At just 14, Karla Solomon's life took an unimaginable turn. Betrayed and exploited by the very person who should have protected her, she endured hardships no child should ever face, including trafficking. But Karla’s journey is one of survival, strength, and incredible resilience. Despite everything, she found the courage to rebuild her life and reclaim her future. Today, Karla uses her experience to empower others, helping those in similar situations find their way out of darkness and towards healing. This story is not just about pain—it’s about hope, recovery, and the power of resilience.
#humantraffickingawareness #resilience #survivalstory
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Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
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#humantraffickingawareness #resilience #survivalstory
Thank you for watching Unfiltered Stories! We offer a platform for our guests to speak openly about their life stories and journeys, shedding light on the challenges they faced and the resilience they've shown.
Our mission is to raise awareness about survivors by delving into their stories, exploring the impact of their experiences, and how they've managed to heal and rebuild their lives.
By sharing these stories, we aim to break the silence surrounding those challenging memories and create a compassionate environment.
🌅 FOLLOW US 🌅
Facebook ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredFB
Tiktok ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredTT
Snapchat ➮ https://tinyurl.com/UnfilteredSN
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NewsTranscript
00:00I felt betrayed. I felt used. At 14, I found out I was pregnant, and what I saw changed my
00:06life forever.
00:12My earliest memories were actually being at my grandparents' house.
00:16My grandpa's Winston's strength loan store. Loved watching NASCAR.
00:22My grandma, she was very kind to me.
00:25One night, I remember that I didn't get to go back with my mom.
00:29My grandparents took me from my mother. My dad is just a name on a birth certificate.
00:35Eventually, when I was almost four or five, I went to stay with one of my aunts.
00:40She was married. She had another kid with him about my age.
00:45They were given legal guardianship of me, and I would say that life was good.
00:49We had pigs and chickens and dogs and a huge garden.
00:54I would wake up to the smell of bacon on the weekends, and my aunt instilled in me manners, respect
01:01for others.
01:02She taught me how to work hard for the things that I want, you know, to take care of my
01:06responsibilities and to do things with excellence.
01:10So I lived with her from the time that I was four until I was 11 years old.
01:14Life was good. When I was a bit older, my aunt had gotten divorced.
01:18I started to pick up on some of the things that my aunt would say about me or about my
01:23mom.
01:24Kind of started making me feel like I was a burden to her.
01:28Because of that, I didn't have much supervision.
01:31I started acting out, and I was eventually abandoned once again.
01:35My aunt dropped me off at my mom's doorstep because she found out that I had stolen a pack of...
01:43I wasn't even smoking them.
01:45I was trying to impress the girl down the street.
01:47She was like 16.
01:49But my aunt made me pack a backpack full of clothes.
01:52She drove me to my mom's house, and she dropped me off.
01:56She told me to my face that she wanted me to know what it felt like to be poor.
02:01That she wanted to teach me a lesson, and that maybe then I would be grateful for everything she's done
02:07for me.
02:12I was only 11.
02:14I went from eating three meals a day to wondering if I was going to eat at all inside this
02:20new home.
02:22Mom and new stepdad, they were both doing...
02:25They were extremely violent with each other.
02:27My aunt didn't act like this.
02:29I had never even seen my aunt take a drink.
02:31So this was behavior I had never seen, and I didn't feel safe.
02:36So one night, I got curious of what all the yelling and noise was coming from their bedroom.
02:41And I snuck, and I watched from under the door.
02:43And what I saw changed my life forever, and it terrified me.
02:46And I ran away that night for the first time.
02:49I felt like nobody wanted me.
02:51Nobody loved me.
02:52And I felt all alone.
02:54An older lady approached me a few hours after I left the house.
02:58She lived down the street.
03:00She knew my mom.
03:01They were sometimes friends.
03:02They would sometimes be together.
03:04She smoked me that night for the very first time, and she encouraged me to go home.
03:09That I had her now.
