By Jill Sperling

Mother of Jessie Foster holds out hope 13 years after daughter’s disappearance

Mar 29, 2019 | 4:17 PM

KAMLOOPS — When Glendene Grant speaks about her daughter, Jessie, her eyes fill with tears. Not out of sadness, but out of pride. 

“I get empowered by the name Jessie Foster, I do,” she said. “It makes me feel like help is around the corner, people are being saved. It took one girl to go missing to save hundred of women and girls and men from going missing or being led down the wrong path.” 

On March 29, 2006 Grant’s life changed dramatically when her daughter, who was staying in North Las Vegas with her boyfriend, Peter Todd, suddenly stopped responding to phone calls. 

“Usually Jessie, if she didn’t answer right away would call back really soon to all of us,” Grant said. “And I said, ‘Oh, that’s weird,’ and Katie, one of my other daughter’s said, ‘yeah, I called her too and I haven’t got a call back either.’ And we’re like, ‘okay that’s weird,’ and I started calling her. We knew immediately that something was wrong.”

Prior to her disappearance, Jessie had been abused and was working for an escort service. 

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Grant believes her daughter’s boyfriend knows what happened to Jessie. 

“Peter Todd is responsible for Jessie’s disappearance. They lived together. He lied about when she went missing.”

Todd was cleared as a suspect by the North Las Vegas Police Department, and Grant has spent the last 13 years speaking out against sex trafficking. 

“There’s been billboards, there’s been books, there’s been documentaries and I feel like I’m just getting started,” Grant said. 

Grant says she believes Jessie is still alive and carries the hope that she will one day see her precious daughter again. 

Meantime, Jessie’s story is preventing others from being trafficked. 

“I mean, we have a law in Canada called Jessie’s law,” Grant said, “and it’s to fight prostitution, it’s to help women who have gone through what she’s gone through and you know there’s places for women to go, because of Jessie having gone through what she went through, these things came about.”

Thirteen years after Jessie’s disappearance, Grant says she will never give up her search for answers. 

“You can’t heal from a horrible wound and then pretend it never happened, so yeah, it’s not closure, it’s just answers.”