Believe Me: The True Story of How a Trafficked Teen and Her Advocate Changed the Justice System and Found True Freedom

Praise

Andrea Powell’s book is more than a book about justice; it’s also about infusing social change with love and a fierce commitment to compassion. A must-read.

Justin Baldoni, author, actor, filmmaker, and podcast host

"Believe Me is the extraordinary story of two women: Tiffany, a teenage victim of sex trafficking sentenced to jail for thirty years, and Andrea, a passionate advocate fighting for Tiffany’s freedom. I have had the honor of witnessing their ten-year journey together. A journey of trauma and healing, courage, and ultimately, Revolutionary Love. Read this book for these women to inspire you, as they have me."

Valarie Kaur, bestselling author of See No Stranger and founder of The Revolutionary Love Project

"Believe Me is an honest accounting of what trafficking looks like today. Not the sensationalized stories you hear in the news but the real stories and real voices of this issue. I met Andrea over a decade ago when I was first beginning my own journey into the anti-trafficking world. I learned much from her. She is a fierce advocate, fighter, and expert in this world. I am honored to know her and support her work and her story on behalf of women and children everywhere."

Marisol Nichols, actor

Andrea Powell’s book is urgent and vital. No one should be incarcerated because of crimes committed against them. This book is a story of fierce love leading to justice for so many survivors. It’s a call to action and proof that when women come together, change happens.

Carmen Perez-Jordan, CEO and President of the Gathering for Justice Foundation

"As a former prosecutor, I have worked alongside advocates like Andrea to ensure that survivors are protected, not incarcerated, as a result of their own trafficking. Believe Me is the true story of a courageous survivor and her tenacious advocate’s enduring fight for justice. Andrea is the real deal, and this book is a must-read for anyone wanting to make the justice system more just."

Maggy Krell, author of Taking Down Backpage

I have known Andrea for fifteen years, and her passion to ensure that no survivor of trafficking is left alone to suffer has always moved me. I hope everyone reads her words and feels their calling to support survivors. I truly am excited to see the impact Andrea’s book will make for survivors and, honestly, anyone who has felt unheard, disbelieved, and simply discredited because of their past. This is a must-read and a true story of love overcoming fear.

Geena Roceri, model, writer, producer, transgender advocate, and public speaker

Introduction

breaking the cycle

After dinner, I curl up on the sofa to read the letter again. It’s one page inside a crumpled envelope. It came from someone I’ve never heard of: Tiffany Simpson, Inmate 100142344, Pulaski State Prison. She sent it two weeks ago, but I’ve only just received it. Her handwriting is big, loopy, and perfectly formed.

Dear Andrea,

My name is Tiffany Simpson. I am 18 and when I was 17, I was arrested for sex trafficking and I’m doing 20 of 30 years in prison down here in Georgia.

My pimp said I was not making enough and he used my phone to convince this other girl to come with us. He sold us both to these guys in a trailer by a construction site.

He said he was going to burn down my grandmother’s house and stab our baby out of me if I didn’t do it.

Now, I can’t see my son and my pimp’s mom is trying to get custody of him from my mom. I’m worried I’ll lose him forever.

I saw that girl Alyssa’s story in that USA Today story you were in. My dad sent it to me from his prison.

So, I wanted to know. Am I a victim of sex trafficking or a prostitute?

After leaving my office earlier that evening, I’d stopped at the street corner. I stood there, reading her letter for the tenth time. The cool October breeze stilled, and I no longer noticed the cars speeding by in the rush-hour traffic or the lights waving between red and green and back to red again. I would never be able to unread her words. I could already feel my life was about to change, the world momentarily fading around me. How could a seventeen-year-old girl be in a Georgia prison for sex trafficking? How could she think she’s a prostitute if she was being sold by a man twice her age?

I never expected to become an advocate for a teenage girl convicted of child sex trafficking. I’d always thought that once it was proven that a child was a victim of sex trafficking, they would get the help they needed; they wouldn’t be arrested. Tiffany’s letter defied my belief, and a cold chill filled me. How many more teenage girls like her were out there?

