We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Rhonda Kuykendall. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Rhonda below.
Rhonda , appreciate you joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
There is a question I loathe to answer. I have seen it posed on social media to engage an audience, used in conferences as an ice breaker activity, or asked as a game of “50 Questions” with friends. What did you want to be when you grew up? So simple, right? My fingers hover over my keyboard. I ask myself, “Do I dare?” contemplating whether I should tell the truth. I rarely do because, for me, as an eleven-year-old child, I wanted to be a prostitute.
At a very early age in life, I witnessed domestic violence. During these fights, my father would grab me, and we would be on the run away from my mother and two sisters. I would stay with him for a month, three months, and one time about a year. While in his care, I was alone. Years later, I realized he did not take me to care for me; it was just one more way to harm my mother. I was eight years old the first time I was raped by two older boys behind a fence in our apartment complex. Years later, at ten years old, I was in the hands of a four-time convicted child sex trafficker. I was first taken on weekend trips to Houston and eventually flown to Lubbock, where I was forced into a child pornography ring. The abuse continued throughout my early childhood until I was about twelve years old.
I wanted to be a prostitute because at least I would be paid for what was happening to me. In 1982, I watched The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in my local movie theatre. How fun it all looked onscreen. Glamorous women, protected by a house madame with the protection of the sheriff in a small Texas Town. Can you believe this movie is listed as a Musical Comedy? There is nothing to sing and dance joyously or laugh about in the lived experiences of people who are sexually exploited.
Years later, I began to understand what an injustice the entertainment industry commits against survivors of sex trafficking. Whether it is the release of Pretty Woman in 1990, Jay-Z’s hit song “Big Pimpin,” or the glorification of pimps online (search “Pimp Memoirs” on Amazon), society shows the incorrect portrait of glamour in sex trafficking.
When I realized how uneducated many communities are regarding the realities of sex trafficking, I promised myself to become an advocate. I knew it was my mission to combine a lived experience with service.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Sexual abuse is a broad category of specific crimes; sex trafficking is a subset of sexual abuse. For an overwhelming majority, sex trafficking is repeated forced rapes. I was always aware of the sexual abuse in my early life, but I did not identify as a sex trafficking survivor. Studying human trafficking, I began to understand my lived experience was sex trafficking. My victimization in sex trafficking started when I was ten years old in 1981. The term “human trafficking” was not codified until 2000 in the federal law titled Trafficking Victim Protection Act. Until then, the language to explain sex trafficking did not exist.
My work in anti-sex trafficking advocacy began with a struggle to find justice for myself. When I visited the police department in 2001, I wanted to press charges. A statute of limitations revealed I was too late. In Texas, a victim had ten years from their eighteenth birthday to bring charges forward. It was ludicrous to me. Victims struggle to come forward for many reasons. The inability to understand the world around them plays a huge role. As a child, this is normal because there is nothing to compare. As I got older and told a childhood story, I saw the shock on people’s faces. I learned very quickly to edit what I shared. Fear is also a motivating factor. My trafficker told me to go ahead and tell anyone. He said, “They will know it is your fault. You wanted to be a model; this is what models do, so if you tell anyone, they will know you wanted this.” It worked. I was paralyzed with fear, shame, and insecurities for decades.
After being unsuccessful in tolling the statute of limitations, I decided this law had to be changed. No victim of child sexual assault should be denied the right to justice because of a law on the books. I worked over two legislative sessions for five years and abolished the statute of limitations for child sexual assault in 2007.
Thus began my work in social justice. It has not been an easy path, but extremely fulfilling. This past legislative session there, nine bills were passed regarding human trafficking, and I worked on several of those, including HB390, which required human trafficking education in hotels and motels.
I am working on several bills for this upcoming session beginning January 2023. Each month I meet with a group of nonprofits to discuss human trafficking legislative work. Victims of sex trafficking should be able to report crimes to police without fear of being charged with prostitution. This law is known as a “Safe Harbor” law because it will provide a safe place for victims reporting crimes perpetrated on themselves or crimes they have witnessed. I will also be working to register what is known as white-label ATMs, which are ATMs that are not tied to any financial institutions. These ATMs are used in illicit massage businesses to launder money from illegal operations. If a prostituted individual is an adult, the perpetrator must use force, fraud, or coercion to be charged with sex trafficking. For adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities, this requirement is not fair. In many ways, adults that suffer from these disabilities are child-like; therefore, the provision of force, fraud, or coercion should be removed in these cases. I would like to work on these bills, among others, in the 88th Legislative Session.
