A Letter from Mandy

As a survivor of sex trafficking, I experienced exploitation in multiple phases of my life. For many years, I didn’t have language for what had happened to me. I didn’t call it trafficking. I didn’t even call it abuse. Looking back now, I can see how deeply exploitation became normalized, so much so that it blended seamlessly into my understanding of life, relationships, and my own worth.

When exploitation begins early, it doesn’t always feel like a major traumatic event in life. It feels like life itself.

For me, it began when I was a toddler. At that age, I did not have the developmental capacity to recognize danger, manipulation, or harm. I didn’t know what red flags were because abuse was my baseline. There was no “before” to compare it to, no reference point for safety, protection, or love. What should have felt alarming instead felt familiar.

When exploitation is introduced before healthy attachment, safety, and care are established, it rewires how a child understands connection. Abuse and care become intertwined. The very people who feed you, bathe you, and put you to bed can also be the ones harming you. That kind of confusion doesn’t disappear with age, it embeds itself deep within the nervous system and the belief system.

Despite having a mother who loved me, my understanding of connection, value, and belonging was profoundly shaped by the trauma I endured at the hands of those who exploited me. Care felt conditional. Attention felt transactional. Safety felt fragile and temporary. And somewhere along the way, I learned, without ever consciously deciding, that my body existed for the harmful sexual needs of others.

Many survivors of sexual exploitation experience it more than once, not because they are weak or reckless, but because trauma shapes expectations. When your self-worth has been destroyed, when your sense of identity has been fractured, survival becomes the priority. You begin to tolerate conditions you should never have to endure. You begin to believe, “Maybe this is just how life works.” Or worse, “Maybe this is what I deserve.”

Exploitation thrives where hopelessness lives.

I survived, but survival did not end when the traffickers were gone. Freedom did not arrive all at once. Even after there were no pimps, handlers, or controllers dictating my movements, I carried the internal residue of exploitation with me. I had to unlearn what trafficking taught me about my body, my voice, my value, and my purpose. 

My exploitation unfolded in distinct phases, each shaped by my age, my vulnerabilities, and what I was searching for at the time.

From approximately eighteen months to three years old, I was trafficked by babysitters. At that age, there is no ability to resist or understand. There is no language for consent, violation, or escape. The people harming me were also the people caring for me. This is how early trauma bonds are formed, not through force alone, but through dependency.

Between the ages of fourteen and seventeen, I was trafficked by an older boyfriend who functioned as a pimp. He gave me attention. He made me feel chosen. He told me I was special. He introduced me to criminal activity framed as “easy money.” Before long, I depended on the very drugs he made me sell. They numbed the pain I didn’t yet know how to name. He was controlling, abusive and obsessive, growing angry when other men noticed me. At the time, that jealousy felt like protection. It felt like love. It wasn’t.

At seventeen, an adult female “friend” trafficked me through strip clubs and hotels in San Francisco. She recognized my financial desperation and framed exploitation as empowerment. She told me selling sex was smarter than “giving it away for free.” She spoke directly to the wounded, powerless part of me, the part that longed for control. All the money went to her, but I was made to believe that it would pay of because she was eventually going to give me some of the money as well.

From ages twenty to twenty four, I was trafficked by a model management company that sold me to wealthy and powerful individuals, including celebrities and billionaires. They told me they were helping me achieve a dream. By then, exploitation was so normalized that I struggled to recognize it for what it was. I had been conditioned to believe that being raped in mansions was normal.

In every phase, the strategy was the same: convince me they cared.

Traffickers do not exploit bodies alone, they exploit human needs for connection, belonging, safety, and worth. They weaponize vulnerability. When people ask, “Why didn’t you leave?” they often misunderstand the reality of trauma bonding. I didn’t have the language to explain what was happening. Trauma, psychological manipulation, and substance dependence fractured my sense of reality. What looked like choice was survival. What looked like consent was coercion. What looked like opportunity was exploitation.

I did not know help existed. I believed I was on my own. I believed the people exploiting me were the ones helping me survive.

Today, I dedicate my life to supporting survivors as they heal and rebuild. I serve on the National Survivor Advisory Council with Street Grace, working to confront and reduce the demand that fuels sexual exploitation. But before advocacy, before healing, before purpose… I survived. And survival alone is not the goal.

This is why confronting demand matters. Sexual exploitation does not exist in isolation. It is sustained by individuals willing to purchase access to another human being. Until truth replaces fantasy, exploitation will continue. Survivors are not commodities. We are human beings.

- Mandy