I was labor trafficked as a child inside a cult. I did not get a paycheck. I did not get a choice. I was abused if I didn’t work fast or hard enough. And the adults around me were the overseers. There were dozens of children in the cult being trafficked in the same manner.

I wrote about this labor in my memoir, Cult Child. The scene below takes place when I was about six years old. My older sister and I had been put to work shucking corn. My older sister, Leis, was ten.

It is fall, and the leaves are turning color. I am sitting out by the corn fields. We’ve been harvesting the fields for days. We get up at dawn to work before breakfast which we then eat quietly while we listen to tapes of our leader, Brother Sam, preaching. They play the tapes through the loudspeakers wired from inside of the Tabernacle.

I try hard to tune out the tapes, letting the noise of Brother Sam’s loud preaching voice drift into the distance during meals. He frightens me and always sounds angry. I try to stay awake at the breakfast table. I am so tired, and I constantly fight my eyelids closing. They feel heavy and still dry like handfuls of sand have been dumped inside of them.

Out by the corn field today, I sit at a wooden table. I must reach my arms up high to grab an ear out of the large pile of corn in the middle of it. Leis is sitting opposite me. There are many other girls and women sitting around the table. We all grab ears of corn, pull off the leaves and silk; then break the stalk off at the end to throw away and chuck the corn into gunny sacks. My small hands get tired quickly from pulling the leaves down, and I begin to slow down. My fingers are aching, and my wrists are tired. Sister Debbie yanks my hair and smacks my forearms.

“Hard work makes God proud, Sila,” Sister Debbie firmly reminds me in her haughty way.

I look at Leis, my bottom lip shaking as tears well up in my eyes. Leis starts shucking corn faster. I follow her lead. Leis blinks softly at me. I know she’s telling me she loves me.

I hate Sister Debbie just as much as I am terrified of her. I want to sit next to Leis so badly. I’m mad, mad, MAD inside, and I want to scream. I am trapped and owned by a woman who hates me.

I worry that Sister Debbie will kill me in the night. I know what death is. I’ve seen the stabbing of animals in the neck and know this is death. Sometimes the way she looks at me makes my skin crawl like worms are all inside of it. My body moves independently sending a shudder through me which turns my arm hairs up from the goose bumps.

After time, I come to accept that this is just the way it is. If I’m getting hit it’s my fault. I did something bad, like talk or laugh, whisper out of turn, or move too much in church service. We are never left alone to be idle. I am always with Sister Debbie, just like now, sitting at this corn shucking table being “seen and not heard”. Soon the adults start singing hymns together.

“I have decided to follow Jesus. No other name I know.”

We shuck corn for many days during the fall; from early morning until dark, when the adults light Coleman lanterns for us to see by as we work into the late nights. I think most times I’m just sleepwalking from being so physically exhausted. Days drift by leaving behind hazy shadows to become fragments and flashes which will follow me for years to come.

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Cara Cobb, one of the cult leader’s daughters-in-law, wrote about this labor in her book, We Walk on Water. Her job was to keep the children working at all times. In one scene, she describes a moment of desperation. She couldn’t find any work for the small children, so she took them into the woods. They spent hours picking up pecans.

We were told the work was for God, because idle work was the devil’s hands. The truth is simpler. Adults trafficked our labor, and they used fear, punishment, and isolation to keep exploiting it.

It took me entering counseling years ago to be informed that I had been trafficked. When I finally learned the legal definition of trafficking, I read it line by line. Every element was there. That moment gave me something I had never had. It gave me an accurate identifier for my experiences.

That is why this article is important. The word I fought to understand is being worn thin and often used incorrectly. I want to talk about how that happened, and why it matters to all of us who carry trauma.

How the Word Got Watered Down

Somewhere along the way, “trafficked” became a catch-all word online. Scroll through survivor spaces and you will see it everywhere. It gets attached to incest. It gets attached to neglect. It gets attached to abusive foster homes, controlling parents, and in some cases, even a single assault.

I understand why. Trafficking is a word people take seriously. It gets attention. It gets believed. For a person whose abuse was ignored for years, a stronger word can feel like the only way to be heard.

Social media rewards that. Big words get more views. Hashtags spread faster than definitions. A story told as “trafficking” often travels further than the same story told as “abuse.”

But trafficking is not a feeling. It is not a level of pain. It is a specific crime with specific parts. When the word gets stretched over everything, it stops describing anything. And the people it was built to protect start to disappear inside it.

