Everyone Who Left Me Behind

Illustration of a woman holding a folder in a hallway, with a prison visitor scene behind her.

Content note: this page talks about trafficking, sexual assault, and system failure, without graphic detail. You can stop reading anytime. If you are a survivor: you were asking too, even if no one heard you.

This is what they wrote when they turned me away.

The trafficking program: "not stable enough to participate in their program."(2018)
The county that "would not be able to complete the application due to not knowing the client."(2023)
The survivor agency that said yes, then texted that I "require a higher level of care due to [my] disability."(2026)

2018 and 2026. Eight years apart. Two programs for trafficking survivors. The same answer: my needs were too big for them.

Agencies closed my file. That wasn't the worst part.
The people closest to me left me behind too. Again and again.

MY FAMILY.

The friends who promised always, and anything I ever needed.

The people who told me they loved me, that I was family. For that, I would do anything they asked. I would risk my life for them. I would become whoever they wanted me to be. All I wanted back was what every human being wants: home, family, love.

The men who proposed to me and told me I had family now. Who promised they'd always be there, even just as a friend.

They didn't just leave. Some of them used me first. They took advantage of my disabilities: my brain injuries, and the days my thinking slips away.

They listened. They acted like they cared. I gave them a map of my deepest wounds, and they used it to aim right where it hurts. When I stood up for myself, they turned it around and made me the dangerous one. Both men, the one who took me to Virginia and the one I came back to Las Vegas with, tried to get me locked up or put in a hospital. Abusers do this so often that it has a name, DARVO: they deny what they did, attack you, and flip the story so you look like the one who hurt them.

Everyone.

I know what you might be thinking. If everyone leaves, maybe she is the problem.

But my records show something else. When someone stayed, I did well.

I was never too much. No one was ever assigned to stay.

Give me hope

Programs came and went. Some days, jail was the only place I felt safe, so I asked to be taken there.

It always ended up
JUST US.

Always JUST US.

Just me and the parts of me that kept me alive.

But that's not the whole story. Here's what happened when someone stayed.

2003 to 2025 · ages 14 to 36

When help came, I did well

At 14, in a group home: "She did complete the First Step program without running away"

Source: Juvenile court record, 2003

You could be the next one who stays.

Someone followed.

Read the whole story

What my records show

At 28, after a crisis unit stay, my safety score went from 3 to 10: "Safety Rating @ Admission: 3 Safety Rating @ Discharge: 10"

At 34, with rides, rent help, and one worker pulling it together: "Individual reported she was doing well, adjusting well to the community, fully connected to services"

At 35, with a case manager and my shots on time: "No incarcerations, no contact with DHS/BHD emergency services nor psychiatric hospitalizations" (That means no jail, no crisis calls, no hospital.)

At 36, Henderson police called a victim advocate for me "due to Jada's emotional distress and the fact that Jada advised that she was a past victim of human trafficking."

I'm not asking anyone to stay forever. If you ever need to stop, tell me, and help me hand off to the next person. That's how no one gets left again.

My mom never got help. She died by suicide.

I have been begging for help since I was 13.

I am fighting so my child never loses her mom the way I lost mine.

I will not let my child fall through the cracks I fell through.

It started before me. It ends with me.

The footprints are still here.
Will you follow them?

Walk with me

or give me hope

Next: The little girl who's still waiting