Children as young as sixth-graders are being recruited in schools to become the pawns of sex traffickers, one victim says.
Parents send their children to school and the last thing they think they will have to worry about is their son or daughter being recruited by a sex trafficker.
It’s a hard reality to imagine however, it is happening right here in our own backyard.
News 6 Investigator Eryka Washington spoke with one victim who shares her story of survival.
"We were trapped there like slaves," Katarina Rosenblatt told Washington.
Rosenblatt was forced to have sex with men at the age of 14.
She recalls the nightmare she lived in middle school.
Sex Trafficking Grades Per State | Graphiq
"There was a trafficker that sent his daughter to school so he was using his own 14-year-old little girl to recruit other kids to feed the lust of his pedophile friends," Rosenblatt said.
She told Washington the girls who were recruited were from broken homes, had abused backgrounds and were vulnerable.
"The way they brought us into that trafficking ring was through a sleepover.
We were supposed to have pool parties and pancakes but instead we were given alcohol and cocaine.
His friends came over these older men in their 40s came over and picked the girls that they wanted.
I wound up being sold by her dad for $40 and he had us taken to a brothel in Broward County," Rosenblatt said.
Katarina was a victim of sex trafficking for weeks before getting away.
Ron Stucker, from the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigations, says often the girls involved are those you least suspect.
"These were not girls staying in a shelter or runaways," Stucker said.
Earlier this year, two Orange County high school students were victims of sex trafficking. Both were"A" students and college bound.
"If you looked at it from the outside and you saw them in a shopping mall or you saw them at some event you wouldn't look and say there's a kid in trouble," Stucker said.
Agents say both girls were coerced and blackmailed by this man, Martin Wright until they were able to get help.
A common tactic used by traffickers older men gaining trust of teen girls.
"They start slow with them than they begin to gain emotional psychological control over them asking them to start doing things and then the threats come involved and coercion becomes involved," Stucker said.
Traffickers are not just older men.
"It could be anyone we have male human traffickers and we also have female human traffickers. They usually don't tell them what they are getting into they promise them the world," said David Allmond, an agent with the MBI.
Sue Aboulhosen, with Department of Children and Families, says it happens more than you think.
"We see it a lot it's our own kids in our own schools in our own backyards. It's not children from other countries brought here it's happening right here and kids are being recruited right here," Aboulhosen said.
In fact last year Central Florida had 273 reported cases of human trafficking.
There were 43 confirmed cases in Orange County and those are the cases that we know of.
Rosenblatt is a survivor and one of the lucky ones.
Most victims die of suicide, drug overdose or are even murdered.
Rosenblatt's message is for parents, "You have to protect your children because if you don't somebody out there will step in your place and they'll take them from you. They will steal their innocence right out from under your nose."
Katarina has her doctorate, has written a book about her experience, and most importantly shares her story to help others and let people know this does happen and to be aware.
If you know of someone that may need help, you can call the National Human Trafficking Resource Center at 1-888-373-7888.