If you're in Nashville right now, women, some as young as nine years old, are currently being trafficked for sex within fifteen miles of wherever you are. Human trafficking isn't a problem unique to Nashville. In every city, there are these spots where you have a whole lot of [prostitutes].
It was all the same everywhere I went," she told me when I met her at Thistle Farms, a Nashville based social enterprise run by the women of Magdalene, a residential program for women who have survived lives of prostitution and addiction. A graduate of the rehabilitation program Magdalene House , Rita had a sweet, soothing voice and dimples that do not reveal her traumatic past.
She spent three decades living largely on the streets of Nashville and riding around the country on eighteen-wheel trucks with truckers who gave give her "dope" in exchange for her company. I pray that they find somewhere that will keep them safe.
There is no safety out there on the street. Everyone is a dog. It's a doggy doggy world out there. All you know is get or be got and it's the same everywhere you go. So I was like, forget this. I'm done. I packed my little bag. I got on the MTA and I started riding. I was familiar with Herman Street and I knew there was an inpatient treatment center there and I went to see if I could get myself in.
It had to be about or in the morning and they weren't even open yet so I sat there and I sat there and I sat there. And I was like, someone is going to have to help me today because I'm too damn old to be trying to turn tricks. I'm too old for that kind of madness.
