Sex-Slavery Now: It's Time To Turn The Tide by More Too Life's by Brook Bello

 

Thank you to the 57 countries that read this blog. I know I have been away for a bit but wow! It has been very busy at our center with all that we at More Too Life do at our Sarasota Victim Services, Social Justice | Anti Slavery Rescue and Awareness Center.

 

By amazing grace a shorter version of this article be be found on http://humantraffickingsearch.net/ as I wrote it for their site and the UN portal that they are also in. I was grateful to them and their staff at the OLP Foundation and for all the work and impactful information related to the issue at hand. 

Sex-Slavery Now: It's Time To Turn The Tide 

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Coming out of the pain of being a victim of human trafficking or being a buyer and longing to stop exploiting/raping women and children does not have to be a secret when we embrace the truth of where we've been.  But we need to get to that broad place of emotional and psychological wholeness.  It is a painful quandary to think you know where you want to go in life but to be paralyzed, crouched in a corner with a secret anguish that stops all forward movement.

On the other hand, it is also a strange America and a profoundly distorted world when a pedophile, a porn addicted buyer of prostituted children, teens and women, may desire to get help, but is too ashamed, cowardly and profoundly ill to take the first step to achieving their freedom and his own.  Here is a man who knows in his heart that he is committing a criminal and soul-destroying act--but he still buys children's and women's bodies for sex. He rationalizes his crime by our culture's warped values, the pervasive devaluation of women and acceptance of violence against women.  Our obsessively overly-sexed society has forgotten the buying and selling of female bodies has nothing to do with sex in the first place. On the contrary, the word sex comes from a root word that means intimacy. There is no intimacy in the purchase of the sex act, only degradation for both parties.

Even survivors of sexual exploitation, once freed from being prostituted, will often spend decades trying to recover, trying to take their place among the accomplished, successful people in our society.

Does it matter that after I was raped, I eventually ran away from home and was trafficked into the backseat of a car? That lead to being trafficked in an apartment, which turned into a brothel.  That snatched my life and my heart from me. Does it matter to those that don’t understand that rape is not sex and sex trafficking is being repeatedly raped.  Who, then, can understand what it really takes to heal from that?    Survivors, are “hidden in plain sight".  Society is blind to  the destruction wreaked on our bodies and minds.  And at the same time, victims and survivors  rarely comprehend the extent of damage to psyche and soul by all this violence, to our ability to heal and go on.   In others words, "we do not know that we don't know." 

Does it matter that I was trafficked until my small body didn't know the difference between that world of dark evil and the more innocent one I was born into?  Does it matter to anyone that many trafficked girls and women don't live to tell their stories or will ever be in a healthy enough mind to do so?    

Does it matter that in the journey of "victim to survivor, survivor to thriver” they need real friends and loving therapy without having to beg for it?  Victims should not be re-victimized by a judgmental and dismissive society. 

The media and first responder should learn to have an exceptional counsel in boundaries for once sexually violated victimized children did not learn how to cope with the eyes of judgement and a lack of understanding in many cases, as well as others, because they were learning that they were worth nothing. As children and young girls, are forcibly taught, while being trafficked, that we were good for nothing--just throwaway, soul assassinated sex toys.   Can society face the fact that our little baby virginal wombs ranging these days we've seen as young as 3 years old and up have been violated, not to mention all of the boys that are also pillaged and raped from an average age of 5 years old.  And all for the sick pleasure of a pedophile beast disguised as a man in a, sweatsuit, or jeans or a suit and tie, often with a family photo in his wallet and a college ring on his finger.

Look, our society today has serious issues in the midst of obviously great things as well so what do we do?  We cannot heal if we hide our eyes from the dark, twisted world of Modern Day Slavery. We can avert our eyes; we can pretend that the degradation of women and children is okay. We can "normalize" violence and exploitation of women and children, through our warped entertainment media and our culture at large.

Society deems prostituted women as adults, who often claim that a life of being prostituted is by their own choice.  But after years of being beaten and drugged by pimps, years of being deeply wounded, often beaten and degraded by scars, hundreds of strange and broken men--old, young, fat, thin, foul-smelling, oily, dirty or perfumed--all strangers--they hardly know what is healthy reality any more.  How can they be said to be making their own choices?

Or they might have a "career" of sliding down poles with once innocent backsides in the air for the warped (addicted) pleasure of a man that deems himself a brother, friend or father to someone and husband to another--but to whom they are nothing but trash to be abused--"whore, whoe, slut."  Disposable.  Underneath, despised, all while calling it dancing. Now, I love the ballet, and jazz and modern dance but that ain't it.

It is a travesty to call the trafficking of young girls "teenage prostitution" or to advocate for "legalized prostitution". Even adult women who are scared into saying yes to being trafficked were often broken children who were sexually abused at home, lost in an indifferent foster-care system, and then enticed/tricked into prostitution by pimps who lies will often promise them love and/or security.  But then  the pimp will "groom" her with thoughts of heaven or "season" the girl or woman through gang rape, beating and drugging her and pursuing to guide her all the way to hell.

The girl or woman may seem an adult "making her own choices" but she is caught in a dark downward spiral of being degraded, sexually used, often beaten by the, trafficker, buyer, and/or the "trick".  

How does it feel, can you imagine the horror of a "popular trend" among sex-buyers of gagging so far down the woman's throat she gags to the point of passing out.  Covering her face with fear so that she cannot see, all the while calling her "filth"? How does one pursue to feel clean after this and make their way back into "mainstream" society? 

Pretty soon she is in utter darkness so far from the surface of light it's hard to find a way out.  Most trafficked women probably give up trying and stay addicted to drugs and sometimes end up as homeless addicted prostituted women, who to many, seem useless and not worth fighting for.  And herein lies, the lie and the twisted truth of human-trafficking: Greed, capital G,  will always find away to capitalize on  a desperately abused person's confusion, despair and guilt. 

I have to say, with man it is impossible but with God all things are possible and I believe that restoration is real.

"You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus."

-Mark Twain

But we can fight this horror.  We only have to open our eyes to the destruction being wreaked on both the victim of trafficking, and--we must remember--upon the perpetrator as well. For, as  wise souls remind us, evil-doers are harming themselves as well as their victims.  We all must face this evil, and find ways to get at root causes (poverty and a culture of violence) to end trafficking. The world around us cannot define who we are because we as its caretakers shape our world in the first place.

 - Brook Bello

See Brook In October along with so many other amazing women of God at the He Loves Me 2014 Women's Conference with amazing Trina Jenkins, wife and first lady of Pastor John Jenkins at First Baptist Church of Glenarden. Including Sarah Jakes, Dr. Caroline Leaf who I have mentioned so much on this blog, Valorie Burton along with the so many great teachers. Click the link to find out more!

Note that the new unvailing of "Living Inside the Rainbow" the new book by Brook Bello will be launched here! The New Book with new publisher, cover and release in Hardcover! Look for the new site soon...

http://fbcglenarden.org/conferences/womensconference/speakersartist.html

http://fbcglenarden.org/conferences/womensconference/speakersartist.html