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 BOISE, IDAHO – While living at home as a teenager, Theresa L. Flores was trafficked by an organized crime ring unbeknownst to her parents. As she has briefly told her story on The Today Show and MSNBC’s Sex Slave series,
Theresa now reveals the dark secrets about what happened to her for two years while living in an upscale suburban Detroit neighborhood in her new book, The Slave Across the Street: The true story of how an all-American teenager survived the world of human trafficking, released January 11, 2010 on National Human Trafficking Awareness Day.
As a licensed social worker with a master’s in counseling, Theresa’s story moves from a desperate girl trapped in a horrific situation to one of hope and valuable insights from a professional perspective for parents and leaders to ensure that this doesn’t happen to their own children. More importantly, Theresa’s story exposes the fallacy that human trafficking only happens to foreign women and children—it’s happening to our own children more often that we want to admit.
Theresa writes in her book: “Lying in the bathtub, I knew it was time. Time to pour out the past onto paper. As I pondered this thought, I wondered what would happen, not if, but when, I finally opened Pandora’s Box and wrote my story for others to read.”
Theresa’s story takes readers into the dark world of human trafficking, exposing just how horrific of a crime it is and putting a human face and a heartbeat to it. Instead of trafficking being about a crime that’s committed against a child or woman “over there,” Theresa personalizes it and shows the destructive nature behind this heinous injustice against people. And that’s where this gripping true story takes readers, from beyond the nameless, faceless idea of trafficking to the real flesh and blood of a survivor who managed to escape with her life and dignity still intact. Kevin Bales, author of Disposable People and president of Free the Slaves, says of Theresa’s book: “Thank you for the courage you brought to the writing, for the truth you spoke so unflinchingly, and for the hope that is your special gift to others. We hear too little from those who have borne slavery. Yet it is this lived experience, and the lessons that come from it, that is our best guide to ending savery.” Theresa has now dedicated herself to serving as a spokesperson on the issue of human trafficking, particularly from the perspective of a victim as well as how it is just as much of a domestic problem as it is an international one. She regularly speaks all over country, sharing her story and empowering people to stop trafficking in their own back yards. To schedule an interview with Theresa, please contact Jenna Lineberger at (208) 860-2749 or email her at jenna@ampelonpublishing.com
Ampelon Publishing $14.99 Paperback, 192 pages
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