This is a horrifying story, so haunting and disturbing that I have spent a lot of time thinking about it since I saw it. I want to warn people because it is so awful and so heart wrenching that the Livejournal community I originally found it had a bit of a ruckus over the poster not putting a break in the page. There is no doubt about it, it is a vile, horrifying story and one which has gotten me thinking. So here's your warning, don't read past this line if you're weak of stomach, it will haunt you.

First, this was from a Dr. Phil show dealing with the issue of sexual slavery. Here's the link to his website. He had a gentleman named Ty Ritter on the show and here's what Ty had to tell everyone.

"We raided a place that was doing child porn. They go to great lengths to keep people out: glass embedded in the walls, and barbed wire. There's a security guard that's looking down toward the end of the building here. I got one of my guys watching because we were getting ready to raid it in the early morning hours, and we did. And we brought two children out of there.

"We were trying to recover children that were being filmed, and I found this girl. They had tied her to the bed. They had driven a large nail through the top of her head. When the nail is in the brain, it causes the body to convulse. As she's convulsing they are having sex and filming until she dies. On her bottom, she had a tattoo of a ram's head in a circle. That's a tattoo they use for branding children. The expert told us the tattoo was at least 10 years old. She was approximately 18, 19 years old. So this girl ended up in sexual slavery at a very young age.

As I read this over a week ago so many things inside of me shifted. It was like, for a moment, the fog had lifted from my eyes and there it was, this sick and putrid, rotting thing that we call a society, laid bare in all of its filth before me.

I would like to say that this story, this tragic, heartbreaking story of this girl who had a nail driven through her head and who was fucked as she was dying, surprised me. I would like to say that I was surprised, shocked, that my eyes snapped open and my brows furrowed into unbelieving lines. But I can’t say that. I can’t. I’m not shocked. I’m not surprised. I see the threads and how they connect, I can see, so easily, the pathways and the common truths in our society that leads to this.

This child is not the only one. Her pain is the pain of so many others, experts say over 4 million others, each and every year.

No, when I read this story my reaction wasn’t surprise. There can be no surprise when one sees as many things as I have seen. What I felt was such a deep and piercing sense of sadness and resignation that it resonated through my very core. I wept. I cried until my eyes were burning and my head was spinning.

I thought of this girl, this 19 year old girl. I thought about her pain and her fear. How horrible it must have been to hear these men talking about what they were going to do to her. Discussing how they would kill her and use her one last time for the camera.

There is a photo on that website, a photo of a girl who doesn’t exist. A girl, a young woman, who doesn’t exist. A child that society left behind. She is forgotten, a forgotten life and a forgotten death. Her existence, her life, snuffed out before it ever had a chance to begin. Snuffed out for the sake of an orgasm. For an orgasm the very idea of this leaves my mouth dry and my heart empty.

Now, this girl is an extreme case. Nobody would doubt that her life and her death were horrible and heart wrenching. Nobody would stand before me on this blog and say that her death was an acceptable loss, nobody would defend her death as ‘just one of those things’.

But do you ever think of the other victims? The ones whose stories are perhaps not as horrific, not as terrible as this one? I remember them. I remember the girls. Apathy is the greatest enemy to these girls. Apathy is death. Apathy is slow death. And we live in a country dominated by apathy. By self-interest, by flesh, by blood and by money. We live in a country that begs for women to be younger and younger, to feed the flesh market, to feed the ‘Rights’ of men to view women. Women in strip clubs, women in prostitution, women in pornography as many women as you can get and as often as you want them. . Apathy is the greatest tool of this industry. It is the hallmark of the men who utilize the different aspects of this industry.

Apathy kills.

I remember the girls. I remember them vividly. We rarely talked about things that mattered, things that were important; mostly it was the same type of banter you get with any group of young women. But sometimes, only occasionally, in the wee hours of the morning while we were waiting to get another call from some businessman in some local hotel, we talked. A bunch of young girls, most of us dyed blonde, the pinnacle of the male ideal of beauty. Faces that were smooth and clear and eyes that sparkled with too much makeup.

I remember them. I remember their small hands and long fingernails and it is only now, so many years later, that I realize that we were a sight to behold. We were the wet dreams of so many men. Young girls, many of us underage, though we never spoke of it; 17, 16 and, I suspect, worse. Their real names have been lost to time, but their faces stay with me. Their stories stayed with me. We rarely talked about anything like that, but sometimes, over the cold pizza and wild berry wine coolers we would chat. Sometimes the stories would pour fourth and their glittery eyes and flawless skin would become haunted and pained and I would see them in all of their beaten glory. The stories of abuse, of incest, rape, molestation. The stories of lives riddled with pain and desolation.

Little girls, little women, all of them with stories, heartbreaking stories of stepfathers and apathetic mothers. Stories of runaways. Stories of trading sex for a place to stay. And in one of those rare moments when one of us had too much wine cooler floating through our young bodies someone might say something. The sparkly eyes would go dead and the terrified and abused little girl residing in the perfect body of every man’s fantasy would come out. Only then would I recognize feeling this place of emptiness inside of me, this huge fucking hole that enveloped me and I wondered what the hell we were all doing there. It was during those rare conversations that I actually SAW them…that I SAW them in all of their haunted beauty. And, as a story played out about the abuse that so and so had lived through I saw the terror and fear and sadness, the bright eyes would go dark and her face would go slack and I’d see the child who lurked just beneath the surface, the child who still just wanted to be loved and who wanted, more than anything in the world, to reclaim her power.

I remember sitting around that little table in the back room of that place. I remember the way the pizza turned to cardboard in my mouth as the pain poured fourth. We were kids, but more than that we were lost. We wrapped ourselves in the only thing that had ever really mattered, our sexuality. We hated men, we hated what they had done to us. We simultaneously laughed at them and despised them. But always we hoped to find a good one. These were girls who never had a chance, girls who were forgotten before they had even been recognized. Already, at that young age, several of them were addicted to drugs.

Where are they now? Where is Mercedes and Tawny? Where did their paths take them? What kind of lives have they led? Strange how I don’t remember their real names, I remember only the names they wanted me to remember. Our stories weren’t so different, our tales of fear and terror and hopelessness, it was just a matter of degree. I remember thinking myself lucky in many respects. My story, painful as it was, didn’t involve gang-bangs for a place to live, didn’t involve years of systematic abuse, but others did.

I remember one girl, I can’t remember her real name, (a point that shames me) a tiny little thing, you know the type? The ones who still have to buy their clothing in the kids section? The kind of girl who always makes you feel like a clumsy giant when you’re around them because you tower over them by several inches? I remember hearing her speak of her step-father raping her nightly for years. How she ran away and how she would tell all of us, how she tried to convince us and herself, that her boyfriend was a savior. That the man who had forced her to trade sex for a place to live was an angel, sent straight from heaven.

I remember her crestfallen face, though she tried so fucking hard to hide it, when she came in one night sore, her body aching, her vagina and rectum pained from the gang bang she had &lsquoarticipated’ in with her boyfriend and 3 of his buddies. She asked us if any of us had something for the tenderness and then told us what had happened, she laughed about it, grinning and bobbing her head as she spoke, her blonde locks falling over her flawless face. Someone said something like, “Damnit hon, why the hell did you do it if it was so miserable?” her smile faltered and her eyes slipped to her pizza in contemplation, a small, half-hearted laugh escaped her lips and she said, “Well, you know, it’s not like I could say no, I mean, he’s giving me a place to stay, remember?”

We got her something for the tenderness and changed the topic to lipstick or something else just as mundane.

What is the point of all of this? Here’s the point. These are the girls you are looking at in your pictures. These are the faces of pain, the faces of children trapped by their sex, wrapping themselves in the only thing they were taught had any value, their sexuality. These are the faces and the lives of the girls you exploit and yes, I DID say exploit in your pornography. These are the faces of prostitutes; these are the lives of porn stars. Lives of incest and rape and trading sex for a fucking roof over their heads. THESE are the lives behind the glossy pictures.

And do you know what pisses me off more than anything? The fact that you pay nothing for their pain. Most of you jump onto the internet to your favorite free porn site. Your sense of entitlement goes so far that you don’t even pay for it. You are masturbating to rape victims, you are masturbating to abuse victims, girls who were molested and raped by fathers and uncles and brothers and yet you don’t care. Your apathy is the most dangerous thing in the world to these girls, to these children.

Their faces are lost to you, just as their stories. Their lives, their hopes, their failed dreams are invisible in the wake of the free pussy and slick images that hide their desolation. Any of these girls could have been the one who was found with a nail embedded in her brain. Any one of them could have been because they probably came from the same fucking place. A place of pain and isolation. And they are little more than bits of flesh exposed for your benefit. Bits of flesh that you don’t even spend a fucking nickel for. Not that I would have anymore respect for you if you did, but the fact that you don’t enrages me to an extent that I can barely get words around (and which will wind up being another post entirely).

And you all tell me, every fucking day, so much that it makes my ears bleed, that ‘nobody in MY porn is hurt’. Of course not, because to you their personal stories don’t matter. They never did, did they? No, because you will read this and you will get indignant and you’ll be angry that I dare to tell you the truth and you’ll go over to your favorite free porn site and masturbate to their pain once more. Their stories fall onto deaf ears, their pain and misery are secondary to what they can provide for you.

Where did Tawny go? What is she doing? Did she find her way onto one of your free websites? Did this child, this girl whom I remember so vividly, find her way into your computer. I think it’s likely that she did, likely that her story will never be heard because her voice is invisible to those who victimize these girls again. Those who look at porn, those who buy prostitutes, you are all Johns. Their pain, their screams are silenced by their much more important vaginas.

Your ‘Free Speech’ lay in the vaginas of these women. These pained girls who have lived lives that would likely have made YOU suicidal. The types of lives that men rarely have to live, the kind of lives marked with sexual abuse by men whom they trusted. Marked by being bought and sold, by being used and degraded and each and every time you pull one of their photos up and masturbate to them you are telling them that their pain is secondary to your orgasm.

Sure, these girls are not as extreme as the girl with the nail in her brain. But these are the faces of the girls you see.

In the United States approximately 1/3 of women will be raped at some point throughout their lives. The vast majority of them have it happen before the age of 18. In every other industry in the U.S. the numbers of rape victims are representative of the population. About 1/3 of teachers, 1/3 of office workers, 1/3 of secretaries have experienced rape. In the sex industry however, the numbers skyrocket. In some studies 100% of prostitutes have been raped. It is well known that the numbers are WAY more than 1/3. WAY more than 1/2. The numbers generally fall into 90-100% range. Doesn’t that tell you something? Shouldn’t that tell you something?

Some men (and women) on this blog spend a lot of time vigorously defending pornography. Pornography that is littered with abuse victims. Girls who were raped at 7 or 8, children who laid in bed at night waiting for their father or step-father to come into their rooms. Think about that for a moment. By the time they get to pornography and to prostitution they have been used so often and by so many men that they know that the only thing of worth that they have to offer is their sex. And they do it. They do it because they don’t know anything else.

Many, (and in some studies, most) of these women have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Most of them are plagued with nightmares, night terrors, panic attacks and flashbacks. What you men and women are doing when you patronize this industry is the equivalent of putting a War Veteran back in the war, back into the fields of his trauma, and you’re excusing yourself by saying, “Well, he wanted to go back. He liked killing other people! It’s his choice!” But you are apathetic to it. You are unfeeling because obviously, these girls HAVE no feelings, they are objects, they are parts, tits and asses and pussies. These things can’t feel, they can’t have a story.

Your apathy fuels this market. I ask you to do me a favor, the next time that you decide to go to your favorite free internet porn site and help yourselves to the degradation of another human being I ask you to look at her. Look at that face staring into the camera, look into the eyes of that human being, look, and know that you are very likely about to masturbate to a girl who spent years being abused and raped. Look at her and see her face as the face of the child she was, perhaps frightened and saying her prayers before bedtime, knowing that within a few hours her uncle will be turning the doorknob to her bedroom. Imagine her horror for months and even years, then look at her eyes again.

If you are capable and able to continue to watch that girl, that victim then I cannot help you. Go away because you disgust me, you sicken me and your apathy bleeds over into this very blog, your apathy stains these virtual pages and I want nothing more to do with you. Go away and leave me to do my work, leave me to feel the pain of them for you. And yes, I will do it for you, because they deserve recognition.

If, however, you have a second thought after doing this. If you look into those eyes and understand and realize that you are most likely dealing with an abuse victim, a woman who probably fights demons every day of her life, and you feel pain for her, or even a shred of empathy for her dignity, for her dignity being stripped, then stay here. Stay and listen to what I’m saying.

If you are a human being who is able to feel empathy then I ask you to hold back. Hold out for now, if you must then continue to use them in your mind for now, but don’t patronize that industry any more. Don’t give the pornographers more incentive to use more victims. Don’t give the impression to these women that their pain is acceptable and that they were right all along. Don’t let your actions tell them that what they have been told all their lives, that their sex is the only thing about them of value is accurate. If you believe that these women are valuable and that they matter then don’t tell them otherwise with your apathy and with your actions.

Change lies with you. Just as your apathy can destroy them, your empathy can save them.

~Biting Beaver