MEMPHIS (WREG/WTVF/CNN) – Cyntoia Brown is talking about her life before prison.
Brown spent more than a decade behind bars for killing a man she said bought her for sex when she was 16.
“Pretty much everything I did I was trying to be accepted. I was trying to feel like I belonged,” Brown said.
In a room filled with dozens of people at New Direction Christian Church, Brown talked about her story of redemption after being released from prison for killing the man who bought her in 2004.
The act got her life with the possibility of parole after 51 years.
Now at the age of 31, Brown is free and married and is sharing her story in her new book “Free Cyntoia: My Search For Redemption in the American Prison System.”
Pastor Stacy Spencer talked to Brown about her childhood and how that affected the choices she made – choices that led her into the world of prostitution and sex trafficking.
“I was out there and I didn’t even think that I was having sex for money. No, I’m not. I’m just playing my part. I’m his girlfriend,” she said.
Brown says in prison she never once accepted that she would be locked away for the rest of her life.
“We are all capable of second chances, third chances, fourth chances. We’re all capable of change,” she said.
Brown was released earlier this year after former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam granted her clemency.
She says now she will continue to fight for women suffering from abuse and sexual exploitation.
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