Chicago area nonprofit seeks to help victims of sexual abuse and exploitation reclaim their lives

CHICAGO (CBS) -- Reclaiming their lives. That's the message from one west suburban organization encouraging young girls.

Reclaim 13 helps teenage girls and young women who have been sexually exploited.

Tomitra Fluker, a Reclaim 13 survivor advocate who was trafficked by a close family member, wears her trauma proudly.

"At the age of 11, from 11 until 13, I was trafficked," she said. "I'm not ashamed of it. Where I was, I was definitely ashamed of it, and it kept me in bondage for a long time, but I'm proud now because I'm able to look into the faces of some of the girls who look just like me, who was quiet like I was, who felt like they deserved it."

Fluker said someone very close put her in a horrible position.

"My mother was my trafficker, and reason being is because she was a heavy substance abuser, and she was addicted to it for a very long time," she said.

Fluker got out of the situation after her grandmother moved her to another city.

Now she works in a safe house for younger girls. Reclaim 13 is a Christian-based, nonprofit organization in Lombard that helps to rescue and rehabilitate survivors of sexual exploitation.

"There are kids out there who don't think that anybody cares about them. There are kids out there who are going through unimaginable trauma, being hurt by people," said Reclaim 13 founder and CEO Cassandra Ma.

Reclaim 13 said it's the only safe house in Illinois for children between the ages of 10 and 17 who have been sexually exploited. It's been around since 2012. Since then, the group said they've helped hundreds of girls.

"Our residential programs, as I said, serve trafficked children between the ages of 10 and 17. And then another program serves them 18 to 25, but our goal is to actually create a campus where we can help them take even that next developmental step into their adulthood," Ma said.

Ma said their statistics show the average age of children who are inducted into trafficking are 13 years old.

"That's why we adopted the name Reclaim 13, to reclaim these children's lives," Ma said.