36 people, including 29 children, were rescued from horrific captivity during a single raid in collaboration with law enforcement.
After being tipped off to suspicious activity in a particular building, our brave rescue agents posed as utility workers who needed to check something within the structure.
What they discovered was an illegal brothel where children were kept locked away, unable to attend school or even leave the property. While a few of the older children were being sold for sex, most of them were being used as hostages. Kept isolated on a separate floor, the children were used as leverage to force their mothers into sex trafficking. With this information in-hand, we worked with police to set up the raid.
Many of the children rescued in collaboration with police were shockingly young, including a 5 and 6-year-old; ten of them were boys. Tragically, one boy had been beaten so severely during his captivity that he passed away at a hospital days later.
This sobering loss is a reminder of the extreme danger exploitation can impose on children. The rest of the kids and the mothers are safely recovering in shelters, free from exploitation.