Kimberly Ritter could not believe what she was seeing.

Girls wearing almost nothing at all, suggesting all sorts of sexual acts, listed on page after page of Backpage.com's escorts section. When she looked closer at the photos, she noticed something eerie.

She could recognize the rooms.

Ritter is a meeting planner at Nix Conference and Meeting Management of St. Louis. She and her co-workers work with 500 hotels around the world and visit about 50 properties annually. She can identify many hotel chains used in escort ads by their comforters, bathroom sinks, air conditioning units and door locks. Sometimes, she can also identify a specific property.

Meet Kimberly Ritter, sex trafficking sleuth.

Read more of the story

By Lisa Cohen, CNN

Editor's Note: How can individuals help combat modern day slavery? Watch "Taking a Stand, Making a Difference".

Denver, Colorado - Staring down a mountain of bras in her basement, Kimba Langas knew things had gotten out of hand.

The stay-at-home-mom started collecting unwanted bras as a way to help women on the other side of the world. It started small through word of mouth, and then a Facebook page.

But the bras quickly overran her home in suburban Denver, Colorado. They were in her basement, in her garage, in her car. They were in bags, in boxes, in envelopes. Her husband, Jeff, tried to navigate his way around them, but it wasn't easy.

"He was constantly moving boxes out of his way to access his tools," Langas said. "Down in the basement is where he keeps his table saw and other large tools, so besides having to move boxes, he would suffer a scolding from me from getting sawdust all over the bras!"

And the neighbors were beginning to talk, too. "If the weather's nice I usually count and box up bras in my garage," Langas said. "The neighborhood boys who are always around playing in the cul-de-sac try to pretend they're not watching!"

Langas collects unwanted bras for a charity called "Free the Girls" which gives them to young women coming out of sex trafficking in Mozambique - not to wear, but to sell in used clothing markets where bras are a luxury item and command top dollar.

The girls can make three times the average wage, more than enough to support themselves and not be trafficked again.

Sitting in her living room packing boxes of bras with her four-year-old son, Wyatt, she reflects on how quickly the little project took off.

It was the pastor of her church who came up with the idea for "Free the Girls." He was planning on moving to Mozambique for missionary work, and called Langas to see if she would run the project with him. She thought it sounded like fun.

"One of the things that was so appealing to me for "Free the Girls," besides the catchy name, was donating bras," she said. "I had probably five or six bras in the back of my drawer. As women, you know, we buy a bra, don't try it on, get it home, wear it once, it doesn't fit. And it's one of those items where you'd like to donate it when you donate clothes to a charity, but you're not sure. Do we donate bras? What do we do with bras?"

Apparently, that sentiment resonated with women across the U.S.. Shortly after launching the Facebook page, the bras started coming. The response was much bigger than she expected.

"I remember in the beginning how excited I would get to pick up envelopes and small boxes, and wow, if a box had 50 or even 100 bras that was crazy," Langas said. "And all of us of sudden, you know, 800 bras, 1,000 bras, 1,250 bras.

"There was a drive in Arizona and the women collected 8,000 bras. There's a church in Tennessee that collected 3,000 bras. There's a group here in Denver that collected 1,250 bras. It's just one of those things that caught on and spread."

It spread so much that Langas had to rent a storage unit to hold them all. But now she has a big problem: How is she going to move 25,000 bras 10,000 miles (15,000 kilometers)?

A shipping container would cost $6,500; money she says she just doesn't have. When she hears about people traveling to Mozambique, she asks them to take an extra suitcase with them, filled with bras. But her goal is to raise enough money to ship all of them.

In the meantime, she is encouraged by the volunteers helping her and motivated by the young victims she is fighting for, happy to do her small part in the fight to end modern-day slavery.

"Eventually it is going to change," she says. "I know it is. And if it's not in my generation, I hope that my son gets to see major change and I hope, by the time he's out of college or maybe even my age, hopefully sooner, he will be like, "Slavery? What? Oh, I read about it in my textbook."

By Natalie Allen, CNN

Twelve-year-old Dieu wears a bright-green top sprinkled with yellow flowers as she squats in a pile of garbage with her mother.

The two talk and laugh while their hands work quickly, sorting plastic from the discarded food and waste.

A full bag will bring their family just pennies. But this is their life’s work. They live on a dump in Rach Gia, Vietnam, part of the Mekong Delta.

