#TBT Alexie’s Story: How I Survived Being Sold for Sex Trafficking

(originally posted August 6, 2013) I met Alexie this summer in Nicaragua on a mission trip. We immediately clicked due to having similar food allergies. I love how God works! We spent the week serving together with women who were prostitutes and trafficked and abused. It was on a long road trip, I learned about her story as a survivor of trafficking. I have never met someone who has had a more painful story, but Alexie showed me what love looks like, what hope looks like, and what redemption looks like. It breaks my heart that she had to endure years of physical and sexual abuse, however, Alexie showed me that God takes our pain and turns it into something beautiful. Alexie wants her story to help change the lives of girls ALL over the world who are suffering and lost and hopeless. Alexie is a gifted storyteller and I pray her story touches your life, too.

Hi, my name is Alexandria Grace LeZion. My family sold me for sex trafficking, I endured severe sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, neglect, and abandonment by my own family.

My family often took me to hotels and would sell me to people for sex. I was forced into pornography at a young age and the abuse happened by several family members on a weekly and often daily basis.

I was told I was fat, ugly, only good for sex, among other horrible lies that I grew up believing. I was never allowed to say no or fight back during the abuse and I had no way to express on the outside what was going on in the inside of me, so I started using self-harm as a way for me to express what I could not express in words.

After several series of events my counselor told me about Mercy Ministries and after applying and then stopping the process and then a year and a half later re-applying I got accepted.

I walked through the doors of Mercy Ministries on August 16th, 2011.

When I came to Mercy Ministries, I was broken dealing with feelings of guilt, shame, condemnation, self-hate, self-harm, depression, suicidal ideations and attempts, fear and many other forms of struggles and bondage as a result of the abuse. I kept myself as isolated as possible, until I learned what love was.

While at Mercy I learned how to face my past and invite Jesus into my life and share every detail with Him and ask Him to heal all of my wounds.

I was taught how to stand on the truth of Gods’ word by speaking it out over my life and choosing to believe it.

I grew to trust God and see myself for who He created me to be.

He is not the author of my pain.

He felt everything I went through and He went through it with me. He never left me.

I began to forgive the people who hurt me and I received freedom from the pain I was holding on to by my unforgiveness. I got to see Him take my impossibilities and turn them into His possibilities.

God and the staff showed me that I am loved for who I am. I didn’t have to do anything to receive their love. It was given to me freely and with no strings attached and they taught me how to love others in the same way.

Since graduating from Mercy Ministries, I was accepted at James River Leadership College and I am in the process of learning how to embrace the dreams God is giving me. Through God’s Word, Mercy Ministries, James River Assembly, and JRLC I have learned that I am a new creation in Christ. I am not who the world or my own parents said I was. I am who God says I am. I am beautiful. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am a daughter of the Most High King. I am loved. Here at James River Assembly God has surrounded me with people who love me and support me. He has met all my needs in supernatural ways. God is redeeming and restoring everything the locust took from me and my story has become His story.

I have a passion for life, people, and missions. I want to be a light that goes into dark places and tells people about Jesus. There is no way to freedom and true healing apart from Him. Jesus is the one who saves and He has saved me from death and has given me life that I may live abundantly in His grace.

Alexie shared this link to help bring awareness to children being sold to sex slavery in the United States –Robert J. Benz. #SaveUSChildren

• We must understand that children being sold commercially for sex in the US is a real and ongoing problem.
• Following the lead of courageous girls everywhere, who fight to receive an education, we must educate both students and teachers about the reality of sex trafficking in our communities.
• According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the U.S. Department of Justice, somewhere between 100,000 and 300,000 U.S. children are either trafficked or at risk of being trafficked for commercial sex each year.
• Children being sold or at risk of being sold commercially for sex, on the other hand, are vulnerable for a very predictable and disturbingly common reason — money or profit.
• The children at risk of being trafficked in the U.S., however, are more likely to be associated with negative and prejudiced terms that are easy to reject such as: homeless, runaway, throwaway, underage prostitute and delinquent.

My Life Is Crazy Too is a series of reader submissions. Your life is a story … this is your opportunity to share your stories about life, love, and mommyhood to provide understanding, hope, and compassion in the unique situations each of us face every day. “Your love, God, is my song, and I’ll sing it! I’m forever telling everyone how faithful you are. I’ll never quit telling the STORY of your love.” Ps 89:1

If you would like to submit a story to this series, send to karigib@gmail.com.