Wherever there are shadows, there are people ready to kick at the darkness until it bleeds daylight. This is Bleeding Daylight with your host, Rodney Olsen. Welcome and thanks for listening. Today's episode is a very important one. My guest is talking about an issue that unfortunately goes far deeper and touches more lives than we'd like to imagine or admit.
While I can assure you that there is nothing graphic or sensationalised in the episode, the subject matter itself may be triggering for some listeners. However, I truly believe that these are matters that require not only our attention but our action. As you listen, please consider sharing this episode with others through social media and word of mouth. Today I'm speaking with Jennisue Jessen, a survivor of unimaginable trauma who has transformed her pain into a message of hope and healing.
Jennisue shares her harrowing story of childhood exploitation and the deep spiritual journey that led her to find faith, freedom and purpose. Through her experiences, she has become a passionate advocate for others, shining a light on the darkest places and helping those who have suffered to find their voice and reclaim their lives. She is an author and the founder of the ministry Compass 31. Jennisue, welcome to Bleeding Daylight.
I am so excited to spend some time with you, Rodney, and your listeners. Thank you for having me. Before we start our conversation, it is worth saying that the things that you're about to share could be troubling or triggering for some people. I'm sure that you've shared your story many times, but the fact that it is deeply personal means that it may even be difficult for you to share as you continue to. So I do thank you for your openness.
But can you take me back to the day that your childhood was stolen from you? Absolutely. Thank you for that compassion and that introduction. It is challenging to share my story, except as a child growing up, I learned that my survival was dependent on my silence and my submission. So reclaiming my voice has been a tremendous healing journey, and therefore I'm really grateful that you would share your platform with me for a few minutes. My once upon a time starts at the age of four.
I grew up in the U.S. in the Midwest, the buckle of the Bible belt. It started like any other day for a four-year-old bouncing around with pigtails. My grandfather took me to work with him, and he worked at a train station. And all day long, I was spoiled rotten by all the workers. I was the only kid on site. They were giving me treats and candy and all the things.
But I spent a good deal of time with one man in particular, whose job it was to move the train cars back and forth in the train yard. And I sat on his lap. I got to drive the trains. I got to blow the whistle. It was a day full of fun and joy. In the afternoon, early evening, when it was time to leave, I left with my grandfather, not imagining that we would go anywhere except for home. But instead of home, we went to a big open field where that man was waiting for me.
He paid my grandfather and then came and took from me what he had paid for. In a matter of a few minutes, my world turned upside down and inside out. I didn't have words or the sophistication to understand what was happening or how to endure it or how to make sense of it. But after the unthinkable happened, my grandfather came and wrapped me in a blanket, put me in the back seat of the car to take me home. You made reference to my faith and my introduction.
I would say that was the first time I met Jesus, was in the back seat of the car driving home. Jesus showed up and held me on his lap and he didn't mind the tears or the snot or the blood. He just whispered, I've got your baby and I'm not going to let you go. He didn't. But by kindergarten, I was praying every night that he would just let me die. In first grade, I had chronic kidney infections, UTIs and first signs of a sexually transmitted infection.
Second grade, I sat in church on a Sunday morning behind the man who paid to rape me the night before. Third grade, there was a perpetrator, particularly violent when he wasn't able to rise to the occasion. He fractured my pelvis in three places and fractured my neck in two places. The trauma went on for a total of 14 years until at the age of 17, I was desperate to escape. I believed my only hope for escape at that point was by completing my own suicide.
I would say once again, God intervened and I failed at that. But the next day after my failed suicide attempt, I had an appointment at a clinic and found out I was pregnant. With that, awoke in me this mama bear instinct. I had never been successful in fighting on my own behalf or running. They were always faster. They were always stronger. Again, I learned my survival was dependent on submission and silence. I learned that lesson really well. But now I had an innocent baby to protect.
With that, I finally had the courage to tell a counselor enough about what was happening for her to intervene and get myself and my child to safety. That's really where my healing journey began. Help me understand a little bit more of that background. What was happening with the rest of your family at this stage? Your grandfather is taking you out and exploiting you for his gain, his financial gain, while he's exploiting you with several men. Where are the rest of the family at this time?
Was there anyone else that you felt that you could talk to? That's a great question. My dad was an alcoholic and my mom was addicted to my dad. When my house was in chaos, quite frequently, they would send me three hours away to stay at my grandparents' house. At this stage of my journey, I genuinely believe they had the best intentions. They thought they were doing what was best by getting me out of the house and to my grandparents' farm. That was not the case, obviously.
