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Olivia Littleton lives in Central Florida.
She is originally from the Midwest and describes her upbringing as normal.
She’s now married, enjoys biking, and has a career helping victims of human trafficking because she was one herself.
“I got to the point where I couldn’t even make basic decisions for myself. I felt like I had no idea how to even pick what I wanted to eat for dinner because every decision that he possibly could control was controlled over me,” said Littleton.
“I thought I would always be someone that was a victim, that someone else had control over my life, that the dreams that I had for myself before meeting this person, that those were no longer options for me,” said Littleton.
Olivia was 19 years old and playing volleyball at Georgetown University when she got on a dating app and connected with a man 15 years older.
She says he gained her trust and then eventually began trafficking her.
“So he really started by just being someone that would listen to me. He was older, so he would offer things like coming to see me and taking me to dinners,” said Littleton.
Olivia says once they were in a relationship, he started asking for explicit photos and videos.
“A few months in, he then kind of flipped the script slowly into asking for photos and videos that were increasingly more sexually explicit,” said Littleton. “Then use those photos and videos to keep me in exploitation because he would threaten things like posting the photos all over my campus, sending them to my friends and family.”
Olivia’s nightmare got worse as her trafficker began selling the photos and videos online, and then he demanded more.
“It then increased to, ‘Well, now you need to meet people in person.’ And so, it just slowly increased from the online exploitation and to in-person exploitation,” said Littleton.
“I didn’t want anybody to know that I had gotten myself into this situation because that’s what I was told as well. ‘You chose that. You’re the one that started sending the photos and videos. No one forcing you to do this,'” said Littleton. “While really, they are forcing you. It’s just they have an emotional hold on you — a mental hold on me.”
Olivia was able to get out of the situation when her trafficker was arrested on child pornography charges. But her story is becoming far too common.
Ron Stucker is the director of the Metropolitan Bureau of Investigation for Orange and Osceola counties and says it’s important to understand that Human Trafficking is profiting from the exploitation of someone for commercial sex or labor.
“In commercial sex, there can be forced fraud or coercion elements we look for when an adult is involved,” said Stucker. “If a juvenile is involved in commercial sex, it’s human trafficking.”
In 2023, MBI provided services to 65 victims of human trafficking, which is more than one a week.
“Human trafficking is very much a supply and demand type of crime, if there was not a demand out there, therefore there would not be a supply, and people are willing to pay for commercial sex,” said Stucker.
The U.S. Department of State reports there are an estimated 24.9 million victims of human trafficking in world. It generates $150 billion dollars annually with profits greater than the sale of drugs or guns.
The U.S. is one of the top destinations for victims of trafficking, and Florida is a top spot for traffickers.
It’s the tourism and transient population, along with large sporting events, and ports and convention centers that bring traffickers.
While runaways and foster children can become more vulnerable to trafficking, one expert in the field says it takes 17 minutes to entice a child to send them a nude photo. And if that bad actor sells those photos, it’s trafficking.
“They’re going to promise you the world. ‘Oh, and by the way, here’s a picture of me, and then the next picture and then the next picture. Send me one of yours. I’ll just do it for you. Just for me, just between the two of us, because I really care about you,’” said Edwards.
Jan Edwards, with Paving the Way Foundation, goes into schools all over the state to educate students and parents about the dangers that exist online.
“Florida ranks third in the country for calls to the National Trafficking Hotline. Orange County is second in the state, according to DCF, for child sexual exploitation,” said Edwards.
This exploitation is why women like Olivia, who lived this, are now working to help others in similar situations. She’s an anti-trafficking supervisor for One More Child.
Olivia is now sharing her story from the steps of the nation’s capital to local events at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. She wants survivors to know their story is not over.
“I really believe that I have a God that has redeemed this story, that that’s taking horrible things that had happened to me and allowing me to use those for good I don’t know that I would be in this field if I wasn’t a survivor. And I think all of the great qualities that I have been given, like being a good connector, being kind and loving are the way that I can connect with survivors now. So it’s a redemption story,” said Littleton.
FROM WESH 2
