7
My Vulnerability

My childhood was terrible, and yet not any worse than that of many other victims of human trafficking. I had been chosen and groomed by Mary—which probably wasn’t her real name.

Her name may have been false, but the method was real, and she used the techniques most human traffickers employ to steal and destroy the lives of ignored and sexually abused young people. Like me, those children and teens have little sense of self-worth. Why would they? They feel no one loves them and no one is looking out for them.

I was an ideal candidate. It didn’t take much for Mary to notice my vulnerability and exploit me. She knew what she was doing, but I was blind to the multimillion-dollar industry of the sex trade that was going on behind the scenes.

Most people would think that after it happened once, I would wise up to the lures and tricks of the trade. Actually, it made me more blind to the trafficking. We know that if a child is targeted once, they are more likely to be targeted again. As I had yet to learn, there develops an invisible chain that binds targeted children to their predators.

Three times I was seduced into a terrible lifestyle, and each time it was more serious. I took free cocaine and alcohol and endured the sexual abuse as a necessary evil. With no one standing up for me or stepping up to rescue me, I believed the lie that my lifestyle was acceptable.

That belief, along with the deadening effect of drugs and my continual yearning for love and affection, meant the sex was something I put up with. Eventually, I needed the drugs to get me through the days, weeks, and events. Because I lived in what I call a survival mode, I had no respect for myself. I was deadened to the life around me. At times, I felt I was some kind of pseudo-human.

By the age of fifteen, I thought my lifestyle was normal; it was how everybody like me lived. It didn’t seem to matter, because I believed I deserved to be mistreated. Again, why not? The mistreatment had become an ingrained part of my lifestyle.

I hung around other kids who felt the way I did, and in each other we found acceptance. Being with others in the same situation helped us believe the way we were living was normal. Since we had no control over our environment and no one guided us in the right path, our behavior became familiar, and therefore it became easy for us to live in those compromising environments.

Despite that, something inside me knew it was wrong, but I had no one to point me in the right direction. Those who tried to tell me I was wrong or that I was doing terrible things with my life, I tuned out. They hadn’t been there to stop my childhood sexual abuse, and I couldn’t trust them.

Dad remained abusive to my mom, so I didn’t respect her or her opinion. I thought if she couldn’t protect herself or me, why should I listen to her? My mother came from Finland, and she had no awareness of such things as human trafficking. Where she lived, people trusted everyone and they didn’t lock their doors at night. Several times I thought, If I tell her, she’ll freak out, overreact, and I don’t know what she’ll do.

I kept silent.

Over time, I discovered that the love from my handlers was false, and eventually I was able to escape. Yet, even with the dehumanizing, perverse, and disgusting lifestyle, those in the trade know how to keep us trusting them and dependent on them. Long after we leave, the lure to return is there.

Some never move beyond that dependency.

I was one of the lucky ones. I survived the degradation of being a sexual commodity. Some say that fewer than 15 percent of human trafficking victims ever escape. Although I was fed cocaine regularly, I overcame my drug addiction. Unlike most victims, I didn’t die before the age of twenty-five.

My story could have been like the stories of other victims I’ve known. Many of them are used up and dead by the time they reach the age of eighteen. Some survive to their twenties, but few live much longer. If they do get away, they rarely tell anybody, or they surrender to lives of prostitution or adult entertainment.

Most of those I hear from today stay addicted to drugs and sell their bodies to feed their habit—including children who have been sold by their parents to feed their own demanding, compulsive need for drugs. It becomes a horrible, vicious cycle of addiction and abuse from one generation to another.

Now I live to help other girls—and increasingly boys—to walk in freedom and find that they too can regain their self-respect and human dignity. Because I’m alive and free, I want to warn others about the dangers.

Looking back, I can see that my childhood experiences made me vulnerable and set me up for the traffickers. Even before I was old enough to attend school, fear was an everyday occurrence. Mom and Dad argued a lot. Before long, it escalated into yelling at each other. One day, he threatened to kill her, and Mom’s screaming grew louder. With tears in my eyes, I ran into the kitchen. Mom, wearing her bathing suit and barefooted, was trembling and trying to push him away.

He held a butcher knife a few inches from her throat.

“Don’t kill Mommy! Daddy, please don’t kill Mommy!”

He didn’t kill her, of course, and I don’t remember how it stopped. But after that, I worried that he might kill her. Not only did my father yell often, but sometimes he struck her with his fist. Other times he threatened to make me pay for our mistakes—even if I didn’t know what mistakes we made.

I was about five years old when my dad introduced me to inappropriate sexual contact. My parents were already divorced, and it was one of those many times when we lived with him because my mom depended on him and couldn’t afford her own place.

That day Mom was working in the kitchen, and Dad was in the bathroom with the door open. He called me. “Honey, come here. I want to show you something.”

He stood in front of me, and his pants and underwear were at his knees. Because he hadn’t done that before, I didn’t know what to do.

“This is a privilege,” he said quietly, and made it seem like I should be honored to look at his naked manhood.

I was afraid and began shaking.

“Here, touch me,” he said.

Even at that age, I knew it was something that a little girl shouldn’t do. Yet because he was my father, I did what he said. Even during my early teen years, he tried touching my breasts and his hands searched my body for “growth and maturity.”

That first time, however, I called out to my mother, “Daddy asked me to touch his pee-pee! He made me touch his pee-pee!”

Mom rushed into the bathroom and yelled, “You dirty old man!”

