I am alone here in this small room but it is never truly quiet. I’ve learned to take my mind to another place where I can dream of a life without head counts or people telling me what I can eat or wear. It’s those little cuts that shape a life behind walls. I am Tiffany Simpson. I am a survivor of child sex trafficking. I am a mother. I am an advocate. I am also sitting in a southern Georgia jail now for the past 9 years.
My journey to incarceration began long before I was even trafficked. I was born into a family with domestic violence and substance abuse all around me. They say you are the company you keep, but when you are a child, you do not have a choice.
At six years old, I watched my dad go to jail for the rest of his life. I love my dad but he abused my mom. After he was gone, my mom left me mostly to fend for myself while she drowned her own life in alcohol and drugs. Those were my examples of a family and love. The families I’d see all happy at the pool or church seemed like another world, a world where I was not invited. Now I know that what I was experiencing is called abandonment.
I wish now that I’d listened to my grandmother and aunt when they got custody of me when I was 13, but all these habits of running wild and getting in trouble were already formed. I was angry and didn’t feel like they understood me.
My trafficker knew what he was doing when he met me. He played the father figure and the boyfriend so perfectly that I just ran straight to him. I felt like I didn’t have anything to lose but I was so wrong.
He beat me, sold me, degraded me, stabbed me and threatened to kill the baby growing inside me and my grandmother, too. I was trapped in broad daylight and the drugs kept me quiet while he took the money from all the men who would come to rape me. The one time I did try to run, he caught me and dragged me back covered in dirt and blood. When he trafficked another girl who was my friend, I was too scared to fight. The police who had never tried to help me, arrested me along with my trafficker. I was charged with sex trafficking and sentenced to 30 years in jail. My baby boy was taken to me and is now living with my traffickers mother. My trafficker, the Sheriff, my own attorney, the prosecutor and the judge were all these so-called powerful men who wanted to lock me up. They wanted me to just go away because thinking of me as a child who was trafficked was too complicated for them. My own trafficker was never charged with what he did to me. It was like my pain didn’t exist to these men.
I could have just given up. I almost did, but there was just a spark of life in me that would not let go. That led to me reaching out to Andrea at Karana Rising. It’s been over 9 years of fighting for my freedom. So many powerful women are now working to set me free and undo the injustice these men caused. My new attorney is a powerful woman named Susan Coppedge is working some legal magic and from within jail I’m partnering with Andrea, another survivor named Ashley and a young filmmaker, Noel. I just can’t help but notice now that I’m surrounded by powerful women that my journey to freedom feels very close to coming true. When I am free, I am going to make sure I use my past to help other girls coming up behind me. That is what women do. We lead.
Written by Tiffany Simpson:
Tiffany Simpson is a Survivor and Advocate at Karana Rising.
