Features Frames

<body background="images/32-33bkgd476x599.gif"> <p><img src="images/prostit357x131.gif" align=right hspace=0 width=357 height=131><br clear=all> </p> <p><img src="images/30-31bkgd252x311.gif" align=left hspace=4 vspace=4 width=252 height=311>Come with me into the Tenderloin and this is what you'll see: Winos wrapped in rags, lying on the sidewalk in cardboard boxes. Dealers on the corners, selling crack on one side of the street and heroin on the other. Topless bars, peep shows and run down hotels where women are bought and traded. Johns walking through or cruising by in Jaguars. A place where no one wants to be after 5 p.m. </p> <p>But in 1979, to a 14-year-old girl from the East Bay, San Francisco looked fast, bright and rich. I wanted to become a part of that life across the bridge, just a 25¢ bus ride away. </p> <p>I wanted to be part of something, to feel hope. </p> <p>My family moved to Oakland, California, from rural Louisiana when I was 12. Soon after, my parents began to split up. They were both alcoholics, and my father often beat my mom with sticks, chairs, bricks -- whatever was handy. He'd beat me too because he said I wasn't his child. At 8, I began to sniff glue and gasoline to escape the pain. When I was 10, my brother molested me, and I lost a part of myself forever. I couldn't find any self-worth, and I began to act out sexually with all the boys in my neighborhood. </p> <p>I started spending more and more time away from home, going to friends' houses or just hanging out on the streets. One night at the age of 14, I was walking home from a friend's house when I met a man who offered me money for sex. I gratefully agreed. I was desperate for school clothes and other things I needed. After that, I often walked along the same street, looking for the same man; I thought it would be easier than doing it with someone new because I wouldn't feel so angry or filthy. </p> <p>Between the ages of 14 and 16, I was on the streets most of the time. I turned tricks for alcohol, money or pot. At night I sometimes tried to trade my body for a warm meal. The tricks were getting to know me, but I was still hiding it from my parents. I was ashamed for them to know that I was a prostitute. </p> <p><img src="images/pq5.gif" align=left hspace=4 vspace=4 width=216 height=145>By the time I was 17, I was spending most of my time in the Tenderloin. One day I met a charming young man wearing a gold and diamond ring. He paid attention to me. He brought me gifts -- the little things you need when you're living on the streets. He took me out to dinner and bought me perfume. Even though I knew what he was, I didn't care. I thought he would be my savior. I was proud to move in with him. </p> <p>Soon, as a young face, I was making more than $400 a night. I spent $100 a day on alcohol and gave a lot of money to my pimp so he could buy clothes, alcohol and his new drug, crack cocaine. </p> <p>Turning the first trick of the night was the hardest because most of the time I was still sober and could think clearly. Fear overcame me. "What am I doing?" I thought. "It's dark. I'm alone. What if I don't come home tonight?" After my first trick, I had enough money to buy alcohol. It helped take the fear away. </p> <p>Six weeks after I moved in with my pimp, we bought a new car. We took expensive vacations, sometimes jumping on a flight to Los Angeles to buy underwear at Frederick's of Hollywood. All the while I was working, and my pimp was adding more women to our family. </p> <p>At 18 I was pregnant. I stopped drinking and stayed off the streets until three months after my daughter was born. But I wasn't ready to give up the lifestyle. I gave my baby to my mother and went back to my pimp. But now, with thirteen women making money for him, he became more abusive. </p> <p><img src="images/32-33bkgd252x320.gif" align=right hspace=4 vspace=4 width=252 height=320>When he got drunk, he threatened and beat us. He said we never made enough money. Nobody from the outside world tried to help us. In this criminal world there are no police calls, and there are no emergency room runs. The outside world is like an enemy. </p> <p>We are a population no one cares for. We are abused by the males in our lives, starting with our fathers. I accepted the violence from my pimp the same way my mother accepted beatings from my father. </p> <p>As time went on, I started smoking crack more and more often. You have to keep using in order to not feel, you have to keep prostituting to pay for the drugs, and you keep using to keep prostituting. Even when you don't want to go out, your addiction drags you. It tells you, "Get up, you have to go now. I need you to take care of me." </p> <p>Once I got my first trick of the night, I would run down and buy crack and alcohol. Then my fear would transform into an inner rage that came out in violence against tricks, the police or other women. </p> <p align=center><img src="images/pq4.gif" align=bottom hspace=4 vspace=4 width=288 height=118></p> <p>When I was 20, we were staying in New York when I got six arrests for armed robbery in six weeks and spent a year in jail. Crack