He was a wicked bad guy. There were ways that I tried to tell as a child. Like I said, children don't really have words or a frame of reference for what's happening. But one example would be in kindergarten, we were given an assignment for Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, to draw a picture of our family. I drew and colored my whole family, the people you're referencing, normally. But my grandfather, my primary perpetrator, I drew him almost the whole sheet of the paper.
I drew him naked and I drew him with an erection. My kindergarten teacher called my mom. My mom came to pick me up, saw the picture and was furious. Took me home, tore up the picture, disciplined me. We don't draw pictures like that. And there was never any further conversation. My grandmother did know what was happening. She encountered me being injured more than once. And her reaction is, we won't speak about this ever. My grandfather was a leader in his church. He was a deacon or an elder.
I was abused by another man in the church. One of my perpetrators was a police officer. Where do you go? Where do you go from there? If my mom says we don't talk about this, we don't draw pictures like that. If my grandmother says this will never be spoken of, if the people who are supposed to be safe in the church or in law enforcement are not, then there's very little resource for a five, six, seven, eight, 10, 15 year old to find freedom.
I know that there were even religious overtones, let's say. Whenever your grandfather had taken you out, there was a particular song that he would play. I want you to tell me a little about that. And do you think that this was intentional or was this his way of trying to deal with it himself? What do you think was going on there? That's a great question, Rodney. I don't know that I've ever been asked that in that way.
Besides my grandfather's perverse love for little girls, he loved old gospel music. He would play the song, including that first day after the unthinkable happened and he put me in the backseat of the car, he put in a cassette tape playing How Great Thou Art, which is a classic hymn. Then throughout the years, all my years of exploitation, he would play that song either during or immediately after the violence.
I believe it was his way of trying to program me to never, ever find freedom, certainly not freedom in church or in Christ. In reality, that song became intrinsically hardwired into my nervous system. It is absolutely still to this day a trigger. For years when I would hear that song, it would send me into a tailspin. I would literally be physically sick. I would vomit. I would have to leave. I would have a panic attack.
It would take days, if not weeks, to recover from being triggered because it was so inherently linked to violence. Now I have a really great faith community. One of my friends leads worship, and she'll warn me in advance if it's in the lineup and where it is. Then she'll cue me with a gentle nod so I know when to step out because it still bothers me. What his motive was, I don't know. He was in church every Sunday. Like I said, he was a leader in his church.
He liked that that made him look good. I really, really believe it was an element of both spiritual abuse and mind control. There was all this abuse leading up to the time that you found that you were pregnant. Thankfully, that's when the healing began. That's not to say that it was easy. It continued to be a difficult road, but you mentioned that when you found that you were pregnant, that that was the beginning of the healing. Tell me about that journey.
Yeah, it was the beginning of freedom because, like I said, having this baby to protect, as much as I wanted to die, when I found out I was pregnant, I felt like I had to stay alive at least long enough to give birth to this child. Part of my experience of exploitation at the age of 15, my grandfather had found out that I was pregnant, took me to a slaughterhouse. I had a forced abortion strapped to a wooden table.
So finding out I was pregnant a second time at the age of 17, I needed to stay alive long enough to give birth to this child because I couldn't bear the compound guilt of the loss of another life. It was complicated. It was messy. It was dark. It was scary. Yet, as my child grew and I watched him sleeping peacefully at night, I was struck by the wonder and the innocence of this child and that this child could come through me, who I felt myself to be so profoundly broken.
To see this miracle of life in the darkest, darkest place was an astounding picture for me of God's grace and His mercy. In the midst of the darkest dark, God could say, Even here, light. Even here, life. That journey was long. I was certainly not a good parent initially. It's taken a journey. I found out that I was pregnant on April 26, 1990. Every year since then, my son and I celebrate his day. He knows it's coming and I know it's coming.
I have told him from as long as he's had words, he was a hero from conception, that I wouldn't exist if it weren't for him. I would have eventually completed my suicide. Before he had any logical process, any skills or abilities, before he could talk or walk, he was a hero from conception that saved my life. Now, he and I, we have a global impact on counter-trafficking, and that's a pretty remarkable gift.
That's the first time you've mentioned the word trafficking, because oftentimes we think that trafficking is what happens in other countries, but you were very definitely trafficked by your grandfather. I guess when we start to realize that that can happen in our own neighborhoods, it becomes very real for us. Tell me about that idea of trafficking and the concept that that is not something that just happens in faraway places. That is a brilliant and insightful question, Rodney.
