Instagram influencer Kat Torres sentenced to prison for human trafficking and slavery

After two young Brazilian women were reported missing in September 2022, their families and the FBI launched a U.S.-wide search to find them. All they knew was that they were living with Kat Torres, a social media influencer who posts healthy lifestyle content.

Torres was sentenced to eight years in prison last month for human trafficking and slavery charges against one of the women.

According to information obtained by the BBC, a criminal complaint has been filed against Torres regarding the second woman.

So how did this former model, who attended parties with Leonardo DiCaprio and appeared on the cover of international magazines, manage to deceive her followers and lead them into sexual abuse?

“It represented a kind of hope for me.”

Ana, who describes the moment she came across Kat Torres’ Instagram page in 2017, is not one of the two missing women, but she says she was also subjected to Torres’ pressures and played a key role in the search operation for the women.

Speaking to the BBC, Ana shared that she was drawn to Torres’ story, which stretched from the poor slums of Brazil to international catwalks and parties with Hollywood celebrities.

“He seemed to have overcome the violence and the abuse and all those traumatic experiences in his childhood.”

Ana also had a violent childhood and then moved to the US alone from southern Brazil and ended up in an abusive relationship.

Torres recently published her autobiography, A Voz (The Voice).

The phenomenon, who claims in the book that he can make predictions thanks to his spiritual powers, also gave interviews to respected programs in the Brazilian media.

“She was on magazine covers. She was seen with famous people like Leonardo DiCaprio. Everything I saw was convincing,” says Ana, who says she was particularly impressed by Torres’ approach to spiritual issues.

But Ana didn’t know that the inspiring stories Torres told were partly based on lies.

Torres was never the same again when her Hollywood friends introduced her to a hallucinogenic herbal drug called ayahuasca, says her former New York roommate, Luzer Twersky.

“That’s when he kind of… started to lose himself.”

Twersky believes Torres was paid to have romantic relationships with wealthy and powerful men, and that these men also paid for the apartment they shared.

Torres’ wellness website and subscription service promised customers “the love, money and confidence you’ve always dreamed of.”

The self-help videos offered advice on relationships, health, business success and spiritual matters, including hypnosis, meditation and exercise programs.

Torres, who held private one-on-one video meetings for $150, claimed that he could solve all of his customers’ problems during these meetings.

Amanda, who lives in the Brazilian capital and is a former client of Torres, says Torres makes her feel special.

“I would tell him first all my doubts, questions, decisions, so we could decide together.”

But Torres’ advice also had a dark side. Ana, Amanda, and some of Torres’ other followers describe feeling increasingly psychologically isolated from friends and family during this time, and willing to do anything Torres suggested.

When Torres asked Ana to move to New York in 2019 to live with him and work as his assistant, Ana accepted the offer.

Meanwhile, Ana, who was studying at a university in Boston, said she decided to drop out and study online and accepted Torres’ offer to care for her animals, cook, do laundry and clean for about $2,000 a month.

But when she arrived at Torres’ apartment, Ana realized the social media influencer’s life was very different from what she portrayed on Instagram.

“It was very surprising. The house was very messy, dirty, it smelled bad.”

Ana explains that Torres can’t stand being alone and can’t even do simple things like shower by herself.

Ana, who explains that she had to rush to Torres’ every need, says that she lived on a couch covered in cat urine and took a few short naps during her time at home.

Ana says that some days she hides in the apartment gym and sleeps for a few hours instead of exercising.

“I realize now that he was using me as a slave… that he got satisfaction from it.”

Ana says she was never paid.

“I felt like I was stuck there with no way out. I was probably one of his first human trafficking victims.”

Ana had moved out of her home in Boston when she moved to New York, so she had nowhere to go back to and didn’t have enough income to afford a new home.

Ana says Torres became aggressive when she tried to confront him, and that this behavior triggered the trauma of domestic violence she experienced in her past.

Three months later, Ana found a way to escape the Torres home by moving in with her new boyfriend.

