03 Mar We can live beyond our trauma and live to teach others a new way

by: Deanna Lynn, Executive Director of Refuge for Women KY

Keeping kids safe is an adult responsibility, and one way to do that is to recognize that trafficking can and does happen in many different ways in our community and to the people we care about. One Kentucky woman shares her story, offers a deeper look into trafficking in our communities, and how we can work to keep kids safe and teach others a new way.

 Content warning: This blog, or pages it links to, contains information about sensitive subjects including porn, abuse, substance use, and violence which may be triggering to survivors.

This month I celebrate 15 years free from making porn. Free from my trauma being viewed for others’ pleasure. Free from my body being abused with a smile on my face like a sex trafficker taught me fresh out of high school. A trafficker who would have me practice for free and film me increasing my tolerance all in order to make a “better life” for myself where others would “admire me.” People who would celebrate my being used and dehumanized. Over 100 films where I signed over my rights because of years of hearing people I trust tell me that’s the only thing I would be good for, beginning before kindergarten. 

People dismissed my pain by saying I was there by “choice” and I really thought it was all my fault and that I could control what happened and get out any time. But, let me share with you a few different people who helped me “choose” to turn over my body since I believed I had no rights to it anyways. 

By and far the most common person to recruit women into this life is their partner. As a woman who grew up watching a parent hit and run and as a child who was often hit, humiliated and terrified, I thought violence was a normal part of love. It was normal to me to have my partner put a gun or other weapons in my face to prove I wasn’t scared. It was normal for me to be asked by my partner to do things to impress their friends if I loved them and then be told no-one would ever love someone like me. They were all I had. 

It was my normal to be taken away from people who wanted to love and protect me, to push me away from the door when I would try to leave, or keep me from phones where I could call for help. In the brief moments I would realize what’s happening I would scream in hopes someone would hear and help and, when I would return home, abusers would break into my house, apologize, offer me drugs to “feel better” and get me right back out to where I was. 

Abusive love was called passion. I even betrothed myself to someone who would tell me how no one would ever love me. Though he worked in the same business I had escaped from, he would come home and take out what he called his “grudges” in the bedroom saying, if I used to do it for others he should get more. It was normal for me to be in relationships where I would be curled over in a ball, on the floor, crawling to the bathroom, not able to stand up for a while because of what they did to me in bed. What I “allowed” them to do because they told me if I loved them I would “prove it.” 

I had no one in my life showing me a different way of being loved. 

Having not seen real love and really only knowing fear, this was my normal until I was almost 30. Almost 30 before I could sleep without waking up to whatever someone would be doing to me. I could sleep not afraid of the condition my “loved ones” would come home in. 

This month I celebrate 15 years of being free from the piece where that part of my life was filmed and glorified. Where the more I could take the hotter it was. 

I’m 15 years free from being recorded in an industry where I saw many women whose boyfriends asked them to do this “one thing for them”, whose husbands would sell them and control them all while thinking they are really in control of how much abuse they receive. Partners, agents, pimps, producers all sharing profit from the woman’s body and telling her she will never be able to work in the real world, never find someone who loves her because she is damaged goods. This is the number one way a woman is sold. 

So when we are out there teaching our daughters to not talk to strangers, let’s take a close look at who she might be in a relationship with. Even the most celebrated women in porn when I was there were in these types of relationships. 

If we are going to be against trafficking, we might do well to understand how it’s happening in our homes, neighborhoods, and really right in front of us. For anyone still in this type of relationship, I can say first hand this is not love. The sexual exploitation I experienced through porn is also not harmless or a replacement for love. Real love was uncomfortable for me at first, but worth leaning into. How do I know? Eight years of marriage and two kids. 

We can live beyond our trauma and live to teach others a new way.

Find more resources to learn more about human trafficking and its impact.

Check out Face It’s THRIVE brochure, which offers information for parents and caregivers on understanding trauma, promoting healing, and helping families continue to thrive.

Keeping kids safe is an adult responsibility. If you suspect child abuse, make a report to Child Protective Services at 1-877-KYSAFE1.