takes your life faster than anything I've ever known, and I was losing myself to my addiction. </p> <p>I moved back to Oakland when I got out, and returned to the streets. Crack became my pimp. Crack is a fast death and your body suffers; prostitution is a slow death and your body still suffers. </p> <p>I worked from 7 p.m. to midnight, making $300-$500 a night. I went in and out of drug treatment centers but nothing worked. My addiction would not be controlled. I tried suicide, I tried leaving the city, but prostitution and drugs were everywhere I went. </p> <p>By the time I was 26, I had two more daughters, born in the midst of addiction and chaos, and my aunt took both of them to raise. I felt hopelessly stuck in a cycle of generations of women working the streets and getting high. Prostitution felt like a ticket out of poverty because I didn't know any other way.</p> <p>When I went out on the street, I never knew what to expect. Some tricks will beat you and some will cut you for their pleasure. Others are out and out killers. Those are the killers who never get caught; the ones who go from city to city murdering as many prostitutes as they want. </p> <p>One time I met a trick in an alley. After we were done, he grabbed a brick, bashed my head in and stole all my money. I went to the police for help, but they arrested me and let the john go. </p> <p>Police all over this country are mostly the same. They treat prostitutes like an easy arrest or a piece of meat. They rape you, beat you and then throw you in jail anyway. </p> <p>I realized I would rather be the abuser than the abused. I carried a straight razor for protection, but I used it for revenge. I robbed crippled old men who came to me for sex and stabbed tricks because they didn't have enough money for me to get loaded. I went from suicidal to homicidal and back, and I never knew where the middle was. </p> <p>One night, I saw a police officer walking toward me. My first reaction was, "Oh, God! Some asshole cop, that's all I need." But this officer was different. Not only was she a woman but she also seemed to understand where I was coming from. I thought, "Your job is to take me to jail, and my job is to resist, so why are you being so nice to me?" She took me to jail, but she also took care of me and helped me get into a treatment program. </p> <p>This time, I was ready to get out. I hated to see my daughters growing up without me. I feared the cycle repeating itself. I feared seeing my own daughters on the street corners. I was determined to better myself and take care of my children. </p> <p><img src="images/34bkgd252x407.gif" align=right hspace=4 vspace=4 width=252 height=407>For the next two years, I got clean and began counseling. My three daughters came back to live with me and we began to build a new life together. I started back to school to get my GED and enrolled at a community college to learn about outreach. It was only by the grace of a loving God that I had been spared. There were so many times I could have been killed. There were so many times I could have overdosed. God saw fit to keep me here for a purpose. </p> <p>I heard about a new program starting up on the edge of the Tenderloin called PROMISE: Prevention Referral Outreach Mentoring and Intervention to end Sexual Exploitation. It was a treatment center focusing on the special issues that prostitutes face. No one had ever talked to me about how prostitution was tied in with other addictions. I wanted to be a part of bringing that into the open. I wanted to help create a place where prostituted women could feel safe. </p> <p>PROMISE plants a seed of knowledge and understanding in the women who come in to take advantage of its services. It presents alternatives to life on the street, and more important, it gives these women a place where they can find support from someone who has walked in their shoes. If they want something to eat, if they want to talk or if they just want to sit and take a break, PROMISE is there. </p> <p>I teamed up with the director of PROMISE and became the outreach coordinator. Today I walk the streets again, handing out condoms and pamphlets that explain sexual exploitation and define prostitution as sexual abuse. I work at the center on our drop-in days, and I talk to the women who come in. </p> <p>I tell them they don't have to accept their lives the way they are. I show them there is a way to escape the madness, to escape the abuse. And I tell them they can free themselves from bondage. </p> <p>But it's not easy. Most of the time, women are secure in the lifestyle. You can't tell them to give up $400 a night and go to a place where they don't even have a job. It has to be the woman's choice. But if she can find it in herself to reach out for help, I can help her find it.<img src="images/bug14x8.gif" align=bottom width=14 height=8> </p> <p><font size=1>By Ruth Morris as told to Rosemary Howe Camozzi<br> Photo Illustrations by Mike Elias and Laura Goss</font></p> <hr> <p><font size=2><em>Ruth Morris is a pseudonym. The subject of this article requested that her real name be changed to protect her identity.</em></font></p> </body>