When Columbia native Robin Flemming was 20 years old, she met a man who seemed like everything she was looking for. He was loving, caring and promised her the world. It wasn’t until she moved to Texas to live with him, however, that he began using her for profit.

Flemming is among the 20.9 million worldwide victims of human trafficking, the buying and selling of human beings for monetary profit. Although she is a survivor, many victims of human trafficking are not able to escape their trafficker.

It is an issue that reaches all parts of the United States, including Missouri. According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, there were 7,572 human trafficking cases in the U.S. in 2016, 135 of which were in Missouri.

“We have sex trafficking [and] labor trafficking, which are the two main forms of human trafficking, and they certainly exist here in Columbia and throughout Missouri,” said Nanette Ward, co-founder of the Central Missouri Stop Human Trafficking Coalition.

Labor trafficking is when a person works for little to no pay, often in unsuitable working conditions. In the U.S., those who are labor trafficked are often foreign-born individuals with little means of asking for help. Victims of labor trafficking can be found working everyday jobs in hotels, construction crews and restaurants.

“They might end up working in a hotel with the promise of a good job,” Ward said. “They get here, and their documents are taken from them. They don’t have access to any kind of support or services and don’t know how to ask for help, don’t know the language. There’s forced labor in all different types of industries and settings, whether it’s in the city or an agricultural setting or a restaurant.”

Sex trafficking, the other main form of human trafficking, can manifest in many different ways. In Flemming’s case, she was a victim of intimate-partner sex trafficking, a situation in which someone coerces another person into an intimate relationship and starts selling them for commercial sex acts.

Victims of sex trafficking are not always bought and sold for sex, however. Flemming, for instance, was an exotic dancer.

Flemming’s trafficker, whom she now refers to as “the monster,” brought her to a club one day and told her she was going to audition to be a dancer. During her first night of dancing, she earned $3,000.

“I was hooked,” Flemming said. “I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can go to work for one night and make that kind of money? Where do I sign up?’ But I didn’t realize it was going to be his money. It was, ‘You’re going to go to work, you’re going to make that money, and you’re going to make it home, and then you’re going to go back and you’re going to do it again and keep doing it.’”

Flemming’s relationship with her trafficker continued that way for about five years. Out of fear for her safety, Flemming had to send her daughter from a previous relationship back to Columbia to live with Flemming’s mother.

“I mean, of course he married me, and he made me feel like, ‘I’ll take care of you and your daughters. It’s going to be everything you ever wanted,’” Flemming said. “As soon as I started making money and he got me in that club, it was hook, line and sinker. He had complete control over me, and I was terrified.”

Throughout their marriage, they moved across the country and lived in more than six states. Flemming said her trafficker abused her verbally and mentally, raped her numerous times and occasionally kicked out of her home, leaving her with no place to go. It took a realization of her own worth for Flemming to decide to do something about her situation.

“I had no money,” she said. “I wasn’t even allowed to have my wallet. I couldn’t have my ID, my Social Security card, nothing, because then I could leave. And I started to realize I had no control over my own life, and in a marriage, it should be 50-50 for the most part. … [I realized], ‘this is not the life I want. I don’t want to be with a drug addict or a pimp, and if I’m going to work this hard, make this kind of money, it’s going to be for me.’”

After secretly stashing money at work, Flemming raised about $10,000, which she used to escape from her trafficker. Flemming went to work one day and decided that she would not come back. It wasn’t until two and a half years later that her trafficker finally started leaving her alone.

“The last time I saw him was Oct. 14, 2006, and he came to my day job and hid in the bushes, jumped out, choked me unconscious and bit 18 holes in my face and tore up the inside of my mouth,” Fleming said. “It was kind of the point where, ‘If I can’t have you, nobody will, and you’re not going to be pretty. Nobody’s going to want to be with you.’ That was the last time I had seen him. It’s been 10 years, which has been hard just recovering and telling myself I deserve better. I didn’t deserve any of that.”

Flemming was able to divorce her trafficker in 2007, a year after she saw him for the last time. She then had to work to get her life back to normal. Flemming stayed in exotic dancing for six more years. After counseling, continuous nightmares and a year of being sober, Flemming’s life has returned to normal. She now lives in Columbia with her husband and daughter and runs a daycare. She is currently trying to repair her relationship with her other daughter, who also lives in Columbia and is married.

Although Flemming was able to get out of her situation, many victims of human trafficking struggle to leave out of fear of their trafficker and getting in trouble with law enforcement. This is often the reason why human trafficking cases can be hard to solve.

“They can be right in plain view, and you would not know,” Ward said. “You could have that person working in the back washing the dishes of a restaurant, and you would have no idea unless you were really inside that network of what’s going on, and who would that be? It would just be the people who are involved in that or other individuals who are victimized and just as afraid as the next person.”

Organizations such as the Polaris Project and the Central Missouri Stop Human Trafficking Coalition work on both national and local levels to raise awareness of the signs of human trafficking. Many travel companies also train their employees to recognize common signs of trafficking.

According to Ward, those who are being trafficked often come off as timid and uncomfortable, have seemingly limited control over their lives and don’t speak for themselves.

“We can all get those indicators at a training or an educational session that can truly make a difference of our awareness,” Ward said. “So that we truly begin to see things with a different eye for when there might be something suspicious, whereas before we just walk by and not want to be concerned because we’re not thinking, ‘Could that be a crime going on?’”

For Flemming, one of the most important ways to combat human trafficking is to stop blaming victims.

“You have to understand what I went through was horrific,” Flemming said. “But the way I’m treated after can be just as horrific if you keep treating me like I’m the one that did something wrong. So I think that’s the most important thing, is just people understanding. I don’t want to still be treated like I was a stripper.”

_Edited by Madi McVan | mmcvan@themaneater.com_