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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Stella Marr Interviewed by Activist Ruth Jacobs

Reblogged from http://ruthjacobs.co.uk/2013/01/29/stella-marr-sex-trafficking-survivor-anti-sex-trafficking-activist-advocate-executive-director-founding-member-sex-trafficking-survivors-united-survivors-connect-interview/

How did you become involved in the movement against sex trafficking and sexual exploitation?

I was trafficked in prostitution in New York City for nearly ten years, from the early 1980s to the early 1990s. Two of my friends from the life were murdered. My beautiful friend, April, died of suicide because the madam she’d called promised to send help then did nothing. April died waiting – to me it feels like another murder. My best friend Gabriel, who’d been trafficked from age sixteen, died of AIDS at age twenty-four. His family kicked him out when they found out he was sick, so he had to spend his last days living with a john who made him buy life insurance with the john as beneficiary. I fill with tears when I think of it.

The public needs to understand that prostitution is sex trafficking. The term ‘sex trafficking’ reflects an awakening to the truth about the realities of prostitution – that it is sexually violent, coercive, degrading, and involves fraud, deception and the abuse of power. In other words, the circumstances of prostitution are those of sex trafficking. The only reason the public doesn’t always recognize this is that there’s a strange assumption that if someone is in prostitution – it’s OK to commit these crimes against her. It’s the ultimate victim blaming. The UN general assembly agrees – their definition of sex trafficking describes prostitution:

(a) ”Trafficking in persons” shall mean the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation…

(b) The consent of a victim of trafficking in persons to the intended exploitation set forth in subparagraph (a) of this article shall be irrelevant where any of the means set forth in subparagraph (a) have been used. 

What draws you to support people who are trafficked and sexually exploited?

Ralph Ellison wrote, “We are one, and we become many. This is not prophecy, but description.”

After being trafficked in prostitution, you feel linked to all the others who’ve been there. You want them to be okay. You are no longer merely yourself; you are part of a whole. It’s a tremendous blessing. It’s why so many survivor activists and advocates are working in the anti-trafficking movement. As survivors, one of our greatest resources is our warmth and our deep care for our sisters and brothers. Now we are empowering ourselves and each other, the next step is to help make our work sustainable through funding.

Researchers have found that survivors of sex trafficking/prostitution suffer from the same amount of trauma as the victims of state-sponsored torture; this is no surprise to those of us who’ve been there. People who’ve been through this kind of devastation need help, support and services. Recovery is possible. Many of us who’ve come through it are now leading passionate, meaningful lives. Most survivors I know are warriors.

Read the rest of the interview at Ruth’s wonderful blog

Sex Trafficking Survivors Worldwide Unite, Board to Meet in Washington DC

When there are enough empowered survivors speaking out the sex industry will be dismantled

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Sex Trafficking Survivors United  is holding their inaugural board meeting in Washington, DC between October 17-21, 2012.  This historic meeting of some of the most experienced and effective survivor leaders in the Western Hemisphere and Europe will launch an unprecedented collaborative effort among sex trafficking/prostitution survivors worldwide.  Flying into the US capital from Canada, the USA, and Ireland to attend are:

Trisha Baptie, EVE, Educating Voices, Vancouver, BC

Vednita Carter, Breaking Free, Minneapolis, MN

Kristy Childs, Veronica’s Voice, Kansas City, MO and KS

Natasha Falle, http://www.sextrade101.com, Toronto, ON

Tina Frundt, Courtney’s House, Washington, DC

Cherie Jimenez, The EVA Center/Kim’s Project, Boston, MA

Stella Marr, Survivors Connect Network, Houston, TX

Bridget Perrier, http://www.sextrade101.com, Toronto, ON

Christine Stark, acclaimed writer and artist, Minneapolis, MN

For various reasons, most survivors have been working in relative isolation within the anti-trafficking movement.  We believe the time is right for us to join forces as survivor-activists to lend our expertise, our voices, our trauma-focused and empowerment aftercare programs, our stories of transformation, and our passion for social change to the larger work of creating a world free of sex trafficking, which is another word for prostitution.  Making distinctions between sex trafficking and prostitution is harmful and misleading.  It marginalize those that are trapped and suffering.

