(dark music) ♪ ♪ (melancholic music) ♪ (woman) When I was 12, we were hitchhiking from Idaho to Oregon, and a semi driver had pulled over and picked us up, but that was the first time I was trafficked.

About a year after he began raping me, around the time that I was four years old, my father, he began to sell me to other men, and it began with an uncle.

(man) Me being a kid, I was 12 and 13 years old, they never used the word "prostitution," but that's what we're talking about.

Fourteen is when I actually met the guy who would become my trafficker.

I was trafficked while I was still at home, still going to school, still going through all those things.

And so, like, that was my first time being sold.

♪ (Samantha) The things that we had to do were get up at three o'clock in the morning-- that's when our day started, three o'clock in the morning-- get on the tiniest stripper clothes, stilettos.

We worked till four.

It would be like four, five, six, seven, eight o'clock in the morning.

I was 13 at the time.

We need to first educate and make people understand how big this problem is and how much we've kind of ignored it and we've labeled it as a kind of third-world-country issue and that never happens in America.

You know, we're too educated, we're too wealthy, if you will, and we don't have those issues.

But in Atlanta alone, with the international airport, with the accessibility of the highways, with all of these types of things, we are a mecca for children who are prostituted.

Little boys, little girls.

(dreary music) ♪ My biological mother was addicted to drugs and alcohol from the time-- from before I was born.

When I was 12 years old, we hitchhiked from the state of Idaho to the state of Oregon.

But that was the first time I was trafficked.

We were hitchhiking, and a semi driver had pulled over and picked us up, and, um, she worked out a deal with him to take me in the back of his semi.

It was the first time I'd ever seen the inside of one.

It was huge.

It looked like, you know, a bed in the back, and then you could close where the front were, and she stayed in the front.

We were pulled over in a truck stop, and, um, that's when I lost my virginity.

There isn't a foundation in that kind of life for anything good, really, except to survive.

(Misty) Everything's really, really close.

(Nanette) Yes.

(Misty) And then, Alliance Mental Health.

This is my therapist.

Everything's just right here.

We got to Oregon, and my mother hooked up with another guy and got us a place to live.

You know, I used to go in bars and stuff with her.

They used to think we were sisters.

I started stripping, about 14 years old.

Pimps would come in and out of a bar in Oregon, and they would just take girls out.

You never see 'em again.

And, um, I left with a man.

He took me to California first.

He wanted me to be the ultimate star.

It seemed all glamorous, and then about a month afterwards is when the beatings started.

(solemn music) ♪ (Greg) I was a bad kid growing up in South Philadelphia, coming from a poor family.

My dad wasn't really in my life, and my mom placed me, in 1976, into the South Philadelphia Boys Club.

There I met a youth mentor, and he was taking us out to football games and Penn State games, so we thought, you know, you started out as a good guy, and then at some point, he had other kids starting to talk to us about sexual behavior and if we would ever think about doing a sexual act with a man in return for money.

You know, at first I said, "Look, I'm not gay, and why would I do this stuff with a man?"

But at some point, when you're smoking weed and drinking and popping pills, you need this money.

So the first time, I said, "I'll do it one time and I won't do it again."

Then one time turned into two times, that turned into a hundred times.

Then by '77, going into '78, we're all already being introduced to many different areas, primarily surrounding philanthropy work or football games, and then at some of these events, we would interact and be introduced to other pedophile types.

(grim music) ♪ (Robert) The very first memory that came to me when I started to reach back and think about my father was of being violently raped in the bathroom by him.

He sodomized me.

I screamed and cried.

♪ About a year after he began raping me, around the time that I was four years old, he began to sell me to other men, and it began with an uncle, his brother.

I was taken to their house, and I thought it was just a regular family visit.

So I was there with these cousins and my uncle, thinking everything was gonna be okay, and, um, not long after my parents left, he said, "Come with me.

There's something I want you to do."

So when I followed him into the cellar, it was very dark, and I just knew something very terrible was gonna happen, and he began raping me just like my father did.

I heard my father and my uncle talking.

My uncle said, "He took it like a man," and they both laughed, and they exchanged the money, and that was the beginning of the trafficking.

(solemn music) ♪ (Renee) We had a Senate Study Committee here, and it was testified that young boys are also targeted.

They're prepubescent boys, before they have developed their pubic hair.

And unfortunately, they're called baldies, and there's a big demand for these young boys, but unfortunately, they get abused, and once they become a little bit older, they're not in use any longer, but their lives are ruined.

You know, I was a child prostitute.

I would do oral sex, we could touch, we could take pictures, we could even make movies, but there are certain things I didn't want to do.

I wasn't homosexual and I wasn't into, you know, anal sex.

