CUMBERLAND COUNTY, Pa. (WHTM) – On Monday, local leaders including Cumberland County District Attorney Sean McCormack, State Representative Thomas Kutz, Upper Allen Township Police and others held a Human Trafficking Community Workshop.
This workshop was held to raise awareness, educate, and tell those who attended to fight against human trafficking.
Representative Kutz says human trafficking is the world’s largest criminal enterprise.
At the workshop, a sex trafficking survivor shared her story. We are not sharing this survivor’s identity for her safety.
She says, as an adult, she was living in hotels throughout Harrisburg working at a strip club.
“Through dancing, I met this couple who used to come into the strip clubs, and she approached me the one day and said, ‘hey um do you want to join the circuit…and travel around the states hit all the major hot spot clubs, we can make money together,'” said the survivor.
The survivor said she had nothing to lose and agreed to go with the couple.
“We get to South Carolina Florence, get to the hotel room, I lay down there we all go to bed him and her on one bed, I’m on the other bed. We go to sleep,” she said.
But when she woke up, the couple was gone, and an armed man was there.
“By the door with a gun in his lap, tells me that I am his and that they left me there and sold me to him,” said the survivor.
The survivor said her trafficker told her who she had to sleep with.
“And my trafficker stood in that hotel room during each situation with a gun in his hand to make sure that I did not try to leave,” said the survivor.
Then one day, she says a man paid the trafficker double to leave the room so he could be alone with her.
“As soon as he left that room and I heard that door click, I took off for my life, and I ran out the room,” said the survivor.
She ran to a nearby truck stop, where she hid for three days.
She says people ask her why she didn’t call the cops after escaping.
“Because the cops were coming there in uniform in the cop car coming to the motel room.”
While at the truck stop, she says a man came up to her from Truckers Against Trafficking.
He connected her to an organization that helped her escape. “Still till this day, it’s not easy for me I still struggle with a lot of things, I’ve overcome a lot but trusting people is definitely a hard one for me,” said the survivor.
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