Transcript for Podcast 3 (Part 1 of 2) 

 

Speaking Out! Human Trafficking Survivors 
and Individuals with Disabilities Discuss 
their Lived Experiences with Services 

MARGARET: We would like to advise our listeners that this 
podcast discusses topics that include human trafficking, sexual 
assault, and domestic violence. Though we do not discuss graphic 
details, listener discretion is advised. 

Greetings, and welcome to the Trafficking of Youth with 
Disabilities Education and Outreach Project podcast. Thank you 
for joining us. The purpose of this podcast is to raise awareness 
about the reality of trafficking of youth with disabilities. We talk 
about what trafficking is, risk factors for youth with disabilities, 
and how providers and the disability community can support 
survivors. This podcast was produced and organized by the 
International Organization for Adolescents and the National 
Human Trafficking and Disabilities Working Group. I am your 
host, Margaret Potkay, project consultant with IOFA. 

Welcome to podcast three, part one, Speaking Out: Human 
Trafficking Survivors and Individuals with Disabilities Discuss 
Their Lived Experience and Interactions with Services. We learned 
from podcast one that human trafficking in the United States is a 


crime that happens in all areas across the country. Our guests 
discussed with us what youth trafficking looks like, how it impacts 
youth, and specifically how youth with disabilities are targeted 
and trafficked in our communities. In podcast number two, we 
spoke to expert professionals from across the country who work 
with youth on how professional youth services providers can 
identify youth survivors of trafficking, and how to provide 
appropriate accessible services for them. 

We know that trafficking survivors receive services from a variety 
of social services organizations to meet varied and complex 
needs. Today, we'll be speaking with youth survivors of trafficking 
about their lived experiences, and their take on human trafficking 
and the services they have received. In part two of the podcast, 
we'll be chatting with self-advocates with disabilities about their 
experiences seeking and obtaining services. 

So today, we are speaking with Erica, with the goal of better 
understanding how we can serve survivors of human trafficking 
and learn from their valued experiences. These individuals would 
like to share their own life experiences surrounding what 
happened to them in trafficking situations. We know that all 
youth sex trafficking situations are different, and they can happen 
to boys, girls, transgender youth from all backgrounds, races, 
ethnicities, LGBTQ, and socioeconomic statuses. 


The individuals we will speak with were all trafficked here in the 
United States. All have received extensive therapy and 
counseling, and feel comfortable talking about their trafficking 
situation. They have support of their counselors and case 
managers in sharing their experience. The purpose of the 
interview is to bring awareness to providers who may come into 
contact with youth who are at risk of being trafficked, and to 
understand better how to reach and serve potential trafficking 
victims. 

So welcome to podcast three, part one. Welcome our guest, 
Erica. We'd like to get to know you a little bit better. Can you 
introduce yourself to the audience and share whatever you feel 
comfortable with? 

ERICA: So hello, my name is Erica. I'm from Vermont. I'm going 
to be 43. I have Marfan syndrome. I was diagnosed when I was 
three with Marfan's. It's a genetic disorder that affects your 
skeletal connective tissues. I was actually given the prognosis 
that I wouldn't live past the age of nine. So congratulations to 
me, I'm now 43. 

I work for, with a disability rights organization. I work actively 
with survivors of domestic sexual violence and human trafficking 
of people with disabilities. I am currently serving on several 
boards that protect people with disabilities. I am very active in 
local government. I'm also just active in just my community, and 


making sure that nobody has to really live through the same 
things that I lived through. And just speaking out against human 
trafficking as a whole. And I'm just really excited to be here 
today. 

MARGARET: Yeah, thank you for joining us. Thank you for sharing 
your experience so that we, the audience, the community, so that 
we can provide insight, information, and services to survivors. So 
thank you. I would love to know a little bit about your experience 
growing up with Marfan's, and if there were any memories that 
you could feel comfortable sharing that were defining to your 
childhood or adolescence. 

ERICA: Absolutely. So again, I grew up here in Vermont. I don't 
know if people know where Vermont is. It's two hours from the 
Canadian border. We're a very small state. So again, I have 
Marfan's. Some people might be googling that now as they're 
hearing about it. Back in school, very little was known about it. 
People didn't know how to react to it, especially teachers. 

I give some credit to people that really looked into it, but I was-- 
I want to say some defining moments of my childhood was the 
fact that my mother didn't really want or know how to deal with a 
child with a disability, let alone a child that wasn't going to live 
very long. And I don't-- this really hard to explain or some people 
to understand, that my mother also had her own demons. And I 


learned later in life that she was also abused as a child. I did not 
learn that actually until this year. 

