They don’t look like the victims being saved by Detective Olivia Benson on Law and Order SVU.
They don’t have Liam Neeson on an international manhunt for them.
In fact, New York City’s sex trafficking victims look so much like you and I. In the daily hustle and bustle to get to work, you’ve probably even sat next to them on the subway.
While you’re thinking about your day at the office, they’re thinking about how stuck they are. Trapped in slavery. A slave to a pimp, a slave to their body, and a slave that you cannot see.
We often have a preconceived perception of what a sex slave looks like. Perhaps it’s influenced by Hollywood productions and media outlets alike. But let’s get one thing straight: It’s not background or status, successes or failures, nor is it anything one person makes the decision to do that forces them into a life of slavery.
“It’s that confluence of a super-young, vulnerable person meeting a predatory individual who is ultimately part of a billion-dollar sex industry,” said Rachel Lloyd, a sex trafficking survivor, and founder of the anti-sex trafficking group Girls Educational & Mentoring Services.
“They don’t really stand a chance.”
A recent three-part series published by the New York Post, gives a glimpse inside the hidden sex slave industry that’s living, breathing, and operating RIGHT under our noses. Here. In America. In New York City and beyond.
Cue dramatic SVU opening: “These are their stories.”
From the age of 2, “Alexis” was tossed around in and out of foster care. She went from one family to the next to her own, and back again.
First molested by her biological father at 8 years old, the sexual abuse very rapidly turned to rape.
What kind of chance does a kid have in the world when sex, abuse, and fear are the only things they’re ever taught? Before she was even old enough to know what her female organs could do, they were being used against her will.
When she was just 14 years old, Alexis had a cat that she couldn’t take care of. So she asked a man she met on the street to take care of it for her.
He was a neighborhood pimp.
“He managed to get in a conversation with me about a party that he was going to do, and that a famous celebrity, Meek Mill, was going to be there . . . So he asked me if I’d like to go,” Alexis said in an interview at The Children’s Village, an organization that assisted in her rescue.
He asked her for pictures of herself for the party’s “VIP list,” and met her that night to take her to the “party.”
In the car on the ride there, he gave her a cup of sparkling wine, and in just a few short minutes, Alexis felt her jaw lock up and she became hot.
What she didn’t know is that the pimp had used her “VIP list” photos to make an ad on Backpage.com. The two arrived at a Yonkers hotel where there were men who responded to the ad, waiting to have their turn with her.
Alexis spent 2 years in “the life,” before a friend told her about the safe haven that is The Children’s Village.
Now 22 years old, Alexis works full-time at a counseling center in the Bronx and is the proud mother of a 2-year-old daughter.