FULL POST

Greensboro, North Carolina (CNN) — The truck-stop hooker is no Julia Roberts, the trucker in the cab with her no Richard Gere, and this truck stop off the highway could not be any farther from Beverly Hills, the staging ground for “Pretty Woman.”

Danielle Mitchell watches from the other end of the parking lot and shakes her head.

“We know from talking to other victims and other agencies that girls are taken to truck stops and they’re actually traded,” she says, sitting in her car, a shiny silver sport utility vehicle.

Mitchell is North Carolina human trafficking manager for World Relief. World Relief is a Christian nonprofit attached to the National Association of Evangelicals and is best known for its efforts to combat global hunger and respond to disasters around the world.

Mitchell is trying to tackle a disaster in her home state. And she is not alone.

Read the story from CNN's Eric Marrapodi at CNN's Belief Blog

For the better part of an hour, 42,000 college students stood in the frigid Atlanta night, patiently waiting for a statue illustrating the fight against human trafficking to be illuminated.

They filled the Georgia International Plaza next to the Georgia Dome stadium and stood in the crisp 40 degree air this week staring up at the 100-foot high hand reaching toward the sky. Just a few minutes after midnight, they lit candles and the lights below the statue came on. The students cheered then started to softly sing. A chant of "FREE-DOM! FREE-DOM!" grew momentum.

The event  was one of the final gatherings during the Passion 2012 conference, an annual meeting of 18 to 25 year olds. The students were encouraged to donate money to causes that battle trafficking.

The statue, covered in items made by slaves like clothes, represents many things said the man responsible for coordinating the outreach efforts with the organizations that will receive portions of the more than $2.6 million raised during the four-day conference.

FULL POST

CNN went undercover with the Mossos d'Esquadra - the human trafficking unit in the Catalonia region of Spain - as it tackled a major investigation into Chinese prostitution in the region.

Now, the unit takes CNN inside another case it has cracked. But this Nigerian prostitution ring had many factors investigators hadn't seen before.

Undercover police are on the frontlines of the fight against human trafficking and the Freedom Project has accompanied several agencies that have given CNN unprecedented access to ongoing investigations. A few months ago, CNN showed how the Mossos d'Esquadra - the human trafficking unit in the Catalonia region of Spain - solved one of Europe's largest forced labor cases.

This time, CNN takes a look at another major investigation into Chinese forced prostitution in the region.

Watch "Undercover Catalonia" on CNN International, November 24, London 0830 / Berlin (CET) 0930 /Abu Dhabi 1230 / Hong Kong 1630; November 25, Abu Dhabi 0930 / Hong Kong 1330; November 26, London 0730 / Berlin (CET)  0830 / Mexico City 2200 / New York 2300.  

By Misty Showalter, CNN

It's the moment the human trafficking unit with Spain’s Mossos d'Esquadra was waiting for: After months of exhaustive preparation and dozens of operations, it finally made the big bust.

This time, investigators broke up a Chinese prostitution crime syndicate ruthless in eliminating its competition - even expanding into an international human trafficking ring. Thirty-nine people were arrested, 17 brothels busted and 30 women freed.

The year-and-a-half-long investigation exposed a calculating group that within just two years wiped out any competitors in the residential brothel business, says Sub-Inspector Xavier Cortes, head of the human trafficking unit of Mossos d'Esquadra, the police agency for the Catalonia region of Spain.

(More: Mossos and unraveling the web of Spain’s sweatshops)

"[The syndicate] began offering a different product set, offering an exotic consumer [choice] of sex and very low prices compared to the rest of the market," Cortes says. "Others had to close and go because, evidently, the client dropped them. The [syndicate’s] prices were much lower and the product was innovative; it was exotic.

“Now that they've cornered the market,” he says, “they also want to recover the consuming market for women from African countries, and are trying to start to diversify the supply within the Chinese-controlled apartments."

The investigation began in June 2010 when detectives started to take a closer look at newspaper ads for Chinese brothels. In recent years, the Chinese population has exploded in Barcelona - the largest city in the Catalonia region where Mossos d'Esquadra operates. Barcelona has become a major trade route from China to the rest of Europe, so the increase in the population wasn't a surprise. But investigators began to notice there were more and more Chinese residential brothels - places of prostitution operated out of apartments - and fewer residential brothels run by any other nationality.

