02/03/2026
Some stories stay with you because you were never meant to forget them.
She was fifteen.
Girl Scout.
Drill team.
Good grades.
Middle class.
Nothing about Kristen’s life marked her as “at risk.”
Then one day, she received a notification on her Instagram account.
A message about how beautiful she was.
Then more messages…
Then an invitation to a party.
It was all very flattering—and very persistent.
Little did she know those messages were from a gang member at her high school.
Someone she walked the halls with every day.
Little did she know she wasn’t being admired—she was being selected.
Eventually, she went to the party…
and then she went missing.
Sold on the streets and over the internet not far from her home.
Exploited for her body.
Did we mention she was fifteen?
Not long after she disappeared, we became closely involved.
Calls with her distraught mother.
Collaboration with other organizations.
Working alongside law enforcement.
Then the search intensified.
Billboards went up across Houston.
But no one had seen Kristen Galvan.
That was over six years ago.
And this next part… this part is very hard to write.
A few days ago, we received the news no one ever wants to receive. Remains were identified. Kristen had finally been found—along with several other girls—not far from Houston’s “blade,” the notorious red-light district, the same area where we searched for her so many times.
Investigators shared horrific details—details we can’t bring ourselves to share.
Kristen was never just a name to us.
She was a child.
A daughter.
A sister.
A life that mattered.
One small measure of justice is that her traffickers are now behind bars, though not yet for her case. Court documents reveal that her primary trafficker operated a “trap house” with as many as a dozen girls at a time, using extreme violence to enforce quotas. He reportedly withheld food while supplying drugs to keep the girls working.
A real-life horror no one should ever endure.
Kristen was so young.
She had a bright future.
But one unsuspecting screen click opened a door to a literal hell.
And she’s not the only one.
We have been close to many situations like this—families we personally know, people we’ve attended church with. Stories far closer than most would ever imagine. Many from Christian families… even homeschooled.
Some were rescued.
But others were not.
Kristen’s story forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: behind every exploited child is a system sustained by consumers—often anonymous, often unseen, and often convinced that what they are paying for is harmless.
Houston ranks as the number one payer for online s*xual exploitation—number one in the world! Men paying monthly for “personal” interactions with so-called “amateurs,” detached from whether the person on the other side is being coerced, trafficked, or underage.
We are grateful for the authorities who arrested Kristen’s trafficker. But there are still many others trapped in similar situations. There are still men watching behind screens, consuming what was never freely given.
At every youth trafficking prevention meeting we host, we will tell Kristen’s story. We will urge parents to build safe environments for their children. We will warn young people not to awaken love before its time. We will say clearly that running away is not the answer—and that social media is not a safe place for children.
And we will continue to proclaim this truth: Christ is not merely our answer—He is the love we were looking for, the freedom we cannot manufacture, and the life no one can take away.
Please pray for Robyn, Kristen’s mother, and for the many lives Kristen touched.
