It’s a miracle that she can reflect on it today with a smile on her face. I was personally struggling to contain my emotions as Keeya Vawar shared the heartwrenching details of her life with me. The self-proclaimed “survivor advocate” was extremely personable during our interview around her recently released memoir, One Thousand Elsewhere.
At the tender age of 23, Keeya found herself in a mental hospital having what she described as a mental breakdown, which in all actuality was a Godly breakthrough. Keeya had spent the better part of the last seven years keeping her family in the dark. She was ready to leave the destructive lifestyle alone and felt it was no better place to turn but into the loving arms of her older brother. There was only one problem, it was against New Jersey state law for hospitals to release patients to anyone with an out-of-states` address. Keeya was a long way from her hometown of Dallas, TX when her brother traveled across the country to bring his sister home. God sent her an angel in the form of the unit clerk who told her brother to leave his address blank so she could be discharged into his care. Keeya was ready to build the life that she desired and she knew that to do so, she would have to address the faulty foundation that her life thus far was built upon. It was time to face the reality of her family secrets and being both a victim and perpetrator in the world of human trafficking.
Family Secrets Create the Desire to Escape
We all know the saying, “What happens in my house, stays in my house.” While the sentiment of the saying doesn’t need to be explained, what is rarely talked about is how this code of silence leads to the victimization of Black women and children. Keeya Vawar’s family are amongst the countless Black people who have been tormented by the long-held practice of presenting a false reality to the world.
In Keeya’s family, the abuse came at the hand of her father who embodied many of the classic abuser traits. Abusers typically like to hide in plain sight and her father understood that by keeping his family in the church, no one would ever suspect what was happening inside his home. “We were in church every Sunday without fail unless my mother was too bruised to go,” Keeya said. In addition, abusers understand that isolation is necessary to their ability to maintain control. Keeya feels that the constant movement or “...checkerboarding across the country” as she described it, was a calculated ploy by her dad to not only keep her mother under his control but also cut her off from her family. Subsequently, the nomadic lifestyle during her early years kept people from getting to know them enough to discover the family secret of torture and abuse. Abuse that Keeya grew weary of at an early age.
“I was 12 years old when I made up my mind that I wanted to kill my father.” After a dozen years of witnessing him physically torture and abuse her mother and older brother, she knew that killing him would be the only way to prevent the inevitable of her becoming the next victim of his abuse. Almost a year after she began having homicidal ideations towards her father, Keeya became subject to his wrath. Although the sentiment remained, Keeya simply could not kill her father. As a result, Keeya would endure the physical abuse for three years before she decided to finally escape the hell that she was living in at the hands of her alcohol and drug-addicted father.
Conventional wisdom would suggest that getting help and being removed from her home life is as simple as telling someone in the church or even a school official. However, Keeya did not consider those options because that would go against the code of silence that would cause embarrassment to her mother. Keeya knew that she had to leave but had nowhere to go. She had been saving her money from the part-time jobs she was working in hopes that the perfect opportunity would present itself. She was 16, her brother had moved out and started his own family and things were getting worse.
Although Keeya was being abused, she has always been a fighter. Rarely, if ever, did Keeya simply take the punishment that was given, she always fought back. During one of the last confrontations, she had with her father he threatened to kill her. “I believed him,” Keeya said simply as she described to me what made her finally say enough was enough. As fate would have it, Keeya would meet the “perfect guy” just as her father would present the “perfect opportunity” for her to escape.
“I was 16, he was 27, he had absolutely no business talking to me.”
It was a few months before Keeya would run away from home when she met him. At the time her family was living in Dallas, TX but amongst their many stops was Oklahoma. Keeya had kept in touch with a friend she made during her time living there, who invited her to the prom. Her parents acquiesced to her wish to attend the event and Keeya found herself aboard a short flight to the Sooner state.
The petite 16-year-old was fashioned in the typical early 90s wear and beamed of naivete as he approached. Looking back on things now, it is easy for her to spot how gullible she must have appeared. However, at the time Keeya couldn’t see past the opportunity to be rescued from the dungeon she called home. He was 27 years old and she was no match for his charm. She was traveling alone and the conversation that started at the gate to board the plane continued on the flight and ended with an exchange of numbers and the promise that if she ever needed him, he would take care of her.
In the world of abuse, kidnapping, and trafficking, what I have just described is a part of the grooming process. To make it plain, this takes place when a predator identifies a potential victim and begins to mentally “groom” them into believing that they can and will provide them a better life.
Keeya’s chance encounter quickly grew into a mental fairy tale that would finally provide a place to go once she developed the courage to escape what she was experiencing in her home. Keeya didn’t have to wait long before the chance to breakout was upon her.
The man Keeya met on the plane was from Atlanta and that is exactly where she found herself after running away from home. The first night she touched down in Atlanta, he put her in some nice clothes and took her around to all the clubs and showed her off. “I was meeting rappers, ballplayers, music execs, I mean it was the early 90s in Atlanta, it was the place to be.” Unfortunately, her fairy tale quickly became a horror movie. Two weeks after she got to Atlanta he had put her out and she had nowhere to go.
