July 24, 2018

CJ Curtis: Brief Overview

I was born and raised in Spokane, WA in a typical dysfunctional middle-class family. Dad was absent worked out of town and mom worked endless outside the home to make ends meet. All of this among other factors such as childhood trauma and abuse left me vulnerable to be targeted by a sex trafficker. At the age of 13 I was very rebellious, and I was lured away to California by sex trafficker or a pimp, to use street terms, where I would quickly be forced to sell my body on the streets of California. I was gone for several months and my mom nearly killed herself trying to track me down. When I found my escape I came home and to cope with the trauma quickly turned to hard drugs and my life continued in a downward spiral most of my teenage life. I was able, by a miracle, to complete high school and have a healthy baby boy my senior year. After that I submersed myself back into a life of drugs and prostitution for another couple of years and when I finally hit my bottom I cried out to Jesus who showed up mightily and saved me and gave me hope of a better life. Fast forward 10 years after that encounter God started impressing on me to share my story and at the time I had no idea that it was the part of my story that was so tightly locked inside of me by shame and guilt that even the closest people in my life knew very little details about it. A good friend of mine who saw thru my subtleties gave me a book to read. I could have been reading my story. A young lady my same age groomed by a trafficker who was able to entice her to run off with him and become his sex slave. And what got me was when I began to read the statistics of how often that same story happens in even our city. I began to recall my own story and the young women I encountered on those streets and realized that it wasn’t my choice I was a victim of human trafficking. That was just a couple short years ago and since sharing my story and having those realizations I have been healed and set free in so many ways. And it has started a fire in me to join the charge in abolishing human trafficking and helping to free other survivors from this dark world.

At that same time, in Gods perfect providence, I would meet the Altmeyers and the HRC team and be given the opportunity to share my story and get behind a ministry that has hit the ground running, in not only raising awareness about domestic trafficking, but is also doing something about it. It has always been very clear to me that there are power in numbers so rallying God’s people and resources together is how we are going to fight this giant. The Repeat Boutique is just one way to do just that. There are so many ways I see this model benefiting the ministry. Not only to raise funds for the restoration center but also have place that the women and volunteers could come and serve and get job training and discover their unique gifts. Whether that be organizing, creating, designing, speaking, leading, teaching etc…

I’m grateful for this opportunity to share my testimony of Gods redemptive power, love and grace in such a beautiful and unique way.

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