Thank you so much, because we have this kind of Hollywood image of what trafficking is, the good guy kicking down the doors and Liam Neeson or Jim Caviezel comes in and rescues the kid and beats up the bad guy. That's all great and fine, but it's not the reality.
The vast majority of trafficking happens, at least initially, in a trusting relationship with a loved one, a parent, a grandparent, a family member, an intimate partner is how over 75, I think it's 76 and a half percent of people who are trafficked for sex initially are sold by a family member or an intimate partner.
The vast majority of those, especially children who are trafficked, are actually living in homes and going to school and coming to your kids' birthday parties and in your Sunday school classes. They are all around us. They might be in foster care. They might be living with grandparents. They might have parents with addiction issues. They don't have to be transported across state lines, county lines into another country to be trafficked. Trafficking is always an exploitation of vulnerability.
In this case, it's an exchange of something of value, money or something else of value in exchange for the opportunity to gain sexual access to the individual being sold. That doesn't actually require transport. In a lot of cases like myself, my grandfather would take me to a place where I was exploited and then take me home again.
At the end of the summer, when it was time for school to start, I would go back to my own home three hours away and have a couple of months of reprieve until fall break or Christmas break or spring break, when the exploitation would resume again. We know that traffickers generally remain active. Were there others that he was taking advantage of in this way? I do know of a handful of others that were also exploited in the same time frame by my grandfather. He was violent and he was prolific.
It was not just me. You're right. Not only was his criminal career prolific, but the men that paid to exploit myself and other kids that I was exploited with. There was several occasions that there was more than one child involved in the event where we were exploited. Boys and girls, it's not just a girl thing. It's not just a Midwestern thing. It's not just an other side of the world thing. Unfortunately, traffickers like my grandfather, they are generally brilliant business strategists.
My grandfather would profit off of me three different ways, at least three that I know of. First, he would profit from the firsthand transaction, receiving money from a perpetrator to have access to my body. During the violence, he would take pictures or film it. Then he used those images, what we now call child sex abuse material. Back then it was called child pornography. He would use those images to blackmail the perpetrator so that he had to continue to pay.
If or when that man would refuse to pay or could no longer pay, then he would sell those images on the black market. There was at least three threads of revenue that came from every act of violence that I endured. That's common. That is the standard, the SOP, if you will, the standard operating procedure for traffickers. This shows the darkness, the insidiousness of it in that he knew well and truly that he could keep those people who were being exploited quiet.
He knew that he could keep the other perpetrators quiet. He lived in this place where there were so many people actually involved, both perpetrators and those being exploited. Yet, he must have felt that no one was going to ever touch him because he was able to keep all parties quiet and continue with what he was doing. Yeah. He definitely was a big fish in a small town, nowhere Missouri, but he was wealthy. He had status. He had power.
I don't even know how many blackmail films or pictures there were. I was just one of a handful of children that I know of. He operated with impunity. Like I said, one of my perpetrators was a police officer. One of them was a judge. They were normal guys that you would see on the street, respected guys that you would see on the street, family men that you would see on the street. They don't look like monsters, which is another misconception about perpetrators.
We tend to think that they're hidden in a basement and they have claws or horns or something. But in reality, the buyers of sex most often are middle-aged married men with upper middle-class income because they have the time and money and capacity to use their influence to gain whatever they want. Often that is at the expense of women and children. You mentioned that your son was a very big part of the healing process for you, but also that it was messy.
Tell me a bit more about the way that you continued to walk that journey of healing. I can't really share a whole lot about my healing without also sharing my faith. I don't think that I would be here without the intervention of God on my behalf. One of the things that was really critical was I had been invited to a church. I'd given my life to the Lord when I was fourteen. I had heard a message. I believed it that Jesus was my Savior.
I had met him in the dark so many times in the midst of violence. I was like, oh, I know him. Yes, that's what I need. I need a Savior. He's it. I believed it. Unfortunately, the violence continued. It was about a year after that that I had the forced abortion. So I was bewildered about who is God and what's this all about.
During that same season, I read a story in the Bible in Judges 19 about a girl, a young concubine who ends up being raped until she dies, gang raped until she dies, and she dies on the threshold of what should have been her safety. It's in the Bible. I read this story at fifteen, still bleeding from violence, and I was furious. Why is this in the Bible? We don't even know her name. She was married to a Levite, a religious leader. Why is it here? Is God saying this is okay? He endorses it.
What's the deal? It wasn't until many years later, I got news that Ralph, my perpetrator, my grandfather, had died. When I got the news, Rodney, I started crying, and I cried and I cried. For three stinking days, I cried. Finally, my husband came to me, and he was like, What is the deal? We've been waiting for him to die for years. What's the deal? I said, I don't know. I don't know. My husband was like, You need to figure it out. So I went upstairs. I got down on my knees. I cried out to Jesus.
