Girls Like Us: Fighting For a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale

Lloyd recounts the story of Keisha, a 13-year-old girl who is being held at Horizon Juvenile Center for prostitution charges. Keisha has been booked by an undercover cop posing as a client. Though Keisha has a strong case, her surly teenage demeanor, typical for her age, does not work in her favor with the judge or jury. Despite having multiple charges, Keisha’s pimp is released the next morning. Keisha does not understand why she is the one in jail, “why she, who’s been beaten and forced to make money for him, is being treated as the criminal” (167). Lloyd writes that under the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, domestic exploited girls are less protected than foreign ones. Under TVPA, underage foreign victims are entitled to a safe house, while North American victims are arrested, charged with prostitution, and then taken to a detention center. 

Lloyd remembers the multiple attempts that her boyfriend JP made on her life in the summer of 1994 in Germany. She realizes after she left him and “the life” that “perhaps it hadn’t been all my fault” (185). In Lloyd’s early days working with underage victims, she is also working through her own trauma.