Taken

I have a recurring dream in which I am kidnapped in some way, then sold into prostitution by human traffickers. Usually I'm in a foreign country like Cambodia and surrounded by child prostitutes, but last night I was just close to home but trapped in a dirty house where everyone was smoking and doing drugs. Someone entered our house one night through the upstairs (the cheerleaders let her in) and she had a knife and told me to come with her or she would kill Theodore. And Tim slept through the whole thing. Then somehow I ended up in that house, then they made me pretend I was a virgin so they could sell me for more. I don't remember many other details except at one point there was a chicken cooking in the oven and I didn't want to eat it...

Years later, I escaped by running away in the middle of the night (in most of my other human trafficking dreams, Tim usually rescues me and all of the children Liam Neeson-style). The brothel owner's husband patrolled at night, but somehow he wasn't around and I got away by hitch-hiking with some man, who then also wanted to kidnap me, so I jumped out of the car while it was moving. I ran to a nearby house where I knocked desperately because I was seen by the husband of the brothel owner and he was coming after me. A couple opened the door and let me in, and the husband of that couple stayed downstairs to deal with the brothel owner's husband while I went upstairs with the wife. We sat down in her daughter's room where her two little girls were playing (at this point, Theodore was with me, but then when I return home it's like he wasn't with me). I told the wife about what had happened to me, and she was all like "that doesn't sound so bad, you're being dramatic."

We tried to report the brothel to the police, but apparently they were being paid off so they hadn't done anything about it. Eventually, I think I contacted the FBI.

When I returned home, Tim and Theodore still lived in the basement apartment, but weren't there for some reason. I was also in a towel? And then I found Tim at the Lee's. Then I tried to nurse Theodore, and I was really, really sad that my milk had dried up.

The end.



Hated the movie, love Liam Neeson.


Maybe this means I'm meant to work with trafficking victims? I'm very passionate about the subject, and to me it's one of the most terrible scourges on our planet today. I've written many a research paper on trafficking and attended multiple conferences on the topic. I think there needs to be more awareness and more law enforcement to combat trafficking. Once, I even reported what I thought was a case of trafficking. I'm still confused as to whether it was, but I was at the Greyhound bus station in DC when some pretty, very young Russian girls were trying to ask me questions(in very broken English... I tried to call my brother-in-law to interpret, but didn't end up reaching him until they were gone) on buying a ticket. They showed me where they were going and gave me an address, and I tried to look at their pamphlet and call the number and figure out if it was legit (they were supposedly coming to work at an amusement park, I think). When I called the number, it was just a weird answering machine. Then later I got home to my sister's house in Charlottesville and went on Google Maps (if I had only had an iPhone!) and the address was just to a kind of run-down house. I ended up calling the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) line and reported the address and what I thought might be going on. I have no idea what happened, or if anything suspicious was going on in the first place, but I was hyper-sensitive to the issue and figured better safely reported than not.