Survival Sex - Distortion of Value
Keeya was stuck between a rock and a hard place. She was homeless and didn’t want to go home. With no diploma, no employable skills, Keeya felt that her options were limited. She reached out to an A&R she met at one of the nightclubs and alluded to him that she was homeless. "He introduced me to a world famous music producer who agreed to allow me to live with two of his music groups and promised to put me in music videos" Keeya told me. Every promise was fulfilled but at a high cost. She was required to have sex on command in exchange for food, clothes, and shelter. Keeya was essentially being sex trafficked by a prominent music exec in what is now known as survival sex. Survival sex? Although the term means exactly what it says, I felt this term needed more of an explanation, so I asked for one.
“Think about it this way…” Keeya continued, “There are over 400 homeless teenagers tonight in Dallas. It’s supposed to be cold tonight, they don’t have any family they feel they can go to, so how can they avoid spending the night on the streets? They offer sex in exchange for a meal and a place to sleep for the night. They are using sex as a means for survival.”
I must admit, this was a tough pill to swallow as I tried to digest the magnitude of this sad reality. My mind immediately began to think about how young girls are told to “know their worth.” I kept thinking, “how can they?” when they live in a world that has an overindulgence of sexual gratification. Fully understanding the ramifications of the sexualization of American society, I couldn’t dismiss the notion that some young girls are willingly going into sex work. I was interested in what would be her take on how this reality all plays into the world of sex trafficking, so I couldn’t help but respectfully press Keeya more on this topic.
“A lot of these young ladies are being drawn in by the success of Meg, Cardi, and Nikki.” (Which is no knock on them. However, most women and girls who attempt to use their bodies as a commodity won’t be nearly as successful.) In most, if not all cases, if positive reinforcement can’t be achieved, negative reinforcement will do. Stripping and even sex work allows people with a distorted understanding of their self-worth to feel valued and make money in the process.” It was something about the way she said it that made me believe that this was one of the hardest parts of her past that she had to come to grips with. Like most people who find themselves in a bad situation that they can’t see a way out of, she had to find a way to make the best of the unfortunate circumstance.
Becoming a Survivor and Finding the Road to Redemption
It’s never as simple as getting up and walking away. Keeya thought a beacon of hope had come to rescue her after a little over a year of being trafficked within the Atlanta music scene. She was spending most of her days housebound to avoid being noticed by truancy officers in the metro Atlanta area. Keeya knew that if she was caught she could be sent back to her parents in Dallas. So when a woman who came by the house she was staying at noticed her and offered to take her out of the situation, Keeya gathered the little belongings she had and left. No pot of gold at the end of this rainbow either, the woman was essentially a madame living in a hotel and wanted Keeya to work for her. This lasted only six months.
Keeya wound up in the hands of another Madame, only this time, she wasn’t turning tricks. The Madame showed her how to run the house and the ladies who were working, many of them older than her, reported to Keeya. She couldn’t beat them so she joined them. However, Keeya couldn’t continue trafficking women with a clear conscience, so after a short stint, she walked away. By then she was 18, had no diploma, and had developed a fascination with fast money. The next five years of her life were spent in the world of sex work between Atlanta’s famed strip clubs and working in the industry in various cities along the east coast. All came to a crescendo when she wound up in the aforementioned New Jersey mental hospital.
Keeya was heading home ready to face her father and rebuild her life from the inside out…
I came from a long line of trauma
“My Dad grew up in foster care. His mom was the neighborhood prostitute.” Keeya recounted.
His biological father was abusive towards him and his brother which led to my Dad going into foster care. Later, my Grandfather would kill my Uncle. My Uncle was a Black Stone Ranger in Chicago and tried to rob his dad, my Grandfather. My Grandfather killed him in self-defense” she continued. I could tell that although she didn’t have a relationship with them, she understood the impact her lineage had on how she was raised. She never once made excuses for her father’s behavior she went as far as saying, “My father failed me” in our conversation. However, it became apparent that as she learned more about her father's upbringing, the dots of her fathers' destructive behavior when she was a child began to connect for her.
Today Keeya and her father have the relationship that she always wanted. He has kicked his addictions and the two have made amends in regards to their past. Keeya admitted that emotionally healing from both the abuse and being sex trafficked is an ongoing battle that she faces to this day. A battle that Keeya is committed to winning. She believes that true healing requires her to become an advocate for others who have been “Silenced by shame and victimized by pain.” She knows all too well how silence enables the world of abuse and trafficking to thrive. Keeya feels that her book is only a part of the advocacy work she is doing to bring more education and awareness of the signs of sex trafficking. She also hopes that her work will prevent young people who are vulnerable from succumbing to the same fate that she endured.
With so many dimensions and layers to the complex world of sex trafficking, I wanted to know what was her message to young people. Her answer was one that to me expounds into every realm of life and can be used to empower us all, “You can’t know who you are unless you know who created you!”
Interested in learning more of Keeya Vawar's Story Buy the Book One Thousand Elsewhere or check out her website https://keeyavawar.com
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