Authority, Predators, and The Human Cost of Sex Crime

So what is the human cost of sexual crime?

It’s the psychological, emotional, and physical toll that directly results from the harrowing and ultra-violating act of sexual crime. This is true for whatever type of sexual crime is committed, including sexual harassment.

When I began my work as a private advocate, I was still in college. I’ve learned a lot about sexual crime since then, and I see first-hand the consequences of sexual crime.

I saw it when a close friend of mine, a victim of incest, took her own life to stop the abuse her mother denied existed.

I saw it when a good son overdosed on pills to keep himself from having to attend school, where he was being targeted by a coach and his friends for sexual favors.

I saw it when a young mother contemplated killing her child, born from rape, because the child was being used as a way to keep her submissive as a sex slave.

These are just a few of the ways the human cost can be identified in sex crimes.

But they aren’t the only ways. It can manifest as depression, lack of empathy, sexual promiscuousness, lack of regard for safety, reckless behavior and more.

When you are a victim of a sex crime, no matter how acute or consistent the crime is, there is a human cost. Always. There are no exceptions.

The majority of people who come to me for help have been abused and exploited by people in positions of authority. When I say the majority, I mean just that — over 75% of the 50 people I’ve helped so far.

To me, this is highly concerning. After all, I’m not a cop. I’m not a detective. I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a judge.

I’m a writer. I shouldn’t be getting these calls. And I shouldn’t be getting told not to inform the police.

But I am. And I do get told that.

Why are there so many people coming forward with stories of abuse, trafficking, rape, torture, and exploitation by police officers, military officials, sheriffs and judges?

Because it’s a reality. It happens. And these people don’t trust the institutions that failed them.

I want to stress that the vast majority of people in positions of power do not engage in sex crimes. This is not an all-out attack on those people who strive to make life better for all of us.

In fact, most people in power I’ve met want to protect people from sexual abuse. I’ve met — and have worked with — countless police detectives, attorneys, prosecutors, federal law enforcement, advocates and more to help these kids.

They are not the bad guys.

But.

There is a small sliver of people in power, specifically in the military and in police departments across this country, that abuse that power to get sexual favors. They are aggressive and domineering and dangerous.

They’re predators.

But they don’t see themselves that way. In fact, they see themselves quite differently.

You see, there’s this idea in the heads of those predatory people in power — the “sexual favors” they get from their positions is a reward.

They don’t see forcing someone to do sexual favors as rape. It’s just fun.

They don’t see tricking or pressuring someone into a sexual situation as exploitation. It’s just a means to an end.

They don’t see blackmailing or threatening someone into silence and submission as coercion. It’s just “covering their bases.”

They don’t see “passing a kid around” as human trafficking because they figure no one is ever going to tell and they’ll get away with it.

After all, they’re protectors of society. They should get what they want. They don’t even think of the psychological, physical and emotional ramifications they’re causing these kids. Because it’s not about the kids — it’s about them. It’s about a disgusting need to control someone through physical violence, coercion, rape, torture, and human trafficking. It’s about feeling like God because for the most part, these people don’t feel powerful in their own lives.

And they take it out on people they feel will have no recourse against them. People who are afraid of authority and will submit to it. People and women of color who are rarely taken seriously in these situations. Young kids who are afraid of getting into trouble with their parents. People with criminal history.

People they feel have no other options but to just do what they’re told.

People like the three young adults I’m going to talk about now. Young men and women who are far stronger than their abusers ever thought they were.

Young men and women who want you to know what they went through.

Adeline

Adeline was a senior in high school when her story began. She was trying to catch up after repeatedly running away from home and being in and out of alternative schools. At only 17, she began dating a man 21 years her senior, a police officer in her city. While the relationship was good at first, and she felt comfortable with the man, things quickly went sour when he began using drugs pressure her into sexual situations she was uncomfortable with.

What followed is almost unimaginable in America — but only if you’re not paying attention.

