After 17 years being trafficked in prostitution she went blind while pregnant: Extraordinary survivor writer Christine McDonald

Christine McDonald was trafficked in prostitution for 17 years.  Then she went blind while she was pregnant.  She has written a bold, brave book about her heartbreaking experiences, which include giving birth in shackles.  She was suffering from an undiagnosed disability which played a role in vulnerability to being trafficked.  She has written an amazing page turner of a book:  Cry Purple.

She will inspire you!  Her writing is an extraordinary testament to the nightmare of prostitution and the beauty and resilience of her spirit.

Here is an excerpt:

While I was walking along, keeping a lookout for a spigot, I saw some beautiful flowers in a yard behind a fence. Knowing that the owners must have had a water hose around somewhere—and drawn by the flowers—I climbed over the fence. I walked over and began picking some of the flowers of each color: a red one, a blue one, a yellow one, and a few purple ones. The purple seemed so calm, so peaceful and rich.

As I was picking them, a man came out from the house with a phone in his hands. He yelled with an accent.

“Get away!” he said. “I’m calling the police! Get away from my house!”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and headed for the gate, with the man still yelling at me about my trespassing in his yard and picking his flowers. I still had them in my hand, and I dropped them by the fence as I exited the yard. I turned as he yelled once again that he was calling the police.

“I’m homeless,” I said.

Then it hit me that I was barefoot, that I was standing in the cool of the grass, and that his flowers were beautiful.

“I don’t see much beautiful stuff,” I said, and then I started walking again. —  Excerpt from the book Cry Purple.

Read more about Christine at her great webpage www.crypurple.com

Order Christine’s book here:  http://crypurple.wordpress.com/get-a-signed-copy-of-cry-purple/

Or order from Amazon here:  http://www.amazon.com/Cry-Purple-Christine-McDonald/dp/1482053616

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Angel K on PTSD and the Prostitution Trap

To understand prostitution you have to understand extreme trauma.  It’s deeply political.  Researchers have found that women in prostitution suffer from the same levels of trauma as the victims of state-sponsored torture.  So the effects of prostitution are clinically equivalent to those of state-sponsored torture.

You’re with a desiccated man twenty years older than you.   The cold flash in his half-closed eyes reveals he’s enraged he paid for sex. He’s got his hand way inside you so it feels like he’s trying to pull out your uterus.  When you make a sound indicating pain he digs his fingernails into your cervix.  If you ask him to stop, he pins you to the bed and digs harder.

This kind of John is ‘normal.’   Many men are far worse.  Hour after hour of this, day after day, week after week.  So those of us who survive this are left with crippling PTSD.  And there are precious few resources available to survivors trying to heal.   This puts us in a Catch 22 situation:  When you have severe PTSD it shows.  People instinctively shy away and you’re too scared to ask for help.  It’ll be hard to make friends or find a job in this condition.  You won’t be able to build the safety nets you need to escape. PTSD keeps you in prostitution.

Survivor Angel K writes brilliantly of this on her blog Surviving Prostitution and Addiction: 

The mental trauma (prostitution) causes serves to make women who have survived it incredibly vulnerable to going back - not because we want to (you can hear the johns rubbing their hands, gleefully saying see! They love it really!) but because in a society which has swallowed the lies and language of the sex industry, there’s quite simply no place else to go.

Here’s another excerpt from Angel’s brave post:

There have been times when I have thought about going back to prostitution. It felt to me, at times, inevitable that I would end up back there, as messed up by it as I have been and remain, with PTSD that makes everyday life almost impossible, with insomnia, when the splitting is frequent and time loses its meaning, when even being in a room with someone is too scary, too much. When things have been at their worst, I have felt any possibility of attempting ‘normal’ life to be laughable, and I have known the one place where I could go where I would be absolutely normal, where my fucked-upness would be not merely permissible but actually required. Prostitution. As a little girl I didn’t dream of one day growing up and having men fuck me for money. I don’t believe many little girls do. But we acquire damage on the way and end up there, getting more damaged day by day, desperate to get out, sometimes too damaged to get out, or out and sometimes too damaged to stay out.

