[00:02:39] I'm a farm girl. … I was homeschooled. … I have one sister.
[00:03:50] It's a 550-acre farm. It's been in the family for ever. I currently live on the farm, my family lives a couple of miles up the road.
[00:04:37] I just always felt like I was out of place, I never felt like I fit in [on the farm]. I always had big dreams.
[00:06:01] I definitely was a performer from a very young age. And I definitely wanted to be in the performing arts. And one thing that was awesome about being homeschooled and privately educated, was that my family could direct their focus more on the things I was good at, and a little bit less on the things that I wasn't good at.
[00:07:15] At an early age I started going to punk rock concerts, especially once I got my driver's permit. It was there at one of the concerts that … [breaks out laughing]
[00:08:36] At the Vans Warped Tour in Chicago IL I met a photographer that said that he wanted to make me a star. … He was from Los Angeles, and this moment was pretty much the beginning of the end. I flew to Los Angeles not long after that, my mother accompanying me because I was a minor.
[00:09:33] This man who was well into his 20s, he was into his late 20s, offered me an opportunity I thought I couldn't pass up. And my parents, being the amazing supportive people that they are, went along with it.
[00:09:55] My mom came along with me on that trip. … On that trip I was groomed for what would happen later. On that trip I was sexually assaulted under the influence of drugs, my mother was not present, she kinda let me go and hang out and be myself. … I didn't know that I could talk to my family about it … and I really didn't have anyone to talk to so I stayed quiet about it.
[00:11:15] I finished my education early because of being homeschooled and the same photographer that had assaulted me introduced me to a high-profile musician. The high-profile musician said "come out to Los Angeles, we'll start a music career, you're going to be a model, you're going to be a musician, you're going to be famous." And I believed it.
[00:11:34] So before I turned 18, my father drove me out to Los Angeles with the small amount of possessions that I owned.
[00:12:11] When I got to Los Angeles, within 48 hours I was addicted to a drug I only know as "ice", I don't know what it was, this is quite a while ago. Now I'm 39 years old, back then I was 17.
[00:12:30] It started off with the famous musician offering me a couple beers … and after I had a little bit of cocktails then the drugs were offered, I was under the influence, then the serious grooming started.
[00:12:59] In retrospect I really just wanted to please everyone, because I really wanted to be famous. That sounds funny now to say it because now that's the last thing I want.
[00:13:44] The gentleman who promised me the world ended up selling me after a couple of days. I remember it clearly. I was sold for $500 for a very older gentleman in the hills, the Hollywood Hills. This gentleman ran a … a trafficking ring, it was a prostitution trafficking ring for transgender folks. … I remember it clearly.
[00:14:34] That was basically the ultimate beginning of the end, when I was sold to that guy.
[00:14:50] So this is in a day before cell phones. This is pre-9/11. … I was extremely vulnerable, I had no connections in Los Angeles … I was completely alone.
[00:15:24] Because of amazing grooming, and I have to give them credit for this, they did a really good job, at that point in it, I would have thought if I'd had gone to the authorities it would have been my fault.
[00:16:42] I've been blessed in a way, where I'm fortunate enough where I don't remember everything. My memory is very spotty, because I had had a lack of food, a lack of water, I was on drugs and other substances. The benefit of that for me is that my memory is a little hazy about it, and so for that I'm grateful. I've also come to terms with the fact that those memories might come.
[00:17:23] I was so difficult for the gentleman who purchased me to handle that he actually gave me back to the original person, for free, gave me back to the original person who sold me. And that person left me for dead in a hallway after a extremely heavy excursion. I ended up in Cedars Sinai hospital in apparent drug overdose.
[00:19:21] They released me from the hospital and I flew back to the farm. I rolled back home with a trash bag … my family didn't even recognise my after I'd got off the plane. Keep in mind this wasn't long after my father dropped me off.
[00:19:38] [Q: How long?] I can't really recollect. I'd probably have to ask my mom, which I'd rather not [laughs]. But it wasn't long. It didn't take a long time for this to go down. When I got off the plane they didn't even recognise me when they came to get me. I definitely was traumatised.
[00:20:05] After I got it together a little bit, it was maybe two weeks I spent back on the farm. I flew back to Los Angeles, because I had moved there. So my car was there, everything I owned was there. And within a couple hours I remember contacting the same person who had done the original trafficking.
