By Tanita Matthews
THIS BRAVE woman FAKED her own DEATH to escape SEX TRAFFICKERS before turning her trauma into a thriving SEX COACHING business – claiming it’s helped her LOVE HERSELF.
Founder of ‘The O Factors’- a seven step programme dedicated to tantric therapy, Jennelle Gordon (37) from California, USA, was a victim of sex trafficking at the age of 19 and faked her own death to escape.
The former army vet was discharged from the military due to an injury she sustained during initial training for the Gulf War and found herself without anywhere to go, her ‘extremist fundamental Christian cult’ family had shunned her and she was without direction.
Jennelle was picked up in Fort Hood Texas by a man who she believed cared about her and wanted to look after her, but within months she was drafted into his depraved world and pimped out to clients in exchange for cash.
Eventually Jennelle escaped, but she soon fell into the clutches of a dangerous and violent who forced her into exotic dancing and sought to sexually exploit her.
Jennelle eventually fled to Thailand where she found solstice in tantra – a spiritual Indian practice that is based on a set of spiritual practices that direct the universal energies into the practitioner, thereby leading to liberation.
“They call them ‘finesse pimps’ where he’s pretending to be your boyfriend and in the end, he manipulates you into doing things and you’re sexually exploiting yourself,” Jennelle said.
“I was really miserable and wanted to get out of that situation and I started modelling with cars. I met a photographer from Vegas, I told him about what was going on, and he helped me escape my first trafficker, and then I moved to Vegas.
“I was waitressing at the time at Hooters in Vegas and I waited on my second abuser. Months later I was recovering from a really traumatic beating – I was forced to go back to work and I still had strangulation marks all over my body, I had bruises all over from being hit – I was not in a position to do anything let alone be in a strip club making money.
“I was working with my colleague, another dancer, and she said, ‘don’t you want to be happy?’ I had like $300 in my pocket and I needed like $3,000 to go home and not suffer the consequences. I just said, ‘I want out’.
“So, she reached out to him (her pimp) and told him, ‘there’s been an accident and she’s passed.’ He didn’t even care so that broke the cycle of realising that this person did not love me and that’s how I was able to initially get away from him.
“I finally fled to Texas but then I got caught up in another situation. It was just what I knew, and you always go home to what you know.
“What finally changed my journey was when a man walking into the club in San Antonio in Texas where he told me he had attended a tantara workshop and he said, ‘If you find a school, a research one, I’ll send you’.
“I didn’t know this man from ‘Adam’, but I had no one else, and when you have no one you have to trust someone, and so he sent me to the school I studied (tantra) at in Thailand.
“I booked a ticket and I stayed there because it was so healing for me and I realised this was what I wanted to do with my life.
“Growing up in what some might call an ‘extremist fundamental Christian cult’ and then moving where sex was not talked about and definitely sending you to hell, and then moving into the extreme polar opposite of the exotic dance world; and then moving to this whole other extreme of learning to see all energy as divine energy even sexual energy was just the healing that I needed.
“It was about learning to love yourself and that was the biggest message for me because I hated myself at that point.”
In 2015 Jennelle returned to the US, pregnant with her son. She was living in a friend’s garage with her newborn son in California and was desperately trying to figure out how she could give her son a better life.
Jennelle’s background meant that she had a limited education, having only ever been home-schooled until she was at a seventh-grade level.
A single mother, she enrolled in school and thanks to a mentor was given somewhere more suitable to stay but her hardships were still looming, until a message from inspirational speaker, Tony Robbins, launched her career into a whole new dimension.
“I had a baby, postpartum, I’m a full-time student, I have learning difficulties as a result of multiple concussions and head trauma from ten years of abuse and I’m trying to keep a roof over my head and I didn’t want to live like that anymore, it was too much to bear,” said Jennelle.
“I had given a speech at a class on campus and made a club and joined the debate team and realised that this was my mission to help other women like me to get out of that life or even to get out of that life.
“One night I was scrolling through Instagram and saw this post from Tony and it said, ‘stop worrying about what could go wrong and start thinking about all the things that could go right’, and it just spoke to me in a way that I haven’t experienced.
“I commented on his post along with several other thousands of people, I never thought he was going to write me back, but when I woke up he had written me and said, ‘I want to help you and help you help more women. I want you to come to one of my events and I’d love to meet you and perhaps you could come speak to our school where we help women who have got out of that life.
“I met him, and he sent me to his retreat, and we developed a rapport and he kept sending me to his events.
“After that I said, ‘well I don’t just want a club, because no one takes me seriously if you have a club but if you have a non-profit you get a bit more respect and people will maybe take me more seriously and I can help more women,’ so I formed ‘Beyond Freedom’.”
Born in 2017, ‘Beyond Freedom’ works with victims of sex trafficking and helps them to leave behind the horrors of being exploited.
As well as helping thousands of women navigate their lives beyond sex trafficking, Jennelle also coaches people as part of her tantra training.
In 2018 she developed ‘The O-Factors’ working with people from around the world to heal through tantric practices.
“What gives me my ‘X Factor’ is that I’ve experienced every kind of physical and sexual abuse that you can probably imagine,” said Jennelle.
“I can empathise and connect with people in a way that is effective and that’s what people need, to feel connected and to feel heard and they don’t want to feel judged. When you have someone with my past that is sitting in front of them, there is nothing that they can need to feel shameful about.
“The O Factor’s main goal is to help men and women connect back to the intimacy within themselves, to understand that it’s just an experience that it doesn’t define them it doesn’t negate what they’re going to be, or if they’re successful or not and it’s just an experience, it’s a painful one, but together we can shake the shame.”
Jennelle is about to release a book on her experience and is dedicating her time to raising her son and to continuing to help people who have been victims of abuse and trauma. She hopes sharing her story will inspire others to live their best life no matter what their circumstances.
“No matter their trauma their triumph is greater, and people can truly live the outstanding life that they desire,” Jennelle said.
For more information see www.mediadrumworld.com