Nearly two weeks after receiving a phone call from Attorney General Ashley Moody informing me that she would be appointing me to the Statewide Council on Human Trafficking Direct-Support Organization Board of Directors it has been made public and still don’t haven’t been able to find words to adequately express how honored I feel. While growing up and being trafficked I was in public and came into contact with people all the time. People saw me, but they either chose to igno

At thirteen years old after watching both of my parents try to commit suicide I was stripped away from the only life that I knew and placed in a facility filled with strangers. Though I had experienced horrific things and didn’t belong with my parents, it was familiar, and it was the only life I knew up until that point, so I wanted to go “home.” I began cutting myself, which caused me to be kicked out my first group home and told it was because “they didn’t deal with kids l

During the 2018 Legislative Session I traveled back and forth to Tallahassee on four separate occasions with two fellow survivors and two advocates. We advocated on behalf of a bill sponsored by Senator Book and Representative Spano that would allow survivors of human trafficking to sue lodging establishments that knew human trafficking was happening at their establishment and turned a blind eye to it. That bill ultimately died on the final day of session. I worked with Sena

“I could NEVER get up and share my story,” I declared to three of my friends at the 6th Annual Human Trafficking Awareness Day in Orlando, FL four years ago. It was the first anti-human trafficking awareness event I had attended and it changed my life. It was at that event when I learned exactly what human trafficking was and realized what happened to me when I was younger wasn’t prostitution; it was human trafficking. Since the day I said I could never get up and share my

The last quarter of this year has been an unexpected season of great pain and sorrow. In September we were hit with hurricane Irma. The beginning of October I had to have a complete hysterectomy, which I was mentally prepared for, but it still brought up several emotions and left me feeling like I was less of a person due to having the surgery. A few days before Thanksgiving, during an interview with Karla Ray from Channel 9 News, Karla helped me find my strength that I lost

It takes a lot of courage for survivors of domestic violence, sexual abuse, childhood abuse or any type of abuse to share their experiences. Fear and shame keep many victims and survivors from talking about abuse that occurred. Many often carry that secret around for many years or for their lifetime. For many years fear and shame kept me from talking about abuse that occurred in my past. I was afraid because of the things that happened to me, what I witnessed happen to oth