Big Brothers Big Sisters Miami is sounding the alarm on human trafficking signs at the start of the school year.
The organization held a panel discussion on Saturday, where a survivor decided to share her story and told CBS News Miami how she was groomed at a young age.
A survivor hopes her story will help protect others
Seanna Martinez said she was just 14 when she became a survivor of human trafficking. It started when she was contacted by some men on social media. She is now 19.
“As a homeschooler at the time, I didn’t have a lot of real-life friends,” Martinez said. “When I got this attention online and all these friends online, it was really different for me.”
Martinez said the men convinced her to send explicit photos to them.
“At first I didn’t even see the danger in it and how terrible the act was,” she said.
Martinez said eventually the men took her to their home, and she said she did get to leave. When her sister found out, they told the police and one of the men was eventually arrested.
“I could easily have been transported across state lines,” Martinez said.
She decided to share her story at a panel on human trafficking at the Big Brothers Big Sisters organization.
One of the reasons why this event was held on Saturday in Miami is that the school year is just getting underway, and because Florida is consistently one of the nation’s leaders in human trafficking cases.
The National Human Trafficking Hotline found that Florida had the third most reported cases of any state last year.
Social media is a tool human traffickers use, a retired DHS agent says
Victor Williams, a retired Department of Homeland Security agent, founded the anti-human trafficking organization Quest2Freedom.
He said social media is becoming one of the main tools that traffickers use to find new victims, adding that a popular target is emotionally vulnerable children.
“Unresolved trauma creates that vulnerability for traffickers to come in and groom people who are looking for that connection,” Williams said.
Martinez said she wants young people to know how impressionable they can be at a young age.
“I would go along with it because I trusted them and because they were my friend,” Martinez said.
Martinez said there was a group of people responsible for trying to groom her. She said only one of them ever got brought to justice.
