In 2004, when she was 16 years old, Cyntoia Brown shot and killed a man she alleges had picked her up hours earlier in a Nashville parking lot intending to pay for sex.
Despite claiming self-defense, Brown Long, who has since changed her surname to reflect her marriage, was tried as an adult and convicted of murder in the first degree, and eventually sentenced to 51 years in prison.
The year of her trial, she was likely seen as just another lost cause — a mentally ill murderer, a teenage prostitute. Over a decade later, however, thanks to the cultural shifts of #MeToo, changes in Tennessee's legal code and greater awareness of human trafficking, Brown Long is now more widely viewed as a victim of childhood sexual abuse.
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