"How many of you know enough about human trafficking to write a paper about it," Theresa Flores asked a classroom full of Otterbein students. A few students raised their hands.
"Prostitution?" she continued, "How about Fair Trade?"-- even fewer students kept their hand up. "When we think about slavery we think of Indian boys making soccer balls," said Flores. "You should also think of humans and slavery when you look at me," said Flores, a mother of three, who graduated with a degree in social work from Ball State University and grew up in an upper-class suburban family. At 15, Flores accepted a ride home from a boy who went to her high school. "I was brought up to believe everyone was a good person," she said. That day Flores was raped and photographed by the boy's male relatives. The men threatened to show the pictures to her family, friends and priest unless she agreed to pay them. For the next two years Flores was beaten, tortured, threatened and forced to have sex with "hundreds of men." "They would call my house...and demand that I appear. I didn't waste time...I would go barefoot. If I took too long to arrive I would pay later that night." Unable to tell her friends or family what was going on, Flores was "living a nightmare." She finally escaped the situation when her family moved. The U.S. Department of State defines human trafficking as, "modern-day slavery, involving victims who are forced, defrauded or coerced into labor or sexual exploitation." They estimate about 600,000 to 800,000 people annually are trafficked across national borders. Those numbers don't include those like Flores who are trafficked within their own countries. Sarah Lovett, a freshmen nursing major who attended, was amazed. "It's just a shock to realize that there's so much around us that we don't know...and that it's affecting people who you wouldn't even think." By talking to college students, Flores hopes to create awareness. She encourages students to tell two other people. t&c;