But her role in Torres’ life didn’t end there. When she heard that two young Brazilian women were missing in September 2022, Ana knew she had to take action.

At this point, Torres’s life was very different. She was married to Zach, a 21-year-old she had met in California, and was renting a five-bedroom house in the suburbs of Austin, Texas.

As he did with Ana, Torres targeted his most loyal followers and tried to convince them to come work for him, promising to help his followers achieve their dreams by using the intimate personal details they shared with him.

Brazilian Desirrê Freitas and Brazilian Letícia Maia, who lived in Germany for a while, started living together with Torres.

These are women who later went missing and are wanted by the FBI.

Another Brazilian woman, whom we call Sol, was also hired by Torres during the same period.

Sharing on her social media channels, Torres introduced her “witch clan” to her followers.

The BBC understands that at least four other women were about to be persuaded to join Torres but pulled out of the deal at the last minute.

Some of the women were reluctant to appear in this report, saying they feared online harassment and were still traumatized by their experiences.

But we were able to corroborate her account using court documents, phone conversations, bank statements and Desirrê’s book about her experiences, @Searching Desirrê, published by DISRUPTalks.

Desirre explains that Torres was suicidal and needed her support, so she bought him a plane ticket from Germany to the United States.

Torres is also accused of convincing Letícia, who was 14 when she began life coaching sessions with him, to move to the United States to babysit and later drop out of school to live and work with him.

Sol says she agreed to move in with Torres after becoming homeless and was hired to give tarot readings and yoga classes.

However, the women soon realized that their new life was very different from the fairy tale they were promised.

Within weeks, Desirrê says, Torres pressured her to work at a strip club, telling her that if she didn’t, she would have to repay all the money she owed him.

Desirrê, who said Torres also threatened her with “spells,” said she believed in Torres’ spiritual powers at the time and was horrified by the possibility.

Desirrê reluctantly agreed to work at the strip club.

Speaking to the BBC, club manager James said Desirrê worked long hours every day, seven days a week.

Desirrê and Sol share that in the Austin home, the women were subject to strict house rules, forbidden from speaking to each other, required to ask Torres for permission to leave their rooms or use the bathroom, and required to hand over all their earnings to her immediately.

“It was very difficult to get out of that situation because he had all our money,” Sol told the BBC.

“It was very scary. I thought something could happen to me because he had all my information, my passport, my driver’s license.”

But after Sol overheard a phone conversation in which Torres told another client that she had to work as a sex worker in Brazil as “punishment,” she realized she had to escape somehow.

Sol was able to leave home with the help of an ex-boyfriend.

Meanwhile, her husband’s guns began appearing regularly on Torres’ Instagram stories, becoming a source of fear for women.

Around this time, Desirrê says, Torres tried to persuade her to leave the strip club and work as a sex worker.

When she refused, Desirrê shared that Torres took her to the shooting range as a surprise, and says that she was afraid and gave in to Torres’ demand.

“I had so many questions in my mind: could I stop whenever I wanted? If the condom broke, would I get a disease? Could (the client) be an undercover cop and arrest me? What if he kills me?” Desirrê said in her book.

The women say they were not allowed to return home that night unless they earned $3,000 a day, as set by Torres.

“I had to sleep on the street many times because I couldn’t earn enough money,” says Desirrê.

Statements seen by the BBC show Desirrê sent more than $21,000 to Torres’ account in June and July 2022.

Desirrê says she was forced to pay much more in cash.

When she wanted to quit sex work, Desirrê shares that Torres threatened to report her to the police.

In September 2022, Desirrê and Letícia’s friends and family in Brazil launched social media campaigns to find them after months of not hearing from them.

The women were now unrecognizable, their black hair dyed blonde like Torres’s.

Desirrê says that at this point, all of the contacts on her phone were blocked and Torres was following her every command.

The Instagram page @searchingDesirrê (Looking for Desirrê) has become increasingly popular, and the young woman’s story has been featured frequently on Brazilian news channels.

