This is the 6th and last installment of the "The Sex Trade Uncensored" series running in the Edmonton Journal.
____________________________________________
Drugs become roadblock for women trying to get off street
Two success stories hinged on getting help for addiction
Renata D'Aliesio
The Edmonton Journal
June 22, 2005
In a probing six-part series, Journal crime reporter Renata D'Aliesio writes about the people who sell and buy sex, how the industry works and its local impact.
- Friday: Rashmi struggles to escape street life while a serial killer prowls
- Saturday: Johns go to school
- Sunday: The secret life of escorts
- Monday: The lobbying prostitute
- Tuesday: The boom in porn videos
- Today: Life after prostitution
EDMONTON - This time they gather for Ellie May Meyer.
Meyer had worked as a prostitute on 118th Avenue since 1998 to support her addiction to crack cocaine and heroin. Last month, the 33-year-old's lifeless body was found in a rural area east of the city, the circumstances of her death similar to those of so many other slain Edmonton prostitutes.
On a day in May, nearly 200 people arrive at Winston Churchill Square to remember Meyer. People such as Anita Hunt crumble in tears. She still works the street, and Meyer's death is another reminder of the danger she faces nearly every day.
Dawn Hodgins and Bonnie Pool are at the square, too. Meyer's death affects them differently: it reminds them how fortunate they are to have left prostitution and drugs behind.
Many try. In a survey of street prostitutes, the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation found that 25 women had tried to quit a total of 143 times, averaging eight times each. Resources such as Kindred House and a court-diversion program are available, but more support is needed, say police and outreach workers. Detox centres are especially lacking.
"We spend more money housing people in jails than we do helping them," says Wallis Kendal of iHuman Youth Society.
Hodgins and Pool suffered years of abuse and spent years selling sex to feed their drug habits before they were able to change their lives.
Almost always, for such women, there is one defining moment. For Hodgins, that moment appeared in a photograph.
She had taken her son, then about five years old, on an Easter egg hunt. Her mother took pictures and showed them to Hodgins. That was a decade ago, but Hodgins still remembers how shocked she was by what she saw. She had no idea she had fallen so far.
"I hadn't seen myself in a long time. I mean really seen myself as other people saw me," she says. "And I looked at that picture and I looked like all the people I was scared of when I saw them on TV, and all the bums and drug addicts.
"In my mind I didn't look like that. That made me quit. I hadn't seen myself like that. I looked like a walking dead person."
Hodgins was 16 with a cocaine habit and selling hashish when a prostitute approached her.
"She said, 'I know these parties that this old guy has. Do you want to come?' "
Hodgins hated her first time having sex for money. She was with four men that night and made about $400.
"It was the most disgusting thing I ever did in my life," she says. "But I had the money and something in me said, 'People have been taking this from you for free anyway. You can get paid for it. It's the thing that you're good at. People have been doing it to you for so long, you must be good at it.' "
By the time Hodgins decided to quit drugs and prostitution, she says, her cocaine habit was costing her about $1,000 a day. She tried to get into a detox centre in Edmonton, but was told to phone back in three days.
"I wasn't going to wait," she says. "I couldn't."
So she went to her aunt's home on a reserve in northern Alberta, and got clean there. She says she has slipped a few times along the way, but her life today is so darn normal.
In her 10 years off the street, she has completed her high school diploma and other courses at NorQuest College, married a man who was never involved in drugs or crime, become a co-ordinator at the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation, and routinely visits schools to warn students about the lure of prostitution.
This month, her son graduates from high school. "He's such a good kid," the 34-year-old mother says proudly.
Pool smiles as she plays with a friend's baby at Meyer's memorial.
She has children of her own and a life away from the street now. After nine years of drug addiction and prostitution, Pool hit bottom in 1999.
She weighed about 90 pounds. Her skin was grey and her eyes black and sunken. She knew then that she would die if she didn't quit. She prayed to God.
Pool had kept in touch with an Edmonton social worker since she was 17. Although she was no longer underage, she got into a safe house, where she spent nearly seven months getting clean.
"I just grabbed the right length of the straw," Pool says.
The world she knew, though, will always linger. Johns and drug dealers still approach her, even when she's walking with her daughter, hand in hand, to church.
She has had to fend for herself for so long, she has trouble letting people in.
"I still have problems with that, making friends," she says. "I'm trying not to be distant with people."
She let Samantha Berg in. The two met in the safe house as they both struggled to break free from their addictions. Berg never did.
"I tried to do everything I could to help her, but I'm powerless over those things," Pool, 28, said after Berg was found dead in an Edmonton trucking yard in January.
"You can't make someone do something."
But you can help, Kendal says, and be patient when they slip, as they so often will.
"I just take it a day at a time," says Kendal, who works with some of the city's most troubled and drug-addicted teenagers. "I know that these guys can do it. They just have to have the support in place."
Pool might have not left drugs and prostitution without the social worker who got her into a safe house. Hodgins might still be "walking dead" had people not cut her breaks along the way, like the NorQuest teacher who caught her smoking crack in a school washroom.
