UNTIL the age of 12, Kate Price lived in fear of her violent father, who subjected her to frequent beatings and sickening sexual assaults.
But over the decades that followed, she was plagued by disturbing, hazy flashbacks that indicated she’d endured an even darker horror, with only a breadcrumb trail of clues that included a mysterious figure called ‘Chicken Plucker’.
Kate Price, now in her 50s, told The Sun how she broke a cycle of abuse to create a loving family
Kate as a young girl posing with her childhood cat on her family’s front porch
It was only when she embarked on radical treatment with a trauma specialist that she unlocked hidden memories and discovered she’d been horrifically drugged and sold for sex by her father to strangers in laybys across Pennsylvania.
“With my eyes open, I saw a hundred trucker men who had raped me,” she says now.
Kate’s gut-wrenching story first came to prominence in a Pulitzer Prize-nominated investigation that shone a light on the sickening underground network of predators operating in the US state, with judges, attorneys, and law enforcement officials corroborating key details of her shocking flashbacks.
Her father, who has since died, was never charged. He was investigated by federal officials but denied any wrongdoing.
In her remarkably powerful new memoir – serialised in three parts here for The Sun – Kate, now in her 50s, tells how she broke a cycle of abuse to create a loving family of her own and become an advocate for trafficking victims…
Part One: ‘You will always be mine’
“Where’s Daddy?” was the first sentence I ever spoke. I asked this not because I wanted to find him, but because I didn’t want him to find me.
Most days, my father would stop at a bar on the way home from work and drink with his friends.
By the time he walked in he was fuelled with liquor and rage, looking for my older sister Sissy or me.
He’d ambush whomever he found first, pounding us with clenched fists, careful not to leave any bruises on the more visible parts of our bodies.
Punches to the stomach and knocks to the sides of our heads were standard. Choking happened on a less regular basis.
My father often woke me hours after I had gone to sleep and loaded me into his pickup or took me to our garage behind the house, though the details of what happened after were vague.
On those nights I often woke to the smell of rubbing alcohol and the feeling of a cold ball wiping my bicep before I felt my father’s rough hands prick my arm with a needle.
Or he’d wake me with instructions. “Drink this,” he’d whisper, handing me a plastic bottle filled with a gooey liquid that tasted like cough syrup.
He would whisper, “Shhh, we’re going to a party.” My body would go limp as my father took off my nightgown and changed me into clothes, my mind sputtering in and out of consciousness as he carried my listless body outside.
I always woke up in the morning wearing my nightgown but no underwear. My hands would cup the soreness between my legs.
I’d have no idea what had happened. My brain struggling to patch together various slivers of memory – flashes of glaring headlights, empty beer bottles, an abandoned warehouse, a movie theatre, and our backyard garage; wisps of smells of motor oil, wet grass, whiskey, beer, and cheap cologne filling my nose; the sounds of running truck engines and men laughing.
No longer wanting to deal with the despair, I grabbed the first pill bottle I could find and swallowed one pill after another
Kate Price
When I was six, my father discovered I had a crush on my neighbour Bobby, who was a year older.
In one swift motion, he yanked me forward, grabbing and turning my left wrist to expose the tenderest part of my arm. Then he snatched his ever-present pocketknife.
I stood frozen as he dug an X into my forearm. Despite the pain, I was too shocked to scream.
“You are mine,” he said, spitting the words as he carved. “You will always be mine.”
I’m not sure whether my father carried or threw me down the two flights of stairs to our basement. Either way, I passed out. When I woke, my entire body ached as I replayed the relentless punches and kicks.
I was certain my father intended to kill me and might one day succeed.
And it would be my fault, because as he had told me, “You make me do bad things.”
SUPPLIEDA young Kate poses with a basket on Easter Sunday[/caption]
Later on, I decided to take matters into my own hands.
One detail lodged in my brain was a name I’d heard my father use on his CB radio – a man called Chicken Plucker. Who was this?
One day, I leaned into my father’s truck and picked up the CB microphone.
“I am looking for ‘Chicken Plucker,” I said. A voice crackled, “This is Chicken Plucker …”
Without warning my father appeared. He just smirked. The curious part of me was satisfied. Whatever was happening to me was real. My quest to learn the truth had begun.
I’d have no idea what had happened. My brain struggling to patch together various slivers of memory
Kate Price
My father was the only authority I had on boyfriends and girlfriends.
“You make me feel so special and loved,” he said, as we lay together in my bed. “This is our special time that’s just for us. Don’t ever tell Mommy or Sissy.”
I didn’t protest. At the time, I thought this was normal, especially after he had explained, “This happened to me, so it’s happening to you.”
