Once again we go back to South Carolina to hear from actual child trafficking victims and not the imaginary ones kept in pizzeria basements that have no basements. For those of you who may not know, Myrtle Beach in South Carolina is one of the nation’s biggest hotspots when it comes to sex trafficking of all types.
News 13 in South Carolina spoke to two survivors of child trafficking.
One survivor said that she was sold at the age of 14 by an older relative.
“From 14 to 17, I was sold to pastors, doctors, lawyers, and police officers and people you think would never buy sex from a child, were purchasing me,”
“During the whole time, I was getting doctor’s appointments and I was sitting in school and I was going to the grocery store, standing, like, behind normal people and nobody knew. Nobody had any idea that I was being trafficked,”
Many victims of child traffickers know their abusers and they can often be members of their own family including parents.
News 13 spoke to another survivor who was trafficked during the 1990s. Her trafficker used what I call the ‘boyfriend’ approach. The traffickers will target those with dysfunctional family lives and try to act like the hero. This survivor was approached when she was 14.
“Who said he loved me, who said no bad things would ever happen to me again, that he was going to take care of me. It was like he was coming in as my knight in shining armor and all the bad things were going to disappear, and I believed everything he said,”
Before she knew it, she was hooked on drugs and walking the streets. The only way she was able to escape was to get arrested and spend time in jail.
Thankfully, there are more resources for child trafficking victims than there were back then. Both survivors who spoke with News 13 are actively involved with two organizations to assist the victims of trafficking. Those organizations are The Formation Project and Lighthouse for Life respectively.
If you really want to do something about child trafficking besides reposting false narratives on Facebook, please consider donating your time or money to an organization like these near you.
Victims of trafficking oftentimes continue to struggle even when they’re out of the life. The more resources that are available them the better.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 