So, there was a couple times where there were certain individuals that would take us to a hotel after one of these events, and they would insist, and I would say no, and then at some point, they would get us disoriented with drugs, primarily prescription drugs, and then next thing, you were waking up and you were having rectal bleeding.

Male victims, there's an immense amount of shame that goes into being abused by majority of males, and so there's a stigma attached with coming out and saying, "I want help, I want to get services."

In talking with male survivors, I've even had some confide in me and say that they went to law enforcement to get help and they were turned away simply because they were men.

The last time that I remember my father trying to sell me happened at a barber shop.

Something went wrong when he started to talk to the men that were there, and they started shouting at him and me.

They were yelling at us to get out.

So we left, and shortly after, I started school-- I had turned five years old, started school-- and school was really a safety for me.

It got me away from the house, got me away from him.

So that became my deeply buried secret, and then over time, as I got older, more secrets came along, and because I had already been degraded and just so broken, it was easy for other people to come along and see that.

There is an incredible prevalence of incest in the histories of survivors of trafficking.

It's one of the major causes, because once sexual abuse happens within a family, that breaks down everything they understand about how relationships are supposed to be.

It breaks down all the trust.

(melancholic music) (Catalleya) With my story, it starts back when I was little, and five years old was a time where I ended up being sexually assaulted by my--my relative of mine, and, um, it was one night, I was over at their house, and he woke me up in my bed and took me to the bathroom where he sexually assaulted me, and then the next day, another incident happened, and then it just continued to happen, you know, every time we were together, things would happen.

When I was 14 is the last time that stuff happened with my, um, with the relative of mine, and he had gotten married and everything like that, and 14 is when I actually met the guy who would become my trafficker.

(eerie music) I remember that I thought he was like a youth pastor.

So, like, having this person that I can talk to and wants to talk to me was a big thing for me.

Um, as the time went on, he was the first person that I opened up to about my relative and what happened to me, and his response to that was that it was supposed to happen.

God wanted me to know what true love was, what I was supposed to do.

It was preparing me in a way.

♪ We were at a church outing called Church in the Streets, and I participated in that, and this was when I was 15 years old, and we--he picked me up from that event, and that was the first time that I ended up being sold.

(Cynthia) When I first met her, she wasn't voicing at all.

Her pimp preferred that she stayed quiet because there were clients that preferred being with a deaf woman who did not speak.

♪ I have a lot of concerns for her, and I don't want to sugarcoat this.

She's made a lot of progress, but I have a lot of concerns for her.

First and foremost are her mental health needs, her stability, her future mental health needs because of all of the emotional, spiritual, physical pain that's been thrust upon her.

♪ (traffic rushing) (doctor) I want to take you back this way.

These are our exam rooms here, which are equipped like any other physician's office.

And we do offer GYN for sex trafficking victims.

(Carrie) The thing about human trafficking that makes me so angry is the utter destruction it has on an individual.

So you talk about someone who's been driven around in a trunk for three days because they didn't make enough-- they didn't reach their quota.

Not given food.

Working 17 hours a day, 7 days a week.

You know, your body systems aren't made to work that way, and so, slowly, it will break down.

(doctor) We do offer the rapid HIV testing which would be beneficial for the victims.

People can come in to the front desk and ask for condoms, and they'll be given probably five or six condoms plus some lube to help stop spreading of the STDs.

(Carrie) Fifteen, twenty sex acts a night would not be anything out of the ordinary, and depending on where you find the child, whether it's on the streets, on the streets of Kansas City, you will find that you can have sex with a minor for as little as $35.

(Samantha) The guy that started me out doing this kind of business, he was way older than I was, probably 30-something, and I have been in the business for 11 years.

(grim music) I'm just working, working, working.

I only do in-calls, so I sit in the room with my pimp, hang out until somebody calls.

Directly after I do my call, I call my daddy back down.

I give him the money, and then we just continue to do that.

Once I make about... three or four, or whatever he's comfortable with, I can stop.

(Misty) You can't just leave.

You can't just... look at your folks, which is your pimp, your turn-out folks, your daddy, whatever you wanna call him, you can't just look at him and say, "Okay, I'm done, I'm gonna leave."

It doesn't work like that.

Once you become a little bit defiant or he gets tired of dealing with you or he gets another group in which is younger and better, you get sold to lower and lower and lower.

The older you get, you're gonna go to the next step down.

(dark music) ♪ (Karen) A pimp can be a parent.

A pimp can be a gang.

A pimp can be other girls.

So, I mean, again, the faces of that are different than what we stereotypically think of.

They often categorize it as, "Well, this is a low-economic, high-crime-area problem," but the reality is it transcends all economic brackets.

Most of the luring that goes on in the Metro Atlanta area happens in the nice malls.

