ENTRY #8. JUSTICE FOR CYNTOIA BROWN.

#JUSTICE FOR CYNTOIA BROWN

I just recently seen an article about a 15-year-old who was kidnapped, a part of human trafficking and sold to a 43-year-old man. This story has just become viral and the big part of this story isn’t that she was a part of human trafficking the big thing is that she had gotten the courage to finally fight back. she had shot and killed the man who bought her. She was forced into prostitution by a pimp when she was 15 years old and ended up killing a man when she was 16, in self-defense. She was tried as adult for his murder and given a life sentence. Her name is Cyntoia Brown, she’s been in prison for more than 10 years already. She was tried as an adult in 2004. I’m sure just like this case there are many cases where the justice system has failed and instead of trying to help children in the same predicament, they just see the “crime” they committed, and they lock them up and throw away the key. Her story had gone viral when singer, Rihanna, had posted her story to her Instagram. That’s the power of social media. Before this hashtag had made her story go viral there was actually a documentary filmed in 2011 but the spotlight didn’t shine very bright for her case back then. It wasn’t until the hashtag #FreeCyntoiaBrown had gone viral that her story had made it to the eyes of famous celebrities. One well known celebrity, Kim Kardashian-West had seen the story and was so shocked to see such a young girl, who lived through such a horrible life, pay for one mistake for the rest of her life that she had called her attorneys and she’s actually fighting to have her free.

In the state of Tennessee where she was forced into prostitution they didn’t have laws on how to deal with child- prostitutes so when the documentary had come out, it played a big factor in the change of how they deal with these cases. They also mention how juveniles weren’t offered parole with a life sentence but in 2012, the supreme court banned that saying it was unconstitutional. However, she does have a possibility of parole, when she’s 69 years old. Many celebrities have read her story and were inspired to try to help and make some changes in the laws in Tennessee but more than that they are all trying to free Cyntoia. They don’t understand why an underage girl in such circumstances was given such a harsh sentence and I don’t either. A petition has been circulating around asking for a retrial in the case. She deserves some kind of justice.