How do you call CPS on CPS? A little over a year ago I testified against my trafficker/dad/rapist because child welfare made him a foster parent. I could hear my neighbors bickering about Thanksgiving recipes as I called child welfare to let them know they had made a mistake. …

Holding a plate of untouched endive hors d’oeuvres, I gazed out the 16th floor window of Amazon HQ at the Tech Against Trafficking Summit. From the skyscraper’s towering view, I could see the street down below where I slept in warehouse doorways as a homeless teenager. A few blocks down…

On the Depp v. Heard trial, the politics of crying, the unique misogyny actresses face, and the weaponized fears of white women — The true crime industrial complex has broken our brains, convincing millions that they are experts in criminal behavior. True crime as entertainment has convinced us that we know what a victim looks like and how much they should or shouldn’t cry. But watching an episode of Law & Order SVU…

Each year on January 11, Human Trafficking Awareness Day is recognized across the U.S. This year, we should examine what we are actually building awareness of. As a child trafficking survivor who has also worked for anti-trafficking nonprofits and shelters, I have watched disinformation about human trafficking spread across social…

A story of tragicomic omens, stolen identity, and finding where you belong The bank teller glanced up from her computer screen and laughed nervously, “You don’t look like a man.” I felt the blood drain from my face, my heart pulsing in my ears. “Does it say,” I drew in a breath and whispered my father’s name. Her smile dropped. In my…

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde — The morning Jeff Bezos launched into space, a homeless woman with a walker was assaulted by a group of men on the border of the Seattle Amazon headquarters. Within the pristine confines of the company’s territory, you will find no homeless people in spite of Seattle’s teeming housing crisis. A…

“Are you from around here?” — Like a scene straight out of an Octavia Butler horror story, in a panel discussion about Charter Amendment 29, former Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran urged Seattlietes to consider: “If you expand housing of various kinds […] it may well produce a migratory effect.” (49:00) Sidran went on to describe…

Britney Spears is a former child entertainer who has been rendered the legal equivalent of a child under her father’s control. Although Spears is an adult, exploitation of child entertainers by their parents is commonplace. I should know. Before I was a homeless teenager, I…

Danny Westneat recently discussed debates about homelessness in Port Angeles, Washington and Seattle. In the column, he says that he has asked people living under bridges where they are from. But as someone who was homeless as a teenager in Port Angeles, and later in Seattle where I hoped to…