Sex traffickers looking for girls in Sudbury, former worker says

Morning North8:37Preventing victimization by the sex trade

Natasha Falle tells the story of how she got into the sex trade at age 15 and managed to escape it a decade later. She's in Sudbury to talk to female students from five different high schools to try and the prevent victimization of young women.

A former sex trade worker is trying to stop young women in Sudbury from being recruited into sex trafficking.

Natasha Falle told a group of high school students Wednesday she went into the sex trade at the age of 15 on the false promise she could use the money to turn her life around.

Falle said what happened to her could absolutely happen in Sudbury.

These guys, when they're looking to recruit girls, they actually will come to Sudbury looking for them so that they can ... get them away from their supports, isolate them, and bring them into the big city where they feel lost and dependent on them.

Falle says young women should be vigilant about who is approaching them about sex work.

It was actually girls who introduced me, which is actually pretty common when we're talking in terms of domestic trafficking, she continued.

It's the females who are doing the luring, often for the pimps, because [the pimps] are trying to spare themselves of having any kind of criminal charges.

Girls between 13 and 16 are at the highest risk of entering the sex industry, Falle noted.

The former teen sex trade worker is now working with Sudbury police to help educate young women about the dangers of getting into sex trafficking.

Falle said she only managed to escape the trade after hitting rock bottom.

"There was an incident with my escort driver, she said.

I was drugged and raped by him and it's something that I just couldn't get past."

Falles story is resonating with other young women, like 15-year-old Collge Notre-Dame student MichaelaThorpe.

Thorpe says she has a friend who went through a similar experience.

"There are so many people who are going through this and it's just mind opening."