Before The Night Comes

"My eyes are filling with tears. I'm transported back - as I often am -nearly thirteen years, to a very different place, to the lonely side of a remoteBrazilian highway, to a night so dark it felt like it would swallow us, to thevery first girl..."In 2012, after ten years working as a journalist, Matt had an experience in Brazil whichchanged his life.

On a road trip with a friend in a remote rural part of the country, he sawa girl standing on the side of the motorway, who they discovered was just 11 and sellingher body to truck drivers. Realising he had stumbled upon a hidden and unreported scandal, he gave up his staffjob and moved with his wife and young son to Brazil with the intention of documentingthis tragedy. However, he soon became involved in the lives of the girls andspent the next ten years setting up safe houses along the motorway, the BR-116, whichhe discovered was the worst road in the world for child prostitution.

The BR-116 is Brazil'slongest and busiest highway and the fourth-longest road in the world. According to a Government study, along its 2,700 miles there are at least 262 placeswhere it is known children are sold for sex - or, on average, one every ten miles.

Theworst rate of child sexual exploitation on the BR-116 is along a 300km stretch in the northof Minas Gerais state and south of Bahia state known as the child prostitution corridor. Matt has also weaved the girls' stories throughout the book, so the reader gets to knowthem and follow their journeys, as well as the journey Matt went on from finding one girlon the side of the road to the present day, with five 'Pink Houses' helping 500 girls a day.