Designated a Survivor. Still Treated Like a Criminal: Kara's Story

I first told my story publicly years ago - long before most courts ever recognized what had happened to me.

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Parts of my experience were featured in advocacy writing about employment barriers survivors face, and many people first heard my voice directly through the There, I Fixed It episode of This American Life - where my story begins around the 8-minute mark. That episode captured a piece of my reality.But it didn’t capture what came after.

Eight years ago, I sat in a room and listened as someone with official authority put a name to what had happened to me.

“Trafficking survivor.”

I remember thinking that word - official - meant something would finally change. That recognition would translate into relief. That the arrests, the charges, the years of criminalization for things I was forced to do would start to fall away.

I thought the designation would open doors.

Instead, it opened another process.

In Florida, there’s technically a legal pathway for sex trafficking survivors to have prostitution-related charges vacated. On paper, it sounds like justice. When people explain it, they make it sound straightforward - file the motion, show your designation, and your life opens back up.

That hasn’t been my experience.

I was trafficked for more than a decade, moved across state lines, arrested again and again for things I was being forced to do to survive. Eight years ago, I received my official designation recognizing me as a trafficking survivor. I believed that would finally unlock the door - that it would mean relief, recognition, a chance to rebuild without my past following me everywhere.

Eight years later, I am still trying to clear all of my charges.

So far, I’ve had convictions vacated in as many as eight different jurisdictions - eight separate courts, eight separate legal fights. Each one required documentation, old case records, affidavits, legal coordination, hearings, and retelling my story in painful detail.

Nothing about the process has been automatic. Nothing has been fast.

Sometimes it feels like I have to prove I was hurt “badly enough” every single time. Like my trauma is on trial, not the system that criminalized me.

And while all of that has been unfolding in courtrooms, real life has been happening outside of them.

In 2023, I applied for an entry-level job - one that was advertised as felon-friendly. I remember thinking it might finally be my way into stability. A steady paycheck. A chance to rebuild my credit. A way to start repairing the financial damage that more than ten years of trafficking had caused - years that dragged me across eight states, nearly cost me my life, and left me starting over from nothing.

Instead, during the interview, I was asked if I was “some kind of crack whore or something” because of my misdemeanor prostitution arrests.

That question didn’t just sting - it clarified everything.

This was an international corporation that publicly celebrates its diversity and inclusion initiatives. I was nationally certified as a sex trafficking victim for the purpose of vacating my record. Parts of my story had even been publicly shared. None of that mattered. The criminal record spoke louder than the truth.

I often think about how different my life might look if I had gotten that job - how much more stable I could be by now, how much further along I’d be in rebuilding. How one employer choosing to see me as a worker instead of a record might have shifted the trajectory of my recovery.

But background checks don’t show nuance. Pending vacaturs don’t show up at all.

Employers see charges - not context - and move on.

Even after winning civil lawsuits connected to my trafficking - even after courts validated that what happened to me was real - I still had to petition court by court to erase the criminal records that came from that abuse. The designation didn’t clear my record. It just gave me permission to start fighting to clear it.

And while the system moves slowly, life doesn’t wait.

Job opportunities disappear. Housing applications get denied. Stability feels fragile - like it’s always just out of reach because paperwork is still pending somewhere.

Just this past week, my attorney called to say that after two years of sitting on a prosecutor’s desk, my 10-year-old prostitution charge was finally going to be vacated.

My heart soared.

One more down.

Now all I had left - just to have a real shot at a decent job - was straightening out my driver’s license suspension, which was itself a direct result of the criminal justice chaos in my life. I could see the finish line. I could see a future that didn’t feel sealed shut.

“When will it be done?” I asked, barely containing my excitement.

“She’s going to file a non-objection to having your charges dismissed,” my attorney said. “It should happen fairly quickly… maybe within the month.”

I hung up and called my advocate - someone who had walked beside me since the earliest days of my exit from trafficking.

She was quiet.

“A non-objection?” she repeated.

“Yes!” I said. “They aren’t going to fight it. This is good. This means I can finally move forward.”

I could hear her take a breath before she answered.

“Of course it’s good,” she said carefully. “It just feels… wimpy.”

I didn’t understand at first.

She continued.

“It took them two years to decide not to object?" She said incredulously. "Two years where you couldn’t get stable employment. Two years where your record still followed you. Two years where you were still paying the price for something you were trafficked into. They couldn’t have ‘not objected’ two years ago?”

And that’s when it clicked.

Her reaction wasn’t about diminishing the win. It was about naming the delay as harm. The prosecutors office hadn't really seen their own complicity in Kara's life and how the delay in making things "right" is actually justice denied.

Advocates see what survivors live in real time - how every month a charge stays on a record blocks housing, employment, licensing, transportation. They understand that justice delayed isn’t neutral - it compounds instability.

A “non-objection” sounds procedural. But what it really meant was this: the state wasn’t taking responsibility for the harm. It was simply stepping aside after years of doing nothing.

No apology.No urgency.No repair for the time lost.

Real justice would look different.

It would mean automatic vacatur once trafficking is officially recognized. It would mean trauma-informed courts, funded legal support, and timelines that reflect the urgency of rebuilding a life. It would mean removing the burden from survivors’ shoulders and placing responsibility on the systems that caused the harm.

And it would mean going deeper than vacatur.

Because as long as prostitution remains criminalized, trafficking victims will continue to be arrested for acts they were coerced into. Full decriminalization would prevent future survivors from carrying criminal records for their own exploitation. It would move resources toward housing, healthcare, and support - not prosecution.

Survivors shouldn’t have to spend nearly a decade fighting to undo harm the system helped create.

Clearing my record has felt like climbing the same mountain twice - first to survive what happened to me, and then again to prove it mattered.

If we’re serious about combating trafficking, we have to stop criminalizing those living through it - and build a system that restores lives instead of prolonging punishment.