Brenda Myers-Powell was just a child when
she became a prostitute in the early 1970s.
Here she describes how she was pulled into
working on the streets and why, three
decades later, she devoted her life to
making sure other girls don't fall into the
same trap. Some people will find Brenda's
account upsetting.
Right from the start life was handing me
lemons, but I've always tried to make the best
lemonade I can.

I grew up in the 1960s on the West Side of
Chicago. My mother died when I was six
months old. She was only 16 and I never
learned what it was that she died from - my
grandmother, who drank more than most,
couldn't tell me later on. The official
explanation is that it was "natural causes".
I don't believe that. Who dies at 16 from
natural causes? I like to think that God was just
ready for her. I heard stories that she was
beautiful and had a great sense of humour. I
know that's true because I have one also.
It was my grandmother that took care of me.
And she wasn't a bad person - in fact she had a
side to her that was so wonderful. She read to
me, baked me stuff and cooked the best sweet
potatoes. She just had this drinking problem.

She would bring drinking partners home from
the bar and after she got intoxicated and
passed out these men would do things to me.
It started when I was four or five years old and
it became a regular occurrence. I'm certain my
grandmother didn't know anything about it.

She worked as a domestic in the suburbs. It
took her two hours to get to work and two
hours to get home. So I was a latch-key kid - I
wore a key around my neck and I would take
myself to kindergarten and let myself back in at
the end of the day. And the molesters knew
about that, and they took advantage of it.

I would watch women with big glamorous hair
and sparkly dresses standing on the street
outside our house. I had no idea what they
were up to; I just thought they were shiny. As a
little girl, all I ever wanted was to be shiny.

One day I asked my grandmother what the
women were doing and she said, "Those
women take their panties off and men give
them money." And I remember saying to
myself, "I'll probably do that" because men
had already been taking my panties off.

To look back now, I dealt with it all amazingly
well. Alone in that house, I had imaginary
friends to keep me company that I would sing
and dance around with - an imaginary Elvis
Presley, an imaginary Diana Ross and the
Supremes. I think that helped me deal with
things. I was a really outgoing girl - I used to
laugh a lot.

At the same time, I was afraid, always afraid. I
didn't know if what was happening was my
fault or not. I thought perhaps something was
wrong with me. Even though I was a smart kid,
I disconnected from school. Going into the
1970s, I became the kind of girl who didn't
know how to say "no" - if the little boys in the
community told me that they liked me or
treated me nice, they could basically have their
way with me.

By the time I was 14, I'd had two children with
boys in the community, two baby girls. My
grandmother started to say that I needed to
bring in some money to pay for these kids,
because there was no food in the house, we
had nothing.

So, one evening - it was actually Good Friday - I
went along to the corner of Division Street and
Clark Street and stood in front of the Mark
Twain hotel. I was wearing a two-piece dress
costing $3.99, cheap plastic shoes, and some
orange lipstick which I thought might make me
look older.

I was 14 years old and I cried through
everything. But I did it. I didn't like it, but the
five men who dated me that night showed me
what to do. They knew I was young and it was
almost as if they were excited by it.
I made $400 but I didn't get a cab home that
night. I went home by train and I gave most of
that money to my grandmother, who didn't ask
me where it came from.

The following weekend I returned to Division
and Clark, and it seemed like my grandmother
was happy when I brought the money home.
But the third time I went down there, a couple
of guys pistol-whipped me and put me in the
trunk of their car. They had approached me
before because I was, as they called it,
"unrepresented" on the street. All I knew was
the light in the trunk of the car and then the
faces of these two guys with their pistol. First
they took me to a cornfield out in the middle of
nowhere and raped me. Then they took me to
a hotel room and locked me in the closet.

That's the kind of thing pimps will do to break
a girl's spirits. They kept me in there for a long
time. I was begging them to let me out
because I was hungry, but they would only
allow me out of the closet if I agreed to work
for them.

