Rachel Lloyd (1)

Not in your neighbourhood, right?

When you think about trafficking, you think of "Thai girls in shackles", or "Russian girls held at gunpoint by the mob", or "illegal border crossings, fake passports, and captivity".

You don't think of Americans trafficking Americans; that doesn't happen to American girls.

You don't think about eleven-year-old girls being trafficked; that doesn't happen to eleven-year-old girls.

Allow Rachel Lloyd to set you straight.

Not because she is the executive director of show more GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services), although that's a decent reason too.

But because she has lived that life. That's what makes her story stand out. And not just to the readers of Girls Like Us, but to the girls that GEMS assists.

One of them explains: "Everyone else, the counselors and stuff, they can be nice, but they had a luv-luv life. You feel me? A luv-luv life, they read about the shit we went through in some book -- that's good 'n' all but you lived this shit."

Rachel Lloyd is educating her readers about the impact of commercial sexual exploitation on girls, but she is also sharing her own life experience.

"It's different, your life was like ours, some the same, some different but you been there, you feel me?"

Rachel Lloyd's honest and forthright approach earns her the credibility of her listeners and readers alike.

Girls Like Us opens with an element of her experience, from the near-present. It's late on a Friday night and Rachel Lloyd is called to a foster care agency to meet a fourteen-year-old girl who has been picked up off the streets.

The author's writing style is energized and contains enough sensory detail to clearly sketch the scene; the reader meets Danielle right along with Rachel, experiences something of the horror and sorrow along with her when she realizes that Danielle is actually eleven-years-old, not fourteen.

But if even Rachel Lloyd, who founded GEMS in 1998, is surprised, the reader will likely find this shocking.

Not only do we tend to think of this as a problem that other countries instigate and perpetuate (thinking across borders, rather than within them), but we don't understand the complexities of the problem either.

(For more about the complexities of the problem, and for a longer response to the work, please visit Buried In Print.) show less

There's nary a false step in this incredibly readable, heartbreaking account of girls who are coerced into selling their bodies for the profit of the men who control them. Sounds a bit like slavery, doesn't it?

The author, Rachel Lloyd, speaks from personal experience. She pulled herself out of "the life" with much support of her friends. When she was 21, she decided to form an agency to help girls get off the street. She named it GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services) because she show more sees the girls as brilliant stones just waiting to be polished. The work is not easy, filled with successes often followed by heartbreak as a girl chooses to go back to her "daddy". Along the way the author fills us in on what it was like for her; what it took for her to finally pull herself away.

Not an easy book to read, and yet so hard to put down! Nothing is sugar-coated in Rachel's narrative, but sometimes you just have to know how it really is. Highly recommended for men, women, social workers, teachers, anyone who works with youth--well, for everyone! show less

This was a powerful book. It weaves together Ms. Lloyd's own story of growing up in an abusive household and her entry into prostitution and her subsequent rise out of "the life" to create GEMS - Girls Educational and Mentoring Services - with the stories of the girls she met along the way. And I do mean girls. Some of these trafficked girls were as young as eleven. It is very hard to read stories of girls that young being abused at the hands of both their pimps and the justice system.

I show more found I couldn't read the book through like I would a novel. I had to read a chapter or two and then put it aside and read another book for a bit. That is not to say that I was unhappy to have read Girls Like Us. It is a book, I think that needs reading. I was very unaware of much that I read regarding just how young some of the girls are. I was very unaware of the mis-perceptions people hold regarding young girls and the supposed "choice" they make to be a prostitute.

Ms. Lloyd's personal story is harrowing and she deserves so much credit for pulling herself out of the hell she found herself in and using her experiences to try and make things better for girls in similar situations. She spares nothing in telling her personal story; not of her being beaten by her "boyfriend" or of her relationship with her alcoholic mother. She uses her past to connect with the girls she counsels. She has been where they are and she knows some of what they are feeling.

But the book isn't all about the bad; there is hope and lots of it. There are a lot of people who want to help stop the trafficking of young women and give them the resources they need to live a more normal life. That is where GEMS and groups like it come it. And books such as this that raise awareness and change perceptions. I'm glad I read it. show less

this is such an important book. rachel lloyd talks about the commercial exploitation of children in such a real but also accessible way, that while this book is hard to read because of the content, she draws you in. the stories she tells aren't exploitative and they drive her point. these stories need to be told and people need to read them, as hard as it is to know this stuff. and it's well written and honest. read this book, and then do something, even if "all" you do is support her show more agency, or one like it. show less