The return of slave-branding? Modern-day sex traffickers bringing back vile practice as girls tell how they are forced to get a tattoo of their pimp's name or insignia to mark them out as 'property'.
17-year-old Adriana has a name delicately tattooed in swirly handwriting just below her collar bone, beneath a bauble necklace - It is the name of her owner, a Pimp.
At the age of just 14, she, just like so many of America's approximately 800,000 sex slaves today, was branded by a man named Cream who promised her everything in exchange for 'doing some work'.
Adriana calls this tattoo her 'war wound'. It bears the name of a pimp who made her a sex slave at 14
Beyond the physical abuse and emotional torment, this permanent scar acts as a daily reminder for hundreds of thousands of women of violence, fear and oppression at the hands of tyrannical pimps.
Police forces have come to recognize certain 'marks' that distinguish victims of the $9billion slave trade. Often, a girl will bear a crown with their captor's initials.
She is one of just a few women to have escaped. Hundreds of thousands of
American women - and children - are enslaved and tattooed by pimps
Dollar signs and bags of money are also common. In many cases the women will have a name tattooed across their body in numerous places - above their groin, down their arm and on her neck. Some are even branded with a unique bar code.
Founder of Survivors Ink and a survivor of sex trafficking, Jennifer Kempton, who now helps other women cover up their tattoos, said..'It very much so is a psychological form of bondage. It ties you to those memories and it ties you to those feelings that you felt when you got that and to be able to be free of enslavement and then to make an active choice of, "This is what I want on my body, not this man's name or this gang's symbol, I want my daughter's name, I want a beautiful flower, I want a religious scripture, I want a butterfly to show that I have wings, and I can fly."
Kempton was led into a life of abuse by Salem - the man she believed would protect her after she was raped at the age of 12 by her brother's friend at home in Columbus, Ohio. For the next five years she suffered innumerable attacks and rapes, and was branded several times.
'Property of Salem' was inked above her groin, 'King Munch' - the name of the gang, was tattooed on her neck while other men left their names on her arms and back.
Crowns such as this one across a victim's chest are a common symbol
used to brand women in America's $9billion sex slavery industry
According to Kempton, no girl or woman escapes the streets unmarked. She fled after two failed attempts to hang herself. When the rope broke, she decided it was a sign to try to escape.
Now, her body is embroidered with flowers, scripture and delicate drawings. 'It was so liberating to take his name off of my body and have what I want there. The love I had been seeking my whole life, I got it with that tattoo.'
Dollar signs and money bags are inked onto victims' arms, necks, groins, legs and backs
A crown is usually accompanied by the pimp's initials. It is common for girls to bear multiple names
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