Mom's missing teen modeled for man charged with child porn
(WJBK) - Nickia Ketchum is beyond panicked, six weeks ago her daughter Kayci Latoski disappeared near their Dewitt Township home near Lansing.
"This has been a nightmare for my family over the last couple months," she said. "It is a living hell for us, it really is. We don't know if she is okay, and that is the worst part. We don't know."
Ryan Ulman, who owns Instinct Entertainment in Livonia, was arrested earlier this week for child pornography - a case connected to a Flint gang and drug addicted child sex trafficking victims.
Kayci Latoski signed with Ullman’s so-called modeling agency when she was 15. He contacted her through Facebook and eventually her mom says he showed up at their house to have her sign a contract which clearly says nude pictures "are an option."
"We thought alright we'll give it a try," Ketchum said. "It started out with age appropriate, clothing things you saw in Target ads. It went from that to he wanted skirts and short shorts. From that he wanted nudes, her topless, her pulling her underwear. I am like this is disgusting, we're not going to do this, we stopped."
Her mother said Kayci may have done nude photos.
"If she did, it was not with me," she said. "It may be photographs he was asking her to do without my knowledge, because I didn't like it."
Ketchum knows, because instead of paying a photographer - Ulman paid Kayci's mother to take the pictures. Some were risqué'. Ulman paid the teen $60 for her pictures, which never did get her a modeling job.
So far Ulman has not been connected to the sex trafficking ring but the feds allege many of the sex trafficking victims were models of Ulman.
FOX 2: "Do you believe he may be connected to her disappearance?"
"It is possibility," Ketchum said. "Maybe not directly him, but for all we know they are finding photographs of all these half-naked, underage girls at his home and some of these girls are actually missing now or been found in sex trafficking rings. How do we know he isn't taking these young girls information and selling them to other people?"
The Freedom Against Child Trafficking has put out fliers and Ketchum says she is also working with detectives and federal agents about a possible connection between Ulman and her daughter's disappearance.
"I don't care if it is my child or anyone's, if you know where there is a missing child; turn them in for God sakes. Her family misses her, we miss her a lot."