Prostitution is neither legal nor explicitly illegal in Spain. You can willingly prostitute yourself, but you cannot become a licensed prostitute. It's illegal to force someone into prostitution. Proving whether a woman is willingly selling herself, or is being forced into it, makes investigating prostitution very tricky.

(More: Spain’s hot spot for human trafficking)

Brothels are another issue altogether. Investigators say to avoid detection, many brothels try to work around the law by securing licenses to run as bars or restaurants. Women will work inside as waitresses, so that if any sexual activity does take place, they have receipts that show some other service was given.

But investigating Chinese brothels poses even more unique challenges. As Spain’s human trafficking unit knows from breaking up a previous Chinese crime ring involving hundreds of victims of forced labor, the Chinese community is very tight-knit, keeping most of its contacts inside its ranks and rarely communicating with authorities.

"How they network, the manner of hierarchically structuring the organizations, the manner of trafficking the different functions - they're different to those that we know already, of other organizations of the West," Cortes explains.

Detectives started to observe the Chinese brothels, sometimes trying to get inside posing as clients, and then once inside, announcing they are police conducting a routine check.

They would discover what they say is evidence prostitution was taking place: red lights, several mattresses on the floor in one room, condoms and toilet paper by the mattresses. These were no ordinary apartments. Yet the women inside would not admit they were prostitutes.

"Simply from the outside, [you] cannot see anything that catches your eye, just the door of a house,” says one of Cortes’ undercover agents. “Therefore the people who come here have prior knowledge, in other ways, that prostitution is practiced here - in this case Asian."

During the search of one brothel, agents took three women back to the police station. One of the women admitted she'd just come from China the week before. To investigators, this was proof that women were being trafficked from China to be forced directly into prostitution.

After more than 15 months of surveillance, police checks and phone wiretapping, investigators finally gathered enough evidence to make the bust, and on September 26, they moved into 18 suspected brothels at the same time, and another 15 businesses, nightclubs and homes on October 1.

Agents say what they found was not only proof that the sexual exploitation of women was the group's main objective, but also evidence that the organization was using Barcelona as a layover to traffic the women to highly profitable first world countries, such as the United States, Australia and Canada. Police are still investigating exactly where in those countries the women ended up.

"One of the most recurrent pathways that was being used at this time was the transfer of people trafficked from China to Turkey, to Istanbul with a tourist visa," explains Cortes. "Once there, they took the passport back in order to return them to their country of origin so there is no evidence that this person had not returned. They would then cross the border to Greece by land, where they were given new documentation with a new identity. Within Europe, the mobility is much easier. Once they arrived at the final destination, which was Barcelona, they were put into flats where they spent a period of two or three weeks without being able to go out on the street. From here they waited for their final documents with which they crossed the ocean."

The accused traffickers were able to do all this, detectives say, with a high quality counterfeiting document lab. Agents found hundreds of forged passports, holograms and even stamps to simulate visa entries into different countries. Police also discovered credit card forgery equipment, weapons that they suspect were used to threaten the women and even to extort other Chinese businesses in Barcelona, and a wide variety of drugs - more than 2,600 ecstasy pills, 400 marijuana plants, and the means to make a drug called Ketamine.

Of the 39 people arrested, 33 are in jail awaiting trial and six were freed pending further investigation. Mossos d'Esquadra is also issuing international arrest warrants for accused traffickers in China and elsewhere. The 30 women who were freed will be offered visas to stay in Spain if they cooperate with police.

Recently, a series of reports from CNN's Dan Rivers traced slavery in the supply chain. He began in Cambodia, where a woman grieved for her daughter, to a factory in Malaysia where the girl was forced to work for no pay and, ultimately, went to shops in London that sell the products made by slaves.

Luis CdeBaca, the U.S. human trafficking czar - more formally known as the ambassador-at-large for the U.S. Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons - sat down with CNN's Max Foster to talk about what consumers can learn from the reporting and other tips for keeping slavery out of the supply chain. FULL POST

In today's world, it can be tough to determine whether products have or have not been produced through slavery. A specific component of a product – the cotton used to make a T-shirt, for example – may be the result of human trafficking.

Thankfully, there are products in our lives that we know are slavery-free, like the homegrown tomato you had for lunch. (More: What is your slavery footprint?)

CNN iReport is inviting you to participate in a special assignment to identify items that you know are slavery-free. Was the exercise easy or surprisingly difficult? Do you make an effort to shop slavery-free, or is this the first time you've thought about where products come from?

