At 15 years old, Alika’s parents separated after years of abuse. She was left vulnerable, and responsible for her ten-year-old sister in her home city of Córdoba, Argentina. “We had no food in the house. I remember those long days living on potatoes. Being left to care for my sister alone.”

Struggling to make ends meet, she eventually asked her father for help. Instead of receiving love and support, she was told the only way to survive was to sell her body just as her mother and grandmother had been forced to do. Her father looked at her and said, “You know what you need to do.” That is how, at age 17, Alika entered the world of prostitution.

At the age of 20, she was offered a job and a flight to Ushuaia, in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina. Little did she know the job was really in a brothel. The demand for prostitution from the sailors and fishermen who pass through the city was endless. “The women were their property. They were brought in by the men, owned by the men, and there to serve the men.” The conditions in the brothel were terrible; the surrounding walls were lined with barbed wire. It had small, filthy rooms where the women slept, ate, and were prostituted.

Their documents and passports were confiscated, and they were kept in debt which made escape impossible. They were fined for turning up late, failing to clean the rooms, having a day off, or refusing a client.“ At night, the pimps thumped their fists on the bar and demanded more money,” recalls Alika. “They’d say, ‘Girl, you’re here to make me money. You’re not here to sleep, you’re not here to look beautiful, you’re not a famous star. You’re nothing.’”

As a result of the constant violence, Alika was left with scars, several missing teeth, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The women prostituted in the brothels of Ushuaia dealt with things like sexually transmitted diseases, lesions, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, regular physical violence, and many became addicted to alcohol and drugs in order to withstand the abuse they endured.

In 2012, border police raided the brothel and removed the women after not passing an inspection. Alika was finally rescued from sex trafficking and exploitation. This began a long journey towards healing, restoration, and finding a life of true physical, spiritual, and emotional freedom.

In 2016, Alika courageously stood up against her traffickers in court. Her pimp, his wife, and the manager of the club in Ushuaia were all sentenced to prison. She also sued the state as an accomplice of her exploitation, and became the first victim of trafficking to win a case for sex trafficking against a State.

Today, Alika is a mother of six children, and determined to break the cycle of generations of exploitation in her family. She is also dedicated to freeing other women from the exploitation that she herself endured. She started the Alika Kinan Foundation, a local partner of Atlas Free. Serving over 200 women to date, women are provided with things like emergency housing, legal advice, case management, basic needs, trauma care, and medical care.Our work is filled with survivor leaders, who are not only living in freedom but changing the lives of others in the process. As we've seen through Alika's story and countless others—free people, free people. Every human being was created for freedom. And right now, there are many more women like Alika who are exploited and powerless.