Human trafficking by the numbers

400

The estimated number of teens trafficked every night on the streets of Dallas

13

The average age an American girl enters the sex trade

$90

The average cost of a trick in America; girls are often required to bring in $1,000 a night

48

The number of hours on the street before a runaway teen is approached by a sex trafficker

96%

Of teens who end up trafficked were abused at home

New Friends New Life is always seeking volunteers who can help with childcare, teaching or offer work experience. Find out more at newfriendsnewlife.org.

Classes out on the pink floral comforter of her bed that would fit perfectly into a little girl’s bedroom.

In many ways, Robin is a little girl, just one that didn’t get to grow up like little girls should. Born to a mentally ill mother, she ended up in foster care after a neighbor reported seeing her shivering day after day without a coat to keep her warm in the harsh Midwestern winters where she was raised.

At first foster care was a step up, a place where her unmet needs were finally addressed. Then, she says, a relative of her foster family began molesting her at age 9. Her blue eyes cast down as she shrugs off the didn’t seem like a big deal to do it for him,” Robin says. “You do it a couple of times and you start to go numb.”

She began to see herself as an object, not a human. Knowing that her young age made her more desirable on the streets, she soon began selling herself. She met a man online who agreed to fly her to Dallas. No one seemed to notice when she ran away.

She worked for a pimp for several years, a man more than twice her age who beat her and raped her, but also gave her a place to stay and food to eat. Eventually, she made enough money to move in with a friend she

I like doing this? Not especially, but it’s what I choose to do. I’m not some victim.”

Amanda Jones used to think like Robin. Just like Robin, she was sexually abused at home, before turning to the streets as a teenager. She was trafficked for the first time at 15, and spent the next nine years caught in the web of prostitution for a pimp’s financial gain.

“I didn’t ever see myself as a victim,” Jones told KERA radio in an April interview. “You’re just trying to survive at that age, so you don’t see yourself as a victim.”

Jones is now a successful accountant, living in Dallas in a life that is unrecognizable from her time on the street. It wasn’t easy and it didn’t come overnight, but she found support from neighborhood nonprofit New Friends New Life, which works solely with female victims of human trafficking and the sex industry. Of-