But what was hard for her is that, because of her own demons 
and not dealing with her own issues, is that she also had a lot of 
codependency issues and alcoholism. And faced with knowing 
that a child had a disability and knowing that a child was not 
going to live very long, her ideas were that love was physical, and 
that if nobody loved her physically and intimately, then she 
wasn't loved as a person. The things for her were that some of 
the people that she brought into the household were extremely 
not nice. And they had ideas that sleeping with a child were a 
good idea. And she allowed this a lot. And they often paid her, 
whether it was through alcohol, money. And that child was me. 

And one of the things that really was interesting in my school was 
I would act up a lot. And a lot of the teachers overlooked that as, 
oh, that was this child with a disability. She's just acting out 
because she's special, so to speak, quote unquote, and that's just 
the way things are. Sometimes I would come to school with 
bruises, fat lips, cuts. And it would just circle down to the fact 
that I had a disability, I was clumsy. My mother could hide 
things. 

I don't think I mentioned that my parents were divorced. My 
father also had Marfan syndrome. My parents were divorced, and 
so my mother could also hide things. You know, she was just 


playing outside and was roughhousing. My father didn't really 
know how to handle a child, let alone a female child. And he 
would just say, oh, OK, my mother must know what's right, and 
would just believe her. 

So those were a lot of things that I remember in living when my 
mother, was just being really scared at night, not knowing who 
was going to be in my bedroom, and trying to hide. And there 
were a lot of nights I wouldn't sleep. I'd sleep in school. And it 
was just-- it was horrific. And I still have sometimes night terrors 
because of it. 

MARGARET: Well, thank you for the courage to share this 
experience. And I would like to ask, considering what you did 
share, if you consider yourself a survivor of trafficking. 

ERICA: I want to say yes and no. The term survivor, to me, is 
somebody that's able to get on with their life. And this is always 
going to be a part of my life. I guess I've survived what happened 
to me, but to me, it's always going to be a part of who I am. I am 
always going to be fearful of people touching me, and not 
knowing why they are touching me. It took me a very long time-- 
I've been married for almost 20 years, and sometimes I'm still 
waiting for my husband, who is very, very caring and very, very 
supportive, to hurt me. 


So you're constantly, constantly living in that fear of who's in 
your bedroom. You're constantly living in the fear of having your 
back to an exit because you don't know who's coming in. You're 
still waking up and almost seeing a boogeyman. So surviving-- 
yeah, you're surviving, but that's what you're doing, is you're 
surviving. You're surviving the horrors of what happened to you. 

So sometimes I struggle with that. You know, yes, this happened 
in my childhood, but it's still hard because sometimes you'll see 
flashes, or you'll see glimmers of it. And there are also bits and 
pieces I don't remember. And I'm almost fearful of why is it my 
brain doesn't remember all of it. Why was it so bad that my brain 
doesn't want me to remember it. 

MARGARET: Right. And taking that experience as a child is 
something, you know, when we process things at a younger age, 
we don't have necessarily the tools to understand. And even 
then, at that point of time, was there even speaking of any 
trafficking? I don't know if that was even something that was 
defined in those early times. 

ERICA: Well, no, there wasn't. And also, I'm going to say again I 
was a child with a disability, and I was in special education 
classes. So back then, when you were in special education 
classes-- and I've even heard tell today-- that you're not even 
taught good touch and bad touch. So I didn't even know what 
was happening to me was a good thing or bad thing. 


I didn't know there were private parts. I didn't know, you know, 
what you're taught now, you know, what's under your bathing 
suit is not to be touched by other people. So I wasn't aware. 
There weren't words for abuse. There weren't words for hurt. 

So I would act out. I was a shy kid or I'd have a bad temper or I 
couldn't sit still or I wouldn't let a teacher touch me. For them, it 
was me acting out because I was disabled, but there were no 
words like trafficking, there were no words like abuse, there were 
no words like I'm being hurt, because nobody gave me those 
words. 

MARGARET: So would you say that you were treated differently 
even in the school system because of your disability? 

ERICA: Absolutely. The school system treated me a lot differently 
because I was in the special education classes. You know, back 
then, and even still today, the special education classes, you were 
separated from the other students. We had our own recesses. We 
had our own lunchtimes. We would walk by the other classes and 
see them doing their work. And I would often wonder in the back 
of my mind, you know, what are they learning that I can't learn. 
Why are they so special? But yeah, we were treated a lot 
differently than the other kids. 

MARGARET: And tell me, so how did you end up making the 
decision to seek support? How did you get through that 


experience, and how did you end up ultimately leaving the 
trafficking situation? 

