Young And Trapped: Homeless Youth And Young Adults Ensnared In Human Sex Trafficking

Madison Police Detective Maya Krajcinovic, who investigates sensitive crimes, hugs a 23-year-old woman who had been addicted to heroin and a victim of human trafficking for four years.

STEVE APPS -- State Journal

 

Alone and vulnerable, homeless youth frequently fall prey to human sex traffickers

• DEAN MOSIMAN and DOUG ERICKSON | Wisconsin State Journal

By age 19, the petite, blond-haired woman was homeless, a slave to heroin and becoming ensnared by a sex trafficking industry that is quietly rampant in Madison.

Eventually, she would sell her body to three or four men a day, most days of the year, making lots of cash but surrendering most of it to a lover-pimp who provided food, cheap motel rooms and "protection" — and, most importantly, fed her drug addiction.

At 22, heroin had transformed her body to an anemic rail and she estimates she'd been with 1,500 men.

"Drug dealers will take what you want most and absolutely use it against you," she told the State Journal.

Her sister lived the same life.

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