Sadly, our pop culture—which is exported around the world—glamorizes the role of the pimp, which promotes sex trafficking.
—Mark Lagon
It’s an extreme uphill battle for trafficking survivors of any age to move past the horrors of captivity—the months or years of terror, abuse, neglect, pain, subjugation, torture, and humiliation—and live normal, healthy, productive lives. The resulting deep, lasting scars might seem beyond healing, but there are numerous stories of miraculous recoveries. While both victims and traffickers are human beings with value, we must never lose sight of who is the criminal and who is the victim, nor of the need for vigorous prosecution of crimes committed as well as services for survivors. However, to add to the complexity of this crime, all too often perpetrators were once victims. Hurting people hurt people. Until we can compassionately and wisely bring healing to a world of hurting, this crime and others will reproduce.1
Hurting People Hurt People
By the time Jason Foster*2 was in his midtwenties, his father, although it brought him enormous pain, prayed agonizingly for Jason to be removed from this earth because he was hurting so many people with his life choices. The prayers hadn’t started out that way. Neither had Jason.
Jason grew up in one of the nicer neighborhoods in Salem, Oregon. His dad, a doctor, and his mom, a stay-at-home mother, were loving parents who strove to provide their two sons with everything they needed to succeed. They also tried to be good neighbors and were active in the community. The couple went to church every Sunday and lived what they believed in their family and community. In short, they had a good reputation and it was well earned.
Jason was a sweet young boy who got along well with others. In addition, he was smart, strong, athletically gifted, and a natural leader. He had it all going for him. There was no reason to question the bright future this young man would have, unless one knew that as a preschooler he had fallen victim to sexual abuse that would change the course of his life.
Jason and his friend Debbie* regularly played out in the forest behind his house, enjoying the simple pleasures of childhood. Childhood dreams that live in a child’s mind can transform a simple tree fort into a spaceship. The bicycle without training wheels becomes a race car. And the baseball hit over the backyard fence becomes the grand slam that wins the World Series.
In Debbie’s world, however, life wasn’t so simple or so pure. Her parents not only had become involved in pornography, they had involved their little girl. Out of her hurt came Jason’s. In the midst of their play, she would insist that Jason go with her to the bathroom to perform the sexual acts that her parents had introduced to her.
Jason never felt comfortable with what happened in that bathroom. “Can’t we just hug?” he protested. That is how he had been taught to show affection. Instead of agreeing, Debbie threatened to tell Jason’s parents about what they’d been doing if he refused to participate in their sexual game.
Years later, Jason still doesn’t know why he didn’t just call the girl’s bluff. In hindsight, she certainly had more to lose than he did. But he was ashamed and he was scared. So he continued to comply with the abuse, which in his words would become “a cornerstone of the person that I [became].”
By puberty, feelings of guilt about the abuse turned to anger. He thought he could handle his feelings, but they were handling him. “I hadn’t told anybody,” he says. “I had no intention of ever telling anybody that type of a thing, especially being a boy.” When the anger boiled over, he turned violent, hurting himself and others without a second thought.
At age fourteen, Jason began experimenting with drugs and alcohol. He found that alcohol made him “comfortably numb.” Since he still hadn’t told his parents about what had happened—let alone asked anyone for help—the attempts to self-medicate helped him get through the day.
When his parents realized that Jason was experiencing more than just normal teenage rebellion, they did everything they could to help him regain control of his behaviors. They talked with him and grounded him and took away privileges, trying to provide an even balance of love and discipline with boundaries, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, they sent him to a boarding school where he nearly died of an overdose. The boarding school expelled him and sent him home.
His parents refused to give up on their son. Recognizing that he had a substance abuse problem, they admitted him to the best adolescent recovery program they could find. At sixteen, when most kids were trying to be on their best behavior so their parents would let them get their driver’s license, Jason was in his first lockup. He felt hurt, betrayed, and even angrier than before.