It's not in the projects, it's not in the malls that everybody's afraid to go to.

It's happening in the suburban malls that people are dropping their kids off at the front door because they feel that secure with them.

(Catalleya) Traffickers are smart.

When they're looking for somebody, they go shopping, in a way, and that's what I call it because they know what to look for, they know what they want.

They always know which ones to go after, and then they pursue that person.

They zero in on that vulnerability, come up with the right thing to say to that person to establish a rapport with them, and then they begin to groom them.

All children have vulnerabilities.

If I were to say "insecure 13-year-old," I'm being redundant.

Every young girl wants to believe that she's the one who's gonna be featured, that she was the one picked.

When they get that attention, sometimes they'll be invited to a party, they will quickly realize that they are the center of attention at that party but not in the way they intended.

Videos and threats are made so that they have to continue in that particular business.

We've had young ladies who were taken into a motel room, they were brutally raped, they were drugged, their pictures were put on Craigslist, and they were forced into sexual exploitation, and then on the flipside, we've had young women who were groomed much longer than that, and they weren't forced physically, per se, but they were psychologically really groomed and controlled, and they had a true belief that this man loved them and cared about them, and it just so happened that they were upon hard times and he needed her to-- to have sex with other men for money if she really loved him.

Eventually what happens is the trafficker takes all of the support systems away from this person in a very fast and violent manner, and then what he does is creates this image of them being the person that can supply all their needs, so he becomes this alpha source to the victim, and the victim loses the ability to walk away.

(Anna) There's an abuse and then there's a reward.

Any time there's an abuse, a reward, there's a trauma bond that's formed, and these children, these boys are attached to the market facilitator in a way that is similar to the trauma bond we see with females who are being pimped out.

So, if we didn't come back with any money, we'd get in the car, he would take us back home, and he would...beat us up in front of the other girls to show the other girls that this is what would happen if you don't make any money.

(dreary music) ♪ (Misty) Chris was somebody, he was what they call a gorilla pimp.

Chris was probably one of the scariest people I've ever met in my life because he could... look at you and smile in your face but be beating the crap out of you at the same exact time as he was talking to you calmly and telling you that this is what you deserve.

And a lot of people said, "Well, isn't-- if you're prostituting, how is it rape if you're out there doing it?"

So I told 'em, well, I told a guy, "No way, no sex," and the guy was persistent and he was pushy, and even when I kept saying, "No, no, no," next thing you know, they slipped me something.

After getting hurt, you try not to get hurt.

You just try not to-- do whatever you can to not get hurt.

The...having sex with guys isn't as painful as being beat, so just get it over with.

You're pretty much not exactly there half the time when they're doing whatever.

You're wherever else you are, you think about whatever.

Sometimes I would even think about school, like, "Oh, okay, I have an assignment in such-and-such," you know.

So you're not really there, so just get--just do that.

Just do whatever they say, that's pretty much it.

For those who understand what it's like to be traumatized sexually, it breaks your spirit.

It really causes your mind to be very unstable in terms of what is reality and what is not reality, what is right and what is not right.

(Misty) I thought, "This is my life.

This is what God chose for me.

Is there a God?

Do I have a dad?

Where's my dad?

Do I really have somebody that I can call Daddy?"

(Catalleya) Through the years, I continuously thought that, you know, I'm a sinner, God hates me, God's no longer with me, you know, that was it.

I knew everything they say, I knew all of the Bible verses that I had to know and all those things like that, but inside, I didn't really have that connection with God.

I didn't really feel that connection with God, you know, how can God love somebody like me, pretty much.

At one time, I thought I had a future.

I thought I had some kind of life ahead of me.

I started to feel like I didn't anymore.

I really didn't see myself living past 20 years old.

One of my favorite places to go was railroad tracks that were down the street from me.

I saw those tracks as the end, and there were two times that I waited for a train to come and almost stepped in front of it.

(Misty) Um, I tried to leave, and I knew it wasn't gonna work.

Somebody had told on me that I was leaving, and he grabbed me by the back of my hair, I ended up on the ground, and he just started kicking me, stomping me, stomping me, stomping me over and over and over.

And then I began to, um, defecate and pee on myself, and I couldn't feel anything, and, um, somebody called the police, and the police came, and... they didn't really care either, I'm gonna be honest, at that time.

We're treated like convicts, like, uh...garbage.

(tranquil music) ♪ (Detective Bassett) Yeah, I mean, we'll come up and, every once in a while, check the, uh, the hotels.

This is one of the hotels here that we have in this area.

435 and Metcalf.

It's very easy for people, whether they're johns or prostitutes, to, uh, to access.

♪ (Alexis) It's much easier to pick up the seller who's there for a longer period of time than the buyer who comes and then disappears, and the other thing is, sellers in cities where, I mean, if they're on the street or if they're in hotels here in Las Vegas, they are the nuisance factor because they're there for longer periods.

