Plus a BIG announcement!
I’ll never forget the day I read the article in my hometown newspaper. A woman, once a childhood friend, shared her story of childhood sexual abuse after finally breaking free from a life of trauma and addiction. She had been molested for years; years that we attended class, pep rallies, and football games together. Years that I sat next to her at lunch or behind her on the bus.
As we got older and the teens in our small town began to differentiate into cliques, she ran with a different crowd. Rumors spread. In the eighties, sleeping around was not less common but definitely kept under wraps, so when word got it, the gossip mill ran hard.
As I look back, I feel so bad about my part in the gossip mill. I now wonder how many girls like her at my school were “loose” because their innocence had been stolen? Multiple studies over the past two decades associate risky sexual behavior with childhood sexual abuse (Thompson).1 My friend, and many like her I have since learned, wasn’t what we cruelly called a slut.
She was wounded. Scarred. Traumatized. All at the hands of someone she should have been able to trust.
I stood at my kitchen counter in shock after reading her story. As a child and young teen, I had no idea what was going on in her home. I could only look back and wonder what I would have done if I had known. Would I have spoken out? Demanded someone step in and help her?
Within days, Melody’s story was born.
I put myself in her shoes.
I took what I had learned through volunteering with a local ministry for human trafficking survivors, combined it with my friend’s story, and Paper Dolls: Trust Your Instincts began to unfold page by page.
I am very proud of that story and grateful for the many readers who have shared that it opened their eyes to the reality of human trafficking in the United States.
In fact, I recently decided to go back and update the resources in the back of the book…which led down a rabbit hole to redesigning the cover, revisiting the story, and cleaning up a few things that bugged me after it was published!
Call me crazy. I won’t argue.
By now I think you have guessed the big announcement!
I will be releasing a revised and updated version of my book, Paper Dolls: Trust Your Instincts very soon!
Why?
The statistics around human trafficking in our country are horrific. In 2024, there were an estimated 24,000 trafficking victims in the United States. 75% were female, and 40% were minors.2
God only knows how many cases were never reported.
The problem is overwhelming, but the more people who are awakened to the reality of what is happening in their own back yards, the more survivors can be identified and rescued.
And that is why I am revising and updating this very important story. I can’t wait to share it with you.
More soon,
~Jeanine
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If you suspect human trafficking, don’t hesitate to act. Call 911 immediately to report it and provide as much detail as possible. You can also reach out to the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 or text BeFree to 233733.
- Thompson, Richard et al. “Child Maltreatment and Risky Sexual Behavior.” Child maltreatment vol. 22,1 (2017): 69-78. doi:10.1177/1077559516674595 ↩︎
- The Numbers: Human Trafficking in the USA in 2024, stepstohope.org. https://www.stepstohope.org/blog/understanding-the-numbers-behind-human-trafficking-in-the-usa#:~:text=The%20Numbers:%20Human%20Trafficking%20in,vulnerability%20and%20lack%20of%20resources. ↩︎
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