An Arizona state senator called police alleging that a fellow senator threatened him to stop his regular meetings with critics of the state foster care system who believe it is playing a role in a broad sex-trafficking conspiracy.

Sen. David Farnsworth told officers this week that Sen. Kate Brophy McGee told him to stop holding meetings at the Capitol with people she has called "unbalanced."

Farnsworth said Brophy McGee told him: "'I'm not asking you to stop. I'm telling you to stop.'"

"I asked her what that meant. She said, 'My husband said that you would understand,'" Farnsworth recounted.

The Mesa Republican took that as a threat and reported it to the state Department of Public Safety.

Farnsworth said he fears children in foster care are being abducted by a worldwide trafficking network and sold into sexual slavery.

"I have no proof of that, but those are my darkest fears," he said.

Brophy McGee's campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

The Phoenix Republican co-chairs the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee on the Department of Child Safety and has become a target of some who share similar theories.

The matter was first reported by the political newsletter Yellow Sheet.

She told Yellow Sheet that she has been made to feel unsafe, with some critics of the Department of Child Safety disrupting meetings she has attended and following her from official functions.

Brophy McGee told Yellow Sheet she had advised Farnsworth he was meeting with people who were "unbalanced." She recounted having to ask security guards on at least one occasion to help her safely get back to her office.

But Brophy McGee said Farnsworth did not seem to care. Her comments to him were not meant as a threat, she said, but as a way to explain the matter to the "patriarchal" Farnsworth in a way, the senator thought he would understand.

"I was trying to pierce through his view of women by saying ‘I have talked to my husband about this. My husband is very concerned. He said to tell you that he is very concerned and that you would understand what that meant,’ words to that effect,” Brophy McGee told the newsletter. “In other words, it’s not me being a fluffhead saying this is a problem. It’s a problem.”

Remark made in meeting at Capitol

The senator from Mesa said he began researching claims that children have disappeared from state care. Farnsworth said there were nearly 400 such cases in the past fiscal year, although he said that number is a composite of several different statistics — children who have run away, children who are missing and various other scenarios.

Farnsworth said one reason he reported Brophy McGee's comments is that two former state legislators — one in Oklahoma and one in Arkansas — were found dead within days of each other earlier this year. The deaths have fueled conspiracy, theories but police have arrested a suspect in one case and have said there was no foul play in the other death.

Farnsworth said Brophy McGee made the remarks to him during a meeting Tuesday with Senate Chief of Staff Wendy Baldo and Deputy Chief of Staff Melissa Taylor.

Farnsworth said he went home, chronicled the meeting in his journal and thought about calling the police but decided to sleep on it.

Investigators 'looking into it'

The senator said he was still emotionally troubled by the remark the next day and decided to meet with officers from the Department of Public Safety at his office in the state Capitol.

They talked for about an hour, he said.

Brophy McGee told Yellow Sheet she was later visited by three detectives from the state's counterterrorism task force.

A spokesman for the Department of Public Safety confirmed Friday that the agency had received a complaint and was "looking into it."

He said he could not provide additional information.

Andrew Oxford can be reached at andrew.oxford@arizonarepublic.com or on Twitter at @andrewboxford.