He really used the boyfriend role as a way to gain my love and trust. You end up doing it because you think you’re in love, and you think he loves you.
I was sent to Connecticut to a Massage Parlor in Hartford, and I worked from 10am till 1am for three days in a row.
The first guy who bought me could've been my grandfather—it was horrifying. Then I go back home, still in college, still living with my parents. So now I’m becoming this other person, living two different lives. I changed my mind and decided I didn't want to do it anymore, and that’s when he started to use violence. I started to make a plan to escape…
I started saving money without him noticing. I did this for a few months. Now I had a few thousand dollars, I want to get my own apartment. I left with a few things—my cat and my dog… I was so suicidal, I was hopeless, I was depressed, and I had no idea how I was going to put my life together. I began using drugs and turned back to sex trafficking. Before I knew it, I was addicted to heroin, lost everything, homeless, sleeping on park benches. The drugs become your trafficker at this point—I didn't care if I lived or died… My brother died of an overdose in 2006, and I didn't want my mom to lose another kid because she only had us two.
I got sober, put it down and never looked back.
Narrative source Youth Underground, a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing human trafficking through youth education, awareness-raising and advocacy.
The original narrative can be found here
https://www.facebook.com/YouthUnderground.CH/posts/1581192691916200
