FORT WORTH, Texas, Jan. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — At 16, Derek Williams talked his 14-year-old girlfriend into letting him sell her to support his three-bag-a-day heroin addiction. The lucrative profits launched him into 32 years as a career trafficker, selling more than 150 women and teens in all 50 states, Canada, and Europe.
Derek didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming a child sex trafficker. He wanted to be an attorney. However, abuse, neglect, and other trauma turned his dreams into the nightmare of hopelessness. Millions of American children are trapped in that same hopelessness today, making them vulnerable to becoming victims of people like Derek was or becoming who he was.
Mind Games: Understanding Trafficker Psychological Warfare intertwines Derek’s story with evidence-based research, practical tools, and personal insights from co-author and international award-winning communicator Dr. Deena Graves. She adds vital insights from 13 years of direct victim experience and training others to prevent and heal victims.
For way too long, trauma and traffickers have had their way with our children: Evidence-based research has overwhelmingly found that we are not protecting them from traffickers and that those who become victims receive inadequate treatment for their unique, complex trauma. As a result, research suggests that as many as 50 percent try to escape through suicide; they have a 40-percent higher mortality rate than the national average.
This groundbreaking biography aspires to change that. It is timelier than ever, with online enticements of children and teens skyrocketing 97.5 percent from 2019 to 2020. The epidemic of depression, anxiety, fear, and loneliness intensified by the pandemic makes our children more susceptible than ever to traffickers.
Mind Games takes the power out of their hands and puts it in yours. It is a one-of-a-kind opportunity for professionals, first responders, and parents/foster parents to understand this destructive industry from the inside out. Each chapter makes crucial connections between the events in Derek’s life and what could have led to different outcomes.
Derek makes no excuses for what he did. He transparently unfolds his story to help people understand how traffickers prey upon childhood trauma and other vulnerabilities to lure victims into their trap.
"By unpacking my story, I hope to give you strategies to combat the hopelessness that holds children captive, making them easy prey for a skilled predator or an incubator for a beast in the making like I became. While I can never make retribution for all the lives I ravaged, I long to prevent the destruction of more of our children."
Denise Williams, Derek’s longtime victim and bottom, wrote the foreword and is available with the two authors for interviews. Denise became a victim at 11 and adds to the depth of insights about how childhood trauma becomes a trafficker’s hunting ground. She created the nationally recognized My Life My Choice program and unravels the path trafficking victims take to bottom, recruiter, or trafficker.
Each year in the United States, children suffer more than 246 million known traumatic events, including trafficking, sexual exploitation, running away from the abuse in their homes, and hunger. This trailblazing book turns vague concepts, buzzwords, and research into passion that inspires action.
M3 Transformations
www.m3transformations.com/mindgames
817.933.1755 |
328482@email4pr.com
M3 Transformations designs solutions with hope. We partner our extensive victim experience with cutting-edge research, the latest brain science, strategic foresight, and Big Idea development to create trainings, tools, and consulting. M3‘s evidence-based, award-winning, interactive youth program, The Traps of a Trafficker©, has resulted in more than 2,000 viable disclosures, with multiple felony arrests and convictions.
SOURCE Derek Williams
