- I actually didn't know that I had been trafficked
until I was told by another girl I was working with in porn
that what had happened to me was sex trafficking.
I actually grew up just up the street from here.
I grew up in Ventura, California.
My mom was really young when she had me
and she wasn't ready to prioritize me.
My mom was in an extremely dysfunctional place in her life,
and I experienced a lot of sexual abuse
by one of her boyfriends,
starting at about four years old.
And so I took that understanding
of this is the affection that I'm offered,
and you don't have a say
in what is going to happen to your body,
you don't have a say
in what kind of affection you're going to allow.
At about 13,
I would go on my space
and I would just look for any sort of validation
that I could find from men.
And as I did that,
I met a guy who was about 14 years older than me,
so was in his late 20s at the time,
and we met over social media.
So it wasn't very long,
by the time I was 14,
that he had explained to me really
that in order to continue to be with him
and continued to get this validation
that I was so desperately looking for,
I was gonna need to start pulling my own weight.
It started just with a conversation of,
hey, I can't pay this bill or I can't do this thing
or buy this thing that you have wanted without your help,
and so I'm gonna have a friend
and you're gonna have sex with this friend for me
and then we'll go do whatever it was
that you wanted to go do.
So in these times where I would run away
from the house that I lived in with my grandma
and I would run to go be with him,
this is where,
this area is where I would wait.
And I would come sometimes,
most of the time in the middle of the nights,
and I would wait on this bridge
or even just actually right here
where I could see this parking lot
and know that he was gonna wait
and wait for his truck to pull up
so that we could go off together
and I could go into these motels
where we would meet these men.
And when I was 18,
things in that relationship definitely started to shift.
But at this point, he told me that now that I was 18,
he was just gonna drop me off at the strip club
and then I was gonna bring him money,
whatever money I came back with.
And when I was 20,
I met a customer in the strip club
who told me that I would be perfect at modeling.
He said, "You're beautiful.
I don't know why you're coming here
and having to work until four o'clock in the morning.
You should take my number, call my girlfriend,
and we'll get you hooked up with some modeling gigs."
But when I called this girl,
She pretty clearly explained to me
that it wasn't modeling at all
and what I'd be asked to do would be porn.
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And so I went and I met with them
and they had me sign a contract.
And they explained to me,
anytime that you ever feel uncomfortable,
you call us.
And you don't ever have to go to that shoot,
we will be there to pick you up.
You don't ever have to do any sort of shoots
that you're not comfortable with.
And what kind of shoot you are gonna be doing,
what the expectations are,
and what kind of sexual acts you'll be performing.
So this really seemed like an opportunity
to rewrite the trauma that I had been going through
for the 20 years before then.
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My first shoot was down in Santa Monica.
I was supposed to be a solo shoot,
which what that means is you're there by yourself
and you're the only talent there.
It's not with another girl or with a guy,
it's just you by yourself.
And from the moment I walked in,
I felt uncomfortable.
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And from right away,
I called my manager to tell them I was uncomfortable.
And instead of the supportive producer
and the supportive manager that I had experienced
when I was signing my contract,
I got told that I was being difficult
and that if I was going to continue
to make money in this industry,
that I was gonna have to learn how to behave.
So it was made pretty clear that this was not,
nobody was gonna have my back.
What I realized when I entered
into the adult commercial sex industry
was that what had happened to me
was not an isolated incident.
This was pretty typical among most of the girls
that I was working alongside.
They almost all had the same sort of childhood sexual abuse
that I had went through,
and many of them had had the same teenage years
of sex trafficking that I had experienced as well.
So in my last six months in the industry,
I was in this relationship with this guy
who was booking all of my performances,
all of my shoots,
all of my dates outside of these shoots,
and I had zero say-so.
Oftentimes I didn't even know that I was going to a shoot.
And there was one night that I was picked up and I refused,
I refused to go.
And his reaction to that was to take my phone,
to take my shoes,
and drop me off in this area of Southern California
that was just agricultural.
And so there I was in the middle of the night
with workout shorts and a sports bra,
no shoes, no phone, no money, no purse,
just really left by myself.
And it was there that I really made the choice of,
I can go back without that wool over my eyes
and with total clarity
of what I was getting into in the industry,
or I could commit suicide,
or I could do the one thing
that I had watched one girl do
when she was able to actually get out
and get out successfully.
And so, in my mind,
I was like, the industry will always be there,
suicide will always be there,
and this is my one chance.
And so I called a woman who I know,
I knew her and knew what she had done.
And they offered to place me
in this restorative care program
for women who were leaving human trafficking
and sexual exploitation,
whether that be massage parlors,
strip clubs, porn, prostitution.
It was a recovery home for that kind of hurt.
And so I spent a year in this restorative care program
for women like me,
for women who were leaving and who wanted a different life.
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I feel like at this point,
while I would love to take back
some of the things that happened to me
and some of the choices that I made
because of the way they hurt me
or the way that they hurt other people,
there isn't one piece of my story
that has been unique to me.
Every single piece of my story,
I've been able to talk to another girl and go,
I get that, I understand that,
and I've walked that
and you're not alone.
The only way that I was able to get out
was by looking at the hope of someone else
who had been able to get out.
So it was important to me
that I was gonna be a piece of that hope
for the next girl and the next girl and the next girl.
And so now I've had the opportunity of mentoring
and working with all of these girls
who are anywhere from 12 to their early 20s.
That has brought more healing
than all of the therapy that I've done to get to where I am,
than everything that I've walked through,
is just the knowledge of,
we're not in this by ourselves.
And there was somebody who came before us
and there's somebody who's gonna come after this.
That shared pain,
but then when it's coupled with that shared healing,
that's where you get the full picture.
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