Our organization will raise funds for survivor-led programs helping women exit prostitution and recover from the extensive trauma.  We will continue educating the public on the reality of sex trafficking/prostitution from those who not only have survived it but are on the front lines with those that are still trapped and still not being recognized as victims.  Additionally, we will urge anti-trafficking organizations to empower survivors by opening doors and funding opportunities, recognizing the expertise that we bring to this movement, and hiring survivor leaders.  Our work will connect survivors, strengthen our voices and put us at the heart of the anti-trafficking movement where we belong.

We’ll also advocate for funds for services to help the victims of trafficking/prostitution and continue to grow our survivors network, while developing a speakers and writers group to help get more survivor voices into the public consciousness.  This combination of raising funds, networking survivors and expanding the voices of survivors will lead to more survivor empowerment, and ultimately more resources to help girls and women exit and recover.

About the International Association of Sex Trafficking/Prostitution Survivors Survivors United

Sex Trafficking Survivors United is a fledgling soon-to-be nonprofit organization dedicated to uniting the energy, efforts and voices of sex trafficking/prostitution survivors everywhere while making their work sustainable so we can end sex trafficking/prostitution in our lifetime.  We believe when empowered survivors that have had extensive time in “the Life” understand their experiences and are speaking the truth, along with those that support survivors, the sex trade will truly begin to be dismantled.

Already with 60 members, 25 of whom are running their own effective nonprofit organizations, our coalition provides more services to victims while educating the public  than any single anti-sex trafficking NGO in the USA and Canada.  Additionally, we operate a private network that provides community and support for survivors.  All members of our organization are abolitionists who agree that to end trafficking/prostitution we must address demand and focus on providing more choices and empowering recovery services for the victims.

Sex Trafficking Survivors United has grown out of Survivors Connect Network.  We hope to take our activism to the next level of empowerment by seeking funding for survivor-led programs that meet our best practices criteria as a coalition and creating a speakers group where we advocate that survivors are paid for speaking engagements so their activism is sustainable.  The network will remain  as important as ever.

EMAIL:  sextraffickingsurvivorsunited@gmail.com

CONTACT:  Stella Marr, 832 368-3899, texts welcome

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52 Trafficking/Prostitution Survivors Vote to Support Irish Survivor Abolitionists’ Efforts

Survivors Connect Network, an international coalition of trafficking/prostitution survivors, has voted unanimously to stand with and support the goals of our Irish sister survivor abolitionists.   These amazing women, some of whom are members of Survivors Connect Network,  are working courageously to bring the Nordic model  into Irish law while insisting on meaningful help for women exiting trafficking/prostitution.

An Irish survivor activist explains further:

“In the run-up to the Irish government’s deliberations on the future of prostitution legislation in Ireland, I put out a global appeal to women who’d experienced trafficking/prostitution via Survivor’s Connect Network. I asked that they vote to support our efforts to see the basic principles of the Nordic Model implemented here in Ireland:

1 – The criminalisation of sex-buying.

2 - This law would of course criminalise only the buyers of sex, not the sellers of it, because we believe that no woman should be criminalised for her own exploitation.  and

3 – The pledge of real, practical and workable supports for women exiting prostitution, including education, training, housing, trauma counselling, and specially trained social workers.

“We Irish survivor abolitionists received wholehearted support; in fact many survivors from around the world asked how they might be of any further help or assistance. We were and are sincerely comforted to feel the collective solidarity of survivors of prostitution and trafficking in our struggle.

“To each of the many women who voted to support us, I would say this letter is a thank you, but in fact it is a statement that we cannot thank you enough.

“With strongest solidarity and deepest gratitude,

 

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Ontario’s Prostitution Ruling Misrepresented Evidence and Contravened the Charter & Case Law

Max Waltman, a legal scholar who has been published in the New York Times, has concluded that the ruling in the Bedford case misrepresented evidence, while contravening case law and the charter.  Michelle Brock discusses his breakthrough paper at Hope for the Sold.  Here’s an excerpt:

A paper concludes thatBedford v. Canada erroneously rewrote the law against “living on the avails of prostitution” on basis of misrepresented as well as faulty evidence, and contravenes prior Supreme Court cases and the Charter by making prostituted persons more vulnerable to exploitation.

