Cyntoia Brown Long: The Sex Trafficking Victim Turned Activist

Cyntoia Brown Long: The Sex Trafficking Victim Turned Activist

On August 6, 2004, a 16-year-old girl named Cyntoia Brown killed 43-year-old Johnny Michael Allen — a man who bought her for sex.

A victim of sex trafficking, Brown said that she was acting in self-defense when she fatally shot Allen, fearing that he would harm her. But despite her heartbreaking story and her young age, the state of Tennessee insisted that she be tried as an adult for her actions. Prosecutors painted the murder of Allen as a "thrill killing," and Brown was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.

But Brown's story was far from over. More than a decade into her sentence, her case suddenly caught the attention of many high-profile celebrities, who publicly rallied for her release from prison. And before long, Brown would be granted clemency, freed to tell her story on her own terms, and empowered to advocate for other vulnerable young women just like her.

See the photos and go inside the harrowing story of Cyntoia Brown's journey from sex trafficking victim to activist —

Cyntoia Brown Long (née Brown; born January 29, 1988) is an American author and speaker who was convicted of murder and robbery at the age of 16. Brown, who was a victim of child sex trafficking at the time of the incident, claimed that Johnny Allen had paid her $150 to have sex with him, and that she feared for her life during their encounter, leading her to shoot him. Prosecutors argued that Brown killed Allen while he was sleeping in order to rob him. Brown was found guilty of robbing and murdering Allen and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

She would have been eligible for parole at the age of 67. After renewed interest in her case in 2013, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam commuted her original sentence to 15 years and Brown was released on August 7, 2019. Her story is detailed in the 2011 documentary Me Facing Life: Cyntoia's Story and in her memoir, Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System. Her fight for freedom from prison is documented in the Netflix special Murder to Mercy: The Cyntoia Brown Story (2020).

On the night of August 6, 2004, 16-year-old Brown met 43-year-old Johnny Michael Allen in the parking lot of a Sonic Drive-In on Murfreesboro Road in Nashville, Tennessee. Allen was a real estate agent. He also was a youth pastor and a Sunday school teacher and had started a homeless ministry at a local Baptist church.

According to a detective on the case, Allen asked her if she was hungry and if she was "up for any action." The detective asserted that Brown answered yes to both questions and accepted Allen's offer to take her to his house. Brown and Allen ordered dinner and Allen drove the pair to his home. At a later hearing, Brown testified that she agreed to have sex with Allen for $150, but claimed that they never actually engaged in sexual intercourse. Allen's friends and family denied that he had tried to solicit Brown for sex, instead claiming that he was trying to help her.

 However, the lead prosecutor in the case, Jeff Burks stipulated that Allen picked Brown up to pay her for sex, stating, “That was a fact from start to finish.”

In court documents, another minor who was a waitress at a local restaurant claimed that she and the other young teens at the restaurant felt uncomfortable whenever they had to serve Allen. The waitress said that he would hit on the teens regularly.

At some point during the encounter, Brown shot Allen in the back of the head using her .40-caliber handgun. She then stole $172 from Allen's wallet and two of his firearms and fled the scene in Allen's truck. Brown left Allen's truck at a Walmart parking lot and flagged down an SUV for a ride home. Police later found Brown and McGlothen at the nearby InTown Suites.

In a letter asking Governor Haslam to deny clemency, the lead detective in the case of Allen's murder wrote that on August 7, Brown had a neighbor drive her to the Walmart where she had left Allen's truck. The detective says that Brown asked the neighbor to drive her back to Allen's house so that she could steal more items but he refused. The neighbor reportedly told the detective that Brown told him that she “shot somebody in the head for fifty thousand dollars and some guns” and that she "shot somebody in the head last night and blew his brains out." The detective further asserted that Brown told the neighbor that the killing was a "fat lick" (robbery) and that she had been "waiting on a lick like that all week." According to the detective, after the neighbor told his roommate about the incident Brown called him on the phone and threatened him, saying “you better stop running your fucking mouth about my business or I’ll get to you too.”

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