Upload photos of your slavery-free items and share your perspective with CNN. The best stories will be featured here on the Freedom Project blog. You can check out the iReport assignment for additional details.

Want to find out more about slavery in the supply chain? Check out a brief overview or go to Anti-Slavery International's interactive map.

Last week we asked for your questions about 'Trapped by Tradition', the documentary featuring actor Anil Kapoor which explored how in someIndia villages girls are sent into prostitution by their families. Here is a selection of your questions, answered by CNN correspondent Mallika Kapur, who worked on the documentary.

Question: Creating awareness is good but what measures have been put in place to help eradicate this abnormal tradition and give these girls hope for a new beginning? – labelle

Answer: Groups like Plan India and its sister organization, Gram Niyojan Kendra, are working hard to stop this practice. Their goal is to prevent the next generation from falling into the same trap, so they are building schools in the area and encouraging children to attend. They have a team of people who work closely with the men and women in the village. They also spend a lot of time counseling people and explaining the dark side of this tradition. Often the people involved don’t realize what they are doing is wrong because it’s been this way for generations, so nobody questions it. One lady, Ranu, who works with Gram Niyojan Kendra, has been living in the village for 10 years. She runs a residential school/shelter and looks after the babies of prostitutes while they are at work. She does this so that the babies are brought up in a safe environment and don’t end up being forced into the sex trade. So yes, there’s a lot of work being done to change the mindset of the people, and to encourage children to go to school.

Question: What is being done to the criminals who are involved in these activities? – Twaha

Answer: Unfortunately, many times, nothing happens at all. This is because the men who push the girls into prostitution are family members of the girls, so it gets difficult to prove they are traffickers.India does have a law against trafficking – the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act – but many anti-trafficking groups say it isn’t very effective. Also, traffickers can be punished only if someone files a police report first. Because family members are involved in trafficking themselves, who is there to file a police report? That’s one of the main reasons traffickers don’t get tried and punished.

Question: How long has this been going on? What part of India? Is there anything we can do to help? – Concerned

Answer: This has been going on for generations. In our documentary, we focused on the Bedia community which lives in a few villages in Bharatpur district in Rajasthan state, western India. You could contact Plan India which works with 40 villages in this district to find out how you can help.

Question: Who started this tradition/business and what do you think about the government’s duty in this matter? – A. Bhattacharjee

Answer: This has been going on for generations and is a by-product of poverty and tradition. Also, the people here are at the bottom of the caste system. Historically, they had few job opportunities and were exploited by the rich, upper castes. They formed the most vulnerable strata of society and had to resort to sending their own daughters and sisters into the sex trade to earn money.
 
The Indian government has good policies and intentions but anti-trafficking groups will tell you what the government really needs to have is targeted intervention. It needs to have specific programs to help this group of people. For example, if the government decides to build schools, it needs to have a school right there in the middle of the village so that the children don’t have a long commute. It needs to counsel the people to send children to school. It needs to sensitize the community there not to attach a stigma to the children of sex workers. So a targeted, specific intervention for this vulnerable community is essential.

IMPORTANT-It is not trapped by tradition it is TRAPPED BY POVERTY!!!!! - Shree

Answer: Yes, absolutely. Poverty breeds desperation and in this case, extreme poverty meant these people had no alternative but to send the women to work in the sex trade so they could earn money to feed their families. It’s vital to provide the people of these villages with an alternative form of income, so groups like PlanIndia and Gram Niyojan Kendra are providing them with vocational training programs and working to link them up with government-run employment schemes. The challenge is to provide an income that matches the hefty earnings the women get from prostitution. For instance, a sex worker can earn as much as $2,000 a month. While it’s hard to find a job that pays as much, anti-trafficking groups say their focus is convincing the people here to find a job that gives them dignity and a way out of this dark tradition.

 

Editor's note: In some Indian villages, girls are sent into prostitution by their families - a tradition that began as religious obligation but is now continued for money. In "Trapped by Tradition," which airs Saturday and Sunday on CNN International, (viewing times below) "Slumdog Millionaire" star Anil Kapoor shows how Indian charities are trying to stop the tradition. CNN has changed Priya and Meena's names.

By Anil Kapoor,  Special for CNN

Bharatpur District, India - Leaving home at 5 a.m. for a shoot is nothing unusual for me but this trip was definitely very different - a road trip from Delhi to a village close to Bharatpur in Rajasthan to talk with working and former prostitutes.

