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When I was 14 years old, I was lured away from home by a man I met at a New Jersey shopping mall. This man told me that I was pretty enough to be a model and that I was too mature for high school. It was the summer after my eighth grade middle school graduation, and I feared high …

I was in a restaurant recently. It was a cafeteria style, where you basically go down a line with people serving you from behind a glass partition, and the customer explains what he or she wants. Think Subway, although it wasn’t Subway. I quietly noticed a group of five women, together with one man. All of them were young—early to …

When Beth Jacobs was 16, she was drugged, kidnapped, and forced into prostitution. She says that her captor took her to a truck stop and forced her to have sex with a man who asked for a discount afterward because she “cried too much.” This traumatizing experience was the first of many during her six years as a sex slave. …

Just snapping a photo of your hotel room the next time you go on vacation could help save a trafficking victim. Human trafficking is the world’s fastest growing crime, and victims who are exploited for sex aren’t just getting victimized in unsuspecting homes and closed off backrooms. Hotels are optimal spots for traffickers to exploit their victims because they can …

If you think human trafficking is a terrible thing that happens in countries far away, you’re dead wrong. A new ad campaign from the San Diego District Attorney’s Office launched on Monday, aiming to debunk myths about sex trafficking, according to a press release. “The unfortunate reality is that widespread human trafficking is currently taking place in our neighborhoods and …

A devastating, but largely hidden issue, got center stage at the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night. Ima Matul opened up about the years of abuse she endured while she was trafficked as a domestic worker in Los Angeles. Her harrowing story underscored the fact that this isn’t just a problem overseas. Rather, it’s “happening right here in our backyard,” …

Ever since I was a junior in high school, I have been passionate about fighting against human trafficking. It all started with a Community Ambassador Training held by youthSpark, a nonprofit that works to end child sex trafficking in Georgia (not the country, but thestate, inside the US). After learning about such a heinous issue and becoming aware that it was such a …

The highest court in the country has spoken, and now Backpage.com, considered one of the most common places for child sex trafficking victims to be advertised, must finally release subpoenaed files to a U.S. Senate committee investigating the website’s practices. Backpage.com has long resisted the Senate’s subpoena, even after lawmakers held the website in contempt. In a victory for anti-trafficking …

More than 1,000 women and girls have been apparent victims of sex trafficking in illicit bars in the US that operate largely beyond the reach of law enforcement, according to the anti-slavery group Polaris. Half of the trafficking cases in cantinas – a type of bar popular in Mexico and the American south-west – arose in Houston, Texas, a city …

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – The descent into slavery began with a friendship. Jessica Luebbert, a Jefferson City native, worked as a bartender and dancer in Columbia. Sean, a regular customer at the bar where Luebbert worked, would tell her he simply wanted to talk with her, she said. That’s something not many customers desired. “Sean paid me about $100 …