03:11Over time, this woman built a relationship with me to the point that I called her mom number two.
03:17She would wait for me at the bus stop.
03:19She would take me back to her house and make me sandwiches.
03:22And she eventually introduced me to older boys and others.
03:28I was at the first party that she took me to, and I later found out that she actually sold
03:35my virginity.
03:36I felt betrayed.
03:37I felt used, and everything seemed to just spiral out of control.
03:43She started encouraging me to run away then, and she would take me to houses and sell me to dealers
03:51or other men that she knew.
03:53There was a couple of times that she would send guys to my school to pick me up so that
03:58they could take me home with them and live out a sick fantasy.
04:02The money that she got from doing this, she used for her personal abuse, and then she eventually made me
04:10try it.
04:10At first, continued to go to school.
04:12I thought what was going on was normal.
04:15I would even brag about what I was doing to other students, and I quickly turned into the outcast because
04:21they all made fun of me.
04:23I was called every name in the book, you know.
04:26I was in and out of juvenile detention constantly.
04:29My first charge was for a terroristic threat because I told my stepdad in front of the police that I
04:35would be in his sleep if he hit my mom again.
04:38I begged the police to arrest him, and they took me instead.
04:42I was only 12 at this time, and I was always told that I was the issue, that I needed
04:48to have better behavior,
04:49that I needed to just stay home and respect my parents and stop making up stories.
04:54But that just added more reasons for me to leave since it was apparently all my fault.
04:59Something I learned very, very fast is that nothing in life is free, especially for runaway kids.
05:07I eventually stopped going to school, but it seemed like nobody noticed.
05:10I wanted my parents to love me and my brother more than they loved me.
05:15I wanted to sleep in a bed and not have to be woken up in the middle of the night
05:20to either my parents arguing or some strange man wanting me to have so that I had somewhere to sleep.
05:27And there was always something that I needed and I didn't have.
05:30And the only way that I could get those things by letting other people do horrible things to me behind
05:36closed doors.
05:37I eventually got away from this woman because one day she picked up this guy.
05:43As soon as he got in the car, he told her to drive out to a secluded place.
05:48And I was familiar with it.
05:50A lot of people go out there and do.
05:51And he handed me instantly.
05:54Sure, about two blocks later, we got pulled over.
05:57I was a known runaway at that time.
05:59So the police just took me back to the station and they started questioning me.
06:04He got in my face and he asked me.
06:06He said, ma'am, the reason I'm asking you how you know that man is because that man just got
06:12out of prison.
06:13He was a girl about my age that looked just like me and left her body exactly where we were
06:20going.
06:21They were watching him because he had just gotten out of parole.
06:24I never went back around her after that.
06:32So at 14, I found out I was pregnant and I tried to go back to school and the school
06:39told me that I wasn't allowed to come back until after I had my son.
06:42Nobody asked me questions.
06:44I had nobody that cared, nowhere to go.
06:47I couldn't even finish my education.
06:49So I ended up telling a guy I barely knew that I had recently been with that he got me
06:55pregnant and he believed me.
06:57He was in his early 30s.
06:59I was 14.
07:00I was desperate and just really in my adolescent mind was thinking I needed a safe place to live and
07:10be fed.
07:11This man made me clean a certain way, cook a certain way, performed socks for him multiple times a day.
07:17It was a very sick situation.
07:19Throughout my pregnancy, I was never asked questions of who I was staying with, however, where I was living.
07:24I went to doctor appointments alone.
07:27I was only 15.
07:28When I had my son, I was at the hospital alone.
07:32After I came home with my son, his parents, who paid all his bills, said that either I work or
07:38he does because they weren't going to pay for my child's diapers anymore.
07:44You could clearly tell by his skin color that that was not his child.
07:49He wouldn't work.
07:50I worked full time at 15 years old, and then I had to come home every day, cook, clean, take
07:59care of my son, please this man.
08:02And I endured this for about almost four or five years.
