As
Lauren Chopek painfully details her story, she does so with the
reticence of a survivor, as if somehow remaining silent would have been
better.
"I used to blame
myself for everything. But, like I, I would say I let them do that to
me. I am dirty. It's my fault," says Chopek through tears.
But
Chopek is finally speaking out, determined to shake the guilt and shame
that she knows should stalk her perpetrators instead of her.
"Now
I see that I was just a child," says Chopek, now sitting serenely in a
safe house, a healing lodge in rural Manitoba that cradled her in the
love and protection she so needed when she escaped her life on the
streets.
Now 19, Lauren was just
14 when she was sexually exploited and trafficked for sex in her
hometown of Winnipeg. But as an indigenous girl in Canada, her story is
hardly rare.
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