How I survived being forced into pornography: ‘I died in that hotel room. I was a walking corpse’
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In 2016, Mariah Rief, then 19, thought she was going to a modelling job at a hotel. Once there, she was sex trafficked. She knows of 15 fellow victims who have since died by suicide or drug overdose –...
'For years, I'd hardly talked about it at all' … Mariah Rief.Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian
When people ask Mariah Rief about her experience as a survivor of sex trafficking, they tend to start with the Craigslist ad which led the then 19-year-old to a "modelling shoot" at the Hilton hotel in San Diego. For others, the story starts when Rief enters the lobby and meets Theodore Gyi, the "photographer". Or after they've taken the elevator up to a room, Rief standing at the threshold, Gyi behind her blocking her exit – and just inside the door, the silhouette of a second man waiting.