08:06And I left one day because I had some strong suspicions that he was using my son.
08:12I actually met my husband through this ugly process when my son was poor.
08:16Me and my husband, we ended up married after five years together.
08:21We had two more children together.
08:23And you would think that this is the happily ever after, but I never dealt with any of the trauma
08:31from my childhood.
08:36So by this time, I had six felonies on my record.
08:40I was 29 years old.
08:42I was a general manager for a restaurant.
08:44I had a teenager, a toddler, an infant, and my husband worked out of town.
08:49At the time, I developed an addiction to pain meds because of an emergency surgery.
08:55I was feeling extremely overwhelmed, and that's probably an understatement.
09:00And it seemed like that definitely wasn't helping the situation.
09:04So I did the one thing that I knew how to do very, very well, and I ran.
09:10Yes, I was selfish.
09:12I left my kids.
09:13I left my husband.
09:14I had this belief that I was going to find a better life, that the grass is going to be
09:19greener on the other side.
09:21And looking back, my life wasn't bad.
09:23I was just a very hurt and traumatized person that had never received any healing.
09:28During the separation from my family, I got into a lot of bad situations.
09:35I even ended up robbing a well-known rapper in Baton Rouge, gold chains, guns.
09:43I had people looking to seriously hurt me.
09:47And somebody I knew that I thought I could trust told me one day,
09:52Hey, I can introduce you to somebody that can help you out of this situation.
09:56It started out as what I thought was the beginning of a romantic relationship.
10:01He spent lots of money on me at first, bought me things I could never afford otherwise.
10:06And I perceived all of this attention as love and interest.
10:11And then one thing, everything changed.
10:13I pulled up at a hotel where he had a room and he placed an ad on a known website.
10:21He named me Alexia, the Australian princess on the ad.
10:25He used a blurred out face picture of a girl off of a website.
10:29And he told me I needed to dye my hair blonde.
10:31I tried to leave, but he stopped me and ended up convincing me that I only needed to do it
10:38just one time.
10:39After that first time, I got back into the car and he gave me a quota of $1,500 a
10:47day.
10:47If I didn't meet that quota each day, there was punishment in the form of physical and sex abuse.
10:54So he started coaching me to talk and act differently.
10:58He trained me how to respect him.
11:01He traveled me across different states from Louisiana to Colorado and we stopped at every city in between.
11:07He broke my ribs one day by punching me in the chest as hard as he could because I shut
11:12the door without his permission.
11:13I would go through these breakdown periods where I would beg and cry him to just me because I didn't
11:20want to do this anymore.
11:21And he would do something to manipulate me, like tell me to pick out a car I wanted to buy.
11:28On the way back to Houston area, I threatened to drive the car off of the road a couple of
11:36different times to everybody in the car.
11:39It tore my heart out and I realized in that moment that I needed to start finding my escape.
11:45A few days later, then I saw an opportunity and I finally tried to run away from him, but I
11:53didn't get very far.
11:54I called my husband and while I was telling him what was going on, I started getting messages of him
12:00telling me that if I didn't go back,
12:02he was going to take my daughter who was five years old at the time and do the same thing
12:06to her.
12:07So at this moment, I screenshot all of these messages and I sent them to my husband.
12:13And I basically told him goodbye because in my mind, this was the only way to protect my daughter.
12:20I didn't care what happened to me at that point.
12:22I didn't know, but my husband called the police.
12:25So when I went back, things got way worse.
12:29My quota went up to $2,500 a day.
12:32I had no freedom whatsoever.
12:33And mind you, during this whole time, I have untreated, crushed, broken ribs.
12:41And he refused to take me to the hospital.
12:43I was in excruciating pain sitting in the bathtub because hot water seemed to soothe me.
12:50My broken ribs and other things that, you know, were ailing me.
12:55I was on pain pills.
12:57This man had already taken everything for me.
13:00My wedding ring, everything.
13:01But I bought my husband this cross pendant for an anniversary present, like years and years ago.
