FAMILIAL SEX TRAFFICKING: AN INSIDER’S PERSPECTIVE
Mary Jo Ross grew up in a family that practiced familial sex trafficking, satanic ritual abuse, and other types of abuse. With 17 years of lived experience, Mary Jo focuses this module on the prevalence of familial sex trafficking with an inside perspective on what it was like to be trafficked by four family members.
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68 learners
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1 hour 7 minutes
Video duration
What's included in this online course?
A step-by-step guide
Mary Jo Ross’ lived experience and expertise will help you become educated, equipped, and empowered to identify and assist the nearly invisible victims/survivors of familial sex trafficking.
Study at your own pace
You can enroll in this course whenever you want, and study at your own time and pace.
Unique learning experience
You will not learn just by watching many hours of videos. We are offering interactive courses with different media and quizzes, to improve your knowledge.
Mary Jo Ross
A survivor of many types of abuse from birth to right before she started her senior year of high school, Mary Jo was born into a generational satanic cult, sex trafficked by four family members, and experienced awful things you don’t want to imagine.
After years of feeling ashamed about what happened to her, she finally realized in 2022 that she was not the one who should be ashamed. The abusers should be. Mary Jo discovered that telling her story and supporting other survivors has helped her heal. It also permits others to share their story.
Even after years of therapy, instead of using drugs, alcohol, cutting, starving, binging, or many other things to keep the feelings and memories deep inside and try to cut them off completely, she became a workaholic. After all, when you work seven days a week for years, it’s easy to ignore those feelings and memories.
A single mom without child support, she quickly got caught up in work. As an executive director of up to six nonprofit state professional associations simultaneously, she also owned a for-profit association management and consulting company. Mary Jo also helped start a national nonprofit on top of that.
Work travel kept her on the road 26 weekends a year for three straight years after her children left home. She became severely burned out and had to close her business because it was too dependent on her. It was excruciating because Mary Jo discovered that her work was her identity. Knowing that she’s not meant for the corporate world, she opened a consulting business along the way and helps other small business owners avoid some of the mistakes she made along the way.
Mary Jo had two books published in 2023:
Can My Business Survive My Vacation? is a workbook she published in July 2023 that covers all business areas to show the owner what to do before, during, and after a “real” vacation. That same preparation allows the business to be prepared for disasters as well.
STOP THE SILENCE® Thriving After Child Sexual Abuse with lead author Pamela J. Pine, Ph.D., is a collaboration with 23 authors from nine countries sharing stories and tips that helped them heal. Stop the Silence® is a department of the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (IVAT) committed to the prevention, treatment, and mitigation of child sexual abuse (CSA), other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and related interpersonal trauma.
She also volunteers for The Demand Project (thedemandproject.org), which exists to eradicate human trafficking, online enticement, child sexual abuse material, and the commercial exploitation of children.