She was raped, beaten and starved, and sadly, those aren't even the worst details of her life. Forced into sex trafficking when she was 18, Julia Walsh was exploited in 20 states and 131 cities.
Walsh told NBC 5 she was essentially a modern-day slave. Her traffickers not only severely beat her, they also threatened hurting members of her family if she ever tried to leave.
Her traffickers put a tattoo on her body that included a heart and her trafficker's name.
His name was his brand, a sign Julia was his property. He put it on almost all of the girls he exploited.
"Others have it on their neck, sometimes on their arms," Walsh said.
It wasn't always this easy for Walsh to talk about her past.
She was born in 1992 in Russia. She and her twin brother were put up for adoption in a Russian orphanage.
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When they were one and a half, a well-to-do North Texas family adopted them. The Grapevine couple didn't have any other kids and Julia said they spoiled her with private school and all the gifts she could've wanted.
But she said high school wasn't easy and that she found it hard to connect with people.
By her sophomore year of college, Walsh had dropped out of school and moved in with her boyfriend's family in San Antonio. After they kicked the couple out, Walsh said she started living in her car and slept in the trunk.
"It ended up all, you're so low on money. He had me working at a couple different restaurants but he was so controlling he didn't want me to look at any other guy. I wasn't able to hold a job because of that and so from there it became trafficking," Walsh said.
It was trafficking because she was being severely beaten if she didn't perform. Moreover, her boyfriend, now her first trafficker, kept all the money she made.
To cope with the abuse, Walsh started using drugs.
"I used cocaine a lot and marijuana and just any pills I could get my hands on. I was able to run away, that's where I fell into the hands of my second trafficker," Walsh said.
For the next three years, Walsh was moved from city to city with three more traffickers. She said business was always in hotel rooms, where multiple women were being exploited. The clients ranged from doctors and lawyers to sex offenders and pedophiles. Each woman had a daily quota for sales -- hers was $3,000 a day.
"You can see anywhere from three to 20 people in a day," said Walsh. When asked what happened when she didn't hit her quota she said, "usually that doesn't happen because if it does you know that you're getting beaten up and and it's not gonna be good."
During the four years she worked, Walsh was arrested multiple times.
"Almost every day I kept thinking, 'OK, I'm either going to die today because I'm going to meet a client who's violent, or maybe my traffickers going to have a sudden mood change and he's just going to go off on me, or maybe I'll just kill myself, just because it was such a horrible way to live. I thought it would be nice to get rescued but then that dream just faded," Walsh said.
It faded until 2014 when Walsh and another girl were driven by their trafficker on whats known as an "outcall."
Walsh explained an outcall as, "wherever they're at -- we go to them. And so we did that and it was a sting operation."
Lubbock police arrested David Ronald Mims. He was Walsh's fourth and final trafficker. He was later sentenced to 40 years in prison. Instead of jail, Walsh was sent to a safe house with other women who had also been trafficked.
It was the first time she told her parents what had been going on.
"I'm sure it was really hard for them. They knew something was up but they didn't know, I don't even think they knew trafficking was really," Walsh said.
That's why Walsh is now sharing her story, to teach other people what trafficking is. She's made a career out of counseling other women to help them get back on their feet. She said her goal is to change how people treat victims.
"People don't wake up and say that they want to prostitute themselves or be a prostitute, they just don't wake up and have that thought. I didn't want to do this, nobody wants to do this, but you get to a point where you do what you have to do just to survive," Walsh said.
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