ERICA: I actually didn't make that decision. It was actually a 
fluke. My parents, like I said, were divorced, and my father 
remarried my stepmother. And it was my stepmother who 
ultimately realized there was something not right. I was sleeping, 
she came in my bedroom, and I screamed and ran out of the 
room. I was in a dead sleep. She touched me, I screamed and 
ran out of the room. And she said, something is not right. There's 
something going on, and we have to help her. 

MARGARET: Wow. 

ERICA: And then she started talking to my father and realizing 
there was more and more going on. And she ultimately came to 
the decision that I was to leave my mother's house. 

MARGARET: So you went to your father and stepmother's house 
after that point in time? 

ERICA: Yes. 

MARGARET: And did they bring you to any counseling, any 
provider? Did you end up going to any meetings for healing? 

ERICA: My stepmother did take me to counseling. She ultimately 
moved me to a different school, and made sure that I was-- she 


had me re-evaluated, and realized I did not need special 
education classes. She had me going to counseling twice a week, 
and she also had me going to-- I was in a whole new family, so 
we had family counseling going on, as well. 

It was a whole new world for me, because this was a woman who 
cared about my education, she cared about my well-being, she 
actually cared that I was eating healthy food. And she would 
actually talk to me about what was going on, and allowed me to 
learn all of these new words and vocabulary and all these things 
that my biological mother, I want to say, for lack of better words, 
kept from me. 

MARGARET: Right. 

ERICA: But it was just a whole different world, where I could be 
Erica, where I could thrive and grow and get away from this 
abusive situation. 

MARGARET: Wow. Well, what an amazing trajectory in your story, 
and I'm so grateful that you were able to move into a different 
place and find a safe haven and be treated with that respect and 
support. Do you remember when you started connecting with the 
provider or going to the services? Would you be able to share 
what that process was like for you? How did it kind of change 
your perspective and thoughts, and maybe even like what was 
provided for you at those meetings? 


ERICA: The first time I started going, I actually hated it because 
they wanted me to express my feelings, which I didn't know what 
those were. They would have me talk about my mother, and what 
happened in my mother's house was secret. You know, you don't 
talk about those things. My mother's house was very secretive. 
You didn't do that. Then they wanted me to talk about my 
mother. 

And you know, I was brought up you love your parents, and I 
didn't want to betray my mother's trust. So I hated it. I think I 
went through, hm, two therapists before I finally found one where 
I'm like, this is not somebody who my parents are paying for me 
to talk to, where they're actually like letting me go at my own 
pace. 

You know, if I didn't want to talk about the stuff that was going 
on in my life, I could talk about stuff I liked. I could talk about 
books or I could talk about music. And they would eventually find 
a way for me to talk about my feelings, but I didn't have to talk 
about the deep trauma in my life. I could just talk and be myself. 
And eventually they would get to the points in my life where I 
was hurting, but it was not forced out of me, so to speak. 

MARGARET: So it does sound like you did end up finding a 
provider that did bring you a comfortable space to share and 
build trust. So that's wonderful. Would you say that there's any 


challenges or barriers that the providers, perhaps unintentionally, 
may have put in front of you at that time? 

ERICA: The providers before I found the provider that did work 
for me was that they weren't meeting me where I was. That was 
one of the big issues, because they wanted me to start talking 
about all the trauma, and I wasn't ready yet. I was just learning 
how to live or be, for, be a child. I was never able to do that in 
my mother's house. 

And I just wanted to do kid things. I wanted to, you know, play 
video games or go hang out with my friends. I never had friends 
before. And the psychiatrists I had, they wanted me to talk about 
all of this bad stuff that I just wanted to forget about. And I didn't 
want to be that Erica anymore. So that was one of the barriers. 

And then the teachers that I had, my stepmother would talk to 
them and say, don't treat her differently. You know, yeah, she 
has a disability, she may have limitations, but don't call it out. 
That hurts her. And it was really interesting how my father and 
my stepmother learned how to support me. And I want to say-- 
this is very cliche-- I was very, very lucky, and not too many 
people are, to have that support. But it was very interesting how 
psychiatrists want you to talk about all the bad stuff, and not 
meet you where you're at, and that's very much a hindrance. 
Some people are not there yet. 


MARGARET: Right. So the space, that time to allow you to be a 
young person, allow you to just be in that space, to become 
comfortable was super essential in order to move forward in the 
healing process. And were there any other challenges that you 
might remember of the space, the resources that were provided 
for you, or anything on that side? 

ERICA: I'm trying to think. I want to say it was a lifetime ago, but 
it really wasn't. You know, for me, it was just very interesting 
how a lot of the teachers in the school before I was at just 
summed it up to, you know, she's just a troublemaker, she's just 
this, and not looking at what's going on in the home. They could 
ignore it. And then when I saw other kids in my new school 
getting abused, I'm just like, why aren't the teachers looking at 
the home? And then when I went to high school, I saw other kids 
getting abused, and I'm like, something's going on in their lives. 
Those are signs of abuse. Why aren't they looking at those? 

