When I was 7 my biological dad passed away and my mom started dating another guy. He was a nice guy at first and then he became very abusive to my sister and I.
When I was like 10 or 11 I ran away from my mom’s house, got into trouble. I ran away from there with another girl. We went to her parent’s house in Cedar Rapids and her dad wasn’t very nice either. He tried making us do things so he could get drugs and stuff from other people, and I left there. I think I was just walking down one of the aisles and then a guy approached me. I said I’m just looking for some food to get and he said, do you have any money to get it and I said no. he asked me if I wanted a modelling job and he told me that I’d have all this money and I could have food and shower and all this stuff. And then I went with him. He had some people from Chicago come and another girl came. He told me I was gonna go with them. And when I refused to go with them, they took my pants off and beat me with a belt.
And then they put me in their van and took me to Chicago.
They took me to their van and took me to Chicago with that other girl. And left us at a house that was really old and looked run down and there were people stood outside with guns. And he left me there with a guy. The pimp. He came into the room and he took pictures of me and posted them on craigslist and he gave me a cell phone that I had to answer when someone called. There were people outside my door watching my room and I had to do stuff like sexual things with guys when they would come, and then give the money to the guy outside my room.
There was a girl that tried running away and then he brought us all into the same room and told us all that if we did what she had tried to do then we were gonna get beat like she did and he beat her in front of us.
There was a day I got called on the phone about someone who wanted to come and the guy that came into the room pretended that he was going to do all the same things that everyone else did. But he ended up being an undercover police officer and he arrested me, and took me to the Cook County police department and he questioned me. I was only 14 going on 15 and I told him how old I was. He knew that I ran away because I told him I did, because I wanted to go back home.
I don’t want what happened to me to happen to anybody else. Anybody could pick you up. And it all happens really quickly. And I think a lot of the people that do the human trafficking stuff, have less of a chance of getting caught in a smaller community is what they’re thinking.
Narrative produced by Braking Traffik