I have had PTSD for more than a decade. It began with the violence of my ex, and continued throughout being pimped and then prostituting myself. Incapacitated by it, I struggled to speak or even move at times: I simply froze up. As the abuse continued and worsened, over time, the trauma continued to leave its record on my mind and body, layer on layer

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Related articles

• Looking for Unicorns: The Search for the “Happy Hooker” & the “Good Punter/John” (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
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• “I’m not the only one who was mistreated in prostitution” (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Trapped Indoors: Survivor Interview (stellamarrundercovercallgirl.wordpress.com)
• The Sneaky Language of the Sex Industry Lobby (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• How a Holocaust Survivor Can Help Prostitution Survivors (secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com)
• Methods of the Pimp-Mind (survivorsconnect.wordpress.com)

I Can Be Soft-Spoken or I Can Be a Pit Bull

On March 11, 2012 Eden, the movie based on the life story of trafficking survivor and activist Chong Kim, premieres at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, TX.  Chong is such an amazing, encouraging and brilliant woman.  She inspires trafficking survivors every day.  I can’t wait to see Eden.  I know it will have great impact worldwide — just like Chong.  She’s the kind of person who makes you smile and feel thankful when you think of her.  Chong recently wrote of on how she feels about herself, her life as a survivor activist, and her impending fame on her blog Face of Tears.  Here’s an excerpt:

When I look at my life today, being a mother, wife and activist my schedule is already busy as it is and I truly enjoy my “down” time, I can’t imagine a more hectic life then what I’m going through right now. My film, “Eden” is expected to be released this year according to the IMDB and since the announcement of Jamie Chung starring in my film, I’ve received so many contacts, letters, admirers and etc. I am however pleased to receive any letters of those who send sincere thanks and admiration, but what does annoy me is when, all they want to do is talk about the film, the cast or when they can get involved in this entourage of my public life? That is how you know they know nothing about you. I seperate people I “network” with verses people I consider my personal friends. I don’t mind collaborating and networking with other organizations, but if you haven’t reached out to me before “Eden” became an existence and I’ve written to you before, what makes you think you’re invited to network with me now? I don’t care to have an entourage of people to follow me, unless they want to admire the REAL me. I am very outspoken, I don’t back down just because you or I disagree with each other nor will I refuse to silent my voice, feelings or emotions. I can be very soft spoken or I can be a pitbull, it’s all in how you approach me. I don’t like to be told what to do, what to say and who to be. I don’t want to change who I am and I don’t ever want to forget where I came from, but most of all I hate conformiity we don’t have to have the same belief, politics, or lifestyle, I can get along with almost anyone. I don’t care where you come from, I just want to know where you are going, you’re not obligated to explain your past I want to know what you are willing to do about it and if you’ve been hurting, what methods have you tried in coping your pain or to find resilience, serenity and free from bitter and anger? I have always been a fighter and I don’t mean in a steel armor and a long sphere running down the field just for a kill, I mean a fighter in form of not giving up in speaking, loving, adoring and saving those who give me just a glance of their cry for freedom.

Read more

Read an article about the movie Eden in Audrey magazine

Copyright © 2012 Chong Kim, All Rights Reserved

Related articles

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Red Light

An amazing poem from gifted survivor Chong Kim’s blog Face of Tears.  We’ve all been to the place she describes.  To read her is always to remember that we’re not alone.

Here’s an excerpt:

I stare at my hands, covered in black and blue.

Gripping onto the floor, trying to hold myself up,

As he’s cannibalizing my body.

I close my eyes, tears fall among the drips of my eyeliner,

I pray for death,

No redemption for me.

No one perceives me as a prisoner,

I am just a clown performing for predators.

Over and over I am raped,

Silent victim, because I have no voice.

How did I get here?

Yeah, I chose this life because I have nothing better to do

Then to choose misery . . .

(Copyright © 2012 Chong Kim, All Rights Reserved)

Read the complete poem here.

The film Eden, co-written and based on the life story of Chong Kim, is premiering at the 2012 South by Southwest Arts Festival!

Prostitution and Choice

Dublin Call girl has a great new post up about choice in prostitution:  She shows that it doesn’t exist.  She bravely shares her own story and we are all the better for it.  Here’s an excerpt:

I am going to try to explain the psychology behind ‘choosing’prostitution, in my case.  This may get confusing and complicated, and I might even contradict myself, so bear with me.

I went straight from being abused in a weird sexual and violent way into prostitution. There was a meshing between the two lives. I finally got the abuser out of my life by moving house when I was 21, but I was still in the previous house when I ‘discovered’escorting.

The man that was in my life for five years before I became an escort, was not a lover, or a boyfriend, or just a friend. He came across me when I was 16 and then began a long process of emails, text messages and phone calls to get me under his control. I’d been raped in the same year he found me. Maybe this has something to do with it, although I’m obviously not blaming  myself at all. I just mean that maybe if I hadn’t been raped, I wouldn’t have been so confused and easily influenced, and, vulnerable, basically.  I maybe wouldn’t have been such a good target. Who knows. There is no point in thinking about these things. I can look back on all this, sad for myself but not feeling tragic, slightly amazed that I got through it, and that I still am getting through it.

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