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 afterher 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.

"I want it to put a face to the justice system," says Brown-Long by phone from Nashville of her book, Free Cyntoia: My Search for Redemption in the American Prison System,published last week.

"I hope it will make people see things from my point of view and help them open their eyes about what really goes on behind the news stories and the court cases. A lot of people in the system get lost behind case numbers - and some of their sentences are completely outrageous."

Brown-Long knows that her case was unique. After more than a decade in prison, where she would eventually obtain two university degrees, find God and get married (shetied the knot with Christian hip-hop artist Jamie Long over the phonewhile still incarcerated), she appealed for clemency. The petition went viral after celebrities including Rihanna, LeBron James and Kim Kardashian Westtook to social mediato condemn her life sentence.