Natalee Cramer is ready to tell her story more than two years after being kidnapped and held by a gang of sex traffickers. She was abducted in April 2022 when she went to watch a Dallas Mavericks basketball game with her father at age 15.
Trigger warning: sexual abuse, sex trafficking
The teenager from Dallas, Texas, left her seat at the American Airlines Center without her phone and told her father she was going to the bathroom. At that time, she was having a "craving" for weed she consumed to cope with her anxiety.
Highlights
- Natalee Cramer recounted being kidnapped from a Dallas Mavericks game in 2022 and raped at age 15.
- She was lured by a stranger at the Texas basketball game and held by traffickers, who later took her to a hotel in Oklahoma.
- Natalee's parents used a private investigator to find her; the teen's case led to eight arrests.
"I just walk around, and that's when I caught that guy's eye," Natalee, now 18, recalled during an interview with WFAA. "I told him, 'I'm just really looking to smoke. Do you smoke?'"
Image credits: CBS TEXAS
The man replied that he did smoke and offered to give her some marijuana he had in his car that was parked in the garage.
"He didn't tell me there was anyone else there with him," she said. "It was just him. He told me we would walk back to his car that was parked in the parking lot...in the garage...and that's when the second guy came."
Natalee was abducted in a car in April 2022 after speaking with a man at a Dallas Mavericks game in the American Airlines Center
Image credits: CBS TEXAS
"It's not like a guy with candy in the back of his van, and you just get thrown in the back of the van. It looks like a normal conversation until it's not.
"You don't know you're in danger until you're in the middle of it, and you don't know what to do, and you can't get out.
"There's no room to judge people because they can't get out. If they could leave, they would," the teenager added, responding to those who blamed her for what she has endured.
After multiple days, Natalee was taken to Oklahoma, where the abusers left her with another group of criminals who trafficked her at a hotel.
Image credits: CBS TEXAS
She was paralyzed with fear and thought that she would be punished if she tried to escape.
"It clicked for me that I was in danger when I was raped by them. I knew I was in danger by then, but I did not know how to leave because I was scared.
"I could have asked for the phone, but they would have been right there. What was I supposed to do? Even if I had run, where would I go? I didn't know where I was."
"It's not like a guy with candy in the back of his van, and you just get thrown in the back of the van. It looks like a normal conversation until it's not," the teen explained
Though she did not want to take a risk by running away, Natalee still hoped that witnesses at the scene would report the case to the police and rescue her.
When she revealed to workers at the hotel that she had been raped, the teen said the staff told her that there wasn't anything they could do.
"They told me they couldn't help me. They didn't know how to help me.
"I was more surprised to see a family with small children there and they looked me in the eyes and could see that all of these people were older than me and still not say anything.
"The dad of these little children looked at me, and he couldn't tell at the hotel. [The man who trafficked her] had a whole rifle by his side, and the family just walked on like nothing happened."
The men who abducted Natalee raped her and drove her to Oklahoma, where they left her with another group who trafficked her at an extended-stay hotel
Image credits: CBS TEXAS
"I was just praying to God. I'm tired. I can't do this anymore. I need someone. Please send someone."
That someone was a police officer who identified her when she was walking outside of an apartment complex.
On the night Natalee disappeared, her father, Kyle Morris, was told by a Dallas police officer working at the arena that he had to report the case to the North Richland Hills Police Department, which is more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) away from the game because that is where the family lived.
Her parents were reportedly referred to a private investigator in Houston, Texas, who found photos of Natalee in online sex ads and traced them to Oklahoma City.
Image credits: WFAA
They shared the information with the Oklahoma City Police Department, and officers began conducting the search in the area. Natalee was found eleven days after her disappearance.
"He pulled up next to me, and he's like, 'Are you Natalee Cramer?' and I was like, 'Yes.'"
Eight people were arrested that day in Oklahoma, two of whom pleaded guilty to trafficking and child porn charges, according to Dallas Express. All were later sentenced to time in prison.
Additionally, Natalee's family filed a lawsuit against the companies that own and manage the extended-stay hotel where she was trafficked, detailing surveillance camera footage showing the 15-year-old victim in the hallway with the armed men.
Surveillance footage from the arena shows Natalee walking with a man before being kidnapped
Image credits: WFAA
Image credits: WFAA
"On one occasion, a hotel employee saw the 15-year-old victim crying in the lobby while two adult men escorted her to their room and yet did nothing," the family's attorney, Zeke Fortenberry, claimed in a news release, the outlet reported.
"Other times, men patrolled the hotel hallway with an AK-47 style assault rifle."
According to the lawsuit, the hotel rented at least two different rooms to 44-year-old Kenneth Nelson, a registered sex offender.
Eleven days after Natalee's disappearance, eight people were arrested and sentenced to prison
Image credits: FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth
"This is my life, and they have ruined my life. I cannot feel sorry for them because they did not feel sorry for me," Natalee said about the arrests.
Her family continues to fight for the men who kidnapped the teen in Dallas to be charged and jailed.
Last year, the Dallas County grand jury threw out the charges of sexual assault of a child against 33-year-old Emanual Cartagena, the man accused of luring Natalee away from the game.
"I was extremely upset," Natalee's mother, Brooke Morris, expressed.
"Our attorney had additional evidence that he was trying to present to the district attorney's office in Dallas, and we were outright told in a nutshell, 'thank you for the additional evidence, but we are not going to be presenting to the grand jury again.'"
Natalee said her memory is enough evidence to confirm what she experienced.
"I can recall all of the things they did. All of the things they were wearing and all of the things they said and did to me. All three of them are guilty, and if I could see all three, I would be able to point them out."
Natalee and her family started Aisling, a non-profit organization that provides support for survivors of sex trafficking and sexual assault
The family started Aisling, a non-profit organization that provides support and resources for survivors of sex trafficking and sexual assault.
"I want to make a pathway for people to feel comfortable and emotionally safe to talk to people and come forward," Natalee explained. "If they can't speak for them, I'm going to speak for them."
The 18-year-old is working on her mental health in therapy, living on her own, and pursuing her General Educational Development Test (GED).
According to 2022 data from the United Nations, 4.9 million women and girls worldwide are victims of forced commercial sexual exploitation. Estimates suggest that women and girls may constitute up to 80% of persons trafficked globally.
"She was a naive kid. Traffickers took advantage of her," one reader wrote
