing.

For me that is the toughest pill to swallow about this case. I work my ass off to try and highlight the cases of missing Black people. For my fellow Black media colleagues who work in mainstream media, it is an even tougher sell for them to get editors not from our community to cover these stories. The television show “Alaska Daily” is doing a great job in highlighting missing Native American women. So to find out we all got played by Russell for still unknown reasons, it hurts. She also owes a public apology to everyone involved.  
All that said, it doesn't mean we should not believe women who say they have been kidnapped or raped. Sadly, too many are victims of these crimes and their road to recovery is long and difficult. Too often their perpetrator does not face justice. Too often we never find out what happened to them at all and too often families are still wondering where their loved one is.

If anything, Russell’s actions have made me even more committed to my work of reporting on missing Black people. Because I know there are some who will see this as a reason to bail on this important work. Not me. Russell’s case, while disturbing, is still mostly a rare event. The message needs to be sent that what she did is not okay, but our message of finding missing Black people is just as important. I will continue to partner with Black & Missing Inc. or any other organization that is fully committed in the ministry of finding missing Black people.

According to the most recent data from the National Crime Information Center, more than 30,000 Black people in the United States remained missing at the end of last year. Our mission is to significantly reduce that number. That is the bigger story.