Luciana took a steadying breath of the warm Dominican air as the door to the SUV opened. A man she didn’t know beckoned from within the vehicle, and she obediently climbed into the passenger seat. A quick glance revealed another man and a woman sitting in the back seats.

As the door shut behind her, Luciana attempted to mentally prepare herself for what was about to happen. It had happened plenty of times since she’d been sex trafficked out of her home in Colombia. If she could just survive another night, maybe things would change soon.

She clung to a single, thin hope: her cousin. In a stolen moment when her guard wasn’t paying attention, she’d managed to call her cousin, who was a police officer back home, to ask for help. She’d quickly told him about the fake job, the locked apartment and the guards. 

And the beatings.

He promised to help, but nothing had changed since. She tried to play her part as the two men in the SUV began speaking with her, but the fear and exhaustion made it difficult. Her trafficker had set up this meeting, and like so many others, she knew how it would end.

Or so she thought.

After speaking for a few minutes, the man confessed to Luciana: he was an undercover officer. His specialised anti-trafficking department had partnered with Destiny Rescue upon receiving a tip from the U.S. Embassy via Interpol, which was responding to a request from her cousin in Colombia.

They needed Luciana’s help. They knew that she’d been trafficked, but police needed more intel on the traffickers and their operation. So as they rode on in the dark, Luciana told her story as our female agent recorded the conversation and took notes.

“Everything felt normal at first….”

“She told me that if I wanted to come work in the Dominican Republic, there was a job for me,” Luciana began. 

Luciana heard about getting a good job outside of Colombia from a friend, who put her in contact with a woman named Sofia. Sofia said that her company would be happy to arrange for transportation and housing at her new job, but those services would come at a cost. “She explained the supposed ‘debt’ I’d have to work off and made it all sound very legitimate,” Luciana said. “But looking back, it was all just a front — a cover. Everything she told me seemed organised, even reassuring.”

Sofia bought Luciana’s airline tickets and arranged for her hotel stay. “Everything felt normal at first — they even came to pick me up,” said Luciana, who was encouraged to see that a friend from back home had also arrived in the Dominican Republic to take the same job. 

Meeting their new “boss” changed everything.

He confiscated their passports and informed them that they’d incurred a substantial debt. To pay it off, they were forced to be featured as “entertainment” in nightclubs from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. every night. Part of those duties included being sold for sex whenever the trafficker arranged it. In the interim, they were kept locked in a house and fed only one meal a day. 

Stepping back in

Our agent carefully recorded all the information, including the traffickers’ names and areas of operation. It quickly became evident that this was a much bigger case than previously thought. Luciana laid out the details almost stoically, as much a part of the rescue plan as the officers and agents. 

Giving the team directions, she had them drive through the city so that they could identify the traffickers’ other two locations of operation. The information she provided would be instrumental in executing a police raid to rescue every victim and arrest every trafficker.

Then she did something remarkable.

Once she’d conveyed the scope of the exploitation operation to our agents, she went back in.

To leave that night would have blown our cover and compromised the police operation to rescue all the other victims. So after the late-night drive, Luciana voluntarily returned to the nightmare she’d been enduring, pretending that she’d just spent the night with a client.

After that, our teams moved swiftly to set up a raid with police. 

Knowing that Luciana and the other victims were under threat every second that they worked, they built a case and developed a plan with lightning-fast efficiency. The day after meeting Luciana, they confirmed Luciana’s intel, finalised the case, delegated resources, finished the necessary legal documentation and formed a plan of attack. 

The next day, they raided all three locations.

Thanks to Luciana’s intelligence and immense courage in returning to her traffickers for one more night, the raid was an incredible success, resulting in the safe rescue of all eight trafficking victims. The women were relieved beyond words that the nightmare was finally over, but now have a long journey toward recovery. 

Our agents were moved by some of the survivors’ comments during their rescue: “They felt deep shame, fear, and confusion, emotional numbness, and a shattered sense of self,” said one of our agents. “Some of them were saying, ‘I don’t even know who I am anymore.’ ‘I’m scared all the time. Even when I know I’m safe.’” 

Coming home

Luciana and the other survivors have returned home to Colombia, where they are reportedly doing well. Officers arrested the three primary traffickers during the raid, along with Sofia. Further investigation revealed that Sofia, who was also Colombian, started out as a victim of human trafficking before being tragically drawn into the trade. The traffickers were all convicted and are serving two-year sentences for their crimes.

Luciana’s bravery brought down an international trafficking organisation, rescuing herself and seven other women and saving countless more from exploitation in the future. Will you speak up for trafficking victims trapped in exploitation? There are over a million children among those suffering exploitation around the world today. Like Luciana, many are desperate to come home. But they can’t do it alone. 

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