What the Law Actually Says

Federal law defines trafficking through the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, often called the TVPA. Its definitions sit at 22 U.S.C. § 7102. The crimes themselves are defined in Chapter 77 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code.

The law also defines “severe forms of trafficking in persons” in two parts. The first is sex trafficking where a commercial sex act is caused by force, fraud, or coercion, or where the person is under 18. The second is recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for labor or services through force, fraud, or coercion. The purpose must be involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery.

Advocates break this into three elements. Most trafficking cases need all three elements active in order to stick.

Labor trafficking

Labor trafficking is about work taken by control. Under 18 U.S.C. § 1589, forced labor means knowingly getting someone’s labor through force, physical restraint, serious harm, threats of serious harm, or abuse of the legal process. It also covers any scheme meant to make a person believe that refusing would bring serious harm.

“Serious harm” is broader than beatings. It includes psychological, financial, and reputational harm. That matters for cult survivors. Our control was often fear of God, fear of hell, fear of losing family, and fear of being cast out.

Sex trafficking

Sex trafficking centers on a “commercial sex act.” The law defines that as any sex act where anything of value is given or received by anyone. Money counts. So do drugs, food, shelter, or favors.

Here is the part many people miss. For adults, prosecutors must prove force, fraud, or coercion. For a child under 18, they do not. If a minor was used in a commercial sex act, that is sex trafficking under federal law, full stop.

The federal crime codes

Penalties are heavy. A § 1590 labor trafficking conviction can bring up to 20 years, and life in aggravated cases. Sex trafficking under § 1591 carries a mandatory minimum of 10 years, and life in some cases.

States Have Their Own Trafficking Codes

Federal law is only one layer. Every state also has its own trafficking laws. A trafficker can be charged federally, by the state, or both. State laws sit under the federal floor. Some go further than federal law, and the wording differs from state to state.

Washington is a good example. It was the first state in the country to pass a law aimed at trafficking, in 2003. Its main statute is RCW 9A.40.100.

Under that law, first-degree trafficking covers anyone who recruits, entices, harbors, transports, isolates, provides, obtains, buys, maintains, or receives a person. They must know, or act in reckless disregard of the fact, that force, fraud, or coercion will be used. The goal must be forced labor, involuntary servitude, a sexually explicit act, or a commercial sex act.

Washington also matches federal law on children. A minor used in a commercial sex act is a trafficking victim without any proof of force. The state has a separate statute on commercial sexual abuse of a minor, RCW 9.68A.101.

If you live somewhere else, look up your own state’s code. Search your state’s name plus “human trafficking statute.” Read the elements yourself. It is the best way to know where your story fits.

Child Labor Exploitation in Real Life

The Twelve Tribes soap factory, New York, 2018

In June 2018, Inside Edition aired hidden camera footage from Common Sense Farm in Cambridge, New York. The farm is run by the Twelve Tribes, a religious group many former members call a cult. A former member went back inside with a camera.

The footage showed children on an assembly line packaging lotions and skin creams. The products went to brands like Acure and Savannah Bee, sold in major stores. Outside, a 6-year-old boy was filmed picking potatoes and pushing a wheelbarrow. Former members also described regular beatings with a thin rod.

The New York State Department of Labor went in days later. It found violations involving 12 minors doing factory work, which is prohibited. It opened cases that could bring fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. It also expanded its probe to eight other Twelve Tribes sites in the state. Both brands pulled their products from the factory.

Notice how that case was handled. It was treated as a child labor violation, with fines. Nobody went to prison. That gap between what survivors lived and how the system labeled it is something cult kids know well.

The Ohio egg farm case, 2014 to 2016

This one was prosecuted as trafficking. Traffickers recruited workers from Guatemala, some only 14 or 15 years old. They promised good jobs and a chance to go to school in the United States. Families were made to sign over deeds to their land to pay for the trip.

The kids ended up in rundown trailers in Marion, Ohio, with little heat and little food. They worked up to 12 hours a day at Trillium Farms. They cleaned chicken coops, loaded crates of chickens, and de-beaked and vaccinated birds. Most of their pay was taken. When one teen complained, the ringleader threatened to kill his father.

The ringleader, Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, pleaded guilty to forced labor conspiracy, forced labor, witness tampering, and alien harboring. He got 188 months in prison. A co-defendant got 10 years. Prosecutors counted about 35 victims in all.

