Trafficking US
I recently attended a training hosted by For Such A Time Ministries and NH Traffick Free (a Project of Real Life Giving) in collaboration with the Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking.
The Hands That Heal training has been so powerful and presented so well, it has been like drinking from a fire hose. The information presented is both substantial in content and volume. Our training is geared toward domestic trafficking, or trafficking in persons within the Continental US.
This is a heavy issue for anyone. I knew it would be emotional for me, but I did not know that I was a trafficking victim, now a survivor, of course. When Lisa Thompson defined Trafficking In Persons, I was taken aback. I fit the criteria, in every respect. I had most of the risk factors as well. It was quite eye opening.
I was conceived by rape, which would not be a risk factor, if it weren’t for the fact that I thought of myself as a product of rape and not a valuable person, created in the likeness and image of God.
Our family lived in great poverty at times. I was sexually abused, neglected to the point of frequently going days without food and no one would notice. I wandered aimlessly, just hanging around with nothing to do, smoked pot, drinking or doing any drug I could get my hands on to alter my reality.
All summer when I was 13 years old, a handsome body builder with the quintessential pimp car of the day: a shiny, black, two-door Cadillac with red leather seats, would come through my neighborhood and just visit. I didn’t even sit in his car for about two months. He gave me his phone number, didn’t ask for mine, he was sweet, unimposing and very gentle. His nickname mirrored his initials. His friends called him ACE.On my 14th birthday, my mom came home from work and I reminded her of the day. She gave me two crumpled dollars. We hadn’t been getting along, but ACE was there for me. He said he had a way for me to make money to get what I wanted. That afternoon, I called, met him at the corner store standing in three inches of slush and went to his apartment. There he sold me to a man in a full leg cast. He took me across town many times and down to the illegal gambling place or the pool hall in the mill buildings and sold me again and again.
I lived, actually I survived, on the streets for four years and became a house pet for one of the men ACE had sold me to. He was a powerful crime boss in the small city. He insisted that I have an abortion when I became pregnant.
God gave me a dream of the abortion procedure in living color. It was vivid and disturbing. I was terrified, because I knew without a doubt, that he would kill me if I didn’t have the abortion. So, I called Anthy. She was a social worker that had tried to help me out. I made the appointment in his presence and told him I would go without him. He insisted we go to dinner that evening afterward. I had to pretend to have had the abortion. It wasn’t hard, because of the dream. It evoked such strong emotions and feelings that I had no trouble acting it out. I was very afraid he would discover the truth.
I said, “Something happened on that table.” I just didn’t want to see him anymore. I told him I had a cousin about 20 miles north of the city who could get me a job at a café. I went 100 miles south to a home for unwed mothers. He let me go.
I survived. That is an abbreviated version of my story of Trafficking US.
This is still happening in our own neighborhoods.
I survived. That is an abbreviated version of my story of Trafficking US.
This is still happening in our own neighborhoods.
