I promised this story would be told. I have waited to tell it my whole life, but fear has kept it inside. At first it was fear that my traffickers would find out and punish me for telling like they had promised. Then it was fear that J.Q. Public would not want to hear it and punish me for telling. But it is my story and for the safety of our children, it needs to be told. Trafficking of children does exist. It existed 60 years ago when I was a child. Here is the first blog. There will be a new published here each Tuesday until the story is told. My husband wrote it, but my words are in italics.
This story has been a long time coming, primarily because we have had to mature and gain perspective on something so out of the ordinary that it boggles the mind. This is a synopsis of a struggle it has taken years to digest and then comprehend and finally gain the understanding that we presently have. And this perspective, too, may change further over time.
To be used as a child prostitute at the tender age of 9 and 10 and in kiddie porn throughout your childhood does something to the brain that is hard to undo. I, Vicki, thought the rest of the world was living a “Brady Bunch” type life while I was caught in a hell that was mostly “how am I going to survive this next hour?” My parents presented as normal functioning people. They were both college educated and my dad was a military man. We lived in middle to upper middle class homes and spent summer afternoons at the pool. I was a Girl Scout and an honor roll student by day, but at night and on many weekends I was taken by my father to his little “parties” with his friends. The PTSD I suffer now from what I went thru is difficult on a day to day basis. For instance, most pictures of me show the haunted, terrified look in my eye of the little child who is being photographed in a porn show.
I hope by telling this story that three things will be accomplished. One, I know it will help my personal healing to speak out to a general audience. This produces a certain kind of validation that is cleansing. Two, I want to help people, who live in the USA, understand that between 200,000 and 300,000 children domestically are being used in the commercial child sex trade each year. This is a national tragedy and sadly not a well-known one. We all lose when this amount of innocence is robbed from our children. And I can’t help but think that we are all accountable—if only by our ignorance or inaction. And third, I would like for my own children to better understand what’s behind my PTSD and to more graciously accept it and forgive the lack of normalcy it created in their lives. And maybe—just maybe—they might even understand that they, like myself, have developed a greater capacity for compassion because of their experience.
This is “Human Trafficking Awareness” month. Our story is meant to aid in understanding the dynamics of this kind of child abuse—both victim and perpetrator—and especially to give insight into the violence of this particular kind of abuse. In the process of writing this—as you will see—it became obvious that sexual trafficking is one of the most violence of crimes against children. It creates shame and darkens the soul more than almost any other type of human desecration.
It should be understood that I, Jody, am telling the bulk of this story from my perspective. Vicki is actively engaged with the writing and you will see her hand in italics. She is much more of a talker than writer. We both think the story is more understandable when narrated by someone with one foot inside her world and the other in everyone else’s world. And I have one additional purpose: to tell the story for its own sake. It’s an incredible and fascinating story that I entitle “The Long Shadow of Darkness” because it invites you into an understanding of evil and its effects that I am sure is beyond your present ken.
If you would like to see the work we are involved with in Guatemala, visit our website at www.safehomesforchildren.org . Our child advocacy work there is designed to keep families together which is the foremost deterrent to exploitation of children. Vicki does public speaking on child trafficking in the States, and if you would like to you can make donations to Safe Homes and note its purpose.
