My notes/summary of the article as it relates to the details of her story. (Sorry, it's too long for the reply & quote buttons to work.)
Probably the most notable thing is that she slips up in her description of contacting the trafficker upon her return to LA. Before she's said they didn't pick up the phone, this time the musician tells her to go to AA. I also quite enjoyed how she remembers going to the AA meeting in Chinatown on a Monday, but none of the actually relevant details.
Also that she'd forgotten how to write upon her return to Illinois. If you're caught in a lie, just lie more!
The whole thing is 8,500 words long and Shane Cashman is not a good writer, so you can probably skip it.
Don’t forget he compared her to the Doomsday Clock in the beginning (thats the only part I looked at)!
The story's tagged "Gonzo Journalism" and it reads like it was written by a middle-schooler trying to be deep and meaningful, convinced he's the next Hunter S Thompson. I like how he compared the Doomsday Clock announcement to ISIS because, er, the clock was revealed by removing a black cloth that was draped over it.
Usual stuff mostly: met a photographer at a concert "out here" (Illinois) "when I was about 15". She can't name the photographer for unspecified "legal reasons". She says the photographer "groomed" her by "finding out my vulnerabilities. What would make me leave my family and come out to LA." But the grooming wasn't sexual, instead talking "about the dream world. The opportunities … Promises of a modeling career. Rockstar stuff."
Her dad moved her out to LA at 17, and "her parents set her up with an apartment".
She is introduced to the musician, by the photographer, "immediately. Within a few days. Like 48 hours." "She recognized the musician the moment she met him." The alcohol & drugs stuff takes place at the musician's house. Asked if the photographer and musician are "a team", Eliza says: ‘“Do you think I know that?” she said with some hostility.’
Eliza says she wasn't apprehensive because she was “in the dream world”. “Up until that point, I didn’t even know that evil was a thing that happened.” Cashman points out that her family is religious, so didn't she learn about evil at church? “I did not understand what evil was until LA,” she said.
The musician "wasn't violent". Eliza repeats the thing about how the drugs & alcohol had a strong effect because she "was really thin because [she] was modeling, so [she] didn't have any meat on [her] bones".
“And one day, he basically told me, ‘I’m going to sell you for drugs.’ I was in the room when he brokered the deal. He called the guy. I don’t know if it was all planned out in advance or whatever. I don’t know. I’m assuming this is a thing they did.”
“When he called the buyer, were you thinking anything like, ‘What the fuck is this phone call?’”
“No, I was just told we needed more drugs, so ‘We’re gonna sell you.’ And I was like, ‘Holy shit, I’m a child prostitute.’ I was embarrassed. I knew immediately I would never tell anyone about this.”
The buyer, previously referred to as the "very older gentleman", was "old, fat, ugly". She was at his place for "maybe days? A week?"
“I don’t know what particularly happened, but I think I started to kick a little bit. I think I became a problem. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t drinking, and I believe I had an overdose.
Nurse treating her compares her to Kurt Cobain, who by that point had blown his head off:
“I woke up in Cedars-Sinai. No friends out there. The nurse treating me told me she treated Kurt Cobain once and that he and I have the same eyes. He died a few years earlier. That moment eventually would keep me sober. Maybe she was just gassing me up to make me feel better, but it gave me confidence.”
Her parents bought her a plane ticket home. “Somehow, they knew.”
She says that when her dad dropped her off in LA, she thinks she had blonde hair, but it was "jet black" when she came back. She says the buyer dyed her hair black to make her look like a boy, because "I think that's what they were into", and claims there were transgender children at the buyer's house.
Whereas before Eliza's said she was "left for dead" in some nondescript hallway, the hallway is now in the musician's house and they were the ones to call an ambulance. ("I'm surprised they even called anyone.")
Eliza claims that when she got back to Illinois she'd forgotten how to write.
I had to learn how to write again. English was like another language. I was so fucked up that I didn’t know how to order food at a restaurant.
After a week recuperating at home, Eliza "just wanted to go back to LA."
When she gets to LA, she calls her trafficker again. But whereas before she says they didn't pick up, now she says the musician told her to go to AA:
“After the first trafficking, I came home, and when I went back to LA, I called him. He would not talk to me.”
“The musician?” I asked.
“Yes. He wouldn’t talk to me. He just told me to go to AA.”
She says she "went to AA in Chinatown. I believe it was on a Monday. The meeting itself was called Chinatown. It was in West Hollywood."
She says she call the musician because she "didn't want to miss the opportunity" of "being a rockstar … I wanted to be a model."
Those involved in trafficking her "are very high profile".
She alludes to an Instagram account of hers being stolen: “I had a fully popping Instagram. Like that was just sitting there, once I got back control of it.” But AFAICT her current (now scrubbed) account elizableu is not a continuation of an older one.
“My former abuser, (the one she would meet later in her life) had access to my Instagram account. I did not always have access to it.” It's not clear which account she means here (probably intentionally). We know that the elizasiep Instagram account is now newstylesmp, run by a barber she's still friendly with.
Eliza also says how she feels about people who want her to back up her wild claims: “It’s like gore porn. They’re hitting me up, wanting to know if my vagina is ripped.”
-Somehow her parents knew and arrived in CA to take her home
She says her parents bought her a plane ticket, not that they went out there to get her.
Inconsistencies are already abound it seems
In that second attached image, about her trafficker still following her, she may mean a trafficker from the second period (2010s). (Not that I believe her.)
www.youtube.com
