A Crash Course in Sex: Cara and Stacey's True Story of Slavery

by Amanda Kloer · 2009-02-12 08:40:00 UTC
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A couple years ago, the Toledo Blade did a mutli-part series on the trafficking of two young girls in Toledo, OH.  Their story is both powerful an typical of trafficked children in America.

"In the modest, Midwestern city of Toledo, Ohio, cousins and best friends Cara and Stacy went out one May afternoon for a frosty. It began to rain, and a woman driving a white Lincoln Continental pulled alongside the girls. The man in the passenger seat looked familiar; the girls thought he was a friend's father. The girls asked, and the man claimed he was who they thought, and offered them a ride."

Like many trusting teens, the girls had no thoughts that someone would be out do do them harm in their quite suburban neighborhood.  Unfortunately, the man was not their friend's father, but a human trafficker named Derick Willoughby.

"Their 10 days in captivity amounted to a crash course in the business of forced sex. They were given clothes and fake identities, and were taken to hotels around Toledo and forced to perform sex acts. An adult always watched and collected payment. Cara and Stacy learned quickly not to cry or speak without permission. When one girl broke a rule, they told authorities, it was her cousin who took the beating."

Traffickers and pimps are mater manipulators, and they understand what it takes to keep each girl in prostitution.  Sometimes it's promises of love, sometimes it's rape, and sometimes its beating the girl's friend instead of her.  It's the reality of trafficking of children in the U.S.

Cara and Stacey were eventually rescued and are now safe, hoping to put this horror behind them.

Amanda Kloer is a Change.org Editor and has been a full-time abolitionist in several capacities for seven years. Follow her on Twitter @endhumantraffic
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