5 Things I Learned as a Sex Slave in Modern America

When you hear about modern-day slavery, you probably picture some third-world brutality occurring in Africa or Southeast Asia (and if you just muttered something about your unpaid office internship, go ahead and slap yourself right now). When you hear about sex trafficking, you imagine a gang of Eastern European thugs kidnapping women and getting chased down by Liam Neeson.

But, incredibly, human trafficking is a multi-billion-dollar industry in the United States today. Statistically, Liam Neeson is more likely to sell his own daughter into slavery than have her stolen by some mysteriously brown Parisians. Cracked wanted to know how the hell this was possible, so we sat down with "Jane," a former sex slave, and asked her about her life.

NOTE: We don't have a policy of putting trigger warnings on articles, but if there exists anywhere on Earth an article that needs such a warning, here it fucking is. In fact, if this doesn't disturb you, there is a good chance you are a crazy person.

#5. Sex Slavery Is a Thriving American Industry

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I was 4 or 5 years old when it started.

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We'll just kick this off with some kittens as an inoculation for the coming sad.

If you're expecting my "sold into child slavery" story to begin with guys in ski masks bursting into my bedroom and snatching me up in the night, the actual story is worse, in a way. One night, my stepdad just pulled me out of bed and said, "Come here, uncle needs to see you." There were zero uncles downstairs. But there were several creepy, creepy men who passed me around from lap to lap and paid him for the privilege. If you're asking yourself where my mother was, well, she was right there, watching.

My stepdad and mother would have people over all hours of the night, drinking and smoking crack. Sort of like family game night, as directed by Darren Aronofsky. She was in on the decision to do what they did (and if you want to give yourself nightmares, try to imagine the conversation that led them to broach the subject). When I was that age, it didn't go beyond "sit on uncle's lap." I'd do as I was told and they'd call me a good girl and that was that -- I obviously had no idea what was going on. Then I got a few years older, and they started sending me off on "private sessions." Yes, that means exactly what you think it means. Let's not kid ourselves.

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Why is it that "uncle" is somehow the creepiest type of relative to be?

The next question that's flashing through your mind is probably, "Why didn't you tell someone?"

I did -- I was just 6 years old when I (accidentally) mentioned something about my "uncles" to a teacher -- I just said something like: "My uncle's came over and we had fun," because those were the words my mom always used. If you think at this point a SWAT team raced to my house and busted everyone, you and I live in different worlds. What happened instead was the teacher called my mom, and she talked her way out of it somehow. When I got home, she beat me up, I think to block out her entire Terrible Person Bingo card.

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Grand prize? A copy of Mein Kampf signed by Josef Stalin.

What a crazy, unusual situation, right? If you saw it in a scripted movie, you'd think the writer should go see a therapist. But here's the truth: human trafficking (forcing someone into labor or sex acts against their will) is worth between $9.5 billion and $32 billion worldwide-- to pick a random comparison, $9.5 billion is four times what the entire Burger King chain takes in. Recent stats found 83 percent of sex trafficking incidents in the U.S. involved victims that were U.S. citizens, and nearly half of those were minors -- just like I was. It's estimated that right now 300,000 kids are in this situation or are at risk. Just this June, the FBI freed 168 kids who'd been sold into sex slavery across 106 American cities. Since 2008, at least 4,000 kids have been freed from similar operations. Six years. So, yeah, my story is as isolated an incident as the existence of Walmart stores.

Some of the victims are runaways, some just have awful parents. All of them are invisible, as far as mainstream society goes. That's how this stuff hides; I was a chameleon good student and industrious worker with various part-time jobs, with a secret life in forced prostitution. That first part was important to my mother -- keeping up appearances, looking like the "good girl."

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Nobody ever suspects the parents of an honors student.

So, you want to know how the business works? No? Well, we're going to talk about it anyway ...

