She was only nine years old when her family began selling her into the sex trade. Even though she was only a child, she was forced to service several men each day.
“Men would be brought to my home, to my bedroom, to the garage, to the basement, I would be brought to hotels, I would be brought to homes in the suburbs.”
Jessica Dillow is telling her story of sex slavery, prostitution, escape, and restoration for the third annual Human Trafficking Awareness and Advocacy Day at the Colorado State Capitol.
Her tragic journey began in Canada then moved to southern Colorado. Dillow’s family did not let her go to school, so she had no avenue of escape. She talks of her isolation,
“Having no friends, having no school, having nobody be able to see what was taking place, caused the abuse to perpetrate even greater, which then increased the number of men that I would see.”
At one point, the girl was sold to a pimp as a prostitute and taken to southern Colorado. But all that changed when she was 21 years old. A perceptive stranger recognized that something was off, that maybe Dillow was caught in the web of human trafficking. The unknown woman slipped Dillow a note with just a phone number.
Although the abused young woman was nervous, she finally gathered her courage and made her first bid for escape. This action took tremendous bravery. She explains,
“And she told me I could call her if I wanted to call her. She reached out and helped me so I was 21 years old when I was able to escape.?
With head-spinning speed, Dillow was on a plane headed to Denver. Her final destination was a safe house in Colorado Springs. The constant terror of Dillow’s existence left little energy for anything but sheer survival. She said,
“I remember looking up into the sky and seeing that it was blue for the first time.”
But her new-found freedom only lasted for six months because she was a Canadian citizen. When her visa ran out, authorities forced her to go back to Canada ? alone. After a struggle with a pimp, she finally escaped.
Surprisingly the numbers of sex slaves in the U.S. are staggering.
“Each year about 17,500 individuals are brought into the United States and held against their will as victims of human trafficking. Some estimate the number is as high as 60,000 annually?(not including) those who are here from previous years, migrants already in the US, runaways, displaced persons, and those from oppressed/marginalized groups and the poor.”
Dillow is telling her story to help raise awareness of sex trafficking in cities throughout the U.S. and raise hope for those trapped in the human trade. She says,
“I want people to know that there’s healing, and that there’s life beyond the victimization. As a survivor leader, I know it’s taking place with the girls that I mentor, the girls that I work with, what I want people to know is that it’s taking place in their backyards.?
Emergency healthcare providers often miss the signs of human trafficking, mistake the signs for intimate partner violence, and are rarely aware of how to help.
Recovery has been a years-long struggle for Dillow especially learning to trust those who are supposed to love her. But she will be graduating from college in just one semester with a degree in clinical psychology. And she will marry her fianc? in June.
Dillow’s ghastly journey is one of tragedy, courage, but most of all hope.
Watch her tell her story here:
