Staff report

Theresa Flores, a motivational speaker, best-selling author and popular TEDx Talker, will talk about her time as a human trafficking victim and how she survived, at a presentation at 5:30-7 p.m. Thursday in the Bowman Auditorium of Ohio University Southern.
Admission is free.
Flores was trafficked as a teen and survived for two years as a sex slave while living in an upper middle-class Michigan suburb. She was drugged and raped by a classmate. She was forced into sexual slavery because the classmate’s older cousin used photos from the event to blackmail her.
She became a social worker and founded Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution (S.O.AP.), which gives hotels bars of soap with phone numbers so that victims of sex trafficking can call for help.
Flores has been active in getting states to pass legislation that deals with human trafficking. In 2010, Ohio passed a senate bill to make human trafficking a felony, based in large part on her testimony.
In 2015, Michigan passed a bill with a section called the Theresa Flores’ Law, which extended the statute of limitations from six years to 25 years from human trafficking.
Flores has received the first Courage Award from Gov. John Kasich in 2012 and the Ruby Award from the Soroptimist in 2009. In 2013, she was honored for her work with S.O.AP. with 2013 Christian Service Award by the University of Dayton’s Alumni Association.
The event is sponsored by the Lawrence County Health Department.