They pimped me for a while, six months or so.
I wasn't able to go home. I tried to get away
but they caught me, and when they caught me
they hurt me so bad. Later on, I was trafficked
by other men. The physical abuse was horrible,
but the real abuse was the mental abuse - the
things they would say that would just stick and
which you could never get from under.
Pimps are very good at torture, they're very
good at manipulation. Some of them will do
things like wake you in the middle of the night
with a gun to your head. Others will pretend
that they value you, and you feel like, "I'm
Cinderella, and here comes my Prince
Charming". They seem so sweet and so
charming and they tell you: "You just have to
do this one thing for me and then you'll get to
the good part." And you think, "My life has
already been so hard, what's a little bit more?"

But you never ever do get to the good part.
When people describe prostitution as being
something that is glamorous, elegant, like in
the story of Pretty Woman, well that doesn't
come close to it. A prostitute might sleep with
five strangers a day. Across a year, that's more
than 1,800 men she's having sexual
intercourse or MouthAction with. These are not
relationships, no-one's bringing me any flowers
here, trust me on that. They're using my body
like a toilet.

And the johns - the clients - are violent. I've
been shot five times, stabbed 13 times. I don't
know why those men attacked me, all I know is
that society made it comfortable for them to
do so. They brought their anger or mental
illness or whatever it was and they decided to
wreak havoc on a prostitute, knowing I couldn't
go to the police and if I did I wouldn't be taken
seriously.
I actually count myself very lucky. I knew some
beautiful girls who were murdered out there on
the streets.

I prostituted for 14 or 15 years before I did any
drugs. But after a while, after you've turned as
many tricks as you can, after you've been
strangled, after someone's put a knife to your
throat or someone's put a pillow over your
head, you need something to put a bit of
courage in your system.

I was a prostitute for 25 years, and in all that
time I never once saw a way out. But on 1
April 1997, when I was nearly 40 years old, a
customer threw me out of his car. My dress got
caught in the door and he dragged me six
blocks along the ground, tearing all the skin off
my face and the side of my body.

I went to the County Hospital in Chicago and
they immediately took me to the emergency
room. Because of the condition I was in, they
called in a police officer, who looked me over
and said: "Oh I know her. She's just a hooker.
She probably beat some guy and took his
money and got what she deserved." And I
could hear the nurse laughing along with him.

They pushed me out into the waiting room as if
I wasn't worth anything, as if I didn't deserve
the services of the emergency room after all.
And it was at that moment, while I was waiting
for the next shift to start and for someone to
attend to my injuries, that I began to think
about everything that had happened in my life.

Up until that point I had always had some idea
of what to do, where to go, how to pick myself
up again. Suddenly it was like I had run out of
bright ideas. I remember looking up and saying
to God, "These people don't care about me.
Could you please help me?"

Continue.....

God worked real fast. A doctor came and took
care of me and she asked me to go and see
social services in the hospital. What I knew
about social services was they were anything
but social. But they gave me a bus pass to go
to a place called Genesis House, which was run
by an awesome Englishwoman named Edwina
Gateley, who became a great hero and mentor
for me. She helped me turn my life around.
It was a safe house, and I had everything that I

needed there. I didn't have to worry about
paying for clothes, food, getting a job. They
told me to take my time and stay as long as I
needed - and I stayed almost two years. My
face healed, my soul healed. I got Brenda back.

Through Edwina Gateley, I learned the value of
that deep connection that can occur between
women, the circle of trust and love and support
that a group of women can give one another.

Usually, when a woman gets out of
prostitution, she doesn't want to talk about it.
What man will accept her as a wife? What
person will hire her in their employment? And
to begin with, after I left Genesis House, that
was me too. I just wanted to get a job, pay my
taxes and be like everybody else.

But I started to do some volunteering with sex
workers and to help a university researcher with
her fieldwork. After a while I realised that
nobody was helping these young ladies.
Nobody was going back and saying, "That's
who I was, that's where I was. This is who I
am now. You can change too, you can heal
too."

So in 2008, together with Stephanie Daniels-
Wilson, we founded the Dreamcatcher
Foundation . A dreamcatcher is a Native
American object that you hang near a child's
cot. It is supposed to chase away children's
nightmares. That's what we want to do - we
want to chase away those bad dreams, those
bad things that happen to young girls and
women.

The recent documentary film Dreamcatcher,
directed by Kim Longinotto, showed the work
that we do. We meet up with women who are
still working on the street and we tell them,
"There is a way out, we're ready to help you
when you're ready to be helped." We try to get
through that brainwashing that says, "You're
born to do this, there's nothing else for you."

