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New Mexico officials hope to open state’s first safe house for sex trafficked youth
Though popular portrayals of human trafficking tend to conjure ideas of violent kidnappings and cross-border human smuggling, the majority of sexual exploitation happens much closer to home and likely involves someone close to the victim, experts say. “The images that America has had for several years around human trafficking is girls chained to beds and things like that,” said Shelley Repp, the executive director of New Mexico Dream Center, a Christian non-profit that works with survivors of sex trafficking. She said those images “aren't accurate with the lived experience of the human trafficking victim.”