Free Girls Like Us by Rachel Lloyd Page B

I’ve asked the same questions of God myself, about Monica, about Sarah, about the perpetual pain in the lives of the girls we serve. I tell her it’s a great poem, fantastic, she’s a great writer. I ask her if she wants to talk about what she’s written; she shakes her head no, says she feels better having written it. I know that the holiday is weighing heavy on her, on all the girls, the fa-la-la-la-la of it all, the added reminder, if any were needed, that you don’t feel normal. A reminder that in the family lottery drawing, you drew a short straw and there are no do-overs.
    During the eighties, sociologists and clinicians identified the many ways in which gang culture replicated the family unit for children who found their support systems in the street. In the world of domestically trafficked girls, the same is true. The desire for a family is so strong and so overpowering for most children that it doesn’t take much to create that illusion. Pimps play upon this desire by creating a pseudo–family structure of girls who are your “wives-in-law” headed up by a man you call Daddy. The lessons that girls have been taught, implicitly and explicitly, about family and relationship dynamics are all fuel for the exploiters’ fire. The greater their need for attention and love, the easier it is to recruit them. The more unhealthy the patterns they’ve learned, the less a pimp needs to break them down, the less he needs to teach them. Growing up with an alcoholic or drug-addicted parent sets the stage for caretaking and codependency patterns that are helpful in making girls feel responsible for taking care of their pimp. Violence in the home trains children to believe that abuse and aggression are normal expressions of love. Abandonment and neglect can create all types of attachment disorders that can be used to keep girls from ever leaving their exploiters. For girls who’ve had nonexistent, fractured, or downright abusive relationships with their fathers or father figures, it’s an easy draw. “My daddy,” girls say with pride as they talk about the man who controls them.
    I’m sitting in the office one evening talking to Tiana, a soft-spoken, guarded fifteen-year-old with long black hair and a slow smile. She’s been referred to GEMS by her cousin, Maria, who’s also been exploited. Maria is on the other side of it now, slowly healing and trying to find some normalcy. Tiana’s still very much in the mix of things, currently living with her pimp, so I was surprised that she had come in to attend a couple of groups. I already know a lot about her family history from Maria and it’s horrific. The level of violence that she’s been exposed to and experienced would equal that of a child in a war zone. Witnessing her mother’s murder at the age of six was just the beginning for Tiana. She was then sent to live with her aunt, Maria’s mother, and like Maria she has fared badly. Her aunt’s “care” is visible through curling iron burns and permanent scars from extension cords. It’s not surprising either one of these cousins ran away.
    “Maria’s trippin. She worry too much. I’m good, I’m straight.” Tiana’s working overtime to convince me that she doesn’t need any help. “My daddy takes good care of us.” She gestures to her Baby Phat jacket and jeans as proof.
    “How many girls are there?” I ask.
    “There’s five of us; all the other girls are older. I’m the baby.”
    “What’s your daddy’s name, hon?” I’m curious if I know anyone else who lives there.
    She hesitates, thinking she probably shouldn’t tell me, but unable to contain herself she proudly says, “Dollars.”
    I know him, or at least know of him. Dollars is the ex-pimp of Melissa, the first girl I’d worked with, the girl he beat unconscious on a regular basis. It’s been about eight years since I last saw Melissa and yet he’s still out there, preying on another vulnerable little girl. I figure he must be in