CLEANSING THE WORLD OF EVIL
The public is often led to believe that human trafficking only happens in other countries. Theresa Flores is living proof that it’s been happening in the United States for a long time. It’s often linked to some very sinister people in positions of power, and no one’s immune to it. She was trafficked as a young girl in the Michigan suburbs, before the internet existed and names like Jeffrey Epstein were in the 6 o’clock news. She escaped her nightmare and not only detailed what she endured in her book, The Slave Across the Street, but became a respected authority on the topic and relentlessly tours the country working with other survivors to fight this perverse form of conscription.
In Theresa’s words, human trafficking is a “silent epidemic.” It’s orchestrated by highly sophisticated criminals who use intimidation, extortion, bribery, and violence to continue its onslaught. Various businesses are fronts for it. The dark web is a marketplace for victims being bought and sold. Social media, apps, interactive video games, and hangouts where children congregate draw predators out of the woodwork looking for victims to exploit. Their future may include sexual and emotional abuse, beatings, organ harvesting, forced labor, torture, or murder.
We spoke with Theresa about her experience, what the public needs to know to protect themselves and their kids, and how her organization, SOAP (Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution) Project, raises awareness. The question then becomes, will you dismiss her personal account as an isolated incident that could never happen to your loved ones, or will you be convinced that it deserves more coverage than other hot topics on the evening news ever did? After reading her story, and our feature on this topic elsewhere in this issue, we hope you’ll agree that no child should have to suffer through this kind of sordid opportunism.
RECOIL OFFGRID: Where’d you grow up?
Theresa Flores: All over the place. That was probably one of the things that made me more vulnerable than the average kid — we moved every two years. I was born in Ohio and my dad got a job with General Electric, so we moved all over Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan.
Tell us about how your experience being trafficked began.
TF: In
