When we are young, we believe that monsters lurk under beds and in dark closets. But as we age, we learn that the real monsters walk among us, waiting for their prey to be at their most vulnerable before pouncing.
We like to pretend that these monsters don’t exist close to us. They’re not in our backyards or our neighboring towns. They’re far away–they’re someone else’s problem.
But Cassandra* knows better. She knows that those monsters are everywhere, and they know when to strike.
When childhood trauma like Cassandra’s goes unaddressed, it can lead to a life of compounding harm. Cassandra started abusing substances when she was about nine years old. She left home at 16 and had her first child at 17–when she was still a child herself.
“I went out into the world without any idea of what I was walking into,” Cassandra said. “I felt unheard and unseen. I felt like I was a replaceable thing. Like I wasn’t important.”
At 19, Cassandra was sent to drug treatment in Oakland, CA. Not long after, she was kicked out of the program and ended up on the street. Traffickers recognized Cassandra as an ideal target–young and vulnerable. Using her substance use against her, they trafficked Cassandra in Los Angeles for nine long months.
“One day when [the trafficker] was in the store, I got the courage to run away…but he chased me and tried to put me back in his car. I fought him off. He wouldn’t have stopped trying to do that if the cops didn’t pull up and he finally drove away,” she said.
Back in Montana, HER Campaign knows the struggle that survivors of trafficking face. The HER Campaign exists to travel alongside survivors on their journey from rescue to recovery through a safe house, an eight-week emergency stabilization program, and long-term treatment residential programs.
With support from HER Campaign, Cassandra found a space where she could begin to heal. Now, she is calling for more support for residential treatment–she believes her own experiences and struggles overcoming substance abuse and childhood trauma made her more vulnerable to being trafficked.
Cassandra’s story is not uncommon–in fact, it’s all too common. In 2022, the HER Campaign had to send 48 of 70 calls for emergency placement to other hotlines and programs. They couldn’t help almost 70% of the people who desperately needed it.
“When we get a call for someone who is actively in trafficking and wanting to get out, they are in full-blown crisis mode. Being trauma-informed, we know that their brain is in fight or flight mode.” said HER Campaign co-founder Britney Higgs.
Higgs and the HER Campaign say more funding is needed to keep survivors from being trafficked again and to bring traffickers to justice. Cassandra wants to encourage other women to reach out for help and have hope in a new future for themselves, and to not feel shame or guilt for anything they have done or experienced.
The monsters may exist, but Cassandra, Higgs, and the HER Campaign prove that they can be defeated.
“If we keep it hidden and in secret, the lights are never going to get to it... It's just going to be something we bury and pretend like it isn’t there,” Cassandra said. “But then it creates a monster. We don’t need any more monsters in this world.”
Learn more about the HER Campaign’s mission to help women heal, grow, and find purpose through residential programs for survivors of human trafficking
*Indicates a name has been changed.
