“It’s Truly A Divine Miracle”
As a young girl Jessica Dillow was sold into slavery by her family. She was not allowed to go to school or have any friends. She would be sold multiple times a day to different men that would beat her and use her like she was nothing, all they wanted was sex. “Men would be brought to my home, to my bedroom, to the garage, to the basement, I would be brought to hotels, I would be brought to homes in the suburbs” Eventually Jessica was sold to a pimp and was forced to prostitute herself. Jessica Dillow was trafficked in her home country of canada and at some point brought to the U.S. for the sole purpose of prostitution.
One day everything changed for Mrs. Dillow, a woman from Colorado recognized that she might be a victim of human trafficking and handed her a piece of paper with her phone number on it while saying “Call me if you want to call me.” Dillow wasn’t sure if she wanted to call her, she was to scared. When she finally worked up the courage to call the stranger, it turns out she was an advocate who helped victims of human trafficking and former prostitutes. The woman reached out to help Jessica and when she was 21 years old she was finally able to escape.
“I remember looking up to the sky and seeing that it was blue for the first time.” Recovery has been difficult after spending years in slavery.” I’ve missed years of education but that cannot stop me from pursuing a future and a hope.” Now Jessica is one semester away from graduating with a degree in clinical psychology and she’s planning on marrying John, in June.
Jessica calls her relationship one of redemption, “I want people to know that there's healing, and that there’s life beyond victimization” She now takes place with girls that have been involved in human trafficking. “I want people to know that it’s taking place in their backyards.” Human trafficking has gone unnoticed and unrecognized for years until now. There are more and more people everyday that have been saved from the harsh world of human trafficking. This is a topic that is very uncomfortable to many, but not talking about it won’t make it go away. We have to get the word out there for people to hear and for them to realize how severe human trafficking really is.
As a young girl Jessica Dillow was sold into slavery by her family. She was not allowed to go to school or have any friends. She would be sold multiple times a day to different men that would beat her and use her like she was nothing, all they wanted was sex. “Men would be brought to my home, to my bedroom, to the garage, to the basement, I would be brought to hotels, I would be brought to homes in the suburbs” Eventually Jessica was sold to a pimp and was forced to prostitute herself. Jessica Dillow was trafficked in her home country of canada and at some point brought to the U.S. for the sole purpose of prostitution.
One day everything changed for Mrs. Dillow, a woman from Colorado recognized that she might be a victim of human trafficking and handed her a piece of paper with her phone number on it while saying “Call me if you want to call me.” Dillow wasn’t sure if she wanted to call her, she was to scared. When she finally worked up the courage to call the stranger, it turns out she was an advocate who helped victims of human trafficking and former prostitutes. The woman reached out to help Jessica and when she was 21 years old she was finally able to escape.
“I remember looking up to the sky and seeing that it was blue for the first time.” Recovery has been difficult after spending years in slavery.” I’ve missed years of education but that cannot stop me from pursuing a future and a hope.” Now Jessica is one semester away from graduating with a degree in clinical psychology and she’s planning on marrying John, in June.
Jessica calls her relationship one of redemption, “I want people to know that there's healing, and that there’s life beyond victimization” She now takes place with girls that have been involved in human trafficking. “I want people to know that it’s taking place in their backyards.” Human trafficking has gone unnoticed and unrecognized for years until now. There are more and more people everyday that have been saved from the harsh world of human trafficking. This is a topic that is very uncomfortable to many, but not talking about it won’t make it go away. We have to get the word out there for people to hear and for them to realize how severe human trafficking really is.
For the print media genre i was going to do a movie review on “Taken”, but then a thought came to me that i should do it on something that actually happened and impacted someone's life. That’s when i discovered Jessica, she was a victim of human trafficking by her own family, my article shows that it doesn’t even have to be a stranger it could be someone that you know and hold close to your heart. My goal while writing for this article is to let people know that no matter what you have to trust yourself and you can never fully trust anyone. Also that it's not just men that get involved in human trafficking and the process that they put the victims through, woman also get involved. Looking back on what i wrote i look at my life and become more thankful for what i have, knowing that it could be a lot worse when there are people that are suffering and nobody is doing anything to help them.