From Sex trafficked Child To Child Advocate: Another Therapist

I am in Guatemala now and part of what I am doing it assessing and researching the incidence of trafficked children. I have learned 2 things. 1. You put your life on the line by housing sex trafficked children in a safe house. It might be blown up. 2. Teachers in the remote Mayan areas are scared to even do "good touch/bad touch" talks because if a kid comes forward and discloses abuse, the teacher puts his life on the line getting that child help. So basically not much is being done about it "because no one wants to die".
I have many pictures and have learned many other things about the communities and children and mamas we are helping. As soon as I get home and can put my pictures on my computer, I will post blogs about them.

Here is the next blog in my abuse series. Want to get them finished up so we can start on our book.

Another Therapist

 I am going to change the name of this blog from "From Child Prostitute To Child Advocate" to "From Sex-Trafficked Child To Child Advocate".   The first title seems to indicate some complicity on my part.  Many people ignorantly believe that prostitution is something that women do of their own volition.  That is rare and never the case with children.  And I know some of you are wondering when we will actually get to the part where I was trafficked.   I believe we have already gotten there.  At the time I was retrieving these memories neither one of us understood this, but now it seems most plausible that the men and women who came to the secret pineapple meetings in Hawaii were paying participants. They received drugs and sex and in exchange paid cash.  My dad sold his daughter and got sex and drugs for free.  This first cult experience in Hawaii did not have much ritual and little Satanism.  But this memory was mixed with others where the ritual of Satanism was more dominant.  I believe that some of the multi-perpetrator groups my father had me in used the word “Satanism” as a cloak.  It was easier to do all the evil things they did in the name of religion than to just admit they were dirty old men and women horribly abusing children.  History is littered with cruelties done in the name of religion.  At the time Jody and I did not have any other way of giving it a name and we were inclined to think there was some continuity between the various memories even when the geography changed.  And there was some ritual--like the act of killing yourself if you told and the brainwashing that went along with that.   "Child-Sex Trafficking" are words that started in the 21st century and more accurately describe my experience.

We began reading everything we could find on Ritual Abuse and Satanic Cults.  Always before I had thought of this as science fiction or the occult and not quite real, but there was something very real happening.  The palpable fear that Vicki was experiencing and radiating throughout the house was not part of her normal character.  Neither Vicki nor I understood it and there were few books on the subject; it was something very new. 

After networking for several weeks Vicki managed to find another therapist with experience in this area.  Joe was two and half hours away in another direction.  Before he would even meet with Vicki he peppered her with questions:  “Do you find that you sometimes lose time and don’t know what happened over a period of several hours or days?  Do you meet people who seem to know you but call you by a different name? . . . ”  Vicki answered no  to each question.   “Basically I’m trying to figure out whether you’re a multiple or not.  I’ve already got one such client and I can’t handle another.” 

In addition to Ritual Abuse we added several new words to our lexicon:  Multiple Perpetrator Abuse; Dissociation; Multiple Personality Disorder; and PTSD—Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.   There was another whole vocabulary that went with Ritual Abuse because it was of a much more severe order than sexual abuse or incest.  The word “ritual” came for the ceremony that went along with much of the abuse.

Joe belonged to a group of therapists and could only barter one-half of his fee, which was almost exactly how much her father was sending her each month.  But Joe was more than willing to do that.  Like Isaac he seemed to have a heart for the work that he did.

The nature of Vicki’s memories did not bother Joe.  He had heard it before and that offered a form of validation to Vicki—apparently other people had been through these kinds of experiences before.  It was real.  In one sense that was comforting; Vicki wasn’t crazy.  But it did underscore the potential of some of her fears. 

Joe did have a strict rule about not calling him after hours.  “This memory work is going to be very difficult,” he told Vicki in a form of understatement that we didn’t appreciate at the time, “and you need to get together a support team.  People you can call day or night to listen to you and help you work through this.”  My name was not to be on the list.  These were people she could call when I felt overwhelmed and needed time out.  I was especially grateful for this dictum because I could not handle much of Vicki’s reaction to her memories.  She would get angry and then nasty as if I had been the perpetrator and she blamed me for everything she was feeling.  This altered state of personality was called dissociation.  Joe said Vicki’s reaction to me was partially due to the fact that I did much of the actual memory work with her—what a therapist might normally do if she were close enough to do multiple sessions a week.  This conveyance of feelings was called transference and was supposed to happen with a therapist but it was too late to change since she could only do appointments every other week, and it was one of the things that we did well together.  Joe wanted her to make a list of five or six people who would volunteer for this role as telephone counselor and bring it to him.

After several sessions Vicki brought up the subject that worried us most:  Was Vicki’s father still involved with these groups?  Was there reason to fear?  At that time Joe was uncertain.  Vicki had not had any memories beyond simple incest while she was in her teenage years.   Her father had left the military and moved to their present home when she was fourteen years old.   It appeared from her memories that the ritual abuse had only occurred while he was in the military and traveling from one assignment to another. 

“To be safe I think you need to assume that he is still involved.  Based on my experience that’s what I would guess.  Not seeing him is a good idea--let’s continue that.”  Because of Vicki’s high level of fear Joe also though that Vicki should write him another letter saying that she had finished therapy and no longer needed him to continue sending money.   This ruse would throw him off and he would assume that she had not remembered anything beyond incest.

This part of my life was not happening in a vacuum.  Less than a month before Hannah was born I made a trip to Florida with Jody to see his mother who was dying of cancer.  She died a week later on Memorial Day.  A few weeks after Hannah was born word came that his father was in the terminal stages of melanoma.  He would die unexpectedly early in the beginning of September.   Life at this time was extremely hard.  Jody remembered a dream that he had had earlier of twin tornados that might best describe the devastation those two events caused in his life.  Our life during that season was a wreck and we were just surviving.  Hannah was my saving grace.  I wouldn't dare stab myself when I was pregnant--there was a baby inside!  And afterward she was totally dependent on me; it was imperative that I stay alive.  The sweet spirit of that tiny baby was Heaven sent.