I was raised in a non-­Christian home in Portland, Oregon. I had a difficult childhood, growing up around drugs, alcohol and domestic violence. I was the oldest of four children, and I don’t remember ever living in one place for very long.

I was 8 years old when the sexual abuse began, and to this day I can still see my father’s eyes looking through mine. The sexual abuse impacted my entire family and I was not the only one abused.

When my mother left my father when I was 10 years old to go to a domestic violence shelter, I thought the abuse was finally over.

While my father was away life seemed better. I began going to Sunday school and accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and into my heart, but about a year afterwards my father got visitation rights. The abuse restarted and I forgot all about attending church and Jesus, but he never forgot about me.

After another year of the abuse, I was able to tell my mom, and the abuse once again ceased. My father was not put in jail right away, however, and I was terrified that his repeated threats to hurt me or my family would come true. Thankfully they did not.

My mom remarried in 1988 when I was 12 years old. I was in middle school and my biological father was awaiting trial for sodomy. He finally plead no contest in 1989. I was so relieved that I did not have to go on trial with my father. And that’s when it happened again. My step father raped me. This went on for months.

I had a scary miscarriage by myself while my mom slept one room away with my step­father. I told my support group for sexual abuse at my school. I thought they would arrest my step dad, but instead I was placed in the back of a police car, and taken to a foster home with no explanation. I just wanted my mom, but no one would tell me anything. It was right before Thanksgiving, and I was super scared.

Eventually I was placed in a group home. Not long after that I began running away. At first we would run away to the park two blocks away and every time a policeman would pick us up a couple hours later and take us right back to the group home. I ran away so much that they moved me to another group home hoping I would stay.

I stayed there for my whole freshman year, not knowing where my mom was, and only seeing my siblings one time. Child Protective Services finally made contact with my mom again, and since she was no longer with my step dad and I was becoming a troublemaker, I was sent home my sophomore year.

By the time I got home, my relationship with my Mom had been severely damaged. She had signed away the rights to my youngest sister, who had been given up for adoption, and my brother was in the Oregon State Hospital. She had not tried to visit me while I was in foster care. So when I got home Iran away again, but this time there was no police report filed. I ran away to see a boyfriend I met at the alternative school I had been going to.

He had friends at his house, and soon my boyfriend looked like a dork in my eyes. The man that was at his house was gorgeous. He was street smart, he had tattoos, and he had just got out of jail. He was a lot like my biological father. I didn’t want out go back home so he took me to his family’s house and I quickly fell in love. I had been looking for someone to love me all my life and here he was. Everywhere he went I followed.

We didn’t stay with his family very long before we moved in with some of his friends just up the street. Not long afterwards, he introduced me to cocaine and methamphetamines. It only took a couple times and I was hooked.

Then came the night I will never forget when he told me he had a debt to a biker, and if he didn’t pay it they would hurt him. I asked innocently, how could we get the money? And he introduced to the booming business on 82nd Avenue.

I was fifteen years old. I nervously got into the first car right in front of Madison High School. My name was quickly changed to Michelle to keep my family or the police from locating me, my age was changed, and it seemed like he loved me even more. He always waited for me while I turned a trick, and protected me, or so I thought. I would walk the avenue back and forth until a car turned the corner, and I would get in.

The worst part for me was waiting until we got to the place, because I never knew what the trick was going to do. Sometimes they would just pay me, and other times I was raped. In once instance, there was a car date, and a bunch of other men jumped in then car and kidnapped me for several hours.

When I ran back to my boyfriend, terrified, he had no compassion, and just wanted to know where the money was. I had to tell him that I no longer had it. While they had me in the car, I was also robbed.

There were several times that I was raped and had guns held to my head, and when I came back I would find my pimp with someone else, or he would be very mean to me. All these incidents on 82nd scared me, and since I felt like no one was there I turned into an angry scary person myself, to keep myself from harm.

There were times the police picked me up, but at that time there were no Human Trafficking laws. I would simply be arrested for curfew violation and let out at 6:00am right back into my pimp’s arms. I lived this way on the streets and in hotel rooms from the age of fifteen until the age of twenty-eight. 

 

Drugs and my “boyfriend,” or that’s what I thought of him then, became the center of my universe. To me they were my gods., I knew God existed but I truly thought this was his plan for me. I felt that I had lost everything and I did not speak to the Lord unless I was mad or in the back of a police car. All I knew were the streets and the code “don’t ask, don’t tell.” I lived by this, and I understood that if I told I could suffer dire consequences.

I ended up getting several felony charges just for being with him in stolen cars, all before I even knew how to drive. But I always protected him, because I was told to even when he was arrested for Promoting Prostitution, and I as a juvenile was arrested for Prostitution. I remember being held in JDH but not much after that. I held my ground and did not testify because he told me not to. After getting out of jail, he moved on to another under­age girl and I continued to use methamphetamine and work 82nd Avenue on my own.

I stayed in close contact with my pimp because I felt as we were family, and that I still loved him as a friend. I carried on this way until I became pregnant in 2003 and decided to leave Portland. In February of 2004, I gave birth to a healthy drug free baby girl. It was then that my life started getting better and I started separating myself from my past life.

My happiness was short lived, though, because my addiction and tendency towards abusive relationships still haunted me. I was still with my daughter’s father, who had willingly watched as I turned tricks until I was 5 months pregnant. The Lord was trying to get my attention by placing me and my daughter’s father in a Christian clean and sober house in Seattle, but I fell back into addiction again. I came back to Portland when my daughter was almost two, and began separating myself from her father.

However, I quickly fell quickly into another abusive relationship, and all the while staying in contact with who I now know was my pimp­­but then called my best friend.

I was still searching for unconditional love, and I was searching everywhere. I tried to find it through men, college, drugs, gangs, having a child, and my pimp. I was drug­free and close to completing community college when my pimp came to see me on last time. He did some really damaging things to my family and my spirit. It was August of 2009 when I finally wrote him off for good. “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

After this my daughter went to foster care for two weeks, and again I was clean. I went to outpatient treatment and this time, stayed clean for eighteen months, the longest I had ever been clean my whole life, but something was missing.

In November of 2012 I relapsed again, and I still had an open DHS case. Again my daughter was removed from my care, and went to stay with relatives. I continued to use methamphetamine, giving up all hope, and resorting back to my old lifestyle of escort services­­only this time online. The court moved for a termination trial not long after my daughter was removed, and that pushed me further down into darkness. I continued to use, turn tricks, and run with gangs.

My visits with my daughter went from weekly to twice a month, and by July of 2013, I was handed a summons to set trial dates. A month earlier my closest friend had entered Shepherds Door, a recovery house for women. I had to be out of my apartment by the end of August, and with no hope left, I remember crying out to God. I was depressed, lonely, and I wanted my daughter back.

The DHS worker, and my attorney told me there was no hope, that I had no chance at ever getting her back. In despair, I set out for the place I knew best, 82nd Avenue. 

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