Dr. John A. King describes surviving sexual abuse and trafficking by caregivers from early childhood until age 16. He suppressed those memories for years and had no frame of reference for what a normal childhood looked like, which shaped how he saw himself.
In 2008, I had recall of being sexually abused by the people who raised me. It was the women who— they're the ones who sexually abused me, and we would call that trafficking now. It wasn't just women who abused me. I was an equal opportunity victim, for want of a better term. It was both male and female. And so that happened for about 14 years until I was at the age of 16. And I sort of locked that away and locked it down and didn't really know who I was. And And, you know, it's funny, when you grow up in an environment like that, you don't have anything to compare it with. So that's your normal.