MARGARET: So it was a challenge to recognize, or to-- 

ERICA: Yeah. 

MARGARET: You know, there was a lack of awareness. 

ERICA: Absolutely. And I still think there is a lack of awareness 
sometimes in the school system. 


MARGARET: No, of course, that is a huge challenge. And that's a 
big part of why we are doing this podcast. And we're so grateful 
for your time and for sharing this because our hope is to have 
listeners, providers, teachers, anyone in the community who's 
able to maybe think twice when they see someone acting out, or 
to understand that there is more beyond what we might assume 
to day-to-day life for youth, and especially for youth with 
disabilities. 

So thank you for sharing the details of that experience, for 
leaving the trafficking situation, for how it felt getting those 
services from the provider, what kinds of challenges you did face, 
and what ultimately made you feel comfortable and what you 
found solace in, and with the best provider that helped you along. 
So thank you very much for sharing your experience. And I'd love 
to ask if there is anything else that you would like to share and 
that we haven't discussed yet. I mean, anything for other youth, 
anything for providers, or just take your moment to speak to the 
audience. 

ERICA: Well, I don't want to make it sound like I painted a rosy 
picture, that everything went hunky dory, because I did go 
through-- I mean, there were times that I thought it was my 
fault, everything was my fault. And I'm actually starting to tear 
up. And it was my fault. And I did go through a period of time 


where I thought I wanted to kill myself because it was all my 
fault. I did this. 

And I went through the what ifs. What if I was a better child? 
What if I was born without a disability? And I went through all 
those, and I still go through those. You know, there are times 
where my brain just goes, Erica, if you could have just done this. 
But I know that's not true. And there were a lot of times when I 
just fought with myself, a lot of times I fought with my 
stepmother because I was still fighting with the lessons my 
mother instilled on me. 

But also, to tie this all back to my mother, I actually, when I 
graduated college, I went back and I talked to my mother. And 
this was, I want to say, I don't know, about 17 years ago. I 
actually went and I asked her why. I wanted closure. I wanted to 
know why she hurt me. And her answer was because, Erica, you 
were a disabled child, and you were worthless to me. And I'm a 
mother, and I don't know why a mother would find a child 
worthless. And to me, that was my goodbye to her. I haven't 
talked to her since. I can't fathom why a child would be worthless 
to somebody. 

But a lot of people ask me if I'm angry. And yes, I'm angry every 
day at her. But anger keeps me going, and anger keeps me 
talking about it. And that's my superpower, is that I'm angry. And 
I don't want this to happen to somebody else. 


MARGARET: Well, thank you for sharing your superpower. We 
really appreciate from the bottom of our hearts your time and 
your courage and the strength that you've shown, of course, to 
be so honest and vulnerable about that experience. And we honor 
you and we thank you so much for sharing your time and your 
story and your courage. So thank you. 

ERICA: Thank you. 

MARGARET: If there is anything else you would like to say to our 
audience, I'd welcome a conclusion for our audience. 

ERICA: If you're out there and you're being hurt, speak up. And if 
you're out there and you see somebody being hurt, speak up. You 
know, it's really hard to say one place or another is better, but 
whoever you trust, speak up. Just speak up, please. You're going 
to save a life. 

MARGARET: Thank you. Thank you for your time and for sharing 
your story with us here today, Erica. We honor you and 
appreciate you so much. 

ERICA: Thank you. 

MARGARET: Thank you. 

Thank you for listening to our podcast. If you have questions and 
would like to contact us, please email us at info@iofa.org. You 


can learn more about IOFA and contact us at our website, 
www.iofa.org. You can learn more about the National Human 
Trafficking and Disabilities Working Group, NHTDWG, at 
iofa.org/national trafficking disabilities working group, and find 
additional resources on the intersection of human trafficking and 
youth with disabilities. 

If you are concerned that someone you care about is at risk of or 
being trafficked, you can get help at the National Human 
Trafficking Hotline at 888-373-7888 24 hours a day, seven days a 
week. Text 233-733 or live chat with an advocate at their 
website, https//humantraf fickinghotline.org. This project was 
produced by the International Organization for Adolescents under 
award number 2016XVGXK015, awarded by the Office for Victims 
of Crime, Office of Justice Programs, US Department of Justice. 
The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations 
expressed in this project are those of the contributors, and do not 
necessarily represent the official positions or policies of the US 
Department of Justice. Thank you to our partners, National 
Human Trafficking and Disabilities Working Group and the 
National Resource Center for Reaching Victims.