Rehab did not bring Jason around. Instead, in an attempt to regain the power that had been stripped from him as a child, he careened from doing dangerous drugs to engaging in dangerous activities. He quickly graduated from buying drugs to robbing drug dealers of the product they were illegally selling to others. “What could they do?” he reasoned. “Call the cops on me?” Knowing that he had hurt someone else—in essence sharing the misery—helped ease the pain he carried inside. If he was going to feel such hurt all the time, then others should as well.
Ultimately, however, what he really sought was a sense of control. He would find that control at age fifteen, not through healthy avenues but through a pimp who had chosen to hang out at Jason’s school. The pimp was recruiting new girls for his “stable,” a term used in trafficking circles for the group of victims a pimp is selling.
Parents sending their upper-middle-class kids to what was at that time the newest and arguably the nicest high school in Salem never dreamed their children could potentially meet a pimp on the premises who would change their lives. But no one seemed to question the presence of this older guy draped in gold jewelry who regularly drove a different, expensive car.
The other kids at school steered clear of Devin,* the pimp. Not Jason. Like a bee to honey, he went straight up to Devin. Before long, the two had become friends. Jason’s charisma and charm soon won him favor with the other pimps with whom Devin hung out, and Jason was embraced and accepted into the pimp family. Their lifestyle fascinated him as much as the control they exerted over the girls intrigued and appealed to him. Before long, he didn’t just want to witness their way of life, he wanted to share it. Finally, being the one in power could help him forget about what had happened during his childhood.
The pimp family schooled Jason in their ways, and soon he turned out his first girl, Claire,* the girl he had been dating. He had painted her a picture of the life they would share together, telling her that if she really cared about him, she would do this for him. Eventually she agreed, without even asking how the money would be split. That was fine with Jason. He had no intention of sharing with Claire a dime of the money she earned.
Just as he had planned, Jason began to drop off Claire on “dates” and then pocketed the money she brought back. She would be the first of scores of girls who sold their bodies and lined his pockets with 100 percent of their earnings.
Over the years that followed, Jason’s life plummeted into deeper destruction. In addition to becoming a full-fledged pimp, he committed crimes involving drugs, weapons, and stolen property. It was all part of “the game,” as pimping is known, that Jason had chosen as a lifestyle.
For the next fourteen years, in between prison stints, Jason pimped girls on the streets, in car lots, and in some of the most famous brothels in Nevada. He lived life as fast and as fearlessly as he could, becoming a renowned rap artist in the process. But even after many years, he still hadn’t found that “high” that he was seeking. No matter what he did—pimping girls, enjoying their earnings, rapping and cutting albums, becoming known in the underworld as the notorious young white guy who had excelled in pimping and rapping—he felt increasingly empty and unhappy.
He was leading a life of desperation, and he knew it. On two separate occasions when he felt he had hit bottom, Jason called his parents in tears. Each of those points of despair brought him a little closer to getting out of the low life to which he had sunk. He knew what he needed to do, starting with getting away from the booze he knew was killing him. He just couldn’t do it alone.
At last, Jason says, he prayed. He was powerless to quit drinking, he admitted as he prayed, and needed help. The next day, despite having consumed copious amounts of alcohol, he awoke feeling fresher than he had in years. He took it as a sign that God was with him. In that instant, he gave up alcohol. He has remained alcohol-free to this day, which amounts to over a decade.
But not using alcohol didn’t negate the rest of his life, which included selling and using drugs in addition to pimping and other crimes. Yet the inner voice to which Jason had begun to listen was clear and steadfast. No matter how far and hard Jason ran after the life of crime, hurting himself and others, that inner voice continued to knock on the door of Jason’s heart. The healing was beginning to happen inside him.
Even so, it would take another year before Jason would relinquish his horrific existence. Finally, after one particularly harrowing experience, he did what he had done several times during his destructive and disastrous life of crime. He went back to his one place of stability and security—to his parents who had never quit believing in him even though they had never condoned his sordid lifestyle. Despite the anguish he had caused them, they welcomed their son with open arms, an act that still humbles him.