I just needed to know that it mattered. I didn't expect an apology. There wasn't going to be some big family reunion. I some level before he died, I wanted some affirmation that all it cost me, the blood, sweat, and tears, the years of nightmares, the suicidal ideation, the PTSD, that it was worth something. So I was wrestling that out on my knees at the side of the bed. Jesus, I just needed to know it mattered. I feel like Jesus answered me as clearly as He ever has.
He nuzzled in close, and He said, It mattered, child. I wrote it down. Go read Judges 19. The point was that this unnamed girl who experiences tremendous violence to the point of death is there not because God condones it, but it's there because He's a God of justice, and it mattered. It mattered. He wrote every detail down so that thousands of years later, I'm still talking about this young, my little sister, this Levite concubine.
She represents not only my story, but every story of women and children, boys and girls all around the world who encounter unthinkable violence and often die in the midst of violence. It seems like they're overlooked. God goes, No, it mattered. I wrote it down. You matter. That has been a pivotal piece of my recovery, knowing that I'm not defined by my trauma. My trauma was an experience. It is not my identity.
My trauma equips me to move through the world and even enter into incredibly dark spaces because I know the dark. I can see in the dark, and I know the worst that men can do. So I can navigate those spaces and do it in a way that empowers others to find freedom. Tell me about that empowering because you've founded a ministry. You've written about these issues. You're reaching out and you're trying to ensure that this doesn't happen for the next one and the next one and the next one.
Tell me about that ministry. Absolutely. In 2011, I was living in Southeast Asia, actually Northern Thailand. My husband and I could not go on a date on Friday night without encountering little kids being exploited. It was everywhere we turned. You go to a normal restaurant, a normal place to eat, a fancy place, a dive, and everywhere we went, we would encounter men on dates, quote unquote, cringy, with little kids.
I knew at some point that God would use my story because really it's his story in a redemptive way. That's where our work was born. Our organization is called Compass 31. If people want to find us, they can find us online, compass31.org. We work to fight trafficking through prevention, restoration, and leadership development. We have a prevention tool that's operating in 44 countries. We have restoration projects in five countries.
Leadership development is this very unique piece that is distinctive. I haven't found it in other counter-trafficking organizations. I'm sure it exists somewhere. Our leadership development, we actually have a hire to study program. All the survivors in our restoration projects actually earn a stipend every month based on their performance and participation in school. They put it in savings, and they go to the mall with their friends, and they help support their families.
We walk with them to their highest capacity. If they want to go to trade school, great. If they want to go to beauty school, great. We've had one graduate law school and pass their bar exam. We've had two graduate with master's degrees in social work. We have two more master's degree candidates that are scheduled to graduate next May. That is the way that we are working together to raise awareness and fight trafficking.
Just this year alone, I've been in Mexico, Honduras, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Mexico again. I travel quite a bit, both doing human trafficking prevention, raising awareness, but also working with law enforcement, social workers, and people who are impacted by trauma. I teach how trauma impacts the brain, and where I'm able and invited to do so, teach how to find Jesus in the midst of the darkest dark. And as a Jesus follower, you would recognize that there is an enemy.
How does it feel to look into the face of that darkness, to look into the face of that enemy and say, you don't get that one. You don't get that one. You don't get that one. They're safe. It's such a juxtaposition that I live in because I'm daily confronted with the darkest of the dark. I sit with these kids. I sit with these girls. I hear their stories. They certainly are reminiscent of my experiences. So that is triggering.
But I get a front row seat watching redemption unfold again and again and again. And it's not because of me. I believe it's because of God, this divine love and the grace of Jesus, that it's his prerogative to set captives free. And that piece is addictive. It's glorious. It brings me such joy to watch freedom unfold again and again. We're just a baby organization. This is our 13th year. We started in 2011. But last year, God allowed us to impact more than 53,000 individuals.
And so far, our recovery rate for people who come out of exploitation is around 92 percent. The standard in a secular environment is a recidivism rate of about 94 percent will return to exploitation. So even though we're babies, we've got just this micro, you know, I don't have a big across-the-board study. We have this little microcosm that we're working in. But our programs, we're seeing a 92 percent recovery rate, which is astounding.
I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier, and that is that your grandmother knew what was going on. As we know, trafficking, and as we've discussed, trafficking is something that can happen in our own neighborhoods. So I imagine there could be someone listening who knows who is a perpetrator, who knows what's going on, but for whatever reason, they feel they need to stay quiet, whether that's to hold the family together and not bring this out in the open or for whatever reason.
