A while back someone named "H" left a very thoughtful comment on the blog, and I haven't had time until now to respond. I 'm doing so now in a post because I thought that what H had to say was important enough for a longer discussion.
H. took me to task a bit for a reference I made in the "Whatever Happened to the Little Girl" post. I said that 12 seems to be the average age for entry into prostitution. H. asked how I know what the average age is and seemed genuinely interested in any statistics I could give him (I'm assuming H is male). The truth is that even "seems to be" is stronger language than I should have used. I had mentioned in an earlier post that people who work with prostituted women often cite research claiming that 11 to 13 is the average age at which people enter prostitution, but that I didn't know how the studies were performed. I can tell you that at YANA, the counselors have worked with many hundreds of women in Baltimore and have found that almost all of them have been subjected to very severe sexual abuse at a very early age. I've been to symposiums about working with prostituted women and have heard the directors of other agencies say the same thing. As I may have quoted in another post, one woman announced "Incest is the boot camp of prostitution." The rest of the room nodded. A police sergeant, Byron Fasset from Dallas, Texas, has formed a unit specializing in working with underage prostitutes. He's kept statistics on more than a thousand girls and found a near universal pattern of abuse suffered by both the girls and their mothers. I see the faces and hear the words of the women at YANA. Even to a layperson like me, so many of them seem frozen at some very early stage of development, and it's easy, very easy to imagine that a part of them just stopped growing on the day they first learned what horrible things that the grownups would do to them.
But none of that is proof of the average age at which women or girls enter prostitution. For one thing, I seriously doubt that anyone has done the kind of exhaustive study necessary to know the average anything for prostitution. There are precious few provider agencies in this country, and they aren't in the business of keeping statistics or probing the women for information they might not want to give. Academics are starting to take an interest in prostitution, but how many of them do you think are out doing lengthy evaluations of thousands of women all across the country? We had a woman do her Ph.D. research at YANA. She spoke to ten of our clients for a little under an hour each. My understanding is that her committee not only accepted this day and a half of research as being good enough for a doctorate, but they also praised her for her great street creds.
And even if we did know the real averages for childhood sexual abuse, how would we know whether the children were actually prostituted? Remember that prostitution can have a very broad definition. If, for example, mom is turning her five year old over to her drug dealer or landlord once in a while in exchange for a little credit, then that five year old has been prostituted. If mom is letting dad have a go at their three year old in exchange for a little peace in the home, then that three year old has been prostituted. If dad is turning a blind eye to what his buddies or maybe his own father does to his eight year old in exchange for their approval, then that eight year old has been prostituted. I know that happens, but how would I or anyone ever know how often it happens? Usually, the child will only know that the landlord, or the dad, or the strange men in the neighborhood hurt her. She won't know who benefited from it.
And much of the time, she doesn't want to know. Within the safety of YANA, most of our clients will talk openly about being raped as children, but they do not think of themselves as having been prostituted as children. Prostitution was their own decision, and it most certainly had nothing to do with their mothers. Recently Sid spoke about the 5 year old in North Carolina who was prostituted by her mother. The child was found dead. Our women were appalled. "Anyone under the age of 18 who is prostituted is a victim of human trafficking," Sid explained. "Have you ever heard of anyone under the age of 18 who was prostituted?"
"People from the Philippines!" one woman said. "I've heard about that!" Nobody else seemed to have ever heard of such a thing anywhere, and the subject swiftly died in an embarrassed silence. So, to answer H., no I don't know the average age at which a woman or girl enters prostitution. And I don't think anyone does, even for one country. If you're thinking about walking-the-street prostitution, then your estimate of somewhere between 16 and 24 sounds as good as any other to me. As for your "defensiveness" about people who try to "demonize" prostitution with claims of child sexual abuse, well, human behavior is complicated, and all we have are anecdotes. If your girl friend is the basis for your "defensiveness" around the idea that being raped repeatedly as a child leads women to prostitution later, it's always possible that she really is that co-ed paying for college tuition that we hear about so much on the t.v. shows. Maybe she went into prostitution for any variety of her own reasons. But if she's been prostituting, and she's promoting defensiveness around the idea that anything her parents did was the cause. . . well, like I said, she might be the exception to all our anecdotes. Then again, H., she might not be.
Showing posts with label incest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label incest. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Why do Women Become Prostitutes? Part II
Concerned staff from an alternative school have asked Sid and me to speak to the faculty next week. Their school is an area with heavy prostitution, and they have two questions: 1) How can they help students whose parents may be prostituting? and 2) How can they help distressed and tearful prostituted women they've seen hurrying in and out of cars near the school? These are absolutely wonderful questions to ask -- and they're horrible questions to have to answer. Today I tried asking the YANA clients what to do. The results were something less than textbook clear.
