Why Do I Fight? Human Trafficking Prevention Month

Why Do I Fight?

D Auge, MA, LMHC, CNP, CPC

Johnson County Human Trafficking Coalition

As we close out Human Trafficking Prevention Month, I am brought back to a question I have been asked so many times – why do I fight? Why do I spend countless hours of my time on this subject? Why do I spend my time advocating, educating, and doing prevention work on behalf of sex and labor trafficking victims and survivors? Why do I allow myself to be surrounded by such a dark subject? Why is this something I am so passionate about? There are probably one hundred different answers for each subject. I am a good person. I want to help people. I do not want to see people trafficked. There is not enough education on trafficking in the United States, especially in Iowa. I wrote my entire Master’s thesis on the sex trafficking and mental health care. Somebody needs to stand up for those who have been trafficked.

Missing from those answers, is the biggest (and quietest) answer of all. I was sex trafficked from the age of five to eighteen. I was familial sex trafficked by people who were supposed to love and protect me. There was no coalition, nonprofit, group of people advocating and fighting for someone like me. My trafficking called no attention to itself and when it came to light, after thirteen years, no one believed me, stating that “things like this do not happen here,” and that it was “impossible.”

My trafficking and abuse did not scream its attention in my small town. I went to my Catholic school every day and only missed a day if I was seriously ill, which was always determined by my mother, another person unaware of what was happening. I participated in extracurriculars- played soccer and tennis, made the varsity cheerleading team, performed in one of the best show choirs in the state, became an All-State clarinetist, took piano lessons in the next town over, held lead roles all four years in dinner theater, worked at HyVee, went to church every weekend, maintained a B+ average. I was a well-known member of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Iowa & Western Illinois, volunteering frequently, earning my Gold Award, and traveling internationally. I had a healthy social life.

I can truly say no one knew what was happening. I never spoke out loud to anyone about what was being done to me. I became so used to the physical and sexual abuse that it became normal to me and keeping absolutely silent to my teachers, friends’ parents, and most importantly my mother was not only imperative to my own safety and the safety of my younger sister who was threatened to replace me if I “misbehaved.”

I, myself, did not even know I was sex trafficked until I was twenty-nine years old, in the middle of writing my Master’s thesis, while sitting in a conference on sex trafficking where survivors were speaking about their experience. A survivor began speaking about being sex trafficked by family and it was like I was hit by a ton of bricks. I had never considered what had happened to me as sex trafficking. I simply had considered it to be “only” abuse.

Part of the reason I had know idea I was trafficked, is the same reason no one knew I was trafficked or believed me when the truth came out. There are stereotypes and beliefs on how sex trafficking should look like and familial sex trafficking does not fit into those stereotypes or beliefs. Social media and television paints sex trafficking as kidnapping, sex trafficking rings, or whole international conspiracies. The reality that surrounds sex trafficking is that anyone can be a trafficker. Your priest, next door neighbor, someone from online, or a family member. Trafficking can start out as survival sex and often trafficking victims are high risk individuals. Those who are homeless, struggle with substance abuse, mental health issues, or are LGBTQ individuals who have been kicked out of their homes. Lastly, sex trafficking can largely be familial where a member of the victims family- father, mother, aunt, uncle, etc,- trafficks the victim for a variety of reasons- for drugs, money, or food. My experience as a sex trafficking survivor is the reason I fight. I have something to add to this advocacy and education world that most people do not. My firsthand knowledge, while painful and dark, is something that not a lot of others can provide. Out there, right now, is at least one five year old experiencing the pain and abuse I did. If I can help one survivor, even in the smallest way, then the fight will be worth it.