TRAFFICKING IN THE MIDWEST

It was only a month into school when Heather met her first college boyfriend. She had grown up in a small town in Iowa, raised by an upper middle class family. She had everything.

“I was head over heels in love, and he seemed to be showing interest too. Now, I never really dated in high school, I was a bigger girl and very self-conscious. I never thought I was pretty enough or skinny enough. A few chats with this guy and pretty soon we were inseparable. I lived on campus at the time, but I spent much of my time at his house. Things were great,” Heather said.

In her free time, Heather would often to go the mall, spending excessive amounts of money.

“Shopping was my therapy. I even dropped money on a last minute spring break trip with some girlfriends to Florida. When I returned from the trip, my boyfriend approached me about my money issue, and I really couldn’t disagree. I needed to get my spending under control,” Heather said. “At first it started out with him taking my debit card. No debit card, no shopping. I was cool with that because I knew I really did need to start saving money. Next it was controlling how much money I could have each week. Me being naive, I bought right into it. I needed a budget.”

But the control for the money didn’t stop there.  

“Eventually I was lucky to get five dollars a week and most of the time I only got that because I returned pop cans. It got to the point I couldn’t even buy my own toiletries. He had to control the money,” Heather said.

It wasn’t until a few months of dating for Heather to truly see that she was being taken advantage of.

“I was his girl. When we would go to the house, I would see the other girls lying, waiting for their next customer or their next beating. All I knew was that at the end of my shift, I would get to go home. I would be able to attend my classes and work,” Heather said.