The kidnapping of a Texas teenager during a Dallas Mavericks NBA game shows that nothing is off limits: expert

The heartbreaking experience of Natalee Cramer, a 15-year-old from Texas who was abducted from a Dallas Mavericks game and rescued 10 days later from human traffickers in Oklahoma, is a reminder that “human trafficking can happen to anyone, anywhere,” an expert told Fox. Digital news.

“A victim of human trafficking can look like anyone, and a trafficker can look like anyone – too often people think, ‘It doesn’t happen in my country, it doesn’t happen in my community – it doesn’t happen,’ it doesn’t happen to people here.” – said Stefany Ovalles, a lawyer at the Center for Safety and Change, who has legally represented dozens of victims of sex trafficking. “Relying on this as a blanket statement is too naive in its assessment of what human trafficking looks like.”

Every two minutes around the world, a child is sold into sexual slavery. According to the nonprofit Safe House Project, of the 4.8 million victims of sex trafficking, 300,000 are American children.

According to the U.S. Department of State, sex trafficking generates profits of more than $150 billion for traffickers and facilitators.

Texas teen kidnapped from Dallas Mavericks NBA game shares what lured her away from dad

Natalee Cramer, now 18, was just 15 when she and her father went to a Mavericks game at the American Airlines Center in Dallas April 8, 2022

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Cramer, who is now sober and pursuing her GED, said she was dependent on marijuana and alcohol to deal with anxiety at the time, and when the game started, she began to feel anxious, she told WFAA.

Cramer told her father she was going to the bathroom, but she left her phone where it was and did not return. On the arena floor, Cramer made eye contact with her alleged kidnapper, 33-year-old Emanuel Cartagena.

Cramer said she went with Cartagena to his car, where he said he had marijuana for them to smoke. The second person met them in the parking lot and the three drove home to North Texas.

“He didn’t tell me there was anyone else there with him,” Cramer said. “It was just him. He told me that we would go back to his car, which was parked in the parking lot… in the garage… and then the other guy came. They told me the weed was in the car right now.

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“They gave me weed,” she told WFAA. “But they had more in mind.”

Ovalles told Fox News Digital that the way Cramer fell into the hands of his kidnappers underscores the importance of having difficult conversations with children that could save their lives.

“I learned from several articles that for (Cramer) the point of no return is the moment she was raped, not any other step before that,” Ovalles said. “I wondered if there had been a conversation about this being a potential danger, whether she could have trusted her gut feeling in the moment of, ‘Let me not follow this man into the parking lot,’ or ‘There is another man here now,’ that we had arrived at that parking lot. . That is why it is so necessary to raise awareness that this situation exists and hope that it will lead to more effective prevention.”

Ovalles said Cramer’s case is unusual in some respects – “kidnappings like this are not that common, (though) they do happen.”

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Most victims are forced into sex trafficking by someone they already know, Ovalles said, such as a partner or family member.

“But everything that happened (with Cramer) after (she was kidnapped) is largely consistent with what we see in other human trafficking cases,” Ovalles said, referring to the physical violence she experienced.

The way Cramer became involved in sex trafficking falls into the category of “guerrilla pimping”: when a trafficker suddenly brutally forces a victim into sex work.

Ovalles said it is more common for a romantic partner to gradually facilitate sex work for the victim, a method called “lover pimping.”

“It starts with an older guy pretending to be in a relationship with you, but at some point he changes his mind and says, ‘I have a debt I need to pay off,’ or ‘I could really use your help, and you.’ You’re doing this for me because you love me,” Ovalles explained. “That’s how they ended up in this situation – ultimately they stayed there because of compulsion.”

Texas girl smuggled out of Dallas Mavericks game deemed ‘fugitive’ before nude photos emerge

Cramer was rescued after her family hired a private investigator in Houston who specialized in abduction cases. Within minutes, he was able to find photos of Cramer posted in an online sex ad and trace her location to Oklahoma City.

While it may seem brazen to post photos of a kidnapped girl online, Ovalles said it is not uncommon and that “there are a significant number of networks where Johns can view online advertisements for children in a safe place.”

The U.S. Senate and House passed the FOSTA and SESTA Acts in 2018, which clarified existing sex trafficking laws and shut down sites such as Backpage and the personals section of Craigslist that were used to advertise sex services and were widely exploited by human traffickers.

Nowadays, such ads and photos are relegated to the corners of the dark web – but they are still available to those who look hard enough.

“They will find a way. They’ll say, ‘This website is down? We’ll just calibrate and go somewhere else,’” Ovalles said. “Traders are very, very smart – there’s a reason it’s a multi-billion dollar industry.”

It’s not just abducted children who appear in the ads – Ovalles says an increasing number of children are being forced to share intimate photos through “sexual coercion.”

“A child can be drawn into a sex trafficking scheme without having to leave home,” she said. “The predator befriends them through social media, catches them, tricks them into sending sexually explicit material, and uses that party to get more sexually explicit material, saying, ‘I’ll reveal it, I’ll send it to all your friends and family'” members “

Eight people – Saniya Alexander, Melissa Wheeler, Chevaun Gibson, Kenneth Nelson, Sarah Hayes, Karen Gonzales, Thalia Gibson and Steven Hill – were arrested after the arrest of Cartagena, the man who allegedly initially led Cramer back to her car before she became a victim of trafficking people. according to WFAA, released by U.S. Marshals in January 2023 and charged with sexual assault of a child. However, a Dallas County grand jury decided there was insufficient evidence to indict him.

Ovalles said she was not surprised the man was not charged – “although we have made progress in the area of ​​human trafficking and obtained more convictions, the conviction rate is so low compared to the number of victims that it is worth dissuading victims from reporting it.” and preventing it.”

Cramer’s parents filed a lawsuit against the Oklahoma City Airport Hotel and other parties, claiming they failed to notice obvious signs that their daughter was being held against her will and was a victim of human trafficking.

But Ovalles said it was unlikely the family would prevail in court.

“I can’t say what the precedent for the Oklahoma case is, but it would be really difficult to hold the hotel liable when the trafficker himself isn’t even prosecuted for human trafficking,” she said. “It is difficult to hold the hotel responsible. It would have to be shown that they were aware that something like this was happening and that she was a minor. There would have to be a lot of precedents.”

Original article source: The kidnapping of a Texas teenager during a Dallas Mavericks NBA game shows that nothing is off limits: expert