CLICK TO HEAR JACK HALL’S INTERVIEW WITH LESLIE KING
Police, prosecutors, and sexual abuse advocates spent the day Friday at Bay College in Escanaba for the Human Trafficking Crimes Summit. They talked about the current state laws on the issue, as well as ways to keep the problem from getting worse.
The Upper Peninsula Human Trafficking Task Force sponsored the daylong event, which included an emotional keynote address from Leslie King.
She was forced into prostitution and drug abuse from the time she was 15 years old. Now, she is the founder and president of “Sacred Beginnings”, a group in Grand Rapids that advocates for women and teens who are being trafficked.
“I don’t want another child to go through what I had to,” King told RRN News. “I relieve my trauma, every time I speak. Just to think, how good God is brings me to tears. Because by Man’s Law, I’m supposed to be dead. But here I am.”
King says sex trafficking does happen in the Upper Peninsula, and she knows, first-hand.
“That’s why it’s happening because you don’t think it’s happening,” King said. “I (was) trafficked up here many times during deer hunting season. I know what goes on up here. That’s why they don’t think it’s happening. These men go to church on Sunday, but Friday and Saturday they go out and do their thing. And then they want to sit up there and praise God on Sunday. I know what’s going on. I’ve lived it.”
King says she wants to do something about it, and expand beyond the two transitional homes she runs down in Grand Rapids.
“There needs to be more here,” King said. “There needs to be a home for women to come to, to be safe. I’ve trafficked here, so why not start here? I want the women up here to know that, guess what? We’re coming. You’re going to be safe. We got you. It’s OK!”
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