The Global Slavery Index estimates that there are approximately 36,000 people living in modern slavery in Sierra Leone.Sierra Leone has one of the highest teen pregnancy rates in the world. An estimated one-third of all pregnancies in Sierra Leone are teenage pregnancies.  Favour was 13 years old when she was sent to live with her aunt. Removed from school, Favour was forced to do domestic chores for her aunt’s family and sell bags of water by the road.

There are an estimated 403,000 people living in modern slavery in the United States (GSI 2018). Sex trafficking exists throughout the country. Traffickers use violence, threats, lies, debt bondage and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. The situations that sex trafficking victims face vary, many victims become romantically involved with someone who then forces them into prostitution. Others are lured with false promises of a job, and some are forced to sell sex by members of their own families. Victims of sex trafficking include both foreign nationals and US citizens, with women making up the majority of those trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. In 2015, the most reported venues/industries for sex trafficking included commercial-front brothels, hotel/motel-based trafficking, online advertisements with unknown locations, residential brothels, and street-based sex trafficking.Melissa was sexually abused from a young age. At the age of 12 she was taken to a warehouse where she was forced to provide sexual services to much older men. Melissa was subjected to extreme physical violence one night when she was set on fire at the age of 13. When authorities tried to return her to her family after the incident, she chose to run away, join a gang and continue a life of prostitution for some time.