A rural Missouri girl forced into sexual slavery at 15, beaten and raped by her pimps, forced to be a drug courier and a credit card fraud perpetrator, Chiquita Tillman somehow found a way to break away from the predators who controlled her life.
Tillman told her story in front of hundreds of people in the Capitol Rotunda early Tuesday morning as part of Sex Trafficking Awareness Day.
"Being a survivor of sex trafficking is not only about the physical release from bondage, but is also about release from the mental instability that comes from being a victim," she told listeners.
Tillman was born and raised in Caruthersville in the Missouri Bootheel. She ran away from an abusive home, hopped on a Greyhound bus and traveled to Los Angeles to look for an aunt who she thought would take her in when she was 15.
Once in Los Angeles, she was lost.
A little girl weighing less than 100 pounds, she found a locker at the bus station to store her garbage bag of clothes. But in just a couple of days, she was wandering the streets looking for food. A young man approached the nave young girl and asked if she needed help. She accepted his offer of food and a place to sleep. After eating that night, Tillman fell asleep in a bed. She woke the next day and found out he had raped her.
He then took her to another home, where he sold her, Tillman said. Her new owner/pimp sent her out with an experienced prostitute to teach her how to work on the street. A police prostitution sweep caught the two. Tillman thought she was free when she was released from the jail alone the next day. A white girl offered to help her, and Tillman agreed. The girl took her to a home where three pimps waited, she said.
She said her new pimp impregnated her; the fetus died before birth. Under the pimp, she was violated by his henchmen and by police officers.
However, she was lucky enough to meet a young liquor store security guard who agreed to help her.
"He came back," she said. " He picked me up. He took me to a motel. He went and got me something to eat."
The man went to his mother that night and told her what he was doing.
"His mom told him, 'Leave her out there. She is probably hardcore - diseased,'" Tillman said.
The son argued his mother taught him to help someone who needed help.
The next day, not only did the mother go to the motel, but her mother as well. When they saw the girl was "just a baby," they took her in. They adopted her.
But saving Tillman from the streets didn't save her from her inner demons, she said.
She did not receive any counseling.
And the damaged little girl became a damaged adult, she said.
"I did not know how to handle my anger," Tillman said. "I did not know how to handle my depression. I did not know how to handle my hatred - the suicidal thoughts that I had."
She was violent, fought with everyone she met and turned to a life of crime, she said.
Tillman struggled until she got counseling.
"It's important that every rescue victim and every survivor receives counseling," she said.
Her example, although mostly playing out in California, is similar to the plights of many of Missouri's children. And the state has become a battleground for human trafficking, according to Sen. Bob Onder, D-St. Charles.
"Missouri is known for a lot of good things," Onder said. "But, one bad thing as a center for human trafficking."
Legislators said the Federal Bureau of Investigation has named Missouri a top destination for human traffickers. Organized crime generates more than $150 billion in profits through human trafficking, they said. And the crime affects more than 21 million people (5 million of whom are children). Legislators are backing a bill (HB 1526) to prevent children from being charged with prostitution and to require patrons of child prostitutes to register as sex offenders.
Attorney General Josh Hawley said the average age of a person forced into sex trafficking is 13. He said in 2017, the National Human Trafficking Hotline - 1-888-373-7888 - received 240 reports of human trafficking in Missouri, and 1,000 in the past 10 years. Ninety percent of reports concern females.
In addition to the hotline, Hawley's office has a toll-free tipline at 1-844-487-0492.
"I sent this (message) to human traffickers," Hawley said. "Do not come to our state. Do not prey on our children. If you do, we will find you out, and we will prosecute you."
Efforts have gone after the predators who traffic in human beings, but there remains a reason for "an epidemic" in the state and country, he said. It's because people are willing to purchase this slave labor.
"We will not eradicate the trafficking scourge from this state and this country until we change our culture about how our culture feels for women," Hawley said.
Jeffrey Green, a Camdenton attorney with the Lake of the Ozarks Stop Human Trafficking Coalition, was among those watching the event. Afterward, he said, human trafficking reaches deeply down into the lake.
Law enforcement officials, he said, told him they are aware of about 3,000 incidents of prostitution happening around the lake every year. Additionally, the Lake Area Sexual Assault Response Team investigated 250 sex assault cases. Certainly, it's not clear how many of those involved sex traffickers.
With its resorts, hotels and vacation homes, people travel from all across the country to vacation at the Lake of the Ozarks, Green said. Traffickers take victims from out of town to the lake, he said.
It's significantly bigger than anyone talks about," Green said. "Some people I was talking to last week said you wouldn't believe how much money was involved."