Woman Whose Family Abused Her Looked To Rent One On Craigslist

Posted December 7, 2013 15:25 by Alan

The 26-year-old woman who suffered an abusive past wants to rent the kind of family she never had.

William Jessup University student Jackie Turner has faced a lifetime of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, survived the rough life of the streets and is now in search of a little comfort and joy.

“I am looking to rent a mom and dad who can give me attention and make me feel like the light of their life just for a couple of days because I really need it,” Turner wrote on Craigslist, the popular online classified ad service.

“I’ve never felt the touch of my Mom hugging me and holding me. I don’t know what it’s like to look in my dad’s eyes and feel love instead of hatred,” she told Channel 10…

Dozens of families replied saying that would be happy to take Turner into their embrace at no charge. It was the other people who she heard from who surprised Turner.

“People who have been raped, people who have been abused, people who have been passed on from foster home to foster home saying the same things,” she said. Many of them opened up to Turner for the first time, revealing their own stories of abuse and survival.

“People are afraid to open their mouths and say, ‘This hurts, this sucks’,” she said tearfully. Her ad gave them a safe space to open up.

Now instead of renting a family, Turner said she is creating one, bringing together the other survivors who contacted her.