Suffering does not deepen because it is unseen, but because it is seen and dismissed.
I know this lesson intimately, not as a clinician or volunteer, but as a survivor whose earliest experiences revealed how easily exploitation hides in plain sight when authority goes unquestioned and vulnerability is misunderstood.
Human trafficking does not always announce itself with chains or locked doors. More often, it moves quietly through systems meant to protect — homes, institutions, and relationships where trust is assumed and obedience is mistaken for virtue. When exploitation hides behind respectability, silence becomes its strongest ally.
For me, this silence began in an outwardly perfectionistic home. But behind closed doors, abuse was constant, and safety existed only through self-denial and compliance.
My mother was verbally and physically abusive, beating me with a belt in fits of rage over small mistakes — spilling a glass of milk, speaking out of turn. I was told I ruined every holiday. My dreams of becoming an actress or singer were mocked. My body and appearance were ridiculed, compared unfavorably to others she claimed she could “actually be proud of.” Even as a straight-A student, I was never enough to earn affection or acceptance.
That conditioning laid the groundwork for what came next: being married off at sixteen to a trafficker in his thirties.
When my father died of lung cancer at thirteen, the weight of abuse and isolation became unbearable. At fourteen, I was admitted to a behavioral health facility in southern Indiana. It was there, inside a system meant to heal, that my trauma was devastatingly deepened. A staff member preyed upon my vulnerability, exploiting the very wounds that had placed me there.
Having never known unconditional love, I was desperate for it. When this man began showing me attention, I did whatever it took to keep it. Though he was fifteen years older — a grown man of twenty-nine — I did not question the imbalance. He told me I was “mature,” “different,” “special.” I did not recognize the grooming process unfolding, even though I was on an adolescent girls’ unit filled with others whose vulnerabilities were just as apparent.
What followed my marriage — and ultimately divorce — was not freedom, but years of unraveling the psychological and relational damage left by exploitation, alongside a growing awareness of how easily systems fail the vulnerable.
That clarity, forged through both suffering and growth, now grounds my work on the Advisory Board of the Bakhita Empowerment Initiative of Catholic Charities, where survivor-led care is central.
My role on the board is living evidence of what becomes possible when trauma is transformed into purpose. Bakhita provides direct services to survivors of sex and labor trafficking, while also educating professionals, organizations and communities on prevention, boundaries in care and accountability within helping systems. By lending my lived experience to this work, I help humanize vigilance, especially when protecting children and vulnerable youth.
This work also affirms a truth the public must understand: being trafficked does not require the annihilation of one’s dignity. Suffering ends where dignity is defended and silence is finally broken.
Donna Simmons is a wife, mother, author, and advocate for breaking cycles of generational trauma.She serves on the advisory board of the Bakhita Empowerment Initiative and has written a memoir, “Ashes to Flame: Transforming Trauma Into Purpose.”
January is National Human Trafficking Prevention Month. Learn more about the Bakhita Empowerment Initiative at cclou.org/bei
