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"It was the biggest child-prostitution sting in FBI history: Last summer, agents across the country rescued more than 100 American teens&amp;amp;#8212;and arrested many of the men who&amp;amp;#8217;d stolen their lives. In a Glamour exclusive, seven of those special agents reveal how they do the everyday work of heroes. Meet The Heroes: They work every day with the goal of saving just onegirl. July 25 was a very good day. From left: Special Agents JenniferTerry, Jonathan Williamson, Samantha Dilland, Nathan Whiteman, andRose Vesci. &amp;amp;#8220;When things get really tough,&amp;amp;#8221; says Agent Whiteman, &amp;amp;#8220;wedance around the office.&amp;amp;#8221; Temperatures had topped 90 degrees in New Orleans the July night that FBI Special Agent Jennifer Terry, 41, headed into the French Quarter. She was searching for a 15-year-old girl gone missing from Kansas City whose photo had popped up on an escort-service website. Working with a male undercover cop, Agent Terry had set up a date with the teen in a hotel room; she could be the first link to taking down a sex-trafficking ring. Only a few hours later, that girl was sitting face-to-face with Agent Terry, refusing to say a word. &amp;amp;#8220;She just wouldn&amp;amp;#8217;t talk,&amp;amp;#8221; says the FBI veteran of six years. &amp;amp;#8220;Finally I told her, &amp;amp;#8217;I know who you are.&amp;amp;#8217; And then she started crying.&amp;amp;#8221; Agent Terry had made a breakthrough. She phoned the girl&amp;amp;#8217;s mom, found her a safe place to stay&amp;amp;#8212;and listened as the girl went on to help identify several men responsible for making teens like her sell their bodies. That hard-won moment would have been a triumph in and of itself, but Agent Terry had already rescued another girl from child prostitution that night, and would head back out into the Louisiana heat to save another, and then another, all while her counterparts from coast to coast were doing the same in choreographed form. The sting was called Operation Cross Country 7 (OCC7), and over three days, as part of it, FBI agents arrested 151 pimps and rescued 106 sex-trafficked children from the streets. It was the latest effort in the bureau&amp;amp;#8217;s 10-year-old Innocence Lost initiative&amp;amp;#8212;and that project&amp;amp;#8217;s most visible victory to date. Yet the heroes who pulled off OCC7 are anything but visible. They are former teachers, engineers, computer technicians, even veterinarians, and in their FBI jobs they almost never speak to the press. Until now. Seven of the special agents who helped coordinate the sting agreed to give Glamour a rare behind-the-scenes glimpse of what it&amp;amp;#8217;s really like to save these children. You&amp;amp;#8217;ll be awed by their work. NEXT: How teens are &amp;amp;#8220;boyfriended&amp;amp;#8221; in &amp;amp;#187; First, the shocking truth: An estimated 100,000 to 300,000 children each year in this country are &amp;amp;#8220;sex-trafficked&amp;amp;#8221;&amp;amp;#8212;that&amp;amp;#8217;s the term federal law uses to describe anyone under 18 who engages in prostitution, on the theory that someone, somewhere, has forced or manipulated them into it. Girls for hire linger at bus stops and NFL games; Backpage and other Internet sites are flooded with ads of underage escorts &amp;amp;#8220;ready to play.&amp;amp;#8221; &amp;amp;#8220;A guy can basically call and order up a girl on his cell phone,&amp;amp;#8221; says Special Agent Jonathan Williamson, 34, who helped plan OCC7 in Chicago. And although a small number of victims are kidnapped by their future pimps, the FBI says that the vast majority are lured in, at the average age of 13, through a practice known as &amp;amp;#8220;boyfriending&amp;amp;#8221;: Traffickers seek out runaways at gas stations or the mall, or troll social-media sites (&amp;amp;#8220;You&amp;amp;#8217;re so pretty, you should be a model&amp;amp;#8221; is a common come-on) and start dating them&amp;amp;#8212;until one day the guy in question says money has run out and persuades his &amp;amp;#8220;girlfriend&amp;amp;#8221; to prostitute either by walking the streets or posting an ad online. Headlines poured in right after the sting. But later, in the final count,the number of girls saved went up to a triumphant 106. OCC7 took agents in 76 cities about six weeks to plan&amp;amp;#8212;with a target date, set by FBI headquarters, of July 25. &amp;amp;#8220;We&amp;amp;#8217;re out there recovering children year-round,&amp;amp;#8221; says Michael Osborn, unit chief of Violent Crimes Against Children at the FBI&amp;amp;#8217;s headquarters in Washington, D.C., who oversaw OCC7. &amp;amp;#8220;But a three-day sweep makes a huge impact.