It’s easier to – if you think that something’s going on at your neighbor’s house, we’ll all just be quiet. Close your eyes to it, even though you know. Like people don’t speak up. People don’t stand up for each other…I mean, people have a blind eye, or they don’t do anything.
[…]
I, I was held out of fear, like, and they’re going to think that their parents are going to be killed or, I mean, those are the kind of things that the trafficker, the pimp, holds over you. To threaten you, to make you submissive. And to do as they’ve asked, or told you…And it isn’t just intimidation, it could actually be torture…its not just that they put you in a room and man after man after man come in. There’s a whole lot more to it than that. They withhold things from you so that you just submit to them even more. So they have a heavier hand on you. So that when they say jump backwards, you don’t hesitate but to jump backwards….Because it’s -- there’s torment, and we’re not talking just the pimps and the traffickers. The clientele themselves want very odd, not always.
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I really think education, educating people, even at a younger age and starting at that point in time onward up to even the elderly and… I think everybody just needs to know. Educating. Being aware. Go back to looking out for your neighbour...Caring enough.
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… that men would no longer buy sex. They would no longer be into pornography and all of those things…I think by being exposed to pornography…I think that once you start opening the door to pornography or opening the door to seeing things, even if it’s on TV, just a little bit watching things are inappropriate -- gets your mind going and then you’re maybe on the internet searching for stuff, looking for stuff, it gets to be more and more, pretty soon, the normal thing…pretty soon that’s not enough and as, as they get older, you know, maybe they’re married and their wife doesn’t do the things that they want so they reach out a little bit…
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Is it put out there to say, if you are a woman who has the opportunity to flee for your life, to flee to get out of something, you can go here or here or here, be it Target. They will report it. So the – you know. The hospital. You know? I mean, be at the fire station, be at, I mean, I don’t know. If, if it goes to the fire station, so do they call the police and say, this and this and that’s happened.
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Then they [police] want to know the pimp and they want to know – it becomes more of an interrogation versus, oh, my gosh, let us get you off the street, let us get you in a safe place so you can think about it…It’s no longer that you are the, a victim or anything else. You are the information center, and they want all your information, and it doesn’t make a difference about torment and the, anything else…They’re forgetting this is a human who has - just went through, yeah...This is somebody who has been murdered inside already. I think when these things happen to you, you begin to shut down, it doesn’t take – take long at all before you die inside. You’re just a shell. It’s really what you become. And to go from that into you know…what sounds better? Is it better to go sit with a police – a bunch of police officers interrogating you?...It’s not that you don’t want that. But there’s a time and place for that.
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And the more you share about your perpetrator, the more fear it puts inside of you because they’ve already made threats, they’ve already done this and that. So now if they think – you think that if they go and they get arrested or, or questioned, they’re going to go to your family, they’re going to go – maybe…they never really ever do…But the threat is still there. It’s just as real as all the beatings and everything else that take place, you know?
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Yes. A place where they could feel safe…they don’t have to fear about their trafficker or their pimp coming after them…they could have basic needs met without any obligations, but it clothes, especially food, warm bed…a comfortable place to sleep….I’ve heard that if you, if you don’t want your child, you could take [the child] to the safe house and no questions asked. What about the girl trying to get off the street? Is there a safe house for that?...There is a help line…but sometimes the phone isn’t the thing that you need. Sometimes it’s knowing the place that you could go to.
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A lot of the programs are, are more religious based, and that's okay because they’re, that's what they're you know wanting to do…I mean, because I, I, I'm a Christian myself and I, that's what I love to do is to, to help girls when they come off. I love to pray for them, I love to tell them how, you know, God changed my life. But I also don't, you know, want to, um, to put someone, who say is an atheist and who comes out, and doesn't want that religious based program to say, “Oh well, I don't want to go there because they're going to push Jesus on me.” I want it just to be more where it could be where everyone's welcome, they know it's there, it's free.
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I think that it would really just have to be somebody who’s, very educated or experienced to be able to handle that. I don’t know that education necessarily is “educated”…then to think of whatever range of age that they are…a 14-year old child, a 12- year old child…that went through all this…
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It’s very possible that three months down the road, you can become very depressed. This is how, these are some signs of depression, let’s look out for this. You know, have somebody accountable with you or that you can talk to…They need to know that, you know, this is a possibility. Depression. They’re withdrawing, you know? What, what can you do, you can seek help or you can suggest this or, yeah.
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Is the tracking system and stuff like that, because I have, I’ve heard that these days, that pimps put trackers on their phone to keep up with where the girls are and things like that, so that’s…It can be a good thing. Could be a pro thing if it’s the parent who had the tracker on their kid’s phone or whatever and their kid came up missing.
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)
