Crip

Amber was 13 when a man took her virginity at a mall and put her on the streets that same night. Her mother abandoned her for dr*gs at nine. Her father did the same. Pregnant at 14. Still on the streets at 21. Now her six-year-old daughter calls her crying, begging, "Mommy, just come home." Amber says she can't leave. She thinks it's already too late. In the video below Amber sits down on Figueroa Street in LA and talks about everything - and nothing she says sounds like what people imagine when they think about this life. She pulls $1,200 to $1,300 a day off the street. Hands half to her boyfriend. Pops ecstasy every day just to keep her body moving through the night because if she stops she has no money, no hotel room, nothing. Two nights before this interview a man jumped into the car she was in, robbed her at gunpoint, forced himself on her, then called her dirty and worthless to her face. She said it stripped whatever dignity she had left. Said she doesn't know why she was back out there the next night. But she was. She's been pistol-whipped. Shot at. R*ped. Kidnapped. All of it. While she was doing all this she put both her younger sisters through school. They're in Sacramento now. Normal jobs. Normal lives. She said that's what she raised them for. Said she didn't want them to suffer like her. She wanted to be a real estate agent. Said she has the mouth for it. Could've been a lawyer. Asked what one thing would have changed everything. A mom and a dad that weren't on dr*gs. Did the game destroy Amber, or did everyone who should have protected her make that decision before she was old enough to understand what was happening?