As a Plan India Patron and Goodwill Ambassador I visited this village two years ago. I was looking forward to this trip because I am an optimist and was keen to see the change that has taken place here.

India has traditionally been a patriarchal society and unfortunately the rate of female infanticides is quiet high. In this village, families rejoice on the birth of a girl child - but for the wrong reasons.

The reason behind celebrating a girl's birth in this area is a dark one. Some members of this community practice a caste-based sex trade - and have done so for generations.

The men knowingly send their own daughters and sisters into the sex trade.

Your questions and answers on sex slavery in India

I was anxious to see what milestones we had reached in trying to stop this tradition - this time visiting with CNN International's Freedom Project initiative to fight modern day slavery.

We received a warm, ceremonial welcome at the village and were greeted by a group of young girls singing. I was struck by the words as they sang: "Give our daughters respect too."

Being a father of two daughters, it got me thinking, if we don't empower our women, how would our families progress?

I had the opportunity to share my thoughts with the women of the community. I sat down with some who had been forced into the sex trade by their families. Some of them were rehabilitated with help from Plan India and Gram Niyojan Kendra, a partner charity working in the same field, while some were still working.

Their stories gradually came out. They told me of their misery, the horrid tales of being sold in their teenage years, of becoming bread winners for their families.

I must confess; the few hours spent with these women were really difficult. At times, I wouldn’t know how to react - console them, cry or get angry with a system as inhumane as this.

I would like to share the stories of two women. Meena was sent to Delhi when she was 12 and worked in a red light area for four years. She earned close to 1000 to 1500 rupees ($13 to $20) a day by entertaining 10-12 clients. While she worked in the brothel, one male member of the family stayed with her to ensure the money went back to the family.

With a sigh, Meena remembered the blissful day when she came back and was rehabilitated with Plan India's help. With a radiant spark in her eyes, she said: "I bought a buffalo with the help of Plan and GNK and now I sell milk and milk products in my village."

Meena has promised herself that her daughter will go to school and not suffer like she did.

Priya was also in the village that day. She's a sex worker in Delhi and sends money home to support her family. Her elder sister, in her late 40s, has left the trade because of her growing age.

It's very difficult to get women Priya's age, - she's in her mid-30s - who are already working as prostitutes, to quit because they get used to the income. That's why Plan India focuses on children, working to prevent them from entering the trade to start with.

Priya's daughter is going to school and wants to be an actress

Priya believes she has no choice. She says she must continue working as she has a large family to support. She has to feed her children and she's supporting her sister-in-law and her children too.

She says that things are changing for the younger girls, thanks to all the money women from her generation have earned for their families.

But she also appears torn at times, sometimes defending the prostitution, sometimes directing anger at her family.

She said: "When I told my elder brother to put his daughter into the trade, he broke all ties with me and moved out.

"I made the marriage of both of my brothers possible and even today I am taking care of my younger brother’s family because he passed away recently. No one has ever acknowledged the value of sacrifices made by me and my sister."

It was time for me to talk to the male members of the community. As always, most of them were initially in a denial mode but started to open up gradually.

They reassured me that in last four years with Plan India and GNK's efforts, a lot of the women have been pulled out of the sex trade and more families are now determined not to push their girls into it.

Also, a lot of the rehabilitated women are ensuring that the girls from their families don’t get thrown into the practice.

It's a small step, but one in the right direction. Changing the mindset of the people in the village is key.

Now that the women themselves are taking a stand against prostitution, I am hopeful, optimistic we can end this tradition.

"Trapped by Tradition" viewing times.
Saturday September 24:
2100 Hong Kong: 2000 London; 2100 CET; 2300 Abu Dhabi
Sunday September 25:
1900 Hong Kong, 1300 CET, 2100 New York/Miami, 2000 Mexico City
Tuesday September 27:
1730 Hong Kong – 1930 CET – 2130 Abu Dhabi

According to estimates by policymakers, activists and scholars the number of modern day slaves ranges from about 10 million to 30 million people.

But how many of those slaves work for you? Now that is the unsettling question being posed by a new online tool and mobile app. It's called Slavery Footprint. It's the latest initiative from the anti-slavery Call + Response campaign in partnership with the U.S. State Department.

It allows consumers to measure to what extent they are complicit in the use of forced labor around the world. FULL POST