A Life Reclaimed
Although Jason’s struggle to get his life back on track would be studded with pain, he had finally made the decision to live a God-fearing life, no matter the cost. From that day forward, he never returned to the life of crime and destruction.
Jason now speaks to groups of young people, as well as to individuals of all ages. Having seen a lot of perpetrators in my life, and very few who have truly turned their lives around, I am a major skeptic when it comes to believing in real-life change for someone who has devastated so many lives. However, I can testify to Jason’s honest turnaround. Today, Jason is my friend. He is happily married, a father, and a man who radiates the love and acceptance of one who has experienced amazing grace, without a hint of religiousity. I can truly vouch for the fact that his is a transformed life.
Miraculous or Supported?
So what is the difference between Jason and so many others whose lives never change? One can never really know the full answer to that question. Jason’s parents—who continued to love him unconditionally even though they never condoned, accepted, or tolerated the havoc he wreaked in so many lives—prayed for him without stopping. They asked their many friends (myself included) and family to pray for him over the years as well. “The restoration God has done in my life is unquestionably nothing short of a miracle in and of itself.” Whether or not one believes in miracles, this story is one of lasting change.
Jason now helps others who have lived a life of crime find the help they need to turn their lives around. One of the first people Jason helped after getting his life in order recently graduated from our state university with honors and is gainfully employed.
Inside the Game
How is it that pimps operate? How are they able to convince young girls that life with them will be better than life with their parents or life on the street?
It is not happenstance, as you will see in the next few paragraphs. Pimps are deliberate and ruthless in the way they systematically groom and then take possession of their victims, fully intending to sell their human flesh for sheer profit. Narcissistic desires for being in power and looking good take a close second place in these predators’ priorities. How are they able to successfully victimize precious and valuable human beings time and again?
Make no mistake; potential victims are prepared for the pimp by our culture. Objectification of women is at an all-time high. Sexualized media is preparing, and some say even grooming, our children for the world of sex trafficking. Music, video games, movies, and television—they all send a message that sexual promiscuity is the norm, that beauty for women equates to being sexy, and that women should be all these things to appeal to a man. Additionally, if a woman can attract a man, it seems to equate to proof in our culture that she is of value.
Never has it been more popular to be famous, and fame is highly valued in our society today. We have noted celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian whom the media often touts as “famous for being famous.” Others who began as child actresses for Disney or Nickelodeon shows have grown up to set new standards in lewd dancing, dressing, and acting.
Celebrities teach our sons they must look and act tough. Even if a guy isn’t wearing droopy pants that hang low to reveal underwear and more, what they wear must give off a macho look. Some have not been influenced by hip-hop culture yet have still bought into society’s message that girls are to be viewed for purposes of fantasy and lust. In fact, they may believe that is what girls really want. Recently I heard someone say that it was more important in his neighborhood to be tough than to be educated, to be street savvy than to be kind and respectful to women. Being macho also means having females your own age a bit in awe of you and maybe fear you a little. Ordinary slang refers to girls as b–tches, hookers, whores, or hoes. If a guy has a girlfriend, she is often referred to as his “old lady” or “b–tch,” sex is an expectation, and he must be the man in the relationship and take charge. Sexting and trying girls out sexually is common, and “friends with benefits” is accepted as normal.
What do celebrities teach our daughters? They teach them how to dress scantily and sexy. And with the airbrushed media, if a young girl doesn’t look as good as the airbrushed star, she needs to try harder, get thinner. In fact, nine in ten girls say the fashion industry (89 percent) or the media (88 percent) place a lot of pressure on teen girls to be thin.3
Teens often spend hours in front of bathroom mirrors learning how to look sexy in all their selfies and other photos. Boys aren’t the only ones who refer to girls as b–tches, hookers, whores, or hoes; teen girls commonly refer to each other using those terms. Being sexual is what everyone is doing, and you should want to do it; if not, don’t tell anyone you are a virgin or not sexually active. Media teaches teen girls that they should be able to dance using grinding and twerking, and it is understood that the purpose is to turn a man on while dancing. Sex is no big deal, comes with no strings attached, and anyone who makes a big deal out of it needs to get over it.
