The STOPLight

My story is different

Many survivors of prostitution have stories of abuse in their childhood. My story is different...

I came from a very loving, middle-class family. My parents loved all three children and treated us well. I was the middle child. From where I saw things, my siblings got all the attention. My older brother was good at sports and my younger sister was like my mother.

Then there was me. I thought of myself as the brat of the family. That was my role and I took it on. I remember once breaking my sister's piggy bank for money to buy candy.

My father used to say to me, "You're in that awkward stage." I believed that I was awkward. I felt like the ugly duckling that would never turn into a swan. I kept a lot of secrets hidden inside and never opened up about how I felt.

I was introduced to drugs at the age of thirteen, and wow, what a change that made in my life. When I was on them, I could be whatever I wanted to be. Previously I had been very shy, but with drugs, I felt open and outgoing. I also started getting really interested in sex -- boy, did that make me feel loved! Someone thought I was good enough to spend time with.

Then I met a man in downtown Minneapolis. He gave me a lot of attention, and I thought I was really special to him. He was a pimp who saw where I was vulnerable and used it to manipulate me. Soon I was turning tricks for him. I didn't mind though, because the attention from the johns made me feel loved. Even through many beatings, I still thought I was loved. In someone's eyes, I was special. I didn't like what the johns did or made me do, but I liked the verbal attention.

I kept on using drugs, too. I thought I could reveal my true self when I used them. I could also avoid reality. When I got pregnant by my first pimp, I quit turning tricks. After my daughter was born I tried staying off the streets for a couple of months. But I went back to turning tricks because I needed money and felt a loss in my life. I felt empty.

While on the streets, I met my next pimp. I started to receive that attention again. He put me out on the streets and introduced me to massage parlors. I started working in one of them and was arrested and spent six months in the workhouse. After I was released, I started stripping in a circuit that covered five states. You would not believe all the attention I received from that. I really thought that stripping would be my lifetime thing because I felt loved.

But my pimp didn't like his lack of control over me when I was traveling, so he sent me to Iowa to work in a massage parlor. I found a new man in that town and lived with him for many years. I kept up the tricking, and was abused the same way I had been before. But I still felt I needed the love.

I continued using drugs throughout all of this. I owed money and wrote bad checks. I knew my life wasn't right, that I needed to do something different, but I didn't know how.

Then I got into crack and finally bottomed out. I called my parents for money and instead, they sent a Christian missionary couple.

This couple introduced me to the idea of being forgiven and loved unconditionally. At that time I found the unconditional love of our Savior, Jesus Christ. When I asked Christ into my life, I had years of guilt lifted off me, and I was new again, inside and out. I found what I had searched for all those years: love, real love.

I praise the Lord for where he has brought me, and I thank the Lord for my parents who prayed for me. Without the Lord, I would most likely be dead now. In return, the Lord has put helping others out of prostitution on my heart. Some other women and I are starting a Christian street ministry to help women get off the street. The Lord has put me in school to get a degree in psychology, so I can do Christian counseling.

Please pray for our ministry; we believe Christ is the answer for women in prostitution. With new life in Christ, they can work on all of their issues and have His strength to lean on. Christ did not come looking for those who were doing well; he looked for the lost.

Let us help those who are lost.

by an anonymous survivor