13:09I found this cross in my stuff.
13:11And I remember this one night, my daughter had a nightmare.
13:15And I put daddy's cross around her neck.
13:18And I told her, baby, when God is with you, no evil can come against you.
13:22And I remember looking at the ceiling in that moment.
13:26And all I said was, I can't take this anymore.
13:30I was recovered by law enforcement.
13:32A few days later, walking out of this hotel, it took an officer literally getting in front of my face
13:38and asking me if I was Carla Solomon for me to realize that I was not Alexia.
13:44So I thought at the hospital, they determined I had several broken ribs in several different places, multiple STDs, infections.
13:52And I told the police literally everything.
13:56I remember the officer was extremely encouraging.
14:00He gave me confidence that if I made it through what I had went through, that I could do anything.
14:08Now, seven years later, I trained state police right alongside him to other law enforcement agencies about interviewing.
14:21That's one of my biggest partnerships today.
14:27I would say my healing journey afterwards was probably harder than just surviving what I went through.
14:34When my husband actually overheard me planning my great escape, he turned me into the police for that old warrant.
14:40And I ended up wanting to prison for the second time.
14:43During the time that I was in prison, I read the Bible front to back in less than six months.
14:49But in reality, I went from one slavery-like condition to another.
14:55So when my husband finally took me home, I hid in the house for almost a year.
15:01I had what was called agoraphobia, which was, it basically means the fear of the unknown.
15:07And I got completely sober.
15:09And I started to realize that what I had went through was something really bad.
15:13So by this time, my trafficker had bonded out of jail and was on the run by this time, facing
15:19charges for trafficking in persons.
15:23Things got kind of ugly for me before they got better.
15:25I couldn't handle all the memories that tormented me constantly.
15:29So I thought my only way out was going to be suicide.
15:32I tell everybody that was the day, October 4th of 2017, that I tried to throw in the towel and
15:39got through it in my face and told me, no, ma'am, you've got work to do.
15:42The very next day, I got, I left the house by myself for the first time.
15:47I got a job and a few months later, I was asked to share my story for the first time.
15:53And soon after that, I helped formalize a ministry.
15:58My trafficker, who I knew as fat, was finally arrested in Kentucky and he was charged in Texas.
16:05And he took a plea offer in 2019 for a total of 60 years in prison.
16:13And I am grateful for each person that was involved in my recovery.
16:19So today, my oldest son is a full-time college student.
16:24My other two children, they obviously live at home with me.
16:29We are all heavily involved with church.
16:32My marriage and my relationship with my husband is probably the absolute best it's been in the entire, this year
16:39will be 20 years that we've been together.
16:42Today, I have an amazing relationship with my mom and my stepdad, even after all of the craziness.
16:49My mom is sober.
16:50He stopped taking the night.
16:53My stepdad still drinks.
16:55That hasn't changed, but his behavior has drastically.
16:59And he's no longer abusive towards my mom, which is a huge change.
17:04And that's why I allow them into my children's life.
17:09My biggest accomplishment is that I have now become a woman that would have protected me as a child.
17:16I work as a consultant for Mercygate Ministries.
17:20I work as a founding partner for Life Raft Incorporated.
17:25I have my own nonprofit, www.carlasolomon.com, which is where I offer consulting services, training services, and support services
17:39to survivors directly and to their families.
17:42I also have been accredited by the Texas Bar Association as an expert in human trafficking.
17:52So, I actually train or have trained a lot of judicial officials.
17:59I'm a survivor consultant and subject matter expert for the Department of Homeland Security's Blue Campaign.
18:06I encourage survivors, don't be silent.
18:10Don't suffer in silence.
18:11It doesn't matter if you reach out to somebody that you trust.
18:14It doesn't matter if you seek counseling.
18:16It doesn't matter if you hit your knees and pray, which probably is my best suggestion.
18:24But don't suffer alone.
18:25There are people that care, and there are people that can help you.
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