The author opens the book by describing being tricked into running away at 14 and then tricked into prostitution. Later on she describes how she was already broken. Her parents contributed, but it seems the bigger attacks on her were older boys and the media around her.
In the 90s when the author was a teen an even more so today, media sends a message that is pervasive and subversive to young girls. Your value is in your sexuality. Men can and should do what they want with you. You are never good enough.
Before we get to how she was treated by males, the author describes what media tells young girls. These powerful messages combine with the developing brain. Young people’s brains have trouble judging danger. This and other vulnerabilities of a still growing mind make them susceptible. Susceptible to media messages and too being groomed.
The author describes several sexual advances that led to sexual encounters that led to the author and many girls like her being emotionally broken. This societal drive (the natural drive is more easily subsumed) for boys to have sex and for young girls to have validation to be valued through sex causes girls to get confused and hopeless.
Now a person comes in and convinces them to have sex for money. They see little reason not to- and if they do not value themselves, it is harder to see it as a loss.
This book has takeaways for dealing with young people dealing with emotional problems. Teens may not be pleasant or cooperative, but that does not mean they do not deserve our attention and patience. Trying to ease their pain leads them to do painful things. Judgement does not help. The author Holly Austin Smith, discusses how people tried to help her, but it was not the right type of help. She needed specific individualized help. She describes what happens all too often- troubled people are given interventions and she kept doing harmful things. You can imagine the judgement that would follow as it does not make sense. But as Dr Phil describes, everyone has a series of filters on reality. What she did made sense through the filters given to her by life.
The damage to many girls does not need to be caused by abuse or sexual assault. However, it is so prevalent that all girls have been exposed to it or have been scared of it happening. Whether you are concerned with sex trafficking or just young people in general, this is a valuable read.
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I was looking for something.

In June of 1992 Holly Austin Smith had finished eighth grade in a small coastal town in southern New Jersey, 30 miles away from Atlantic City. She appeared to her neighbors and casual friends to be an ordinary 14 year old girl, with an unremarkable appearance, neither strikingly beautiful nor homely, a seemingly normal life as the only child of two middle class parents in an apparently stable home, and a good kid with a mildly defiant attitude. However, just under the surface lay much deeper problems, as she was repeatedly sexually abused by an older cousin, had multiple sexual partners and was subjected to forced intercourse by several of them, and was ignored and all but neglected by her alcoholic parents. She was a follower rather than a leader, struggled but failed to fit in to a clique that would accept her, and sought the attention from boys her age, along with older young men, as she believed from her exposure to MTV videos, pop music, teen magazines, and other media that love would provide her with the happiness and personal satisfaction that she so desperately sought.

On an ordinary summer day she went to the local mall with friends, looking for someone to acknowledge her and help her escape from her suffocating and miserable home. Suddenly she noticed an attractive and well dressed young man gazing intently at her. He smiled at her, gave her his phone number, and asked her to call him anytime. She spent the next two weeks talking with him on the phone, as he gained her trust and her love, and when he promised to take her across the country with him in his red Corvette she jumped at the opportunity and met him. Before she could realize what was happening he bought her alluring clothes, shoes and a wig, took her to a motel, put her in the charge of an older woman, and prepared her to turn her first trick.

Later that summer Holly was picked up by police, confessed what had happened to her, and after a brief stay in a rehabilitation facility she was returned to her parents, as both she and they were provided with little counseling or guidance on how she could best recover from the trauma of her experience. As a result, she soon found herself back in trouble, and it took well over a decade for her to put her life in order and finally achieve peace and fulfillment.

Holly Austin Smith now serves as a consultant to law enforcement officials, mental health and other medical professionals, social workers and child advocates, as well as an inspirational speaker for other survivors of commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC). In Walking Prey, she shares her own story, openly and bravely, and discusses the extensive problem of child trafficking, using her own research and the stories of other survivors to effectively drive home her points. Although she focuses on CSEC in the United States, she makes it clear that this is a worldwide problem, and one that no community in any country is completely safe from. She discusses the risk factors for a child to become a victim of traffickers, most notably childhood abuse, particularly sexual abuse, poverty, homelessness, difficulty in school, and mental health problems. She provides useful tips to help those who encounter at risk teenagers determine if a child might be sexually exploited, along with resources that can be utilized to get them off of the streets and into effective programs to address the underlying problems that led to their downfall, and references for further reading.

Walking Prey is a compelling and unforgettable personal story of a survivor of child trafficking, which serves as a clarion call for all people to eliminate this sickening cancer, and provide greater focus on the victims of sexual exploitation to help them re-integrate into society, so that they can lead fulfilling lives and not perpetuate sexual abuse on the children that they later become responsible for. I found this book to be very useful for me as a pediatrician who frequently cares for victims of childhood abuse and at risk teenagers, and as a result of reading it I hope to be able to identify and counsel child trafficking victims in the remainder of my career. ( )