Erasing the ‘Ownership’ Tattoos on Sex-Trafficking Victims
A woman who escaped the industry reflects on how changes to the body can help with recovery.
During an art-therapy session, Naticia Leon once stitched together fabric dolls without faces. “That’s what it feels like to be trafficked,” she says. “You’re not your own person. You don’t have an identity.”
For eight years, Leon worked across the West Coast of the United States under a series of sex traffickers. Each had named and renamed her many times. “They would tell me that this is what they’re gonna call me,” she explains. “Sometimes it would be Hispanic like Marta or Jessica. That was the case with most Mexican women—especially Marta. There were a lot of those.”
When assuming each persona, “at first, I would shut my emotions off temporarily,” she says. “Then, over time, it became
