Reagan's Story
Names , places, and photos have been changed to protect the victim.
PART ONE
Reagan grew up in a loving, supportive, and safe family. She enjoyed school, made good grades, had great friends, and played almost every sport. Her childhood was a happy one and she was never afraid that anything “bad” would happen to her. She definitely never imagined she would become a victim of sex trafficking at seventeen-years-old.
Reagan’s trafficking experience began after she decided to stop at a local gas station after school to refill her car. As she pulled up, she saw that a group of men were standing around the gas pumps. She knew something was wrong when the men started calling out to her to try and get her attention. Reagan refused to acknowledge the men but they became more aggressive and determined to get her attention the longer she ignored them. Even as she tried to drive away, the men surrounded her car so that she could not leave.
Then, out of nowhere, another man appeared and told the group to back away from her car. “To me, in the moment, he was almost like a hero,” Reagan remembers. “I decided to roll down my window and see what he had to say.” His name was Eric. He began flirting with Reagan and gave her his number so that they could stay in contact. Throughout the following days, Reagan and Eric continued to talk with each other over the phone. Eric pretended to care about Reagan and convinced her that he wanted to be in a relationship with her.
“Being the naive seventeen-year-old I was, I thought he was actually into me. I thought we were in a real relationship, even though he was almost thirty,” Reagan says. The trafficking began when Eric texted Reagan an address and told her that she needed to meet his cousin. When she arrived, Eric’s cousin raped her and then kicked her out of his house. After that day, Eric continued to send Reagan places that she needed to go to do “business.”
At first, Reagan was still able to go home to her family. She acted like nothing was wrong. She would lie to her parents about her grades so that they would not be worried. When she would have to work for Eric, Reagan would tell her parents that she was going to a friends house or to her actual job as a waitress.
This continued even as Reagan went on to college. Eric would call her in the middle of a class to tell her that she needed to go meet with a “client.” Eric knew where she went to school so if she did not go where she was told, Reagan was afraid he would find her and hurt her.
Two years passed without anyone knowing that Reagan was being trafficked. Then, a month after Reagan turned nineteen, her parents discovered what was happening to their daughter. Reagan was embarrassed and ashamed. She felt that her parents would never be able to love her again because of everything she had been forced to do. The only thing she could think to do was to leave home.
PART TWO
After leaving her parents’ home, Reagan was alone and even more vulnerable than she was before. She believed that she had no one other than Eric, her trafficker, to turn to. Eric then introduced Reagan to three other men who made her work for them as well. “Business got worse after that day,” Reagan says. “My trafficker and the other buyers knew that I was on my own and that I was even more ‘accessible.’ I worked all over Birmingham, seeing whoever they told me to see, and making however much money they told me to make for them.
“It then turned into me traveling all over the east and south coast being ‘gifted’ to big bosses and contractors that my traffickers were trying to get jobs with for their own companies. I was even taken to events and private clubs so that I could be the ‘entertainment’ for their clients and workers.”
At nineteen, Reagan had her first child but had to give up custody when the baby was only two months old. Her daughter was given to her parents, and even though she was still allowed to see the baby, it was not enough to make her want to seek help. At this point, she felt worthless and that her daughter was better off with her parents. “I did not want help because I always thought I could never turn my life around,” Reagan remembers. “The whole environment was so negative and demeaning. It broke me physically and mentally every day.”
Reagan continued working for Eric and other pimps for another two years. Her traffickers never provided her food or shelter, so she would do whatever she could to get food and find a safe place to sleep. When the custody visitation schedule would allow, Reagan would visit her daughter and parents, but she never asked them for help.
Everything changed two days after turning twenty-one, when Reagan had her second daughter. Her daughter gave her the determination and confidence she needed to break away from her traffickers. “I had lost that role of being a mother with my first daughter, so I wanted to do everything in my power to be there for my second.”
When the police showed up to a house Reagan had been staying at in Birmingham, she dropped off her second daughter with her mom and went with them. She was nervous, but hopeful that this was the beginning of a new chapter in her life.
PART THREE
After dropping off her second daughter with her parents, Reagan found herself sitting in a jail cell, waiting to talk to the police who picked her up. She was nervous about what would come next, because she knew that there were a few warrants out for her arrest. An officer finally came in to speak with Reagan. Initially, the officer wanted to ask questions about a case he was working that he thought Reagan was involved in. However, after it became evident that Reagan was not who he was looking for, the officer began questioning her about her life.
“He picked me up at about 9:00 am that morning and I was with him until about 5:00 pm that evening, just talking to him about everything that had happened in the past,” says Reagan. “I told him my trafficker’s information, who the buyers are, and where all the ‘business’ went on in Birmingham. I gave him names, addresses, phone numbers, and everything else I could.” What started out as a case of mistaken identity and a possible jail sentence for Reagan, turned into a chance to escape a life of trafficking and potentially save other women who have been unable to leave their traffickers.
Once Reagan had finished sharing her story, the officer suggested that she should consider going to The WellHouse. Her family had told her about The WellHouse in the past but had never wanted to accept their help. But now, Reagan was ready to do everything she could to be the mother her two daughters needed. The officer drove her to meet the women that would take to The WellHouse and to safety. Before he left her, the officer promised Reagan that he would take care of her warrants if she promised to stay at The WellHouse so that she could begin to heal from years of exploitation.
“I never went back to that house in West End,” Reagan recalls. “That officer saved me, and it is a moment I will never forget. He was the first person in authority that listened to me and saw that what had happened to me was wrong. I had been caught up with the police before, but they never cared. They never wanted to see what was really going on in their city. But the officer that picked me up that day truly cared, and for that I will be forever grateful.”
Reagan is now experiencing physical and emotional healing at The WellHouse through our therapy and ministerial programs. She is learning independence and self-worth. “For four years I was someone else’s property. I was an object. I lost faith in God and I was hopeless. But now I have been restored mentally, physically, and spiritually in ways that I never thought were possible. I realize that God has a bigger and better plan for my future.”
Reagan is also now enrolled in college online and working towards a degree in Business Administration and Management. She has dreams to own her own contracting business one day so that she can experience independence and stability. The most important thing to Reagan is her family. “Even though it wasn’t my choice, I walked away from my family once. I will never do that again. My family is everything to me, and I will do everything in power to always be there for them. That is my biggest goal.”