While Desirrê’s friends feared she might have even been killed, Letícia’s family also made calls for help to get the women home safely.

Ana says that as soon as she saw the news, alarm bells rang and she immediately guessed that “he (Torres) was also kidnapping other girls.”

Ana, along with some of Torres’ other former clients, began contacting numerous law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.

Five months ago, Ana and Sol reported Torres to US police, but said they were not taken seriously. In a video she recorded as evidence at the time and shared with the BBC, Ana can be heard saying: “This person is very dangerous and he threatened to kill me.”

Suspicions of sexual abuse shared on social media were confirmed when profiles of missing women were discovered on escort and sex work websites.

Panic-stricken by the media attention, Torres crossed from Texas to Maine with the women. In chilling videos shared on Instagram, Desirrê and Letícia deny they are being held captive and demand that people stop looking for them.

But a video seen by the BBC gives a glimpse of what happened at the time. US authorities were now aware of concerns about the women’s safety. A police officer, contacted by the Department of Homeland Security, called Torres on FaceTime to check on the women’s well-being. But just before the call began, Torres can be heard saying in the video: “She’s going to start asking questions. They’re full of tricks. She’s a detective, be very careful. For God’s sake, if you say anything I’ll throw you out. I’ll scream.”

In November 2022, police finally convinced Torres and two other women to attend a wellness check in Maine.

Speaking to the BBC, Detective David Davol said he became increasingly anxious when he questioned Torres, Desirrê and Letícia.

Davol says they saw a number of worrying signs, including distrust of law enforcement, isolation and a reluctance to speak without Torres’ permission.

“Human traffickers are not always a gang like in the movies. It’s much more common for it to be someone who can be trusted.”

Desirrê and Letícia returned safely to Brazil in December 2022.

Davol says he has seen an increase in human trafficking.

According to the United Nations, human trafficking is one of the fastest growing crimes in the world, generating profits worth $150 billion a year worldwide.

Davol also believes that social media provides a platform for this crime to thrive by making it much easier for human traffickers to find and deceive victims.

BBC interview with Torres

In April this year, a BBC crew was granted a rare court order to interview Torres in a Brazilian prison.

This was his first media interview since his arrest.

At the time, Torres was awaiting a verdict in a lawsuit filed against him over his treatment of Desirrê.

At first he approached us with a smile and a calm and composed demeanor.

He insisted he was completely innocent and denied allegations that the women had lived with him or were forced into sex work.

“When I saw people testifying, they were lying so much. They were lying so much that at one point I couldn’t stop laughing,” Torres said.

“People say I’m a fake guru, but they also say: ‘He’s a danger to society because he can change people’s minds with his words’.”

When we talked about the evidence we had seen, Torres became aggressive and accused us of lying, too.

“You choose to believe whatever you want to believe. I can tell you that I am Jesus. You can see Jesus or you can see the devil, that’s all. It’s your choice. It’s your mind.”

As she got up to return to her cell, Torres menacingly claimed that we would soon find out if she had special powers and pointed to me (Hannah Price) and said, “I don’t like her.”

Torres was sentenced to eight years in prison by a Brazilian judge earlier this month for subjecting Desirrê to human trafficking and slavery.

The judge ruled that Torres brought the young woman to the United States for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

More than 20 women spoke to by the BBC say they were scammed or exploited by Torres, and many say they are still receiving psychiatric treatment because of his treatment of them.

Torres’ lawyer told the BBC that his client continues to maintain his innocence and that the conviction is being appealed.

An investigation into allegations from other women is ongoing in Brazil.

Ana believes that other victims of Torres’ crimes may come forward and wants people to understand that what Torres did was a serious crime and not just “Instagram drama.” This is the first time she has spoken publicly about her experience.

In the last pages of his book, Desirrê describes his experiences as follows:

“I am not fully healed yet, it has been a tough year. I was sexually abused, enslaved and imprisoned. I hope my story serves as a warning.”