The women suggested counseling and gaining the trust of local prostitutes. They said that it was important to be listened to and not lectured. All very good, but there were no suggestions as to how to gain that trust or how to start the listening process with a frightened woman who is literally running in the other direction. One woman said something more interesting. She told us that when she was out on the corner prostituting, she didn't consider herself a prostitute. She thought she was "dating." The other women nodded. They talk a lot more freely about prostituting when they're talking in the past tense. They can be pretty open about it then.
What they aren't open about -- at all -- is the subject of anybody's mother prostituting. After someone referred to prostituting women bringing their "dates," i.e. tricks home, a new client named LaTeisha said the following, unprompted, within the space of about five minutes. "Some women bring a lot of dates all up in the house. My mother never did that. I came from a good home! My mother was a drinker!" And then, tearfully, "My mother saved my children, but she never saved me." O.K., I don't want to read too much into what the women say, but has anyone you've ever known told you that their mother didn't bring her tricks home with them? If they just announced something like that wouldn't you think the mother was prostituting?
As soon as LaTeisha said she came from a good home, another woman chimed in to say that she came from a good home too. LaTeisha went on to tell us that young people don't know how to date anymore, that they just hook up to have sex. LaTeisha might have a point there, but then she said that the parents teach the girls not to come home "with nothing but a wet ass" after sex; they should have money too. I don't think LaTeisha is speaking for the larger society there. I don't think she knew that most mothers don't act that way. LaTeisha's recommendation for teaching young people not to prostitute? Men should know how to walk with a lady. They should walk on the outside of the sidewalk near the street.
The other women in the group had little to add. I asked if a girl whose mother was prostituting was herself at high risk for prostitution. Only one person responded, and she said, with great determination, that people can rise above their environments. I can't think of anytime I've known a YANA woman to say that she prostituted because her mother did, or that she led her own child into prostitution. And yet, we see, over and over again, that prostitution in our neck of the woods is inter-generational.
Sid and I went to a national conference on domestic trafficking last year and heard the same thing from people in other parts of the country. One detective led a nationally known unit that has been keeping statistics on prostituted women. Not only did almost all of them report a sexual assault background, but over 95% of their mothers reported the same background. Another woman stood in front of the room and told us that "Incest is the boot camp of prostitution." In the first year of YANA's existence, the counselors documented hundreds of stories of childhood sexual abuse. We've had many mother-daughter pairs come to us, often with the daughter having found YANA first and taking the first step away from prostitution.
Still, the mother-daughter thing isn't talked about. The reasons for prostituting are almost always given as "I just wanted to run wild." or "I'd do anything for drugs." Even when the drug use began after the prostitution, the drug is given as the cause. What should counselors do when the students have prostituting mothers? The answer is confusion, silence, and insistence that their own mothers were good. On the one hand, that lack of awareness doesn't bode well for staying out of prostitution. LaTeisha, who is clean, admitted that while she isn't on the street anymore, she will turn a trick in an emergency. "If I don't have food, I will get in a car to feed my children," she said. Right. LaTeisha hasn't had custody of her children for years. Prostitution may be self sacrifice, but it isn't noble, and it sure isn't done for the sake of the kids.
On the other hand -- and this is very important -- women struggling with prostitution still make progress in their lives. They still find ways to grow, to enjoy themselves, and to appreciate each other. LaTeisha is dating a man with no job and no money at all. She isn't crazy about this fact. ("That mf better get a job" is how she put it.) But she really lights up when she talks about him. They enjoy each other. They talk. He takes her around his family. She says she's enjoying what she should have had when she was young. Most of our women were put on a very hard road when they were children, and they keep stumbling forward without thinking too much about why they're there. A lot of them get amazingly far without taking much of a look backwards.
The women suggested counseling and gaining the trust of local prostitutes. They said that it was important to be listened to and not lectured. All very good, but there were no suggestions as to how to gain that trust or how to start the listening process with a frightened woman who is literally running in the other direction. One woman said something more interesting. She told us that when she was out on the corner prostituting, she didn't consider herself a prostitute. She thought she was "dating." The other women nodded. They talk a lot more freely about prostituting when they're talking in the past tense. They can be pretty open about it then.