Being attractive is good, but flawless is better. Being attractive means being thin, maybe too thin, and wearing clothes that barely cover one’s underwear, which is optional. After all, that’s how the stars dress.
If girls can be attractive enough, everything will fall at their feet and all their heart’s desires will come true. They will be loved in a spectacular way, they will have plenty of money, and the fame that will surround them will give them more attention than they can handle. And even if the dream of fame fails, if they are sexy they will at least have boys who want them for sex, which in today’s teen culture is a must.
Most of all, being attractive means being sexy. The words handsome and pretty have been replaced by the unisex word sexy. The word sex has gone from being barely spoken in public a couple generations ago to being the word to describe an attractive person.
Recently in my work I saw a photo on a teen’s Facebook page of her one-year-old nephew who was dressed up like a gang member. Her caption read, “This is the sexiest man alive.” I cringed at the message she had written, both for how her mind was thinking and for how this toddler was being groomed before he could barely walk.
All of this is pre-grooming for sex traffickers who are ready to turn out young girls as “fresh meat” or “barely legal.”
Many songs top the billboard charts with titles like “B–tches Ain’t S–t,” which describes grabbing the “hoes” and grabbing cash; “B–tch Betta Have My Money,” which describes keeping “hoes” “on point” and how the pimp expects money; and “One Less B–tch,” which describes the murder of “hoes” who do not comply with their pimp.
With the culture our children live in, it is no wonder that when traffickers approach them, they understand one another. The grooming process has already begun before the next step with the trafficker.
Being a parent in our society is tougher than ever before, but one thing is for sure: if our children understand that all people are equal and learn to respect themselves and others as equals, that is the beginning of “ungrooming” what society has inflicted. If we all view ourselves and others as equals, there will be no place for human trafficking—ever.
There’s Nothing Cool about Pimps
Jason, the pimp discussed earlier in this chapter, chose his misguided, destructive path because it provided him with the three things he thought might ease his pain: money, power, and respect.
Popular culture in the United States doesn’t just condone pimping, it often glamorizes it. In feature movies, on television, and in the world of hard-core hip-hop music, pimping is often presented as a thrilling line of “work” to which young men should proudly aspire. One 2005 hard-core hip-hop song titled “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” which chronicles the sometimes violent struggles of a street pimp to make a living off his “b–tches” and “hoes,” won an Academy Award for best song.4
In too many neighborhoods, pimps are looked up to as symbols of success. Why not? They have all the trappings that money can buy, and their jobs are even celebrated. And not just by the entertainment industry. In a large number of cities, including our own small town, “pimp and ho” parties are publicly advertised and celebrated at local nightclubs.
Excuse me?
There is nothing at all glamorous or socially acceptable about pimps or pimping. Real-life pimps are among the worst kind of predators our culture has to offer, and they pose a very real danger to young women and girls in America today. They are criminals who recruit, coerce, and threaten our young women and girls, then sell them into prostitution. They traffick their victims from brothel to brothel and from town to town, making it extremely difficult, sometimes impossible, for law enforcement or the victims’ families to locate them.
Despite their abysmal record, we elevate pimps in modern speech—especially among the young—by using the word pimp in a positive context. “Wow! You’re pimped out today!” is said to indicate that someone is extremely well dressed. What a way to refer to what was once known as our Sunday best. And what a crime. Common sense tells us that the word pimp should at best indicate something ugly and vulgar. Instead, on every episode of the popular MTV (Music Television) program “Pimp My Ride,” technicians, body and paint specialists, and artists convert people’s beat-up, barely running wrecks into “pimped out” automobiles that their owners can drive down the street with pride.
