Recently, I came across a memoir by Rachel Lloyd entitled Girls Like Us - Fighting For A World Where Girls Are Not For Sale, which crosses perspectives using both her work with GEMS: Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in New York City and her own personal journey and experience in the trafficking world.
I would encourage you strongly to read this book, along with their documentary, entitled Very Young Girls, which is available via Netflix. My personal notes, found in this blog, are only highlights, and the most moving pieces of this book are found in the individual stories, as well as the past that inspired Rachel Lloyd to found GEMS. Also, my personal interest areas reflect only a small portion of the vast amount of work to be done within this field of work. I tend to focus on legislative reform, whereas many volunteers are far more interested in mentoring and restoration, or rescue. All of these areas are equally vital to ending the problem, so reading this book will shed further light on areas I may gloss over due to it not being my specific area of work and research.
Chapter 3 - Family:
The more research I do into the topic, the more I see alarming similarities and risk factors that are involved with many domestic minors who end up being trafficked. This chapter addresses some of these common factors.
"My mother's drinking dramatically escalated... comatose sometimes... At 13, I'm a little perplexed... I thought she'd be relieved... I couldn't wait for him to go, and have been praying fervently at night for him to be gone... His absence seems to cast a heavier pall... than his presence... These feelings are overwhelming her, and the only place to unload them is on me... I'm drowning in her grief..."
The story continues, with Rachel's mother insisting that she go out on Christmas to try to find her stepfather. "I didn't really want to find him, didn't want to be involved in this mess... It's clear that he could not care less... I worry about... how on earth I'm supposed to tell my mother that her husband has found himself someone else while she sits home and drinks and cries... Nothing really lifts the mood at home... The gloom of that Christmas will be replayed for several years... She sunk deep in depression; me: sinking right along with her... I'll do whatever I can not to be at home for long."
"Stay at a boyfriend's... craving to feel included in someone else's home... try to make myself a useful and thoughtful guest... My mother will marry a new man... I'll be excluded from these Christmases... I'll still feel jealous. Her happy holidays spent with someone else; on her dad ones, I'm expected to be there..."
"Our family was irreparably broken... I adopt my mother's trick of getting so drunk throughout the day that... I would be semiconscious or dead asleep for the majority of the day and night... get as wasted as I can so that I literally have no memory... The holidays... are just an inconvenient reminder of... my lack of family.... Over time, I'll figure out how to tolerate... CHristmas without getting totally trashed... Forgiving and letting go take a little bit longer."
Rachel speak about a childhood theory of pain quotas, that everyone has an approved pain limit, and once you reach that quota there would be no more of it. The more she works with these girls, the more she comes to understand that this theory is completely false. Here are some normal stories and anecdotes from girls she works with. Remember, these are normal and frequent, not rare exceptions:
"You were there when your father stabbed your mother, and then you went to live with you aunt, but she was getting high and she fell asleep smoking and the apartment caught on fire, so then you went into the system and the brother in your first foster family abused you and then you ran away and the first night you were on the street you met a man, who then later become your pimp?"
"Statistics... couldn't even begin to measure the severity or the frequency of trauma these girls were experiencing... sexually abused by every male in their family... orphaned by their parent's murder/suicide.death... who would then be abused in the system, ... the concept of love, family care, bore little resemblance to most people's definitions... violence, absent father, substance-abusing mother... Formative years helped by laying a foundation... girls... had never experienced that sense of safety or love... There were no good memories, no modeling of safe love... adults all around them had failed them, the family structures had cracked... people that should've been the safest were the ones who caused the most pain of all."
Rachel goes on to explain that her job is to, "teach them how to be resilient, to create a family from the people around them who are able to love them in a healthy way. Girls get their hearts broken more times by their families than by any guy..." She talks about the holidays in a way most of us never think about, "It sucks to feel that everyone... is enjoying the warmth of family while you're stuck with an alcoholic...abusive...alone in a group home... Pressure to feel normal... concept of family is so distorted with abuse, neglect, and abandonment this pressure can be lethal.... The number of girls at GEMS who attempt suicide increases... between Thanksgiving and Christmas."
Here's a particular passage that I've marked and highlighted all over and even boxed in, so it seems extremely important to pass on:
"During the eighties, sociologists and clinicians identified the man ways in which gang culture replicated the family unit for children who found their support system in the street. In the world of domestically trafficked girls, the same is true. The desire for a family is so strong and so overpowering for most children that it doesn't take much to create that illusion. Pimps play upon this desire by creating a pseudo-family structure of girls who are your "wives-in-law" headed up by a man you call Daddy. The lessons that girls have been taught, implicitly and explicitly, about family and relationship dynamics are all fuel for the exploiters' fire. The greater their need for attention and love, the easier it is to recruit them. The more unhealthy the patterns they've learned, the less a pimp needs to break them down, the less he needs to teach them. Growing up with an alcoholic or drug-addicted parent sets the stage for care taking and codependency patterning that are helpful in making girls feel responsible for taking care of their pimp. Violence in the home trains children to believe that abuse and aggression are normal expressions of love. Abandonment and neglect can create all types of attachment disorders that can be used to keep girls from ever leaving their exploiters. For girls who've had nonexistent, fractured, or downright abusive relationships with their fathers, or father figures, it's an easy draw. "My daddy," girls say with pride as they talk about the man who controls them."
One story Rachel tells perfectly illustrates this pattern. This girl had experienced a violent history and run away with her cousin. They were recruited by a pimp who they call daddy. Se says he "takes good care of us..." Rachel had experienced this particular pimp before and says, "He can be a pretty violent guy, sweetie," to which the girl responds with, "I know," launching into a story about how one of his girls was, "dragged out of the house naked and... run over several times..." and finishing with, "She shouldn't have been talking back... I like it there. We have a house and everything. And a dog. And we get to sit and eat dinner together every night. Like a family. It's nice. That's the best part."
Rachel uses a metaphor for this situation that likens the family dynamic to a cow. If you've never seen a cow and someone shows you a horse and calls it a cow, you will believe them. "If you haven't had proper love and care, then a substitute will feel like the real thing, because you've got nothing to compare it to.... Her "daddy" is the first person who's shown her any type of kindness, who'd modeled what a "real" family looks like - even though after dinner he takes her and the other girls out and sells them on the street."
Rachel recognizes that many mothers are simply "overwhelmed and under resourced." She notices that, "violence is generational and abuse is hereditary... It will take a lot more than the court-mandated 12 week parenting classes... to erase the lessons... that have been drilled into her for the last 18 years... I wonder what it will take to break the cycle."
This statistic is staggering and goes beyond the CSEC victims. One in Four girls are victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse before the age of eighteen. "For victims, boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred... Sexual abuse lays the groundwork. The pimp, the trafficker, doesn't need to do much training. It's already been done - by her father, her uncle, her mother's boyfriend, her teacher. She's well prepared for what's to come."
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