By then he had turned away and pulled up his pants.

A few days later, Dad called me into his bedroom and locked the door. He had his own bedroom. Mom, my brother, and I slept in the second bedroom.

Dad started by playing games with me, and it was fun. Although the memories are somewhat fragmented, at some point he touched me and showed me how and where to touch him. Even though I didn’t like doing it, I craved his approval, and he was my daddy, so I obeyed.

And I felt dirty.

I don’t remember if that happened only once or several times. The next memory I have was after I turned seven. That’s when he touched my breasts. “You’re developing fast,” he said. “You’d better be careful of boys. They’ll take advantage of you.”

By then we lived in the same apartment building, one floor above my father. I ran out of his apartment that time and into Mom’s arms. “He—he touched me again.”

“Stay here.” She slammed the door and went downstairs.

I have no idea what she said, but after she came back I said, “I’m afraid he’s going to get mad at me.”

“He’s not going to get mad at you,” she said. “He shouldn’t do things like that.”

Thirty years later, I realized that Dad had destroyed my personal boundaries. Sad to say, it was only the first violation. Being that he was my father, it normalized being exploited and abused by men.

I believed all men were like him.

I’ll tell you a little more about myself. I was born in North Miami, Florida. My brother, Daniel, is eighteen months older. Our mother is Finnish and our father was a Romanian Jew. I look like my mother, with blonde hair and a voluptuous figure. My first name, with the odd spelling, comes from my European heritage. My last name and hazel eyes show that I’m my father’s daughter.

My parents divorced when I was three years old. Even after they were no longer married, my father wasn’t out of our lives. As strange as it seems, my mother not only remained dependent on my father, but she continued to work for him all the years I was growing up. A typical arrangement was an apartment where Dad claimed the master bedroom and the three of us slept in the other.

Dad worked hard in real estate, where he bought and sold businesses. By the time I was born, he had become a millionaire. Despite that, he never enjoyed his wealth, and I don’t think he was secure with the money he accumulated. He seemed constantly afraid that he would lose everything. Besides, Dad was cheap—very cheap—which I now realize was because of his fear of becoming poor again. Not only had he grown up during the Great Depression, it had also been an era of discrimination against Jews in America.

Because his life had been hard, I assume that’s why he never gave me or my brother money for anything unless we begged. When he occasionally took the family out to eat—oddly enough, always at expensive places—he gave each of us a five-dollar limit, although a full meal would have cost at least twice that amount.

Before we went into a movie theater, we stopped at a convenience store and bought candy because it was cheaper. Even in those days, people weren’t supposed to bring their own snacks, so we had to sneak our treats inside. I still have memories of those early years—strange, sad, and fragmentary—but they remind me of what an abusive childhood I survived, and I’m saddened to realize how Dad also abused my mother.

During my childhood, we moved often because we had no financial stability. Mom always seemed to be begging Dad for money. He often refused, even when it was for something like food or clothes.

Another factor about my father was that he had consistent interactions with those within the Mafia. But I have to say this for him: Dad wouldn’t let them control him. The year before I was conceived, Dad argued with one of the Mafia bosses and refused to let them take over his business. A few days later, they bombed his office. Dad wasn’t hurt, but only because he was late for work that morning. They didn’t try again.

Dad’s refusal to back down was one of the good things I learned from him. Long after I broke away from the sex trade, I figured out how to stand up for myself—it wasn’t easy, but I learned. If I hadn’t learned from his example, I wouldn’t be alive today, fighting against this evil of human trafficking. I wasn’t as courageous as Dad, who refused to be intimidated by the Mafia and kicked the boss out of his office. It took me a long time to take action, but ultimately I was able to stand up for myself.

And yet my life is also contradictory. The strong, determined part of my personality is there, but there has also been the victim mentality. I absorbed that by watching my mother’s submission to Dad’s cruel and demanding ways as well as giving in to his abuse and sexual advances.

For instance, my earliest memory of Dad is him putting me inside his car, locking the door, and walking away. I was too little to unlock the door. Because it’s hot and muggy in South Florida in the summer, I began crying. I have no idea of the time factor, but my mother finally found me, opened the car, and took me into her arms.

Looking back, I wonder if Dad had some kind of personality disorder. However, my experiences set me up to be victimized. Learned helplessness and powerlessness entered my brain as a young child. I was taught to be dependent, and I looked for others’ approval.

There was also a spiritual awareness in my life—not strong, but real. Around the young age of three, my mom told me about Jesus being God’s Son and that God was my heavenly Father. I didn’t understand what she meant until one day when I was a little older. My dad was working outside on his car, and I heard a voice, which I learned to recognize as God’s. That early memory stands out clearly, despite the years of cocaine in between.

I am your Father, the voice said.

Confused, I looked at Dad, who was perhaps twenty feet away. “Then who is that guy?”

He is your dad too, but I am your heavenly Father.

From that moment on, I knew I had a relationship with a different kind of Father, someone who was looking out for me. I didn’t grasp what that meant, and it would be years before I threw off the victim mentality that I had learned from my earthly father who mistreated us.

It didn’t take much for Dad to lose control, and little things set him off. Because his rules weren’t consistent, I had no idea why or when he’d object or yell at me. My mother took the abuse, and I always knew who had the upper hand in our home and family. Ours was a male-dominated family, and we yielded to whatever the men wanted. No one said those words, but it was a learned form of behavior.