By the time Tiffany Simpson’s letter was in my hands in 2012, I’d met hundreds of survivors across the United States and around the world in my ten years as a victim advocate. (Now, I’ve met over 2,000.) I’ve worked with girls trafficked blocks from the White House and even out of their own childhood homes in places from Alabama to Maryland. As I’d explain in TV interviews and the law enforcement trainings my team and I led each month, sex trafficking involves three groups of people: victims, traffickers, and those who benefit from the victim’s exploitation, namely the sex buyers. Each represented one point of a triangle. But Tiffany’s words made it clear that it wasn’t always so simple. Tiffany’s trafficker had forced her to lure another teen girl into sex trafficking by threatening to kill her unborn baby. How can she be two points in the triangle? I wondered.

More than a decade has passed since I stood on that busy street corner reading Tiffany’s letter. I assumed that first letter wasn’t telling me everything, but I sensed a sincere and lost person who hadn’t given up on herself. I wrote back, and she replied. She opened up more and more as our letters continued. I got to know Tiffany, and the more I knew, the more I believed her. The story of her childhood and all the ways in which her trafficker exploited and abused her were so similar to the other girls and women I’d worked with over the years. I’m still learning about everything she’s been through in her life, not least of which is trafficking.

It would be years before I understood how my own sexual assaults and exploitation played a role in the work I do. After bonding through hundreds of letters and emails, Tiffany was the first person I told about my own story. For many years, our bond existed in Times New Roman typeface alone.

* * *

When you think of sex trafficking, what kinds of images come to mind? Sex trafficking in media and movies is often depicted as an intense, action-packed kidnapping scene: An innocent child is abducted on her way home from school and sold in a dark web auction where no one can find her. Or a young woman is drugged at a bar, dragged into a car, and tied up in a creepy basement dungeon. Though these situations may be based on some sensationalized versions of the truth, that isn’t the way it goes for most victims. The truth is often much more complex. Real sex trafficking often looks like a teenage girl standing next to a much older man at a motel as he books a room. Or a teen boy who suddenly has a new phone and clothes skipping school to hang out with a much older man. Or a teenage girl in a doctor’s office being watched by a man who speaks for her about her injuries. Or that girl whose online friends are all older guys.

Tiffany wasn’t locked inside a hotel room or hidden away in a trailer park. She wasn’t kidnapped, and she didn’t just stop showing up at school. Instead, Tiffany was disappeared by the system. Those who are meant to protect victims wanted to lock her up instead of untangling her complicated situation with compassion. It was as if they felt that labeling her a criminal meant they didn’t have to help her, that she would just disappear. Tiffany could easily have faded away behind bars.

In time, I realized we had to make Tiffany reappear. We had to make Tiffany exist on the outside while she was still locked up on the inside. This was the only possible way to help her become free. The media follows big-name cases of sex trafficking like Jeffrey Epstein and R. Kelly, spraying every detail across the front pages, but there was only one tiny newspaper article about Tiffany Simpson and that disappeared long ago. It listed her as a seventeen-year-old sex trafficker, right alongside the thirty-four-year-old who stabbed, beat, and trafficked her.

I thought helping Tiffany toward freedom was my personal calling. Very quickly though, I found that I cared for her deeply as a person. I talked to my mom about her and incessantly asked friends to send support, bringing the people around me into Tiffany’s world. I also came to care for Tiffany’s father, even though he played a role in Tiffany’s exploitation. Tiffany’s dad committed a crime that led to a life sentence, leaving her vulnerable with a mom who struggled with alcohol abuse. He often blames himself for not being there, and over time, I learned his childhood was not so different from Tiffany’s. Tiffany has taught me the meaning of unconditional love, and it’s her father who taught me about unconditional forgiveness.

You should know up front that this isn’t a fairytale. While on November 23, 2022, Tiffany was released from prison, her story isn’t wrapped up with a neat little bow; it’s ongoing, and it continues to be a struggle. But Tiffany’s advocacy for herself and survivors like her, along with the help of lawyers, advocates, other survivors, and so many people who care, are changing the laws that almost let her disappear behind bars forever. Together, we want to make sure no more victims suffer the same injustice and fate.

* * *

It’s March 2021. Nine years and five months after that first letter from Tiffany. I’m staring at my computer screen, waiting for Tiffany to dial into the video link from the jail service. She warned me it might not work. After eight years, this will be our first time seeing each other’s faces. She’s only allowed two people on her video list, and after years of trying, she was able to add me after dropping her mom, who doesn’t have a computer or cell phone. It’s 3:15 p.m., and she said she’d call me at 3:00. I’m not allowed to call her, so I have to wait.

Just connect, I whisper to myself. I’m staring at my computer screen watching the clock tick. Finally, the screen flickers in and out, and then, there she is before me.