What they aren't open about -- at all -- is the subject of anybody's mother prostituting. After someone referred to prostituting women bringing their "dates," i.e. tricks home, a new client named LaTeisha said the following, unprompted, within the space of about five minutes. "Some women bring a lot of dates all up in the house. My mother never did that. I came from a good home! My mother was a drinker!" And then, tearfully, "My mother saved my children, but she never saved me." O.K., I don't want to read too much into what the women say, but has anyone you've ever known told you that their mother didn't bring her tricks home with them? If they just announced something like that wouldn't you think the mother was prostituting?
As soon as LaTeisha said she came from a good home, another woman chimed in to say that she came from a good home too. LaTeisha went on to tell us that young people don't know how to date anymore, that they just hook up to have sex. LaTeisha might have a point there, but then she said that the parents teach the girls not to come home "with nothing but a wet ass" after sex; they should have money too. I don't think LaTeisha is speaking for the larger society there. I don't think she knew that most mothers don't act that way. LaTeisha's recommendation for teaching young people not to prostitute? Men should know how to walk with a lady. They should walk on the outside of the sidewalk near the street.
The other women in the group had little to add. I asked if a girl whose mother was prostituting was herself at high risk for prostitution. Only one person responded, and she said, with great determination, that people can rise above their environments. I can't think of anytime I've known a YANA woman to say that she prostituted because her mother did, or that she led her own child into prostitution. And yet, we see, over and over again, that prostitution in our neck of the woods is inter-generational.
Sid and I went to a national conference on domestic trafficking last year and heard the same thing from people in other parts of the country. One detective led a nationally known unit that has been keeping statistics on prostituted women. Not only did almost all of them report a sexual assault background, but over 95% of their mothers reported the same background. Another woman stood in front of the room and told us that "Incest is the boot camp of prostitution." In the first year of YANA's existence, the counselors documented hundreds of stories of childhood sexual abuse. We've had many mother-daughter pairs come to us, often with the daughter having found YANA first and taking the first step away from prostitution.
Still, the mother-daughter thing isn't talked about. The reasons for prostituting are almost always given as "I just wanted to run wild." or "I'd do anything for drugs." Even when the drug use began after the prostitution, the drug is given as the cause. What should counselors do when the students have prostituting mothers? The answer is confusion, silence, and insistence that their own mothers were good. On the one hand, that lack of awareness doesn't bode well for staying out of prostitution. LaTeisha, who is clean, admitted that while she isn't on the street anymore, she will turn a trick in an emergency. "If I don't have food, I will get in a car to feed my children," she said. Right. LaTeisha hasn't had custody of her children for years. Prostitution may be self sacrifice, but it isn't noble, and it sure isn't done for the sake of the kids.
On the other hand -- and this is very important -- women struggling with prostitution still make progress in their lives. They still find ways to grow, to enjoy themselves, and to appreciate each other. LaTeisha is dating a man with no job and no money at all. She isn't crazy about this fact. ("That mf better get a job" is how she put it.) But she really lights up when she talks about him. They enjoy each other. They talk. He takes her around his family. She says she's enjoying what she should have had when she was young. Most of our women were put on a very hard road when they were children, and they keep stumbling forward without thinking too much about why they're there. A lot of them get amazingly far without taking much of a look backwards.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Why do Women Become Prostitutes? Part I.
I suppose that most of you have heard Mackenzie Phillips' claim that she had a ten year sexual relationship with her father, beginning when she was 19. Her father, a musician with the Mamas and Papas, can't deny it because he's dead. Mackenzie Phillips has a long history of serious drug addiction and doesn't present particularly well. And the claim itself -- well, by now, we're used to hearing the stories of young children who've been made the victims of incest or preyed upon by daycare providers. We know how we're supposed to react to them. Mackenzie's claim, that as an adult she had an affair with her own father, is something else. People don't seem to know how to react to her. As far as I can tell, she's become a very, very public object of embarrassment. You can't help but look at the red haired, slightly ravaged looking woman, tossing her head, smiling ingratiatingly, and talking, talking, talking about how she spent her 20s sleeping with dad. At the same time, you don't want to look at a person like that any longer than you have to. She's probably sick, after all, and, given the incest, maybe a victim, but in a lot of ways she's just plain repulsive for having participated in her own degradation.
