The Texas teen who was abducted from a Dallas Mavericks game two years ago is sharing her harrowing story of how she was kidnapped, sex-trafficked, and raped as a warning to other teenagers.
Natalee Cramer and her dad, Kyle Morris, went to a Mavericks basketball game at the American Airlines Center in Dallas on April 8, 2022.
‘… I’ll never forgive you, and I wish the worst on you 100%.’
Natalee — who was 15 years old at the time — said she started getting an “anxious feeling” and had “this craving for like getting high or getting drunk.”
She told her dad that she was going to the bathroom and left her cell phone in her seat.
“I just walk around, and that’s when I caught that guy’s eye,” Natalee recalled to WFAA-TV. “I told him, ‘I’m just really looking to smoke. Do you smoke?'”
The man told her that he did smoke and that he had some marijuana in his car. The man walked her to his car, parked in the garage of the arena. A second man appeared, and they put Natalee in the car. She said the men provided her with weed and drove her to a house in North Texas about 20 minutes from the arena.
“It clicked for me that I was in danger when I was raped by them,” Natalee explained. “I knew I was in danger by then, but I did not know how to leave because I was scared. I could have asked for the phone, but they would have been right there. What was I supposed to do? Even if I had run, where would I go? I didn’t know where I was.”
The night Natalee disappeared, her father notified an officer with the Dallas Police Department who was working the game that his daughter had gone missing.
The officer allegedly told Morris that he needed to report her as a runaway to the North Richland Hills Police Department — more than 30 miles from the American Airlines Center — because that’s where they lived.
When Morris contacted the North Richland Hills Police, he said they were unable to help because the incident occurred in Dallas.
Three days after her disappearance, a bulletin for the missing teen was sent out by the Dallas Police Department with assistance from the North Richland Hills Police Department.
Natalee previously had been reported as a runaway multiple times.
“I was running for attention,” she said. “I was running for love. I was running for drugs. I was running from things that I couldn’t control … that I wasn’t able to speak up about.”
She continued, “For me, a lot of it was my mental health. I wasn’t in therapy. I was struggling with self-harm. I was struggling with friends. I was struggling with school. There were a lot of factors for why I ran. It doesn’t have to be family issues. It can be anything.”
Natalee said she was held in North Texas for three days before being transported to Oklahoma and handed off to another group of people.
‘I had braces at the time, and I was punched in the mouth by one of the guys. My whole cheek was just scratched. My braces were like inside my cheek.’
She “was given alcohol and numerous narcotics, including methamphetamines,” and the Texas suspect allegedly sold Natalee to an “unknown adult male who transported her” from Dallas to Oklahoma City, according to the complaint.
The teen was being held captive at the Extended Stay America hotel at the Oklahoma City Airport.
Natalee recalled seeing a family in a hotel hallway while she was under the influence of substances and adult men wielding rifles accompanied her.
“I was more surprised to see a family with small children there, and they looked me in the eyes and could see that all of these people were older than me and still not say anything,” Natalee said. “The dad of these little children looked at me, and he couldn’t tell at the hotel. [The man who trafficked her] had a whole rifle by his side, and the family just walked on like nothing happened.”
As Blaze News previously reported, Natalee’s family sued the companies that own and manage the hotel where she was trafficked. The lawsuit filed in February presented surveillance images of Natalee in the hallways of the hotel with the men. The suit claimed the employees either failed to recognize the signs of human trafficking or turned a blind eye and ignored it.
“The Extended Stay America hotel in Oklahoma City put profits ahead of people by turning a blind eye to the sexual exploitation occurring right before their eyes,” stated Zeke Fortenberry — the attorney representing the family. “This victim’s life will forever be changed. We hope to hold accountable those responsible and create change within these organizations so that this never happens to any other child.”
After going days without police locating their daughter, Natalee’s parents sought help from a private investigator in Houston. The Texas Counter-Trafficking Initiative agency found online sex ads featuring photos of Natalee and traced them to Oklahoma City — roughly 200 miles from where she was kidnapped.
Natalee was starting to lose hope and asked for help from above. “I was just praying to God,” Natalee said.
She said she told God, “‘I’m tired. I can’t do this any more. I need someone. Please send someone.’”
Natalee also has a message for the people who abused her: ‘I would say, “Thank you, because you made me who I am today. You made those things happen in my life that made me stronger, made me be more resilient.”‘
On the same day she prayed to God, an Oklahoma City police officer noticed the teen walking outside an apartment complex. The officer asked her if she was Natalee Cramer.
Natalee was rescued 11 horrific days after her abduction at the Dallas Mavericks game.
“Being found, that was definitely God being like, ‘I’m not going to give up on you; I’m not going to let you die,’” Natalee said.
Eight people were arrested and later sentenced for their role in Natalee’s sex trafficking. In January 2023, U.S. Marshals arrested 33-year-old Emanuel Cartagena — the man who met Natalee at the arena and abducted her. Cartagena was charged with sexual assault of a child.
Natalee and her family also believe the Dallas Police Department could have prevented her from being a victim of sex trafficking.
“I think Dallas [police] did horrible, horrible,” Natalee told KTVT-TV, adding that “my case is a perfect example of cops not doing their job. I was walking around outside when the game ended. When the game ended, everyone was rushing outside. They would have found me. They just didn’t look at all. They would have found me.”
Cramer said there were three men in Dallas involved with sex trafficking her. The Dallas Police Department arrested a suspect in Natalee’s case, but a Dallas County grand jury declined to issue an indictment, no-billing the case.
“My first sex trafficking incident was with the people at the American Airlines Center. That is Dallas’ deal,” Natalee said. “That is their responsibility; that happened in their area. That’s not Oklahoma’s to deal with. I was [trafficked] by Dallas men. Dallas police needs to deal with it, not Oklahoma police.”
Natalee also has a message for the people who abused her: “I would say, ‘Thank you, because you made me who I am today. You made those things happen in my life that made me stronger, made me be more resilient. But … I’ll never forgive you, and I wish the worst on you 100%. I wish the worst on you. But I thank you.'”
Natalee also warned others about sex trafficking.
“It’s not like a guy with candy in the back of his van and you just get thrown in the back of the van,” she said. “It looks like a normal conversation until it’s not. You don’t know you’re in danger until you’re in the middle of it, and you don’t know what to do, and you can’t get out.”
Natalee — who is now 18 — said she is sober and pursuing her GED.
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