A Letter from Jenny

I was a child when I was trafficked, and there is no reasonable way to misunderstand that fact. Childhood does not become ambiguous simply because adults decide not to ask questions, nor does it disappear because money changes hands. Still, buyers repeatedly claim they didn’t know. They insist they didn’t see a child. That insistence is not rooted in a lack of information. It reflects a refusal to confront what was directly in front of them.

Nothing about my experience involved being hidden or erased. I was not invisible. I was not a distant rumor or an abstract statistic someone could ignore. I stood face to face with grown men who had decades more life experience than I did. They understood age, power, and control. They understood what it meant to make a choice. And with that understanding, they chose to proceed.

The language used to describe buying sex matters because it shapes where responsibility lands. Many people call it a victimless crime, a phrase survivors never use. That label belongs to those who benefited from not looking too closely, to those who paid, left, and returned to their lives without consequence. It belongs to people whose comfort depended on believing a story that absolved them. The moment a child is acknowledged, however, that story unravels.

Consent does not exist for children. Meaningful choice is not something a child can offer, especially when adults control the money, the environment, and the exit. No transaction has the power to change that imbalance. Instead of reckoning with it, buyers ignore the child altogether.

For buying sex to be framed as victimless, one thing must happen: the buyer must avoid seeing who is actually being harmed. That avoidance is reinforced by how trafficking is commonly imagined. Popular narratives focus on chaos and violence, on chains, locked doors, and dramatic rescues. Those images are comforting because they create distance. They make trafficking seem rare and unmistakable. In truth, trafficking is often quiet. It is built on conditioning rather than spectacle.

Children who are trafficked are trained to comply. We learn what to say and what to withhold. Obedience quickly becomes a survival strategy, while resistance feels dangerous. Over time, fear moves inward. Panic settles into stillness. Survival depends on reading adults accurately and responding in ways that keep us safe.

To an outside observer, that learned stillness can look like calm. But calm in a child who is being sold has nothing to do with consent. It is a response shaped by control. I did not scream, fight, or run, not because I was willing, but because I was a child reacting the way children often do when adults hold power over them.

Adults know this. They understand that fear can silence children and that unpredictability can drive compliance. They know that following instructions is often how children protect themselves when consequences are unclear or threatening. They also know that silence is not agreement. Buyers depend on acting as though none of this is true.

When buyers say they didn’t see a child, what they often mean is that they avoided seeing what would have required them to stop. Children who are trafficked do not control their schedules, their transportation, or their money. Negotiation is not an option. Answers are often careful and rehearsed, cues taken from others in the room. Compliance becomes instinctive because hesitation can bring harm. None of these indicators are subtle. They are simply easy to dismiss when acknowledging them would disrupt the transaction.

That disruption is precisely what buyers work to avoid. Recognizing a child would require asking questions. Questions would interrupt the exchange. Interruption would introduce discomfort. And discomfort is something buyers rarely tolerate. Instead, ambiguity is accepted, doubt is pushed aside, and responsibility is deferred. “I didn’t know” becomes a convenient shield.

There is, however, a clear distinction between not knowing and refusing to know. Innocence can exist in the absence of information. Refusal is an active decision. Choosing not to know allows someone to preserve their self-image while continuing behavior that causes harm. It makes exploitation easier to justify and the human cost easier to ignore. When adults decide not to question age, power, or control, neutrality disappears. Comfort is prioritized over a child’s safety, and that choice carries consequences.

For a child, those consequences do not end when the transaction ends.

Being trafficked reshapes how the world is understood. It teaches that adults can cause harm and walk away unaffected, that authority does not guarantee protection, and that a body can be treated as something for others to use. Over time, it reinforces the idea that needs and boundaries matter less than someone else’s desire, and that worth is transactional.

Those lessons do not vanish when exploitation stops. They follow survivors into adolescence and adulthood, shaping relationships and influencing how trust, safety, intimacy, and self-worth are understood. Power dynamics become familiar terrain. Attention can feel dangerous. Kindness may be met with suspicion.

Healing under those conditions is never a single moment or milestone. It unfolds unevenly over years and decades. Some wounds soften with time. Others remain sensitive. Certain beliefs must be unlearned repeatedly, even after progress has been made.

While buyers leave the scene behind, survivors continue carrying what was left behind.

That imbalance is exactly why the concept of a victimless crime does not hold.

Public conversations about buying sex tend to fixate on the moment of exchange. The focus remains on the act, the money, the encounter itself. Rarely is attention given to what follows. Rarely is space made to consider what it means for a child to grow up knowing adults viewed them as something to be purchased. Safety can feel conditional. Trust can feel unstable. One’s own body may feel unfamiliar or unsafe. The realization that those who caused harm returned to ordinary lives while survivors were left to rebuild themselves from the inside out only deepens the wound.

That cost never appears in the transaction, yet it is the very reason the idea of “victimless” is so deeply misleading.

Trafficking persists because demand exists. That demand is not abstract. It is personal. It looks like adults standing in front of a child and choosing their own desires over her humanity. It is the decision to continue even when something feels wrong, when age is uncertain, or when power is clearly imbalanced. Without buyers, there would be no children to sell.

Removing overt force from the story does not remove harm. Paying money does not eliminate coercion. The absence of visible violence does not mean damage has not occurred. The system endures because too many people benefit from not acknowledging the truth.

This is why accountability matters. Accountability is not about labeling people as monsters or staging public humiliation. It is not about demanding forgiveness from survivors. At its core, accountability is about changing behavior. It requires recognizing that participation, even when wrapped in denial, causes harm. It means choosing to stop. It means refusing to benefit from exploitation. It means understanding that protecting future children matters more than personal comfort.

Remorse without change accomplishes nothing. Guilt without action leaves harm untouched.

Real accountability begins when excuses end.

When society accepts the idea that buyers “didn’t know,” responsibility shifts away from those with power and onto children who had none. That shift reinforces myths that make exploitation easier to ignore and harder to prevent. Teaching the truth requires naming what actually happens. It requires acknowledging that children are visible, that signs are present, and that harm is not accidental.

Prevention does not begin with rescuing children after damage is done. It begins by challenging the beliefs that allow harm to continue. It begins by refusing to normalize demand. It begins by holding adults accountable for how they choose to use their power.

I was a child.

Whether they saw a child or chose not to care, the outcome was the same.

The crime did not end when they walked away. It continued living inside me, shaping how I learned to survive, how I learned to heal, and how I now speak, advocate, and educate.

- Jenny