Not only was Adeline raped and tortured for years when the police officer went on drug binges, he video taped his assaults and used them as blackmail. Beyond controlling where she went, who she talked to, and if and what she studied, he also pulled some strings to have her placed as an intern at the police station where he worked. This made getting help hard, even though she thought it would have been easy. And, as she told me, getting out of the relationship was even more difficult.

“His beat was where I lived, and he’d drive by my house on duty, sometimes parking out front. He let me know he was always watching me. He loaded and unloaded his gun in front of me on a daily basis. Telling me, everyone is a killer it just takes something different to take it out in all of us.”

Adeline is free from the police officer now, and after years of distance from that horrible situation told me this:

“I wish the other officers would have told him, ‘Take the kid home. Shouldn’t she be doing her homework?’ It also baffles me that I spent an entire summer interning with a detectives office, and not one of them bothered to google the name of their intern. Why didn’t any of them ask how a former runaway and missing person came to work for them? The latter is not impossible, but it should raise questions and concerns.They have task forces dedicated to stopping child sexual exploitation, but when a victim is placed in their office they can’t recognize the signs.”

Adeline is now in her late twenties and living in Southern California with her fiance. She aspires to work as a civil rights activist.

Savannah

Living in Florida was supposed to be a dream come true for Savannah and her family. They immigrated to America when she was six years old to find a better life.

What they found wasn’t the American dream.

Savannah was 16 when the trouble started. Already she was considered the beauty of her family, and as the only daughter, she was also spoiled rotten by her father and brothers. And, like many young women, she found she was free to experiment with life.

“I think back and I wish my parents had been stricter. Coming from Colombia, my parents both had restrictive upbringings. I guess they thought we deserved more freedom,” she told me over the phone. “And I took advantage of it, I did. Drinking, drugs, sleeping around. I did it all. But I wish that when they caught me doing it, they were stronger about keeping me in line.”

Savannah got into trouble with the law on the account of her boyfriend, an 18-year-old man from Venezuela that was suspected of being a human trafficker. She was questioned by a member of a Domestic Trafficking force, a detective liaison who told her she was lucky that her boyfriend hadn’t trafficked him. And coming from a poor family in not a great neighborhood, the detective told her she might have been groomed to become a victim.

“I was so mad, you know? I was pissed. Like, how can you traffic kids? I believed everything that detective told me. And I told him I’d help him try to catch other traffickers,” she said. “And he took me up on it. Said I could help by going ‘undercover’ as a trafficked girl.”

What Savannah didn’t know until much later was that it’s not only unethical but illegal to use a minor as “bait” in an undercover sting. But by then, it was too late.

The detective arranged a “rehearsal” with Savannah, complete with alcohol and drugs.

“We were both doing drugs, and I thought, ‘you know what? It’s cool. I’m with a cop.’ But then he started kissing me and touching me and I wanted him to stop. I started hitting him and he slapped me across the face and told me to keep still, that I wanted it and it was my fault.”

The detective raped her several times that night. When he finally let her go home, he showed her photos and video he’d taken on his phone, showing her using drugs.

“He told me if I ever tried to tell on him, that I’d be the one going to jail. There was no evidence he did anything to me because he’d used a condom, and besides, he was a cop. And he said that something might happen to my brothers if I made a fuss,” she said. “And I believed him.”

So Savannah kept quiet, and the abuse continued for several weeks. She became depressed and withdrew from her usually happy disposition. She lost weight. Finally her parents became concerned about her behavior and they made the difficult decision to send her back to Colombia for a summer.

“It was the best thing they ever did, sending me home. I got to spend time with my family. I got my shit together — quit drugs, drinking, everything. By the time I got back, that detective had been reassigned to another city and I felt freer. I’ll never forget what happened to me, though. I’m more guarded because of it.”

