Oh, America. The land of the free and the American dream, but what many people don’t know is that America is, in fact, still home to many chains.

We can label America as the land of the free, but we cannot erase its past history of chaining people to slavery, nor can we ignore that we have a new type of modern slavery that is forcing people into sexual slavery. America may be a great country, but it is not immune to the issues that other countries have. I did not always think this way though, as I did not always know that human trafficking was as in issue that plagued America.

It was my junior year of high school when I was assigned a project in my AP English class that forever changed the way that I look at the world. The project was to write a paper on a tragedy in America that is currently going on. Many of the other students quickly chose their topics to write about, such as gun violence and unemployment, while I, on the other hand, was getting a severe case of writer's block. I was struggling to find an issue that no one else had chosen and one that I was passionate about.

Then, one night, I was at a sleepover with a friend. While sitting in her room, I saw a book entitled The Modern Slavery of America. I was intrigued and shocked as I read the back of the book and entered the world of starting to understand such a complex topic. I had no idea that human trafficking occurred in America and was, in fact, a "modern slavery." Often, in the news, when and if you hear about sex slavery, it is taking place in third world countries, but never our great America — the supposed land of the free.

After my friend had fallen asleep, I lay in bed restless. In the midst of my unsuccessful fight with my insomnia, picked up the book I had seen earlier. In the light of my phone, I stayed up for hours reading the book.

Once I had finished it, I couldn’t begin to comprehend the information that I had just digested. There was a whole segment of America that I was unaware of, one that was filled with terror and pain. This was not the America that I had grown up proud to live in. I was confused as to why this was never something that was discussed as in issue in America and, thus, I had a topic for my paper.

I wrote the paper passionately and quickly, as I could barely wait to share with my classmates what I had learned. Then, the time came to turn it in and I, without doubt, felt I had done well on it.

I got it back a week later, and, to my surprise, got a 68 percent. I was baffled, as I was used to acquiring As on papers and felt so strongly that I had done well. I looked at my teacher’s comments on it, and besides some small grammatical errors, there wasn’t much, so, one day, I went after school to ask her about it.

My teacher told me that I had received the grade I did because I did not follow the prompt, as human trafficking was not an issue in America and that I was lucky she gave me any points on it.

I was shocked. Not a real issue in America? She said the statistics and evidence I showed her meant nothing. That proved to me that my paper was important because it was people like her who’s ignorance of the issue can become the reason it's forgotten about.

I could only think of these poor victims' faces, many of them being women and children, who were just faces in a sea of chains. From that day forward, I was determined to help people know that human trafficking is, in fact, an issue that happens in America.

I told everyone I knew what had happened with my paper and my teacher, and I informed them about the issue. Just because human trafficking doesn’t happen often in the upper class doesn’t mean that it is a nonexistent issue, as it often happens to people in the lower class — people who others don’t notice when they go "missing."

I ask everyone to put themselves in a little child’s shoes, taken away from their families and scared as they are forced to have intimate relations with random men, just to live. It is a real issue in America, and something does need to be done about it.