New survivor blog
Thanks to an email from the author, I learned about a new survivor blog today called Welcome to my Nightmare. Another addition to the community!
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Announcement for Email Subscribers
With the implementation of the EU’s new rules about handling personal information, the GDRP, I’m sure many of you have noticed the large number of websites and platforms updating their terms of service and privacy policies. The new rules apply to everyone, even little old blogs like this one. In light of preparing for these…
Following the Site With a Little Privacy
This year, I’m trying something new to provide as much privacy as possible while ensuring you see all the posts from the site: a Telegram channel. If you are a Telegram user, you can subscribe to the channel here – https://t.me/childabusesurvivor
When it Comes to Abuse, Trafficking, and Violence, Do We Have a Race and Gender Problem?
What I want to address, however, is how our society defines victims and how it leaves far too many people behind. The article above is a great example. How many people, if asked about sex trafficking, picture little white girls or women abducted from Target? Probably a lot. For many, the only information they’ve ever gotten about trafficking are warnings about Target or shopping mall parking lots from their Facebook friends. They don’t know how many teenage boys from broken homes, living in poverty, are pulled into being trafficked. How many gay youths, rejected by their families, fall victim to it? How many immigrant children here, with no parental supervision, are sold off by the people who should be protecting them from sexual slavery?Â
Those stories, even if they’re told, are not going to grab national headlines. They are not going to evoke world-wide outrage and sympathy. Those are things that happen to “other people”. We might even be tempted to start looking for reason why it’s their own fault, or at least the parents fault, right?Â
From a media perspective, we also have to keep this in mind. An abduction of a young white girl from her home, is a rare event. It’s actually newsworthy because it happens so rarely. When it happens, it’s shocking. A trans, minority, teen being coerced into selling themselves, with no one to turn to for protection, isn’t any of those things. A gay male teen being kicked out of their parents house and trying to make it through homelessness, is also not something that happens so rarely that there would be major news coverage of it. These things happen all of the time. So often, that they aren’t really news.Â
So, which group should we have support and services for? I’d like to vote for ALL OF THEM. But that will take educating people about the reality of who gets abused, who gets trafficked, and for us all to accept that it happens everywhere. Until we get there, and are willing to see all different types of people as victims, we will continue to fail one group or another. That’s not acceptable.Â
