A judge's denial of bail for the billionaire draws applause from Selah Freedom, which has been working for years to change cultural awareness.

SARASOTA — A federal judge’s decision to deny bail to billionaire Jeffrey Epstein on sex trafficking charges is being celebrated by a Sarasota nonprofit as more evidence that its mission is creating a massive shift in the nation’s consciousness.

“The change is that the culture is finally opening its eyes. We’ve been talking about this forever,” said Elizabeth Melendez Fisher Good, co-founder and CEO of Selah Freedom, “but it’s beautiful to watch the world seeing trafficking for what it is, and the change that’s coming with it is fantastic.”

>> RELATED: Read the Herald-Tribune's award-winning 2013 special report, "The Stolen Ones," on child sex trafficking in Sarasota and Manatee counties

Epstein, a financier whose wealth afforded him access to rainmakers as powerful as Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, became an officially registered sex offender when he pleaded guilty to a single count of prostitution of a minor in 2008. But FBI investigators said dozens of girls had been victimized.

On Wednesday, Epstein was discovered semi-conscious on the floor of his Manhattan jail cell, with injury marks to his neck. An investigation is continuing.

Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. Attorney General for the Southern District of Florida, was criticized for dispensing a cushy sentence, of which Epstein served less than four months. New witnesses continued to step forward. This month, as Epstein was arrested on more trafficking charges, Acosta was forced to resign as Labor Secretary over his mishandling of the Epstein affair.

For Fisher Good and Selah, the message was unambiguous.

“What it shows is that society will not turn a blind eye anymore just because you’re powerful and wealthy,” she says. “And I think there will be more convictions to follow.”

Founded in 2011 in hopes of ending what some experts describe as a $32 billion pipeline for “modern-day slavery,” Selah has since become a national model with its prevention and outreach programs. It has conducted awareness seminars with law enforcement agencies from New York to Arizona and has served more than 5,000 sex-trafficking survivors.

Part of the strategy involves reframing the prostitution phenomenon as an industry of exploitation, versus the long-running happy-hooker cliché. In fact, says Fisher Good, the typical scenario involves domestic sexual child abuse that often prompts girls to flee their parents or guardians, and “within 48 hours of leaving home,” she says, “80 percent are approached by a pimp.”

Once on the street, the average child is sold anywhere from 15 to 40 times a day for up to seven years. Selah’s youngest client, Fisher Good says, was an 11-year-old girl. She cites a recent statistic suggesting 67% of the victims are sold by parents, often to support their own drug addictions.

Epstein, 66, was described by an investigator as a predator with an insatiable appetite for youngsters. “Once these girls lost their braces and their pubescent look and started becoming 16 years old or 17 years old,” former detective Michael Fisten told CNN, “they were too old for him, so then he started using them as recruiters to bring younger girls.”

Cognizant of Epstein’s lenient incarceration terms in South Florida, New York federal judge Richard Berman noted that several of Epstein’s young accusers said he had sex with them while out on work release from jail. Berman dismissed a request for bail because Epstein’s impulses are “not likely to have abated or been successfully suppressed.”

In June, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill authorizing more watchdog measures, including a public database naming pimps and prostitute clients. Earlier this month, the state, which has been supporting Selah Freedom for the past four years, gave the group a $1.5 million boost to expand its services.

Those services include a residential program offering trafficking survivors aged 18 or older a stable environment where they can receive proper health care, education and basic life skills, such as learning to drive or earning high school diplomas.

“A lot of our survivors tell stories of being given opioids to keep them dependent on their trafficker,” says Fisher Good. “We’ve heard how they’ll be given a choice — do you want to be numb to endure this, or not. They all said they chose to be numb.

“What’s interesting is, one of our graduates at one of our events the other day said she was in and out of more than 20 rehab facilities as a juvenile, but that she couldn’t stop using until she dealt with the shame first. She said you don’t want to remember, you don’t want to feel, so you keep getting thrown into rehab, which doesn’t change anything until you address the root cause, which is the abuse.”

For more information on Selah Freedom, visit selahfreedom.com, call 1-888-8-FREE-ME or email Info@SelahFreedom.com.