NEW GLOUCESTER — When she was 19, Jasmine Fiandaca met a man who would change her life.

He was sweet, kind and charming, she said. He bought her things, showered her with attention and told her she was beautiful and loved.

After six months, he had groomed her to sell her body for him.

At a conference on human trafficking at Pineland Center on Thursday, Fiandaca described her descent into a seven-year period of prostitution that nearly ended her life.

She recalled for an audience of 300 the turning point when she had succumbed.

She had just returned to Boston from Hartford, Conn., where she had serviced men in a dark, smelly building that catered to low-level customers.

It was there that she learned how to switch off a part of her brain to get through the degrading work.

After putting in several 13-hour days, she reunited with her boyfriend, who had become her pimp.

He extended his hand. When she hesitated to hand over the wad of cash she had made, he asked: “Is this going to be a problem?”

She was thinking, “Yes,” but handed over the money anyway.

“I had lost my voice,” she said. “I lost the ability to make choices. I just handed him over everything I had. I felt extremely shameful. I couldn’t figure out what was going on.”

Later, she would learn the name for it: breaking.

It was part of a process pimps use to turn women into commodities.

First they groom, then they break, Fiandaca said.

When she told him she had changed her mind and wanted to quit, she learned the next step in the process: beating.

She ran away often; he would drag her back home, literally.

Leaving was not an option.

He would tell her she was worthless, dirty and unlovable. He said she wouldn’t be able to live without him.

That lasted for five years.

For two of those years, she worked at an upper-level massage parlor in Kittery known as the Danish Health Club. After the owner died and police shut it down, she discovered Craigslist.

Meanwhile, Fiandaca was training other women that her boyfriend would find to work for him, all the while believing that he loved her.

She started meeting clients at hotels; going to them instead of them coming to her.

Her boyfriend sent her to college to get a business degree in an effort to make his business more profitable.

She earned her degree, even making the dean’s list, but felt no sense of pride or enjoyment; only numbness and emptiness, she said.

When she became pregnant, she believed a baby would mark the beginning of a new life for her and her boyfriend. She hadn’t expected that he would force her to terminate the pregnancy.

But something else had changed. She had decided she had to leave him and that life.

She withheld a small portion of her earnings and buried it in the potting soil of her plants. Over time, she had stashed enough after six months to rent an apartment and fled his home with her belongings stuffed in a few trash bags and a police escort.

She was alone, afraid and running out of money. She tried to commit suicide. Then she relapsed, calling her former pimp.

He broke into her apartment and she called the police. He was arrested on domestic violence charges. She secured a restraining order.

That’s when she began to abuse drugs, which led to a return to prostitution. A prescription drug addiction led to heroin. She ended up living on the street.

After her brother died from a drug overdose, she realized the only way she would live would be to get clean and sober.

It took several tries at rehab to stay drug-free.

At Alcoholics Anonymous, she met a woman who took her to church. At that point, Fiandaca was thinking: “OK. Whatever works. I need something to save me from myself.”

There, she found the support system and the positive messages she needed to begin healing and rebuild her self-esteem. They loved her without judgment.

Through recovery and lots of therapy, prayer and church classes, Fiandaca helped lift the “heavy burden of shame” that had incapacitated her for so long, she said.

She discovered it took a community to bring her back from the brink of despair.

Now 33, she has a 5-year-old son and a 2-year-old daughter. She works on the lecture circuit and is writing a book about her experiences.

She worked at a “safe house” where women who are trafficked can go for support and recovery. She visits homeless shelters and other places where prostitutes are likely to appear and hands out bags filled with soap and shampoo, along with a card that tells them who they can call and where they can go to get help and support.

Although her pimp was never held criminally responsible for what he did to her, Fiandaca said he can’t continue to oppress her as long as she speaks out about her experience.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com