Girls Like Us

Rachel Lloyd was only thirteen when she found herself in the sex trade. The second of six children, Lloyd grew up in a working-class family. When her parents separated, she and her siblings moved with their mother to a neighborhood on New York's Long Island. There, one day, a girl approached Lloyd and three friends, offering them candy and money if they would go with her to a nearby house. It seemed innocent enough: they went along and were promised even more candy and money to have their photographs taken. Instead, an adult man emerged from the house and sat the girls down against their will for what seemed like hours—only to walk away as if nothing had happened.