Questions about Street's Hope

Q: How long is your program?

A: The participant's length of stay in the program will be tailored to the individual, based on input from the woman, her counselor, her mentor, and the Street's Hope staff. Typically a participant is involved in the program two to three years. At the end of this period the participant should be well on her way to independence by having acquired new job skills, developed new friendships, and formed a support system that will be vital in helping her continue in her new life.

Q: Why can’t women in the "sex for sale" industry leave that life without assistance?

A: Because of deep psychological scars have formed from abuse, the transition to another life can rarely be dealt with alone. These issues deal with an unhealthy view of self, an unhealthy view of the world, and are many times complicated by addictive behaviors and other issues. In addition, women in the "sex for sale" industry have often isolated themselves from friends and family that could be of help. Their only associations are people with the same problems and in the same business. They find themselves with little education and no money. Even though money is made on the street, if they have a “pimp,” he takes it all, threatening her if she does not comply. At other times the money is spent on a drug habit. Looking at the total picture one can see how difficult escape might be.

Q: Will Street's Hope provide housing?

A: "Street's Hope is very excited about our transitional living house that is near completion. We hope to be able to house up to seven women in this facility beginning May 2008."

The Horrible Facts

(Dear Potential Clients, Please know that we realize you are unique. The following statistics represent the clients we have served to date. If these statistics do not represent you, please be assured that you will be welcomed at Street's Hope just as you are. We welcome you and would be honored to serve you. Sincerely, The Street’s Hope Staff).

• Almost 100% of the women that have entered Street's Hope program have been victims of domestic violence in one form or another. They have very few outside support systems.

• At least 90% of the women entering Street's Hope program have been sexually abused as children by a family member or someone they trusted.

• Almost 100% of the women that have entered the program of Street's Hope are battling some form of addiction.

• 100% of the women in Street's Hope are working through emotional difficulties.

• Some of the women who come to Street's Hope have children they are supporting.

No human involved?

•"As recently as 1991, police in a southern California community closed all rape reports made by prostitutes and addicts, placing them in a file stamped "NHI." The letters stand for the words "No Human Involved."(Linda Fairstein, SEXUAL VIOLENCE: Our War Against Rape, 1993, New York, William Morrow.)

• The commercial sex industry includes street prostitution, massage brothels, escort services, outcall services, strip clubs, lap dancing, phone sex, adult and child pornography, video and internet pornography, and prostitution tourism. Many women who are in prostitution for longer than a few months drift among these various permutations of the commercial sex industry.

• "All prostitution causes harm to women. Whether it is being sold by one's family to a brothel, or whether it is being sexually abused in one's family, running away from home, and then being pimped by one's boyfriend, or whether one is in college and needs to pay for next semester's tuition and one works at a strip club behind glass where men never actually touch you. ALL these forms of prostitution hurt the women in it." (Melissa Farley, paper presented at the 11th International Congress on Women's Health Issues, University of California College of Nursing, San Francisco. 1-28-2000)

• "About 80% of women in prostitution have been the victim of a rape. It's hard to talk about this because the experience of prostitution is just like rape. Prostitutes are raped, on the average, eight to ten times per year. They are the most raped class of women in the history of our planet. " (Susan Kay Hunter and K.C. Reed, July, 1990 "TAKING THE SIDE OF BOUGHT AND SOLD RAPE," speech at National Coalition against Sexual Assault, Washington, D.C.)

•"The average age of entry into prostitution is 13 years"(M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, "VICTIMIZATION OF STREET PROSTITUTES, Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-123) or 14 years (D.Kelly Weisberg, 1985, CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT: A Study of Adolescent Prostitution, Lexington, Mass, Toronto). Most of these 13 or 14-year-old girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. Others were "traditional wives" without job skills who escaped from or were abandoned by abusive husbands and went into prostitution to support themselves and their children. (Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe, Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition against Domestic Violence, 1990.)

• In one study, 75% of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide. Prostituted women comprised 15% of all completed suicides reported by hospitals. (Letter from Susan Kay Hunter, Council for Prostitution Alternatives, Jan 6, 1993, cited by Phyllis Chesler in "A WOMEN'S RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE: THE CASE OF AILEEN CAROL WUORNOS,"in Patriarchy: Notes of an Expert Witness, 1994, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine.)

• A Canadian Report on Prostitution and Pornography concluded that girls and women in prostitution have a mortality rate 40 times higher than the national average. (Special Committee on Pornography and Prostitution, 1985, PORNOGRAPHY AND PROSTITUTION in Canada 350.)

• The prostitution market is driven by customer demand for sexual service. During WW II, the Japanese military forced from 100,000 to 200,000 Korean women into prostitution to service their military. (Kathleen Barry, THE PROSTITUTION OF SEXUALITY, 1995, New York, New York University Press.)

