QUEENS, N.Y. (PIX11) -- It's now been nearly a month since the NYPD launched its "Restore Roosevelt Avenue" Operation to crack down on prostitution and other quality-of-life issues in Queens.
Advocates for the sex trafficking victims have been going on some of the raids of the alleged brothels to make sure the women and men who have been forced into sex work know there are options to get out.
Melanie Thompson, who now does advocacy and outreach for The Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, is herself a survivor of sex trafficking. She shared her experience with PIX 11 News to raise awareness of the human toll of human trafficking.
Thompson, who was attending school in Queens, tells PIX11 News that in 2010, "I was kidnapped on the way home from a movie theater when I was in 6th grade. Not your typical thrown in a white van, kidnapped. Me and my two girlfriends at the time, we ran into these two boys who went to our middle school, they were a little older, they had previously graduated. We were 12 and 13, they 16 and 17."
Thompson says the boys said "Let's get drunk, let's play spin the bottle, those kinds of things, the next thing you know, I blacked out and was being raped by one of those boys when I woke up my friends were gone. It was in the basement of a house, when I ran up the stairs, the boy who just did what he did, came back with an older man who told me I wasn't going anywhere, it was the older man who brought me across the street to an abandoned house and I was locked in the closet there."
Thompson says her mother reported her missing but she remained trapped by her Pimp and held in the abandoned house. She says it's a lot more common than you think for children born and raised in this city to become victims. She says "The reality is it's average Joes that walk up and down the street, take the same subway as us, that are trafficking the same people sitting next to you on the subways."
Thompson says she thinks it's important that people engaging in prostitution are not arrested but offered court-mandated, long-term resources to find a way out. She does believe that people who purchase sex, as well as the pimps, should still be prosecuted. She supports a bill that was introduced in the State Senate by Senator Liz Krueger.
Thompson tells PIX11 News "On average, it takes most survivors of sex trafficking at least a year to actually fully understand what they went through, and then another 3 to 5 years after that for them to actually be in a place where they can seek services."
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