Human trafficking happens everywhere, but it's a crime that is hidden in plain sight.
"I think it would be hard not to find a location in our area that didn't have some form of human trafficking," said Lisa Mercer, a design teacher at the University of North Texas.
For her graduate thesis, Mercer developed an app to help report suspected cases of human trafficking. It's called Operation Compass.
"To me, it's like a way home. You can use a compass to get home," Mercer explained. "I think that community members can be a survivor's compass."
When Mercer first started her project, she admits, she knew very little about human trafficking.
"I thought, 'Oh, I'll just create this app and survivors can push a button and law enforcement can swoop in and save the day,'" Mercer laughed. "I was no naive."
After the story aired Thursday night, NBC 5 Noelle Walker hosted a Facebook Live chat with a human trafficking victim. That Facebook Live chat can be seen below.
Her advisors had a suggestion.
"Before you get started on that amazing app, you may want to consider doing some research," Mercer recalled them saying.
Mercer found out Texas is second only to California in the United States for the number of human trafficking cases.
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"I was so surprised," Mercer said. "I had this idea that is was girls being locked away places, and that's not always the case. It can be quiet often someone we sit next to at a coffee shop, or walk down the street, and we just don't know it."
"What about the house next door?" asked Tonya Stafford, a human trafficking survivor. "I was in the house next door. Looks just like your house, my house, and everybody passed us up."
Stafford said she was trafficked in 1988, when she was just 13-years old.
"You know that little girl was there, and then all of a sudden she's not there. That's what happened to me," Stafford explained. "My mom was a drug addict and she sold me for drug money to a man who was 26 years old, and he kept me. He kept me."
Service agencies that help trafficking survivors and law enforcement said very often people miss the signs of trafficking.
"I think it's extremely hidden," said Dallas Deputy Police Chief Vernon Hale. "In many cases, hidden in plain sight."
"I tell people that I could walk out of this office or walk out of my house and see human trafficking and not be aware of it," explained Bill Bernstein, deputy director of Mosaic Family Services. "That's how challenging it is."
The calls and leads from Operation Compass are sent to Mosaic.
"It has the potential for uncovering cases of human trafficking that may go uncovered forever," Bernstein said of the app.
Stafford now has her own foundation to help survivors just like her. It's called "It's Going to be Ok, Inc."
"Because I would tell myself, it's going to be OK," Stafford explained. "Out of tragedy there is triumph and there was so much purpose in my pain."
North Texas is the test pilot project for Operation Compass. The app is free. It's been downloaded more than 300 times so far and launched more than 600 times. Mercer is hoping to build on it.
"Then we can launch in another city and then another city," she said. "I don't know that I saw the vision of what I'm doing now, but I'm really glad that I'm here."
Since this story first aired Thursday night Mercer said there has been more than a 50-percent increase in Operation Compass downloads.
All those people are now armed with the potential to help a human trafficking victim go in a new direction.
"It's an app-raised age," said Dallas Police Department Deputy Chief Vernon Hale. "If we can get the young people to report crimes on an app that they're not willing to call in, then certainly that will help."
Hale said police are starting to call human trafficking what it is.
"I believe human trafficking to be a form of slavery, whether it be the sex market or the labor market or other forms of human trafficking," Hale said.
Hale said people who may on the surface look like they are committing a crime, could be victims.
"We see prostitutes, many times we look at them as some type of entrepreneur, rather than a victim of some sort," Hale explained. "But we've got to know and continue to fight these battles and save victims and realize they are victims."
Here is how you can help:
Download the app: Operation Compass
Here is a link to Tonya Stafford's foundation: IGTBOK.org
Mosaic Family Services: Click here
