Maria's Story

“I am sitting up in bed, wide awake, scratching the skin on my arms. It is not the kind of momentary, pleasurable scratching designed to relieve a passing itch (though there is certainly some kind of desperate pleasure in it). This is something much more brutal. My fingernails are clawing at the skin; they are wild, frantic out of control. They do not stop when blood begins to emerge, when my scalp begins to sweat. The only thing that makes them stop is the eventual weak voice inside my head that slowly gets louder. It says, ‘stop. Stop scratching. Stop it now.'“

I’ll call myself Maria for this story. I am now 16 years old, and I live in Los Angeles, California. My story begins in Philadelphia; that’s where my family and I lived. It all started when a man came up to me in the mall and told me that I should be a model. My parents agreed to let me go to LA because they couldn’t afford to take care of me anymore. Next think I knew, I was taken to the man’s house where I was locked in with many other girls.

He forced us to snort cocaine every day in order to get us to stay. We all became addicts. My dream of becoming a model soon became my worst nightmare. He stole my innocence. I was only thirteen back then. I didn’t even realize what was really going on.

Even if I wanted to, I can no longer have children. I consider myself dead; there is nothing left in my life. All I care about is drugs, and the only way I can get it is if I stay in the house. I have no choice.