Rebekah Charleston - A SWERF's Sex Trafficking Story
Rebekah Charleston is a SWERF that is on the news lately for filing on a lawsuit to abolish legal sex work in Nevada. She works to criminalize the sex industry and everyone in it. One of her jobs is to train police and the FBI to “save” sex workers the way she was saved, by putting them into prison.
Her bio can be found here https://silentscreams4help.org/guests-speakers-by-name/rebekah-charleston/
She is one of the Executive Directors of We are Cherished Inc aka, Valiant Hearts which made $326,987 in 2016 per their 990 filing. Their salaries range from 30k-50k from what I’ve seen. She must have joined Valiant Heart recently because the last tax filing I could find was from 2016 and her name wasn’t on their director’s list on past filings either. Below you see what this organization did with some of their money in 2016, and the number of people that received service.
Like most sex trafficking organizations:
It’s a missionary group that seeks to “save” sex workers by converting them
They work with the feds, and police and train them
They lobby and fight to criminalize the industry
They spend a bunch of money going to strip clubs and giving them tiny gift bags (usually useless) to convince them to leave the industry
Going off this article I’m going to read this sex trafficking story with my knowledge and honest feedback
http://www.fwtx.com/articles/fwtxmag/features/nine-lives-amazing-stories-survival/Rebekah-Charleston
Basically Rebekah made the CHOICE to run away from home, and to survive she decided to work in the sex industry. She began at 17 and continued for 10 years until she was 27 years old. According to her, she was a literal SLAVE this entire time. She was only able to finally escape slavery when the feds did a sting operation.
I do want to point out her childhood because it’s very clear that she had serious issues like many Americans do. Her family was battling mental health issues, she was depressed and suicidal, her friends told she could get high from Coricidin, she got into marijuana, tattoos, and she moved on to other drugs by 16. Based off her logic, she was forced to get high off of over the counter drugs, and other substances. She was behaving the way many rebellious, experimental teens behaved. So I’m going to take a wild guess that things were turbulent in the home, and her parents were strict and suffocating for her. What I don’t understand is why she doesn’t seem too concerned with the lack of medical care (access to mental health professionals, and drug treatment) for most Americans. Instead she’s dedicating herself to criminalizing the sex industry, an odd choice considering that sex work kept her alive for 10 years, while her mental health almost cost her own life at 10 years old. So while she was 16 and using drugs, she decided to move out and drop out of school. Her parents tricked her into going to an “event” with them which turned out to be a forced intervention. She was institutionalized at The Holy Highway, a private Christian 9-12 month program for troubled 12-17 years old. She claimed that the place was abusive, and they were forced to do manual labor on the fields, clean, and given food with bugs in them to eat. This is interesting because she’s suing two legal brothels, and hoping to make sex work illegal in Neveda. I googled if she was also suing The Holy Highway to get the place shut down, but apparently she thinks it’s ok for teens to be forced into this place for month, and forced to do labor and eat bugs. That’s not child labor, it’s not trafficking somehow, and it doesn’t need to be taken down. But the legal sex industry does.
She spent about 6 months against her will at the institution and when she was allowed to visit the house, she ran away and became homeless. There should be more resources in place in our society for children and teens running away from home, more resources for orphanages, allow LGBT parents to adopt, etc. She isn’t fighting for any of that either. A teen could die out on the streets. She doesn’t seem concerned about creating better safety nets in society, and systemic care for people who need help. She works for an organization that helps a few people with a few limited things like gas, temporary housing, etc. And she works to criminalize an already marginalized group.
Continuing with her story, she stopped being homeless when she moved in with 5 drug dealers. It was unstable and she experienced a violent episode when one of them was tripped out and tried strangling her. So she made the choice to move out and become a drug dealer herself, not making enough a friend suggested she try stripping. So she decided to work for an underground strip club (or use fake ID on a legit one) she doesn’t say, but at 17 she was stripping and drinking. She claims that at this point she met her first “trafficker”, in her words “who she thought was her boyfriend”. So she met a man at a strip club she decided to work at prior to meeting him, and went out with him. She moved in with him and there were other girls there who told her that she was going to be escorting. She said she was afraid of being killed. At one point she and her new friends were looking for clients at a strip club parking lot. She met another men, and starting to fall for him. [remember she’s a slave, I guess] He mentored her to quit bad habits – drinking, smoking, and eating junk food. The relationship turned bad and he became controlling and abusive. The issue I have with this is that this just sounds like domestic violence to me. I feel like the only reason she and others call this sex trafficking is because she happened to be in the sex industry. But abusers will take control of the finances, become abusive, and controlling of their partner’s bodies and sexuality. I feel that we should address domestic violence, wealth inequality, and discrimination women face in our society. While I understand where people may come from with this…I feel it’s a bit of a reach to call this “slavery”.
While she was with him, in her own words, she went from “a streetwalking, drug-using, $50-prostitute to a high-class call girl”. 10 years later the feds busted them and tried to get her to prove they were running a prostitution ring. She didn’t comply, and wasn’t charged, but she was charged with tax evasion and served 13 months in prison. If this is true, it means that by her own logic SHE was enslaving people. But we’re going to let that go, because apparently her life was saved by being in prison. This is probably why she feels that criminalization and punishment will save all the sex workers who are just like her. However, prison isn’t a treatment facility, it’s not resources, it’s not housing, or anything like that. Stories of people being happy they went to prison are really rare. It’s kinda odd to me that her parents forcing her into an institution that functioned like a prison didn’t “save” her but the feds doing it did. Once she was released, she started working “an honest job at a bar” waiting for her “trafficker” to finish his time. Some people (like my strict parents) wouldn’t call that an “honest job” or an acceptable job for a woman but we all have our own standards. She finally decided to leave him by sending him an email while he was at prison. I had no ideas that slaves throughout history could just choose to leave, but that’s what she’s claiming happened. The police who put her in prison saved her, by finally deciding to break up with her boyfriend by herself. Now that she’s in her 30s she learned that she was a sex trafficking victim and a former slave, she teaches police and the FBI that sex trafficking isn’t a choice….
Her story ends with one of her back tattoos which she claims one of her “traffickers” [ex abusive boyfriends] used to “brand her”. You know how some enslaved people or animals are branded with numbers or their owner’s name to show ownership, she’s claiming that a tattoo she got for her boyfriend…was them branding her. I could understanding this symbolically, but literally it’s not the same. I just feel like these stories are really really racist, and only white people could do this.
I’m going to be reading about her lawsuit against Hof’s legal brothels in Nevada in the next blog post.
Catch you later!
xoxo
Maya