The teacher threatened to kick her out of school and phone the police. Hodgins pleaded.
"I was just freaking out," Hodgins says. "I was like, 'Don't kick me out.' I said, 'Please, just give me a chance.' "
That chance, Hodgins says, was pivotal. It probably saved her life.
rd'aliesio@thejournal.canwest.com
_____________________________
WARNING SIGNS
Signs your child could be a prostitute, or may be becoming one:
Attitude
- withdraws physically and emotionally from home and family
- has extreme mood swings
- becomes secretive and reserved
- lies about where they are going
- becomes confrontational
- engages in abusive behaviour or language
Routine
- drops friends for new group that includes children from other schools or communities; they may be older
- skips school
- grades drop significantly
- doesn't want to participate in traditional family events
- becomes a night person, staying out late or unable to sleep at night
Language
- adopts slang and mannerisms they never used before
- speaks in one- or two-word codes
- starts using a street name
Physical appearance
- dresses provocatively
- uses excessive makeup and time getting ready to go out
- behaviour becomes more sexual
- has bruises or other signs of abuse
Clues around the house
- has unexplained money
- has new and expensive clothing or trinkets
- has drug paraphernalia such as cans with holes, burnt knives, twisted spoons and rolling papers
- gets a cellphone or pager
- has long-distance bills for cell numbers or numbers that don't show up on call display
- has matchbook covers with cell numbers hidden inside
- has business cards and receipts from places a teen wouldn't normally visit
- receives calls from strangers at odd hours; hang-up calls
- lots of condoms around
- carries weapons
Pimps
- are any age, although most try to appear to be a peer
- often involved in other criminal activities
- may pose as a friend or boyfriend who is nice to the family -- polite, considerate, a smooth talker
- strongly desire money and status
- may be involved in drugs, carry weapons and cellphones
- are manipulative
- exploit several prostitutes at a time
- are possessive and isolate prostitutes from their families
- can be a family member
- may be an adult who provides things such as food and drugs in exchange for sex
Recruiters
- are male or female
- are usually similar in age and wear the same style of clothing
- offer friendship and portray exciting lifestyle
- always appear helpful and caring to children
- may be family members who force children into prostitution because of poverty or to support addictions
Common places for recruiters
- school
- stores, video arcades near schools
- bus stops and LRT stations
- malls, especially food courts
- coffee shops
- community centres
Places where prostitution occurs
- bars, lounges and pool halls
- youth centres and group homes
- truck stops, gas stations, bus depots
____________________________________________
Drugs become roadblock for women trying to get off street
Two success stories hinged on getting help for addiction
Renata D'Aliesio
The Edmonton Journal
June 22, 2005
In a probing six-part series, Journal crime reporter Renata D'Aliesio writes about the people who sell and buy sex, how the industry works and its local impact.
- Friday: Rashmi struggles to escape street life while a serial killer prowls
- Saturday: Johns go to school
- Sunday: The secret life of escorts
- Monday: The lobbying prostitute
- Tuesday: The boom in porn videos
- Today: Life after prostitution
EDMONTON - This time they gather for Ellie May Meyer.
Meyer had worked as a prostitute on 118th Avenue since 1998 to support her addiction to crack cocaine and heroin. Last month, the 33-year-old's lifeless body was found in a rural area east of the city, the circumstances of her death similar to those of so many other slain Edmonton prostitutes.
On a day in May, nearly 200 people arrive at Winston Churchill Square to remember Meyer. People such as Anita Hunt crumble in tears. She still works the street, and Meyer's death is another reminder of the danger she faces nearly every day.
Dawn Hodgins and Bonnie Pool are at the square, too. Meyer's death affects them differently: it reminds them how fortunate they are to have left prostitution and drugs behind.
Many try. In a survey of street prostitutes, the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation found that 25 women had tried to quit a total of 143 times, averaging eight times each. Resources such as Kindred House and a court-diversion program are available, but more support is needed, say police and outreach workers. Detox centres are especially lacking.
"We spend more money housing people in jails than we do helping them," says Wallis Kendal of iHuman Youth Society.
Hodgins and Pool suffered years of abuse and spent years selling sex to feed their drug habits before they were able to change their lives.
Almost always, for such women, there is one defining moment. For Hodgins, that moment appeared in a photograph.
She had taken her son, then about five years old, on an Easter egg hunt. Her mother took pictures and showed them to Hodgins. That was a decade ago, but Hodgins still remembers how shocked she was by what she saw. She had no idea she had fallen so far.
"I hadn't seen myself in a long time. I mean really seen myself as other people saw me," she says. "And I looked at that picture and I looked like all the people I was scared of when I saw them on TV, and all the bums and drug addicts.
"In my mind I didn't look like that. That made me quit. I hadn't seen myself like that. I looked like a walking dead person."
Hodgins was 16 with a cocaine habit and selling hashish when a prostitute approached her.