Hey, Andrea? It’s me, Tiffany, she says in her Georgian accent. Her voice is faded, as if she’s speaking from a hollow room. The only visuals I’ve had all these years are her arrest photo and a photo of her taken months before she was arrested that still lingers as her Facebook profile. Seeing her for the first time, even on a computer screen, makes my hands shake a little. She somehow still looks seventeen, even though it’s been nine years since she was sent to Pulaski State Prison in Hawkinsville, Georgia. She is smiling down into the screen, almost giggling.

I press my fingers into my headset to hear her better. Tiffany! We’re finally doing it! I say, jumping up and almost knocking the green cafe chair over. I’m too excited to sit, and I lean in closer to see her face better. The video screen continues to flicker in and out, as if there aren’t enough pixels for her to remain fully there.

Her bright smile seems out of place in the washed-out gray of the call area. It’s so bright out there. You look great! she says.

I flip the screen on my computer around to show her the birds-of-paradise flowers and succulent plants around me. I can’t believe I’m looking at you. How much time do we have?

I guess about fourteen minutes now because we’re only allowed fifteen. I can try to call back, though, for another fifteen, or you could try to set up another video.

That isn’t enough time for everything we have to talk about, but it’s better than before, which was zero minutes. I’m speed talking, loudly. The time limit presses down on my words and hers.

Did you hear from Susan? I ask. She said she’d be in touch. I read there was a law passed last year about vacating criminal records for sex trafficking victims. So, when you get out, we can work on that, and you can get your son back. Susan Coppedge is Tiffany’s new attorney after agreeing to help her in the fall of 2020. Her previous pro bono attorney, Stephen Reba, hadn’t been in touch with Tiffany in months at that point. Susan is the best; she’s spent countless hours prosecuting human traffickers. So, I had explained to Tiffany when I first told her about Susan, she really will know how to fight for you.

Would I qualify? Tiffany suddenly looks serious, leaning toward the screen and balancing the black handset of the phone on her shoulder. It’s connected to the wall with a coiled cord that dangles below her shoulder and tangles in her long, wavy, mahogany hair.

I don’t know, but it’s a law worth exploring. You were a victim of sex trafficking, and you were a child when you were charged, but there are some crimes they won’t vacate.

Tiffany leans even closer, whispering so that other inmates can’t hear. Well, I guess we’ll have to cross that bridge when we come to it. I know it’s going to happen.

Yes, when, not if, I think, staring into eyes that are filled with deep conviction.

They are lifting COVID restrictions here, so my new attorney could visit me. Maybe you can come with her.

I highly doubt that the prison warden will approve me visiting her, but I smile anyway. I can’t wait for that, Tiffany.

You have one minute remaining, the recorded voice reminds us. The jail video system is ruthless.

Oh, no! Tiffany, try to call back, but just in case you can’t ... I quickly say a few more things, and then the screen goes black.

Minutes pass and then, suddenly, the familiar vibration pulses in my hand.

Do you accept these charges from an inmate in …

I quickly push 1 to accept.

Tiffany! I’m too loud again.

She laughs. I said I’d call you back, girl.

Our conversation turns to the most recent release effort. We’ve gained support from a small grassroots network of advocates called Dressember to create a short film about Tiffany’s life that we’ll use to keep advocating for her release. Part of the goal for today’s call is to finalize the script using Tiffany’s words. We have a month to complete it before we launch our national campaign to free Tiffany.

While the film focuses on Tiffany’s story, it isn’t solely to garner support for her release. There are survivors like her all across the United States who are in jail due to their own trafficking. Some were convicted of sex trafficking, others for crimes as small as truancy. For years, Tiffany’s release seemed impossible because she wasn’t seen as a victim by the system. Instead, she was portrayed as a perpetrator.

But then in August 2019, a survivor named Cyntoia Brown was released from a Tennessee jail after sixteen years when the governor granted her clemency. She was convicted for shooting and killing the man who bought her and was about to rape her. Another survivor, Alexis Martin, who was convicted of killing her trafficker, had also been set free in 2020. Tiffany deserves her freedom too. I’m in regular touch with reporters from the Washington Post and The New Yorker, and I’ve written nationally about Tiffany and justice for survivors, but so far that hasn’t been enough. We need to go bigger.

It’s time, Tiffany. I know it. She smiles, saying nothing as her fingers play with the black cord of the phone.