So the enforcement is focused on the nuisance factor, which is the seller, as opposed to the customer.

(Detective Bassett) I mean, we do a lot of intelligence gathering, trying to figure out who these girls are, where they're at, um, you know, if they're actually doing what we've actually been-- or we've been reported.

(Dalia) To me personally, even as a prosecutor, I don't see how we can prosecute children for prostituting, but that's kind of what happens, and so a lot of times, these cases were kind of getting caught up in the juvenile system and things along those lines.

The other issue we were having was--part and parcel with that is the disclosure.

What child wants to come forward and say, "Yeah, I'm being pimped by so-and-so," when you know that all you're gonna do is be transported to jail?

There's not enough places for these girls to go where they can have a safe place to be, where they can get resources that they need-- therapy, counseling, to be detoxed if they need to-- and for them to not be able to have contact with their pimps.

(slow, mellow music) ♪ I know in some jurisdictions, these girls are getting charged rather than an investigation into how she got into this to start with, so I think more and more agencies are seeing the reality of the fact that they're not suspects, they are victims, and that there does need to be more work, more investigation, more questions.

(Sgt.

Britton) When I first started, attitudes towards our victims were treating the girls more as suspects, as that they were the root of the problem.

Those attitudes are slowly changing now.

Many of the smaller agencies, when we would find young ladies here in Atlanta brought from their jurisdiction, are now taking a more active role in actually trying to identify why and how the child ended up in Atlanta.

(Brian) One of the primary missions of our unit is education.

We spend a lot of time educating other law enforcement agencies on how to recognize a child victim, and once a child victim is recognized, what to look for in order to successfully prosecute a trafficker.

(Carrie) When you have a pimp or a person that is controlling all of the activity, all of the marketing that happens to sell their product, holds all of the money, controls all of the people that are seen, sets the quotas, there you have a human trafficking case.

(eerie music) (Bobbi Jo) When we got this house, two months later, the dope man moved in next door, and he was a pimp also, and his entrance was his side door, and he would bring the girls up here, and there was a staircase going up to the second floor-- he had the whole second floor-- he would bring the girls in here for about two weeks, string 'em out on dope, and then he would take 'em down to a downtown hotel and pimp 'em from there.

And so the drugs is a-- it's a chain.

It's some slavery for 'em, you know, and that's what they do.

They keep 'em dependent on that.

And then they use that drug to keep 'em going back out in the street.

"Well, if you want this, you gotta do that."

As much time as we spend trying to educate people in general about this issue, the pimps are putting in that much more intensive time in teaching these girls to hate us.

"Don't talk to the police, don't talk to anybody outside of our circle, don't tell anybody what's going on, 'cause all they're gonna do is lock you up.

I'm the only one that cares about you.

I'm the only one that'll do anything for you."

And a lot of times, what they see is that the pimps are right when they're getting locked up, when they do try and tell somebody about what's going on.

And so, one thing that we have to recognize is that we have to almost... detox 'em, if you will, from what they've been brainwashed to think for so long.

The police tried to get me to take--like, to do a sting or whatever.

I was supposed to be picked up by somebody, and I ended up running away from the police officers, and I texted that the police were there.

At that time, I was just thinking, "I'm gonna get in so much trouble.

I'm going to be hurt.

I'm going to--other people are going to be hurt."

It was pretty much the end of the world for me at that moment.

If you have a relationship with a father who's abusive, and you get out, and you're being lured by someone who's equally abusive, you don't see that as a negative response.

You see that as a proper, familial type of response, and so you're gonna give them more trust than you normally would because they're behaving just like your father.

Listen, I can tell you from my little 11-year-old, you light up their world whether you want to or not, and with all your warts and all your blemishes and all your issues, you still light up that little girl's world, and so if these girls are transferring that same compassion and love to someone in the industry, then there's almost no way to get 'em out.

(Sgt.

Dumit) They have a loyalty to these guys that goes way beyond anything that we could ever imagine, and that's why it's so hard sometimes for us to understand why they won't tell us, you know, everything that we need to know.

You have to go at their pace, um, and you don't know what all they've been through.

They may report a rape, but what they didn't tell you was they also got beat up if they tried to run away, and maybe they got beat up five or six times, and they're not really ready to tell anybody about that yet.

(Mike) They have to know who you are and feel you out before they tell you.

It can be three months before they feel comfortable enough to go into that part of their lives with you.

There's some reprogramming that needs to happen, and I guess one thing judges can do is try to contain them for some period of time while that can start.

Ultimately, it's the people who spend hours with them, talking with them.

It's the therapists, it's the counselors.

Those are the people that really have the influence.