To date, living “on the avails of prostitution of another person” has been illegal in Canada. That law was challenged in the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Bedford v. Canada on March 26, 2012. The court essentially found that the law prevented prostituted persons to benefit from third parties such as brothel management, escort agencies, bodyguards, or drivers — all whom were perceived as able to enhance the safety and well-being of prostituted persons. Hence, the avails provision was rewritten by the court, stating that it “applies only to those” who live on the avails “’in circumstances of exploitation.’”

Now, a recent working paper from Stockholm University penned by Max Waltman, a PhD Candidate at their Department of Political Science, concludes that the Court of Appeal for Ontario erroneously rewrote the law against “living on the avails of prostitution” on basis of misrepresented as well as faulty evidence, and as a result made prostituted persons more vulnerable to exploitation. The paper highlights how the Bedford ruling contravenes previous Supreme Court cases on prostitution, and is inconsistent with equality guarantees under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Waltman suggests a different decision based on the notion of equality under the Charter’s case law, which would effectively endorse the Swedish prostitution law in Canada that criminalizes purchasers and pimps, and decriminalizes prostituted persons. The case will now head to the Supreme Court. (If you are new to the Bedford ruling, and want to get caught up on the basics, you can read a clear description of the decision here.)

Download Waltman’s ground-breaking paper here

Read  the rest of the article about this breakthrough legal scholarship at www.HopefortheSold.com

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Spending July 4th as a “Child Prostitute” — or Victim?

Powerful survivor/advocate and Founder of Courtney’s House Tina Frudt, has said, pimping and trafficking is one and the same.”  Brilliant survivor/writer Holly Austin Smith has written an exceptional post which shows how building a false separation between the idea of being pimped and the idea of being trafficked harms girls and women who are or have been in the life.  Here’s an excerpt of Holly’s tour de force:

Not only does the word prostitute imply choice but it carries with it centuries of stigmatization.  At 14 years old, I began to believe that I was a prostitute.  I couldn’t understand that I was victimized because I believed I must have chosen to be a prostitute.  I initially refused to testify against my traffickers because I believed they were now the only people who accepted me.

“[The trafficker] might beat you, he might sell you…but at least he accepts you,” stated Rachel Lloyd while explaining the mindset of a victim, “society doesn’t have a lot of empathy for girls who have been in the life.”

Rachel explains that traffickers will tell young women and children that the police won’t believe them, that their family will no longer want them, and that nobody will treat them nicely.

And, unfortunately, this is often true.  This is the reason why many girls, including myself, chose to return to the traffickers; I felt shunned by society.

The answer to this problem is to stop labeling child victims as prostitutes!  These children are victims of commercial sexual exploitation and child sex trafficking.

“When you talk about a young person being trafficked or exploited,” explained Rachel Lloyd, “the edon the end makes it something that was done to that person; it’s not who they are.”

For nearly 20 years I carried a sense of guilt and shame with me, and I can trace it back to one single word: prostitute.

Read the rest of this moving article here.

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How Survivors Give Each Other Hope

Alexis, who blogs at Spilled Perfume, just posted a beautiful piece about how survivors encourage each other, about her realization that she wants to devote her life to helping people exit prostitution, and about her new book, which will soon be available on Amazon.com — Hooray!!  Here’s an excerpt:

On Thursday night last week, I made a big decision: I will give myself and my life fully, 100% to helping people escape prostitution, and helping survivors recover.  This decision has been four years in the making.  I think it is good idea that God gave me this desire years before I was ready; this allowed me to ponder it intensely and get prepared.  My wounds were too fresh before so it was not really an option for me to help other victims (not to mention that I had no courage whatsoever), but it seems that the timing is right somehow.

I often feel that I’m not in the driver’s seat of my own car.  My life is so random and unpredictable.  So check out these VERY CRAZY THINGS which have been going on in the past eight days.

First of all, I met a survivor of child sex trafficking just 24 hours after my car accident which should have killed me.  I’ve never had the courage to find out about how to apply for positions working with sex-trafficked survivors, but by the time I read his story (which took me and hour and a half) I was completely resolved.  This is the reason I did not die last Monday.  This is the reason I’m alive.  Again, I’ve known this for four years, but I did not have the courage or the resolve until Thursday night.

