MY YOUTH
CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS
CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS
CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS
I was born in 1960. The Vietnam War had started in 1955. Women couldn't get birth control unless they were married. Nor could they own property, or have a bank account in their names. Abortion wasn't legal until 1973. So I was the baby "freakonomics" talks about who are "unwanted" and tend to be criminals. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Freidan was published in 1963. The only way to really avoid being drafted was to be married and have a baby or "hardship" in other words. Since my dad was 17 when I was announced, this got him off the hook. He got a job as a gas man reading meters and my mom became a stenographer at the LA juvenile courts. My grandmother always seemed to have an unusual "coldness" towards my mother. We just never knew why until we got a "deathbed" confession. Which was my mother had been the product of rape. Since no one believed her neighbor was a rapist, she fled to a "single mothers' home" in San Diego. Something made her change her mind about adopting out my mom, so she left the home. Only to find no one would rent to a single woman, or give one a job. Her rapist had been stalking her and was now stationed in San Diego, so she went to the captain and made a "deal" to marry him for the sake of the child being "legitimate". He had a stroke not long after that, and spent the next 38 years in a VA hospital. To be the dutiful wife, she'd visit him monthly. Once she told us, we could now understand why she'd seemed so cold towards my mother, but not me. So the circumstances of the birth do have an impact on the life of the child, or the family dynamic.
THE TIDE TURNS
CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS
CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS
My childhood was very much a Brady Bunch kind of life, at first. I was getting into so much trouble at school, a smart teacher decided to give me an IQ test. I was off the charts so they put me in the Mentally Gifted Minors Program when I was 8 years old. The trouble stopped because I was now not bored. My dad's dad died of alcoholism when I was about 7. My other grandfather was a vegetable in the VA hospital. My dad's mom developed a gambling problem after his dad died. Grandma's second husband murders her violently because she wants a divorce because he was beat her so bad he broke her arm once. After her murder, my dad flips out and decides to launch one of the biggest white color crimes that changed the way credit operated forever. My mom is now taking "diet pills" (speed) because my dad keeps calling her fat when she's not, and then Valium to calm her nerves because of the way he's abusing her, s well as what she's seeing in the juvenile court system daily. To sleep, she's taking phenobarbital. Mom's now having mental meltdowns where she's flipping out and beating me one minute, and then acting like nothing happened the next. My dad starts getting caught "peeping" into womens' windows, hiding XXX porn, and then he starts sexually abusing me at the age of 11. I've started my period by then and look like an adult woman to the point where I am impersonating my mom as part of this big con we're now pulling. However, to the outside world, we were the model family. There was no drugs or alcohol, and the bills were paid - so many people assumed nothing was wrong. Yet there were signs that I'll go over in the class to the trained eye I was in trouble.
TEENAGE REBELLION
CHILDHOOD AND PARENTS
TEENAGE REBELLION
Pimps always pitch the "happy ever after" to get their victims to hurt themselves today. My dad's pitch to my mom was after she signed for literally millions of dollars in real estate, bank loans, credit cards, etc., she's supposed to file for a divorce and bankruptcy to wipe out all these debts. Then they're going to take out all of this cash, pack all of the property like the guns and jewelry, and go buy a compound off the grid in Mormon country where he can find a "sister wife" and we're all opposed to live happily ever after. Until my mom can get her pension, she's got to stay in California. So all of the property was stuffed in a house in Vegas, while he left mom and I in a motel literally without a penny. He's supposed to rent us a house in Idaho, and then come back in a week to take us to our new home. When I saw him packing everything he owned into that suitcase, I knew he wasn't coming back. But I'm thrilled because I'm now "free" of this nightmare! Or so I thought as mom's drug use and depression hits when she realizes he's not coming back. I've been a latch key kid anyway, so now with mom checked out on all those drugs, I now am raising both of us. She doesn't even realize our money has just run out, and rent is due in a few days. I'm 13 by now and built like Sophia Loren, so using the pool hustle my dad taught me to beat his buddies with, I put on a short skirt and a tube top and stroll into the bar next door. I've won our rent money in less than an hour. Mom doesn't even wonder how I paid the rent because of the pain meds she's taking for her back surgery. I discover "cruising" on Whittier Blvd, and CB radio's, and I feel like I'm taking my power back over men with all this flirting with 30 year old men while mom thinks I"m at a friends house. Then I"m raped by a boy I go to school with. I find out he's raped most of my class actually. I can't file a police report or mom will know what I'm up to when she thinks I'm doing homework with my best friend. I explode into sexual addiction sleeping now with half of Whittier, but at least I'm not doing drugs like it seems most of my class is doing. I am having to use these connections to keep mom sedated as she gets violently abusive when she's alert - so I prefer her drugged out. I'm now missing so much school - I decide to take an equivalency test, and start community college. But then I miss my period. I'm in trouble, but to the outside world everything looks normal.
MY BACKGROUND
HOW I BECAME THE HIGH TECH MADAM
How does a teenager who doesn't drink or even smoke pot, one who spent two years studying to become an ordained minister, and was smart enough to have been placed in the Mentally Gifted Minors program in grade school, joined MENSA at 16, become the notorious "High Tech Madam" (the media dubbed me that because I was the first madam they'd heard of who even had a computer, let alone a CCTV, and who screened clients by tapping into their TRW credit report)?
We have to back up to see I first confront my dad about stealing my college money. He admits it like it was perfectly normal. He's also forged receipts to get out of paying mom any child support. Mom's pension and disability from LA county is still not being paid. Then my best friend gets kicked out, so we now have a house guest. The only thing I can think of to do is to get a job. As usual, mom is so loaded on her pain medicine I'm the one having call the shots now for both of us. I had all the red flags for being vulnerable to sex work - no father, no mother really, extremely restrictive childhood, sexual abuse and trauma (two rapes and a pregnancy before I"m 19), adult responsibilities combined with an early puberty - all classic for both my father abusing me and entering sex work.
