LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — When there are major events in Las Vegas, Metro will use that time to prevent sex trafficking and locate victims.
But it happens whether there is a special event or not. In fact, Las Vegas lands on a list for its staggering sex trafficking numbers. Many victims, often between the ages of 12 to 16, answer ads for modeling jobs or meet strangers online.
One Las Vegas-based nonprofit was built by a woman who escaped the nightmare and now helps light the way for those still trapped.
Annie Lobert vividly remembers each time she nearly died.
“My pain was so severe… it was so severe,” Lobert said. “I tried to kill myself several times.”
Lobert was sex trafficked when she was just eight years old. It started decades of exploration, manipulation, and isolation. Crimes so vile, it was underground.
Now thanks to the internet and social media, the sex trade has exploded.
“And that’s why trafficking has got, probably a thousand times worse,” Lobert explained.
Las Vegas is one of the handful of hub cities that make it ripe for traffickers to exploit victims.
Here’s why:
- A high influx of tourists increases demand for commercial sex
- The popular disbelief that prostitution is legal
- A large transient population including runaways and unhoused teens
- A 24/7 economy to exploit victims day and night
- An interstate highway and airport make domestic and international trafficking easier
For Rachel, it wasn’t opportunity, but vulnerability, that robbed her of her freedom, identity, and dignity.
“Feeling like I’m trapped inside my trauma and there’s no way out,” Rachel explained.
She was targeted by someone she trusted. After spending most of her adult life as a missionary outside of the U.S., returning home felt foreign.
She fell into the wrong crowd with the wrong people. Her doctrine and worship were replaced with drugs and alcohol, eventually developing a trauma bond with an abuser that led to prison.
“A year out of prison I was thinking if this was it,” Rachel explained. “If this is the life that I’m stuck in, I don’t know that I want it. I was in a place where I thought that maybe death was better.”
Luckily, she heard about Pink Chair, the faith-based program that Annie Lobert created more than two decades ago.
“If I can share my house, my living room, my bathroom, whatever, I need to help someone with a child, with themselves get away from their evil tormentor trafficker,” Lobert explained. “I did it, and I’m still doing it to this day.”
She started outreach in 2004, but year’s later she found Destiny House, the home base for the charity where hundreds of victims are given a second chance.
Less than a dozen women, like Rachel, sleep, eat, and receive extensive therapy there. They also receive life skill classes, trauma healing, and spirituality-led courses all designed to build a new secure life.
Ashley is a Pink Chair graduate who quickly paid it forward, working there and helping answer desperate calls for help.
“It can be someone calling who’s literally leaving their trafficker running on the street as it’s happening,” Ashley explained. “Or it could be someone who is literally crying out for help, for resources. Maybe they’re homeless. It could be someone who’s dealing with their children and their trafficker has, custody over them or their abuser.”
Talking to someone who knows exactly what you’re going through is critical to program. It is survivor-led and survivor-oriented.
For Ashley, it turned her pain into purpose.
“When I was a client, I never thought that I was going to make it this far. And to hear someone say, ‘You’re the reason why I’m here, because you kept talking with me. You kept supporting me. You kept encouraging me,'” Ashley said. “And it just shows that no matter what you’ve been through in life, you can always give back and always, help other people with what you’ve been through.”
Once Annie escaped, she wrote a book called “Fallen,” and hosts a podcast to reach trafficking victims. Additionally, she serves on Metro’s sex trafficking task force. Her work, her passion, never ends.
“I knew that if I help just one person, maybe I could create someone else like me,” she added. “Because when I die, I don’t want to die with with just me. I want to leave this to the survivors. This is their. This is their house. This is their organization. And I want to keep it that way.”
