Human Trafficking : It's real. It's in your town. It can happen to you!

Over 27 million people are slaves today—more than during 400 years of the transatlantic slave trade.
　 The sale of human beings is the third largest illicit trade. 50% of the victims are children and 80% are women.
Trafficking is when an employer uses force, fraud and/or coercion to maintain control over the worker and to cause the worker to believe that he or she has no other choice but to stay and continue to work .


Common methods used.

Isolation or removal of familiar surroundings including from family & friends.

Physical and or sexual abuse

fear of abandonment

Misrepresentation of the company, work or wages

Verbal or psychologial abuse

threats of harm to victims or victims family
Sales Crew Owners & Operators earn appoximately 50 Million annually. While the typical agents earn between $3.00 to $ 20.00 per day. They are left with no money to buy a bus ticket home or money to supply them food for a day.
For more information check out:
.

The polaris project
http://www.polarisproject.org/

1-888-373-7888 or text HELP or INFO to BeFree (233733).
http://www.humantrafficking.org/

http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/human-trafficking/what-is-human-trafficking.html


The best way I can get the information out is to share one girls story of her experience being a victim of human trafficking.
　
A Short Road To Hell: My story of my time on Mag. Crew
It was the summer of 1998 when I seen that eye-catching ad in my local newspaper that read Fun in the Sun get paid to travel while earning lots of cash in a rock in roll atmosphere call Gina for details. I had a good job working in a call center making reservations for the national parks service.

I however wanted something that would help me escape the crippling pain that had become my life. I had recently suffered the loss of a very dear loved one. I had been abandoned by my father while being forced into a marriage with a guy I did not want to be with. I went from being an honor roll student-college bound in the pre law program to a high school drop-out in a matter of a few months. My life had been turned upside down and I felt the need to escape if not forever than for a little while. The ad in the paper sounded like the perfect solution.

I called the number listed in the paper and spoke to Gina for twenty minutes while she conducted my "Interview" over the phone and told me right away that I was hired!! I would be working with girls and guys around my age for a sales company traveling around the United States and the best part was I would be making lots of money while I did! It sounded like the perfect solution to all my problems.

Gina said that I should get packed and she would call back with my departure information. I was so excited I called up my best friend Little B and told her that I was going to be leaving with a traveling sales company she wanted to come along to so she hung up and called Gina too, a few minutes later she called back excited she got hired too we were going together!!

Gina called back later that day and gave me the information we were to meet a guy name Joey at our local holiday Inn who would drive us up to Pittsburgh to join up with the rest of the crew. Little B and I packed up what we wanted to bring with us out on the road, and spent our last night together at my grandmother’s place!!

The next day we went down to the holiday Inn with suitcases and backpacks but the guy that was suppose to meet us was not there yet so we waited inside the lobby. Forty-five minutes later a tall looking bald man in wrinkled clothes walked up and asked if we were the girls that Gina had sent? We followed him out to a white beat up old ford.

I remember feeling odd about traveling out of state with a man who did not look very professional but then it was suppose to be a causal environment. I shrugged it off and got into the car despite the warnings going off in my head.

On the ride up to the hotel in Pittsburgh Joey asked us a lot of questions about ourselves in between he would tell us about all the cool places he has been and all the things he has gotten to do since joining the company it sounded exciting like we were going on a big adventure.

When we got to the hotel Joey took us upstairs to meet our manger Eddie in his room/office. The moment I laid my eyes on Eddie I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach that something was off he seemed a little shady to me especially when he put a handful of cash in my and little B hand for just coming out and joining the crew. It was then that the other agents started coming back into the hotel and I learned that we would be selling magazines subscriptions.

My first day of training was what they called stemming usually in a mall or parking lot where we would walk up to random people and try to sell them magazines. I did not get any my first day and neither did Little B but no one seemed to care because we were new, All the guys and most of the girls on crew were pretty friendly and went out of their way to make sure we were having a good time which we were. The next day we left Pittsburg and travel all day and night until we got to our next location in Indiana.

For the first few weeks we learned the ropes going door to door or stemming with older agents, I would get some sales but was not what they called a power agent but was told I would get it with practice. I would perfect. I was encouraged to wear shorts and tank tops showing as much skin as possible. They said the guys would be more likely to buy magazines from a pretty girl.

We were taught to say that we were kids in a contest trying to earn points towards a college scholarship and a free trip to Europe. We were taught to ignore the first No and keep selling. We were encourage to get payments in the form of Cash as Checks were accepted but discouraged the reason they listed was because it takes too long for a check to clear.

In the beginning we would get anywhere from 15-20 dollars a day but after awhile it would dwindle down to barely 5-10 dollars a day that was not a lot of money to eat dinner on that night or have breakfast the next morning but somehow you were expected to make it work.

I cannot begin to count the payments of $3.00 I received while working there, or the times where I did not get paid at all. I often shared a room with three-four other girls so that we would have to sleep two to a bed yet we were charged for the expense of a room.

We would get up at 6-630 am because we had to be at the morning sales at 7 am before we would load up in our assigned van and head out to grab a bite to eat (if you had the money) before going out on drops. We would work from 8am to as late as 9-10 pm six days a week in all weather conditions.

