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Human Trafficking - The Slave Across the Street

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When the subject of human trafficking is brought up, one might think that it is happening in a third world country involving teenage girls that are trapped in a broken home environment, abused at home, divorced parents, or just a runaway trying to escape the harsh reality of life. But in the case of Theresa Flores, her book "The Slave Across the Street," describes how human trafficking can exists anywhere and to anyone regardless of your socio-economic status or background. The book highlights how an all-American Catholic girl with loving parents and siblings growing up in the rich suburbs of America fell into the victim of human trafficking and commercially being sexually exploited. "The Slave Across the Street," is the biography of Theresa Flores of how she was lured in by the use of seduction and intimidation to force her to perform sexual acts at a moment notice and getting caught in a web of sophisticated sex trafficking ring in the suburbs of Detroit in the early 1980's. Flores describes in details of how her life was turned upside down by a group of Chaldeans boys at her High School with what started out as a innocent crush on a boy named Daniel that leads to her being manipulated and sexually raped. Flores life changed in glimpse of an eye, from one day living in the comfort of her family and friends to another day filled with torture and fear that is involved in business of sex trafficking. Flores was a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 15 years old in upper class suburbs of Detroit. The book describes in gruesome details of how she was forced into sex trafficking, beaten and tortured to do things against her will on the basis of intimidation and threats on her family and loved ones. Daniel a boy she had a crush on in school asked her to take a ride with him and end up taking her to his house. His two cousins photographed as he end up raping her. One of the cousins Nick uses the pictures as leverage and threatens her to show the pictures to her church priest, her family, her dad's boss and the school. That in turns put Theresa in a position where she was young and naïve and didn't want to hurt family and close ones by the embarrassing photos to comply with Nicks demands of what started out with sexual pleasures to get the pictures back to a full blown sex for money scheme. Throughout the book, Flores receives threats from Nick and his gang about hurting her family and friends if she doesn't listen and obey their commands. For over two years she sneaks out of her house nearly every night to get picked up and taken to a location where sometime as many as dozen men sexually abuse and beat her. Throughout this whole ordeal, people that knew that she was involved in this horrific ordeal didn't speak up nor stood up for her because they were in fear themselves and those that would help didn't know such as her parents. The sexual abuse and violence only stopped because her father

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