This past July I received a Facebook message which started out, “We don’t know each other personally…”. The woman on the other end continued by thanking me saying, “because of what you do and the law you help change in 2007, I had my week in court.” I always knew this day would come decades later when abolishing the statute of limitations would help someone. You see, the law was not retroactive meaning that it only applied to child sexual assaults occurring after the bill passed in 2007. Tears filled my eyes as I whispered to myself, “she is my why.” For survivors working in this space, there is an intense desire to pave a better path for those who come after us. Reading her words, I was so very proud to play a small part in her journey.
Thanks,
Rhonda Kuykendall
Texas Human Trafficking Survivor Leader Council
Anti-Child Trafficking Consultant, Texas CASA
Chair, Legislative Advocacy Team, Child Advocates of Fort Bend
Chair, Human Trafficking Team, Fort Bend County DA Office
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
I worked very hard to overcome my childhood trauma. I married my high school sweetheart, Tommy. After ten years, we had two beautiful children. I thought I was healed. While grocery shopping by myself in town, I saw a man standing in the refrigerated section. I knew who he was, another man who had hurt me as a child. I walked up to him and introduced myself. As soon as I did, he denied his identity and left the store. I stood paralyzed, unable to go, and infuriated that after all these years, I still could not escape these feelings of powerlessness. A week later, my mother told me she was going to a funeral, and when I asked who had passed away, she told me the man I confronted in the grocery store had committed suicide. I told her what happened to me, and she immediately responded, “Well, it had nothing to do with you. He lost his job, and his wife left him. I am going to the funeral in support of his family.” I sat on the other end of the phone, devastated, whispering in my mind, “I am your family.”
After this confrontation, I began my journey to fight for my rights and eventually the rights of others who come after me. Resilience is defined as the ability to recover quickly from difficulties or toughness. I live two hours from the state capitol in Austin. Typically, during legislative sessions, I wake up early, drive to Austin, work all day, and drive home. I cannot tell you how many times I was furious leaving the capitol. On my drive home, I would think to myself how this journey is just too arduous, too complex, and impossible to succeed. I would give up, but as I drove, I would think of other ways to get around an obstacle, another strategy to bring awareness, or an idea to pursue. As I pulled into my driveway, I had an action plan to continue my advocacy. Legislative work is not for the faint of heart. It is hard, grueling work. You must be tough to advocate with survivors and at-risk communities. These trials and struggles only make the successes that much sweeter.
I wish I could say I never questioned God, but that is not true. There were times when I was so angry. There is beauty in seeing the complete picture while looking back on your journey. I wanted to press charges against my perpetrator, and every avenue I took, I was told, “No.” If I had been successful, I would have put all my energy into stopping one predator, mine. Through my struggles to change a law, this will help an immeasurable number of victims stop their predators. The effect of legislative work is bigger than one person, and it lives on to help others in the future. This is my biggest accomplishment and one I am proud to be a part of creating a statute to help others similar to me.
Today I am an Honors student at the University of Houston-Downtown pursuing my bachelor’s in social work. I was just elected to serve on the Texas Human Trafficking Survivor Leader Council, representing the state of Texas along with eleven other survivors. I chair the Fort Bend County District Attorney’s Human Trafficking Community Awareness Team. I also chair the Legislative Advocacy Team as a member of the Board of Directors at Child Advocates of Fort Bend. I work at Texas CASA as their Anti-Child Trafficking Consultant. I finished a 63-page guidebook teaching child sex trafficking to the Texas CASA Network.
What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?
Passion and hard work built my reputation in the anti-sex trafficking community. I started this effort as a worker; I did not identify as a Survivor Leader, Overcomer, or Thriver. Through the years of working on changing the statute of limitations on child sexual assault, giving presentations on sex trafficking in my local community, working with cities to change ordinances to deter illicit massage businesses, and bringing awareness to human trafficking, I have shown that with hard work we can change the world for the better.
Hard work does not come without a passion for helping others, righting wrongs, and knowing that a lived experience should be respected and celebrated.
At the bottom of my email is Margaret Mead’s quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” It takes a village, a tribe, to effect change, and one person cannot do it on their own. If everyone finds one area to combat this horrific crime and begins to work, collectively working altogether, we can move mountains.
I have been married to the love of my life, Tommy Kuykendall, for 36 years. Together we have two grown children: Alyssa, who is a high school math teacher, and Ty, who is a zookeeper. Tommy and I have our own motorcycles and love to scuba dive and travel to relax and decompress.
Resources
To learn more about sex trafficking, join the Facebook group Our Voice in Texas. https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourvoiceintexas/
Become invested in educating yourself. Here is a list of books to begin learning: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/18UK3U1NHSDHH
Report suspicious activity to the National Human Trafficking Hotline
1-888-373-7888
Text “HELP” to BEFREE
24 hours a day, 7 days a week
http://humantraffickinghotline.org
If an emergency, call 911.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourvoiceintexas/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhondakuy/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rhondakuy
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhondakuy/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/rhondakuy
Image Credits
Colt Melrose Photography – photos a and b