A Survivor's Story
Yahoo7
A victim of child sex trafficking has spoken out in the wake of the abuse scandal that's shook Hollywood in a bid to remind others abuse isn't restricted to the movie industry.
Jerome Elam was just five years old when his stepfather began molesting him and he was introduced to a child sex trafficking ring where he was repeatedly drugged and raped for the next seven years.
"Hollywood is starting to unravel, but that's not the only place it's happening," Jerome told News Corp.
Jerome, whose abuse only ended when he enlisted in the US Marine Corps at 17, is one of thousands to fall victim to such rings.
He highlights the rapid growth of the internet has only made the problem worse.
"It's like whack-a-mole on the dark web because it's all encrypted - they'll take the sites down as quick as they go up, it's so prolific it's hard for them to really put a stop to it," he said.
Jerome believes that 80 per cent of the people using the dark web are sexual predators and points to a recent bust from January 2016 that saw the closure of a pedophile website with a staggering 95,000 subscribers.
He says during his harrowing ordeal he was forced to have sex 10 to 12 times a day while anti-trafficking charity Polaris Project says the average victim is abused up to 48 times each day.
Jerome revealed the disturbing details of his abuse, believing his mother was just a pawn in his new stepfather Neale's master plan.
Jerome now works to fight human trafficking in a bid to bring an end to the abuse.
"I was targeted through my mother - in other words the pedophile targeted me and got to me by romancing my mother," he said.
This, unfortunately, happens all the time.
Jerome later found out the chilling information that was passed on to the pedophile ring before he was enslaved, which included a photograph of him as a young boy.
His abuser Neil initially groomed Jerome in a bid to win his trust, before the abuse set in and was sent down a path he thought he would "barely survive."
He was introduced to a pedophile ring where he was sold to group members after an initiation that involved being beat and raped by each member.
The physical abuse, to me, just confirms my belief that pedophilia is less about sex and more about the destruction of innocence, or even better, the violation of the sacred.
The vast majority of pedophiles have been sexually abused as children themselves. Criminologist David Wilson said he never interviewed a pedophile that wasn't also a victim of child abuse. As a consequence, they feel dirty, and may well feel angry at God. Beating, raping or defiling children may very well be an attempt to hit out at God.
He estimates pedophiles pay around $5,000 for the use of a boy, and the more that was paid, the extent of the abuse worsened.
The National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children says each child involved can rake in up to $200,000 a year for pimps.
Jerome went public with his story in 2014 and initially struggled to cope as he was haunted with flashbacks of his lengthy ordeal.
Today, Jerome Elam is the CEO of Trafficking in America Task Force and is fighting human trafficking in his bid to end the sexual abuse suffered by millions.
See also: Anti-Trafficking Advocates, Law Enforcement Endorse the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (15th item on link).
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