Savannah is now nineteen years old. She works in the Northwest in the health profession and is currently saving money to get her bachelor’s degree. She wants to become a nurse.

Grant

The eldest of four kids, Grant was in charge of helping his mother raise the family. Even at 14 years old, he was doing chores around his neighborhood in the large Texas city they lived in to make extra money to feed and clothe his three younger siblings. He tried his hardest to be, in his words, “the dad I never had.”

But it came with a price. The extra responsibility took a toll on Grant. He was young and angry and didn’t have a consistent support system. He was quick to anger and found himself getting arrested for a series of assaults against classmates and a teacher at the public school he went to.

He got lucky, or so he thought. The judge that he appeared in front of for three of the arrests took a liking to him. He took him under his wing. He gave him chances to get his life together. And Grant began to trust the judge.

“He was friendly, you know, at first,” Grant told me. “He helped me pay for anger management ‘cos my mom couldn’t. Got me good community service. He was really nice to me. Like a dad. I got to go over to his house once for dinner. I started feeling like part of his family.”

About three months into his new friendship with the judge was when it all when downhill. The judge had promised to take him to a sporting event for his birthday but instead drove him out to a lake and gave him some alcohol. Grant passed out.

“When I came to, you know, I didn’t have pants on. There was blood on my boxers. I felt sore. And the judge, you know, he was passed out in the back seat. His pants were open and there was stuff at the tip, white stuff.”

Grant had never heard the word sodomy before, but he would learn what it meant over the course of the next six months. The judge had a few friends who began visiting when Grant was home, each paying a “price for admission.” Every time, Grant was given drugs in his drink that made him forget everything.

“I felt like since I didn’t remember that it didn’t happen. I guess I didn’t want to think about it. But then I realized they had pictures of me and videotapes. [He] showed them to me once. Said if I ever thought about telling, he’d show my mom. She wouldn’t be able to take it, she’s had enough pain. So I kept quiet.”

Grant found freedom from the situation when his mother was offered a higher-paying job in a small rural town. He’s never been back to the city because he’s afraid of the judge, who has since retired. He’s now 25 and pursuing a Master of Social Work in the Northeast.

These are just some of the stories I have been told over the years. Again and again, these kids are coming forward with stories of sexual exploitation, abuse, and trafficking at the hands of people in power. People they thought were supposed to help them. People they thought they could trust.

People who failed them.

If and when they make it out, they don’t go to the cops or the media for help. They rarely tell their families and may go decades without telling their story to anyone.

What do they do instead?

They carry that weight of being used and abused on their shoulders. They struggle with knowing they were victimized and they try harder to become more than just survivors. They make mistakes and they get up and try again.

Because they want to live without shame.

Because they want people to know they didn’t break.

Because they want to see justice for the disgusting, vile things they were put through, and the only way they know how to do that is to thrive.

Because at the end of the day, everyone just wants to be seen as human.

There’s a human cost to sexual crimes. You may not always see it, but it’s always there — the violation of a person’s intimate physical, emotional, and psychological space. The guard they put up in order to never be hurt again. The misuse of alcohol or drugs to help them forget. Depression. Suicidal thoughts.

The people I’ve written about here are all still alive. They’ve moved on as best as they can.

But not everyone I talk to makes it. Suicide is more common in sexual crime than you realize. And it hurts to know that because of the actions of an individual, someone takes their life.

That blood is on the perpetuator’s hands.

I started this article by telling you the UN and the federal definitions of sexual exploitation, human trafficking, rape, and more. I want to end it by saying this:

Not all people in power are bad.

Not all people in power are good.

More importantly:

No one is above the law.

It’s up to us to make sure the ones who abuse their power are punished, rightly, by the law.

And if you look away when people are being sexually harmed in any way, you are contributing to the human cost of the crime.

We’re all better than that, so don’t look away. Don’t be silent.

Say something, and save someone’s life.

Names, ages, and locations have been changed to protect privacy.