Former sex slave: I was chained in basement and sold

NASHVILLE, TN (WSMV) -Law enforcement and rescuers of sex slaves report that because of a saturation of human trafficking in the deep South, more human traffickers are bringing young girls to Middle Tennessee.

“The trafficker said to them (slaves) on the way here, I’m taking you to Nashville because I can make more money off you there,” said Derri Smith, executive director of End Slavery.

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Sex crimes detectives said that Nashville is part of a four-city human trafficking “loop” that also includes Birmingham, Memphis and Atlanta.

Read also: Police: South Carolina kids found living with in home with roaches, pigs

“It’s almost like a circuit,” said an undercover Metro sex crimes detective.

Investigators said the girls are taken from city to city.

The TBI estimates in Davidson and Coffee counties there have been more than 200 recent cases of minors being sold into slavery.

Photographs obtained by the Channel 4 I-Team from law enforcement show the circumstances where the girls are kept.

Read also: Women narrowly escape death after trespassing on Ind. railroad tracks

One photograph shows a gun in a bathtub where a girl was duct-taped and left for hours.

Another shows the kinds of tickets, often seen in carnivals that are used to sell the girls.

One group of photos shows shrines set up in hotel rooms to Santa Muerte, a kind of cult, where pimps pray for protections from cops and other competition.

“The youngest investigation I’ve worked was on a 12-year-old,” said the undercover detective.

A survivor of a sex trafficking loop agreed to share her story with the Channel 4 I-Team.

“Stephanie,” who is now 18-years-old, is currently in Middle Tennessee, brought here by investigators while the men charged with selling her are being prosecuted on the West Coast.

Read also: Phallic symbol, obscene word painted on St. Louis County home

She is getting counseling and help from the nonprofit End Slavery that interviewed her this year, and both they, and Stephanie, agreed to share that interview with Channel 4.

Stephanie said she was 15 when she was first sold into slavery. She said an older man showed her affection and then drugged her.

“I woke up, and I was being raped by everybody in the room,” she said.

She said the man then threatened her and said she needed to leave town with him or he would come after her family. After traveling with him for a while, she said the man took her to an abandoned house.

“He chained me to a pole in a basement. I was there for a while,” she said.

Stephanie said in that basement, she found she wasn’t the only girl being held captive.

“She was all filthy, she was all scared to talk. One day they came down to feed us, and they caught us talking. Then they put her upstairs. And after that, I never seen her again,” Stephanie said.

But her ordeal in the loop was just getting started.

“He sold me to a gang member. He (the gang member) made me wear heels, made me wear lingerie to the clubs. He made me prostitute myself,” she said.

Finally, she was arrested by police, and revealed her true age.

“I told him my name, I told him my age, I told him when I went missing, I told him how long I was missing,” she said.

After agreeing to testify against her abductors, she is now getting help from End Slavery, including documenting on camera how she survived.

“It was totally her idea. She approached us. She said, ‘Do you know any journalists? I want to tell my story.’ She’s ready to have a voice,” Smith said.

Smith said Stephanie is working on getting her GED and has a job.

Copyright 2014 WSMV (Meredith Corporation). All rights reserved.

WSMV Channel 4

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Video: Man caught breaking into lingerie store

ST. LOUIS (KPLR) – Police are searching for a man in connection with a “smash and grab” robbery of a south St. Louis adult store, Tuesday morning.  It happened at Patricia’s, on the corner of Gravois and Grand.  Surveillance video shows the suspect, a black male roughly in his thirties, throwing a brick through the glass front door, then crawling through himself.

“I thought he wasn’t the brightest tool in the shed,” area manager Susan Woodward said of the video. “I mean to go through the glass and get cut up, and he did get cut up going through.”

Once inside, the man never went near the cash register.   He seemed to know exactly what he was looking for.

“Normally people when they break into stores like ours they go for adult toys, or they go for movies,” Woodward said.  “You know, the cash obviously is locked up and he went directly for the ladies lingerie, underwear and corsets.”

After the rampage through the lingerie section, the man is seen crawling back through the door with an arm full of clothing.

Some items were found in a nearby alley off Arkansas St.  The suspect still hasn’t been identified.

If you recognize him, contact St. Louis police or Crimestoppers.

Surveillance Video

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