Truckers train to help sex slaves on the roads

Just for a second the black drape covering a window of a parked recreational vehicle flew back, revealing the face of a gaunt young woman inside. She was jerked away and the curtain closed. Witnessing this from his rig at a truckers’ rest area in Virginia, long-hauler Kevin Kimmel thought a while and punched 911 on his cell. “There’s something strange going on,” he said. Kimmel’s watchful eyes and simple phone call rescued a 20-year-old Iowa woman from the clutches of modern-day slave owners who tortured her into having sex with strangers.

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One reason for that: The 20-year-old victim saved when trucker Kimmel called police lived just outside Des Moines, where her three-week-long nightmare began. In late 2014, she accepted a ride from a couple — Aldair Hodza, 36, and Laura Sorensen, 31 — offering to take her to visit relatives on the East Coast. What followed would sicken even the most avid fans of horror films.


According to news accounts of the couple’s conviction last summer, the torture included nailing the victim’s feet to the RV floor, pouring bleach into her wounds, dragging her by a leash down gravel roads and burning heated keys into her skin. To show what he might do if the woman were to escape, Hodza had her watch him slit the throat of a dog brought into the RV.

The slave’s services were advertised on Craigslist postings as the RV moved from state to state. She was malnourished and near death when police responded to Kimmel’s call at the Virginia truck stop. They told the trucker, “She wouldn’t have lasted another 48 hours.”

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