Woman At Center of Katie Britt’s Sex Trafficking Anecdote Slams Senator For Twisting Her Story

Screenshot via CNN.

Of the many negative responses to Sen. Katie Britt’s (R-AL) State of the Union rebuttal on Thursday, the element of the speech which has come under the most scrutiny is the story she told about a decades’-old sex trafficking case to illustrate the extent of the current border crisis. Now, the woman at the center of that story is speaking up.

In an interview with CNN posted on Sunday, Karla Jacinto, who was the victim in Britt’s story (a fact that was confirmed by Britt’s communications office), stated that the crimes against her occurred from 2004 to 2008, well before President Joe Biden took office. Jacinto also said her time in captivity was not in the United States, nor was it at the hands of Mexican drug cartels — as Britt falsely claimed in her rebuttal.

Jacinto, who now works on behalf of sex trafficking victims as an activist, told CNN: “I hardly ever cooperate with politicians, because it seems to me that they only want an image. They only want a photo — and that to me is not fair.”

She further explained:

I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic: all the governors, all the senators, to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time. People who are really trafficked and abused, as she [Britt] mentioned. And I think she [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude.

Jacinto also clarified that while Britt made it sound as if they had an intimate, one-on-one conversation, that was also not the case:

Jacinto said she met the senator at an event at the southern border with other government officials and anti-human-trafficking activists, instead of one-on-one as Britt stated.

Britt used Jacinto’s harrowing story to attempt to illustrate how lax Biden has been on the border crisis, despite the fact that Jacinto’s experience occurred two decades ago. When confronted about the timing discrepancy by Fox News’ Shannon Bream on Sunday, Britt danced around the question and continued to blame Biden for his policies on the border.