It's her family I find most interesting. Both her dad's ex wives have denounced her, even Michelle, with whom she was supposed to have had a close relationship. Neither of them mentioned the father's role in addicting Mackenzie to drugs before she reached her teens. Her youngest sister has unleashed a series of snide remarks, supposedly meant to be neutral, acknowledging Mackenzie's need to "come clean." Little Sister also sounded angry that Mackenzie had left her alone with the father who could have done the same things to her -- if he had done them to Mackenzie -- which probably he didn't. It was Mackenzie's other sister, Cheyenne came to Mackenzie's rescue, proclaiming her belief in Mackenzie and her love of her sister. Cheyenne's support consisted of the following: 1) a statement that she believed the affair happened, 2) repeated emphasis on the consensual nature of the affair, 3) a description of what an idyllic time she had with their father the few times he visited, 4) a lengthier discussion of how hard Mackenzie's revelation had been on Cheyenne's family, and, finally, 5) forgiveness for Mackenzie for having told her story. At no point did Cheyenne or anyone else express any interest in Mackenzie's claim that the "affair" began when her father raped her, that their sex frequently took place when Mackenzie was too stoned to know what was happening, or that her father had allowed one of his friends to rape her when she was a child. For this display of sympathy, Mackenzie gratefully and enthusiastically professed her love of Cheyenne.
Perhaps she was right to be grateful. Nobody at all came to Ellen's defense when she turned over evidence against her husband the rapist. We had a client whose uncle went to prison for the years he spent raping her while she was in elementary school. When he came out, the family welcomed him back with open arms. Decades later, when the woman's father died, a YANA staffer took her to his funeral. Nobody in the family would let her ride with them. When our women are battered, even by a stranger, they want to protect the man who attacked them, the way their mothers protected the men who attacked them as children. Very few of our women have ever denounced a family member who beat them or raped them, and of the ones who have, I can't think of any who got even as much support as Mackenzie got from Cheyenne.
Why do women become prostitutes? I don't have the answer, at least not all of it, but Mackenzie Phillips' family gave us all a nice, on-air demonstration of the culture that produced many of our clients. All the attention, all the concern is focused on maintaining the family just as it is. There just isn't any room left to worry about what's happening to the victim. The result sometimes seems to be a woman willing to participate in her own degradation. Long ago, I began to think of the women at YANA as the obedient daughters. Well into adulthood, they keep doing what they've been taught long ago.
It's her family I find most interesting. Both her dad's ex wives have denounced her, even Michelle, with whom she was supposed to have had a close relationship. Neither of them mentioned the father's role in addicting Mackenzie to drugs before she reached her teens. Her youngest sister has unleashed a series of snide remarks, supposedly meant to be neutral, acknowledging Mackenzie's need to "come clean." Little Sister also sounded angry that Mackenzie had left her alone with the father who could have done the same things to her -- if he had done them to Mackenzie -- which probably he didn't. It was Mackenzie's other sister, Cheyenne came to Mackenzie's rescue, proclaiming her belief in Mackenzie and her love of her sister. Cheyenne's support consisted of the following: 1) a statement that she believed the affair happened, 2) repeated emphasis on the consensual nature of the affair, 3) a description of what an idyllic time she had with their father the few times he visited, 4) a lengthier discussion of how hard Mackenzie's revelation had been on Cheyenne's family, and, finally, 5) forgiveness for Mackenzie for having told her story. At no point did Cheyenne or anyone else express any interest in Mackenzie's claim that the "affair" began when her father raped her, that their sex frequently took place when Mackenzie was too stoned to know what was happening, or that her father had allowed one of his friends to rape her when she was a child. For this display of sympathy, Mackenzie gratefully and enthusiastically professed her love of Cheyenne.
Perhaps she was right to be grateful. Nobody at all came to Ellen's defense when she turned over evidence against her husband the rapist. We had a client whose uncle went to prison for the years he spent raping her while she was in elementary school. When he came out, the family welcomed him back with open arms. Decades later, when the woman's father died, a YANA staffer took her to his funeral. Nobody in the family would let her ride with them. When our women are battered, even by a stranger, they want to protect the man who attacked them, the way their mothers protected the men who attacked them as children. Very few of our women have ever denounced a family member who beat them or raped them, and of the ones who have, I can't think of any who got even as much support as Mackenzie got from Cheyenne.
Why do women become prostitutes? I don't have the answer, at least not all of it, but Mackenzie Phillips' family gave us all a nice, on-air demonstration of the culture that produced many of our clients. All the attention, all the concern is focused on maintaining the family just as it is. There just isn't any room left to worry about what's happening to the victim. The result sometimes seems to be a woman willing to participate in her own degradation. Long ago, I began to think of the women at YANA as the obedient daughters. Well into adulthood, they keep doing what they've been taught long ago.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Being "on the side of" Prostitutes
The women we meet in this blog are the adult sort- of survivors of childhood abuse. Thirty, forty, fifty, and older, they are still struggling with the things that happened to them as children, faithfully recreating the abuse that was inflicted upon them when they were three, four, and five. Sometimes YANA works with the children themselves, though. Sid and her determined little band of volunteers collaborate with police and prosecutors, providing comfort and advocacy for those the government has chosen to consider the victims of human trafficking. By definition, anyone under the age of 18 who has prostituted is a trafficking victim, whether they cross jurisdictions or not. Often, by definition, they are also criminals and are prosecuted no matter how young they are. We will undoubtedly talk more about the children in later posts. Today, though, was a good reminder of where the grown up YANA women come from.
