How One is Trafficked at 14 Years Old

I was talking to my doctor yesterday and he asked if I’d had an injury that would cause my neck pain. I told him that I fought a rapist and my neck was hurt in the process. The rapist was one of the pimps that sold me as a young teen.

“What do you mean by sold?” he asked. I was sold in sex trafficking from 14 – 18 years old. I smiled slightly as I told him and he was shocked by that. “Why are you smiling? That’s horrible.” He said. I said, “Because it was the textbook case that could have been prevented.” If people knew how it worked, they could prevent it in many cases.

There are many components to stop such a widespread evil, but one way is to let people know when they are being set up. I’d started to contact schools and police departments a while before I got so sick. I wanted to go out and tell everyone how to spot it.

So, here’s some of what I would have to say, if I had the opportunity:

Pimps and traffickers take their time. They pretend to be a friend and progress to a boyfriend. Then, they slowly begin to play on the vulnerability of youth. They will invest months of casual conversations. It is called grooming the victim. It is a cat and mouse game to many of them. Few keep track of the actual time it takes. They just enjoy the ride. Often, a trafficker will have various stages of relationships ongoing with a number of youth.

One pimp may have a casual, friendly lighthearted relationship developing with a girl at the mall and have a boyfriend relationship with a girl he met outside of a school and have boys and girls that he sells at night in the city all at the same time. They may be sold on the street or out of a house.

From friend to lover to pimp is not always smooth, but it is always lucrative to the pimp. It is always abusive to the person being used.

Sex trafficking doesn’t mean transport. It means used for sex for another’s gain. It could be money or exchange of goods and services, much like one would barter.

A fourteen year old cannot be complicit. Our brains are just starting to develop the frontal cortex, executive powers for decision making in our mid to late teens. Our ability to connect to future consequences are not quite developed at the average age of 12 – 14 years old. I was 13 when I was groomed. This is the average age of sex trafficked victims in the USA.

I thought I was deciding, but in reality, I was manipulated. What little girl decides to be abused night after night? It wasn’t always brutal, but often was.

I had issues from child abuse and neglect, but that is not the key. Any youth from any kind of background may be a target. The pimps are cunning and figure out the weakness of their prey. They do not see you as a valuable human being with dignity. They see you as a tool to get what they want.

They may use friendly tactics. They may use fear. They may use blackmail techniques, like taking video or photos of a young person in a compromised position and threaten to expose them. They may kidnap, rape and imprison their victims. They may use drugs. They may use money or stuff. They may simply play on sympathies, asking the teen to have sex with someone to help with a car payment or the rent. They may exchange sex for safety from another threatening their lives or family.

A girl or boy sold for sex can be sold many times, night after night. Unlike selling drugs or another thing, people can be reused. This is the horror of child sex trafficking.

As mentioned, our brains have not developed the frontal lobe executive power systems. Abuse tends to stunt this development. So, after years of abuse, the person is still unable to make the decisions and do the reasoning of someone of comparable years. Even when they are released from captivity, they have healing and catch-up to do.

Tragically, our legal system and social services is lagging way behind in many areas of the country and after care isn’t a restorative process, but a punitive one. Calling a teen a child prostitute is ridiculous. By federal law, anyone under 18 years old that has engaged in sex for any kind of profit is a trafficking victim.

Healing from this kind of abuse is possible, but scars remain. Like any injury though, humans are resilient and we can overcome and be valiant and have wonderful lives.

There are no throw-away people.

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May you be blessed. You are welcome to contact me to come speak at your school, church, event or testify at your Statehouse.