Dr. Due Books

Theresa Flores was an unlikely sex slave.

At age 15, she was a petite, attractive blonde who lived in an upper-class suburb of Detroit, sang in the Catholic Church choir every Sunday and was determined to remain a virgin until marriage.

Then an older student gave her a drug-laced Coke and raped her while she was semiconscious.

“I was devastated,” she said Thursday at a conference on child sex-trafficking at the Oral Roberts University Mabee Center.

That was the beginning of a two-year nightmare in which she was forced into prostitution through fear, threats and intimidation.

“I became a middle-class sex slave to these men. I was told, ‘I own you,’ ” she said.

“They threatened me every day,” she said. “They always knew where I was.”

They followed her home from school. They called her several times a week to meet with clients.

Ashamed, terrified and confused, she told no one.

Flores escaped when her father, an executive with General Electric, was transferred to Connecticut after her junior year.

Fearing for her life, she never reported the ordeal to authorities.

She went on to become a clinical social worker.

She kept silent for 25 years.

She has now committed her life to exposing human trafficking.

Flores wrote a book, “The Sacred Bath: an American Teen’s Story of Modern Day Slavery.”

“My mission is telling my story. This is how I can get back at them, and save other girls,” she said.

Mark Elam is director of Oklahomans Against Trafficking Humans, which sponsored the conference along with ORU, United Way of Central Oklahoma, FBI Victims Service Division, and several churches and social service organizations.

Elam said human-trafficking is second to drug dealing as the most lucrative black-market enterprise in the world, and is expected to surpass drug dealing soon.

He said Americans think Asian nations are the primary child sex-traffickers, but the United States has become the No. 1 destination point for child sex-trafficking. An estimated 300,000 American minors enter the industry each year. The demand is highest for white, educated, middle-class children age 13 to 14.

Oklahoma is a pipeline state, he said, and indicators suggest the state ranks seventh to 10th in child sex-trafficking nationally.

Oklahoma was the only state with children found in all three major FBI sting operations conducted under the “Innocence Lost” program, he said.

Special Agent Jim Windsor, founder of the FBI Human Trafficking Task Force in Oklahoma City, said one of the biggest U.S. child prostitution cases involved more than 30 young girls, most of them Oklahomans, working truck stops in Oklahoma City.

“A lot of organized crime rings are realizing there’s money in prostitution,” he said.