Texas teen's abduction at Dallas Mavericks NBA game shows nothing is off limits: expert
The heart-wrenching ordeal of Natalee Cramer, a Texas 15-year-old abducted from a Dallas Mavericks game and rescued from sex traffickers in Oklahoma 10 days later, is a reminder that "trafficking can happen to anyone anywhere," an expert told Fox News Digital.
"A trafficking victim can look like anyone, and a trafficker can look like anyone – people too often think 'It doesn't happen to me, it doesn't happen in my country, it doesn't happen to my community – it doesn't happen to people here,'" said Stefany Ovalles, an attorney with the Center for Safety and Change who has legally represented dozens of sex trafficking victims. "To rely on that as a blanket statement is being too naive about what human trafficking looks like."
Every two minutes worldwide, a child is sold into sexual slavery. Of the 4.8 million total victims of sex trafficking, 300,000 are American children, according to the Safe House Project nonprofit.
It is estimated that sex trafficking generates more than $150 billion in profits for traffickers and their facilitators, according to the U.S. Department of State.
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Natalee Cramer, now 18, was just 15 years old when she and her father attended a Mavericks game at American Airlines Center in Dallas on April 8, 2022.
Cramer, who is now sober and pursuing a GED, said she was dependent on marijuana and alcohol to cope with her anxiety at the time, and when the game started, she began to feel anxious, she told WFAA.
Cramer told her father she was going to the bathroom, but she left her phone at her seat and did not return. On the arena's concourse, Cramer made eye contact with her alleged abductor, 33-year-old Emanuel Cartagena.
Cramer said she walked with Cartagena back to his car, where he said he had marijuana for them to smoke. A second person met them in the parking garage, and the three drove to a house in North Texas.
"He didn’t tell me there was anyone else there with him," Cramer said. "It was just him. He told me we would walk back to his car that was parked in the parking lot… in the garage… and that’s when the second guy came. They told me the weed was just in the car.
"They did give me weed," she told WFAA. "But there was more that they had in mind."
Ovalles told Fox News Digital that the way Cramer fell into the hands of her captors underscores the importance of having difficult conversations with your children that could save their lives.
"I learned in a couple of articles that the point of no return for [Cramer] was when she was being raped as opposed to any other sort of step before that," Ovalles said. "It made me sort of wonder if a conversation happened about this being a potential danger, could she have known to trust her gut at the point of 'Let me not follow this man to the parking lot' or 'There is another man here now that we've gotten to this parking lot.' It's why it's so imperative to raise awareness that this is out there with hopes that it leads to more prevention."
In some ways, Ovalles said, Cramer's case is abnormal – "abduction in this way isn't as common, [although] it does exist."
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Most victims are coerced into sex trafficking by someone that they already know, Ovalles said, like a romantic partner or family member.
"But everything that happened [to Cramer] after [she was abducted] is pretty much in line with what we see in other trafficking cases," Ovalles said, referring to the physical violence that she endured.
The way that Cramer was inducted into sex trafficking falls under the umbrella of "guerrilla pimping": when a trafficker suddenly, violently forces a victim into sex work.
Ovalles said it's more common for a romantic partner to gradually ease the victim into sex work, a method called "Lover Boy Pimping."
"It starts off with an older guy pretending to be in a relationship with you and at some point he switches it up and says 'I have this debt I need to pay off,' or 'I could really use your help, and you're doing this for me because you love me,'" Ovalles explained. "That's how they get into this situation – they end up staying there due to coercion."
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Cramer was rescued after her family hired a private investigator in Houston who specializes in abduction cases. Within minutes, he was able to find photos of Cramer posted in an online sex ad and trace her location to Oklahoma City.
Although it may seem brazen for a trafficker to post photos of an abducted girl online, Ovalles said it's not uncommon, and that "there are a significant number of networks where Johns can have a safe space to look at online ads for children."
The U.S. Senate and House passed the FOSTA and SESTA bills in 2018, which clarified existing sex trafficking laws and shut down sites like Backpage and the personals section of Craigslist, which were used to advertise sex work and commonly used by traffickers.
Now, such advertisements and photos are relegated to the corners of the dark web – but still accessible for those who are looking hard enough.
"They'll find a way. They'll say 'This website is shut down? We'll just recalibrate and go elsewhere,'" Ovalles said. "Traffickers are very, very savvy – it's a multibillion-dollar industry for a reason."
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Not just abducted children are featured in these ads – Ovalles said a growing number of children are coerced into sharing intimate photos through "sextortion."
"A child could be thrust into a sex trafficking scheme without ever leaving their home," she said. "A predator befriends them over social media, catfishes them, gets them to send sexually explicit material and uses that batch to get more sexually explicit material by saying 'I'll expose this, I'll send it to all of your friends and family members.'"
Eight people – Saniya Alexander, Melissa Wheeler, Chevaun Gibson, Kenneth Nelson, Sarah Hayes, Karen Gonzales, Thalia Gibson and Steven Hill – were arrested after Cartagena, the man who allegedly initially led Cramer back to his car before she was trafficked, was arrested by U.S. Marshals in January 2023 and charged with sexual assault of a child, according to WFAA. But a Dallas County grand jury decided there was not enough evidence to prosecute him.
Ovalles said she isn't surprised that the man wasn't charged – "while we have made strides in the area of human trafficking and getting more convictions, the conviction rate is so low compared to how many victims there are that it works to dissuade victims from coming forward and preventing this."
Cramer's parents have filed a lawsuit against the Oklahoma City Airport Hotel and other parties, claiming that they failed to acknowledge obvious signs that their daughter was being held against her will and trafficked.
But Ovalles said the family is unlikely to win in court.
"I can't speak to what the case precedent looks like in Oklahoma for this, but it would be really difficult to hold the hotel liable when the trafficker himself isn't even being persecuted for doing the trafficking," she said. "It's difficult to have the hotel assume liability. You'd have to show that they were so aware that this was happening and that she was underage. There would have to be so many precedents."