Stories

Written by Grant Stimmel

Like animals in a zoo, but worse.

You wait for your number to be called. 

17. 34. 92. One by one the other girls leave…

Then it is just you. Number 146. 

Nameless, alone, you await your bidder. Then, finally, you are called. Escorted from the glass room, your dress hangs loose. You are 11-years-old, and only beginning the worst night of your life. Only this happened last night, too. And the night before that. Tomorrow, there will be more of the same.

Did you know that Charlotte is the #1 city in NC and #7 city in the nation for human trafficking activity? Stunned? Hold on. There’s more. A girl is bought and sold every 15 seconds for an average cost of $90. That means, by the time you finished reading that statistic, one girl has been forced into human trafficking. By the time you finish reading this article… well. You do the math. 

Human trafficking can sound like a humanitarian heartstring issue, pulling on the fringe of society, and before meeting a victim - a college student who was coerced into what was advertised as a modeling agency career photo shoot - I coldly dismissed sex trafficking as the modern-day term for prostitution. I quickly realized this is real life where people are preyed upon, often drugged and abused. 

Local nonprofit organization Playing for Others (PFO) believes that the two most important questions we can ask in our lifetime are “Who Am I?” and “How will I give of that?”