The abolitionist

National | Activists believe John Miller is the man to make the fighting of forced prostitution a State Department priority | Anne Morse

IN VERA CRUZ, MEXICO, A YOUNG woman named Maria is approached by an acquaintance. There are restaurant jobs in the United States, the woman tells her; Maria can earn money, lots of it, and boost her little girl and her parents out of poverty.

It sounds like the all-American dream to 18-year-old Maria. But once in the United States, the dream becomes a nightmare. "I was transported to Florida, and there one of the bosses told me I would be working at a brothel as a prostitute," she recalls. "I told him he was mistaken, and that I was going to be working at a restaurant, not a brothel. He said I owed him a smuggling debt and the sooner I paid it off, the sooner I could leave."

If Maria or her fellow prostitutes refused to service a customer, "the bosses would show us a lesson by raping us brutally. We worked six days a week, 12 hours a day. If anyone became pregnant, we were forced to have abortions, and the cost of the abortion was added to the smuggling debt," Maria says.