[00:20:24] It's odd what happens to the trauma brain, once you've experienced that trauma. A lot of people call it Stockholm Syndrome, we call it trauma bonds in the movement. I was developing a trauma bond with my traffickers. Fortunately, for me, they didn't accept my calls. I'm assuming it was because I was such a handful, I was pretty difficult to deal with, even at any stage of being trafficked, I think one thing that saved my life continuously was that I was really difficult to deal with.
[00:21:10] My consistent willingness to fight was what actually kept me alive.
[00:21:42] I had met what would turn out to be my husband. I got married at a very young age to someone I was in a band with. Unfortunately that marriage was an abusive relationship, that was a domestic violence situation, he tried to kill me multiple times.
[00:22:07] When he left for Iraq, because he had joined the military and we had moved to Germany, I was telling a friend one day about our relationship and she let me know, "Hey that's domestic violence, that's abuse, and you should leave". So I decided to leave.
[00:22:48] We ended up getting a simplified dissolution [it was a CA marriage].
[00:22:56] I had entered another relationship and unfortunately that relationship ended in a very tumultuous and heartbreaking way. And because of the heartbreak from that situation, I sort of went back to my trauma brain. [Is this meant to be the MCR guy?]
[00:23:20] I was really vulnerable, and part of being vulnerable led me back to being trafficked again.
[00:23:33] I didn't go back to my original traffickers. I don't even know where they are. I have absolutely no idea where they are. [But she said one was a "high-profile musician" -- surely it's easy to find out where he is?]
[00:23:41] I ran into a crowd with a new set of traffickers … we would call them pimps. … And unfortunately I fell back into the life.
[00:24:19] It took me a lot of years to reach out. And what happened was, after being passed around in the life for quite a few years, I will be honest with you my family noticed things that were going on, but they could never really put their finger on it.
[00:24:56] At no time was I chained up. At no time was I without a cellphone. At no time was I without Internet. The first trafficking, yes, because there really weren't cellphones … but after, when I was an adult … when I fell back into the lifestyle, when I fell back into the game, I always had a cellphone, I always had ability to walk into a police department and I just never did.
[00:25:28] There are a couple of reasons for that. Number one, a good trafficker will put a hit out on your life. They know where you live, they know where your family lives, they have your identification.
[00:26:14] Fortunately human trafficking over the past years has come to the forefront and the public eye.
[00:26:57] One of those non-profits had dropped off a beautiful stack of bibles one night to a gentleman's club that I was being trafficked out of. And I walked in to check in for work … and I saw the stack of bibles, and I asked the manager if I could have one. What I didn't realise when I asked the manager if I could have one, was that there was an email address in the back — actually it was a website, sorry I mistake, there was a website on the back of the bible.
[00:27:40] It's this beautiful pink little bible, but on the back they had put this website. I held on to that website information in that bible for a year and a half before I reached out for help.
[00:28:03] I don't really even know what the breaking point was, because I had been beaten up so many times, I had been sexually assaulted so many times, I had been … black eyes, permanent scars on my face, teeth chipped, I mean anything you could possibly think of, it happened. Drugged, I was drugged so many times. I had gone to the police a lot of times. But something, one night, I couldn't take it any more.
[00:28:50] I was living on the west side of Chicago … I was living on a gang line, and there were shootings, killings …
[00:30:42] (Q: Can you share the name of the organisation [she contacted]?) Um, you know what, I'd rather not right now just because I wanna make sure I protect them as well. A lot of times advocates and organisations become targets, but I'll definitely … I'd have to ask them first, so without their permission, I don't want to put them in jeopardy.
[00:31:10] When I stepped away from the my traffickers lost money, and they want that money back, so that non-profit would become a target for my traffickers.
[00:32:13] (Q: How many years had passed since your first trip to LA?) That's a really good question, I'd have to do the math. My first trip to LA, originally, I was 16. And this day I'm talking about, I was already in my 30s, I mean my early 30s, I might have been 30. But I would really have to go back and look. I still have the original email, I read the email sometimes when I do public lectures at universities and things like that.
[00:32:56] (Q: And I understand this wasn't the last time you tried to get out, right?) Unfortunately I did go to a safe house … I lasted for three months, like I said I've always been pretty rebellious … with two days of leaving that safe house I was already back with my trafficker.
[00:33:41] And one thing that was so alluring about my trafficker at this point was that he was high-profile. … He's a high-profile athlete, so we'll just leave that there.
