The lights of the city are twinkling, people are bustling, and the holiday spirit is in the air. You can feel the excitement all around.
There is a heaviness that I find makes it difficult to breathe, but a crispness to the air which gives my body a chill. It is mixed with the warmth against my face, and I can feel the wet liquid running down my neck. As I begin to awaken to my reality, the sounds around me are intensely loud with cheering. The cheers I realize are for the man who is on top of me, raping me, which explains the challenges I’m having catching my breath. It is the weight of his body, which fully encapsulates my 100 lbs. The warm liquid is urine coming from one of the other men who just finished raping me. The cheers are coming from the people who have already had a turn with me, and those who are waiting for their turn next.
As my reality becomes clear and I fade in and out of consciousness, I vaguely remember someone forcing me to drink a beverage, then staggering or actually being drug to the location. The location is a dark, filthy alley in downtown Dallas. The realization was that I was the “party favor.” My clothing had already been selected and properly placed to hide the bruises from my previous beatings in preceding days. I was learning to be complaint, but it did not appear that anyone cared about the bruises when my clothes were ripped during the night’s activities. In no way did I have a choice.
I lost count of the men climbing on top of me after about 7, 8, or 9, and began to pray for an end. My whole body was shivering, tears streaming from my eyes; I was becoming numb to the parts of my body that hurt beyond what anyone should ever endure. Then I felt a hand grab my arm, yank me up, and drag me to the closest fast food chain bathroom. It was there she assured me that I had made quite a bit of money already tonight, but the night wasn’t over, and I needed to get cleaned up for the next party – words I had heard all too often. She was another victim, but she knew how to play the game much better than I did and her beatings were far less. She seemed to have more privileges than anyone else in the house. Most of the time she was encouraging and supportive and assured me that “it” would get easier, that I wouldn’t mind after a while, and maybe I would even learn to like “it”. I NEVER did!
I stared at my reflection in the scratched-up mirror of the fast-food chain bathroom. She had locked the door and was in no way allowing me to leave or even considering leaving me alone. At that point, I am not sure it would have even mattered. It was all my legs could do to hold me up as I wiped the blood running from between them, pulled the gravel from my skin because my body had been pressed against the rough alley, and attempted to wash the urine from my face, neck, and hair. She hurried me along, instructing me that “he” (my trafficker) was waiting, and the night was still young.
Looking in a mirror was the last thing I wanted to do, but as I caught my reflection what peered back at me was a hollowed, brown-eyed girl with no hope, despair, shame, and a wish for death. It wasn’t the end for a while in the “life” of trafficking, but little did I know what would lie ahead in the years to come.
This is WHY Reflection Ministries exists today. You may say it is a calling, a vision, or sometimes I hear “she needed a hobby.”
Reflection Ministries has truly been my personal faith in action and an obedience to what I feel Christ has laid on my heart to see people as people. It is where I found the Lord truly redeems what He allows. My husband, Wesley, challenged me early on when I finally got up the courage to share my past with him to not build a non-profit with “duct tape and bailing wire”, but to be thoughtful, intentional, and pay attention to the details – to essentially be “me.”
The journey of this ministry over the past 7 years has been a rollercoaster. In the early days, I spent every waking hour researching other organizations, reading every book I could get my hands on, traveling the USA, hosting lunches, meeting with anyone that would give me even five minutes to talk about trafficking victims, restorative care services, and everything in between. I had no idea how to create a non-profit, and some may say I still don’t. I don’t know that my intention was to build a non-profit, but my desire was to create a model of long-term restorative care that encompassed crisis stabilization, therapeutic services, identification restoration, education opportunities, and economic empowerment resources with a social enterprise aspect so survivors of trafficking were met at the moment of crisis, and not passed around to multiple agencies. A place they can call home, feel safe, be empowered, and find a group of supportive and caring people in a community to journey through life with them on a daily basis. People that would celebrate their wins, pour into them with wisdom and discernment, and pray with them when life threw challenges at them. I wanted to create for victims what I never had and what over time the Lord blessed me with in West Texas.
Since September 2016, Reflection has designed programs, built and trained a trauma-informed team that provides 24/7 care in an undisclosed, secure location called The Village, opened Reflection Ministries Academy, and created an academic curriculum which also includes life skills, exploitation courses, and vocational training followed by aftercare resources. We have been a part of almost 250 victim recoveries, educated almost 45,000 people in the Permian Basin
and across the USA, participated in prosecuting traffickers and buyers, had charges expunged for survivors, been blessed with 5 babies, impacted 66 cities in Texas and 24 states in the USA, and watched survivors become self-sufficient and independent in their daily lives which results in them finding true freedom.
Reflection is the only long-term restorative care organization providing programs that cover crisis stabilization through aftercare services for trafficking survivors for up to 4 years. This is only possible BECAUSE OF YOU – West Texans who took a chance on a girl with a vision. You have opened your hearts to me, financially supported our programs, and continue to cheer us on and show up for our events. You show us grace when we may not respond exactly the way you think we should. So many of the techniques and our program designs appear to be counterintuitive to how most people feel we should serve trafficking victims. There is always a reason, an extremely thoughtful design, and numerous planning sessions before we implement our programs.
We have had many challenges along the way and maybe if we had it to do over, we would change some things, but most likely our team would relive it just the same. Only because through every challenge and every win we have learned how to be a stronger, more trustworthy, a trauma-informed team.
Thank you, West Texas, for stepping up, as you always do, to meet the many needs of trafficking victims and cheering this team on as we walk daily with survivors. We could not move this mission forward and see lives restored daily if it weren’t for you.
