Survivor Creates Organization To Fight Human Trafficking

By Robert J. Hansen | OBSERVER Staff Writer Emily Sanders, left, and Paulette Wyllie at Bishop Gallegos. (Courtesy of Emily Sanders) “I believed this man loved me and I loved him,” said Emily Sanders about the man who turned her into a sex worker. Sanders said she became a sex trafficking victim the way too many young women are: by someone they are in a relationship with. Sanders, 40, was abandoned by her father as a child, then was sexually assaulted as a preteen – events that set her on a path of dysfunction and self-destruction. She went from an honor roll student to a habitual truant and dropped out of Hiram Johnson High School. By the time she was 16, Sanders was married and had two kids. They separated shortly after their second child was born because she said the relationship was toxic and turned abusive.& Sanders said in her youth she was promiscuous, would binge drink and party hard. Nonetheless, she was never prepared for the street life of pimping, drugs and the struggle.& She began selling herself for sex in 2016 when she was 32 years old. Her trafficker abandoned her on the streets when she was...