Dressed in slacks and a bright-blue top, Aubrey Lloyd shows not a hint of the hell she went through as a 16-year-old victim of sex trafficking.
"I was not hidden, I didn't have chains, I was right next to you the entire time," Lloyd, 35, told students and others who attended Human Trafficking Awareness and Advocacy Day at the state Capitol on Thursday. "I was sold, and I was sold and I was sold."
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers also spoke at the event, saying the general public has no idea how widespread the sex trafficking of children is.
Lloyd was 12 years old when her grandfather raped her.
At the time, she was living in Colorado Springs with her mother, a drug addict, and a stepfather who used her as a punching bag.
Human trafficking survivor Aubrey Lloyd is waits to speak during Human Trafficking Awareness and Advocacy Day at the State Capitol in Denver, CO February 20, 2014. Lloyd, who grew up in an abusive home, and was drugged, raped and sold on the streets by a pimp at 16, is now an advocate for other survivors. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post ,)
At 16, she held an after-school job as a clerk at a convenience store when another employee, a girl she thought was a friend, suggested she run away and stay with her, Lloyd said.
There, she met a 22-year-old man who she thought was the boyfriend of the girl's mother.
"We were in the kitchen, and he said, 'Are you ready to make some money?' "
That sounded like a good idea, until he told her he wanted her to work for his escort service. She refused.
Later, the girl suggested they go to a party. There, she said, she was drugged and raped.
"That was the last time you will ever say no to me," she recounted the pimp telling her.
Over the next year, he sold her to a string of johns.
One of those men, whom she called a client, and a drug dealer she knew eventually helped her escape.
"The dealer convinced my pimp to let me have a private date. The client took me to my grandma's house," she said.
Her grandmother committed her to a mental institution, where she stayed for two months. People with whom she related her experience blamed her for her victimization.
"I had people say it was my choice, ... that I was a sexual deviant," Lloyd said.
Later, another pimp initiated Lloyd's younger sister into a life of prostitution as well. "She was trafficked all over the country," she said.
Lloyd was able to bring the girl, by then heavily addicted to drugs, back home, but her sister wasn't able to recover from the experience.
At 16, she killed herself.
For 17 years, Lloyd told no one what she had been through. She completed her high school education and earned a bachelor's degree at Colorado State University in Pueblo.
A mentor convinced her to get a master's degree, and she began working as an advocate for rape victims.
Six years ago, she contacted the Human Trafficking Task Force of Southern Colorado and met people who convinced her that she was dragged into a life of prostitution — and that it wasn't her fault.
"To all the people who said I would never find love, my husband calls you a liar," she said.
In the mid-1990s, when Lloyd was pimped out, there was no Internet.
Now, Suthers said, flesh-peddlers rely on websites such as Backpage.com. Seventy-six percent of all trafficking of underage girls is done via the Internet, he said.
