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of family. So a mamasan, even though she may be cruel at times, is this mother-type fgure, and if you take the kids out forcefully and you put them in something that looks and feels like an institution and not neces- sarily a home or family, it feels so unfamiliar that they'll go back to the brothel." TALK TO RUDY CHAVEZ AT ANY LENGTH ABOUT LOVE 146 AND HIS VOICE WILL BEGIN TO QUIVER. Chavez is the president of lux- ury watch company Baume & Mercier North America. He met Morris through a mutual friend, and over lunch one afternoon Mor- ris told him the story, told him about the brothel and the pane of glass and the eyes of the girl labeled 146. And then Morris ex- tended an invitation. "Tree months after that lunch, I found myself with Rob for eight days visiting Cambodia, Tailand, and the Philippines," Chavez says. During the trip, Morris and Chavez visited safe homes and spent time with caregivers, the "boots on the ground," as Chavez calls them. Tey also spent time with the children. "When Rob and I were in Cambodia, we toured one of the safe homes Love146 supports," Chavez says. "One little girl followed us around. I guess she was about seven or eight years old. She had been a victim, and I was uncomfort- able because I wondered if I was making her uncomfortable. Te tour lasted about forty minutes, and when it was over, we walked to our van and waved good-bye." Tis is where Chavez's voice begins to catch. "I waved at the little girl and she ran up and jumped in my arms. It was completely unex- pected. She wouldn't let go. I get emotional just thinking about it. Rob and I got in the van and didn't say a word to each other for the next four hours." Immediately after that trip, Chavez became a fnancial supporter of Love146 and later chairman of the organiza- tion's U.S. board of directors. Chavez's reaction didn't surprise Morris. He's seen it many times. He tells the story of a celebrity who after visiting one of the safe houses, looked at him and said, "Wow, these are like real children." "I said, well, that's because they are real children. Tat's the reality we forget. We put these titles on people all the time and we put people in categories: trafcked children, victims, prostitutes—what the heck, man, we're talking about human beings here." And the human beings, the individuals, the children Morris is talking are not just found in the dark corners of the world. A sixteen-year-old girl gets off a bus in Munich or Milan or Manhattan. She's young, she's scared, she has run away from home. She's immediately approached by a man of- fering food and shelter. "You're beautiful," he says. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that?" She walks away, but he follows her. "Are you hungry? Do you need some money?" He goes on to say that he owns a modeling agency or a hotel or a nightclub and she would be perfect for that type of work. She wants to believe it. She takes him at his word. Ten things start to happen, bad things. "Tere is no job," Morris says. "Tey were tricked. Ten they were trafcked and exploited." Tis happens wherever there is vulnerabil- ity. "Tat's the common denominator," he says. "And a vulnerability could be a his- tory of sexual abuse, neglect, or a family background in commercial sex or even low self-esteem. Oftentimes a vulnerability can be created by civil unrest, a confict in war situations, or something like a natural disas- ter." Morris points to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. "Some of the frst people on the scene were not necessarily aid workers," he says. "Tey were trafckers." L O V E 1 4 6 Morris points to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. "Some of the first people on the scene were not necessarily aid workers," he says. "They were trafckers."