Tanya's Story: Human Trafficking is the Responsibility of All of Us

by Erin O'Hanlon, Coordinator of Community Initiatives, The Women’s Center

Tanya (not her real name) was 13 years old when she first met the woman who introduced her to “The Life.” She was out at 11 o'clock on a Wednesday night, hanging in the park across from the apartment building where she lived with her mom in Detroit.

The woman, driving a beautiful Mercedes, showed lots of concern for Tanya. Why was she out at that time of night? Would she be able to get up for school the next day after being out so late? What would her parents say about her hanging on the street corner?

Tanya blew all that off with a scowl. Her mom was a drunk, and she could see the truant officer coming in his government issued vehicle a mile away. Her mom's boyfriend was the main one to be avoided, with his grabby hands and offers of cash or pot in return for silence.

The woman bought Tanya something to eat, gave her an Ed Hardy hoody to keep warm. The woman said girls like them, girls who had it hard growing up, had to stick together. She said she would come back to check in with Tanya, make sure she was doing okay. She did, always providing food and warmth in her nice car, sometimes taking Tanya to get her nails done.

Before long, Tanya was crashing at the woman's place whenever she wanted, had a disposable cell phone the woman put minutes on, borrowed her clothes. It all seemed too good to be true. Tanya took on the nickname “Shorty.” The woman and her boyfriend, who watched her from across the room, promised to take her on a weekend trip to Atlantic City where they like to gamble. That trip to Atlantic City changed Tanya's life.

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The average age a girl enters into commercial sex work is 13 years old. The same age some girls get their first boyfriend or go to their first formal dance, there are girls who are being bought and sold in America. Atlantic County has the some of the highest rate of arrests for juveniles being prostituted in the state of New Jersey. It also has the second highest rate of adults being prostituted. Atlantic City is a human trafficking hub.

Despite what many believe to the be case, these human trafficking victims are not always foreign born\or brought to this country illegally. Many are lured from local areas in other states, including large Midwest cities and small towns on the East Coast.

They come from environments that act as training camps for exploitation. Dysfunctional families of origin, with histories of substance abuse and previous sexual violence, is all too common for women and girls who are being commercially sexually exploited. Their vulnerabilities are preyed upon by those who “turn them out” or introduce them to the streets. The person who turns them out may be a “bottom girl,” – a female who recruits for a pimp and helps to monitor and dispatch workers. It may be a pimp who portrays himself as a boyfriend initially eager to treat a girl like a princess, and then later eager only for the money she can hand over.

For every girl or woman walking the streets, answering escort calls or working the bars in the casinos, society also plays a part in putting her there. American cultures aggrandizes pimp culture and promotes sexuality available and ready, 24-7. Look no further for this than LasVegas' nickname, “Sin City,” and Atlantic City's slogan, “Always Turned On!” When society doesn't recognize a larger system of poverty and dysfunction at work or tries to make excuses – “She chooses to do it,” or “It's hers to sell” – we all participate in human trafficking. When society doesn't recognize that these girls' lives aren't filled with choices, but are completely void of them, and that this often leads to their involvement in trafficking – we look away from the real root of the problem.

In Atlantic City, a group of nonprofits, law enforcement agencies and community members want to stop the selling and buying of women and girls that happens daily. The Anti-Trafficking Task Force of Atlantic County (ATTAC) is working a multi-leveled strategy: prevention, protection, and prosecution. Strong partnerships between child protective services, police departments and local youth shelters have formed to bring awareness to the issue and offer better options for those being sold. ATTAC's latest goal is to create a “John School,” to deter the demand for commercial sexual exploitation. This would offer a re-education program for anyone arrested for soliciting commercial sex. The fees paid to the school would help to fund ATTAC's prevention and intervention efforts.

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When Tanya got to Atlantic City, everything changed. She was told the trip wasn't free, and she would have to earn her way back to Detroit on the “track” doing “dates.” When she resisted, she was beaten into submission and raped by the pimp. Her “wife-in-law,” the woman who had recruited her, showed her how to dress to gain attention. She had her 14th birthday on the street.

After 2 months she fled, called her mom from a pay phone, walked into a police station. Still today she thinks about that time, the flashes of money she saw, but never had. Over $2,000 a week passed through her hands. With support and counseling, she has recognizes that she has been changed by that experience, but refuses to be defined by it. She hopes someday to talk to young girls about The Life and its false promises. First, though, she wants to finish 8th grade.

For more information about ATTAC or the services offered by The Women's Center, please contact our 24 hour hotline at 1-800-286-4184.