Sid and I talked before the women came in. Sid was still shocked and supremely frustrated by the treatment a teenage girl had received from some rural police. The girl, who was being prostituted by her father, and who was pregnant by one of her tricks, was interrogated at length by an officer who apparently knew both the father and the trick. She was told, repeatedly, that she was an habitual runaway and liar (wonder why she would be that?). She was told that, despite the fact that her father collected money from the tricks immediately after they screwed her, she was engaging in consensual sex. She was told that the victims services workers who were waiting for her in the building were nowhere around. She was told that they only wanted to help her in order to get her baby from her.
As far as anyone knows, the officer wasn't a rapist. He didn't have a thing for little girls, and he didn't profit from the prostitution. He had just chosen which side he wanted to be on, and it damn sure wasn't the side of a prostitute. In a sense, it's not an unreasonable choice. Being "on the side of" a prostitute, any aged prostitute, is painful, involving, as it does, the thought that mothers and fathers will sometimes do horrible things to their children, and that people can be hurt so badly that they will eventually start hurting themselves. What does that say about free will? Nothing most of us want to hear. Perhaps worst of all, it means that people we know, nice people, might have taken part in something evil when they decided to find out what being with a hooker is like. It's so much easier to believe that the homeless women wandering down Wilkens Ave. just decided to prostitute because they were too slutty and lazy to live normal lives. Besides, if you don't think being "on the side of" any aged prostitutes is just plain weird, tell all your coworkers that you read this blog. See what their reaction is.
And then, after you do that, maybe take things one step further, and tell them a benefit of reading. Without intervention, the isolation that little girl felt alone in an interrogation room with the sneering cop is something she could carry with her for the rest of her life. After what had been done to her by her own family, the contempt of the outside world could simply destroy her sense of being part of the human race. When we meet the women as individuals, not stereotypes they get to be human again. First they're human on the screen, then in our minds, then in the way we talk, eventually in the way that they get treated. The women I've met could use a few people on their side. They'd like to be seen as human again.
Sid and I talked before the women came in. Sid was still shocked and supremely frustrated by the treatment a teenage girl had received from some rural police. The girl, who was being prostituted by her father, and who was pregnant by one of her tricks, was interrogated at length by an officer who apparently knew both the father and the trick. She was told, repeatedly, that she was an habitual runaway and liar (wonder why she would be that?). She was told that, despite the fact that her father collected money from the tricks immediately after they screwed her, she was engaging in consensual sex. She was told that the victims services workers who were waiting for her in the building were nowhere around. She was told that they only wanted to help her in order to get her baby from her.
As far as anyone knows, the officer wasn't a rapist. He didn't have a thing for little girls, and he didn't profit from the prostitution. He had just chosen which side he wanted to be on, and it damn sure wasn't the side of a prostitute. In a sense, it's not an unreasonable choice. Being "on the side of" a prostitute, any aged prostitute, is painful, involving, as it does, the thought that mothers and fathers will sometimes do horrible things to their children, and that people can be hurt so badly that they will eventually start hurting themselves. What does that say about free will? Nothing most of us want to hear. Perhaps worst of all, it means that people we know, nice people, might have taken part in something evil when they decided to find out what being with a hooker is like. It's so much easier to believe that the homeless women wandering down Wilkens Ave. just decided to prostitute because they were too slutty and lazy to live normal lives. Besides, if you don't think being "on the side of" any aged prostitutes is just plain weird, tell all your coworkers that you read this blog. See what their reaction is.
And then, after you do that, maybe take things one step further, and tell them a benefit of reading. Without intervention, the isolation that little girl felt alone in an interrogation room with the sneering cop is something she could carry with her for the rest of her life. After what had been done to her by her own family, the contempt of the outside world could simply destroy her sense of being part of the human race. When we meet the women as individuals, not stereotypes they get to be human again. First they're human on the screen, then in our minds, then in the way we talk, eventually in the way that they get treated. The women I've met could use a few people on their side. They'd like to be seen as human again.
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