Sex-trafficking survivor was pimped out at 12 — and now works to help other victims heal

Melanie Thompson was pimped out at 12, kept locked in a closet until she was “broken in” — only to then be forced to walk the streets of the Big Apple selling her body.

Now 27, Thompson is an outreach and advocacy coordinator with the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, and among the community leaders who spoke up Tuesday about how “sex buyers” are fueling New York City’s booming illicit sex trade.

“If we do it without a pimp or a gun to our head it is because of something that we’re lacking,” she said. “We’re lacking a resource. The system of prostitution thrives on you being there and provides a fallacy of resources to keep you there.

“And that’s why we’re calling out the demand — the sex buyers,” she said. “That’s why we’re calling out this issue.”

The sex-trafficking survivor told The Post she was beaten nightly while being held as a young sex slave in Queens, and only rescued thanks to an anonymous tip sent to police — before being plunged into the foster care system and, eventually, devoting her life to advocacy helping other trafficking victims.

“In New York City, it’s very common,” Thompson said. “In my case, it was a friend of a friend of a friend from your middle school who was working with or knew an older dude. That’s very common.

“In the neighborhoods I grew up in there are “Romeo pimps,” where they pretend to be a boyfriend. That’s the most common familial trafficking,” she said.

Thompson maintained that cops, elected officials and prosecutors are simply looking the other way.

“The reality is that we have to look at this as an oppressive system that thrives on other oppressive systems, namely patriarchy, misogyny, capitalism, racism classes — I can keep going,” she said as she joined other advocates at a Manhattan press conference Tuesday.

Thompson said she was a middle schooler when a group of older teen boys invited her and her friends to a party and plied her with drink until she blacked out.

When she woke up she was being raped by a 17-year-old boy — and when she tried to get away a strange older man stopped her at the top of the stairs and told her, “You’re not going anywhere.”

“The older man took me across the street to [a] squatter’s flat and it started with him bringing men to the house, I guess to break me in, for lack of a better term,” she said. “Then from there it went from him bringing to the street and I was street walking for a while.

“And then that turned into online ads — Craigslist, Backpage.”

After more than a month, cops plucked her from her life of horror and she was thrown into the foster care system. By the time she was 14, she was volunteering as a victims’ advocate, she said.

Thompson would later earn a degree in women and gender studies from Hunter College.

“Survivors will come up to you and say, ‘I’ve never said this to anybody before, but I’m a survivor and because you spoke, now I feel empowered to say something,’” she described.

“For me, it’s really just about finding what motivates you, trying to remember who you are or who you are outside of that experience,” Thompson said.

“Also, [to] recognize that I wasn’t at fault,” she added. “It takes years, but once you can rid yourself of the guilt and shame that comes with being in the life, when you recognize that rape is not your fault, even if you didn’t say ‘No.’ Even if you laid there and took it.”