Como eu sinto a tua falta.

Sinto a falta de meu pai. Sinto saudades da sua risada e dos muitos causos de sua infância e de como ele conheceu a minha mãe, o que ele me disse no dia de meu casamento, como ele olhou para a minha filha recém-nascida e a nossa conversa por telefone 2 dias antes dele partir... Sua ausência trouxe-me um enorme sentimento de devastação por muitos anos. JESUS foi, é e será sempre a razão pela qual eu não me afundei em desespero 9 anos atrás. Nada, mas DEUS - em cada minuto de minha vida - poderia ter me ajudado a sair daquela dor profunda. Ainda sinto demais a falta de papai e a sentirei para sempre. Mas, também carrego comigo suas palavras de encorajamento, então dou um sorriso e prossigo para frente :)

How I miss you.

I miss my dad, I miss his laugh and his many 'causos' of his childhood, and how he meet my mother, what he said to me in my wedding day, how he looked at my baby girl when she was born and our talk by phone 2 days before he died. His absence brought me a feeling of devastation for many long years. Jesus was, is and will continue to be the reason I didn't lost myself in desperation 9 years ago. Nothing but God - in every minute of my life - could helped me to come out from dark pain. I miss him dearly and I'll forever. Also I carry with me his words of encouragement then I smile and move forward :)

Time to open our eyes to child sex trafficking...

Time to open our eyes to child sex trafficking and put a stop to it by Beth Kassab, Local News Columnist - 5:48 p.m. EST, September 15, 2012

The teen was rail-thin. She looked nervous as she paced along the side of the road. She didn't belong on South Orange Blossom Trail.
Katherine Norfleet looked closer and thought she recognized the teen. She pulled over.

It didn't take long for the 19-year-old to break down. She was going on her 24th hour out on the street. Her pimp kicked her out of her hotel room and told her not to come back until she had the $1,000-a-day quota he demanded.

"She said she didn't want to be out there," Norfleet said. "The child was tired ... she was so lethargic."

Norfleet, who runs a mentoring program for victims of sex trafficking, quickly assessed the teen's reality. She was homeless with nowhere to turn, which is how a man coerced her into prostitution in the first place.

Promises of money. Pledges of love. Then the threats. Intimidation. Abuse. Whatever it took until she turned tricks and gave him the money.

At 19, she was too old for the state's foster-care system.

But Norfleet knew whom to call anyway: Sue Aboul-hosn, a missing-child and human-trafficking specialist with the Department of Children and Families.

Aboul-hosn took her information and made a call to Jesse Maley, a former sex worker who last year opened a safe house in Seminole County for prostitutes who want to get out of what many of them refer to as "the life."

Maley picked the teen up and now is working with her.

"All she had was a little 7-Eleven bag," Maley said. "No toothbrush, no clothes, no anything."

And Maley knew whom to call to help with that: Aboul-hosn again.

"She spent an hour on the phone with me helping me iron out her [food-stamp] benefits," Maley said. "That's not her job."

She's right. But Aboul-hosn has a knack for expanding her job description.

Officially, she helps search for the roughly 50 children missing on any given day from the 16 counties she covers for DCF.

Unofficially, she's the go-to resource for social workers, law enforcement and others trying to get a grip on the atrocity of young girls and boys being trafficked for sex in Central Florida.

Trafficking is still a relatively new term for Florida. It wasn't added to DCF's categories of abuse until 2009.

But it's an old problem. The difference now is that the state recognizes that child prostitutes aren't just young entrepreneurs in the seedy underbelly of this state's glossy, happy-ever-after vacation appeal.

More than not, child prostitutes aren't criminals, but victims under the control of men and even some women who force them into the sex trade through violence or mental abuse.

"Years ago, even myself and probably you, too, if I saw a child on the side of the road, I thought that child just chose the wrong side of the tracks," Aboul-hosn said. "I thought choice. I never thought this child is being controlled. Now we're realizing these kids are being abused, and we weren't really doing much about it."

People such as Aboul-hosn, Maley and Norfleet toil anonymously on what largely remains an anonymous problem in Central Florida.

The girl walking the streets last weekend who today is in a safe house is a perfect example. One call leads to another. And another. Until someone can help.

Most of us don't think of sex trafficking as an everyday crisis for children and teens in Central Florida. It's just not part of the public consciousness, as homelessness or drug addiction are.

For many of us, talking about an 8-year-old forced into prostitution — the youngest Aboul-hosn has seen — is just too gruesome and depraved.

We grimace and look away just as we would before the heroine is bludgeoned in a horror film.

Ads for "escorts" on websites advertise 14-year-olds as 28. Aboul-hosn has learned how to comb the ads and match the photos with runaways.

Some kids are recruited in local high schools, with some girls trained by their pimps on how to lure others into their world.

It's a ghastly sight. But it's time we look this problem in the eye.

More law-enforcement agencies are training their officers on what to watch for.

Last week a man was arrested on sex-trafficking charges in Osceola County, the result of an investigation that began earlier this month during a traffic stop on International Drive.

The Orlando police officer who made the stop had just been trained on signs related to sex trafficking. He noticed a 14-year-old in the car and sensed something wasn't right.

It turned out the girl, a runaway from the foster-care system, was high. She was taken to a hospital and later revealed to investigators that the man she was with took her from Cocoa and was advertising her online as an escort.

Aboul-hosn got that call, too.

"My phone just keeps going," she said.

bkassab@tribune.com or 407-420-5448