I didn’t know I was allowed to say no. “Only special little girls get to be sexy,” he said.
On one hand, I liked the way his affection made me feel important, yet on the other hand, such intimacy made me feel like I was his wife, not his little girl.
When I was twelve, my mother sat me down.
“Your father’s gone,” she said. “And he’s not coming back. He’s marrying someone else.”
SuppliedKate poses for her second grade school photo in 1977[/caption]
While relieved I no longer had to suffer, a part of me was crushed and betrayed. My father’s mistress was only seven years older than Sissy.
When I finally met this woman months later, she dripped with sex, the opposite of my mother in every way.
My sense of shame and despair around what had transpired in my home in rural Pennsylvania, which I couldn’t tell anyone about, peaked one winter night aged 16.
No longer wanting to deal with the despair, I grabbed the first pill bottle I could find and swallowed one pill after another. Nothing happened.
I could breathe easy for the very first time after my father and stepmother moved to Florida.
Part Two: Confronting the horror
After her father and stepmother moved to Florida, Kate managed to turn her life around by going to university.
But it wasn’t until years later that she met trauma specialist Dr Bessel van der Kolk, who used eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a form of psychotherapy designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.
She learned her body stored the pain from those early experiences, as hidden memories reemerged of how her father had trafficked her to strangers in laybys across Pennsylvania’s Interstate 80.
As Kate drew strength from her treatments and learned more about sexual abuse, she learned her dad was working as an electrician at a hospital – and so wrote to them to warn them about his predatory history.
Hearing the hospital took steps to protect their patients, she found the courage to confront her father about his abuse…
I was about to speak the biggest truth of my entire life. In my EMDR sessions I’d pictured challenging my father like this, and now I was ready to speak truth to power in real life.
“So, Dad, you know how you apologised that time a couple of years ago for being a bad father, for leaving us?” I said. “Well, what about admitting and apologising for hitting me … sexually abusing me? Dad, you raped me. A lot.”
I stopped short of confronting my father about trafficking me; mustering the courage to speak up about his abuse was difficult enough.
Silence. Followed by an explosion.
“Now she’s saying I raped her!” he screamed to his third and most recent wife.
I wasn’t going to let this go. It had taken me 28 years to find my voice and my truth.
“Dad, this happened,” I maintained. “You know this happened. These things . . . you did this to me.”
But there would be no remembering, no admitting, no apologising. Right before the line went dead, my father shouted, “Don’t you ever call me again!”
Part Three: Fighting the traffickers
Kate is speaking out to shed a light on what children are still enduring
In 2003, Kate married Chris, who had supported her when she’d first told him about her past. They later adopted a son.
Then, over ten years, she investigated the crimes against her. And, although her father died recently, she had long given up hope of ever getting justice…
The police had never investigated any domestic violence disturbances at my childhood home or arrested my father.
Internet searches to identify the liquid my father made me drink also came up empty.
I suspected the substance was some sort of medicine my father procured at the hospital where he worked as an electrician or flavoured alcohol but never found any confirmation.
I eventually found a clue. I discovered ‘Chicken Plucker’ means “paedophile” in trucker slang.
I wasn’t seeking vengeance against my father: I already had so many personal triumphs – loving family, loyal friends, thriving career, and a loving community – that I didn’t need to exact a pound of flesh from an old man who couldn’t hurt me any longer.
I sought the truth.
My father and scores of men had objectified my body. And others allowed this dehumanization and transactional violence to happen.
I could have charged him with the crimes he committed against me. But I didn’t have faith he would be convicted. I didn’t trust a jury of my father’s peers.
The crimes perpetrated against me ravaged my central nervous system but have put my life’s purpose into clear focus. Fighting for justice is in my bones
Kate Price
I am sharing my tragic upbringing to shed a light on what children are still enduring. The crimes perpetrated against me ravaged my central nervous system but have put my life’s purpose into clear focus. Fighting for justice is in my bones.
I have also joined the local anti–human trafficking task force and provide CSEC (commercial and sexual exploitation of children) training for local law enforcement, advocates, policy-makers, and direct service providers.
My father told me I was “different” from him and my mother after I tracked down “Chicken Plucker” when I was six. I never quite understood what he meant. Until now.
Now I know I am unstoppable.
Our familial legacy of enabling and perpetrating violence and exploitation ends with me. I will work to disrupt cycles of child sexual abuse and trafficking until my last breath.
This is my calling.
This Happened To Me by Kate Price is published by LEAP at £22.
If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this article, please call the Samaritans for free on 116123.
This Happened To Me by Kate Price is available now Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