#4. This Industry Is Powered by the Internet

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My mom had a webcam, and a couple of years after the visits from the "uncles" she decided to take the "business" online. She'd go into chat rooms and talk me up, and that's how I got my work. The earliest webcam shows I remember were when I was around 6 years old, and they began to pick up after my grandmother passed when I was 8 (my grandmother being one of the last people in my life who could have put a stop to it).

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Webcams: taking arguments with distant family members and slavery into the 21st century.

There were (and probably still are) these fetishist chat rooms on Yahoo, where my mom would just go in and start dropping code words to determine if the guy really wanted to pay for my time or if he was just a random pervert. There was a whole system for the discerning customers: "Snow White" meant a dark-haired girl with pale skin; "Sleeping Beauty" meant a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl; "Strawberry Shortcake" meant a redhead; "Oreos" were black or mixed-race girls; "Fortune Cookies" were Asian girls. If that sounds incredibly racist, or downright silly, you're right. No one's accusing the dudes who buy children of being mature adults.

Once interest was established, my mom would move to the private video chat. That's where I'd sit down with a customer and do you know damn well what. The initial talk was free, just a prelude to them deciding whether or not they wanted to rent me. If they didn't, it'd be my fault for not being cute enough. My parents did business this way until I was about 10 or so, both because the chat rooms were being more closely monitored and I was getting "too old" for them (note: abused children hit puberty early).

And then there was Backpage, a website that I'm just sure has a whole bunch of legitimate uses but also happened to be the advertising tool of choice for my parental pimps. My mom would actually pose as a sex worker herself, all the while dropping hints and insinuations that made it clear that it was her child she was selling. She would describe herself as "a youthful princess looking for her knight, I'm a Snow White with long flowing hair, and I'd do anything to make my daddy happy." It sounds like it might be a perfectly legal ad for a "barely legal" woman, or maybe someone looking for a sugar daddy. But those code words let people in the child slave market know what she was really selling.

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In addition to nostalgia.

#3. You Become a Product -- for Life

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Like any product, there is a certain level of "quality control." If you are ugly, stupid, deformed, or defiant, you are worth less money. Total control of the "product" is necessary at all times. And if you hit a kid a bunch in the same place, people start to notice, so they got creative to keep their meal ticket intact-ish. For the worst offenses, being locked in a metal box or trunk until you passed out from the heat was a common prescription.

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Necessity is the mother of terrible, terrible invention.

Basically, they needed to keep me in prime selling shape until my mid-teens -- the ultimate goal for girls like me was an arranged marriage. They wanted to sell me before I got too old, and sort of cash out. You know all those lectures you had in school where they talk about how many tens of thousands of dollars it costs to raise a child to adulthood? My parents had the opposite goal -- they'd turned me into an investment.

I was 14 when the first negotiations for a marriage arrangement were on the table. When I was 15, one of the guys they wanted to marry me off to offered $50k to take me for life. My parents didn't jump at $50k, either -- a slave like me is worth more money than some small businesses. A pimp can make between $150,000 and $200,000 per child per year, according to the Justice Department. Have you noticed yet that many of the people who want to buy children to molest also have lots of money? Damn, this really does just keep getting worse, doesn't it?

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Good lord, Getty why do you have this picture?

Oh, and that guy who offered the $50K? He withdrew at the last minute when he found an international girl who was cheaper. Yeah, there's a whole world of us out there -- when I was older I met some of the international slaves. One was from Thailand, a couple were from India, two more from Africa. Their cases are similar -- it almost always starts in the family and eventually moves on to family friends and then strangers. The girls I met from Africa were sold straight-up by their parents -- they'd hawk their kids via chat rooms, bragging about their skills and such. Eventually someone bites, and then they work out an international adoption and bring the girl over on that premise. These people aren't giving a teen a home, they're buying a domestic servant or a fucktoy. The two girls from Thailand were brought over by the same guy. He was a slave trader -- yes, those still exist. He'd get the girls who were ripe and of age. "Hey, you're real poor, I'll take your daughters and make them American citizens and give them visas and food." And then they end up with me, in some dirty truck stop.

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"Welcome to America, ladies -- it's just this and basements as far as the eye can see."