We have the draft script for the film, but it has been written purely from the emails Tiffany and I’ve exchanged over the years. We need to refine it, dig deeper. We haven’t found the true root of how Tiffany fell into trafficking. It’s never just one tragedy or misstep that leads someone into sex trafficking, and I know that something hasn’t been said yet.

Tiffany, I’m going to patch in our film director, Noel. Noel Keserwany is a world-renowned Lebanese filmmaker living in Paris. She is political, feminist, artistic, and passionate. She also knows almost nothing about sex trafficking.

Noel had asked me earlier that morning, when we were editing the script, what the chances were of Tiffany being released. I wish I knew. The more noise we make, the closer we will get to Tiffany’s case being taken seriously, I’d replied. I’d never really cared what others thought of the survivors I served, but getting the public passionate about Tiffany and showing the district attorney that she has people who are willing to fight for her could make the difference between another ten years in prison or freedom before age thirty. Working with Noel is part of our bigger strategy to free Tiffany.

Susan and I had explored a parole hearing, but Tiffany isn’t eligible until 2025. We could reopen her case with something called a habeas petition, which is a civil action that questions if a person’s detention is valid. But while there is a new judge, the risk is that the same prosecutor who worked on Tiffany’s case could convince the judge that Tiffany deserves more years, not fewer. At this point, Tiffany has already served nearly a decade.

That’s the minimum sentence for sex trafficking in Georgia, I’d told Noel.

Releasing her isn’t like they are letting her off easy. According to Susan, the prosecutor still believes he locked up a child trafficker and sex offender. That is why this film has to perfectly bring to light the real story of Tiffany Simpson and not what the media has said about her. For the past few weeks, Noel and I have talked constantly, waking each other at all hours, feeling the pressure of Tiffany’s potential freedom.

Today is Noel’s first time talking to Tiffany. It’s like I’m meeting a celebrity. I’m nervous, Noel had confessed earlier that morning. Now, here we are.

Noel, can you hear us? Noel’s video appears on my screen. She can’t see Tiffany, and Tiffany can barely hear her as I hold my phone to the computer speaker.

There isn’t really time for banter. Noel, we only have about fourteen minutes. Let’s get started.

Tiffany is silent for a few moments.

I’m kinda nervous. I don’t know why. Maybe you can ask me questions to help, she suggests.

Noel assures her that nothing she says can be wrong or bad. I know Tiffany well enough to understand she’s always worried that she’ll say or do something wrong. That’s how it is for most victims of abuse.

Tiffany, just tell me more about you. Let’s start there, says Noel.

I like your French accent a lot, says Tiffany.

I’m from Lebanon, actually. I live here in Paris for now, though.

Tiffany nods and says, Ohhh. She has never heard of Lebanon. She takes a deep breath and begins. I was seventeen when I was arrested with my pimp for sex trafficking another girl named Kassie, who was thirteen years old. She was messaging me that she was sick of being home with her grandmother. She asked me if she could come stay with us. My pimp saw the messages.

The first time Tiffany was sexually exploited, she was fourteen, just a year older than Kassie. Noel asked how Kassie knew where Tiffany was and how her pimp, Yarnell Donald, knew she and Kassie were messaging. Most people don’t have every single text they write reviewed by their boyfriend. But trafficking victims like Tiffany usually do. If they aren’t texting about making money, they are often not allowed to text at all.

Well, once Yarnell saw our messages, he said he wanted her too. I was pregnant and getting fat, so he decided she could replace me for a while. He used my phone and offered to help her run away, just like he had said he would help me, and I couldn’t warn her because he was watching my every move, says Tiffany.

Pimps know how to make their victims feel like they’re helping them. Tiffany really did need help when they met; she was homeless. From what Tiffany told me, the same seemed to be true for Kassie—she was just a young girl looking for a safe place to land. But in both cases, Yarnell was only trying to help himself.

Noel jumps in, almost as if to save Tiffany from having to share more of this pain with a total stranger. Tiffany, to make this film, we have to create colors and be very visual. You don’t have to tell me everything like facts. I want to know you really from the heart.

Tiffany doesn’t understand. I don’t really know what is from my heart, I guess, ma’am.

You don’t have to call me, ‘ma’am,’ Noel says, laughing.

I’m a Southern girl, too, and know there’s no way Tiffany isn’t going to call her ma’am. We are taught from birth to say, Yes, ma’am, No, ma’am, Thank you, ma’am, to any woman who’s even slightly older than we are. Noel tries again.

