Kim Belew

As I grew, my stepdad began abusing me sexually. First, he groomed me for a couple of years. He was an alcohol salesman, and he would take me on his route. Before I knew it, he was allowing people on his route to do sexual things with me. This started probably around age 11, and it went on until I was 17. 

Through the course of that, I got pregnant when I was 13. He took me to have an abortion because a pregnancy would have blown everything up. He couldn’t have gotten me pregnant because he’d had a vasectomy, so it would have blown a lot of things away. Also, I didn’t realize at the time when he took me to have the first abortion what was really happening to me. It’s just in hindsight I realize that’s what he did. Then he took me later, when I was 16, to have another abortion. I knew exactly what was happening then. But through the course of ages 11 to 17, there was a lot of abuse and a lot of addiction that happened for me to deal with. The only thing that stopped it was the fact that I got into my addiction, and I got so angry that I was ready to kill him. 

Then we moved. We had lived in the country on a 75-acre farm; very isolated from everything. We moved to a different house where my bedroom door finally had a lock on it, which I’d never had my whole life. I was very angry at that point, and alcohol gave me a lot of courage that I didn’t have otherwise. I finally confronted him when I was 17 and said, “If you touch me again or you do anything again, I will tell somebody.” 

I think he knew I was serious. I would lock my door so he couldn’t get in my room at night. He did stop doing all the things to me. But then it just was festering inside of me. 

And so, at age 18, within our religion, you had to only date with the intention to marry. At 18, the first man that I met was my choice. I was 18 before I got to choose my own partner for the first time, and the first person who came along I married within three months. Within that marriage, the effects of my abuse started to come up and out, and he told everything to the church. 

The elders took me into a room and chastised me. They wanted me to prove it; to show the proof. After being chastised, I left. I felt wounded by the way the church and by all the people I’d known my whole life had treated me. That began my spiral into psychiatric care—mental hospitals and shock treatments. 

In the middle of all of that, my mother and my stepdad were in an auto accident and they both died. I got sober. And I always say that I consider that experience a gift. I call it the gift that my mom gave me. She had to dip out of my life so that I could have a chance at living. And if she’d stayed around, I would have been trying so hard to maintain a relationship with her, which would have been with him, which would have been with the church, and I would have never made it. I felt like the only way she knew that she could help me was to go away, to pass on. I feel like it was the big gift that she gave me.

After I got sober, a lot of healing work happened from that point until now, but it has been a long journey. And I didn’t know until about five years ago that what had happened to me was human trafficking. What my stepfather had done was trafficked me. I’d always had this pre-conceived notion that the definition of trafficking was when a child was ripped from their home and they were sold to someone, and they never saw their family again. I found out through speaking out and starting to get the courage to talk about my story, that what really had happened to me was human trafficking. 

I’ve become super passionate about speaking out about human trafficking, and about abuse, and about letting people know what it really is because most people who go through this experience don’t ever have the ability to talk about it. A lot of them die of addiction or they stay stuck in their woundedness or just don’t feel like they can talk about it. There is a lot of fear. I feel like there’s a lot of grace that happened, you know, that brought me here for a bigger purpose. So, the bigger purpose is for me to be able to speak out and use this platform, and the miracle of being here and being able to tell the story not just on my behalf, but on the behalf of so many people.