DALLAS — Natalee Cramer has been reading and watching her story through the lens of other people for the past two years.
"I look at those pictures and all of those stories that people have made, and I'm not the same person. It's like looking at a completely different person," she said. "It's me, but it's not me anymore."
It's been more than two years since the then-15-year-old disappeared from a Dallas Mavericks game at the American Airlines Center. She had gone to the game with her dad and never returned to her seat after getting up to go to the bathroom. Eleven days later, she was recovered by a police officer in Oklahoma City from what investigators determined was a sex trafficking ring.
Natalee is 18 now, and she wants to tell her story her way.
"I think it's really important to tell my story because I want to be the voice for the people who don't feel that they can speak for themselves, including people who know people who are going through this," Natalee said. "I want to make a pathway for people to feel comfortable and emotionally safe to talk to people and come forward."
The day she disappeared
On April 8, 2022, Natalee said she and her dad were having a good day.
"I was feeling good and just ready to hang out with him," she said. "We got there, sat down in our seats...first quarter happened, and I just started getting this anxious feeling. This craving for like getting high or getting drunk."
She admits that she struggled with anxiety and coped with marijuana and alcohol. She left her seat, without a cellphone and told her dad she was going to the bathroom.
"I just walk around, and that's when I caught that guy's eye," Natalee said. "I told him, 'I'm just really looking to smoke. Do you smoke?'"
He told her he did smoke, and that he had some weed in his car.
"He didn't tell me there was anyone else there with him," she said. "It was just him. He told me we would walk back to his car that was parked in the parking lot...in the garage...and that's when the second guy came. They told me the weed was just in the car."
Natalee said they put her in the car and she was taken to a house.
"They did give me weed," she said. "But there was more that they had in mind."
She said she was held in North Texas for multiple days before being taken to Oklahoma and handed off to another group of people.
Many have posted comments online in response to news reports of Natalee's story, questioning her choice to leave with the men she met at the game and pointing out that she had run away from home before.
She's read the judgment, and her response is a warning. For parents, police, or anyone who cares for teens who may be struggling.
“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. There’s no room to judge people because they can’t get out. If they could leave, they would."
Natalee said that moment, the one where she realized she was in danger, didn't take long.
"It clicked for me that I was in danger when I was raped by them," she said. "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 she disappeared, her father told a Dallas Police officer who was working the game that she was missing.
Kyle Morris, Natalee's father, was told he had to report her as a runaway to the North Richland Hills Police Department, which is more than 30 miles away from AAC because that's where they lived.
In the eleven days it took to find her, Natalee's parents were referred to a private investigator in Houston who specializes in these types of cases. Within minutes, he was able to find online sex ads featuring photos of Natalee and trace them to Oklahoma City. They shared what they had with the Oklahoma City Police Department, and officers began their search there.
Oklahoma City
When asked about her experience, Natalee said one of the things that still shocks her the most was the response she got when she did try to get help.
"It was a situation where the guy who had raped me...he was drugged up. I thought he was overdosing. I said "Hey, I was just raped by this guy. He was overdosing on drugs. I need help,'. They told me they couldn't help me. They didn't know how to help me," she said.
Natalee's family later sued the companies who own and manage the hotel where she was trafficked. The suit they filed details surveillance images of Natalee in the hallways of the hotel, clearly under the influence with adult men holding assault rifles.
"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.
The day she was recovered was a literal answered prayer.
"I was just praying to God," she said. "I'm tired. I can't do this anymore. I need someone. Please send someone."
She said she was walking outside of an apartment complex when a police officer drove by her. That officer turned around.
"He pulled up next to me and he's like 'Are you Natalee Cramer?' and I was like "Yes".
She told him she'd been raped, and she said what came next felt like a matter of minutes.
Multiple people were arrested, charged and later sentenced in Oklahoma for their involvement in trafficking her there.
"I felt some guilt," Natalee admits. "I know that there are things I could have done to prevent this, but I know not all of the choices that were made were my choices. Part of me felt guilty, but I had to come to the fact that this is my life, and they have ruined my life. I cannot feel sorry for them because they did not feel sorry for me."
The fight for justice in Dallas
While multiple arrests were made in Oklahoma, Brooke and Kyle Morris have been fighting for the men who took Natalee from the basketball game to be held responsible for their roles.
Last year, Dallas Police arrested a man they had been searching for in connection with the case and charged him with sexual assault of a child, accusing him of luring Natalee from the game and assaulting her in Dallas before she was taken to Oklahoma.
Months later, a Dallas County grand jury decided not to prosecute that man and he was released.
"I was extremely upset," Brooke Morris, Natalee's mother, said. "Our attorney had additional evidence that he was trying to present to the district attorney's office in Dallas, and we were outright told in a nutshell "thank you for the additional evidence, but we are not going to be presenting to the grand jury again'."
Morris's attorney provided WFAA with emails and records showing his attempts to provide Natalee's therapy notes and even the opportunity for Natalee to testify to which he was told the case had been closed since the grand jury decided not to prosecute.
"They didn't let me say anything," Natalee said. "They didn't let me heal enough to where I would want to say anything. I don't get a say."
The man the Dallas County grand jury no-billed had been arrested before in Harris County for promoting prostitution of a minor.
For Natalee, her memories are all the evidence she needs.
"I can recall all of the things they did," she said. "All of the things they were wearing and all of the things they said and did to me. All three of them are guilty, and if I could see all three, I would be able to point them out."
Making a difference
As the family continues to fight for justice in Dallas, they are also fighting for other families.
They started an organization called Aisling to provide support and resources for survivors of sex trafficking and sexual assault. The name, selected by Kyle Morris, represents feminine strength and resilience,
"There were all these groups and all these people volunteering to help her, and of course, that's what we wanted, but when the dust settled and she's in a treatment center, it was truly just my husband and I and our therapist," Brooke Morris said. "Had we not had our relationship with God and had we not had a strong relationship with each other and an incredible therapist, we may not have made it and that would have done more damage to her."
Natalee is on Aisling's board of directors. She said the most important thing she is bringing to the table is her voice.
"If they can't speak for them, I'm going to speak for them," she said.
"It's a form of justice for us because we didn't get the justice that she deserves in Dallas, so if we can get that justice for someone else, it just feels the same as if you were getting justice for yourself," Brooke Morris said.
Natalee agrees.
The group has already started training teams that work in child welfare, particularly people who work with children and teens who are going through a hard time.
Running Away
Natalee had run away from home before that day in April 2022. She ran again after it happened from different treatment centers.
Many times, including the time she left the Mavs game, she was labeled a "runaway" which is a lower priority case than an all-hands-on-deck response to a critical missing child case.
"I was running for attention," Natalee 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 said it's important to not judge, label, or write off missing teenagers.
"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," she said.
Even now, looking back, there are questions about her story that she's still trying to answer for herself.
"Even as someone who's been clean and as someone who has not run away in over a year, I still don't know the reason," she said. "I don't know the reason why I did the things I did and why I didn't do the things I didn't do, like why I didn't call...why I didn't stop running."
Natalee Cramer is 18 now. She is in therapy, living on her own and pursuing her GED.
Her life was not, in fact, ruined.
"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," she said. "It's also all because of my family, my boyfriend, and my dog...he saved my life too."
Many headlines have been made about her story, but Natalee's title now is Survivor.
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