Snapshot Lived Experience Experts

Aja Houle | Consultant, Bay Area PACT Regional Cohort Rep, Preventing and Addressing Child Trafficking

Aja Houle (She/hers) currently resides in Sonoma, CA, and is a human trafficking survivor, mother of four, advocate, and
author. A Public Affairs candidate, she graduated from the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California,
Berkeley.

On her journey, she came to realize the importance of spreading awareness about combating trafficking. She also came
to acknowledge how valuable survivor empowerment is and its extraordinary capability to spread throughout communities.
Public Affairs has become an area of focus in her life, because trafficking policies do not currently reflect fair & just policy
that survivors deserve. Aja is passionate about working together in communities at city-levels to stand for anti-trafficking
policies through sharing her experience as a professional in the anti-trafficking field as well as her lived experience. She
has dedicated her life to preventative & reparative efforts for all forms of trafficking.

Training Coming Soon! “Trafficking Amongst Peers: Recruitment, Resistance, Resiliency”

Aja is currently finalizing content for an upcoming PACT Training hosted in partnership with the CDSS,Child
Trafficking Response Team to be rolled out later this year.

This past year, Aja began development of a training entitled “Trafficking Amongst Peers: Recruitment, Resistance,
Resiliency," acknowledging that youth who are actively recruiting are often denied placement; with providers commonly
citing “safety concerns for peers.” Aja hopes the training will help professionals who work with youth gain empathy and
engagement strategies and identify provider bias regarding common misconceptions around peer recruitment (which can
often be a form of forced criminality).

Aja shares that “while California’s child welfare system continues to face barriers in securing placements for youth; it is
important that we learn how to address and meet the unique needs of all youth who have experienced commercial
exploitation, including those who are forced or coerced to recruit as a part of their experience.” Social workers and
caregivers can provide the best care to children through relationship-building and meeting the child’s social, emotional,
physical, and spiritual needs. This includes children who have been exploited and forced into recruiting for a trafficker. All
children in-care face challenges and typically experience significant trauma. Peer recruitment is just one of several issues
that stands to potentially impact a recruiter’s peers.”

Reflection: How I was recruited into sex trafficking?

A narrative by Aja Houle

At fourteen years old I met a girl named Annabel inside of a Juvenile Hall. She invited me to stay at her and her
boyfriend's home if I ever needed a place to go. They picked me up one day and within a week I was being sold to buyers
on Craigslist and on International Boulevard in Oakland by a “Gorilla Pimp”.

On a summer night in 2006, we stopped for Burger King at the corner of 42nd & International in Oakland. As my trafficker
and I began walking into the restaurant, a girl standing next to the entrance caught my attention. She looked panicked,
upset, and oddly familiar. She looked like a friend of mine… “Tara. I thought to myself, she can’t be Tara. I’m 60 miles
away from home.There’s no way. She’d never be in this area. Never this late. She’d never be doing ‘THIS.’ ”
“Tara?” I asked the girl with uncertainty. “Aja?” We hugged and laughed and hugged some more. We were happy to see
each other again. We were happy to see someone from our “real lives,” our past lives, our lives before the traffic. “What
are you doing here?,” I asked.

“I just got away from this guy… He’s looking for me – I don’t have anywhere to go. He’s been beating me and has me
working nonstop. I finally got away.”

And just like that, my heart sank into my stomach as I listened to her. I knew he was listening. I knew he was already
preying on every word Tara spoke.

“I’m so sorry, Tara. Can you call your mom?” She told me she couldn’t. I understood why. I didn’t want to face my own
parents. What would we talk about? Everything that's happened to me while I've been missing?

“Aja, come here,'' Billy insisted we speak a few feet away. “Tell her to come stay with us. She ain’t got nowhere to go. We
can get more money together. If he finds her it’s a wrap. You can’t just leave her out here?”

I didn’t know the details of what Tara had been through at that point, but I knew Billy was going to hurt her in every way
possible. What choices did I have? I couldn’t tell Billy no. I couldn’t interfere with what he saw as an opportunity to get
more money—by selling my friend for sex. I couldn’t leave her alone with nowhere to go and running from a trafficker that
might kill her if he found her. If I said no to Billy I'd be beaten and possibly killed myself. I could leave her out there and
spend forever wondering if she was alive.

“Tara, do you want to stay with us for a while?” She threw her arms around my neck and hugged me again. “Thank you!!!”

And that is the story of how I was recruited and I became a recruiter.

A girl, who I’d met in the system and grown a friendship with, who already had countless hardships within her life, now
slept on the couch in our duplex. It wasn't long before she was sleeping with Billy and I in our bed. It wasn't long before he
attempted using his manipulative tactics to pivot us Into rivalry. He was unsuccessful. Tara and I spent all of our time
together when we weren't “working.”
I didn’t realize at that time that I experienced a lot of moral injury. I felt guilty for being happy she was there. I felt guilty
every time a buyer picked her up. I felt guilty for every beating Billy gave her. I felt guilty for the relief that her beatings
lessened the amount of beatings that I received. Moral injury can be life-long.

Who benefits from peer recruitment? The trafficker. It is a tactic used to generate more income, increase supply available
for growing demand, and reduce liability for traffickers. When a trafficker has more human beings to sell for sex, to more
buyers, and assistance with committing crimes, they will enforce peer recruitment whenever opportunity arises.

My story of being recruited and becoming the recruiter, is only one of countless stories…
I hope that in sharing my story I can help… It is a vicious cycle that introduces more children into sex trafficking everyday
across the world.

*While details of the story are told from Aja’s first hand account, aliases were used for other individuals.

Learn more about the Preventing and Addressing Child Trafficking Consultant Network and technical assistance available
to child welfare programs to inform local work by visiting: https://pact.cfpic.org/pact-consultant-team/ or email Project
Director Melissa.Gomez@cfpic.org