I also run after-school clubs with young girls
who are exactly like I was in the 1970s. I can
tell as soon as I meet a girl if she is in danger,
but there is no fixed pattern. You might have
one girl who's quiet and introverted and
doesn't make eye contact. Then there might be
another who's loud and obnoxious and always
getting in trouble. They're both suffering abuse
at home but they're dealing with it in different
ways - the only thing they have in common is
that they are not going to talk about it. But in
time they understand that I have been through
what they're going through, and then they talk
to me about it.

So far, we have 13 girls who have graduated
from high school and are now in city colleges
or have gotten full scholarships to go to other
colleges. They came to us 11, 12, 13 years old,
totally damaged. And now they're reaching for
the stars.

Besides my outreach work, I attend
conferences and contribute to academic work
on prostitution. I've had people say to me,
"Brenda, come and meet Professor so-and-so
from such-and-such university. He's an expert
on prostitution." And I look at him and I want
to say: "Really? Where did you get your
credentials? What do you really know about
prostitution? The expert is standing in front of
you."

I know I belong in that room but sometimes I
have to let them know I belong there. And I
think it's ridiculous that there are organisations
that campaign against human trafficking, that
do not employ a single person who has been
trafficked.

People say different things about prostitution.
Some people think that it would actually help
sex workers more if it were decriminalised. I
think it's true to say that every woman has her
own story. It may be OK for this girl, who is
paying her way through law school, but not for
this girl, who was molested as a child, who
never knew she had another choice, who was
just trying to get money to eat.

But let me ask you a question. How many
people would you encourage to quit their jobs
to become prostitutes? Would you say to any of
your close friends or female relatives, "Hey,
have you thought of this? I think this would be
a really great move for you!"

And let me say this too. However the situation
starts off for a girl, that's not how the situation
will end up. It might look OK now, the girl in
law school might say she only has high-end
clients that come to her through an agency,
that she doesn't work on the streets but
arranges to meet people in hotel rooms, but
the first time that someone hurts her, that's
when she really sees her situation for what it is.

You always get that crazy guy slipping through
and he has three or four guys behind him, and
they force their way into your room and gang
rape you, and take your phone and all your
money. And suddenly you have no means to
make a living and you're beaten up too. That is
the reality of prostitution.

Three years ago, I became the first woman in
the state of Illinois to have her convictions for
prostitution wiped from her record. It was after
a new law was brought in, following lobbying
from the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual
Exploitation, a group that seeks to shift the
criminal burden away from the victims of
sexual trafficking. Women who have been
tortured, manipulated and brainwashed should
be treated as survivors, not criminals.

There are good women in this world and also
bad women. There are bad men and also good
men.
Following my time as a prostitute, I simply
wasn't ready for another relationship. But after
three years of healing and abstinence, I met an
extraordinary man. I was very picky - he likes
to joke that I asked him more questions than
the parole board. He didn't judge me for any of
the things that had happened before we met.
When he looked at me he didn't even see
those things - he says all he saw was a girl with
a pretty smile that he wanted to be a part of
his life. I sure wanted to be a part of his too.

He supports me in everything I do, and we
celebrated 10 years of marriage last year.
My daughters, who were raised by my aunt in
the suburbs, grew up to be awesome young
ladies. One is a doctor and one works in
criminal justice. Now my husband and I have
adopted my little nephew - and here I am, 58
years old, a football mum.

So I am here to tell you - there is life after so
much damage, there is life after so much
trauma. There is life after people have told you
that you are nothing, that you are worthless
and that you will never amount to anything.
There is life - and I'm not just talking about a
little bit of life. There is a lot of life.

Source: www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33113238

Wow.... 25 kini

Life's beautiful after all

We cant read this long tin


Representin verseline association of nigeria

Good she was able to get out of it after 25 years as many don't.
It's great she is fulfilling God's purpose in her life.
Ashawo tins dey everywhere but takes God to save those involved from total ruin

This is one of those topics that merits front-page. The oloshos, mama mopols, ashanas etc will benefit from this. There is life outside that hole they are in. Cheers to a good life!