I remember there was one place they dropped me off that was swarming with mosquitoes so bad that you could barely see your hand in front of your own face. I was lucky some really nice people let me stay inside their house until my car handler came back. Sadly they did not buy any magazine.

When you went out on drops which usually lasted between 2-3 hours at a time, you never knew where you were going to end up sometimes it was in a nice neighborhood, or apartment complexes but a lot of the time you were in ran down parts of town, trailer courts and yes even low income housing developments, they did not care how or where you got your sales just as long as you got them.

The scary part was being out on drops and never knowing who was behind the door that you were knocking on. In the four months I was out on Mag. Crew I had guns pointed at my head, was sexual assaulted and one guy tried to lock me in his house but lucky for me I got away before anything too bad happened.

The Mangers did not care when these things happen to you they would just drop you off at the next location and tell you to shake it off. Once I was dropped off in a neighborhood that had people nailing boards up to their windows and all the people I ran into kept telling me that I need to get out of there before dark or I could be killed. One of them let me call my manger Eddie to have him get a hold of Joey so I could be picked up before it got dark but Eddie told me to get back to selling that Joey would get there when he could.

The managers did not care about your personal safety or if you lived or die out there on T (Territory) you were replaceable by the next naïve young person looking for money.

If you were a female sales agent your are expected to flirt with the customers, and to sleep with the male agents to keep them happy so they would be more likely to continue to sell. My manger even went as far as telling me to show the guys my boobs to get them to buy from me-it made me sick to my stomach. I wanted to sell so that I could eat but I would not degrade myself to do so, I had my limits although as time went on you would start question your limits as desperation seemed to swallow you alive.

The longer you stay out with the road crew the more you learned about the crew. The stories of people being left on drops, beaten up and dropped off in the middle of nowhere or abandoned at the bus station with no money, no ticket home were no longer rumors but reality.

When someone came up missing you did not ask questions because you did not want to be next so you learned to tuck it away and pretended like they were never there in the first place but it always ate at you inside. After a few weeks of working twelve hours a day in the hot sun with little to no food and next to nothing of sleep it wore you down little by little to the point where you started living for the night-time out on road crew.

It was always a big party at the hotel after we came in from our long days knocking doors. I have seen my fair share of ice & beer filled bathtubs, empty bottles and on occasion I would see people passing joints around. I heard of other drugs being used but never personally seen it because I tried to stay far away from that because it was not my scene. Alcohol was easy to come by and I spent 90% of 4 month out on road crew drinking or drunk-but that was normal out on road crew even expected in away.

I seen more fights than I can count from bar rooms brawls to a guy in my crew getting run over because they were fighting with another Mag. Crew for T (stands for territory) I send mangers beat male agents for not making their quota’s.

The Beginning of the end came for me one night in September of 1998 we had just made a jump from Tennessee back to Indiana to join back up with the whole company. It had been one of the rare Saturday jumps which meant that we had two full days of partying instead of just one.

I was on a two day drinking binge and ended up in one of the hotel rooms with about twenty-five people who were all drinking it starting getting late and I was pretty drunk so I decided it would be a good time to head back to my hotel room and crash incept we had only been there 1 day and I could not remember what room I was in or even which side of the hotel I was supposed to be on and everything looked the same.

I thought about trying to find little B but it was a big hotel and I wouldn’t know where to look so I told one of the guys on my Crew Dean that I was just going to crash there on the floor. Usually I would not be so daring but at that point I figure with so many people around I would have nothing to worry about and would be fairly safe.

Well Dean said that there was no way he was going to let me crash in that room with all those guys-"It would not be safe" Dean said that it would be better if I went back to his room and slept it off there so that he could keep an eye on me and make sure I was safe because I was pretty messed up-who could argue with that?

I was young, drunk and naïve so of course I did not argue and to make it worse I trusted Dean and believed he was a good friend so when he promised me that it was strictly for my own good and safety I believed him and agreed to go with him back to his room.

I tried to follow dean up to his room but kept falling so Dean ended up carrying me back to his room. Once inside the door I asked Dean which bed he pointed at the one on the far left of the room and I stumbled over crawled into the bed with my shoes on and full dressed and passed out when I woke the next morning Dean was beside me and we were both without clothes-I freaked out threw on my clothes and ran back to my hotel room.

Thankfully my room-mates where already gone for the day so they were not witness to my meltdown as I shook, scream, threw-up and tried to scrub my skin off. I knew there was no sense in telling anyone because I had broke their rule about if a girl goes to a guys room then she can’t report rape but if a guy goes into a girls room then she can. (It took me a long time to realize that this was totally bullshit rape is rape regardless of the location) I got dressed went to the meeting like nothing had happened and went out on my drops but a piece of me died that day a piece that I will never get back.

Little B left the crew a few days later and begged me to go with her but by this time I was in a relationship with one of the mangers so I decided to stay and see where that went.

I spent pretty much all my free time with Jay in his room half afraid to spend any time in my own room and I stayed as far away from Dean as possible but still would see him from time to time. I also really could not get back into selling so I started doing pretty poorly and would skip eating a lot but at the same time I really did not have much of an appetite after what Dean had done.

