A Black Girl Who Was a Victim of Sex Trafficking; Another Unjust American Verdict

In what world does a 16-year-old girl escape her sexual abuser and pimp, take his life to save her own, and ultimately end up sentenced to over 11 years in prison?

Only in America, or most likely in America, when the victim is a black girl and her abuser was a white man twice her age.

The case of sex trafficking victim Chrystul Kizer gained some attention when she first came to light. But on August 19, she was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison after prosecutors and a judge declared her a perpetrator, not a teenage victim.

It has been a six-year battle. There has been no clemency for her, despite protections meant to help victims of sexual slavery who commit “crimes” survive.

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She served a year and a half sentence in prison by a white judge in Kenosha, Wisconsin. She will be on court supervision for ten years after her release.

She pleaded guilty earlier this year to second-degree reckless homicide with a dangerous weapon, a charge that could have landed her in prison for up to three decades.

Her suffering and the insanity of the conviction and sentence are horrific. But the details of her case reveal major, unforgivable police failures.

“Kizer, now 24, initially faced a possible life sentence for the fatal shooting of 34-year-old Randall Volar III when she was 17. Volar, who was white, had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer, who is Black, for more than a year,” the Washington Post noted.

“More than 30 states have affirmative defense provisions that allow trafficking victims to be acquitted of certain charges against them if they can prove at trial that a crime was committed because of their abuse,” the Post reported.

Prosecutors say the teen hatched a plan to steal her white pimp’s BMW and did not kill him to avoid unwanted sexual advances.

“A 2019 Washington Post investigation found that the Kenosha Police Department knew Volar was abusing underage Black girls for nearly three months before his death. After a 15-year-old Black girl fled his home wearing nothing but a bra and jacket, police raided Volar’s ​​home and found hundreds of child sexual abuse videos; the stash included videos Volar had made of Kizer and girls who looked as young as 12. But as the investigation continued, police and prosecutors released Volar,” the Post reported.

“Kizer’s attorney described Volar as a ‘predator’ and a ‘pedophile’ who exploited young black girls in the Milwaukee area. He was arrested, quickly released and continued his behavior,” Chrystul’s attorney told the judge.

Chrystul told the court on August 19 that “older girls she was friends with told her it was a way to earn the money she needed for snacks, school supplies and food for her younger siblings,” the Post reported.

Her abuser and pimp, “in exchange for sexual acts, Volar would take her on dates and provide her with money, shopping trips and gifts such as a locket that she came to cherish. … Kizer said he also sold her to other men; Volar would give her drugs to make her more comfortable as he drove her to a hotel to meet other men and then take their money.”

Things got out of hand on June 4, 2018, when the distressed child visited Mr. Volar, who “sent an Uber to take her to his Kenosha home, where they stayed up all night. Volar began to massage her leg, but Kizer turned him down, saying she didn’t want to do it, she said. Kizer would later tell detectives that Volar had pushed her to the ground before she could get away. She grabbed a gun from her purse and shot him. She set a fire in his home and fled in his BMW…”

Prosecutors “framed her behavior as a premeditated murder,” the Post reported. They also described the Black victim as “greedy,” “impulsive” and “untrustworthy.”

What happened to #MeToo and religious women?

It doesn’t count when it comes to black girls and women in this society, a society that the Reverend Elijah Muhammad warned we would never receive full and complete freedom and justice in.

“The reality is that in the United States, we have an abuse-to-prison pipeline that overwhelmingly impacts Black women and girls. We have a criminal justice system that punishes Chrystul Kizer and too many other girls like her for surviving abuse, exploitation and gender-based violence,” Dr. Sydney McKinney, executive director of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, said in June.

“Courts across the country are criminalizing Black women and girls for surviving abuse and sexual violence. Survivors need support to access healing services, not punishment. Yet too many are punished and incarcerated for the actions they take to survive.”

After experiencing sexual abuse, poverty and deprivation in her early childhood, Chrystul ends her life with a prison sentence, longer than the prison sentences served by white murderers of black people.

None of the officers involved in the 2020 killing of Breonna Taylor have even been charged. Former Minneapolis police officer Thomas Lane was recently released from prison despite pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the 2020 death of George Floyd. Former Aurora, Colorado police officer Randy Roedema was sentenced to 14 months in prison for his role in the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, a young Black man who was put in a chokehold and later died at the hands of officers and paramedics.

Remember the fatal shooting of Atatiana Jefferson by a Fort Worth police officer in 2019? Aaron Dean, the white officer who recklessly shot into her home, killing her, was sentenced to 11 years and 10 months in prison.

It’s been nearly six years since Botham Jean was shot to death while eating ice cream in his Dallas apartment. That’s when Dallas police officer Amber Guyger walked into his apartment and shot him dead. The white female officer claimed she went to the wrong apartment. She was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

How can a black girl who is a victim of human trafficking be punished the same as officers who shot black people under ridiculous, tragic and unconscionable circumstances?

How does she get more jail time than those who contributed to the deaths of unarmed black people? How is she charged with a crime when white cops seem to be acquitted every day after slaughtering black people?

And when will relief come? We must never forget that we are living in the time of God’s coming and choosing black people in America for His people. Every step the open enemy takes to torment, abuse and slaughter us only hastens his ultimate, final demise in a rapidly disintegrating nation, as the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has warned.

God Himself has come to dry our tears and relieve our suffering. He has promised that our open enemy will not escape judgment. And indeed Allah (God) never breaks His promise.