January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. This means so much to me because I am a survivor of sex trafficking. This is my story.
By: Julie Whitehead
Tags: Rape, Sex Trafficking, Survivor, Domestic Abuse, Human Trafficking

I was a 30-year-old mother of three young children. I volunteered in their classrooms and with the local PTA. I appeared to be just a normal member of society, but things were much different behind closed doors. Ultimately, my husband was arrested for domestic violence and due to his isolating tactics and relentless control, I found myself without a support network.

I was teaching at a Utah preschool and a father of one of my students began taking an interest in me, asking me if I was OK and if things were all right at home. I found myself opening up to him about my life and he seemed genuinely interested and empathetic. He told me (which I found out later was a complete lie) that he had recently gone through a nasty divorce himself and would be willing to help me through the process. I desperately needed a friend, an ally. I was scared and alone, and my soon-to-be ex-husband seemed void of a conscious in his attacks and threats against me. He promised me that he wouldn’t stop until he “spilled every last drop of my blood.” I was in over my head.

This father showed up with meals on nights when I didn’t have it in me to cook dinner for my children. He brought gifts for the kids, called to check on me, and offered to drive around my neighborhood because my ex-husband was breaking the protective order by stalking me. This father slowly gained my trust. He was always there when I needed him. I honestly thought he was an answer to a prayer, a guardian angel of sorts.

Two weeks later, this father asked me to run an errand with him to his sister’s home. He said we would only be a half hour and suggested that it would do me good to get out of the house. Once inside, he asked me to come upstairs with him for just a minute. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I didn’t know why. I thought I was being paranoid and chastised myself for being so suspicious of someone who had been nothing but nice to me. So I followed him upstairs. We went into a bedroom and he shut the door, standing in front of it and blocking my escape. He raped me and everything changed.

He became threatening. He told me he would work with my ex-husband to make sure I lost everything in the divorce, especially custody of my children. He said he would tell any lie about me in order to accomplish this. He threatened the safety of myself, my children, and even my parents whom he claimed to know where they lived and worked. He told me that I would do exactly as he said and not tell a soul or all of his threats would be realized. I believed him.

For the next five months, I was his prisoner. During the week, he watched my every move, following me, constantly calling and texting, and making sure I did as I was told. I took care of my kids the best I could and continued showing up in their classrooms and volunteering to keep up the appearance that everything was fine. But on the weekends, when my children were on visits with their dad or a babysitter, he took me on “trips” that ended in locations all over the state of Utah, the surrounding states, and even Mexico. At every location, other men were waiting to pay for their time with me.

I was sold, drugged, tied up, tortured, threatened, and absolutely terrified. Sometimes my biggest worry was that my trafficker would leave me at one of these places and I would never be seen again. Other times, I thought he would kill me. And the worst times were when I thought he would carry out his threats to hurt my children.

I saw horrible things, things I can never forget. I saw other women and young girls being trafficked. I saw drugs, weapons, and cash. I was degraded and made to feel non-human. I had to live two separate lives: one with my children during the week, attending parent-teacher conferences and meeting with attorneys for the divorce and custody battle; and the other as a human slave, someone who was invisible or who existed in the community but was never truly seen.

I escaped at the end of five months, though I feared it might cost me my life. I couldn’t have done it alone. I needed help. Someone saw me at a restaurant and believed something didn’t look right with my situation. He approached me when I was away from my trafficker, and I took a huge chance by trusting him and telling him that I was in trouble, though I was too afraid to admit to the whole truth. Instead, I just said I was in a violent relationship. I was lucky, so lucky. This man helped me, and I was finally able to break free.

Throughout the years that followed, I went into a deep denial about what I had lived through. I was stalked by my trafficker for years as he reinforced his presence in my life and threatened me if I told the whole truth. I took him to court on a civil and later a criminal stalking injunction, but I still claimed that he was simply a violent ex-boyfriend. I didn’t know that what I had been through had a name.

My trafficker made good on his promise to involve my ex-husband and they worked together, showing up in court as each other’s witnesses against me, spewing dozens of lies. Years later, my trafficker was in prison for some other violent offenses, and I finally felt safe enough to disclose to my new husband and my therapist exactly what I had lived through. That’s when I learned …

I am a survivor of sex trafficking.

My trafficker had an upcoming hearing for possible deportation from the United States, so I summoned all of my courage to testify against him. He was there in the courtroom on some days and on a huge TV screen on other days. I had to tell all the nitty-gritty details with him, and even some of his family, staring me down. It was terrifying, humiliating, and traumatizing. But in the end, my trafficker was sentenced to deportation, never to be allowed back on U.S. soil.

That was four years ago. I am still in therapy trying to heal. I’m making good progress, but I won’t ever feel completely at peace with what happened. The one thing that makes me feel the most hopeful about my recovery is when I am involved in spreading awareness, advocating for victims, and working in whatever ways I can to help eradicate this disgusting criminal enterprise.

For all those who have survived sex trafficking, keep going.

For those who know a survivor, don’t give up on them.

For those who don’t know much about trafficking, realize that it’s happening all around you. Become informed and help make a difference in someone’s life.

For those who help victims heal, donate to aftercare programs, or devote themselves to this cause, THANK YOU! You truly are heroes.