&amp;amp;#8221; The headlines dramatically raise awareness, he adds. &amp;amp;#8220;They put people on alert: &amp;amp;#8217;Watch for this; report something when you see it.&amp;amp;#8217; And most important, they send a message to the girls that they&amp;amp;#8217;re entitled to a better life. Because I&amp;amp;#8217;ll tell you this, most of them think they&amp;amp;#8217;re not.&amp;amp;#8221; When the morning of July 25 finally came, Special Agent Nikkole Robertson, 38, of the FBI&amp;amp;#8217;s Chicago division, was at her command center by eight o&amp;amp;#8217;clock, sending undercover police officers out to follow up on leads. In Philadelphia, Special Agent Rose Vesci, 37, tucked photos of teens into a backpack and grabbed some fruit and protein bars&amp;amp;#8212;there would be no time for meals&amp;amp;#8212;before hopping into a truck with a local cop. &amp;amp;#8220;We drove around town. Anybody we came across, we showed them the photos: &amp;amp;#8217;Hey, have you seen this girl?&amp;amp;#8217; &amp;amp;#8221; she says. And in New Orleans, Agent Terry zeroed in on her Internet sting. For 18, sometimes 22, hours per shift, they never stopped moving, except to interview the girls they recovered. But coaxing out information about the traffickers wasn&amp;amp;#8217;t easy&amp;amp;#8212;in fact, it rarely is, say the agents. It&amp;amp;#8217;s typical for girls to form what experts call a &amp;amp;#8220;trauma bond&amp;amp;#8221; with their pimp, and to not give him up because they believe they&amp;amp;#8217;re in love or, at the very least, that he&amp;amp;#8217;s their ticket to survival. &amp;amp;#8220;The stories of the violence and manipulation always blow my mind,&amp;amp;#8221; says Special Agent Samantha Dilland, 33, who coordinated OCC7 in Sacramento, California. &amp;amp;#8220;When I sit down with these girls, I can&amp;amp;#8217;t help thinking, At 14 my friends and I were wondering what to order at Steak &amp;amp;#8217;n Shake.&amp;amp;#8221; Getting sex-trafficked girls to open up is definitely an art. &amp;amp;#8220;They&amp;amp;#8217;re not like, &amp;amp;#8217;Help me,&amp;amp;#8217; &amp;amp;#8221; says Agent Vesci. &amp;amp;#8220;They don&amp;amp;#8217;t identify themselves as victims. And they&amp;amp;#8217;re offended if you do. So if I come in and say, &amp;amp;#8217;Who&amp;amp;#8217;s your pimp?&amp;amp;#8217; that&amp;amp;#8217;s going to end it right there. He might be the worst person in the world, but he&amp;amp;#8217;s the only person she&amp;amp;#8217;s getting food, shelter, and love from. That&amp;amp;#8217;s why I&amp;amp;#8217;ll ask, &amp;amp;#8217;Who&amp;amp;#8217;s taking care of you?&amp;amp;#8217; Then I&amp;amp;#8217;m looking at him the same way she is. You have to develop the trust, take your time, and listen. Often they do want to tell you how they got to where they got.&amp;amp;#8221; Most of OCC7&amp;amp;#8217;s arrests resulted from such conversations, according to Chief Osborn. &amp;amp;#8220;For each pimp, you&amp;amp;#8217;re not only getting justice for those he trafficked,&amp;amp;#8221; says Agent Williamson, &amp;amp;#8220;you&amp;amp;#8217;re keeping other girls from being victimized in the future.&amp;amp;#8221; NEXT: Angel&amp;amp;#8217;s story &amp;amp;#187; The OCC7 sting was short and intense&amp;amp;#8212;but working the job month after month calls for endurance and steely determination. When Agent Terry first interviewed a 15-year-old known as Angel, picked up for prostitution at a New Orleans hotel about three years before OCC7, &amp;amp;#8220;she was full of defiance,&amp;amp;#8221; says the agent. Angel herself agrees she was in no mood to play nice. After growing up with drug-addicted, occasionally homeless parents, she struck out on her own at age 11. She had just purchased a pack of Black &amp;amp; Milds at a gas station when she heard a man in his twenties say, &amp;amp;#8220;I could have bought those for you.