After a grueling three-day trip from San Diego to Detroit, Laurin Crosson was struck by the lights, glitter and banners, which festooned the city for Super Bowl XL in 2006. But those fleeting images from the window of her pimp’s Escalade was the only glimpse she’d get of the mega sporting event.
“The whole town was lit up,” Crosson, now 48, told The Huffington Post. “But I never left that hotel room from the day we got there.”
At that point, Crosson had already been trafficked for more than two decades, so she was used to pleasing a revolving door of clients every day. But this week wasn’t like anything she had experienced before.
Her first buyer would show up at 8 a.m. and the last would leave somewhere between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Crosson estimates she went through about 20 to 30 men a day who paid $300 for oral sex and $800 for intercourse.
By the end of the week, Crosson had earned enough dough for her trafficker to drive home in a new Mercedes 450SL.
Crosson was allowed to sit by his side in the two-door convertible, bearing the only parting gift she’d keep from the lucrative event — black and blue marks all over her neck, thighs and breasts. She wouldn’t see a penny of the money she earned.
“I remember looking in the mirror and thinking, ‘I look like I was run over by a truck,'” she said.
Keith Hamilton, Crosson’s attorney in Utah, confirmed to HuffPost that she was convicted of prostitution-related charges in Provo, but he was able to reduce it to a disorderly conduct charge.
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They want law enforcement officials to do a better job of identifying the trafficking red flags and communicating with trafficking victims. Both Bender and Crosson say they were arrested numerous times on prostitution charges and never could seek help from cops because they were made to believe that they were criminals who deserved to be punished.
They want the public to understand that victims aren’t just the duct-taped images of girls they see in the movies. While most victims come from abusive and at-risk backgrounds, that isn’t always the case. Crosson grew up in California with physician parents and Bender was raised in a stable home in middle America. She was accepted to the University of Oregon before she was trafficked at 18 by a man whom she believed loved her.
Rebecca Bender poses with her husband and four children.
To help victims, like them, get a chance to escape, Bender and Crosson have taken matters into their own hands.
Bender now trains FBI directors in the Violent Crimes Against Children unit on issues related to sex trafficking. Her nonprofit, Rebecca Bender Ministries, helps organizations more effectively address the needs of trafficking survivors. She lives in Oregon now with her husband and four kids.
Crosson can’t get a job because of her record and lives in a friend’s basement in Utah, she said. But through her group, RockStarr Ministries, she runs a 24/7 trafficking hotline and was able to rescue 15 victims in the last year.
“My goal was to get one person out,” Crosson said. “If I die today, my job is done.”
To help trafficking survivors worldwide, learn more at the Polaris Project.