(Alexis) We're much better at putting money in the management and detention rather than in the healing, rather than in the education and prevention.

And you have to do all pieces, or you're always just gonna be fishing bodies out of the river and not going upstream to look at who's throwing them in.

(dramatic music) ♪ Understanding that this is a business, ending supply is not gonna change anything.

Matter of fact, ending supply is impossible.

Ending the supplier is impossible, although we have to attack it at all three levels: the supply, the supplier, and the demand.

It is only the demand and going after that that can truly end this issue.

(dark music) (Kaffie) If we really are serious about stopping this business, then we have to start taking a long, hard look at who exactly it is that's the fuel.

And it's the buyer, that's the fuel.

The pimp would have no one to facilitate for if there was not a demand.

There are different classifications of johns.

I think there are johns who are led to believe these girls are of age but young, say, 18 or so.

And I think there are johns who deliberately seek out these girls that are young.

"I want an underage girl.

That's what I'm looking for."

And then I think there are johns that just don't care.

They just want it from whoever, wherever.

And, so, for me, I think all of them need to be held responsible for their conduct because if anybody in the situation can break it up, it's the johns.

(Dr. Alexis Kennedy) They all know it's against the law.

They just don't think they're gonna get caught.

And they're right, they don't get caught.

There is no downside to being a consumer because we don't hold them accountable as a society, and until we have that community demand, it just isn't going to happen.

There needs to be community awareness because law enforcement alone cannot do it.

And we just need to have that education and that awareness on all levels.

(Kaffie) So, if we look here, what if we measured the scope of the demand side?

What would that look like, and what would it be?

You have to do the research.

Having the credible numbers and being able to replicate it is what gave us the traction that made all the difference in the world.

I wonder if they actually knew that the--what would be delivered to them would be an underage girl, would they say, "I'm not interested"?

So they embedded a series of three warnings.

If they went through all three of those and still wanted the person-- the girl delivered, they clearly knew it was gonna be an underage child.

And what they found was that 47 percent went through all three of the warnings and still wanted the girl delivered.

I've heard some of those tapes, and it's--it made my stomach the first time I heard it because it was almost like they were ordering a pizza.

(soft music) ♪ (woman) Well, what kind of girl are you looking for?

Um, do you like white girls, Asian, Black, Puerto Rican?

(man) White--white girls, 18 years old.

-You said what?

18?

-Yeah.

(woman) Okay, um, all right, we do have some girls that are 18.

-Let me... -You do?

What's the... What's the youngest you got?

(woman) Um, we actually have one that's 16.

-You do?

-Yeah, um... (man) That's good.

(Misty) Tricks, johns, clients, they don't care about you.

They don't care how you feel or how many times you've been assaulted sexually that same hour, they don't, you know, they are fulfilling their fantasy.

It's their fantasy, it's their money.

You do what they want.

It's not relevant to them.

Really, this is an object, that its sole purpose is to be a sex toy.

Its purpose is for their own sexual gratification.

(moody music) ♪ (Aaronde) In Vegas, for instance, when you're walking down the Strip, the fact that I could go from the second story area, down the escalator, and that these people were so business-minded that there was a supersized QR scanner that I could play off as if I was taking a picture with my phone, but I'm scanning this code so that later on, if I wanted to go to my room and call someone, that availability was there.

We need to educate people on why that's happening.

The fact that there is enough of a demand out there, that people are paying individuals to hand out these flyers every two blocks on the Strip in Las Vegas, that becomes important.

(Kaffie) The biggest challenge, too, is that we have a culture that says "boys will be boys."

And it's that cultural message that we have to change.

So we have to change it not only for the victims, we have to start raising our young boys differently.

We have to start changing the cultural messages.

Majority of the johns are men, but, yet, we don't have any involvement on ending this, and that's an important thing that we need to take a look at, the number of men who continue to perpetuate the myths, who continue to buy sex from girls, who continue to exploit these girls.

But there are a number of us who are saying, "No, not in my city, not in my state, not in my home," and we need to increase that number.

As disturbed as we were to hear that thousands of men will knowingly or unknowingly purchase a child, we knew that there were ten to a hundred times that many men that wanted to stand on the other side.

Understanding that and understanding that I am a female and there are certain topics that when I talk about them, men can't hear them as well.

You know, it's like when women talk to women, sometimes we can get deeper into topics than you can if it's a mixed gender talk, if it's a man talking to a woman or anything like that.

So, what we do know is that men talking to men can go deeper into the topic.

So, for me growing up, the fascination with boys, preteen, teen--early teens, was if you found your dad or your uncle, or your best friend found his dad or uncle's Playboy stash or Hustler or Penthouse magazine.

And it was just that, it was magazines.

Now, we don't need any of that.

