Kim Breaks Free

We meet a large variety of women through our outreach work in trafficked communities. Some young girls are brand new to the sex industry and eager to get out at the first meeting of a new, friendly face. However, for the majority of ladies we work with, a lifetime of untrustworthy people and broken promises has taught them to be more cautious with where they apply their hope. Also, in order to survive the sex industry, a woman must become very good at building on self-protecting walls. Usually the longer she’s been enduring abuse, the thicker her walls are and the longer it takes us to earn the right to bring those relational barriers down. This is how our outreach team first met Kim*… she was a woman with a lot of bricks to her wall.

It can be disheartening to a short-term outreach volunteer when they quickly develop a genuine friendship with a woman working in the bars of Pattaya, only to have to leave a week and a half or so later. No matter what city they’re from, we want to see our friends happy and healthy. For many though, asking her to take a giant and unfamiliar step towards freedom in only two weeks, after she’s endured years of abuse, is just too much to ask.

In Kim’s case, she connected very well with the first group of Not Abandoned volunteers that she met. They shared meals, they took photos together, they connected on social media. They shared both hard and happy stories. Then the visiting volunteers had to leave, back home to the US. Our Thai staff picked up the relationship from there with Kim but she was still nervous about coming to our center in the city. Even though she had just started to work in Pattaya, she was exhausted.

A year later, a person from this same volunteer team was able to return and reconnect with Kim. This volunteer, Jill, found Kim at the very same bar where they first met. Kim told her, “Life is hard. My boss is unfair to me. He withheld money that he owes me. He is overcharging me for rent too. On top of this, I now have a lot of health problems and it’s made working nearly impossible.”

Kim was still struggling with making any major changes however because change had proven to have a bad track record in her life. Jill and the other volunteers completed their trip and eventually had to return home, once again saying goodbye to their friend Kim, who was still in the bars.

However, Jill and our team remained patience. They had taken the relational time to earn more of Kim’s trust and didn’t want to ruin that by pushing a decision on her that she wasn’t ready for. The choice to exit the sex industry was Kim’s and only Kim’s.

Three months after their last visit, that patience was rewarded. Jill was checking her social media when she noticed a new message from Kim. She said she had had enough. She was ready to get out. Jill contacted the Not Abandoned Thai team. They immediately contacted Kim, we to the bar where she was, picked her up, and helped her get back home. Because of previous conversations with the team, Kim had decided she wanted to start her own business, selling food in her local market.

One of the services that Not Abandoned offers is business start-up support. This consists of training, coaching, micro-loans and micro-scholarships, all of which were afforded to Kim. It has now been 2 successful business years for Kim selling food in the local market. She is out from under the fake debt that her Pattaya “boss” was holding over her head and instead, she is her own boss… back home, back with her family. She is healing, she is happy, and she is free.

Not every woman’s story is the same in the sex industry. Sure, there are common threads—common traumas and heartaches. Each story is complex and shaped by different needs and abilities. We must not force our way of help to fit a specific timeline or care mold, and even when our heart is aching, our love must remain patient.

We don't give up. We do not abandon. We show up. We love. We stay steady and then one day a simple Facebook message welcomes us in to finally show a lavish kind of love that we’ve been waiting to show… the kind of unconditional love that leads to sustaining freedom.

*a pseudonym has been used in the telling of this true story