Columbus Dispatch: The Slave Across The Street

DORAL CHENOWETH III | DISPATCH

“I met the devil, and lived in hell.”

So writes Theresa Flores in the The Slave Across the Street.

Were it a novel, her new book might be dismissed as unbelievable. But it’s a memoir – stunning and frighteningly true. The nightmare happened to a teenage girl living with her family in an affluent U.S. neighborhood.

Her ordeal began nearly 30 years ago when Flores was 15 and living in a Detroit suburb.

A shy newcomer to her school, she was befriended by a boy who was part of an Arabic ethnic group known as Chaldeans, from southern Iraq and Kuwait. He raped her. His cousins took photos and used them to blackmail her into becoming a sex slave.

When the traffickers called her at night, she would sneak out of the house, meet one of her persecutors in a car and be driven to places where she’d be forced to have sex with men – sometimes dozens a night.

“To the men who used me night after night, I was not a human being,” she writes. “As they performed the most intimate act a man and a woman engage in, I was only a dollar value. A commodity. To know this in my formative teenage years, during a period when a woman defines her worth and identity, was devastating.

“So many, many men . . . celebrated my humiliation, degradation and pain.”

Her nightmare ended when her family moved out of the state.

The Slave Across the Street describes the ordeal in gritty, understated detail. Her plain talk will make readers flinch, shake their heads and cry. Flores hopes they won’t turn away.

Her book is part confessional, part crime drama, part wakeup call. It is not easy or entertaining, but it is important.

In Ohio, a multiagency task force formed by Attorney General Richard Corday recently reported that more than 1,000 children younger than 18 were sex-trafficking victims in Ohio and that 783 foreign-born people were trafficked for sex or forced labor in the past year.

Law-enforcement officials and the judicial and social-services systems are just now understanding the scope of the problem.

Today, Flores, 44, works as a counselor, a licensed social worker and a founder of Gracehaven, a Columbus-area home for young female trafficking victims. She is divorced and has three children. Recently, she was featured in an MSNBC series on sex slavery and appeared on Today. She speaks nationally on the issue.

Decades ago, she didn’t tell her parents, a teacher or the police what was happening to her, she writes, because she was young, embarrassed, humiliated and afraid that her traffickers would hurt her or her family.

She credits faith and time with helping her heal.

“I am the woman I am today because I met the devil and lived in hell,” she writes. “I choose to use the past as a steppingstone for something good. I choose not to be quiet. I want to help save another young girl from being tied up and taken against her will until she loses consciousness.”

Dispatch Reporters Alan Johnson and Mike Wagner spent months researching the subject of human trafficking for stories published June 28, 2009. To see the stories and a related video, visit Dispatch.com/reports.

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End Human Trafficking Interview with Theresa Flores

categories: Child Trafficking, Sex Trafficking

Published February 23, 2010 @ 03:35PM PT 432 Views

view entire article: http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/an_interview_with_the_slave_across_the_street_author_theresa_flores

Theresa Flores wants you to know that, in the United States, human trafficking can happen to anyone. Factors such as gender, race, and ethnicity are moot in terms of who is trafficked –- and who is trafficking. As someone who was enslaved as a teenager while living in an affluent Detroit suburb, she would know.

Since it is now the second leading crime in the world, and the fastest growing, I would have to assume that it is definitely more frequent now.

As for it being rare, I do think that other types of enslavement (runaways, kidnapping, etc) are more common, but I have heard from many women that they had similar scenarios. And if you count girls who have been “pimped out” by their fathers (I get these emails, too), then they are living at home and this would be a similar scenario as well.

Two things are lacking at the moment, housing and mental health counseling. These girls have nowhere to go, no other option. Many cannot return home and have run away from an abusive, dysfunctional family. So having a place for them to live in which they can also heal (therapeutic) is ideal, yet rare. There are 3 shelters/homes like this in the entire U.S. As for counseling, I never got counseling that was specific to [my experience] or even addressed the PTSD. This is crucial in a person returning to be a productive member of society. The psychological abuse is so extreme that many women cannot even hold a job afterwards. We need all counselors and therapists to be trained on human trafficking, the signs, and how to help the victim heal and become a survivor.

The bottom line of slavery, no matter in the old days when it was legal, no matter what country it is happening in or if it is labor or sex trafficking, has to do with economics. It is also the devaluation of human beings. That being said, the old slavery was also a racial issue. Today that is not true. It does not matter what gender, race, or ethnicity you are. Poverty is also an issue (risk factor) of some slavery, but I believe more so is isolation. That does not need to be physical either. I see many young girls who had no one to turn to and talk or confide in. They had no social support. And this was my case as well.

For me, culture and gender were an important factor in why I was trafficked. Some cultures, even though they migrate to the US, still maintain their cultural values of women. And this was true for the group of men who trafficked me. They did not value women. I do not like to focus on this part because many factors went into play as to why I was trafficked. The point I will always make is that it can happen to anyone.

I have embraced the entire issue of Human Trafficking as this journey continues to take me places I had never dreamed of. When I wrote the book and told my story in public for the first time, I never imagined I would have other women who were victimized by this crime reach out to me and thank me for speaking for them as well. So I do it to be their voice as well. I am also the Director of Awareness and Training for Gracehaven, a long-term rehabilitation home I am helping open in Ohio, for girls under 18 who have been victims. Additionally, I help organizations, like Stop Child Trafficking Now, raise awareness and funds so they can attack the Demand side of this [issue].

Lastly, I have started what I call the SOAP Project. I want to reach out to these girls, and it is very hard to get to them and find them. I recalled my worst night and that was in the motel. I tried to think, what would it have been that I could have seen to help me at my worst moment? And I thought of the room. And the bathroom. I realized that there are no toiletries in those kind of motels, but there is always a bar of soap. And the girls will always wash up afterwards. So I am working on getting labels made up with several key questions like, “Are you being forced to do something against your will?” and the national human trafficking hotline phone number. They will go on the bars of soap and be offered to motel owners free of charge. When the cases of soap are delivered, volunteers will train the motel owners and housekeepers on the signs of trafficking as well.

I hope that this will reach girls at their darkest hour. Since it never reached me.

Celia Williamson and Theresa Flores On Air 2/12/2010

Dr. Celia Williamson, founder of Second Chance in Toledo and our own Theresa Flores are being interviewed by Marine Olivesi on The Takeaway.

For most Americans, human trafficking is a horrific practice that nearly always seems to happen overseas and far away. However, a recent report by the Ohio Trafficking in Persons Study Commission says about 1,000 American-born children are forced into the sex trade every year in Ohio alone.

We speak to Celia Williamson, an associate professor at the University of Toledo who led the research. We also hear from Theresa Flores, a victim of human trafficking and author of “The Slave Across the Street: The True Story of How an All-American Teenager Survived the World of Human Trafficking.”
Listen to the radio show here

The Takeaway is a national morning news program that invites listeners to be part of the American conversation. Hosts John Hockenberry and Celeste Headlee, along with partners The New York Times, BBC World Service, WNYC, Public Radio International and WGBH Boston, deliver news and analysis and help you prepare for the day ahead.