KALAMAZOO, MI -- Social media posts and movies like ‘Taken’ have audiences believing they could be kidnapped and sold into sex trafficking. But author, advocate and survivor Theresa Flores’ story challenges that narrative — a common misconception, according to experts.

During an Anti-Human Trafficking Coalition Event at Ascension Borgess Hospital, Flores shared her traumatic experience as a sex trafficking victim when she was teenager. The story starts when she lived in Birmingham, Michigan, in the 1980s.

“It didn’t matter that we had five bathrooms in our house or that we had just gotten back from Disney World,” Flores said. “I had nothing.”

As the new kid at school, Flores said she was thrilled the cute boy she had a crush on offered her a ride home from school. As they pulled out of Wylie E. Groves High School the black Pontiac Trans Am turned right onto 13 Mile, instead of left toward Flores’ house.

Even at 15, the warning sirens did go off, Flores said. But this was no stranger. It was a friend from school.

The boy invited her inside and offered her a pop. She would later realize he had laced the drink. That afternoon she was drugged, raped and photographed without knowing it, she said. The next day at school that same boy showed her those photos and used them as leverage against her, she said.

The photos were blackmail and if she did not “earn them back,” they threatened to show her parents, teachers and priest, she said.

That started a two yearlong cycle of being picked up in the middle of the night and driven around the Detroit area. She said her alleged abusers would “deliver me like a pizza" to the basements of beautiful homes in the suburbs where clients were waiting.

It was at her lowest point, after being dragged out of the trunk of a car by her hair and auctioned off at a motel, that an “angel” turned her life around. A waitress at a 24-hour diner called police after Flores walked in barefoot the next morning, she said.

“She took one look at me and she knew. She knew the signs of a kid in trouble,” Flores said. "She said something to me nobody ever said in my life — no teacher, no coach, no parents. She said, ‘Can I help you?’

Not like the movies

The idea of being abducted from a parking lot “hits all the marks of a good urban legend,” Michigan State Police Lt. Sarah Krebs said. But that almost never reflects reality.

“We have never had a case in Michigan where somebody was abducted and put into the life of sex trafficking," Krebs said. "It truly does not happen that way.”

A 2018 data set calculated 27% of sex trafficking victims are trafficked by family members, according to Polaris, the nonprofit that runs the National Human Trafficking Hotline. Approximately 32% of victims are sex trafficked by an intimate partner, according to the data.

Victims, like Flores, are manipulated by people they already knew. The promise of a romantic relationship are used as a grooming technique. Police call this “boyfriending,” Krebs said.

Police are now dealing with viral Facebook posts that often describe an “ethnic-looking man” following women while grocery shopping or walking to their cars. When police investigate, Krebs said, they usually find the man accused was checking the women out, looking to start a conversation or that he did not exist at all.

While she does not want to discredit women feeling threatened, she encourages them to be better educated on what human trafficking is and to look for red flags in the children and teenagers they know.

More than 50% of identified girl victims are aged between 15 and 17. About 40% of trafficked boys are under 12 years old, according to the worldwide Counter-Trafficking Data Collaborative.

Operating in the shadows

Sex traffickers are social-media savvy, Krebs said. The majority of cases MSP investigates are unfolding on Snapchat, Kik and other messaging apps, she said.

“When we have parents who are concerned with letting their kids go to the mall, they should really be concerned about who [the kids] are talking to online in their own home," Krebs said.

Krebs warns parents to check their kids’ social media accounts and text messages, and to ask their child where they received expensive gifts such as iPhones, handbags or hair extensions. Parents should also question the motives of any older teenagers or adults who have taken special interest in their children.

The Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act signed in 2000 prohibits “sex trafficking of children or of others by force, fraud, or coercion.” It was the first U.S. law to specifically address human trafficking outside of the abolition of slavery.

The greatest hurdle in locking up predators is victim testimony, Kalamazoo County Prosecutor Jeff Getting said. Not many victims feel safe, empowered or comfortable enough to identify themselves and seek legal ramifications against their abusers, Getting said.

Only one case of human trafficking, a forced labor case, has been prosecuted in Kalamazoo County, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Greg Russell said.

Still, Getting believes an increase of awareness both in the public and within law enforcement has resulted in more prosecutions across the state. Law enforcement has switched its approach from pursuing sting operations to arrest prostitutes to looking for the buyer and the trafficker, he said.

At the end of December, the Warren Police Department arrested 25 women and 21 men during a three-day sting dubbed “Operation Crusade II” that focused on human trafficking, prostitution, pandering and illegal sale of drugs.

“We have to change the messaging, change the focus and we have to involve men in changing our behavior if we’re going to address this issue," Getting said.

Kalamazoo anti-trafficking services

The YWCA Kalamazoo provides comprehensive services for both sex and labor trafficking survivors of all genders and gender non-conforming people, according to the organization’s website. The YWCA offers free counseling and legal services.

The clients who use the YWCA legal services are not like those often depicted in media, said Jessica Glynn, YWCA’s senior director of law and policy. The “spectacle” of human trafficking often excludes labor trafficking, migrant workers and male victims, Glynn said.

“They [society] are fixated on this idea that it is these vulnerable white girls who are at risk of trafficking which is false,” she said. “The people who are trafficked in our community are those who are already vulnerable due to racism, sexism, poverty and bigotry.”

Those who have called the national hotline were categorized into these top five areas of vulnerabilities: recent relocation, substance use, unstable housing, homeless youth and mental health concerns.

The YWCA Kalamazoo has expanded its services with those more vulnerable people in mind. In 2017, it opened a shelter specifically for trafficking survivors.

Stays in the 12-bed offsite shelter usually last about three months, said Meg Hughey, the organization’s community impact coordinator for human trafficking.

The YWCA Kalamazoo also provides sexual assault nurse exams, according to its website. Such an examination can still be administered within 120 hours, or five days, of an incident.

Flores founded the SOAP project, which stands for Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution. Flores and volunteers label bars of soap and packages of makeup wipes with the national trafficking hotline number and ask hotels, motels and 24-hour diners to have them out in the bathroom.

The SOAP Project has volunteer chapters in Grand Rapids, Detroit and Ann Arbor. In addition to regular outreach, the organization targets specific events that can draw large crowds — and therefore higher demand for sex work — such as the Detroit Auto Show, large concerts and marathons. This year, SOAP is traveling to Miami for the Super Bowl and plans to put labeled products in 400 hotels, Flores said.

If you or someone you know is a victim of sex trafficking, the national hotline operates 24-hours a day, seven days a week in 200 languages: 1-888-373-7888

Locally, the YWCA also operates a 24-hour crisis line to address any type of abuse: 269-385-2869