&amp;amp;#8221; At first, she recalls, &amp;amp;#8220;Things were good. We were boyfriend-girlfriend until out of the blue one day he said he needed a &amp;amp;#8216;ho wifey,&amp;amp;#8217; which I quickly learned meant [turning] tricks. I had nowhere else to go.&amp;amp;#8221; Soon she could pull in $3,000 a night. Agent Terry kept looking for her&amp;amp;#8212;and a month after that first unsuccessful interview, her squad spotted Angel in an online ad and brought her in again: &amp;amp;#8220;She was even less cooperative,&amp;amp;#8221; says the agent. All in all, she hauled Angel in four times before the teen finally stopped running back to her pimp. That pattern is frustratingly common, the agents say, and the most heart-wrenching part of their job. One reason for the recidivism? A profound lack of resources to help the girls. There are only 226 available shelter beds for sex-trafficked kids in the entire country, according to the latest data available. &amp;amp;#8220;Home is usually where they&amp;amp;#8217;ve fled from and not a good situation to send them back to,&amp;amp;#8221; says Special Agent Ben Kinsey, 35, who coordinated OCC7 in Kansas City, Missouri. &amp;amp;#8220;And foster care or a detention facility aren&amp;amp;#8217;t always good solutions either.&amp;amp;#8221; The result: Many teens go back to their traffickers. &amp;amp;#8220;Nobody wants to see these kids locked up&amp;amp;#8212;nobody,&amp;amp;#8221; says Agent Vesci, &amp;amp;#8220;but how do you keep them safe? Often there are no good answers.&amp;amp;#8221; The last time she was picked up, Angel says, &amp;amp;#8220;I knew I had to get out of that life. I wanted to stop.&amp;amp;#8221; Agent Terry helped place her in one of the few intensive long-term rehab programs that give girls the support they need. &amp;amp;#8220;She was our hardest case,&amp;amp;#8221; confesses Sally Senitz, who runs the program, Wings of Shelter Int&amp;amp;#8217;l, with her husband in Florida. But the turnaround has amazed everyone. Today, at 19, Angel is acing college, studying to be a teacher&amp;amp;#8212;and her pimp, thanks in part to her testimony, is behind bars for 40 years. &amp;amp;#8220;Jennifer Terry was my worst enemy and best friend,&amp;amp;#8221; says Angel. &amp;amp;#8220;I didn&amp;amp;#8217;t want to hear what she was telling me at first, but I eventually realized it was true&amp;amp;#8212;and that she wanted to help me.&amp;amp;#8221; Liz Kimbel, 24, experienced a similar transformation. One of the first girls rescued by Innocence Lost in 2004, at age 15, she initially had no intention of revealing her pimp. Then she ended up testifying and helped put him away for six years. &amp;amp;#8220;Once I was taken out of the situation and given somebody else to talk to,&amp;amp;#8221; she says, &amp;amp;#8220;I was able to ask myself, How did I become this person?&amp;amp;#8221; Since then she&amp;amp;#8217;s found answers&amp;amp;#8212;and just finished training to speak to middle-schoolers about the dangers of sex trafficking. The seven agents who talked to Glamour hope OCC7 gets the word out about those dangers as well. After the three-day marathon, they were bleary-eyed, exhausted, and happy to go home and hug their children, their spouses, their dogs. Then they looked at their newspapers and Twitter feeds and discovered the operation&amp;amp;#8217;s success had made national headlines. &amp;amp;#8220;It&amp;amp;#8217;s great,&amp;amp;#8221; says Agent Dilland. &amp;amp;#8220;This initiative screams: Pay attention&amp;amp;#8212;our children are being prostituted, and not just in big cities but in small towns, in rural areas. It can literally happen anytime and anywhere.&amp;amp;#8221; Chief Osborn hopes the message reaches girls on the street too. &amp;amp;#8220;We want them to hear this,&amp;amp;#8221; he says: &amp;amp;#8220;You are not for sale.&amp;amp;#8221; Liz Brody is Glamour&amp;amp;#8217;s editor-at-large. A $45 donation will buy a &amp;amp;#8220;hope bag&amp;amp;#8221; (filled with clothes, toiletries, and a journal) for a sex-trafficked teen to help her start a new life. The bags are provided by the National Center for Missing &amp;amp; Exploited Children (missingkids.com/glamour), one of the FBI&amp;amp;#8217;s partner organizations in Innocence Lost. Or call the Polaris Project (888-373-7888) to volunteer near you."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.glamour.com/inspired/2013/11/106-lost-girls-saved-glamour-december-2013/2>