Girl who helped bring down sex traffickers: Hiding just makes thi

You may or may not remember the girl we called Anna.

When she shared her story with us five years ago, she was 18 and known more or less for having helped prosecutors in 2001 break one of Atlanta’s most notorious child prostitution rings.

Although some of the girls, who testified against their pimps along with her, reclaimed that life, Anna didn’t.

She finally embraced her dreams and, with the help of a lot of community support, headed to college. That was nearly five years ago. If all goes as planned, Anna will graduate from college in May.

In a telephone interview the other day from her dorm room, the 22-year-old talked about her life since then, and more importantly, about the child prostitution bill being sponsored by Sen. Renee Unterman (R-Buford).

Anna supports the legislation, which would change the law so that children under 16 — the age of consent in Georgia — are not charged with prostitution and instead are considered victims.

She said she’d even go a step further and make sure cops get the training they need to help young victims.

“A lot of girls go back to the street because of the way they’re treated by the police,” she said. That’s not an excuse. That’s just fact, she said. “They treated me like crap.”

Anna’s entry into the world’s oldest profession began when she was just 12 years old. She had dreams of becoming a hairdresser. That’s what she was doing when a friend introduced her to a man who promised her jewelry and clothes.

That man eventually introduced her to Andrew “Batman” Moore, a pimp who put out his cigarettes on her back and tied her to a bed for weeks without food to make her compliant.

He was about to ship her out of town to do his business when Anna’s aunt found her and convinced her she didn’t have to live that way.

In 2001, Anna testified against Moore in the first of a dozen cases brought against men peddling children for sex.

Moore went to prison. Anna, the name given to her to protect her identity during public appearances, reclaimed her life.

She graduated from high school in 2006, and that fall she headed to college, with her ugly past behind her.

She wasn’t on campus long when a “trusted judge” shared Anna’s secret with her granddaughter.

“She told everyone on campus,” Anna said. “It just messed up everything. People started picking at me.”

She cried at first. She wanted to quit and come home.

Anna decided she couldn’t stay at Bennett College, but she could reclaim some of herself. She needed to break the habit of looking over her shoulder, worrying about what people knew, what they were saying about her. She wanted to stop hiding from the world.

“Hiding just makes things harder,” she said. “People are going to talk about me regardless, so I may as well be myself.”

Part of that, she said, meant reclaiming the name her mother gave her: Shantique.

What it didn’t mean was ever forgetting her journey.

“You never get over it,” she said. “I live with it every day.”

Anna re-enrolled in college. This time in Georgia. And this time a little less heavy with the past.

Now when she tries to forget, she said, it sneaks up on her only when trouble comes, like the time two of her childhood friends were shot and killed. Anna couldn’t help but wonder how she survived prostitution but they were killed just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Their deaths hit Anna hard. She went into a deep depression.

“I just started eating,” she said.

Before she knew what was happening, she’d put on 60 pounds. She’s worked about half of those pounds off now and is trying to let go of the pain and concentrate on getting her degree.

“I’m taking 18 hours, so I’m in class all the time,” she said.

In between classes, she works out and in the still moments she’s able to steal, she dreams of becoming a social worker and building Anna’s Club.

So many times during her life on the street, she found herself saying “y’all don’t know what I’ve been through; y’all don’t know how they hurt me.”

If she has her way, no girl who signs up for Anna’s Club would ever have to feel that way, ever need to speak those words.

“I’ll know because I’ve been there,” she said.