A chilling human story: Who is Antonio Salazar-Hobson?
He was kidnapped when he was four years old and sexually abused for years! Now he fights for the weak... Antonio Salazar-Hobson did not see his family for 24 years after he was kidnapped. His desire and ideals to reunite with his mother helped him navigate a path through hell.
He remembers every detail, even though it happened more than 60 years ago. When he closes his eyes, he's transported back to that hot Sunday in 1960, when he was a kid playing with his siblings in the backyard in suburban Arizona.
Nearby, a car idles at the bottom of the narrow passage that connects the backyard to the road. And a man leans out the window and calls out to her. He is very afraid of the man and the woman sitting next to him. His brother and sister are the same way; He clearly remembers the fear in their voices: “Thank you very much, but Antonio cannot come to get ice cream.”
Then suddenly the man gets out of the car and moves towards them at surprising speed. While the children are frozen in horror, the man swoops down on him, hugs him, and throws him into the backseat. The car speeds away, leaving their screaming siblings behind in the dust.
The car reaches California in just a few hours. It would be 24 years before Salazar-Hobson would see his family again...
What happened to him in the period between his abduction and his reunion with his family was so horrifying that it is almost impossible to express it in words. After being abducted from the backyard and dragged into a nightmarish world of violence and sexual abuse, Salazar-Hobson spent the rest of her life in a never-ending cycle of fear, pain, and loneliness.
Salazar-Hobson's story is much more than the evil done to her. Despite his experiences and his stolen childhood, he achieved extraordinary academic success. He became one of the most successful labor rights lawyers in the United States, representing vulnerable and powerless communities; He devoted his life to justice and mercy. “To avoid being swallowed by the darkness, I walked towards the light and survived,” he says.
Salazar-Hobson was the 11th of 14 children of Mexican agricultural worker parents who earned their living from Arizona's fruit, vegetable, and cotton fields. He explains that they have a hard and cruel life of never-ending poverty and working.
His earliest memory is of sitting in the back of a station wagon at the edge of huge berry fields in the tremendous heat of summer, listening to the drone of planes flying low over the workers' bent backs and raining down pesticides.
His father was a terrible man, a cruel man who beat them all. “My mother, Petra, was a kind, elegant, and intuitive person who had been beaten by my father for years. She had a great love for all of us. For the first three years of my life, I didn't speak at all and was my mother's special child. “He literally overwhelmed me with love,” he says.
Getting back to my mother was my only reason for survival. She taught me to love myself. I breathed in this love and held on to it tightly. This love kept me going after I was ripped away from him.
When Salazar-Hobson was four years old, a couple moved into a house 100 yards away from them. John and Sarah Hobson were the first white people the Salazars met. The Hobsons, who both spoke Spanish fluently, became friends with the family. “They bought us all new shoes, the first new shoes we ever had. They gave money for baby christenings, invited us to watch cartoons on TV, and Sarah baked us cookies. “We never thought they could be bad people,” he says.
Five months later, the Hobsons moved out of town again and soon invited Salazar-Hobson to their home for the weekend. He says he was raped as soon as he got there. A few weeks later he was sent to stay with them again; This time there were three more men in the house...
“At that time I was almost mute, I couldn't speak. I think that's why they chose me. After that day at their house, I stopped talking altogether. "I started losing weight and was in deep shock and shame," he says.
The third time he was sent to live with the Hobsons, he was subjected to a terrifying attack by a group of men, and this time, when he returned home, his family finally realized that there was something serious going on. “And they said, 'You'll never go to that house again.' So a few weeks later the Hobsons came to our house and took me away.”
In the moments after his abduction, Salazar-Hobson remembers sitting in the back of the car, stretching his skinny legs and looking at the new shoes his kidnappers had bought him a few months earlier. “I remember John and Sarah Hobson not saying a word to me in that car. "I knew terrible things were going to happen," he says.
He says he was drugged and marketed for sex by the Hobsons, and forced to spend an entire summer on a farm used by pedophiles. “The third summer was the lowest point and I decided to kill myself because I felt that would be the only way I could get back to my family, but my attempt failed,” he says. “After that, I was sent back to the Hobsons. "They didn't dare to send me there again."
He spent the following years rebuilding his relationship with his mother and siblings. He became one of the most successful and productive labor rights lawyers in the United States. He took on multi-billion dollar companies. He represented Indigenous and LGBTQ+ farmworker communities and won case after case.
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How we survive
At four, I was kidnapped and sex-trafficked for years. Now I fight for the powerless – and win every case
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/25/at-four-i-was-kidnapped-and-sex-trafficked-for-years-now-i-fight-for-the-powerless-and-win-every-case