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Key points
- Human traffickers frequently have an intermediary between themselves and their victims. She's known as "the bottom."
- The bottom may be just as afraid of her trafficker as the males and females she is forced to supervise.
- The bottom may need longer restorative care than those who've been in "the life" for a shorter time.
In the sex trafficking world, the top of the hierarchy is the sex trafficker. Next is the bottom girl (or more commonly, “bottom bitch”), and then the lowest in the hierarchy are all the other males or females the trafficker is controlling.
Jessica Brazeal, with New Friends New Life, an organization focused on sex-exploited women, is interested in helping everyone who has been trafficked. However, in her experience as a therapist, she knows that the bottom girl may need longer care than the others.
What Is “the Bottom”?
The bottom girl is typically the one who has been with the trafficker the longest. She does such things as oversee the other girls, punish them if they step out of line, maybe she transports them to their “dates,” and she may make hotel reservations.
In addition, she trains the new girls, and she may be the one who goes to the jails to bail out girls who’ve been arrested. She’s the trafficker’s trusted lieutenant.
It would be easy to imagine that the bottom girl is a horrible monster, living off the suffering of the people she helps control. However, in Brazeal’s experience, this is far from the case.
“The bottom girl is continuously in survival mode,” points out Brazeal. “It’s true, she has a certain amount of power, and her circumstances might be slightly better than the other girls'. However, it’s also likely she’s suffering from the same fear that the women and girls she’s supervising are feeling.”
Brazeal goes on to say that the bottom girl does what she does out of fear of what the trafficker will do to her. “The punishments for not doing what the trafficker wants can be just as severe,” Brazeal says. “The traffickers’s tools include beating, starvation, sleep deprivation, and breaking their spirit so much that they come to believe that they’re worthless and have no choice.”
The bottom’s mental attitude is likely to be something along the lines of, “I’m doing what I need to do to survive just as much as if I were the newest girl. I don’t have the option to say no.”
The Bottom Escapes
Let’s say that against the odds, the bottom manages to escape her trafficker. Here’s what she faces.
According to Brazeal “If she is an adult who was trafficked as a child, and if she continued to stay connected to her trafficker and became the bottom girl in charge of all the other girls who are being trafficked, she’s going to need a lot of care.”
Brazeal continues, “Let’s say she’s 35-year-old. Since her trafficking began in childhood, she has a limited education, probably a history of substance abuse, and many, many arrests for prostitution. In addition, she may have one or more children to care for.”
What Help Will She Get?
A lot of the treatment she’ll get will be similar to the treatment Brazeal and her colleagues offer other trafficking survivors. The difference is, because her abuse lasted so long, she’s likely to need a lot more time for recovery and restoration.
Her care will probably deal with her heightened levels of depression, anxiety, and maybe suicidal thoughts. She may have difficulty sleeping. She may experience emotional triggers that make her flight or freeze reactions take over.
In addition to medical care, her recovery will include
- Counseling
- Group therapy where she can see other women who are in the same situation
- Help getting the education she missed out on, including getting her GED
- Help in finding a job, including help with job interviews, dressing for a job, and gaining financially savvy about such things as budgeting and saving.
“Our hope is that by the time she finishes our program she’ll have a stable job that she has been in for over a year,” says Brazeal.
Fortunately, Brazeal and her colleagues have relationships with employers in the retail industry, restaurant industry, warehouse industry and others who will offer entry-level jobs. The entry-level jobs will enable once-trafficked women to build job skills and create a resume.
The goal is for a woman to earn a living, have a home, and make progress towards having the life she would choose for herself.
Her journey may be longer and tougher than those who were trafficked for a shorter time. However, with the help of Brazeal and her colleagues, the bottom girl has a good chance of getting to where she needs to be.
New Friends New Life operates in the Dallas area. They’ve been operating for more than 20 years and, in 2020, helped more than 330 women and teen girls recover their lives.
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