Since I have become involved in the movement to stop human trafficking, I have come to see the ugliness of the word pimp and all it implies. And although I’m not easily offended, I do take offense at its casual use. Using the word pimp in the ways I’ve listed above—and in similar ways—not only breaks down moral and social barriers to pimping and sex trafficking, it disguises the true ugliness of what real-life pimps do. Its casual use also dehumanizes the women and young girls who fall victim to pimps and puts a glamorous face on the ugliness. Pimps are human traffickers. Pimps are modern slave masters.
We need to debunk this word so that children understand a pimp isn’t the ultimate superstar but rather a criminal who rapes, beats, and uses people and destroys lives. If somebody were to tell me, “Wow! You’re really pimped out today!” I would answer, “No, I’m not. I haven’t raped anybody, and no, I haven’t beaten anybody. I haven’t kept anybody imprisoned, and I haven’t coerced anyone to do the most degrading thing in the world for my own personal profit. No, I’m not pimped out.”
Pimps are sometimes considered the worst kind of human traffickers because they use their victims over and over again until they’re traded or discarded, or, since few manage to escape, until they die.
To be clear, though I’ve been using the word pimp to refer to sex traffickers, there are a variety of pimps out there. Morally, I see little difference among those profiting off of human slave labor, whether in a factory, a home, a field, or a brothel. They’re all selling humans, so they’re all slaveholders. I don’t know any decent person who wants to celebrate that.
Identifying Human Traffickers in Your Backyard
A reality check in terms of semantics is just the start of what’s needed. We must be willing to expose any pimps—any human traffickers—who all too often operate in our very own communities, even posing as upstanding community members.
Human traffickers could be people who are considered virtuous members of your church or community. Think about Given’s story in chapter 2 and Pastor Keith who recruited him and others from Zambia. Is there a worse form of depravity than using God’s name to abuse others?
Human traffickers could be respectable local businessmen who own secret sweatshops. Remember Quyen Truong? Kil Soo Lee, the man who held her and hundreds of others in his American Samoa factory where he forced them to sew garments, did business with some of this country’s top retail clothing brands.
Human traffickers could be restaurateurs in your hometown. How many people enjoyed a meal at the family chain where Charito worked without having a clue that she and the other Asians were being so mistreated?
Human traffickers could be your neighbors, no matter the income level in which you live. Shyima is only one of an untold number of household slaves being held in this country. A 2004 report concludes, “The second highest incidence of forced labor takes place in domestic service in United States homes.”5 And that doesn’t even include the countless sex slaves squirreled away in brothels discreetly run out of ordinary homes in perfectly ordinary neighborhoods.
These human traffickers—these low-down, disgusting pimps—excel at three things: manipulation, power, and control. They’re well versed in classic brainwashing techniques and take pride in being able to bend other people to their will. A former pimp I interviewed explained that pimps are “at the top of the food chain” because instead of selling dope and setting yourself up to get busted or killed, “you control [your girls] with your mind and get the money without doing anything. You put them at risk and you don’t put yourself at risk with jail, all the stuff that can go wrong in that lifestyle.”6
The pimp world has changed since my source got out of the life of crime, and not for the better. Hard to believe, but life has gotten worse for the victims of pimps. Pimp culture used to encourage pride in the fact that they controlled their girls by psychological control. They played manipulation games and still cruelly treated their victims, but with much less physical brutality and torture than many of today’s pimps. However, now we have what is called the “gorilla pimp.” Younger pimps have been conditioned to believe that they must take what they want by brute force and torture.
After all, that is what our hip-hop culture teaches: drugs, alcohol, women, and whatever else brings a young man pleasure should be used for his status and gratification. Songs about pimping encourage dominance by the male, disrespect for females, and violence to maintain that dominance. Both pimping and drug dealing are seen as glamorous, and they are intertwined in this world.