Second, I’m realizing that this decision I made will have its rewards and joys but it will also have its challenges and tough times.  I cannot express the joy I feel from hearing my new friend – who was trafficked as a little boy from age 6 until age 10 – asking me, “How did you get to where you are today?  I’m having trouble in my recovery.  I don’t know if it’s possible to recover.  I don’t feel that I deserve to recover.”  This is a flicker of hope, a flicker of life inside someone who is somehow still alive against all logic and all reason.  He wants to recover.  He’s not sure how, but if there is any flicker of hope out there he wants to grab hold of it.

So this is an exciting thing about being involved in the lives of survivors!

Read the rest of this beautiful post at www.ragamuffinalexis.wordpress.com.

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Can You Really Know & Truly Believe?

Rebecca Mott’s clear unsparing voice describes how it feels to be in prostitution.  She will move you.  Here’s an excerpt from her blog www.rmott62.wordpress.com.

Do not have pity for me – I am lucky I have exited and I am finding my way back to my humanity – save your anger, grief and desire to make a change for the millions of the prostituted being tortured as you read this.

I will reach into my pain, into the places I had to block out to keep some sanity or the will to live.

I want to write for you to know who those men really were – write to say what being tortured means. Write to the place where you so lose that you could be human – that you forget what being human is.

I want to write into the rotten heart of what it is to be prostituted. I want to write to free my prostituted self, I want to write for freedom for me and all my prostituted Sisters.

To understand and be on the road to destroying male violence, we must see through the eyes and hearts of exited women – these women know and feel and understand the cynical nature of male violence. We know how it is pre-planned, how it is seen as a non-event, how violence to the prostituted is just leisure – nothing more nothing less.

Listen and truly hear our agony, our rage, our ways make deep connections – and used us as teachers to understand male violence and dismissive attitudes to all women and children.

I shall use a few common ways of how I was torture, how normal it became for me – to show that it the structure of the sex trade that must be destroyed.

I was gang-raped often – for any or no reason, because it was exciting for punters to push their boundaries with a whore, because it was branded as punishment for made up reasons, because I was classed as the whore who did not care or feel pain.

Read the rest of the article at  Rebecca’s blog www.rmott62.wordpress.com

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Behind Closed Doors: Living in an Abusive Relationship

Sometimes you can’t move, sometimes you can’t speak, sometimes it’s like he’s shouting at you but there’s actually no one there.

Breathtakingly honest post by Angel K at Surviving Prostitution and Addiction about how what bgins as domestic violence can turn into being pimped.  Here’s an excerpt:

He breaks your boundaries one by one. He wants anal sex. He wants to use toys. He wants to take pictures. There are certain points where lines are crossed and power shifts to him. You both know it though it’s unspoken. After the pictures he has it in his power to humiliate you publicly.

Now he brings in other people.

These ‘friends’ of his, his dealer plus entourage, he wants you to ‘look after’ them, and you’ve learned what that means. Outsiders will say if it was that bad you would have left, but it’s not that simple. Just because you’re still here doesn’t mean you want to be. If you could walk away, you would, but the last time you tried that, you got caught and by the time he’d finished with you, you weren’t walking anywhere anytime soon. He tells you he’ll finish the job off if it ever happens again. He doesn’t let you leave the house. He has the money and the car keys. You have a serious addiction and you’re in trauma. You have PTSD and it makes you easy to manipulate.

Sometimes you can’t move, sometimes you can’t speak, sometimes it’s like he’s shouting at you but there’s actually no one there.

Read the rest of the article at www.survivingprostitutionandaddiction.com

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Part 2 – More Pimps Posing as Sexworker Activists & the Bedford Case

James Baldwin wrote “The victim who is able to articulate the situation of the victim has ceased to be a victim: she has become a threat.”

I had no idea how threatening my voice was until I started to make it heard.  None of us trafficking and prostitution survivors did, until we started to write about the brutality we’ve experienced and these big players within these pimp-dominated ‘sex worker activist’ groups started to do everything they could to silence us and deny we exist.  Survivor bloggers are cyber-stalked via Facebook, email, twitter and hateful blog comments.  Our email accounts are hacked and private information that could endanger us is tweeted or revealed elsewhere online.  Spiteful emails about us are sent to people we work with.  Supportive activists who feature our writing on their blogs are similarly swarmed with vilifying emails and comments.

