The Billboard Wouldn’t Have Saved Me
The billboards went up this month. Houston’s say “Texas is a No Trafficking Zone.” Atlanta is training hotel workers and rideshare drivers to spot the signs. Miami’s sheriff says trafficking is a top priority before the first whistle. With the first World Cup match kicking off today, host cities across America are suddenly very interested in trafficking awareness.
I want to tell you something uncomfortable: I was trafficked, and none of it would have reached me.
Not because the people behind these campaigns don’t care. They do, and I’m glad they’re trying. But the billboards are written for a story the research doesn’t support — and the story it does support is the one nobody puts on a billboard.
Here’s the version the campaigns imagine: a stranger, a hotel, a victim who looks like a victim. Someone trafficked into a city for an event, held by force, waiting to be spotted by a well-trained bartender.
Here’s what two decades of research actually shows: there is no consistent evidence that trafficking spikes around big sporting events. And most trafficking doesn’t start with a stranger at all. It starts with someone you know. A partner. A friend of a friend. Family. It starts with an opportunity that fits the exact shape of what you’re hoping for.
That was me. Nobody grabbed me. Someone chose me — patiently, warmly, through a door that looked like the future I wanted. There was no moment that looked like the billboard. There was no moment that looked like anything, which is why it took me until thirty to understand what had happened to me at all.
That’s the part I keep coming back to. Awareness campaigns train people to recognize trafficking in others. Almost nothing trains you to recognize it in your own life — especially while it’s happening, when it doesn’t feel like a crime. It feels like a relationship. It feels like luck. It feels like finally being seen by someone who gets you.
If I had walked past one of those billboards at twenty, I would have felt sad for the people it was about. It would never have occurred to me that it was about me. I had no idea. That is the point.
So what would have helped?
Someone teaching me what manipulation actually feels like from the inside — not “watch for windowless vans” but “watch for someone who learns your dreams fast and starts holding the keys to all of them.” Someone explaining that the most dangerous person in your life will probably be the one meeting a need nobody else is meeting. Adults who asked better questions about the too-good opportunity, instead of being impressed by it.
Prevention that starts with the vulnerability, not the villain.
This is what I mean when I talk about misalignment. The conditions that made me targetable were set long before anyone targeted me — the unmet needs, the gaps where guidance should have been, the learned habit of not trusting my own read on things. A trafficker doesn’t create those conditions. They find them.
So this week, while the cameras are on and the billboards are up, here’s my ask. Keep the awareness — genuinely. If a hotel worker spots someone in trouble, that matters. But don’t let the World Cup version of trafficking become the only version you can see. The person it’s happening to probably isn’t being moved through a stadium crowd. She’s at home, in your town, in what she believes is a relationship or a job or a break she finally caught.
She won’t recognize herself on a billboard.
She might recognize herself in a story.
That’s why I tell mine.
If this resonated, share it with someone who works with young people — a teacher, a coach, a youth mentor. They’re standing closer to prevention than any billboard ever will. And if you’re new here, subscribe — I write weekly about recognition, alignment, and how manipulation actually works from the inside.
