We tackle the ugly issue of the exploding child sex slave trade in Middle Tennessee.
Over the next several months, Fox 17 is committed to helping children trapped in this underworld in hopes of bringing more kids out of the shadows.
This is Taylor’s story and we want to warn you the material is graphic.
You’ve heard Nashville labeled an “it” city…”it” for tourism, “it” for opportunity and now…”it” for child sex too.
As the women in Taylor’s recovery group sing Happy Birthday to her, this 19 year old admits she’s lucky to even be alive.
Taylor says “I was like any other 16 year old girl. I just wanted to be loved. I was really vulnerable and I met a man who sold me a dream.”
A dream of love, security, a nice home.
Taylor explains, “We will lay there and talk about future goals where ya know, where we were going to live. How many kids we were going to have. I met his kids. He’s a daddy and I met them and fell in love with his kids too.”
At first, it all seemed realistic. Until the abuse started. The isolation, the control, the beating.
Taylor: “He got into this really bad habit of choking me out and i had bruises of choke mark prints on my neck, all around my neck.”
Once he had Taylor, she was expected to produce money with her teenage body.
Taylor says, “When I was with my trafficker, he used a lack of sleep a lot of times. I would stay up for about three days straight and then pass out for a few hours and then he’d put me back out to work. I remember going to truck stops and it started snowing and I’m in bootie shorts and heels and a see through tank top and it starts snowing outside and I said, ‘I’m freezing’ and he said, ‘Well, you better get in those trucks quickly.”
Davidson County Assistant District Attorney Tammy Meade explains it this way, “The next thing you know she thinks she’s doing one thing and he’s got her doing something else.”
Meade’s sole job is to track sex traffickers and put them in jail. Meade says Nashville is on the circuit with men hustling children, mostly young girls, back and forth from Nashville to Chattanooga to Atlanta to memphis.
Meade says they’re even blindfolded or they’re put in the back of a panel van where they can’t really see out so they don’t even know where they’re going next.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, the average age of a child sex slave is just (continue reading at Fox 17)