Girls Like Us: Fighting For a World Where Girls Are Not For Sale

Rachel Lloyd is the book’s author and the founder of the organization GEMS, which aims to equip girls who have been sexually exploited with the resources they need to re-enter normal life. Lloyd started the program after she herself was involved in sexual exploitation as a teenager. After leaving the sex industry, she moves to New York City from Europe to work with a ministry that helps girls and women in the sex industry transition out of “the life,” a slang term that refers to the sex industry. While working with these girls, Lloyd recognizes her own struggles with trauma and the socioeconomic and family circumstances that led her to enter the sex industry in the first place.

Lloyd graphically describes her experience being kidnapped by her ex-boyfriend Mike, who aimed to punish her for not loving him by selling her into the sex industry. Lloyd’s account shows the ways in which women’s concerns about their own safety are often overlooked, even by the very institutions that are supposed to protect them. When Lloyd is able to break free from Mike, find a police station, and report the kidnapping to a police officer, the male cop not only chooses not to believe her—though her body is riddled with bruises—but releases Mike from custody and suggests that Lloyd get a ride back to town with him.