Sex Trafficking Special Report: Former victim tells story of how she escaped

Trapped in the sex trade since age 14, woman now works to heal, help others

Leah Albright was trafficked to Reno. She spent four years working for pimps and her best friend, who was also trafficked was killed at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Leah Albright-Byrd was 14 when she ran away from home and met a man who offered her love and protection if she sold her body and gave him the money.
His offer quickly became a demand, and she spent the next 10 years working, essentially, as a slave to a series of pimps in and outside Reno.
As Albright-Byrd shares her story in her small Sacramento apartment, she wipes off the counter, sweeps the floor and straightens a stack of mail. She never sits still. It's as if she's treading water — constantly moving — to avoid drowning under memories that at one time threatened to take her life.
Another woman was kidnapped in Reno when she was 22 by a man who threatened to hurt her and her children if she didn't perform sexual acts for the men who responded to ads the he posted on the Internet.
The woman, who can't be named until her pimp is prosecuted, recalls her journey while bent over in a chair, arms wrapped around her waist, eyes staring straight ahead. The shame and fear sits on her back like a vulture threatening to steal her soul if she lifts her guard for a second.
Her voice is small as she details the terms of her sexual services. It becomes bold with defiance as she explains how she plotted her escape from her pimp, but tears flow when she identifies her motivation — her two small children, the two she would do anything for even it if meant hurting herself.
These two young women took money for sex. They were prostitutes. That is a fact.
But what is also true is these women were victims of sex trafficking, and they now call themselves survivors.
They were forced into a life they would wish on no one. They hurt then, and they hurt still. Deeply. Their pain shows in their eyes and seeps out as they speak — voices breaking, long pauses, incomplete sentences.
'Over and over again'

"It's gross sleeping with a man that you're not in love with," the Reno woman said as she stared off into the distance, a repulsed look on her face. "It's like being raped every day over and over and over again, and then being raped by your pimp and then going out and being with a different man every day."

Source; dailymail
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