Killing Me Softly

From Knox to Remington, Indiana where we will take our next rest day was a wet and mentally exhausting day for me.  We have crossed into a new timezone (mother, don't freak out), which gave us a little extra rest, but I didn't sleep well at all last night.  And we woke up to thundering rain.  Even with waiting until most of the storm passed, I still had to ride in the rain long enough to get completely soaked.  Then when the sun came out, I was really starting to overheat (I had put on extra layers to deal with the rain), and losing feeling below my elbows.  My legs felt perfectly fine and I had been riding at a solid pace but mentally I checked out and slowed way down.  Thankfully Thomas wanted to ride again today because I'm actually not sure I would have made it.  Once again, though, we were blessed with good weather.  We missed most of the rain and caught the sun for the last three hours of the ride.  God is out there somewhere.

After arriving at our destination, I started singing, "Killing Me Softly."  It's one of my favorite songs and I sing it often, but it had some relevance today.  This trip is killing me softly, gradually.  Yet I know that every morning, every minute, every pedal, I have a choice to keep pedaling or not to.  If I make the choice to keep pedaling I will certainly make it, I know I will.  We all can make it if we just keep pedaling.  Biking 50 miles or more in a day is not as difficult as people think.  You just need to make the choice to do it.  In the end, fighting human trafficking is not as daunting as we think.  We just need to make the choice to do it.

To keep up with the Massachusetts theme of the past few days, I'm going to copy an article my mother sent to me before the passing of the new bill.  Before I do that, keep in mind that human trafficking is the second-largest and fastest growing illegal trade/economy.  Why?  It makes sense.  From the magazine Bitter Sweet and Polaris Project, the average age of entry into forced prostitution in this country is 12-13 years old, and in D.C., a pimp with six girls who forces his girls to bring back no less than $500 a night (which is actually somewhat low), would make about $576,000 a year... all invisible money.  If we don't do more to pass laws and enforce the laws, and change our attitudes toward life and each other, then the question almost becomes, "Why would someone ever not become a trafficker?"

And as you read this article, I point your attention to the last line.  That line and this entire article, in my opinion, makes one thing clear: we humans are incredibly good at killing each other softly.  Posting this article is going to make this post long.  I won't mind if you don't read it until tomorrow, because you will have time tomorrow, all I'll be doing is posting some long-overdue pictures and such.  (This was originally published in the Boston Globe, by Yvonne Abraham)

"For legislators still in need of a reason to pass obscenely overdue human trafficking legislation, Norman S. Barnes has provided.

In case you missed the nauseating news, Barnes is accused of abducting a 15-year-old, holding her captive for 11 days, and forcing her to work as a prostitute in three counties.  He was arrested May 19, after the girl escaped from a Quincy hotel room.

It's a horrific story.  But it's just an extreme example of a scenario playing out all over this state every week, as minors are coerced into selling their bodies to enrich an army of pimps.

Head over to the Germaine Lawrence adolescent treatment center in Arlington and you'll find plenty of girls who were pressed into prostitution as minors: At least 20 of the 80 girls at the center--most of them runaways--have sold their bodies for shelter, or drugs, or to avoid beatings.

As awful as it is, the story of the girl we'll call Aya isn't unusual.  She's 15, with dark hair and an effervescence that seems miraculous once she starts talking.

For half of Aya's life, her drug-addicted mother was barely present in their Fall River home, unable to protect the girl from a family friend who sexually abused her when she was 9.

Aya was a sitting duck--11 years old, sure of her worthlessness--when a 16-year-old at school took an interest in her.

'He was my first love,' she said, during a lunch break at Germaine Lawrence.  Aya loved him even after he started hitting her.

'He made me believe I deserved it,' she said matter-of-factly, piling potato chips into a ham sandwich.

'After a while he said, "If you really love me, you'll have sex with my friend.  I don't want you to do this, but can you just help him out?"  He promised me money and clothes and anything I wanted.'

Instead, she got more beatings, and more of his friends--about 20 of them, who paid the 16-year-old for sex with her.  'I knew he didn't love me, but I didn't want him to leave me either,' Aya said.

Eventually, a worker for the Department of Children and Families saw Aya's bruises and placed her in foster care.  Once out, Aya went right back into the life, this time allowing somebody she'd met online to post pornographic videos of her.  She started cutting herself, and was placed at Germaine Lawrence.  She now gets the same services as any other sexual abuse victim might, including intensive therapy.

Scores of kids like Aya are preyed upon in this state each year, easy marks for pimps who see dollar signs in damaged souls.  But because those girls are usually poor, troubled, and black or Latino, they're barely visible.  Too often, because they're suborned into selling their bodies in more gradual, insidious ways than kidnapping, they're not even viewed as victims: Barnes's lawyers tried just that tack on Friday, saying the girl who escaped him was just looking for a way to avoid going to school.  Some teens picked up for prostitution are treated as delinquents instead of abused children in desperate need of help.  This is one seriously messed-up state of affairs.

But there's some hope: After years of failed efforts, Massachusetts--one of only four states in the nation without a human trafficking law--finally seems set to pass one.  Pushed by Attorney General Martha Coakley, the law would come down hard on traffickers, especially those who prey on minors.

And Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley, his county a national leader in treating teenage prostitutes as victims rather than offenders, has proposed a bill to make that approach law across the Commonwealth.

The prospects of that 'Safe Harbor' legislation are less certain, but it's just as important as Coakley's crackdown.  Because trafficked girls like Aya aren't imprisoned only by coercion and beatings: They're also bound by their own brokenness.

As Aya put it: 'I thought this is what I was made for.'"