Familial Sex Trafficking 101 - Pt 1

In many ways I think the hardest thing for survivors to get over is their own fault in the situations.

It is a tough and degrading pill to metaphorically swallow to accept the fact that you yourself, manifested your own reality.

Now please do not misunderstand me. I am not in any way placing blame. I am certainly not implying that a survivor is at fault for what their abuser(s) have done to them.

I am simply stating that, no matter where we go, there we are, and we as survivors, in many situations, have previous trauma that causes us to gravitate towards other abusers because that is all we know.

I believe it is also important to note that as survivors, many and most times, our abusers keep us so addlebrained, traumatized, drugged, terrorized, in pain, and terrified that our decision-making capabilities are skewed. Which is one of the reasons they do it.

In my case, ‘family’ has always been my kryptonite. Trusting my estranged aunt and uncle Susan and Jim Davis, as well as my estranged father Dan Davis was the second greatest mistake I ever made in my entire life, and through it all, it almost cost me my life on numerous occasions.

I never knew Susan and Jim, the last time I saw them before the family reunion I was barely walking and too young to remember them. My father Dan just raved about them though. “His favorite family members”.

I never really knew my father Dan either. When I was growing up on visitation days, I remember sitting on the front porch for hours waiting for him, calling him like 20 times leaving voice mail messages. He would just never show, and then later have some dire excuse as to why. He never paid child support until I was in my mid 20’s and his current wife Sarah made him so they could buy a house. When I got raped, my father yelled at me for ‘putting myself in that situation”, and “well Kel, you shouldn’t have walked down that (metaphorical) alley in the first place.”. I was never anything more to my father than something akin to a hinderance of a ‘girlfriend’ that he was stuck with and couldn’t break up with. For 37 years of life, I never meant anything to my ‘father’, until the day Jhihong Huang, and Phillip, and Todd and Annie showed up with an open-ended credit card and ‘business loans’ for him.

My mother, Joanie I haven’t spoken to in over a decade. When I was growing up, she used to leave for work before I got up in the morning, then when she would get home, she would lock herself in her bedroom and slide her dresser in front of her door and ignore me. It didn’t matter how loud I knocked, or what I needed, she would ignore me. It would go on for days. Sometimes I would go for almost a week without so much as even seeing her unless she was taking me to doctor’s appointments for unnecessary procedures and operations, so they could find something else ‘wrong’ with me. Then grandma would give her all kinds of attention, and her sisters would be all “ohhh you’re such a great mom”, and she would get days off of work, and flowers at work….

That’s when I started hanging around with the Latin Kings and they started teaching me to steal and race cars. I was 14 at this time. And all I had known since I was 9 after my parents divorced was being sick and being alone. For the first time I had a “family” that “wanted me” and didn't see anything "wrong with me". Quite the opposite. To a naïve little girl, they made it seem like I was valued, and appreciated. Something I had never known. It didn’t matter to them that I was shit balls crazy from all the hormones Joanie had me on. She had me on one of the strongest birth control pills possible when I was 11. But that’s “private family business” and “we don’t talk about such things” otherwise they tell me that I’m “sick again” ….

To be continued….