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00:07:39] (Q: You were … homeschooled as a child?) Yeah I was homeschooled as a child, I have one sister, she's married. Unfortunately she doesn't live here but she's the mother of my two favourite people on the planet, my nephew and niece.
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00:07:55] (Q: And was that southern Illinois?) Yeah, it's uh, we're from Illinois but we grew up in Denver. So, I sort of grew up a little bit in a couple of different spots.
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00:08:05] (Q: And homeschooled all the way through?) Yeah, they tried to put us in public school, I went to public school for driver's ed and typing. And they tried a couple times to get us to do school but I just, it never sat well with me … I didn't seem to fit in.
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00:08:26] I feel really fortunate that I was homeschooled because my parents focused on things that maybe my sister and I would be better at and didn't necessarily focus on other things. So sometimes I was better at spelling, reading, writing, things like that, or math even, but I'm really good in other ways. … My sister and I are both really creative.
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00:09:02] (Q: If you're parents are homeschooling you, did they work?) They kind of took turns. My dad — I try not to give too much information about my family because I just don't want to be stalked — so my dad would work at night at the beginning of my sister and I's life, he worked for a radio station, so he did the overnight shift.
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00:09:35] Both of my parents are really well educated, they both have doctorates. My mom has her doctorate in epidemiology and my dad, um, I'm trying to think if it's in theology or public speaking.
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00:10:37] The Vans Warped Tour is a punk rock music festival tour that tours all around the United States.
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00:10:57] My parents were absolutely incredible at raising my sister and I, but we were a little bit sheltered …
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00:11:27] I really wanted to get off the farm … really wanted to do anything other than be on the farm, which I thought was super lame.
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00:11:46] I went to this Vans Warped Tour, I met a photographer there, he told me that I could be a model and a star, and I believed him. He was from Los Angeles, so because I was homeschooled I graduated early, and that's where the initial trafficking situation happened.
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00:12:53] (Q: Why did your parents do the homeschooling?) They didn't trust the school system back then to do a good job. … and my sister and I were a handful.
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00:13:57] I'm so glad that they did that (homeschool) because we have a good relationship, we have a good bond.
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00:16:13] (Q: When you're talking of your own experience … this was an experience where people obtained compromising photographs … that were being used for monetary purposes, or you as a physical body human being?) Yeah, so, sometimes I get really bad at explaining things … sometimes I do a really horrible job of explaining.
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00:17:01] I was sex-trafficked. I was sold for sex at age 17 in West Hollywood, in California. The initial set of folks that brought me out there for a modelling contract, and to be a rock star, sold me the dream. I told my parents: "I'm going with your without your permission" and I said: "If you stop me from going I will never speak to you again" and I meant it at the time.
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00:17:23] So I went out to Los Angeles, with the help of my parents, and they knew where I was, I got an apartment and I was going out there to be a star. Within a matter of a few hours I was having a beer, I wasn't used to drinking
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00:17:40] Right away the beer was introduced, once I was tipsy then the drugs were introduced, and after the drugs were introduced then started grooming behaviour, I won't get too specific or explicit.
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00:17:52] But then I was, I don't want to say addicted to the drugs, because it was easy for me to get off the drugs once they weren't around, but once I was addicted to the drugs, I was sold for $500 to an older gentleman in the hills, in the Hollywood Hills, for sex.
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00:18:09] So that was the first time that I was trafficked.
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00:18:19] So after that, luckily, I was sex-trafficked but only with that one individual. I think I was such a handful … that he ended up giving me back, and then I was left for dead on a drug overdose in a hallway.
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00:18:36] I got out, I was left for dead, that was probably the best-case scenario of how that could have ended, I'm very grateful it ended that way because the other options probably would have been worse.
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00:18:48] I think I was so difficult because I didn't want to do anything, sometimes abusers will get victims and try to get them to do things in different ways. I was super not compliant. I was a difficult one.
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00:19:33] (Q: What does grooming actually look like in real life?) Everyone's grooming experience is different. In this case … I say that the grooming started right when we met at the Vans Warped Tour.
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00:19:47] I was very young, I was 15, and it took them two years to actually get me out to Los Angeles. That's how long they dedicated this time to grooming.
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00:20:32] It was starting to be implanted in my head that it was my fault, that it was my idea, who was I going to talk to, the police weren't my friend.
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00:21:08] (As in, no-one's going to believe you as you must have consented to this?) Yep, you're a drug addict, you're nothing but a … you're only good for your body, this was your decision, you decided to come out here.
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00:21:34] It was a multi-tier-level of just trauma input on top of each other.
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00:21:39] At the time I was scared, I was hungry - because I was also very thin back then, I was scared, I was very hungry, I was tired, I was traumatised and terrified.
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00:23:33] I did have a trafficker that did beat me up … I got free that initial time, awesome, cool, I never had an opportunity to deal with that trauma.
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00:24:04] Even when I went to the emergency room during the overdose I didn't turn anyone in, I didn't say anything, I was treated like a minor drug addict in West Hollywood, which wouldn't be that weird, I guess.
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00:24:19] Because I never really dealt with it, because I was too embarrassed and really didn't know what happened, that initial trauma was there.
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00:24:25] And I chose to go back to the adult entertainment lifestyle later in life and ended up being trafficked again. So there's a moment there where I was willing, and at a second point in my life I stopped being willing again.
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00:24:40] My second trafficker, a pimp … that was a little bit of a different style where I faced more physical abuse in a more prolonged period of time, where I had an extreme trauma bond with my abuser, and Stockholm Syndrome.
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00:25:33] (Q: Your experience in Hollywood, how long does that go on for?) The first time I had an overdose, and I think it was probably a couple weeks, but I don't remember a lot about that … I'm gratefully a lot of it is splotchy and blocked out.
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00:25:53] I mean I was on drugs. I remember specific things. I remember enough, let's put it that way, but fortunately I don't remember everything.
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00:26:13] But I think it was two weeks, but I literally don't know, only probably my mom would know, because I came back to Illinois after I went to Cedars-Sinai.
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00:26:25] So my parents dropped me off, I was trafficked right away, I ended up with an overdose at Cedars-Sinai, then I flew back home then I actually went back to Los Angeles after that.
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00:26:42] Fortunately I was able to get right off the drugs, but the damage on my life was bad.
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00:27:24] The second time, it was a little bit more presented like an opportunity to … well I thought I had a boyfriend.
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00:27:36] It starts off very small … it was presented like I was part of a team …
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00:28:59] I went back to him to him so many times … it started off with the first time that I left, I had contacted an organisation in Chicago, I was in Chicago, contacted an organisation through email.
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00:29:22] I had gotten their information off of a bible, off of a little bible that I had gotten - I still have it which is pretty cool - their email was on the back of a bible …
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00:29:37] I emailed them, asked for that, and she came and moved me out right away, I was moved to a survivor safe house.
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00:29:48] Unfortunately those trauma bonds were so deep that I actually left three months into the programme, it's a two-year programme, and I went right back.