Put these two cases side by side and the elements show up clearly. There was an act: recruiting and housing the kids. There were means: threats, debt, isolation, and fear. There was a purpose: taking their labor. That is what the word trafficking was built to name.

Send me a photon.

Abuse and Trafficking Are Not the Same Crime

Child abuse is horrific. It is real, it is criminal, and it leaves lifelong wounds. Saying it is not trafficking does not make it smaller. It just makes it accurate. And the rope tying the hands of justice for survivors is rooted in statutes of limitations, where justice is capped in timelines that don’t consider victims at all.

The difference is not about how bad the act was. It is about what happened, and how it happened. This definition is important for victims who seek justice. Trafficking is specific: exploitation for gain. Someone takes your labor, or someone profits from sex acts done to you. Abuse can happen with no labor taken and nothing traded.

A few examples help show the distinction:

• A child sexually abused by a relative at home is a victim of child sexual abuse. If that relative traded the child to another adult for money, drugs, or anything else of value, that is sex trafficking.
• A child forced to do laborious chores under a strict or cruel parent is a victim of abuse or neglect. A child forced to work in a family business or a group’s factory under threats and punishment may be a labor trafficking victim.
• A teen who ran away and was assaulted is a victim of assault. A teen who was housed, controlled, and sold for sex is a trafficking victim.

This cuts both ways. Some people who call their abuse trafficking are wrong. Others were trafficked and never knew the word applied to them. Many child sexual abuse survivors were exchanged for something of value and never realized that made it trafficking. The only way to know is to hold your story up against the trafficking elements in an honest way.

The Wrong Word Hurts Your Own Story

When a survivor misnames their abuse, the first person it hurts is usually them. It rarely feels that way at the start. Here is what tends to follow.

Your credibility gets tested. The moment someone who knows the law hears your story; they will check it against the elements. If the elements are not there, they may start doubting everything else you said. Your true experiences get dragged down with the wrong label.

It can damage legal options. Police, prosecutors, and civil attorneys work from statutes. A report framed as trafficking that does not meet the elements can get set aside. Meanwhile, the real crime may have been sexual abuse, assault, or neglect. Those charges have their own paths, and some have their own deadlines.

It gets used against you. Abusers and their defenders look for any crack. An inflated label hands them one. They can call you a liar about one thing and use it to dismiss the rest.

It slows healing. Recovery depends on understanding what actually happened to you. If the identifier does not fit, the healing work does not fit either. You may end up chasing an inconsistent or inaccurate story, while the real wound goes untreated.

It is hard to walk back. Once a story is public, it follows you. Correcting it later can feel like a contradiction. Many people choose to defend the wrong word out of fear of not being believed, instead of admitting they got it wrong and correcting the identifier.

What It Does to Those of Us Who Were Trafficked

When everyone is trafficked, nobody is. That is the cost we pay. When the word “trafficking” is hijacked from real trafficking survivors, those victims become invisible inside a cog using the word and misidentifying abuses.

I have watched people roll their eyes at the word trafficking. I have seen the doubt on their faces when I say it about myself. They have heard it used so loosely that they assume I am exaggerating too. My experience gets filed next to stories that were never trafficking at all. I’ve had to calmly discuss the statutes to educate them and ask them to please read my book so they can understand. Survivors of trafficking should not have to fight for our truth in this way.

Using the word incorrectly also blurs what trafficking looks like. Real trafficking is often quiet and ordinary on the surface. It looks like a commune soap factory. It looks like a trailer park near an egg farm. It looks like a church work crew. When the public picture is built from every kind of abuse, people stop recognizing the actual pattern of real control, labor, and profit.

There is a practical cost too. Hotlines, shelters, and investigators have limited time and money. When cases that do not fit the crime of trafficking flood their system, real cases wait longer.

Labor trafficking survivors feel this the most. Our stories were already the hidden ones. Sex trafficking gets the headlines. Labor trafficking of children in religious groups barely gets noticed. When the word gets diluted even more, we get pushed even further to the edge of this conversation.

None of this means anyone’s abuse matters less. It means every survivor deserves the right words applied to their harm. Accuracy protects all of us.

Sit Quietly with Yourself

Properly identifying your trauma is not a race. It is not something the internet gets to decide for you. It takes stillness, organization and time.

