Jesslin spent fifteen years in Dutch prostitution. She was being exploited before she was old enough for any of it to have been a choice, and this interview is her account of the whole thing.
She takes it from the beginning. An abusive mother, then her grandmother dying, then being raped for underage pornography, then working as an underage escort. From there a brothel, and from the brothel the windows.
She is precise about the daily reality in a way that is hard to listen to. The clients who took condoms off without asking. What the money actually came to, week by week. Which women have pimps and how you can tell. The pimps who blackmailed her with photographs off her own Facebook. A knife held to her neck. Going to the police and being ignored.
What she did about it is the part I was not expecting. She went undercover and filmed human trafficking herself, because nobody with a badge was going to.
We talked about whether prostitution should be legal at all, and she is not where a lot of people assume a survivor is going to be. We talked about what happens when you try to quit and there is no help waiting for you, which was her experience. We talked about whether the police are corrupt or just not interested. She told me how she feels now when she walks past the windows and sees the women standing in them.
This is a long interview and I have not cut it down to the worst parts. She earned the space.