So…I really didn’t even know what sex trafficking was until I told about my situation, and I was told that you know, “You were taken advantage of, and it just wasn’t right.”
[…]
The time that it happened, I told my grandma. My dad’s mom. First, she just looked at me. She was like, “So, you’re really going to play this card?” That’s exactly what she said to me. I said, “Grandma I’m not lying.” She whooped me. She whooped me. My dad got off of work that day, and he took me home, and he whooped me again.
[…]
Just like I said, in my eyes, there’s a lawyer out there that’s doing it to kids. There’s a judge out there that’s doing it to kids. There’s an officer, an officer of the law you know that’s probably doing it to the kids.
[…]
You know. But every day I wake up, and I have a daughter. And she’d just be playing in the next room, and I just have like these outrageous thoughts. Of stuff like that happening to her, and I wouldn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t wish that on nobody, ever. I wish there was a way that you know I could gain my trust back for people. I still have troubles trusting my boyfriend. Any boyfriend. I don’t like my daughter to go with her dad. He’s a great father…I don’t want this anymore. I don’t want to be afraid for my daughter
[…]
Yeah, just because you have a PhD, doesn’t mean that you can help me communicate about my problems. I need you to actually feel where I’m coming from….
[…]
There is not that much pain in somebody’s heart to where you have to do that to somebody, ever. So…I wouldn’t even have a program. I would have a concentration camp for them [traffickers and buyers]. Really. I’m so serious, because when you do that to somebody you hurt them. You don’t just hurt them physically. You hurt them emotionally, mentally. I’m 23 years old, and I’m still living with that…I don’t want to think about putting them type of people in any type of facility or home, because they don’t deserve that…Those kind of people don’t need to live…Wasn’t there a law back in the day where they used to chop off your jimmy?!
[…]
I am ready to fight. I really am… But I mean if women don’t stand up for each other there’s nothing that we can’t really do for each other. One voice may speak a lot, but a thousand voices together…That’s just how I see it.
Narrative as found in Shireen S. Rajaram and Sriyani Tidball, “Nebraska Sex Trafficking Survivors Speak —A Qualitative Research Study,” Faculty Publications, College of Journalism & Mass Communications (2016)