• The answer to the question "why do prostitutes stay with their pimps?" is the same as the answer to the question "why do battered women stay with their batterers?" (Melissa Farley, 1996) Humans bond emotionally to their abusers as a psychological strategy to survive under conditions of captivity. This has been described as the Stockholm syndrome (Dee Graham with Rawlings and Rigsby, LOVING TO SURVIVE: SEXUAL TERROR, MEN'S VIOLENCE, AND WOMEN'S LIVES, 1994, New York University Press, New York.)

• Prostitution is an act of violence against women, which is intrinsically traumatizing. In a study of 475 people in prostitution (including women, men, and the transgendered) from five countries (South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia): • 62% reported having been raped in prostitution. • 73% reported having experienced physical assault in prostitution. • 72% were currently or formerly homeless. • 92% stated that they wanted to escape prostitution immediately. • (Melissa Farley, Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, "PROSTITUTION IN FIVE COUNTRIES: VIOLENCE AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER" (1998) Feminism & Psychology 8 (4): 405-426

• 67% of 475 people in prostitution from South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, USA, and Zambia met diagnostic criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). 92% stated that they wanted to leave prostitution, and said that what they needed was: a home or safe place (73%); job training (70%); and health care (59%). (Melissa Farley, Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, "PROSTITUTION IN FIVE COUNTRIES: VIOLENCE AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER" (1998) Feminism & Psychology 8 (4): 405-426

•There are few if any programs, which address the needs of children of prostitutes. In a recent study of 1,963 prostitutes, more than two-thirds had at least one child.

•The average number of children was 2. 40% of the children lived with their grandmothers, but 20% lived with a mother working as a prostitute. 9% of the children were in foster care. 5% of the working prostitutes were pregnant when interviewed. (Adele Weiner, “UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIAL NEEDS OF STREETWALKING PROSTITUTES,” 1996, Social Work, 41: 97-106.)

• 83% of prostitutes are victims of assault with a weapon. (National Coalition Against Sexual Assault)

• One woman (in another study) said about her health: "I've had three broken arms, nose broken twice, [and] I'm partially deaf in one ear. I have a small fragment of a bone floating in my head that gives me migraines. I've had a fractured skull. My legs ain't worth shit no more; my toes have been broken. My feet, bottom of my feet, have been burned; they've been whopped with a hot iron and clothes hanger, the hair on my pussy had been burned off at one time. I have scars. I've been cut with a knife, beat with guns, and two by fours. There hasn't been a place on my body that hasn't been bruised somehow, some way, some big, some small." (Giobbe, E. (1992) JUVENILE PROSTITUTION: PROFILE OF RECRUITMENT in Ann W. Burgess (ed.) Child Trauma: Issues & Research. Garland Publishing Inc, New York, page 126).

• Like combat veterans, women in prostitution suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a psychological reaction to extreme physical and emotional trauma. Symptoms are acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, irritability, flashbacks, emotional numbing, and being in a state of emotional and physical hyperalertness. 67% of those in prostitution from five countries met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD“ a rate similar to that of battered women, rape victims, and state-sponsored torture survivors. (Melissa Farley, Isin Baral, Merab Kiremire, Ufuk Sezgin, "PROSTITUTION IN FIVE COUNTRIES: VIOLENCE AND POSTTRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER" (1998) Feminism & Psychology 8 (4): 405-426

• For a great part of 1992 I lived in a beautiful apartment on Capitol Hill. I drove my expensive car. I bought lovely clothes and traveled extensively out of the country. For the first time in my 20 years as an adult woman, I paid my own way. There was no need to worry about affording my rent, my phone bill, all the debts one accumulates simply by living month to month. I felt invincible. And I was miserable to the core. I felt invincible. And I was miserable to the core. I hated myself because I hated my life. All things I came to possess meant nothing.

• I could not face myself in the mirror. Working in prostitution lost my soul." Survivor interviewed by Debra Boyer, Lynn Chapman and Brent Marshall in SURVIVAL SEX IN KING COUNTY: HELPING WOMEN OUT(1993), King County Women’s Advisory Board, Northwest Resource Associates, Seattle.

• In 1999, the Swedish Parliament put into effect a law which criminalizes the buying of sexual services but not the selling of sexual services. This is a compassionate, social interventionist legal response to the cruelty of prostitution. (see,Sven-Axel Mansson and Ulla-Carin Hedin, 1999, "BREAKING THE MATTHEW EFFECT - ON WOMEN LEAVING PROSTITUTION," International Journal of Social Work. Also see Prostitution Research & Education web site, http://www.prostitutionresearch.com for a copy of the Swedish law)

•above facts provided by Melissa Farley PhD Prostitution Research & Education Box 16254, San Francisco CA 94116 USA © 4/2/2000 In order to quote from this Fact-sheet, please credit the author above as well as the specific sources listed after each quote. Thank you. Would you like to know more? Refer to prostitutionresearch.com.