A Texas girl who was kidnapped from a Dallas Mavericks game in April 2022 has shared the horrors she endured when she was held by sex traffickers for days.
Natalee Cramer, now 18, had attended a basketball game with her father on April 18, 2022, when she got up from her seat without a cell phone and told her father she was going to the bathroom, even though she actually had the urge. from smoking marijuana or drinking. alcohol, which used to cope with anxiety, he told WFAA.
“I was just walking and that’s when I caught that guy’s attention,” he said. “I said, ‘I’m really looking to smoke. Do you smoke?”‘
The man allegedly responded that he smoked and had marijuana in his car.
Cramer was later captured on surveillance footage voluntarily leaving the American Airlines Center with two men. They wouldn’t see her again for 10 days, when they found her in Oklahoma with a gang of sex traffickers.
Natalee Cramer, now 18, has shared the horrors she endured when she was held by sex traffickers for days on end in April 2022.
The teenager explained that she did not feel any danger when she first spoke to the Mavericks fan who offered her marijuana.
“He told me we were going to walk back to his car that was parked in the parking lot… in the garage, and that’s when the second guy came,” Cramer said. “They told me the weed was just in the car.”
But when she got into the vehicle, Cramer said she was taken to a nearby home, where she was raped.
“It’s not like a guy has candy in the back of his truck and they just throw you in the back of the truck,” he said. ‘It seems like a normal conversation until it isn’t.
‘You don’t know you’re in danger until you’re in the middle of it, you don’t know what to do and you can’t get out.
“There’s no place to judge people because they can’t go out.”
Cramer was eventually found that night in the parking lot, drugged, while her father, Kyle Morris, frantically searched for her. he told CBS News.
She was captured on surveillance footage voluntarily leaving a Dallas Mavericks game with two men, who she said told her they had marijuana in their car.
He reported her missing to a Dallas police officer who was working the game that night, but was told he would have to report her as a runaway to the North Richland Hills Police Department, more than 30 miles away, because that was where they lived.
But Cramer and her family say Dallas police should have done more, accusing them of not searching for her using evidence from surveillance photos because they considered her a runaway teenager.
“I think (Dallas police) did a horrible, horrible thing,” he said.
‘I don’t agree that people, whether they know if they are in danger or not, are not simply fugitives. My case is a perfect example of police officers not doing their job.
“She was walking outside when the game ended,” Cramer said, arguing that police should have been able to locate her that night.
‘When the game ended, everyone ran out. They would have found me. They just didn’t look at all,” she said, adding that she stayed in Texas, just 20 minutes from the arena, for three days before she was brought to Oklahoma City.
Cramer was missing for 10 days before she was found with a sex trafficking ring in Oklahoma City.
Her parents had to hire a private investigator in Houston, who was able to find online sex ads with photos of Natalee in a matter of minutes.
Ultimately, Natalee’s parents were referred to a private investigator in Houston, who was able to find online sex ads with photos of Natalee within minutes and trace them to Oklahoma City.
The private investigator shared what he had found with the Oklahoma City Police Department, and officers began searching for the teen, who they later discovered was being held in extended-stay hotels.
A lawsuit the family filed against the companies that own and manage those hotels details surveillance photos of Natalee in the hallways, clearly under the influence of adult men with assault rifles.
“I was surprised to see a family with small children there, they looked me in the eyes and could see that all the people were older than me and they still weren’t saying anything,” Cramer said.
“The father of these little children looked at me and didn’t notice at the hotel.”
He went on to say that the man trafficking her “had a full rifle at his side and the family kept walking as if nothing had happened.”
Cramer was rescued after she managed to get out of a hotel room in Oklahoma City and began walking away.
The day she was finally rescued, Cramer said one of the traffickers punched her in the mouth.
“They scratched my whole cheek. My braces were like inside my cheek,” she said.
Hopeless, Cramer began “just praying to God.”
‘I’m tired. I can’t do this anymore. I need someone. Please send someone,” he remembers praying to God before managing to get out of his hotel room and away from his traffickers.
Later that day, while walking outside an apartment complex, a police officer walked by.
“He stopped next to me and said, ‘Are you Natalee Cramer?’ and I said, ‘Yes,'” she said.
The sex trafficking victim then told the officer she had been raped and was taken to the back of a police vehicle with her shoes on the seat next to her.
Eight people were arrested that day, two of whom pleaded guilty to child trafficking and pornography. according to Dallas Express.
They were all subsequently sentenced to prison terms.
“I felt some guilt,” Cramer admitted. ‘I know there are things I could have done to avoid this, but I know that not all the decisions that were made were my decisions.
‘Part of me felt guilty, but I had to realize that this is my life and my life has been ruined. I can’t feel sorry for them because they didn’t feel sorry for me.’
Cramer admitted that he felt somewhat guilty when his captors were arrested and charged.
Meanwhile, Dallas police finally arrested a man last year in connection with the case and charged him with sexual assault of a child.
Officers accused him of luring Natalee from a Mavericks game and assaulting her in Dallas before she was taken to Oklahoma, but a grand jury declined to return an indictment.
“She was extremely upset,” Cramer’s mother, Brooke Morris, told WFAA.
“Our attorney had additional evidence that he was trying to present to the District Attorney’s Office in Dallas, and they told us in a nutshell, ‘Thank you for the additional evidence, but we’re not going to present it to the grand jury again,'” he said. .
Natalee added that she didn’t even have the opportunity to testify and said her vivid memory of what happened is proof enough.
‘I can remember all the things they did. Everything they were wearing and all the things they said and did to me.
“All three are guilty, and if I could see all three of them, I could point them out.”
She said she would tell her captors that she is no longer the scared girl she once was.
He now says he believes “100 percent” more needs to be done in Texas to investigate and prosecute suspects.
‘My first sex trafficking incident was with the people at the American Airlines Center. That’s the deal with Dallas,’ Cramer argued. ‘It is your responsibility for what happened in your area.
—Oklahoma doesn’t have to deal with that. I was (trafficked) by men from Dallas. “Dallas police have to deal with this, not Oklahoma police.”
But he said he believes his case is “at the end of the line.”
“They don’t care, but that’s why I feel like sharing my story will open people’s eyes that this is real,” she told CBS News.
“Police officers need to address these types of things and I hope my story spreads to people who are survivors and people who just want to support because they care.”
Still, the family has had some success, encouraging a change in the Dallas Police Department’s protocol regarding fugitives and starting an organization called Aisling to provide support and resources to survivors of sex trafficking and sexual assault.
“I’m not afraid,” Cramer said of his traffickers. ‘I’m not afraid of them. I’m not that scared person I was when I was with those people.’
If given the chance to speak directly to his captors, Cramer said, “I would say, ‘Thank you because you made me who I am today.'”
‘You made those things happen in my life that made me stronger, made me more resilient.
“But I will never, ever forgive you and I wish you the worst 100 percent.” I wish you the worst, but I appreciate it.
