Op-ed: The Realities of Black Survivors of Human Trafficking

January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month, a time to honor survivors like Chrystul Kizer and so many other Black girls who have been criminalized for surviving. Black survivors face intersecting challenges rooted in racism, sexism, and systemic oppression, creating significant barriers to justice and healing.
The National Black Women’s Justice Institute’s Executive Director Sydney McKinney wrote an op-ed in Essence to illuminate the realities of human trafficking and raise awareness about the unique experiences of Black women and girl survivors like Chrystul Kizer. An excerpt of the op-ed is below, and you can read the entire piece here.
Chrystul Kizer is a child sex-trafficking victim. She is now serving 11 years in prison for surviving.
By Dr. Sydney McKinney
When people picture a victim of human trafficking, they likely picture what they’ve seen in police procedurals or movies like Taken: A young girl is nabbed off the street by strangers, law enforcement (or vigilante family members) search for and rescue them, and the girl is returned safely to her family. But this is often far from reality.
Take, for example, Chrystul Kizer.
Chrystul grew up in Gary, Indiana. Her mom worked to support her children and Chrystul’s interest and talent in music. In junior high, Chrystul earned a spot in the city’s performing arts academy playing violin. After her mom’s boyfriend became violent again and again, however, the family fled Indiana, left most of their belongings, and moved to Milwaukee, where they stayed in a shelter for months before they found an apartment. However, Chrystul began experiencing violence again, this time at the hands of her own boyfriend.
Then in 2017, at 16 years old, Chrystul met the white man who would ultimately become her abuser and trafficker. He began grooming her, buying her food and gifts and giving her cash she could share with her sisters. He also began giving her drugs and demanding sex acts, at least some of which he recorded unknowingly to Chrystul. And he began selling her to older men.
Black girls like Chrystul are disproportionately more vulnerable to being trafficking for a number of reasons, including because traffickers admit that, if caught, they believe that trafficking Black women would land them less jail time than trafficking white women.