Alicia Kozakiewicz Photo: supplied
Warning: This interview contains discussion of sexual assault and themes relating to it.
In 2002 Alicia Kozakiewicz was 13 years old, living in her family home with mum and dad in Pennsylvania, when she was abducted by a man she met online.
For four days she was missing, before the FBI got a tip off and she was rescued.
Somehow Alicia managed to return to a sort of normal, going to school, getting involved with study and extra-curricular activities and graduating with high honors.
She's now working towards her masters in Forensic Psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.
But her big focus is campaigning on internet safety, and advocating for "Alicia's Law" - which creates a dedicated revenue source for law enforcement units that combat child sexual exploitation.
The law been passed in nine states - her aim is to get it into all States in the Union.
She says that grooming of children is growing online globally, and that it needs to be addressed.
Alicia has testified before Congress, co-authored a survival guide for returning abductees, trained members of the FBI and founded The Alicia Project to promote her aims.
She talks to Kathryn Ryan.
Read an edited snapshot of their conversation
KR: Can you explain how you have recovered from the events of those four days and what they must have done to you?
Well those four days were a lifetime. And I can honestly say the little girl that I was – was murdered over those four days. But thankfully, I was rescued and I was given back my life and… sort of found a new normal. Which was not easy there are still days where it is not easy of course, but I think it’s really important to note whenever anybody goes through any sort of trauma, and abduction, sexual abuse a bad relationship a horrific childhood whatever it may be that person be given time to heal, and not to be rushed and to be allowed to heal in their own time and in their own way. And that’s what I was allowed. My family really let me grieve for the loss of the little girl that I was. And I think it’s so important to let yourself be hurt and because somebody has hurt you and you have been hurt. And one of the main end points of healing for me was speaking out about what happened to me and taking this awful, horrible disgusting thing and giving it a purpose and a reason, and using it help others.
Your parents had talked to you about stranger danger, but this was the early days of the internet for many people, so the fear of online predators probably hadn’t had that much publicity at that stage had it?
No, my family certainly didn’t hear anything. My mum brings up the fact that there were urban legends she had heard which she took as the sort of ‘claw in the door at Lovers Lane’, it didn’t seem very serious. There were, again, no stories on the news and nothing to bring this to reality, and to be honest my parents didn’t really understand computers or the internet. It’s really hard to look back at where we are today and look back where they were then.
What type of a site were you on when you began a conversation with this person pretending to be someone your age?
This was a yahoo, or am chat room, this was not Facebook or Instagram or Snapchat or kik. This was long before any of those things and those applications even existed. And that’s something that really shocks kids when I speak to them today they’ll say “oh, did you meet them on Instagram, or did you meet them on kik, or Snapchat?” and I’ll tell them no I didn’t, and I’ll think about all the different levels of danger today and how much this has grown. And while the internet can be amazing and these applications can be amazing and so much fun, there are many evils and monsters we have to protect ourselves from.
What has made the life you lived possible right back from when you were rescued?
Truly, it’s time. Time doesn’t heel all wounds, but it can make them fade a little bit and with time you learn to manage the wounds that have been inflicted on you.
How did you learnt to trust again?
It was very difficult to trust others, and to trust myself that I’d made this huge mistake and I’d made it… I didn’t even know I was making it – could that happen again? Could I fall victim again? Could I make another mistake? And that took some time to figure out a good routine of making good decisions and focusing on my studies and working on becoming the best Alicia that I could. In terms of trusting others, that took a long time too for a lot of different reasons. When it came to romantic relationships, especially it was difficult. I could immediately be thrust back to a flashback episode if a gentleman would hold my hand, or hug me it was very difficult. And then the fact of just trusting someone again - but that is also healed by time.
I don’t really know what steps you can take to help you to trust others because it’s really on that other person to be trustworthy too, so you have to have trust in yourself and trust in others and realise that world is a beautiful, wonderful place even though something really awful happened to you, it happened to you, it’s not who you are and not what the world is.
