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Confessions of a Sexual Exploitation Survivor

I have had the privilege of getting to know Sarah and her sweet heart for Jesus over the last couple of months. Sarah has been active in sharing her love with other girls who have been trafficked into sex exploitation. Sarah, thank you so much for your heart for the marginalized and your desire that others know Jesus.

Friends emailed in questions, and Sarah has been graciously willing to answer them.

How were you trafficked?

In Oregon, most pimps have recruiting tactics they use or specific places they go to hunt out their potential victims. My pimp’s place of recruiting was a local mall. He found me working at Meier & Frank, which is now Macy’s. I worked in the suits department, and he would always come in to buy high-end suits with cash. A few weeks into frequent visits to my department, he asked me to join him to a dinner banquet for the business he worked for, and I agreed. We never made it to a banquet that night. That night I would be taken to one of the largest trafficking houses in Oregon and raped by every man in the house before being put to work.

How long were you trafficked?

I spent pretty close to three years in the life.

What influence anchored you there?

The first six months or so I was in shock, I was fresh in my trauma and I had never 
even thought that something to this degree happened in our world let alone the United States. I was more defiant, as my pimp would say. I am more a fighter than anything, so I kept thinking I was just going to get out and my parents would know something was going on and everything would just be OK. Wrong. Pimps are master minds. He already mapped out any way of finding freedom.

As I got over that stage, I spent some months just accepting my circumstances and what was going on. Because I saw so many tricks, I lost hope and realized how big of an issue pimping and pandering was and how many people WERE NOT speaking up about it or stopping it. Toward the end, I got super suicidal and would beg my pimp to kill me. I would purposefully perform bad with tricks or deliberately not listen to my pimp to get beaten; I saw no way out, so him killing me seemed like my best option then.

The amount of drugs my pimp offered us just to get through calls became an everyday routine for me too, so I just got into the routine of using when offered and then becoming whoever the man on the other side of the door wanted me to be. After so many months of it, it all became like normal routine; it’s all I knew outside a dark room he kept us in.

What is the routine day like?

Routine day is anywhere from three to five tricks a day (“tricks” are Johns. In the game, pimps call Johns tricks). I would meet with a John anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, and in that time I would be responsible for carrying out any fetishes or whatever request the John had made.