"She said, 'I know these parties that this old guy has. Do you want to come?' "
Hodgins hated her first time having sex for money. She was with four men that night and made about $400.
"It was the most disgusting thing I ever did in my life," she says. "But I had the money and something in me said, 'People have been taking this from you for free anyway. You can get paid for it. It's the thing that you're good at. People have been doing it to you for so long, you must be good at it.' "
By the time Hodgins decided to quit drugs and prostitution, she says, her cocaine habit was costing her about $1,000 a day. She tried to get into a detox centre in Edmonton, but was told to phone back in three days.
"I wasn't going to wait," she says. "I couldn't."
So she went to her aunt's home on a reserve in northern Alberta, and got clean there. She says she has slipped a few times along the way, but her life today is so darn normal.
In her 10 years off the street, she has completed her high school diploma and other courses at NorQuest College, married a man who was never involved in drugs or crime, become a co-ordinator at the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation, and routinely visits schools to warn students about the lure of prostitution.
This month, her son graduates from high school. "He's such a good kid," the 34-year-old mother says proudly.
Pool smiles as she plays with a friend's baby at Meyer's memorial.
She has children of her own and a life away from the street now. After nine years of drug addiction and prostitution, Pool hit bottom in 1999.
She weighed about 90 pounds. Her skin was grey and her eyes black and sunken. She knew then that she would die if she didn't quit. She prayed to God.
Pool had kept in touch with an Edmonton social worker since she was 17. Although she was no longer underage, she got into a safe house, where she spent nearly seven months getting clean.
"I just grabbed the right length of the straw," Pool says.
The world she knew, though, will always linger. Johns and drug dealers still approach her, even when she's walking with her daughter, hand in hand, to church.
She has had to fend for herself for so long, she has trouble letting people in.
"I still have problems with that, making friends," she says. "I'm trying not to be distant with people."
She let Samantha Berg in. The two met in the safe house as they both struggled to break free from their addictions. Berg never did.
"I tried to do everything I could to help her, but I'm powerless over those things," Pool, 28, said after Berg was found dead in an Edmonton trucking yard in January.
"You can't make someone do something."
But you can help, Kendal says, and be patient when they slip, as they so often will.
"I just take it a day at a time," says Kendal, who works with some of the city's most troubled and drug-addicted teenagers. "I know that these guys can do it. They just have to have the support in place."
Pool might have not left drugs and prostitution without the social worker who got her into a safe house. Hodgins might still be "walking dead" had people not cut her breaks along the way, like the NorQuest teacher who caught her smoking crack in a school washroom.
The teacher threatened to kick her out of school and phone the police. Hodgins pleaded.
"I was just freaking out," Hodgins says. "I was like, 'Don't kick me out.' I said, 'Please, just give me a chance.' "
That chance, Hodgins says, was pivotal. It probably saved her life.
rd'aliesio@thejournal.canwest.com
_____________________________
WARNING SIGNS
Signs your child could be a prostitute, or may be becoming one:
Attitude
- withdraws physically and emotionally from home and family
- has extreme mood swings
- becomes secretive and reserved
- lies about where they are going
- becomes confrontational
- engages in abusive behaviour or language
Routine
- drops friends for new group that includes children from other schools or communities; they may be older
- skips school
- grades drop significantly
- doesn't want to participate in traditional family events
- becomes a night person, staying out late or unable to sleep at night
Language
- adopts slang and mannerisms they never used before
- speaks in one- or two-word codes
- starts using a street name
Physical appearance
- dresses provocatively
- uses excessive makeup and time getting ready to go out
- behaviour becomes more sexual
- has bruises or other signs of abuse
Clues around the house
- has unexplained money
- has new and expensive clothing or trinkets
- has drug paraphernalia such as cans with holes, burnt knives, twisted spoons and rolling papers
- gets a cellphone or pager
- has long-distance bills for cell numbers or numbers that don't show up on call display
- has matchbook covers with cell numbers hidden inside
- has business cards and receipts from places a teen wouldn't normally visit
- receives calls from strangers at odd hours; hang-up calls
- lots of condoms around
- carries weapons
Pimps
- are any age, although most try to appear to be a peer
- often involved in other criminal activities
- may pose as a friend or boyfriend who is nice to the family -- polite, considerate, a smooth talker
- strongly desire money and status
- may be involved in drugs, carry weapons and cellphones
- are manipulative
- exploit several prostitutes at a time
- are possessive and isolate prostitutes from their families
- can be a family member
- may be an adult who provides things such as food and drugs in exchange for sex
Recruiters
- are male or female
- are usually similar in age and wear the same style of clothing
- offer friendship and portray exciting lifestyle
- always appear helpful and caring to children
- may be family members who force children into prostitution because of poverty or to support addictions
Common places for recruiters
- school
- stores, video arcades near schools
- bus stops and LRT stations
- malls, especially food courts
- coffee shops
- community centres
Places where prostitution occurs
- bars, lounges and pool halls
- youth centres and group homes
- truck stops, gas stations, bus depots
