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Rebecca

There are an estimated 403,000 people living in modern slavery in the United States (GSI 2018). Sex trafficking exists throughout the country. Traffickers use violence, threats, lies, debt bondage and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. The situations that sex trafficking victims face vary, many victims become romantically involved with someone who then forces them into prostitution. Others are lured with false promises of a job, and some are forced to sell sex by members of their own families. Victims of sex trafficking include both foreign nationals and US citizens, with women making up the majority of those trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. In 2015, the most reported venues/industries for sex trafficking included commercial-front brothels, hotel/motel-based trafficking, online advertisements with unknown locations, residential brothels, and street-based sex trafficking. Rebecca was trafficked in Indiana, USA when she was twenty-one-years old. After being sexually assaulted at the age of fourteen, Rebecca began acting out and struggled with depression, anxiety, and began experimenting with drugs and alcohol. When she was twenty-one, she met a man almost twice her age and moved in with him just three weeks later. The man introduced her to crystal meth, controlled her movement and sold her to men for sex. Rebecca tells of how, despite leaving her trafficking situation, she struggled to come to terms with her exploitation and it affected her life for years afterwards