Sit with yourself away from the noise. Close the apps. Turn off the videos where other people tell their stories. Other people’s words can slip into your memories without you noticing. Ask yourself plain questions and answer them honestly.

• What happened to me?
• Who did it, and how old was I?
• Was I made to work? Did someone profit from what was done to me?
• Was anything traded, sold, or exchanged?
• How was I kept from leaving or telling?

Then read the legal elements of trafficking again. Hold your answers next to them. Be willing to find and use the word/s that properly fit your situation. Be just as willing to eliminate words that do not fit.

Therapy helps you see the whole picture

A trauma-informed therapist is one of the best tools a survivor can have. Trauma breaks memory into pieces. Time gets scrambled. A skilled therapist helps you put those pieces in order without forcing them.

Therapy also gives you a safe place to feel the weight of the truth. Sometimes the right word is heavier than the one we chose. It took me a long time to replace “molestation” with “rape”, because let’s be honest here. That’s what it is when an adult commits a sexual act on a child. They are taking something without their consent. In whatever way you are able to identify your experiences, you should not have to carry that alone. Look for someone trained in complex trauma, and if you came out of a high-control group, someone who understands cults, or someone who specializes in domestic violence and understands the elements of coercive control.

Journaling builds your timeline

Writing saved my life. I say “I write to live” and I mean it. Journaling is how I refined my own timeline of events.

Start simple. Write down one memory at a time. Note where you were, how old you were, and who was there. Do not worry about order at first. Later, lay the pages out and start lining them up.

In my journal I wrote every year from my birth at the top of the page and started organizing my memories on each page. Sometimes I had to move a memory, realizing I was younger, or older.

Over time you will see patterns begin to emerge. You will see who controlled what. You will see when the work started and what happened if you refused, or whether you even had any freedom to say no. Those patterns are what show whether the elements of trafficking were there.

Your journal also becomes a record. If you ever talk to an attorney, an investigator, or a publisher, dated notes written close to the events carry weight. They show that your story was built with care.

A profound case involves cult leader Victor Barnard, prosecuted by Reese Frederickson. One of Barnard’s victims used her calendar to code every time he violated her. This calendar became an intricate part of the trial.

Use the Words Right

Your story does not need a bigger word in order for it to matter. Abuse is enough. Neglect is enough. Assault is enough. Rape is enough. Molestation is enough. Every one of those words is real and heavy, and they deserve to be heard.

Trafficking is a very specific crime. It has an act, a means, and a purpose. Before you use the word, sit with your story. Read the laws. Talk it through with a therapist. Look at your journal and your timeline. If the elements are there, claim the word and be able to specifically identify why trafficking applies to your situation.

Those of us who were trafficked fought hard to understand what was done to us. We need the word to stay strong and be used correctly. We need people to hear it and know exactly what it means.

So, I am asking you, survivor to survivor. Tell your truth and tell it accurately. Protect your own story. And help protect ours too by not adopting a word if it doesn’t apply to your experiences. Use proper identifiers so those who are not educated can understand them.

If you or someone you know is being trafficked now, contact the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888, or text 233733.

Sources

• 22 U.S.C. § 7102, Definitions (Cornell LII)
• Human Trafficking: Key Federal Criminal Statutes (Congressional Research Service)
• Involuntary Servitude, Forced Labor, and Sex Trafficking Statutes Enforced (U.S. DOJ)
• RCW 9A.40.100, Trafficking (WomensLaw)
• Human Trafficking Laws (Washington Attorney General)
• Clearinghouse on Human Trafficking (Washington Commerce)
• Twelve Tribes Investigated for Child-Labor Practices (All Otsego)
• Investigators find child labor violations by commune (Fox News / AP)
• Leader of labor trafficking ring sentenced to 15 years in prison (U.S. DOJ, N.D. Ohio)
• Ohio man sentenced 15 years for smuggling teens (AP via CBS News)

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If you’re here reading, thank you for taking the time. Your care matters more than you know. We are all learning together about the harms done to children, how to name them, and how to help.

Victims face many problems in these spaces. One that I care deeply about is the lack of oversight on money sent to states for emergency services for child victims. Too often, no one checks where that money actually goes.

I’ve written a possible solution in a change.org petition. Will you add your name to it?

Sign the Petition

^{✒ What I’m Reading · Swindled by Faith
🖤 What I’m Wearing · This shirt
🕯 What I’m Using · This journal}