I am an exceedingly private person. That being said, it is time to impart the fact that I am a survivor of sex trafficking.
The decision to say this publicly did not come quickly, nor easily. It is not a sentence I write without weight. It is not a truth I speak without consequence. Watching current events unfold has moved me to share, in support of other survivors. Because this path, being a trafficking survivor, is, at times, brutally isolating.
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There are long stretches of silence. Moments when the world continues on as if nothing happened, while inside, everything has changed. There are days when the truth feels too heavy to carry alone, and nights when the echoes of it refuse to fade.
We, the survivors, carry the truth of what has happened, what is happening, and what continues to happen, and we always will.
We carry it because we experienced, brutally, and intimately, deeply, from its insidious moments of torturous abuse to the long-lasting path of recovery.
We carry it because the truth deserves a voice and I believe we can thrive beyond the selfish acts of evil and violence placed upon our innocence.
I am certainly not what happened to me and yet the reality is that the impact of what happened never goes away. I do not have the privilege of turning away, of taking a break. For survivors, the aftermath of what was forced upon us never goes away. Sit with that.
I stand behind my fellow trafficking survivors. Our stories may be different. Our journeys may not look the same. And yet the thread that connects us is real, and it is unbreakable. It is time to raise our voices together, in solidarity, in unison, in a collective call for change and action.
Too often, I have witnessed the human response to inconvenient truth.
When facts, evidence, and the voices of survivors cry out with glaring clarity, the truth is still denied. It is questioned, minimized, twisted, or buried. The discomfort of the truth becomes more frightening to society than the harm itself. And so, the perpetrators remain untouched, and justice becomes an empty promise.
This is the reality many survivors face.
Not just the trauma of what happened, but the silence that follows it.
The disbelief.
The avoidance.
The refusal to look directly at what is right in front of us.
The truth is that silence protects no one except the abusers.
Believing survivors is not a radical act. It is a humane one. It is the bare minimum of compassion. It is the beginning of justice, not the end of it.
One of the most difficult things to bear witness to is the lack of justice and glaring lack of accountability: When blame is shifted to the survivors through victim blaming. When blame is shifted to the devil. When the truth is twisted.
To be clear, the heinous evil acts of trafficking, are, and were, committed by adults of their own free will. Each perpetrator freely made a choice to commit these atrocities, repetitively, again and again.
If you do not understand this, you are aligning yourself with, and condoning, these crimes.
Survivors do not speak because it is easy.
We do not speak because we want attention.
We do not speak because it benefits us.
We speak because the truth lives inside us, and sometimes it becomes too loud to keep buried.
We speak because somewhere, another survivor is still in the dark, wondering if anyone will ever believe them.
We speak because change has yet to occur and never comes from silence.
We speak because our voices, together, are stronger than the systems that tried to erase us.
We speak with the hope to protect and prevent further abuse. For as these heinous crimes continue, children are still being victimized.
If you are a survivor reading this, you are not alone.
Your story matters.
Your voice matters.
You matter.
And if you are someone who has never walked this path, I ask only this: listen. Believe. Bear witness. Stand beside us and join your voice with ours as we speak the truth.
We are seeking justice.
Justice is not built on denial.
It is built on truth, courage, and collective action.
And the time for that action is now.
