St. Paul, Minnesota (CNN) — As dark falls, Joy Friedman hits a streets — a same ones she used to goblin for business while operative as a prostitute.

“My final pretence was incited behind that storefront,” she said, gesturing to a circuitously building.

Now a survivor of sex trafficking cruises these neighborhoods with a opposite purpose. She’s looking for women and girls who are held adult in this lifestyle so she can offer them giveaway condoms and hygiene products.

She is also delivering a message: There is assistance for them if they wish it.

Friedman works for Breaking Free, a nonprofit that helps women shun prostitution. It’s where she got assistance 13 years ago.

“(Prostitution) has been function forever. And forever, women have usually been a victims of it,” pronounced Vednita Carter, a organization’s founder. “They merit better.”

Since 1996, Carter says she has helped some-more than 6,000 women get a support they need. In a process, she’s built an army of survivors who have assimilated her electioneer to finish sex trafficking.

Lured into ‘the life’

Carter privately knows about this world. At 18, she was anticipating to make income for college when she responded to an announcement for “dancers.” At first, she danced entirely clothed, though her bosses and then-boyfriend shortly pressured her into stripping and, eventually, prostitution.

It was some-more than a year before Carter called a crony who helped her get behind on her feet. Later, she satisfied how propitious she had been.

“The infancy of women don’t have anyone to call. There is nowhere for them to turn,” pronounced Carter, now 60. “That’s because we do this work.”

CNN Heroes: A Tour of a Sex Underworld

For many of a women Carter helps, “the life” is all they’ve known. Studies uncover that a normal age of entrance into child harlotry is 12 to 14, and many of a girls have been intimately abused or were runaways.

Carter works to teach a open and law coercion to see these women as victims of sex trafficking rather than as criminals.

“Prostitution and sex trafficking unequivocally are a same thing. It’s about shopping and offered a tellurian being,” she said.

Leaving ‘the life’ behind

Carter says 95% of a women she helps onslaught with obsession as good as earthy abuse, mental trauma, financial instability and shame.

“It’s a process. If (they’ve) been in it forever, it’s all they know,” she said. “They consider it’s their destiny.”

Carter’s drop-in core provides food, wardrobe and romantic support to any lady entrance off a street, no strings attached.

For many women, a initial poignant step is to attend in a 14-week category called Sisters of Survival. Graduates are respected in a ceremony, imprinting a start of their new lives.