A pimp can make between $150,000 and $200,000 per child per year, according to the Justice Department. My parents didn't jump at $50k, either - a slave like me is worth more money than some small businesses. When I was 15, one of the guys they wanted to marry me off to offered $50k to take me for life.
I was 14 when the first negotiations for a marriage arrangement were on the table. You know all those lectures you had in school where they talk about how many tens of thousands of dollars it costs to raise a child to adulthood? My parents had the opposite goal - they'd turned me into an investment. They wanted to sell me before I got too old, and sort of cash out. Necessity is the mother of terrible, terrible invention.īasically, they needed to keep me in prime selling shape until my mid-teens - the ultimate goal for girls like me was an arranged marriage.
But those code words let people in the child slave market know what she was really selling. She would describe herself as "a youthful princess looking for her knight, I'm a Snow White with long flowing hair, and I'd do anything to make my daddy happy." It sounds like it might be a perfectly legal ad for a "barely legal" woman, or maybe someone looking for a sugar daddy. My mom would actually pose as a sex worker herself, all the while dropping hints and insinuations that made it clear that it was her child she was selling.
My parents did business this way until I was about 10 or so, both because the chat rooms were being more closely monitored and I was getting "too old" for them (note: abused children hit puberty early).Īnd then there was Backpage, a website that I'm just sure has a whole bunch of legitimate uses but also happened to be the advertising tool of choice for my parental pimps. If they didn't, it'd be my fault for not being cute enough.
The initial talk was free, just a prelude to them deciding whether or not they wanted to rent me. That's where I'd sit down with a customer and do you know damn well what. Once interest was established, my mom would move to the private video chat.