Young Victims of Sex Trafficking

Part 2

To read Part 1 of Doreen’s story, click here.

“I feel so guilty,” the housekeeper said as she hung her head and cried quietly. “I should have done something, but I promised her.”

When JD would leave with one of the other girls or hit the streets to deal drugs, Doreen would sneak out to the ice machine or the picnic table behind the motel and talk to the housekeeper.

“Don’t tell anyone I was here,” she’d say. “We’re not allowed to leave the room.”

Doreen’s mother was in prison and Doreen been passed around numerous relatives. For the last two years, she had lived with her grandfather, who started sexually abusing her when she was 11. At 13, she ran away and quickly ended up on the street with nowhere to sleep, no food, and no money. She was staying in a shelter.

“Every morning, we had to leave the shelter by 7 AM and we couldn’t come back till 5 or 6 at night,” Doreen said. “One morning, there he was, JD, just hanging around outside. I had nowhere to go, it was really cold out. I was scared, and he asked me if I wanted some breakfast or something.”

He struck up a conversation with Doreen and told her how beautiful she was. He courted her by taking her out to eat and buying her nice clothes and promising to love her and take care of her because she was so “special.” He took her to his apartment where she could shower and sleep and put on her new clothes and makeup.

“He acted like I was a princess or something. I couldn’t believe how lucky I got!” she said.

One night after a nice dinner, instead of taking her back to his apartment, he took her to a motel room on the outskirts of town, where she met several other girls, all under 18. They were all drinking and getting high, so she joined the party.

“I think I kinda saw what was happening,” she said. “I just didn’t think it would be anything like it turned out, you know, I just had no idea. I figured we’d party some, I mean, I’m his girl. He isn’t going to let anything bad happen to me, you know, he does a lot for me, so I figured I might do a little in return for him, to help him out, you know, like we’re a team. But it’s nothing like that, nothing at all like what you see in those [music] videos where the girls are like queens, all proud, acting like important movie stars, getting the royal treatment, like they have all the money and respect in the world. I mean nothing.”

He then took the girls to a truck stop, where she was forced to perform her first trick. When she resisted, JD threatened her and punched her and then shoved her into the cab of a truck with a man who paid to rape her.

Every night, the girls were brought to various truck stops along the expressways outside of town and forced to do 8 to 15 tricks and then turn over their $500 to $1,000 nightly wages to the pimp. In exchange, the motel room, which they all shared, was paid for, their clothes and food were paid for, and they got all the drugs and alcohol they wanted, free.

“Yeah,” she said slowly, leaning against the coke machine. “This is nothing like in that Julia Roberts show [the movie Pretty Woman]. It doesn’t happen like that at all, no way, nobody out there wants to—rescue you,” She rolled her eyes, held up both hands, and formed exaggerated quotation marks with her index and middle fingers.

“They just want to [expletive] you and worse, even, and when they’re finished, it’s like you don’t exist to them. Like this cigarette.” She drew hard on her cigarette and then threw it on the pavement and crushed it with her foot. “This one guy, he had a picture of his daughter taped to the wall of the cab. She was about my age. Didn’t seem to bother him that he was giving money to [expletive] someone same age as his own kid.

“JD, he hugs me and tells me he loves me and that I’m his ‘special girl.’ Then he turns right around and punches me in the face if come up short that night. I feel like it’s me doing something wrong, not him, like I deserve it, I guess, like I should work harder for us.

He tells me that if I love him as much as he loves me, I’ll do whatever he says because he’s taking care of me and why would he do that if he didn’t love me and he knows what’s best and all that. He says if I run away or something, he’ll find me and kill me because he can’t stand to think of me with someone else. And even if I get away who else will ever take care of me the way he does. Not my grandfather, that’s for sure.”

Doreen looked away to hide the fact that she had started to cry. “And I guess he’s right,” she said, defeated, and walked back to the room.

The housekeeper remembers seeing Doreen and the others leaving the motel room every night. “They were dressed in these little short-shorts or really short skirts and sleeveless little tops. And it was cold – I mean really cold out. They never had coats or sweaters on. He didn’t want them covered up, Doreen said.”

“He pushes us out of the car and makes us find dates. We don’t even think about coming back to the car without money,” Doreen said. “Getting a date is just about the only way we can get warm and maybe something to eat if the date is cool like that. But, you know, he did save me. Why would he hurt me? I must be doing something wrong.”

The housekeeper remembers the last time she saw Doreen alive. It was snowing, and JD was leading Doreen to his van, his left hand on her backside. He was wearing a long leather coat with a fur collar pulled up around his ears. She was wearing red spike heels, a tight, short skirt, and a low-cut, sleeveless shirt tied at the waist.

Lab reports showed that Doreen had meth and heroin in her system. But that’s not what killed her. She died of blunt force trauma and asphyxiation, according to her autopsy report. She was bound and gagged, raped, and beat to death. Her skull was completely crushed.

And the pimp and the other girls disappeared and have never been found.

Doreen’s story is not unique or out-of-the-ordinary. Its similarity to millions of other stories is alarming and heart-breaking. Her story is repeated thousands of times every day in every corner of America.

How Do You Protect Your Children?

Most important, talk to them. Keep the line of communication open and flowing.
Tell them about the dangers of real pimps and sex trafficking.
Know who their friends are, on and off line.
Monitor their Internet activity, what they watch on TV, what kind of music they listen to.
Talk to them about how the media distorts the crimes of prostitution and sex trafficking.
Know who your children are with at all times.
Know the warning signs of a targeted or trafficked child, which are discussed in our last blog.
Know how, where, and by what means pimps find and target children.