Comments Human Trafficking All photography by David Downs In December the University of Texas estimated that there are 79, minor and youth victims of sex trafficking and , workers who are victims of labor trafficking in Texas. That means there are at least , victims of human trafficking in our state. Whether we know it or not, some are in Collin County. The flight is an hour away from its destination, and the woman next to me is a nervous flyer.
Thick gold eyeshadow glitters like dragonfly wings over her false eyelashes; a matching bra shines underneath an unbuttoned denim jacket. Her fingernails are dabbled with rhinestones. Her confident flash makes it almost hard to look at her in the tin-can atmosphere where most people are washed colorless. The conversation she strikes up is simply a nice distraction from turbulence until I mention that I write for a living. She smiles. She leans in over the armrest. Sometimes she talks about fighting drug addiction and ancient, cavernous hurts.
Most of all, she says how glad she is to be free. She shows me her Instagram, a strange mix of uplifting selfies and pornographic images of herself twisted in bondage. Her original buyer remains a shadow at the center of her story. Sometimes she calls him her boyfriend. Then I turned sixteen, too old for him. She only broke free of the cycle two years ago. Today, she lives with a man who she loves.
I wonder how free she can ever be after years of being a commodity. It is the first and only report of its kind. The founder of Agape Resource and Assistance Center, Janet works with a small staff out of a cozy office, caring for homeless women and children in Collin County. She has seen people at their most desperateβlost in drug addiction, fleeing abusive spouses, living penny to penny. It was a local police officer calling Janet in desperate need of safe shelter for a woman who had been brought to the hospital in critical condition, bleeding, covered in bruises like crushed tomatoes.
Both the police officer and the doctor had a terrible suspicion about what had happened to her. A year earlier a young mother sought shelter and help.
