When Melody Montemayor was being trafficked, her pimp branded her: his name and a dollar sign tattooed on the nape of her neck, his motto “never under pressure” etched onto her wrist and “property of” inked across the side of her belly.
“I was a commodity. I wasn’t a person,” said Mrs. Montemayor, 38, who now lives in Ponder, Texas. “I was bought every day — and multiple times a day.”
Almost 15 years later, after discovering a directory of free tattoo removal programs, she found a dermatologist willing to help. Over 11 appointments, she saw her tattoos slowly fade away and, with them, the shame she had long carried. It felt redemptive, Mrs. Montemayor said, like she was returning to herself.
In a 2022 study of sex trafficking survivors, about half reported that they had branding tattoos. So, to support survivors’ recovery, some dermatologists have started to offer free tattoo removal services.
Although dermatologists are rarely the first doctors to see these patients, this work has given them unique insight into the ways that sex trafficking is written onto the body, said Dr. Shadi Kourosh, a dermatologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center who offers free tattoo removal to survivors. And some of them are now sharing what they’ve learned to help others better spot patients who are being trafficked.
For Mrs. Montemayor, escaping her trafficker did not mean she felt safe. There was a $50,000 bounty on her head, she said, and she was terrified that her tattoos would give her away. So, for almost two years, Mrs. Montemayor hid in a house in the “middle of nowhere,” barely going outside.
Removing her tattoos felt like a way to quiet her lingering fears — and change the trajectory of her life. Mrs. Montemayor hadn’t met her husband yet but couldn’t see herself entering a relationship with these brands.
She also thought about the life she hoped to rebuild, returning to college, having children and finding her faith.
“I can’t imagine having those tattoos on me, going to church,” Mrs. Montemayor said.
The psychological trap of trafficking
The scale of sex trafficking in the United States is hard to quantify. In 2020, the National Human Trafficking Hotline fielded calls from about 11,000 victims, although the real toll is almost certainly higher, said Abigail Judge, a clinical psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who works with women who have been trafficked.
Branding tattoos are among the most visible signs of sex trafficking. In general, they function as a language of ownership and control, said Dr. Paul Friedman, a former president of the American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery.
Some are in highly visible places, like the neck, hands and face, while others appear on the breasts and genitals. Experts say the tattoos are meant to indicate to both customers and rival pimps whom the victim answers to.
Kathy Givens, a trafficking survivor from Houston, was told that her tattoo was an act of love. Her trafficker pointed to other women who had gotten tattoos for their boyfriends and said that his name needed to be on her somewhere. She felt almost giddy after getting his name inked across her back, assuming he’d be proud. Only later, when she was being trafficked, did she see all the other women with his name on their necks, arms and chests.
“I realized very quickly that I wasn’t special at all,” said Mrs. Givens, who now runs a nonprofit to support other trafficking survivors.
Getting a branding tattoo might look like a choice, Dr. Judge said, but it’s often born out of fear, attachment, addiction and trauma-related bonding. And branding tattoos can make escaping from traffickers more dangerous, said Dr. Damon Clark, a trauma surgeon at Los Angeles General Hospital who provides free tattoo removal for trafficking survivors. “If the wrong person sees that tattoo, they can quickly be found and forced back,” he said.
The life-changing potential of tattoo removal
From a medical standpoint, removal is relatively straightforward. Doctors use lasers to heat the ink and break it up into tiny pieces, making it easier for the immune system to clear the debris, said Dr. Kristel Polder, a Dallas-based dermatologist. It’s a slower, more painful process than getting a tattoo, she added, with sessions usually spaced a month or two apart. For simple, all-black tattoos, the removal can take as few as three to four sessions, but more complex ones may require as many as a dozen.
Many survivors say the procedure is worth it, especially as they seek work, housing or new relationships. “The life that I’m living now — it doesn’t really fit in with having ‘Property of’ and a big money sign tattoo,” said Mrs. Montemayor, who returned to Texas Woman’s University to finish college and get her master’s degree in social work.
But not all survivors want to remove their tattoos: Some keep them as evidence of what they overcame, while others choose to transform their tattoos into something new, Dr. Judge said.
For those who do choose to have them removed, it’s often emotional. Mrs. Givens avoided looking at her tattoo in the mirror for years because it pulled her back into her trauma of being trafficked. But as the sessions went on, she found herself checking again and again, watching the brand fade away.
“It was almost like little pieces of my dignity started to come back,” she said.
A more proactive role for health care
People who are sex trafficked frequently pass through clinics and emergency rooms, with one study finding that 88 percent of survivors sought health care while they were being trafficked. Most, however, are never recognized. In a 2022 survey, a majority of health care workers said that they had never been trained to recognize the signs of human trafficking, and another 2017 survey found that most would not know how to properly respond if they did.
While Mrs. Montemayor was being trafficked, she would often cycle in and out the hospital with major kidney and bladder infections. She didn’t know how to tell the hospital staff what she was being forced to do, and she worried what would happen if she did. “But I remember crying and asking for help and telling them I’m hurting,” Mrs. Montemayor said, trying to tell them she wasn’t safe, “and nobody really paid attention to me.”
Given these encounters, Mrs. Montemayor arrived at her first tattoo removal appointment with Dr. Polder wary and guarded. But over time, Mrs. Montemayor opened up and helped Dr. Polder better understand how trafficking shapes and scars the body.
These experiences have pushed dermatologists to make tattoo removal more widely available to survivors. The American Society for Laser Medicine and Surgery, for example, maintains a directory of nearly 100 doctors who provide free tattoo removal to survivors of sex trafficking, although that’s far from enough to meet the demand, Dr. Polder said.
Some dermatologists are also sharing what they’ve learned with other physicians. Dr. Kourosh, for example, has given lectures to emergency medicine and primary care doctors about the wounds, scars, infections and tattoos that can signal trafficking.
With the American Academy of Dermatology, she also developed a resource tool kit and the Skin Signs of Trafficking Education Advocacy and Resources app to help doctors recognize trafficked patients earlier in the course of their abuse. Later this year, the American Medical Association will also be releasing a training course that Dr. Kourosh helped develop.
The hope is that, with more resources and training, clinicians can offer a safe, nonjudgmental space for victims to open up, when they’re ready. “We have the responsibility of preparedness, and it’s something that we were never given the memo about in our training,” Dr. Kourosh said.
For Mrs. Montemayor, this support came years after she had been trafficked, but it still helped pave the way to a different life. Today, she lives with her husband and two children in Ponder and runs a youth transition home, providing a safe place for boys who are leaving juvenile detention but can’t return to their own families.
When she looks at her skin now, she no longer sees the trafficker’s claim on her body, but rather the new life that she says God granted her. “Healing is possible, help is possible,” Mrs. Montemayor said. “It’s possible to change the trajectory of your life.”
Simar Bajaj covers health and wellness for The Times.
The post They Were Tattooed and Trafficked. Dermatologists Are Removing the Scars. appeared first on New York Times.