I’d like to give you a glimpse of this intense cyber-bullying, using myself as an example. I’m not asking for sympathy; I want to show you what survivor activists go through when we break the silence.

I came out as a survivor online in March 2011.  Almost immediately pro-sex industry men and women affiliated with the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) USA and other pimp-led activist organizations began emailing me and posting aggressive comments on my Facebook wall.  As I got bolder I started leaving comments after articles about prostitution in major newspapers and blogs.  At this point I did not have my own blog, and we hadn’t yet formed Survivors Connect Network.  I was an obscure private person. Nonetheless, members of the “Network of Sex Work Projects” found me.  An anonymous email brought me to this creepy thread about me on admitted pimp Maggie McNeill’s blog.  Another anonymous email led me to this piece on Bound Not Gagged. Here   McNeill implies that I’m a puppet controlled by abolitionists.  Norma Jean Almodovar, the executive director of COYOTE LA, suggests that I might not exist.    Billie Jackson, the founder of SWOP Colorado, criticizes my language. Maxine Doogan, the leader of the Erotic Service Providers’ Union states that I remind her of another troublemaker.  She links to a video created by Michael Whiteacre, a lawyer and filmmaker connected with the pornography industry. The video, called The Devil and Shelley Lubben, slanders Lubben, a survivor who speaks out about abuse in the porn industry.  It includes an interview with an actor who was in a pornographic movie that depicts Lubben with six men.  He discusses her sexual performance.  The message is clear:  Make waves and this could happen to you.

These invasive tactics have only amplified as time passes.  There have been numerous other creepy comment threads and blog posts which pick at me and make false statements written by people I’ve never met who are affiliated with these ‘sex worker activist’ groups.  They are a constant background noise and the volume keeps increasing.  Most survivors who write or speak about prostitution go through this.

Any examples I give are just splashes from an ocean of harassment.  Examine these droplets:

• A few hours after the first ever video broadcast of a talk by Survivors Connect (SC) members, rich and famous Brooke Magnanti sends a tweet to her 49,900 followers, Elena Jeffreys, head of the Scarlett Alliance, an Australian sex worker group affiliated with SWOP USA, and McNeill.  The tweet states that SC members are “like Operation Rescue” an extremist group known for harassing women at abortion clinics.  Survivors Connect formed just four months ago.  Our 48 members are all crime victims and survivors of trafficking/prostitution.  McNeill blogs at Sex Workers without Borders (SWWB) with Jill McCracken, a college professor who is part of SWOP USA. No one at Survivors Connect has ever met Magnanti, McNeill or Jeffreys.

• After receiving aggressive tweets from McNeill I ask her to please stop tweeting my name.  (I’ve blocked her, but if she types the @ sign before my name, I still get her messages).  She ignores my request, and I repeat it many times, explaining that I’m finding the twitter swarm that’s building around her constant tweets scary.  Michael Whiteacre, a lawyer and filmmaker involved with the porn industry (Remember him? He made that hit piece on survivor activist Shelley Lubben) joins the fray. I tell them their intensity is threatening, but they don’t stop, no matter how many times I ask. McNeill tweets “I want you to feel threatened so you BACK DOWN” several times.  Later Christina Page, a doctoral student connected with SWOP USA, joins in.  I’ve never met McNeill, Page or Whiteacre.

• As I’m editing this article I get a tweet from another stranger which contains encoded language that refers to the confidential part of my life.  If I were to interpret this fully I would be revealing my location by a matter of just miles.  The message here is clear: We know where you are.

This is what it’s like for survivor activists every day.  You ignore it as much as you can, and then eventually these people get so extreme, threatening or outrageous that they draw you in.  When this happens, I sometimes fall through the floor of my life and into the past’s deep water.  I become the scared, beat up girl I used to be, locked in a room in a brothel.  Then it’s hard to find my way back to the present.  Resurfacing, I’ll stare into blankness for hours while my legs shake.  I’ll feel hollow and my husband’s voice will seem to come from far away.

Read the rest of the article at www.secretlifeofamanhattancallgirl.wordpress.com

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