Dear Parents and Caregivers,

I wanted to write to you as a parent of young children and a survivor of child sex trafficking in America.  I know firsthand that this conversation that you are going to have with your child is one that has to happen. I never thought I would go through trafficking when I was 13 years old. I didn’t even know that human trafficking existed. Maybe if I knew, it would not have happened to me.

Sometimes, statistics feel like big numbers that don’t feel real. Only, I am real and this happened to me.

Maybe you don’t think this is a conversation that you need to have with your kids, but why wait until it’s the conversation you wish you had. Don’t feel like you have to have this conversation because you are scared that YOUR child could become a victim. This isn’t really what this whole conversation is about right now. This is about us being a community. You, me, your kids, my kids and all the parents and kids out there. There are way more of us than there are traffickers. So, if we all are talking and we understand what trafficking is, we are stronger as a community. Then, every child is safer because your child knows the facts and so do you.

I kind of wonder what it would be like if maybe some of my friends or their parents knew what trafficking was when things started to get bad for me.  I was missing school and pretty depressed after my dad died.  So, I was hurt and started to act up. I used to blame myself for what I went through, but where were the parents or my teachers? If just one person had maybe reached out to me and talked to me about how I was going down a path that was bad, I could have been spared a lot of pain. 

Human trafficking lives in a place without compassion. It’s all about making the victim into a product. The people who do it maybe had bad things happen to them. I don’t know.  So, they lose their way and then think it’s okay to take advantage of kids like I used to be.  

I want my kids to know that they can tell me anything and that if someone makes them feel like they are not safe, they should tell me.  Kids should feel like they can tell you anything and you’ll help them. 

I want them to understand that grown adults shouldn’t be talking on social media to kids they don’t know or buying presents for them. That’s just like gateway bad behavior and it could be the start of a trafficking situation. That’s what happened to me. I was a kid and needed a place to stay. I was wanting love from a dad, too. So, I jumped at this chance that turned out to be not true. Traffickers can see you are vulnerable and they do whatever it takes to act like they will help you out. It’s not true. It’s all about them and money.

Here is my truth. Self love is pretty much the main thing. I want my kids to feel worthy of loving themselves. 

At 13, I didn’t know about how someone might want to make you do things you didn’t want to do. I was also scared to call the police about stuff that was going on at home.  It was a rock and a hard place and I was not just in the middle, I was under them both. I kept running away and that is how I met my trafficker. He saw I was really at risk and he jumped on that right away.  I really didn’t see it coming and it took me time to realize that it was not my fault.  That’s another thing, you have to teach your kids that they can do things to help keep themselves safe but they are never to blame if someone else exploits or abuses them. 

For the longest time, I really didn’t think I had a voice. I didn’t think anyone cared that I was being exploited for money.  I felt like I was on the streets with no voice.

Now, I have a voice (and a keyboard!) and I want to help you keep your kids and all the kids around us safe.   These tools going to help along your way. I’ve been through it and the people who put this together help kids like I used to be. 

Peace,

Ashley