Netflix Plans Cyntoia Brown Documentary as Arkansas Woman Thrives After Similar Imprisonment

Netflix is planning a documentary on Cyntoia Brown who is expected to be released from prison next month . When Brown’s clemency made headlines last January, a young Arkansas wife and mother read about the 31-year-old Tennessee inmate imprisoned for killing the man who paid to have sex with her and was stunned. She, too, had been to prison as a teenager for killing a man who took advantage of her.

“When I first walked into Tucker Correctional Women’s facility…, I had been in county jail, I had been in jail, isolated from the general population for almost a year because I was a juvenile and could not be amongst the adults,” Demetria Thompson recalls. “The correctional staff and the inmates really took me under their wing and tried to show me the do’s and don’ts of prison life.”

Thompson and Brown have lived parallel lives. Both were teenagers without a safety net to protect them. Their circumstances cultivated a survival instinct that included hard choices involving their bodies and men.

The Christmas That Changed Everything

Thompson, who pulled the trigger out of despair, is now a wife, a mother, and a college graduate with two degrees. But those successes do not erase her memory of what happened in December 1995  when Thompson says Kenneth Kelly, or Killa as he was known, put a door jack under the front door to prevent her from leaving his apartment which only had one way in and one way out.

“I asked him what he was doing,” Thompson recounts. “And, he said I was ‘staying the night with him.’”

The next morning Thompson says she discovered the rape had left her with a sexually transmitted disease, and she became “unglued.” Her description of the emotional exhaustion and accumulated indignities she had endured overtook her. She made a decision.

“I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I stood up and pulled the trigger.” Demetria Thompson

She shares, “I remember sitting on my aunt’s toilet rocking back and forth, saying, ‘I’m tired.’ I’m tired of men taking advantage of my body. I have been molested by one of my mother’s boyfriends…molested in foster care…molested by someone I thought was my cousin. I had slept with men to secure a place to sleep at night. My mother was on crack cocaine and couldn’t care less me about me.”

The thoughts drowned out her ability to call for help. Thompson grabbed a gun and went back to the apartment where she says Kelly attempted a repeat of the previous night. But she was prepared.

“I didn’t think. I didn’t hesitate. I stood up and pulled the trigger,” she says. When the police arrested Thompson on New Year’s Eve, she was in Arizona where she had run after the shooting. The authorities brought her back to Arkansas for trial.

The formal definition of sex trafficking may not apply to Thompson’s case. But, undoubtedly, she was a vulnerable young girl like so many others who are forced into arrangements that exploit them. According to Ark of Hope for Children, up to 300-thousand Americans under 18 are lured into the commercial sex trade every year.

As Thompson and her husband raise their girls in a nurturing environment, she offers her advice to the community and to young girls in whom she sees the girl she used to be.

“Seek help from someone who can make a difference,” says the born-again Christian. “Leave the area, go to the police, anything. But, my biggest piece of advice would be to be open and willing to accept change. We are still survivors and victims no matter the choices we made and those that allowed and participated in the circumstances are just as guilty for doing nothing to change it. God is your biggest asset, and if you allow Him, He will turn anything around and use your life as a tool to help another person in your situation.

For information on how to help children in need, please visit The Center for Family Safety and Healing.