We've got the internet.

Our kids have smartphones.

(John) They've got instant access to internet, and it's so available now that it's very unlikely that a child would reach their teen years without having been exposed quite a bit to pornography.

♪ (Aaronde) For boys growing up, if all they've been exposed to is pornography and the graphic nature and the way in which these actors use women because that's what's selling, then in their mind, a girlfriend is just someone that I'm supposed to have intercourse with in whichever way that I want to.

One very interesting thing that we've found is the young girls' early experiences with pornography in the home and men who are in the home viewing pornography very openly, and so, again, for that young person and her mind, she's seeing at a very young age that to be sexualized is to be loved or at least that you'll have some attention in that way.

(John) I don't think anyone starts off thinking, "I'm going to be looking at child pornography," or, "I'm going to be a child molester."

That doesn't enter anyone's mind when they start off on this addictive cycle.

Pornography addiction and sexual addiction is really a very progressive addiction.

It starts with an image or an experience, but that image or that experience no longer holds its same pleasurable value.

It's not as stimulating as it once was, and so we have to find something a little bit more edgy.

At some point, there's a threshold where looking at this, viewing this magazine, viewing this video is not doing enough for me now, so I have to take the next step and I have to physically be in contact with either a woman or a child.

(Joel) It's about making sure that men know that this is wrong, that it doesn't matter what you think you're getting engaged in.

There's probably child pornography at the very least involved.

And if there's child pornography, that's a violation of federal law just by age alone.

It doesn't matter what's happening in it.

If you've got child prostitution going on or you've got child trafficking going on like this, it's a violation of the law.

It's a federal crime and a state crime regardless of what's happening based on the age of the child.

You can have a child telling you, "No, this is the life I've chosen, I love this, I want to do it, I'm good," and if they're not 18, they're not able to say that legally and get you off the hook.

So we've got to make sure people are aware that we've got to make sure that people pay the price for committing these crimes.

(Dalia) When there's grown men who are making the decision that I want to have sex with a child, they need to be treated for what they are and that's a pedophile.

And I feel that there should be harsh punishment for them.

Now tracking them down, that's what's the hardest part.

(Renee) I was actually here at the State Capitol, and I was asked to come and talk to the Georgia PTA, and I always end my speech with: "I want you to go home and look and see what your kids are doing.

Look at their computer, see what they're watching on TV, see who they're talking to, see who they're texting to.

And there was a mother, she actually came up to me, she said, "When I heard your speech at the Capitol, I went home and I had two young boys, and I think they were 10 and 12 years old, and I looked at their Xbox, and I want you to know that my children had been targeted."

And she said, "I did what you told me to do.

I went to the national exploited children's network in Washington, D.C.

They contacted the FBI.

And within two days, the Xbox and our computers were picked up," and they went after the predator that was going after their young boys.

They were to the point of coming to the house and meeting the boys down the street.

We do have a section called the Internet Crimes Against Children section that gets online to try to weed out these guys that use the internet.

But we have popular websites who advertise sex activity or sex businesses.

That's hard to overcome.

(Dr. Alexis Kennedy) Well, we didn't think Craigslist would change, and enough social pressure, they pulled down that adult entertainment site in the United States.

And they took a hit for financial revenue, but because we said, "You can't play dumb, you can't know that this is children, you can't know that this is illegal activity," they took the road of, "We're gonna shut down and be a good citizen."

So, there's been protests all over the United States, and I mean, it's gonna take enough protests and media attention and community demand.

So you can shut them down.

It just takes a demand.

(somber piano music) ♪ (Dalia) We need to have in place a systematic methodology of this is what happens once we are able to rescue these girls from these situations.

When you see the statistics and you see the resources, we are grossly underestimating this problem.

These girls are having children, and then you're just kind of catapulting them into this same cycle of just hopelessness.

(Anna) Unfortunately, many of these men and boys who are trafficked and sexually exploited will become and have become many of our criminal offenders, and they're gonna fight it out.

When I mean "fight it out," they're gonna be the child that winds up in juvie hall.

If it's breaking in a gas station or if it's beating up a kid after school, they're gonna fight out that aggression.

In 1980, what happened was I was getting older, I was 16, I was getting bigger.

A lot of the pedophile types or the sexual offenders who were into kids that were trafficked wanted the younger crowd.

I was getting too old, too violent, too antisocial, too disobedient, and I can physically overcome a lot of them, where before they were-- they went in and believed that they were in control.

Even if something went physically, they were still in control.

But that was--they were losing that control with me, and I wind up attacking the guy that was pimping me out.

I wind up beating him up and robbing him.

So, after that, since I was a naturally criminal kid, organized crime, people wind up giving me a job being initially as an enforcer, as a low-level mob associate.

