Resilience Rising is going above and beyond to help girls rescued from sex trafficking to reclaim their bodies and their lives. Bringing children home and loving them with a steadfast heart is the best way to offer healing.
She was 9-years-old, prostituted by her mother’s pimp, and wanted to die; so I built her a home.
During my time with Colorado Child Protective Services, I spent two years working solo on the overnight crisis team responding to family crimes that occur under the veil of darkness. I worked with many sex-trafficking victims, adults and minors. This is the story of a nine-year-old girl whose mother’s boyfriend prostituted both mother and daughter. Even after being placed in the custody of her maternal grandmother, the abuse continued. I was called upon to re-remove this child from family and find a safer place for her to battle her demons.
Cops and CPS workers enter into unstable and unpredictable home environments every day, bearing witness to the darkest corners of humanity that most will never see or know. But on this night, even our minds were blown wide open. We had entered a true house of horrors. As we walked upstairs and peered behind doors, barren white walls showcased holes of punching and banging, sharp knives materializing perpendicularly, carvings screaming “I hate my life” and “I want to die.” And in the twin bed in the smallest bedroom a young girl was sound asleep. It was my job to wake her from her slumber with the jolting news of who I was and why I was there.
Once outside under the shadows of streetlights, she just came apart. Kicking my shins, slapping my arms, screaming, “I hate you. Just leave me here. I want to die.” The police officer stepped in, asking if he should do something. I told him no. Her actions were not an expression of malice but rather desperation, pain, and mostly release.
During the drive to the social services office, we stopped for a midnight Happy Meal and bonded over teeny-bopper music. She was impressed I knew all the words. An important rule of social work, know your audience. While she slept on a couch with an old VHS playing in the background, I spent hours trying to find a safe place for her to call home. Once in “the life,” a sexually exploited individual has an average lifespan of just seven years*. I knew I had a golden opportunity, and if I didn’t make the right moves, she could be dead by sixteen.
I drove away knowing in my heart that she needed more; she needed a place like Resilience Rising (www.resilience-rising.org). I hoped she would survive, her mother’s boyfriend, the johns, herself. A week later she tried to kill herself. The foster home refused to keep her. She was transferred to an inpatient psych ward at a local children’s hospital, her new home.
This child’s story is in every paintbrush stroke of the Resilience Rising house. I think of her while assembling furniture and writing our licensing application. I wonder how she would have fared here. For every nine-year-old like this one, there are thousands more, right here in the United States. It is time to bring them home.
*U.S. Department of State’s “2014 Trafficking in Persons Report”
Review from #MyGivingStory