2020 Trafficking Awareness

I weighed less than 90 pounds the first time I was sold for sex.

2020 Trafficking Awareness

Looking back, I can see that I was a little girl in many ways. Physically, I was small. I was very immature, socially. I was groomed for prostitution by my biological father first. He sexually abused me and others for years. Because of the core violation, my identity was marred. A profound sense of hopelessness characterized my life.

I could not imagine a future at all. Silence was my prison, when I thought it kept me safer. When ACE came to my neighborhood, I had no idea that I was his target. Neither did I have any thought of why he could come around at any time, unrestricted by a job. He took lots of time to convince me that he was my friend and he was helping me to get the things that I wanted. I was thirteen when I met him.

Dignity had been stripped from me just months earlier by and uncle when he molested me too. The years of child sexual abuse had conditioned me to conceal the matter, even when his degrading treatment continued and escalated. I was lost, even though I lived at home. It wasn’t too long before I began to run away, lost to the streets.

Human Trafficking is much more than selling little girls for sex, to be used and abused for the gratification of grown men. Yesterday’s post makes that clear, but sex trafficking is a severe form of trafficking. It happens in any place, even where you live.

Once Aware

Once aware, we have a choice. We can turn aside and ignore the problems and vulnerabilities of the young people in our lives, or we can get involved with them. Love can make a difference. True love is patient and kind, not seeking its own way, but searching for the truth with only good intentions.

Watch the video below from our course, Responding to Human Trafficking for Pregnancy Resource Centers. If you think it’s valuable, pass it on. There is one each of the first 12 days of 2020.

Let’s look back on 2020 and see lots of love for those in our sphere of influence.