And, then, eventually, as I got older through the years, they had me doing a variety of different organized crime, mob-related crimes.

(Robert) I started escorting for female clients at around 17 years old, and met a girlfriend who was 19 at the time and she was a pornography model.

Got me into doing that while I was still 17, so I was underage.

There was organized crime involved.

They only wanted me there for the production.

And once I was done, they made sure that I was drunk or high, I got what I wanted, and then I left.

(woman) We need to look at the real economies of not, you know, protecting and rescuing children who will grow up to be broken adults if we don't invest in getting them back.

♪ (Misty) Mel, bath time, come on!

(whistling) Get in the bath.

I have a black lab service dog.

She had to be taught how to get in and out of the bathtub by herself.

I see a doctor every 30 days.

The pain level, it goes from zero to ten in nothing.

(eerie music) ♪ When I was first rescued, I had my first back surgery.

Then, when I woke up, I couldn't use my left leg.

Um, so I had another back surgery.

I'm missing two of my discs in my back, so they're built up with cartilage.

So about every five years, they'll have to go in and build it back up, and make sure there's no bone spurs, and make sure nothing has deteriorated any further.

But I'm scared to death, you know.

I want to be able to use my legs forever.

Last month, I gave him a bath and almost broke my back.

And now he just-- now he just hops in there.

I'm so mad.

I never had a boyfriend ever in my whole entire life, but I met Michael.

Then he sent me a picture of him with a pink T-shirt on that said, "Real men wear pink."

And I was like, "You got to be kidding me."

He was like the biggest dork ever.

And, um...

I fell in love with him.

(soft music) But it was hard, it's hard because what are you gonna tell a guy?

What do you tell a man that you want to love you?

That I was a prostitute?

That I was trafficked?

That I was beat?

That I've had to have sex with multiple partners to make money, to feel loved?

And that was--took a long time to learn.

♪ It took so long.

So long.

♪ And there wasn't anybody there for a long time.

Ten years ago there was nobody there.

I was sold in about the mid-'90s this way--all the way until 2011.

♪ It had been 16 years.

(Nanette) It's been difficult for Misty to be able to speak to her needs, and it's important to just continue over and over to reassure her, to affirm that her needs are important and matter to the coalition, to me, to community members who don't even know her and are giving donations simply because they know that someone in Misty's situation should not be living without all their basic needs met.

(indistinct chatter) (Misty) "All you have to do is ask, Misty.

All you have to do is ask."

She always tells me that, you know, and it's hard.

You don't ever ask for anything, not when you're being trafficked.

You know not to ask for anything.

The Coalition Against Human Trafficking has been part of my village, and they've been through this journey with me.

There's no way I would've been able to testify in the state of Oregon if it wouldn't have been for the village, starting from the officer to Saving Grace, to running away from Oregon, and the Coalition Against Human Trafficking.

It took the federal government about five years to complete the case.

September 25th of last year, my trafficker was sentenced to 30 years in the federal state penitentiary in the state of Oregon.

When I stood up and Judge Brown said, "We find you guilty," it...

I just shook.

So, here at Oasis House we have shirts that were made by survivors of human trafficking and the sex industry, and each shirt represents something for each survivor.

And, then, this one is mine.

And, then, to signify that it's mine, it has "Freedom 3-14-13," my day that I was free.

(mellow piano music) ♪ (laughing) ♪ (Cynthia) Her progress has been so inspiring and beautiful to see.

She's got a service dog now named Ben, and that's been a great help to her.

We text multiple times throughout the day, and because of her profound hearing loss, that's our primary form of communication.

And we try to get together at least once a week face to face to do something fun.

I've decided that what I want my role to be is as much as of a support for her, that she can be totally honest with me, but also just to give her back some fun that was taken away from her.

Some personal challenges for me, um, just the sense of overwhelming sadness, anger.

Some of the details that she's shared with me have made me incredibly sad, incredibly angry.

Um...

Especially when she becomes despondent or feeling hopeless, that worries me and weighs on my heart.

Frustration and guilt, really, which I don't usually feel much guilt, but I do.

I have a lot.

And I've spoken with my colleagues at Oasis about that, Oasis House, because I just feel like I'm--at times, "Am I enough?

Am I saying the right thing?"

On March 14th, 2013, 582 days ago, I was given my freedom.

(applause) Now, I talk to people like you to try and bring about a change because, you see, I am one of thousands of Ohioans that are trafficked every year, not to include the millions that are trafficked worldwide.

(Cynthia) She's such a great storyteller, and she's so verbal and honest with what has occurred with her.

♪ I think hearing Cat's story would help someone who might have been in the same situation or is in that situation feel hopeful.

I just don't think that you can hear her story and not be moved to do something about this.