So, like this, Tiffany—I want to ask you about your relationship to colors. What would you say your life was like in colors before going to jail? And what’s life like now in jail? What colors describe it, and what do you think your life will be like in colors when you are free?

Tiffany pauses while her image flickers in and out with the poor internet signal on her end.

My life before jail was dark. Like total darkness. I think Yarnell could have killed me, and no one would have really noticed. It was kind of like I was invisible out there.

She’s said that to me before, but I still almost cry. You can cry later, Andrea, not now, I think to myself.

But here, I slowly started to see some gray, some lighter colors. I think it’s because I feel like it’s safer here in some ways. There are basic things like being able to sleep and feeling like I can do things like get my GED. But there isn’t really color because they control you all the time, and the other women can be rough to deal with.

That’s really interesting, Noel says. Most people would think it was the other way around in colors. You’re surprising me.

Tiffany smiles, and so do I.

I feel like now I have time to imagine my life in colors, she continues. My future when I get out will be so bright. I keep a journal of all my dreams, like seeing California or Hawaii. Andrea sends me photos from everywhere she goes.

After a pause, Noel says, I didn’t see that answer coming. I didn’t expect you to say such valuable things. Andrea and Tiffany, can we record this?

Tiffany says yes. I push the record button on my phone. The audio will be weak and full of static and background noise, but it’s the only way to do it. I have learned from Tiffany that jail is a place where you have to be innovative to have a life.

Keep telling me what life was like before. What led you to jail? I’m sorry if I’m asking you too many questions.

I intervene. Tiffany, we can always stop.

Tiffany shakes her head from side to side. No, I want to do this. After Yarnell picked up Kassie, he took us to this trailer park where we were each forced to have sex with these men there. There were three men I had to have sex with, and one Kassie had to have sex with too. I felt so bad for her because I was in her shoes too.

Maybe Yarnell thought he could make it so that Kassie thought he loved her and was just using Tiffany. She trusted Tiffany and he knew that too. So, he could use a blend of love, fear, and trusting another girl. All classic pimp tactics, I tell Noel.

That’s messed up, Andrea.

Tiffany keeps going, speed talking through the final minutes of our call.

Kassie was scared. I kept thinking of my baby and how Yarnell said he would kill him if I tried to run. After the men were done with us, Yarnell took Kassie home, but she didn’t stay quiet like me. She says he raped her too, and she told her grandmother, who called the police. They arrested me and helped Kassie. At the time, I kind of thought I deserved it, though. She was my friend. My grandmother and her mom were friends too. Tiffany looks down, clearly still anguished at the pain she’d caused someone she cared about.

Tiffany, you know now that’s not true, I remind her. You said it before: Yarnell could have killed you. He might be locked up now, but I think he’s still there in her head, gaslighting her even in her memories. I’ve been gaslighted by someone I wanted to love me too. That’s something Tiffany and I have in common.

We only have a couple more minutes, Noel, I add.

Okay, okay. So, what is day-to-day life like for you now, Tiffany?

Tiffany begins to answer, twirling the curly black phone cord in her fingers, her voice lifting up a bit to rise over a few inmates screaming in the background. I’m focused on getting this group together with Andrea where we can talk to other women about trafficking and help them feel like they have support. I really want to help other girls.

I’m smiling like a proud big sister. Noel, Tiffany is being really modest. She’s always writing blogs, and we started a justice initiative for survivors. We’re going to get a bill passed to ensure survivors are not jailed because of their own trafficking. She’s doing all of this, and it won’t even help her personally.

Tiffany smiles. If the video quality didn’t turn everything gray, I’d think she might be blushing. I love that work, she says. For now, though, I just keep my head down and focus on getting out of here. COVID makes things, like, real tense here.

For the past few months, Tiffany has been trapped in her cell twenty-three hours a day. No sunshine. No fresh air. I don’t think anyone who’s not been locked in a box like that could understand.

What do you want life to be like when you’re free?

I need to get a job and find a way to go to school. I have to get my son back. I want to help girls like me. . . It’s a lot. Tiffany is always talking about her son, Ayden.

"That’s amazing, but what I mean is, like, what’s the first thing you want to do for you, Tiffany?"

Oh, I want to grab my bag and get on a plane to California. I want to run into the ocean and swim for the first time with my son by my side!

"That’s beautiful. Why the ocean? Tell me why the