Sheri Lopez is a nationally recognized survivor-leader, keynote speaker, author, and educator specializing in grooming with the intent to exploit, human trafficking prevention, victim behavior, and survivor-informed systems change.

Groomed at age 15 and trafficked for seven years, Sheri brings audiences beyond statistics and textbook definitions into an understanding of what happens before exploitation begins.
 

For the first three years of her trafficking, Sheri continued living at home and attending school while the exploitation remained hidden. She didn't have the language to explain what was happening to her—and the people around her didn't have the knowledge to recognize it.
 

Today, that experience drives her work.
 

Sheri doesn't simply explain what grooming is, she walks audiences through how it happened to her.

By sharing the three-month grooming process that preceded her trafficking, Sheri reveals how trust was established, boundaries were gradually crossed, dependency developed, and manipulation progressed—helping audiences recognize where opportunities for earlier intervention may exist.
 

A Perspective Beyond the Textbook

Human trafficking rarely begins the way people imagine.

Before exploitation, there may be attention, friendship, affection, gifts, promises, belonging, opportunity, or simply someone who appears to understand.
 

That is why grooming can be so difficult to recognize.
 

Sheri combines lived experience with years of prevention education, advocacy, professional collaboration, and policy work to give audiences practical knowledge they can apply within their professions, organizations, families, and communities.
 

Why Organizations Invite Sheri

Sheri brings a perspective few speakers can offer: the ability to explain grooming from someone who lived through the process before she understood what was happening to her.
 

Audiences learn to:

• Recognize grooming with the intent to exploit

• Understand how trust and dependency can be deliberately created

• Identify boundary testing and gradual manipulation

• Recognize early behavioral and situational indicators

• Understand why victims may not disclose

• Better understand behaviors that can appear confusing or contradictory

• Recognize how parents, professionals, and other gatekeepers can also be groomed

• Move beyond trafficking awareness toward earlier prevention
  
   

Featured Speaking Topics
 

Recognizing Grooming with the Intent to Exploit - How grooming develops, what it can look like, and where opportunities for earlier recognition may exist.
 

What Happens Before Trafficking  - Moving the conversation upstream to the trust-building, manipulation, and grooming that can precede exploitation.
 

Why Victims Don't Tell - Understanding fear, attachment, dependency, manipulation, shame, confusion, and barriers to disclosure.
 

Grooming the Gatekeepers - How offenders may build credibility and trust with parents, caregivers, professionals, organizations, and communities surrounding a potential victim.
 

Understanding Victim Behavior - A survivor-informed perspective on continued contact, attachment, nondisclosure, returning, and defending an exploiter.
 

From Lived Experience to Prevention - Sheri's personal journey and what it can teach us about awareness, recognition, intervention, and prevention.
 

Additional presentations on online grooming, human trafficking, survivor-informed practice, and policy and systems change are available and can be customized for your audience.

 

National Experience & Professional Leadership

Sheri is the Founder and Executive Director of Pearl at the Mailbox, President of the Arizona Human Trafficking Survivor Coalition, Founder of the National Grooming Prevention Hotline, and author of eight books addressing grooming, exploitation, trafficking, personal safety, and prevention.
 

Her professional experience includes:

• Testifying before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee on human trafficking

• Serving as an expert witness in a human trafficking criminal case

• Educating law enforcement and multidisciplinary professionals

• Working with state and federal lawmakers

• Contributing to survivor-informed legislative and policy initiatives
  
   

Sheri's work has taken her from classrooms and community organizations to professional trainings, courtrooms, legislative discussions, and the halls of Congress.
 

Bring Sheri to Your Organization

Sheri is available nationally for keynotes, conferences, professional trainings, workshops, panels, and policy briefings.

Presentations can be customized for professional, government, educational, faith-based, and community audiences.

Prevention starts with understanding what comes before exploitation.

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