I was sold by Mum and Dad to make images of child abuse
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Aged four, Raven Kaliana's parents took her to a film studio where she was sexually abused in front of cameras. For most of her childhood they regularly trafficked her to the sex industry. Now she campaigns against child abuse
Nuala Calvi
Sat 5 Oct 2013 07.15 BST
One of Raven Kaliana's earliest memories is being taken to a family portrait studio by her parents, at around the age of four. The studio was in the basement of a department store in a town 50 miles from their home. Once they had arrived, they waited for another couple to arrive with their own child.
"Would you like to have your picture taken with this cute little boy?" her mother asked, before the parents left the kids with the photographer and retired to the cafe upstairs. But while they sat eating ice cream, the images being made in the studio down below were far from happy family portraits. Raven and her companion had just been sold into the child abuse industry.
It was to be the beginning of a 15-year ordeal, which saw Raven regularly trafficked by her parents and other members of an organised crime ring from her home in a middle-class suburb in the American north-west to locations all over the US and abroad. In her teens, the crimes were often perpetrated in Los Angeles, where many film studios provided ample opportunity for the underground child abuse industry in the 70s and 80s.
Her father, precariously self-employed after losing his teaching job, was violent towards her younger brother, but since she had become the family breadwinner, Raven was granted a peculiar status. "My father always favoured me because I brought in the money β I was supporting our whole family. My younger brother was jealous because of my dad's special treatment of me.
"My father was also quite affectionate towards me whereas he would beat my brother to a pulp. Although he did hit me, he wanted me to stay intact because the less scars I had, the more I was worth."
Inevitably, as she grew older, Raven's value to her abusers decreased and subsequently the kinds of films she was required to take part in became more extreme and violent.
Yet from a young age, she had learned from her parents to rationalise and deny what was going on within the family. "It's the same way that someone who has a problem with alcohol will rationalise their behaviour β 'It's only this many drinks. It's before noon but, oh well, just today'.
"I remember my mother saying things like, 'Oh, they'll never remember it,' like people do when they get their babies' ears pierced. I told myself that my parents meant well, that what I was going through was what was necessary to help my family. It was paying our mortgage."
As we sit talking in a central London cafe, there are two large suitcases on the floor next to us, both full of puppets she has made. A graduate of the puppetry course at the Royal Central School of Speech