Sex trafficking kills people.
I was heading to bed last night and skimming Twitter one last time when I saw a headline that broke my heart.
“Woman who helped those caught up in sex-trafficking dies.”
Jennifer Kempton | Photo by Alaina Fabbro, courtesy Survivor’s Ink
Jennifer Kempton, who founded Survivors Ink, died Thursday morning. The Franklin County Coroner’s Office will conduct an autopsy, but Jennifer’s grandmother believes Ms. Kempton died from a drug overdose. She’s survived by her mother and four children.
Ms. Kempton was 35. She fought the demons of childhood sex abuse and drugs for twenty-three years. She was first raped at 12. That led to abusive relationships and a boyfriend who got her hooked on heroin. Then she was kidnapped and dragged from Columbus to Akron and raped for a week.
In the heart of the Midwest, a woman was bought and sold, or sometimes just rented for an hour.
When that was over, she was dragged back to Columbus and tattooed by force. “Property of Salem.”
She was branded. Like we do to cattle. She was given a permanent mark to show ownership.
That’s where Survivors Ink came from. Jennifer was tired of being reminded of that life every time she took a shower or saw herself in the mirror. She labored to leave that behind her but was confronted with it every day. She had been someone’s property. A piece of meat. She wanted the tattoos—the reminders—gone.
Covering a tattoo isn’t always cheap, and not many artists will donate their time and labor to do something like that. A disturbing number will happily accept money to put the brand on though.
Getting a tattoo removed is almost as painful to pay for as it is to sit through. But Jennifer knew what it took, and set about to make it easier and less expensive for survivors to remove that reminder. After just a couple of years of work, she started receiving pleas for help from all over the world.
It’s impressive that her message and work carried that far. And it’s terrifying that it’s so widespread.
Human trafficking isn’t just about parents in third-world countries selling their kids. It’s not about young kids being snatched from their momentarily inattentive parents, receiving a haircut and dye job in the bathroom, and being spirited away. It is nothing like what I depict in The Sad Girl.
It’s much more insidious and much more obvious.
More commonly, it’s a disaffected teenage girl who runs away to meet the guy she’s been Snapping with, the only one who understands her, who says he’ll take her away from all of this. He loves her. He knows what she’s going through, and he’ll fix it. But her boyfriend turns out to be in his 30s, gets her hooked on drugs, and then starts selling her.
It might be people ignoring signs of trafficking because they don’t want to get involved, or because it’s easier to send a girl to jail for prostitution.
At one point in The Sad Girl, Danny talks with a reporter about trafficking, and she says, “It’s ugly and ugly scares people.”
He gets a little wound up in his response.
“Ugly? Damn right it’s ugly! The idea of buying or selling twelve- and thirteen-year-old girls is disgusting. Everyone should be horrified that it’s still happening. We send people to prison for life just for taking pictures of girls that age. Shouldn’t we be putting that much effort into dealing with selling those girls into slavery?”
I wonder if somehow we’ve become numb to the news reports? It seems that trafficking arrests don’t get much traction in the media beyond local or regional reports. Worse, the public dismisses the stories because they were part of a prostitution investigation, and those people aren’t really being held against their will, are they?
No matter how she died, I think it’s important to recognize Jennifer Kempton as a survivor. She survived childhood sexual abuse and multiple rapes. She survived being trafficked—modern-day slavery. Those events happened, and she survived them. Don’t let the manner of someone’s death take anything away from the work she accomplished.
Ohio death certificates have information blocks for the cause of death and two contributing causes. Regardless of how Jennifer died, her death certificate needs to list trafficking as a cause of death. That’s what killed her.
If you’d like to support the work that Jennifer started, Survivors Ink is a 501C3 organization. Donations are tax-deductible.
6 Comments
I just finished writing a book about human trafficking, and in my research I learned that there are more slaves in the world today than ever before.
Hard to believe.
Of course, I don’t know if they went back as far as when the Children of Israel were enslaved in Egypt or not, but its way too many in this day and age.
Thank you for sharing about this woman. She is a hero!
Thanks for visiting, Susan. Jennifer truly was a special woman. I wish I could have met her.
I’ve read the same statistic about the number of people enslaved these days, and it’s easy to believe. The money involved is staggering.
I had just seen Jennifer tell her story at a Victims’ Services conference on May 8th & didn’t learn of her death until more than a week afterwards. To say it blew me away is putting it lightly! Jennifer’s story of survival was so powerful, I’m still telling people about it. I pray that her amazing soul is now at peace and that her legacy continues to live on through Survivor’s Ink.
Bob,
I had the pleasure of meeting Jen. She was rough around the edges and looked kind of mean. However…. SHE WAS A WONDERFUL HUMAN BEING. I fell in love with her personality the day I met her. She was not afraid of anything. She would call someone out on their B.S. as fast as they could spit it out. You could tell easily that she loved hard, fought hard, and did everything in her power to do something for others who were trafficked. She was quite a smart lady! She is dearly missed.
She sat on our survivor panel last year during our 1st Annual Conference. It was amazing. Sadly, her chair will be empty this year. Oct. 14 is our 2nd conference. She will be honored during the survivor panel. http://www.phoenixrisingky.org
Thank you for visiting, and for sharing that. I wish I could have met her.
Thank you for this. I wish you could have met her. She was a beautiful woman with a beautiful soul. She had the most gentle heart and loved everyone she came across. But she also had a ridiculously crazy sense of humor (despite all she had been through she maintained the ability to lighten any situation with her humor!) She had that ability to draw you in with her voice and powerful way of telling her story. She would give off this tough as nails persona (and she was), but behind the scenes was vulnerable and scared. She didn’t let that part show, she wanted those still out there to see you could be brave and use your voice. There were 3 sides to Jennifer that made her the amazing soul she was. Her public side that captured the hearts of many who educated and held everyone’s attention. Her Survivor Sister side that was fierce and strong and would do anything for her fellow sisters, even when she couldn’t do for herself she always would do for her sisters. And my favorite side of her, the personal side. The side very few knew or saw.
While every side of her was real and raw, it was this side I loved the most. She was so much more than the world saw of her (which is amazing because the Jennifer her sisters and the world saw was an incredible woman one of which this world may never see another like.) I could go on all day about her <3 she was everything to me. So on days that are rough I appreciate people like you Bob, writers who offer a story about her that serves as a reminder of all those who think about her and keep her memory alive. Little reminders to her children the mark she left on this world. Thank You