HOOKER REVENGE – Arresting the “John’s”

Twenty women sat fidgeting on folding chairs as I called their names.  There was one absent.  Her name was listed on the court manifest as Ruby.  I don’t know if that was her real name.

The door opened with a loud bang.  As Ruby burst into the meeting room, she was an intimidating sight.

An African American woman – over six feet – 350 pounds with a wild mop of bleached blond hair, she stomped up to me in the front of the room.  She thrust the papers she was holding angrily into my face.  They read “UNHOOKED AND FREE – A self esteem class for women.”

“Hey, white girl, who are you to f—–g tell me I got no self esteem?”

The room became quiet.  She continued before I could answer…

“Isn’t that what you call this mother-f——g class? What if I refuse to stay?”

“If you leave, I have to mark you absent and the judge will issue a warrant for your arrest. The court mandated you into this program.”

“Okay.  I’ll stay but you’re not getting another word out of me.  Don’t ask me to participate or say one f——g thing.  You and your court got no right to tell me what to do with my own body.  I got all the self esteem I need.”

Ruby noisily pulled a folding chair to the very back of the room and opened a magazine.

This was an actual scene from my program, Unhooked and Free several years ago.  I was a volunteer in conjunction with the Chicago Court system.  It was started by a compassionate judge, Thaddeus Kowalski, who was frustrated with sending them to jail and seeing the same faces in his misdemeanor court.

No wonder Ruby was mad.  She had been arrested over and over and had recently spent 30 days in jail.  The “John,” her customer, was just let go.

He went home to his wife or his life – with no one the wiser.  He could have been an attorney, a construction worker, A CEO or even a policeman.  Only about 25% of the men involved with the women are arrested.

Weren’t they both committing the crime?

If he hadn’t been buying would she have been selling?

The county spends an average of about $125 per day to house an inmate in its facility at Cook County Jail.

RUBY’S LAST STAY IN JAIL COST $3750.

It was not her first.

They are overcrowded and understaffed.  There is little help for the inmates except for access to religious services.   She was just warehoused.    A lot of money spent with nothing to help. There were over 4000 arrests for prostitution in Chicago alone in the past year.  Add it up.

The UNHOOKED AND FREE program was an organized attempt to bring about change in the behavior of the defendants who have been involved in prostitution and who have been arrested and charged in connection with this activity.  Hundreds of participants have been assigned to the program since its inception in 1994. Incarceration had not been proven to be a deterrent to further prostitution activity.

THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT SOMETHING RADICAL IS CHANGING.

According to the Chicago Tribune, a campaign called END DEMAND is being watched by reform groups throughout the country.  It has the support of the Chicago Police Department, the Cook County sheriff’s office and the women’s rights foundation, NoVo,  which is led by Warren Buffet’s son, Peter and his wife, Jennifer.

They also want it to reflect in a state law that a prostituted individual is a victim, said Samir Goswami, policy director for the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation.

I started each class with the same statements.  I told them I am not a cop.  I don’t work for the court. Or the Probation Department.  Or Social Service.  Nobody pays me.  I come here because I want to be here. I also will not try to convince them to give up prostitution.  But I stressed they were playing a losing game. The police are out to get them off the streets.

These women were not high class call girls.  They were street prostitutes.

I went on to say that  nothing that is said in the class will go on their record.  Nothing will be repeated, using their name, out of this room.  And they have the same obligation. There is a requirement on them.  They must agree that they will not repeat anything that is said here out on the street.  Otherwise, nobody will feel safe

This was something new to them – this sisterhood.  I became aware that these young women were not friendly to each other outside.

They were competitors – for the same cars – the same customer.  On the same corner. If anything, they were involved in discrediting each other.  They would scream at a prospective client, “Don’t go with her. She’s a whore! She has AIDS!  Go with me!”  This was definitely not polite society. Nobody played fair here.

Surprisingly, they agree to the terms. As the group progresses, unbelievably, they started to help each other. Someone always has had experience with finding housing, public aid, food stamps or a special person, in a position of authority, who was empathetic.  I think back to what my wise mother used to say.  She told us if you throw people onto their best behavior, they usually rise to the occasion.  She was right.  Even here.

What I didn’t know is that no one had ever listened to them before.  They had never been asked before who they were – what they wanted out of life – what their early dreams had been and what their problems were today. They had never been invited to express themselves. Not ever.

And they were anxious to be heard. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried about the form for this class.  The girls designed the curriculum themselves.  All I had to do was listen.  They laid it out in their conversations.

Here is a snapshot of what the prostitutes told me about themselves:

They hated the work and they hated themselves for doing it. Any illusion that they are nymphomaniacs vanished after hearing them talk. They didn’t even enjoy sex with their boyfriends or husbands.  They said they were turned off from the waist down.

Under that was the good money they earned at this job.  A dangerous job.  Their lives were in jeopardy every minute they were with a “trick.”  They had been bound and gagged, beaten up, knifed, thrown out of moving cars, bones broken.  Prostitutes are found dead in dumpsters all the time.  These crimes are not always reported in the press.

But the job paid well for the hours spent. Oral sex sells for $20 to $30. They do about 10 men a night.  Regular sex is negotiated on a per job basis.  Between $50 and $200 according to how weird a request happens to be.

Here they had “rules” that they prided themselves on.  There were things they would not do. Each woman had a different standard – a feeble, private moral code. It fascinated me that almost every woman ruled out kissing.   They would do almost everything but kiss.  That was too personal.

The next layer was the drugs.  They were addicted to at least one and sometimes several substances. Many of the women lived in an abusive and addictive relationship with a man whom they were also supplying with drugs. These alliances were explosive because the boyfriend  - you can read that “Pimp” – would shift from extreme jealousy of the men who were the customers – to rage if they did not earn enough money to buy the drugs. They had combined habits of $300 to $500 a day.  As one woman said, “I got expenses.”

One day I asked the group which came first – the prostitution or the drugs?  A petite Hispanic woman answered, “The drugs come first.  And then the prostitution.  You need the money to buy the drugs. But you need the drugs to be a prostitute.  Do you know how horrible it is to have a strange man touch your body?  You got to be stoned.”

WHAT IF THAT $125. A DAY JAIL TIME WAS SPENT ON WHAT THEY REALLY NEEDED?

Drug Rehab.  Job Training. Counseling. Safe houses. Health Care.  Parental training.

Because of the frequency of arrests, it is obvious that the current avenue of punishment is not working.  These defendants are overcrowding the already burdened court and the Cook County Jail.  A new approach is necessary.

IT STARTS WITH ARRESTING THE MEN WHO ARE THEIR CUSTOMERS.

If Illinois passes this legislation, can the rest of the country be far behind?

There is constant publicity about sex trafficking in the news from all over the world.

These are our own victims. These sex slaves belong to us.

Will you help to pass legislation in your community?.

ABOUT UNHOOKED AND FREE

Corinne Edwards was the facilitator of the pilot program, Unhooked and Free at Branch 29of the Chicago Court System, for five years.  It was the first of its kind in the country. BBC did a documentary on the program.

It has since been turned over to Genesis House, a drop in center for prostitutes in Chicago.

She is the director of The Miracle Network, an organization which is involved in counseling, media training and support groups in the Personal Growth field.  She is the author of this blog and four books.

For more information on the Unhooked and Free program, click here

Picture by Aluminum Studios

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