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Human trafficking survivor tells her story

Greenville Herald-Banner - 1/15/2020

Jan. 15--Despite the unpleasant subject matter, members of the Greenville community filled the Texan Theater on Tuesday to learn more about the realities of human trafficking from someone who is a survivor of sex trafficking.

The speaker for the event -- which was hosted by Altrusa of Greenville -- was Rebekah Charleston, who was trafficked by three different men over more than 10 years, beginning when she was 17 years old. Today, she is the executive director of Valiant Hearts, a faith-based organization that focuses on the restoration, empowerment and education of those who have been sexually exploited as well as those who are struggling with porn addiction.

Charleston began her talk by explaining that prostitution is only one of many kinds of human trafficking, and that sex trafficking, in particular, can look quite different from what many people may imagine.

"A lot of times when people think about human trafficking, they think of an image of a frightened white girl being grabbed by grubby hands and abducted, but it usually doesn't work like that," Charleston said. "It can start out as a guy taking you out on a date."

She then went on to tell the story of her experience with trafficking.

Charleston grew up in Keller in a middle class family, but when one of her older brothers took his own life, things began to unravel.

In high school, she started going to school less and using drugs. She was also raped on two different occasions, but couldn't bring herself to tell her parents or anyone.

Eventually, her parents checked her into a group home, which to her felt like abandonment. Months later, after earning a home visit from the group home for good behavior, she ran away from her parents' home.

After running away, she found a drug dealer with spare couch and started to live with him and his friends. Later, her new "friends" talked her into stripping ... at the age of 17.

"I didn't have an ID and they still hired me on the spot, because they didn't care," Charleston said.

Through her work at the strip club, she met a man who wooed her and groomed her until "he felt like (her) boyfriend," but he turned out to be a pimp who violently enforced his rules and made her parade through the parking lots of motels with hourly rates.

It was in one of those parking lots that she eventually met a man who seemed more clean cut than the others and promised to "take care of her."

"He told me to stop drinking, smoking and doing drugs, and to work out," Charleston said. "At the time, it felt like I was loved, but I ended up going from my clientele being people on the street to people in the suites."

After months of grooming, Charleston's newest trafficker became physically, verbally and emotionally abusive, and it took her 10 years to escape from him.

"People ask, 'Why didn't you just run away.' I did ... it wasn't until the third try that I finally made it out," she said. "The average number of attempts is seven."

While telling her story, Charleston referred to a tattoo on her arm that her last trafficker made her get, that says, "Unity, loyalty, brotherhood, sacrifice, and love equals family."

"That's all I was looking for, I never wanted to be exploited," she said.

Since escaping her traffickers, Charleston has earned a master's degree in criminal justice, has had a son, and has become the executive director of Valiant Hearts.

After telling her story, Charleston recommended that people go to the Texas attorney general's webpage to learn more about different types of human trafficking and different myths about it. The information can be viewed online at www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/initiatives/human-trafficking.

"We are so glad we got her to speak," said Altrusa co-chair Kathleen Witte. "Human trafficking is a big problem and a lot of people just don't know how big it is."

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