Our challenge lies in changing attitudes so that someone who pimps girls is seen as the slave master he is rather than someone who’s cool. Once that happens, then maybe we can begin to stem some of this flow. As young people become more aware of the recruiting tactics of human traffickers, those typically targeted to be victims of human trafficking become more informed and less vulnerable.
Ironically, a large percentage of human trafficking victims are tricked into going with traffickers. Of course, the trafficker doesn’t tell them the truth. Instead, they say something like, “Come to America. You’ll work in a restaurant and make hundreds of dollars a day in tips.” That’s huge money to a lot of people, and the victim can easily verify that even busboys can earn large tips in the United States. What they don’t realize is that when they get here, instead of waiting tables in that restaurant, they may be dancing a strip pole and having sex for money in a room on the side of the club, with the money going to the perpetrator who trafficks them.
That’s one of the distinct differences between slavery in the old days and modern slavery. Historically, slaves were captured. Today, most slaves have consented to work for their traffickers. They’ve just consented to something very different from what they end up in, so they’ve been duped by someone smart enough, charming enough, and narcissistic enough to pull off a continued series of hoaxes that destroy people’s lives. And because the perpetrators lack compassion and see life as being all about them, they see no reason not to lie if it makes them money. In the traffickers’ minds, hurting someone is justifiable as long as it pads their own pockets.
The bottom line is that a perpetrator is a perpetrator is a perpetrator, whether he’s trafficking slaves for farm work, domestic work, sex, or anything else. Perpetrators do what they do because they profit from it financially and egotistically. It doesn’t matter to them that the profit comes at the expense of another.
The very few perpetrators with even a shred of conscience do everything they can to expunge that sense of right and wrong. When Jason Foster devastated his girlfriend Claire’s life and the lives of so many others by turning them out, he refused to let himself consider why a girl would “go sell her body, do the most extreme thing in the world and give you all the money and stay with you.” He advised a younger pimp he’d taken under his wing to never even consider why someone would be willing to do that. “If you sit here and try to ponder that and think about it, you will go crazy, because there is absolutely no sane reason,” he told him.7 In short, he knew what he was doing was immoral. At the time, however, that just didn’t matter.
For traffickers, the horrific cost to their victims isn’t even a consideration. The sex slaves, the factory workers and farmworkers, the domestic or restaurant workers are simply a tool to make the perpetrator money—and in the process to make him look important. To a perpetrator, using a victim is as casual and calculated as a construction worker picking up a hammer.
So how do you recognize a human trafficker? You can’t tell just by looking, the same way you can’t tell whether someone batters his wife just by looking at him. How do you recognize abusers? They abuse. How do you recognize traffickers? They traffick. There is nothing glamorous about a pimp or any other kind of human trafficker. And unless we see them committing the crime, we often cannot recognize them.
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t hope for some of these people, no matter how far they’ve fallen. As we saw in Jason’s story, with intervention and a deep desire to reform, some can be redeemed. However, that does not negate the necessity for prosecution and for restitution to their victims.
I have met many people who want to find traffickers and punish them in the same way they have tortured their victims. While I can understand how one might feel that way, especially if the victim was their child, those acts will serve no good purpose.
Occasionally I encounter those who want to stand up for the perpetrators because they are people too. My response is that I absolutely believe perpetrators are humans with rights and should be afforded dignity and opportunity to reform, and I hope they find all the help and direction they need behind bars.
What can we do? We can help those whose children are missing by reposting information about missing children on the internet once we have verified that they are still missing. We can join search and rescue groups that do incredible work in locating missing children. We can help put up posters and encourage someone whose child or loved one is missing.
But we can never lose sight of who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. The crimes they have committed are some of the worst on earth. Some of their victims never recover. Some will commit suicide because the pain of survival is too much for them. Human trafficking laws must be improved, services must be improved. In the meantime, those of us who are in this fight must do all we can from day to day to help raise awareness about human trafficking. This is a messy world in which we live, and we must never lose sight of the goal to stop human trafficking that is detrimental to all.
For Discussion