THE STORY OF ANGEL

IS HOUSTON A SEX TRAFFICKING MECCA? From High School Honor Roll to Now Trafficked on Bissonnet -The Story of Angel

How Angel Entered the Underworld of Human Sex Trafficking

By Jamie Winston

To protect her identity and that for sex trafficking. The new friends, the of her family, we use the name new boyfriend, her lack of interest in her Angel, her street name. Angel “old life” were all subtle signs that their grew up in Katy, TX, where she regularly daughter was entering a very dark unattended church, was an honor roll studerworld that they never dreamed would dent and held a normal after school job. ever reach their quiet suburban neighShe lived in a nice middle-class neighborborhood. hood, had a good group of friends, and For Angel and many others like her, it one day her life changed. Angel’s parents all started with a friend from her church. noticed she wasn’t hanging out with her This friend would introduce her to a regular friend group, didn’t talk to them whole new friend group and have her fall as much, became withdrawn and moody, into a world that she never knew existand didn’t seem interested in the things ed. Traffickers have learned that parents she used to enjoy her parents chalked who take their children to church tend up to teenage angst. What they would to be stricter when it comes to things like later find was that Angel was grooming social media, drinking, staying out late,

and overall setting rules and boundaries to protect their children. They have learned to use that kind of information to manipulate and prey on young, innocent girls. They know these girls are sheltered, and they use a teen girl’s natural desire to rebel to reel them in. These things alone aren’t enough, though; there is one additional element to make the girl a “good target.” She must have a vulnerability. Angel’s exposure started when her nephews left the family’s home with her sister. When Angel’s friend heard that she was sad and struggling with her nephews’ absence, she invited Angel to a party. At that party, Angel, who was already vulnerable, was introduced to even more new friends in their twenties. She is exposed to alcohol and marijuana for the first time. Her mom believes very strongly she was sexually assaulted that night. From that point forward, Angel started using drugs more frequently, and soon after, began experimenting with harder drugs like ecstasy and Meth. Once the groomers were able to get her addicted,

they had full control. The average age a teen enters the sex trade in the US is 12 to 14 years old. Many victims are runaway girls who have been sexually abused as children. [1]

One early morning in October, her parents discovered Angel had not come home the previous night. They were concerned but thought she had stayed at a friend’s house and would go to school from there. They worried when Angel, who had just turned 18, hadn’t turned up at school and didn’t have her phone and found out about the drug use. Her parents turned to social media to plead for help in finding their daughter. It was through that outcry that they would learn more about what Angel’s life had become. Some of Angel’s old friends came forward and spoke up about new friends and a new boyfriend. They shared pictures from her Snapchat and showed that Angel was in a motel in Westchase, an area not far from Bissonnet, with a strip of cheap motels frequently used by traffickers. Angel was literally in the lion’s den.

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It would be 21 days before Angel is located for the first time. She had been dumped out of a car, beaten, bruised, twenty pounds lighter, and incoherent. The police called her parents, who rushed to see her. Angel went to the Emergency Room for a Sexual Assault Nurse Exam (SANE). She was able to tell her parents that the boyfriend she thought she could trust had forced her out on the streets and into a life of prostitution. On Bissonnet, Angel was picked up by a man who had spent the last few months raping prostitutes. He held Angel in his apartment for two days, repeatedly sedating her with drugs, and brutally raped and beat her. Angel’s parents could get her into rehab at a local facility with excellent credentials from the hospital. They thought this was the end, and that their daughter was finally free of this life, but they had no way of knowing what would happen next.

Ten days into treatment, Angel’s realized her friend from rehab was the girl from church who had made the original introduction to the man who would later become Angel’s pimp. She was getting out that day and was able to convince Angel to go back to her traffickers. As an 18-year old, Angel could not be held against her will, and the facility let her leave, and so the search for Angel continued. Angel was spotted on Bissonnet, near the Sam Houston Tollway and Highway 59, in an area known as the “Track” or the “Strip,” a well-known hotspot for prostitution in Houston for decades. Angel’s Dad was called with the information and immediately found Angel in a gas station, and when she approached him, she wasn’t shocked at seeing who it was because he was always tracking her down. He was able to keep her there until the police could arrive; they put Angel in the back of the car, but because she wasn’t breaking any laws, they too had to let her go.

Unfortunately, this is the story of so many young girls being lured from their homes and introduced to the dark web and human sex trafficking underworld.

Human trafficking earns global profits of roughly $150 billion a year for traffickers, $99 billion from commercial sexual exploitation. [2] In 2018, The National Human Trafficking Hotline received more calls from California than any other state in the US, followed by Texas and Florida. (To contact the Human Trafficking Hotline: call 1-888-373-7888, text 233733, or chat online.) [3]

1. “Human Trafficking Within and into the United States: A Review of the Literature.” Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Accessed July 31, 2019, https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/human-trafficking-and-within-united-states-review-literature#Trafficking. 2. “Human Trafficking by the Numbers.” Human Rights First. Accessed July 31, 2019. https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/ resource/human-trafficking-numbers. 3. “Hotline Statistics.” The National Human Trafficking Hotline. Accessed July 31, 2019. https://humantraffickinghotline.org/states.

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