On a mud wall in the corner of the back room where Stefania Nastrut lives with her father, the names of the brothers and sisters she never sees are written in a colorful teenage scrawl. Nearby sits the car battery that is the family's only electricity.

“I’m staying here only to finish my school,” said Nastrut, 18.

“After I finish school, I will leave somewhere. I will not expect no one to give me money, to criticize me that he gives me money,” she said.

Nastrut is a rarity in this hilly region of Romania, among the poorest in the European Union, simply because she is still there. By the time they reach her age, most teenage girls there — as young as 13 — have long quit school, with many disappearing into the realm of sex trafficking. According to the U.S. State Department’s 2014 “Trafficking in Persons" report, one-third of Romania’s trafficking victims are underage girls.

There, traffickers have a keen eye for those made vulnerable by their desperation to leave, making the girls ideal victims. The Eurostat 2015 report notes that Romania was one of the top five countries of origin for victims of human trafficking in the EU, as registered by organizations (governmental and nongovernmental) throughout the bloc.