Cyntoia Brown: trafficked, enslaved, jailed for life at 16 – and fighting back

She was still a teenager when she was sold into sexual slavery and sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. Now Cyntoia Brown-Long hopes her new memoir will highlight the flaws in the US justice system that failed her so badly

Cyntoia Brown-Long was just 16 when she was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of a man she claims bought her for sex. The homeless runaway had been in and out of the juvenile justice system, survived multiple rapes and assaults and was forced into sex slavery by her then-boyfriend, a pimp known as Kut Throat, who regularly sold her for drug money.

Yet few details of Brown-Long's troubled childhood were heard by the Tennessee court in 2004, which instead repeatedly described her as a "teen prostitute" and tried her as an adult. Today, 15 years on and just months after her life sentence was commuted by the state governor, Brown-Long has rewritten the narrative behind her incarceration - and her past - in a memoir she began while still in prison.