Antislavery Usable Past

Brian

2019 (Narrative date)

There are an estimated 403,000 people living in modern slavery in the United States (GSI 2018). Sex trafficking exists throughout the country. Traffickers use violence, threats, lies, debt bondage and other forms of coercion to compel adults and children to engage in commercial sex acts against their will. The situations that sex trafficking victims face vary, many victims become romantically involved with someone who then forces them into prostitution. Others are lured with false promises of a job, and some are forced to sell sex by members of their own families. Victims of sex trafficking include both foreign nationals and US citizens, with women making up the majority of those trafficked for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation. In 2015, the most reported venues/industries for sex trafficking included commercial-front brothels, hotel/motel-based trafficking, online advertisements with unknown locations, residential brothels, and street-based sex trafficking.

Brian* was trafficked by his dad when he was eleven years old. He was taken to an old house for child sexual exploitation. He was locked in a basement and raped, drugged, and beaten by different men.

My dad took the abuse to another level at 11 years old. One day, he made me get ready, he took me to an old house in a nearby city, where other girls and I, were pretty much being rented out for sex. I was drugged, raped, and beaten by a man I had never met, in a basement where there were several other girls and men. I was the youngest person there that day. Within a year, being raped, drugged and beaten by different men, became normal to me. A few time, my dad would chain me up to a pole in the basement, and let men have their way with me. Unfortunately, my dad was also an ‘ordained minister,’ who never actually preached anywhere, except for when he twisted the Bible to manipulate me. He had me convinced that God was just like him and that he would treat me the same way. I believed I was a worthless, useless, stupid, human being, created only to be hurt.

*name given

Narrative source Youth Underground, a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing human trafficking through youth education, awareness-raising and advocacy.

Original narrative can be found here:

https://www.facebook.com/YouthUnderground.CH/photos/pcb.2599530783415714/2599527243416068

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VOICES: Narratives by Survivors of Modern Slavery

This is the world's largest archive of modern slavery survivor narratives. Across more than a million words spoken or written by survivors of modern slavery, we can see why slavery persists in particular hotspots, analyse patterns in trafficking routes, identify vulnerabilities, understand more about the challenges survivors face in liberation, and discover new antislavery solutions. These narratives offer the chance to systematically design new antislavery strategies based on the experiences, ideas and solutions of enslaved people themselves.

The database is searchable by country, name, theme, and narrative date. Narratives can be viewed in list or map form. A short introduction provides context to each narrative. Narrative provenance appears after the main narrative text.

For ideas on how to use this database, please see our accompanying guide.

Project Lead: Zoe Trodd. Team Members: Andrea Nicholson, Lauren Eglen, Rosemary Pearce, Olivia Wright.

Project Funders: AHRC Antislavery Usable Past grant (2014-19), ESRC/AHRC PaCCS Modern Slavery: Meaning and Measurement grant (2016-19), and AHRC-GCRF Antislavery Knowledge Network grant (2017-2021).

For any queries about the collection please contact: rightslab@nottingham.ac.uk. If you wish to cite a particular narrative, please acknowledge the survivor’s name, the provenance of the narrative and cite: Voices Database, the Rights Lab, University of Nottingham.

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