You can't ignore what you've heard.

The first thing is to help heal those who've been through it.

So, have enough resources, have enough facilities, have enough of the best people possible in place to help these girls and boys once we're able to get them out of the world of prostitution.

(soft piano music) ♪ (cellphone ringing) (Samantha) Okay, I wake up, I get on my phone, I post my ads, I book appointments, have the people come, make the money, I pay for the room.

This is not a good lifestyle.

But if you're living that lifestyle and that's all you know, it's like, what else can you do?

(Kaffie) These girls have had to experience things that even in my worst nightmare I haven't experienced, and they're experiencing them at an age where it makes me cry to think that they've had those.

In order for any of us to survive something difficult, we put up walls.

That's what, psychologically, we do to protect ourselves.

So when you first meet them, they may be very much in your face, tell you they don't want help, they don't need you.

We are responsible for those walls that that child had.

We as a community failed that child, and it's unfair to say that we didn't.

Awareness alone is not enough.

If I simply make you aware that hundreds of children will be sold this month to thousands of men for sex and I give you no way to change it, you're simply gonna leave sad and frustrated.

So we'll make you aware, and after that awareness, we are going to empower you with information and resources so that you can go to the third step which is engage to make social change, which is the fourth step that leads to the ending of DMST.

The end of all of this, what you have is you have a full picture of how to end this, and you have community involvement from the lowest local area, the smallest local area, all the way up to the state, and ultimately to the national government.

(mellow piano music) ♪ (Robert) When trauma happens, a lot of times it freezes that moment.

There's just so much shock and fear that who we are and what we know just gets stuck in that moment.

And then as we move on from that time, that's still there.

And PTSD then comes along and starts to trigger things, so that fragment starts to work its way up through the layers.

I was hesitant to really open up to my therapist for the first few months.

And, then, at the time that I started to open up to my wife and then my father died, everything came pouring out.

As the sessions went on, I was able to actually feel progress.

So, that gave me hope that there was some kind of light at the end of the tunnel, that I could get through this.

I decided to start volunteering because there was a certain community activist in Philadelphia who said, "Why don't you come with us to protest drug dealers and advocate for troubled kids?"

And I said, "You know what, it makes me feel good about myself," so I started doing it.

And by helping others, I'm helping myself.

So every piece--every time I help someone with a piece of their life, I'm getting a piece of my childhood that was stolen from me.

(Robert) There are tons and tons of experts out there who can talk about trafficking from the law enforcement perspective, from the political perspective.

What really needs to happen is we need more survivor voices.

Human trafficking is talked about in a victimizing way with victimizing language.

We need to learn to accept those who have been trafficked not as victims, but as survivors.

If everybody were to speak up and say something, then people would realize it's not normal, it's not something that's supposed to be going on, it's not something that's supposed to be happening.

Society pretty much does the same thing that traffickers or abusers do in silencing survivors.

You have to understand what it means to be voiceless, what it means to have somebody who has complete and utter control and power over you, and you have to understand the difficulty of breaking that voicelessness.

(indistinct chatter) (Misty) It's your choice, it's your life.

Take control.

You're the only one that can.

It doesn't matter your age.

Talk to somebody.

Talk to anybody.

Talk to the person walking down the street because people know now and they will help you.

(Robert) Having the chance to give my voice this moment is really something so empowering that it just completely crumbles all of the things that happened in my past.

(Kaffie) It's amazing what you can do when it has to be done.

So, what I will usually tell people is: "Take the next right step, but just keep doing the next right thing and trust that in the course of doing that, you'll get where you need to get to, and you will be provided with either the people that have the right skills or you'll develop them yourself, or you'll have the energy that you need in order to do it.

When something is not right, you got to fix it."

(Dalia) There is a war, but we have to look at it as battle by battle because if you look at the entire war, you get overwhelmed and you just don't know what to do.

And, so, each time that we are able to get a girl out of this cycle, that's the biggest success imaginable.

But I think the most important thing you can do as a success is do something.

We can't sit around anymore.

We can't say we don't know about this anymore.

We have to do something.

At the end of the day, the movement is yours.

We understand that it only works if it works locally.

So every state, every community has to figure out what's the best path for that.

(Kaffie) Never think that it can't be done, that there isn't enough time, or there aren't enough people, or there isn't enough money.

If you can envision the change, you can bring it about.

(Cat) People think that I talk about human trafficking too much.

Truth is, I need all of you to start.

Traffickers build on silence both of those who they use and abuse, but also the silence of society.

So, let's talk about it.

Let's talk about what human trafficking is.

Let's talk about bringing an end into it and act on that.

We've got to change our attitude, and we've got to change our perspective on what it means to be involved in combating human trafficking.

(uplifting music) ♪ ♪ (bright music)