The STOPLight

"I am a survivor!"

In 1990 I heard Al Erickson speak on the subject of truths about prostitution. I cried through most of the presentation because he was speaking in public that the church has to be a leader in helping those victimized by prostitution.

I knew I had to help him in some way. After conversing with him, I decided the best way I could help was to begin telling my own story of incest and prostitution. I am one of the victims he was speaking about. I am a survivor!

The incest began with bad touch. I didn't know it was bad touch. It was just a special time with my daddy. My first memories of the bad touch go back to three years old. I thought the bad touch was normal behavior.

I knew about oral sex before I went to school. I didn't like it, but I thought it, too, was normal behavior. Rape began when I was seven or eight. I really didn't like it, but I was told that was how girls become women -- a part of growing up.

At eleven, I miscarried my father's child. It was the doctor at the hospital who told me the facts of life.

My mother wanted to know the name of the boy who got me pregnant. I couldn't tell her. Instinctively, I could not break up the only home I knew. I was certainly confused.

I grew up in a small, northern Minnesota community. My father was a fire truck driver for the city. Because a fire truck is not always out on a call, my father was also a desk sergeant for the city police department. He took the calls and kept in contact with the squad cars by radio. He booked prisoners. When the other policemen took vacation or were ill, he would be their replacement on the streets or in the patrol car.

A part of me admired my daddy. He was an important member of the community. He had awards and citations for valor in the line of duty and for service to the community.

When my mother screamed at me that she wanted to know the name of the boy so that he could be punished, I could not tell her even when she threatened me with a home for wayward girls.

My father, in private, told me my mother was just jealous of our relationship. He told me he loved me very much and that he had always done the right thing for me. He was good at lying.

My father kept me from being sent away. I felt I was "saved" from the home for delinquent girls because I had not told about him. It was difficult at home. My mother never trusted me. I didn't want to be caught alone with my father because I was afraid I'd become pregnant again.

I became manipulative, secretive and sly, and ended up in a lot of trouble at school. Since it was a small community, the gossip about me bounced around until the "nice" girls wouldn't speak to me and the boys all wanted to have a go at me.

I stayed apart, keeping to myself. I read a lot and would not participate in games. I was antisocial. I took pains trying to stay out of trouble and to get good grades so I could get away.

High school was easier for me since it was in a bigger community where some people hadn't heard the gossip. When I was fifteen, I took part-time job and moved away from home. I finished high school. I knew I needed that diploma to make a better life for myself. I got a better job. I seemed to be leading a normal life. Things were really looking up for me.

Then I got raped.

Some children found me in a park, beaten and unconscious. The patrol car that answered the summons was driven by my father and the father of the boy who had raped me. They made me feel it was all my fault.

It was shortly after that experience that men began knocking on my door wanting to pay me for sex, so I became a prostitute. I thought, "Why not?" If men were going to abuse me, they might as well pay me. I thought I could have control over some part of my life. I was a prostitute in my home town, in California and then Florida.

I was lucky. I was a prostitute for only four years. I didn't get killed or hooked on drugs or contract anything deadly.

I got out of prostitution because two women in Florida cared about me and knew that being in prostitution was not what I wanted to do. They told me I had worth. They didn't care about my past. They just wanted to help me get on with my future.

Good counseling and therapy have helped me attain self worth. I am married and have had the pleasure of raising two children.

I was lucky -- but I still have nightmares about the first 21 years of my life. I still deal every day with what happened to me. We must all work to help prevent what happened to me from happening to any child in any community.

by Linda Lee, survivor