I'm already enrolled in classes all day long. My best friend is pretty, but is very much the "dumb blond" type. I knew there was a bikini bar down the street, and next to that was a night club called "Valley West". It's the ONLY Blue's club for miles. I figure I can get a cocktail waitress job, and drop her off at the bar next door since we only got one car too. They hired her on the spot for the dancer job so her Hawaiian dancing classes are coming in handy now. I poured on makeup to try and look 21 and they hired me without demanding my ID. My training to portray older women was useful.
So I'm thinking I've just found a solution. I can work until I go to my morning classes. Then come home and get some sleep, and back to work. We didn't have the internet then, so I had no idea who I"d just been hired by. Richard Pryor has been open about his mom being a prostitute working in his grandmother's brothel. All the men in his family are either drug dealers and pimps, while younger women prostitute and the older ones madam. This family then bought the club to launder money and build Hollywood connections. These aren't street pimps and dealers - each one of the men have Rolls Royce's. Their house is literally next door to the Jackson's house. But I don't know any of this yet - just that I got a job.
I got hired by Nick, a Smokie Robinson clone, and the club's bartender. Larry runs the video camera to make demos for the bands. Sharon is Nick's old lady, and oversees the cocktail waitresses. I know nothing about drinks, but Sharon teaches me how to make change while holding a tray, an to know what drink is what. Weldon sits in the office and watches everything from the cameras. His gun is in the desk drawer. Rock is the doorman, bouncer, and drug runner. All night limo's pull up and get "delivery". Tinted windows make it impossible to know who is on the other side of the glass. So I'm now learning all the various "pimp" styles in this family.
For my first few weeks, I get to listen to some great music, watch how everyone operates, and start to get closer to Rock. He acts like he hates me though, which I later learn is because he doesn't want me to sucked into the "family business". However, Weldon tells everyone he has a "special" place he wants me for in the family. Since I live a block from their house, I'm soon getting a ride to and from work in the Rolls Royce. Donna's loving riding in style too. Sharon brings me up to the house to teach me better ways to dress, do my hair and makeup, since my income now is based on tips.
One night, everything runs like normal, and then two guys storm into the club. They want Nick. One's carrying a baseball bat. He attacks Nick with it. Weldon moves so fast it didn't register mentally - and next thing I know this guy's been shot and they're carrying him outside.
He had just found out his girl had been "turned out" and wanted to kill Nick. Now he's on the ground bleeding. I"m afraid the cops will be called now, but Weldon assures me he's not calling anyone. Weldon has been studying me like a lab rat since I started and now my reaction to the shooting has impressed him. He tell me to come up to the house before work as he's got a proposition for me to learn how to "manage" all their business interests.. The next day starts me on a path that changed my life forever.
MY EXPERIENCES TO SHARE WITH YOU
FOUNDING PROSTITUTES ANONYMOUS AND GETTING CLEAN
While I"m getting deeper into sex work and the criminal world, I'm also taking psychology courses in college. I'm struck by how the life I"m living is not at all what's portrayed in the textbooks. But in 1985, I get arrested. Up to this point in time, I've not been drinking or using drugs. I keep asking my probation officer, the jail chaplain, if there's any programs for me. All they kept doing was give me drug program information. It's like they think someone like me doesn't even exist.
After I get out of trouble, I now soar into a horrible depression. I was being followed by the LAPD, so I can't do anything that will get me arrested. But I also don't know what to do. So I started using drugs. Within a short period of time, I now have a problem.
I'm taken to Narcotics Anonymous, who shows me how to not only stop using, but how to get out of the criminal world I've been living in. Soon others in sex work are asking me how they can do this, but they also aren't addicts. So in August of 1987, I launch Prostitutes Anonymous. This is a 12 step program and hotline for anyone who wants help to leave sex work. That includes anyone - so I"m getting calls from both the trafficked, and the not trafficked. I'm also getting calls from people who aren't using drugs. This is also because the Trafficking Act doesn't get passed until the year 2000. So until we get that federal recognition, all of the calls were coming to us.
Meaning by the year 2006 when we did an audit of my phone bills, we see I've taken over 500,000 phone calls. That's not counting emails and letters. PA spread fast and by 1991, we had 11 "prostitution courts" all over the USA. We even spread into Canada. Up to this point it's considered 98 percent of us don't make it to two years. So once our members started hitting two years of time out of all criminal life, and also clean, that's a huge landmark for us. We start attracting people wanting to study us. So in a ten year study published as "Leaving Prostitution" by Sharon E. Oselin, she cites we are the most effective program in the USA by 2009.
But I also don't know what to do. So I started using drugs. Within a short period of time, I have a problem. I'm taking to Narcotics Anonymous, who shows me how to not only stop using, but how to get out of the criminal world I've been living in. Soon others in sex work are asking me how they can do this, but they also aren't addicts.
So in August of 1987, I launch Prostitutes Anonymous. This is a 12 step program and hotline for anyone who wants help to leave sex work. That includes anyone - so I"m getting calls from both the trafficked, and the not trafficked. This is also because the Trafficking Act doesn't get passed until the year 2000. So until we get that federal recognition, all of the calls were coming to us.
I've been fortunate to be a part of many people changing their lives, and also hearing their life stories. I give you the benefit of this experience in this class of seeing what works, and what doesn't work, over a 40 year span of time. I'll also invite some of them to come speak in the class also.