My family, my mother and father met in California and they stayed there for about four years and then they moved back here [Minnesota], so we moved around quite a bit because my dad was in the Navy, and then they had my youngest brother here and erm she separated from him because of the abuse and we went back to California.
[…]
Well growing up my mother was actually involved in prostitution. I didn’t know what it was at the time. She would have different men in and out of the home to feed her drug habit and things like that. But I didn’t actually become aware of that until I was about 18 and I was already in the life, and that kind of influenced me staying in the life.
[…]
I was first initiated when I was 14, erm I ran away from home. My mother had just committed suicide. So I had moved here from California when I was 13 and erm within a year I ran away from home, I was very rebellious and I you know, didn’t want to follow the rules that my dad had in place. I thought that he was being really controlling, I felt very out of place here, because all I knew was my mother so when I moved here, I felt all alone. And so I met a guy in Minneapolis, downtown, and I ran away. He was a really nice guy and I thought he was my boyfriend and erm we would talk over the phonhe and he would tell me things like erm you know if you just came and stayed with me you wouldn’t have to follow any rules and you know it’s not so bad being with me and things like that. I thought he really liked me so I ran away for a weekend with him. And I actually was very intrigued by the things he was doing, smoking marijuana you know, just hanging you with him and his friends and so one day after I went back home I was just like oh I’ll run away with him you know, just to stay with him and within the first week he took me to another state and erm he, there was another girl, it was him and another guy and erm, she was already involved prostitution, I think she was about 17.
I believe she knew that she was going down, what she was going out of town for and erm and so when we got out of town we didn’t have money and I was hungry and the other guy was buying us food and things like that and he told me, the guy I was with told me things like ‘well if you want to eat or you wanna go shopping you need to make money. And I didn’t know how, I didn’t know what he was talking about, something he told me to follow what the other girl was doing and she would teach me what to do. And we were walking the streets and it was really dangerous. There were a lot of guys, pimps, walking up and down the street trying to recruit other girls, being very violent. Erm things like that.
[…]
I was 14. He was in his early 20s, I think 22.
[…]
I ran away with him and we were in another state for a couple of months and erm I told him I was 18 when met him but there was no way, looking back on the picture I mean, I looked like a child. I was very young looking and erm whether, he acted like he believed me, he probably did. And then I end up going to jail in Tennessee and I lied about my age and so that kind of made it seem like I was, my age was real because he had to bail me out so the other guy that we were with had got some information about me being only 12 but I was actually 14 and I was like well no obviously I’m not because I just got out of jail and stuff like that. And I end up telling him my real age and we were on our way abck to Minnesota because the guy that we went with left us there for whatever reasons and erm I told him and he, that didn’t make him not like me, he actually like me even more when he found out that I was only 14.
[…]
I don’t know the county but I was in Memphis.
[…]
He brought me back to Minnesota and the first night back he beat me really bad, I had two concussions on the side of my head erm, my eye was closed shut, because I wanted to leave him. I had a cell phone that my dad was paying for over the time that I was running away. And he was talking to another girl on my phone and I tried to take my phone from him and he beat me really bad. He was kicking me in my head, in my face and I got away that night and I went to Hennepin County, HCMC and I was really terrified to go back home because I didn’t know how to explain. You know, I was very ashamed of what I had just done and in Tennessee I was very afraid of what my dad would think and once he found out that if he kept me bruised that I wouldn’t go home, he continued to beat me.And his family would hear us fight and they wouldn’t help me.
[…]
He was, he was abusive. I wouldn’t say he was a gorilla pimp, I don’t think that he was actually, I think he was following behind the guy sthat he was hanging out with. I don’t believe that he really knew what he was doing, but I was so young and easy to manipulate that you know, it was just easy for him to control me.
[…]
He would physically abuse me, erm drugs, I got involved in drugs and erm there was just a lot of, I was such a kid you know I was very immature in the mind and it really didn’t take a lot. I kind of felt like he was the only one that would accept me after all the things I’d done. I felt very broken after being in prostitution so, I didn’t have anyone to confide in or to tell them that I wanted to get out because I was so ashamed of what I’d been through.
[…]
I ran away for two years so my dad did not know anything.
[Flora’s abuser knew that he mother was deceased and her situation with her father, and used this as a current of control]
I felt very ashamed and broken. I remember when I found out that my mother was involved in prostitution when I was 18, it kind of became normalised for me like oh it’s not so bad, my mom used to do it and erm I didn’t feel so ashamed about it. But as time went on I started to realise that I just felt really trapped and ashamed.
[…]
One thing that would’ve helped me was if my father would have reached out a little bit more, because my mom committed suicide I felt, I already felt abandoned and I had neglect issues. So I felt like no one really cared about me anyways. And erm I just feel like he cuodl’ve tried to look for me. Because it came to a point where he just did not, it felt like he didn’t even look for me and I was a runaway for a long time and even just having the knowledge to know that what I was doing was not ok, and erm, just erm, there was a lot of things that could’ve helped me but I just felt isolated from the world. Lost, yeah.
[…]
I would like people to know that I am a survivor. And I’m not a victim anymore, there is hope. And erm, being able to reach out and find the support that I found at breaking free has turned my life around. Erm and that I’m not a victim.
Narrative provided by the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration
