Rebecca Bender
Benefitting The Rebecca Bender Initiative
Rebecca Bender grew up as an all-American, small town kid skipping rocks on the river in Southern Oregon. At 18, her boyfriend convinced her to move with him to Las Vegas and the emotional abuse and physical violence began. For six years she was traded and sold between different traffickers, living in a constant state of fear for her life and the life of her young daughter. Her eventual escape and path to healing has brought her to start a non-profit to help victims of sex trafficking, train hundreds of thousands of law enforcement on tactics of traffickers, and help people everywhere see and identify human trafficking occurring in their communities across the country.
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Wise Words
“I started, not really caring if my boundaries were crossed or pushed because at least I was a part and at least I was wanted and I was invited and that was a very different feeling than when I was little.”
“You know, I think what’s so important about this issue of human trafficking is that we all picture this one kind of stereotypical story that we’ve all seen in movies. Some girl being kidnapped, pulled out by one leg while gripping at the carpet from under her bed, brought overseas. We have these really Hollywood style scenes that we picture and what I think is important to know is that as victims, we grew up in the same communities as all of you and so, we too are picturing those scenes and when our situations aren’t matching those scenes, we’re not, there’s not a lot of red flags going off for us because it doesn’t look like does in the movies and that’s exactly kind of my story. I was not kidnapped; I was not duct-taped.
“...And I just kept thinking, I want to believe in him. I’m just going to get the money back, maybe it’ll just be dancing, and I just need to get home to my daughter and things will be better tomorrow. I just kept saying that to myself, like things will be better tomorrow. I didn’t know that it was going to last years and years and years.”
When you are living in a constant state of fear that you don’t know, every time you knock on a hotel room door, or you get in the car with a stranger, if they are going to hold you at knifepoint and rape you for hours, if this is going to be the day that you don’t get to come home to your kids. If this is the day that you contract an STD, that constant state of fear is not actually healthy, mentally for anybody.”
“It is anybody from your local dentist to people that are on drugs, to celebrities, to I mean it’s anyone, it can be anyone and everyone.”
“I was traded and sold between three different traffickers and each one used a variety of fear tactics, but the one was the longest, I’d been there three years, he tattooed his name on the back of my neck, he did that to all the girls. We all had the same tattoo.”
“I had my face broken in five different places. My palate cracked, my nose broken twice, my maxillofacial and terminates had been impounded. He beat me on a regular basis, he would say to the other girls, this one has a spirit that won’t be broke and I used to be so ashamed of like, why is it that I can’t figure out how to comply, that I can’t figure out how to obey the rules how to get in shape and not physically, but like mentally, like do what he wants and now that I’m doing the work that I get to do today, I’m thinking you’re damn right, I have a spirit that won’t be broken. You tried, but you did not win with me.”
“And a lot of people would ask, six years is a long time, why didn’t you just run? And my answer is always, I did. Why do you think I’m standing here today? I did run. Why didn’t I run sooner? I know I had multiple attempted escapes and I learned what to do better every attempt that didn’t go well, every attempt that I got all the way to the airport and post 9-11, they won’t sell you a plane ticket with cash, and I didn’t know that and they wouldn’t sell me a ticket and you just kind of panic. I also think that people are asking from pretty healthy adult brains and they forget that person in the moment. For me, I’m this young 20 something-year-old girl who has a daughter, I’ve been traumatized, I’ve been abused, I’m paranoid. I’m not thinking from a healthy adult brain, I’m thinking from a young person, our brains don’t even form til almost what 25? So, I’m thinking from a 20-year-old brain, let alone a traumatized one and so it’s just not as simple as people realize.”
“Resilience to me is about saying all of this can’t have been for nothing and then fighting and creating something even greater than before.”
“Anywhere where there’s an opportunity to make money, corruption will follow and sex for sale is so rampant. We live in such a hyper sexual culture that bad guys are finding ways to make money from putting their girls in strip clubs, putting them in a massage parlor, wherever they can get them in.”
“There was a girl in a red thong and boots and no bottoms on at all and her jean jacket she had on said, make money, not friends, and people would pull over and she’d get in the car, and it’s just so hard that not only is it out there in our open, but that the stigmas, where people are seeing these women and thinking. I don’t know what people are thinking because I’ve been that girl, but I can imagine when I see you clutch your purse and lock your door, that you’re thinking that prostitute, or she’s doing that for drugs or, shame on her and people have no clue that that girl’s child could be being held hostage at home and that she’s required to bring in a certain quota or her and her kid could be hurt.”
Links
Website: rebeccabender.org
Rebecca’s book: In Pursuit of Love
Charity: The Rebecca Bender Initiative
Facebook: @Imrebeccabender
Instagram: @imrebeccabender