[00:34:12] (Q: So how many years until you finally got out for good?) So I bounced back and forth a little bit …
[00:35:59] I started to see what was really going on, and I had gotten a boyfriend. And at the point I got a boyfriend, enough is enough, and I walked away. I always said I would leave the life if I met somebody that I truly loved, and I did.
[00:36:21] I think another big tipping point for me was when my nephew was born. I didn't want him to lose his aunt to the game, I didn't want to lose his aunt to the street.
[00:36:48] After the relationship with the boyfriend ended I decided to stay on the farm.
[00:37:48] You [a survivor] might go back to the life, and I will never judge somebody for doing that because I did it so many times. I had to have so many experiences that got me out.
[00:38:52] (Q: How long have you been out for?) You know, people always ask [laughs] people always ask me that [laughs] and I tried to figure it out the other the day. I honestly think it totals six years, and I might change that later, and it's not because I'm lying, it just might be because I didn't remember something, or I might need to go back further.
[00:39:12] My best recollection, I'm gonna say six years because around the time I started volunteering, because almost right away when I really fully decided to leave the game for good, I started volunteering, to help survivors.
[00:39:36] (Q: At the end, you were in Chicago, so you were relatively close to your parents. How often were you in touch with them, and how did you make your way back to your parents?) I was probably in touch with them once a month, I wasn't speaking to them very often, I would go home every now and again. But I didn't have a car at this point in Chicago … sometimes I'd go home for holidays.
[00:39:58] I remember there was one year, that my trafficker … I had gone and worked really hard, in anticipation of the holidays, I was trying to save up money for the holidays to buy my family and friends gifts. And he beat me up in front of a restaurant, a restaurant that I actually lived by. He beat me up and took my money because I wouldn't give it to him. So when I say I was tough, that's what I mean.
[00:40:27] Then I would go home empty-handed, and my family was always like: "How do you ever not have any money" and I just couldn't say much. I was embarrassed. … So I definitely didn't want to talk to my amazing, supportive parents about what was going on.
[00:41:20] After I decided to leave the game for good, I decided to give back. Because I recognised all the people that had given me a gift so freely and I just decided to give back.
[00:41:36] How I ended up back on the farm - my ex-boyfriend plays professional basketball, and I had instead of having an apartment in Chicago I had decided to move everything back to the farm, so when we split up from our relationship all my stuff was back at the farm, I just decided to stay there.
[00:43:56] Drugs are really only a part of my story early on. I don't really like taking drugs that much, even smoking weed … Fortunately for me, after that first experience, after I went back to Los Angeles, I was able to find healing in that area.
[00:44:36] I have been drugged [by others] multiple times, left for dead multiple times after being drugged.
[00:45:25] I don't even have a GED.
[00:45:44] After I started doing direct advocacy for the survivors, I was around a lot of folks that were sort of perpetuating a victim mentality type of energy. They really were instilling this feeling and thought in me … this victim mentality in me that I hadn't played a part in anything that had happened, that everything that had happened to me was the result of abuse, abuse, abuse, abuse.
[00:46:23] They also didn't want me to take personal responsibility for anything that had happened, they didn't really want me to look at it for exactly what it was. And I have very unpopular ideas as far as the survivor movement is concerned now.
[00:47:33] I Googled "the dark web" and what popped up was a Jordan B Peterson interview with Cathy Newman, and I clicked on it because I thought he'd be describing how to access the dark web.
[00:49:00] That one interview that I found inadvertently set the tone for the rest of my healing. … I started watching Jordan B Peterson interview and long-form lectures … at the time I looked him up, I was suicidal, I was leaving in fear, I was heavily medicated, I was in a really, really rough spot.
[00:49:57] I had not yet been put in a position to realise that I had a say in what was going on. Needless to say, after starting to pay attention to Jordan B Peterson and the rest of the intellectual dark web, I really started to get a lot of healing.
[00:50:09] When I said that I carry some views that really aren't popular in the survivor space, some of those views include personal responsibility. I had to look back and say: "What was my part in this?"
[00:51:14] I owe a large chunk of my healing … to the intellectual dark web.
[01:00:46] I was about to victim-mentality myself to death. I was blaming everything single thing that was going on wrong in my life on those original experiences and all the people that had done me bad.
[01:02:59] I think one of the most wild things was that, I was pretty low, I was in a pretty rough place, I'd been homeless, I'd been beat up, I'd been sexually assaulted a million times … I am very transparent that the intellectual dark web and Jordan B Peterson have had on my healing.