What would you say to that person who is trying to hide what is going on from someone close to them? Oh, my goodness. You know, I do these conversations all the time, and nobody's ever asked me that. Oh, you stunned me. I would say that there is the perpetrator of violence, in my case, my grandfather, primary perpetrator, and then there are those who are complicit in it. And those who are complicit in it are also guilty. Trafficking does not happen in a vacuum.
It happens because of a whole network of support that empowers a perpetrator to continue to act. And so for those who are complicit, first, I would say I can have compassion for you. Whatever is silencing you, I know what it's like to be silenced. I lived that. I know what the pressure, the fear, the anxiety, the lies that keep you silent are. So I can have compassion for that.
And also, if you know it's your responsibility to act, that we are all created on purpose, for a purpose, that God created good works in advance for us to do. And if you know that violence is happening and you don't intervene, then at some point, you're going to stand before the throne and explain why, why you didn't, why you didn't intervene. And being afraid isn't, I don't think, a good enough answer. I can have compassion for it.
And also, I can say there are resources, there are hotlines, there are safe ways to intervene. If you're staying quiet to keep your family together, chances are it's not the family you think it is. It probably needs to be blown up so that every individual and maybe even the primary perpetrator can find freedom and find healing and find grace and find justice. That's heavily reliant on the people who know and don't say anything. And that's not just, I mean, it can be teachers.
Like my first grade teacher is the one that discovered that I was uncomfortable in my seat and at playground and took me to the nurse and discovered that I had an infection that needed to be treated. My kindergarten teacher, she saw the picture that I drew of my grandfather. While they called my mom, they didn't take any further steps than that. They knew I stayed at home. They didn't go beyond that. And so they did what they could, but they didn't take any action that was effectual.
I would say we're silent and we're submissive because we think our survival depends on it. When in reality, somebody else's survival might require your voice. And what about for those, both women and men who have been exploited at a younger age, have continued to stuff that down and say, no, no, I'm just going to act as if that never happened. And are still dealing with the aftereffects of that all these years later.
I know it must be difficult for them to come out and tell their story, but what would your words be to them? Yeah, that's a much more familiar space for me to navigate. That's where I live a lot of my time. I tell people that have experienced sexual violence and or exploitation that the shame is not yours to carry. You're not broken. You're not the bad person. Nothing they could do could ever break you. Humans don't get broken and need to be fixed.
We get wounded and need to be healed, but not broken. And that they have everything within them to heal from what has happened. I can't say what anybody else should do, whether they speak up, whether they tell a counselor, whether they tell their intimate partner, whether they don't tell anyone, but they journal it.
For me, it came to a point that I thought, if I don't speak what happened, then it might as well be locked in a box and it never has an impact other than the negative impact it has on me. But if I let it out of the box and I speak about it, and initially I would just speak to like one person at a time. I worked on a rape crisis line. I did support in that way. And I would share just one person at a time and for them to see the potential of healing and hope light up. Well, that made it worth it.
So it gave me courage to share another time. Well, that made it work in bigger groups and in bigger platforms and in more spaces. And again, each time I have an opportunity to use my voice, I see at least one, if not two, if not many, many come forward and share their stories of exploitation many times for the very first time when they recognize, hey, this isn't my shame to carry. I don't have to carry it in silence anymore. I can lay it down and begin to walk in freedom.
That's my word for both men and women. You know, we all navigate it differently. There's certainly stereotypes and gender roles that tend to make men want to keep it secret in a different way than women do. But the healing happens. I think the truth sets us free. I believe that to be true. I've seen it again and again and again. Jenny-Sue, I'm sure that there are people who would want to be connecting with you, finding out more about your ministry.
Where is the easiest place for people to find you? Thank you for that. They can find me. We have a website, compass31.org. And I'm also on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn. They can search Compass 31 in any of those places or my name, Jenny-Sue Jesson, and find both my personal and our ministry accounts. But the easiest to get an overview of our work is compass31.org for sure. And I'll make sure to put links in the show notes at bleedingdaylight.net so that people can find you very easily.
Jenny-Sue, I want to say thank you so much for your openness and your honesty and for your willingness to continue to speak out about this and to see many people saved from the exploitation that has kept them hiding away, that they can bring that out into the open and they can find their own healing. So thank you for your time today on Bleeding Daylight. Absolutely. Thank you, Rodney. Thank you for listening to Bleeding Daylight.
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