State and federal officials have teamed up to fight sex trafficking in the rural state of South Dakota, and local communities have initiated new ways to help the victims after the investigations are over.

Ranked 46th for crime and 50th for unemployment, according to the 2010 US Census, South Dakota seems an unlikely hub for sex trafficking, which is why the number of recent trafficking cases in this rural state came as such a surprise to state law enforcement.

“We can no longer say this is rural, safe South Dakota,” Jenise Pischel, program coordinator at Our Home Inc., a non-profit that helps trafficked girls, told the Associated Press. “It’s happening in the quietest of places across our nation, not just here.”

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