Robles-Román said, “Mary, I’m embarrassed that I didn’t believe the advocates, because I wasn’t reading about it anywhere. But, when I visited homeless shelters or schools, inevitably one student would stay afterward and say, ‘Don’t look at me—I don’t want you to know who I am—but I was trafficked.’ Why is it a secret how many children are being raped by pedophiles?”

“The endgame,” Robles-Román said, “is getting an injustice out of our justice system.” Referring to the 1896 case that upheld the “separate but equal” doctrine, she continued, “Plessy v. Ferguson—thank God people didn’t just say, ‘Well, the Supreme Court has ruled, let’s move on.’ ”