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Since 1998 Free A Child has been working to stop child sex trafficking in Nepal where an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 children are trafficked into sex slavery every year. But child trafficking doesn’t just happen in the developing world. It exists here, in the United States. The State Department estimates that 50,000 children are trafficked into the United States every year from other countries; and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that 10% of the 800,000 missing American children are trafficked. “Even one child is too many,” said Kenlyn Kolleen, president of the board of directors for Boulder-based Free A Child. As a result, Free A Child is expanding its efforts to include domestic trafficking issues. In 2004, Free A Child partnered with Urban Peak, Denver’s only homeless shelter for youth, to launch an eight-city survey. The survey investigated Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Austin, and Chicago. On average, 30 percent of all kids on the street reported having been solicited for sex by an adult in exchange for food, drugs, clothing, or shelter. In Denver that means 270 kids—one third of the 900 youth who are on the streets every year—are selling sex for survival. Recent police raids on numerous “spas” in Denver revealed victims from Korea servicing clients in Denver. Denver has also been identified by victims in places as far as Washington, D.C. as a place where traffickers “distribute” victims to cities along the eastern seaboard. “We are just beginning to discover what is happening in Colorado,” said Kolleen. “Trafficking is today what domestic violence was decades ago. People didn’t understand it, the police didn’t know how to respond to it, and there were no safe houses.”
Free A Child plans to launch Phase I of its US anti-trafficking program in the spring of 2006. The pilot program will begin in Denver, with the hope of rolling it out in other cities at a later date. Phase I will entail procuring a case manager to work with partner agencies, such as Urban Peak and the Empowerment Program, to create a protocol to identify and assist victims of trafficking. At this time, Free A Child would be the only nonprofit organization in Colorado servicing victims of trafficking. “We believe the state task force and the community are looking to us for leadership on this issue, and we are ready to respond,” said Kolleen.
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Free A Child Launches U.S. Program 
In early 2005, the State of Colorado enacted legislation to form an anti-trafficking task force to understand human trafficking in the State of Colorado and to recommend legislation to the state legislature. Free A Child is a member of that task force and serves on the Victim Services subcommittee. The task force includes law enforcement, government officials, victim advocates and coalitions against sexual assault. The mission is to understand trafficking in Colorado, make the appropriate recommendations, and work together efficiently and effectively so that ultimately, Colorado will be a trafficking-free state.