A group of ten child paedophiles were in possession of this photo of Jerome Elam and proceeded to abuse him shortly after it was taken. Photo / News.com.au
A group of ten child paedophiles were in possession of this photo of Jerome Elam and proceeded to abuse him shortly after it was taken. Photo / News.com.au
WARNING: Graphic content
"The first time I was trafficked as a child, I was handcuffed to a truck stop bathroom for six hours, raped, sodomised and abused."
Jerome Elam was just five years old when his stepfather began to molest him. Not long after, his stepfather introduced him to a child sex trafficking ring where he was drugged, raped, sodomised and sold as a sex slave for seven years.
He wouldn't escape entirely until the age of 17, when he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps.
Child sex trafficking is the second-fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world, second only to the drug trade. Male victims of sex trafficking have historically been its invisible population.
"Hollywood is starting to unravel, but that's not the only place it's happening," Jerome told news.com.au, citing the bust of a paedophile website in January last year that had a jaw-dropping 95,000 subscribers.
On the dark web, which houses "shopping" sites for paedophiles, 80 per cent of traffic is sexual predators, he said.
"It's like whack-a-mole on the dark web because it's all encrypted. They'll take the sites down as quick as they go up. It's so prolific it's hard for them to really put a stop to it."
As a child and a prisoner in his own home, Jerome said he was forced to have sex "at the most maybe 10 or 12 times a day". The Polaris Project, an anti-trafficking non profit, reports the average victim of sex trafficking is forced to have sex 20-48 times a day.
For Jerome, certain things still trigger the memories. Smells, for example, including the cologne Old Spice, or a mannerism someone has in common with the people who abused him.
His story is one of incredible pain and overwhelming sorrow, and his escape from the ring's evil grip is a miracle that few could ever imagine.
'They were looking for you'
It was 1970 and Jerome and his mother had already experienced their fair share of terror. Having escaped from his abusive biological father, Jerome and his mother, a struggling alcoholic, had a new man in their life - Neale.
Neale was a well-respected member of the community, wealthy and active in his church. Jerome said he was well-liked by everyone.
"I was targeted through my mother. In other words the paedophile targeted me and got to me by romancing my mother," Jerome told news.com.au.
"His aim was me all the time, but he used my mother to get to me, that's something you see quite often. Five years old seems like a young age, but I can tell you there are stories of younger."
Jerome said years after his escape, he discovered the paedophile ring in which he was enslaved has been in possession of a picture taken of him before his capture - the same one Jerome provided to news.com.au.
A woman, who was trafficked by the same ring and who also escaped, contacted Jerome and told him, "they had your picture, they were looking for you".
Photograph that was in possession of his abusers. "They had your picture, they were looking for you". Photo / News.com.au
"It was a bittersweet moment," Jerome explained.
With his mother unaware, Jerome says Neale began to groom the five-year-old Jerome to become a sex slave in his paedophile ring in Florida in the United States.
Jerome said Neale began to win the trust of every adult around him. Neale showered the young boy with gifts and took him to sporting events.
"In the beginning, I welcomed the hugs and affection I received from my mother's new husband, but his actions took a much darker turn," he said.
Jerome was completely unaware his stepfather was about to "send me down a path so dark that I would barely survive".
'The more they pay, the more they can do'
It began when Neale started to molest Jerome in the family house, using death threats against his mother to keep him quiet.
"Keep your mouth shut and tell your mother you fell off your bike. This is our secret and if you want your mommy to stay alive, you won't say a word," Neale told Jerome.
Jerome kept his silence, so Neale began to up the stakes and started using Jerome for child pornography.
"It didn't matter how much of a trainwreck my mother was, I still would do anything to protect her," Jerome said.
When Jerome's silence was sealed, Neale introduced him to the paedophile ring. They called themselves the "group" in private.
Jerome was forced to undergo an "initiation" where he was beaten and raped by each member. He was still only five.
Today, Jerome Elam the survivor, advocates for other victims of child sex trafficking. Photo / Facebook
From that point on, Jerome was trafficked around the paedophile ring and to clients who were willing to pay top dollar. He estimates paedophiles will pay around $5000 for the use of a boy. "They could do whatever they wanted as long as they paid for it," he said.
"They'll pay top dollar for access, it's a lucrative business, especially for boys, because it's such a secret crime right now.
"The more they pay, the more they can do to you."
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that pimps can make from $150,000 to $200,000 per year for each child.
There were ten men within the paedophile ring plus a few "on the peripheral"; people who would undertake tasks for them, who would escort the children back and forth to appointments.
It wasn't just Jerome who was a child sex slave. He has written about the "faces of the boys and girls who did not survive the ring that trafficked me" - face that have "always haunted me".
The men tried to keep the ring as small as possible so "nobody would shoot their mouth off", Jerome said.
"They wanted to make sure they could control the people that were involved," he added.
'Bottomless evil' dwelled in their eyes
The locations where the group would meet were varied. He remembers the time at Christmas, in a hotel, when he could hear an argument over the price of photographs of his naked, eight-year-old body.
He had been raped and used for child pornography "by a steady stream of men and one woman" for eight hours.
"Seeing the bottomless evil that dwelled in the eyes of my traffickers scared me down to the depths of my very soul," he wrote when he went public with his story in 2014.
When he first began telling his story in public, he would wake screaming up in the middle of the night, "still feeling their hands around my neck as I passed into unconsciousness".
What has stuck particularly with Jerome are the sporting events; where the paedophile ring would park an RV in a popular short circuit race, a prelude to the NASCAR season, as a cover to molest kids.
"The couch I was laying on creaked and groaned as the bald and overweight man stood fastening his belt," Jerome recalled.
"The drug-induced haze of cocaine mixed with alcohol had a strong grip on me, but there were times I could almost taste the dust and grit of the world outside."