I hated myself for giving what had happen with Dean.

As most relationships goes out on Mag. crew things ended a few weeks later with Jay but the timing could have been better because the night that Jay decided to break it off he picked me up and took me to a taco bell and we sat in the parking lot while he was thinking about how to break it off gently I was thinking about how I was going to tell him I was pregnant.

Jay went first and I pretended to be completely understanding when actually I was dying and freaking out inside but I vowed I would not let him see me cry so I held it inside until we got back to the hotel and I was safely inside my room then I fell apart crying on Jay agent’s my room-mate Stacey shoulder about what had happened. It took me a few weeks but eventually I ended up getting a test done that confirmed my suspicions-I was Pregnant.

I broke the news to Jay, he took me to a doctor office that I found in a phone book and dropped me off there while I had it confirmed a second time I was pregnant. When I got back to the hotel that night my mangers Eddie and Gina tried to talk me into an abortion even tried to pressure me into getting one, Jay also wanted me to do the same but I refused because it went against what I believe in at the time. I knew that would be something I could not live with so I decided that I wanted to have the baby and I wanted to go home.

　

I asked Eddie to send me home but he told me how much I owed on the "books" and that it would be best if I stayed out there and worked a little longer but when I kept asking to go home he told me that I had to work things out with Jay before he would send me home.

By this time I had been on the road for four months and it had begun to take its toll. I was dehydrated, malnutrition and exhausted I got pretty sick and had to go to the hospital who put me on bed rest for a few weeks which meant I could not work and Eddie would not give me any money for food since I was not working but still would not send me home.

Some of my friends on Crew would try to bring me something back but it was not enough to sustain one person let alone two people. I called my mom and told her everything that was happening and how Eddie would not send me home even though I asked three weeks ago for a ticket home so she came up with a plan to tell him that my grandma died but that still did not work Eddie said that he would send me home once we got to Oklahoma.

I was trapped on Mag. Crew and I wanted more than anything to go home.

The END- I got to Oklahoma in the late evening in October of 1998. I check with Eddie about my bus ticket but of course he said he would get it arranged for me in the morning. I did not like it but asked what room I was in, he gave me the room number and to my surprise I was roomed with Jay (something that was against the rules was girls & guys rooming together) and to add to my discomfort Dean was also in this room.

I called my mom and told her what was happening and she got scared they were going to do something to me so she called my step dad who was a truck driver and was out on a haul down in Alabama. My Step dad picked up an extra load so that he could come over to Oklahoma and pick me up and my mom called and told me my step dad would be there the next day to get me.

My mom called every 15 minutes half the night until I told her I was fine and trying to sleep that I would call her in the morning. I waited the next day in the hotel lobby for my step dad. The relief that washed over me when I seen that tractor trailer pull into the hotel is hard even twelve years later to put into words. I had some good times and bad times out there on the road, I learned a lot about life and people but mostly I carry around scars from living that life.

I never really got the full understanding what happened to me out there on the road until years later and still today I’m working through the issues that remain from my time crew. I was one of the lucky ones and truly believe that getting pregnant saved my life.

Every-time I look at my daughter I know it is because of her life that mine was spared yet still in a way even she is marked from my time out there on Mag. crew as she wonders as she looks in the mirror who is the other half that makes her-her a price that is heavily paid for my mistakes.

My Advice- Do not ever go out on a traveling sales crew, it not worth the time effort or personal cost that WILL be paid-there is no If’s when dealing with traveling Crews. Whatever problems you are facing at home will be a cake-walk compare to what you will face on the road. The only parts of the United States you will see are hotels, doors and fast food restaurants. You never make any real money and WILL leave empty handed probably ending up with the company saying you owe them money.

They claimed I made 66,000 dollars in four months even turned that into the IRS which took me a lot of time to get worked out. The Manger and Owners only care about making money and you are nothing more than a slave, a pawn in their game and they will not hesitate to leave you on the side of the room guy or girl you matter nothing to them.

You will make more money working at a place like McDonald for min wage for a month than you would the entire time you would be out with the Mag. crew also keep in mind that if you are arrested and there is a pretty good chance that you will be because they never get permits that they will leave you in jail and half the time will jump to another state so they don’t get caught or worse yet you could end up like a few guys from my old crew that followed Eddie’s orders and ended up beating a guy to death and are now serving life in prison-

MAG CREWS are Dangerous!! Looking for a party stay in your own backyard with your neighbors and friends!
I am a victim of human trafficking. Slavery still exists in this country. Mag. Crews are still very much in existence and other victims could be knocking on your door! Do let these people into your home they are some very dangerous and desperate people out there.
This is based on a true story however the names of people involved have been chaged to protect the identity of the victim and her family. Any questions can be directed to me via my email aw.beardsley2@gmail.com or through comments below.
　For more agents stories please visit:
www.magazinesalescrews.com/testimonials.html


To show support and awareness for the dangers of Human trafficking I am asking everyone to post #EndHumanTrafficking  on twitter, Facebook, or any social media site for one week! A lone we are but one person with a voice TOGETHER we are THE Voice!!