(Be forewarned–gruesome subject–KSH).
The 29-year-old said others forced her to sell sex for money from age 10 until 17, while she was in the foster care system. She recounted beatings, starvation, forced cocaine and heroin use and seeing the disappearance of other girls who stepped out of line with their traffickers.
The experience left her hooked on crack cocaine and dependent on turning tricks to feed her habit. Yet she still refers to herself as “one of the lucky ones.”
“I was caught and pulled out,” she said. “If it wasn’t for an officer here, I think I’d be dead today.”
This is the dark reality of sex trafficking in the Holy City and across South Carolina. Vulnerable children and young adults are forced to sell their bodies and held against their will, deprived of food and sleep and sometimes beaten until they meet a quota of men to service.
Read it all from the local paper.