A Sex Trafficking Survivor's Take On The Diddy Trials
This doesn't shock me, but it also doesn't quite scratch the surface.
In this article (TRIGGER WARNING), you will get to read about the following:
Diddy’s charges, actions, and rumors about him.
My own experiences surviving a sex trafficking ring.
My explanation about things people don’t quite understand related to the topic.
Trigger warning.
So, I can’t seem to get away from the news headlines this week. As everyone has found out, Diddy has gotten arrested for sex trafficking — among a litany of other charges.
For those who are not in the know, several major revelations came out:
He’s facing three federal charges.
Diddy had an entire criminal enterprise called “The Enterprise” to bring sex workers to the parties, lure children, drug victims, and silence people.
Many major names in Hollywood, including Justin Bieber, attended his “Freak Offs,” which were days-long sex parties involving trafficked people. The Freak Offs were recorded so that people would remain silent.
FBI raids revealed thousands of gallons of baby oil, sex toys, et cetera.
As someone who was trafficked, I really wanna hug Justin Bieber right now. Watching this has been very hard for me, but I feel like there’s a lot of nuance that’s being lost in the news headlines.
I have not been to any of Diddy’s parties. However, I was a product sold at parties like his, and I have actively sat down with FBI investigators to help put my traffickers behind bars.
What I’m saying is that I’ve seen similar shit. Here’s what I don’t think is being discussed enough in the news about Diddy…
We are not talking about the grooming that happened with Diddy’s sex trafficking.
I’m about to drop a truth bomb that’s not very comforting: not all sex trafficking is violent. There. I said it. A lot of traffickers do not actually use violence to get their victims to do what they want them to do.
A lot of them, including myself at the start, were tricked, pressured, or drugged into it. It was when we stepped out of line when we were way too deep in, that violence could have been used.
And then, we’d thank them for the privilege of being beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and occasionally waterboarded. We thought if they beat us, they care enough about us to hit us.
Most of the time, the sheer pressure, gaslighting, drugging, and mindfuckery left us slaves brainwashed into thinking this was normal. We thought it was fine, that we were loved.
Sure, we were sold at auctions, had blood vials drawn, people vanished, and I was sent to buy 40-packs of condoms every two days when I was there, but I believed that my traffickers were my friends.
For a while, I thought this was normal. I thought that this was a sign I was cool. I’ve said this before, but if my traffickers told us slaves the sky was green, we would have all marveled that the sky suddenly turned green.
It’s hard to explain to people who have not experienced that level of abuse and trauma what it does to your brain. When you start to snap out of the haze, all the horror hits you like a freight train.
That level of denial fools others, too. To this day, there are people in my periphery who were there and saw the evidence but were unaware of what happened. Well, one, specifically.
The people left alive from those days decided to shield him from the truth of what happened to us for his own sake while we pursued help. He doesn’t need that trauma. He already had enough.
I have nightmares where I wake up screaming from those days. I get jumpy and scream when people tap me on the back. Sometimes I just burst into tears while driving. I know what his victims go through. My heart breaks for them.
Diddy’s case shows that he followed a similar line of work. He lured young girls and boys to his house, ensnaring them, getting them high on drugs, and getting them compliant with video evidence.
He used force to control others around him.
Diddy’s case is unique because a lot of stars have seen the man get violent with people — even when they were not involved. He’s even alleged to have killed people.
I have reason to believe my main trafficker killed at least one friend of mine, but the one who killed her? No one believed me because he worked a government job until he was found dead near the Virginia-Maryland border. (I can’t say much more.)
This matters because it means that a lot of people adjacent to it complied out of terror — not trickery. That’s a very different can of worms in terms of an investigation and getting the victims to safety.
The line between sex trafficking and sex work is thin.
People often ask how I’m okay with sex work, considering my past. It’s simple. Sex work is consensual, informed, and involves the woman getting paid. This can be empowering for women.
Sex work has helped dozens of my friends escape homelessness, go to college, start their own businesses, and even provide for their families. Some of my friends use sex work as a way to heal from trafficking.
It’s wrong to take that away from them.
Sex trafficking is not consensual. It is not informed, it’s abuse, and it’s horrific.
Others knew.
So, I’ve started to be a lot more vocal about what happened to me when I was young. I was barely out of high school and I was the oldest victim at the time.
In the adult industry, people know who did this to me. Most sex workers heard the rumors about the “parties where you don’t always come back” thrown by the people. Some even tipped off others.
Major traffickers are known in the sex work industry. The sex workers shipped to Diddy were there to make it look legitimate. They were paid to make sure the lines were blurred between legitimate sex work and trafficking.
This is a common tactic that is used in trafficking circles that do slave auctions, forced gangrape, or what I went through. Sex workers and escort agencies often avoid these kinds of clients because of what can happen, even if the pay is good.
I hang out with sex workers who run the gamut from NYC streetwalkers to porn stars. We talk about things, from time to time. This includes our pasts. They often ask why I’m willing to openly befriend them. I tell them why.
When I say who I survived, a common reaction is to have people’s eyes go wide, turn pale, and hear them mutter, “Holy fuck. I’ve heard of him. How are you alive?”
They knew about me. I assure you others knew about Diddy.
I don’t think people know what the baby oil was used for.
So, this is an answer to a question I keep hearing online. I hear commenters ask, “What did he need 1000 bottles of baby oil for?”
Let me clear this up as someone who was trafficked:
Bulk-buying sex supplies is normal in trafficking. My ring, back in the day, used to run through 80 condoms a week. By the time they victimized my friend, it was easily 200 condoms per PARTY. Trafficking rings scale up.
Baby oil is used to make videos and photos look sexy. It’s what’s used in the “wet look” photos you see in pinup and porn. Diddy recorded these Freak Offs, so it makes sense he would want to oil people up.
Lube is a must unless you want to bleed after a couple of romps. Even the most resilient person will dry up and chafe down there. Lube prevents a lot of issues.
Baby oil and lube are used in nuru massages. This is a sex work act that involves naked “gliding” massages. It’s often used as a warm-up to other acts. Nurus take a lot of oil because bodies dry up faster than you think. The 1,000 bottles makes sense to me.
Here’s why the investigation and reveal took so long.
It takes a long, long time for trafficking investigations to go through.
They can go through different agencies and chapters and end up in different jurisdictions, and it can take a while for people to figure out which jurisdiction they should be in.
For example, my trafficking ring was active in about five states to my knowledge — New York, New Jersey, Florida, Virginia and Maryland. That’s five different jurisdictions.
Moreover, investigators are looking to lock down a conviction. They have to have a lot of evidence, beyond a doubt, that the people in question are guilty. They don’t want these people to escape via a legal loophole.
Most victims and adjacent people will stay silent when asked by FBI investigators because it’s so terrifying. We risk a lot — including murder — talking to others. This makes evidence collection grueling.
If the investigators jump the gun, traffickers flee and it’s game over. So please, don’t hate on them.
More will likely come out in court.
I assure you. This is the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve seen evil. I’ve looked into the eyes of people who wanted to kill me before. Evil is real, and it’s a luxury to think otherwise. If the victims step forward, you’ll hear things that truly show what evil looks like.
As a trafficking victim myself this is all so familiar. I have been trying to organize my own thoughts about Diddy enough to write about it but this is powerful. Thank-you.
You are so fucking strong, girl. Keep writing, keep on keeping on.