First of all, I would like to define a prostitute.  What is prostitution According to the Webster’s Dictionary as prostitution is as follows:

Prostitution: the practice of engaging in relatively indiscriminate sexual activity, in general with individuals other than a spouse or friend, in exchange for immediate payment in money or OTHER valuables. 

The commercial sex business consists of these “types” of selling:

Street prostitution, massage brothels, escort services, outcall services, strip clubs, lap dancing, phone sex, adult and child pornography, child prostitution, video and internet pornography, trafficking, and prostitution tourism.

Now that we have defined prostitution, what then, is “pimping?”  According to the same dictionary a pimping is as follows:

Pimping:  a man who solicits clients for a prostitute, to make use of often dishonorably for one’s own gain or benefit.  A pimp is the man or woman who procures the prostitute, promotes, and sells her, and profits from the prostitution.

By definition, pimps are not only the men on the street, pimps are also strip club owners, bar owners, disc jockeys, taxi drivers, concierges, motel managers, etc.  All these venues will profit in some way or another, if they engage in promotion of the woman or man. 

What then, is a “trick” or a “john?”

John:  a prostitute’s client.

I used to use the term “trick” or “date, The word trick comes from customers practices of tricking women into doing more than they pay for; the word date suggests that prostitution is a normal part of male-female relationships.  It’s all a lie—just to make it sound more “acceptable”

Now you are a little more educated as to what is the world of the sex industry is.  It is a sick world, full of broken dreams, battered, shattered, sexually abused women, men and children.  And it needs to stop!  The sex industry is destroying our families, it is causing alarming divorce rates, teen pregnancies, STDs-AIDS, drug usage, not to mention altered views of what sex really means!

Buckle your seatbelts, below are the stats on prostitution in the United States:

AGES:

 

Average age of entry:  14-16 yrs

 

Average mean age:  31

 

Average years in prostitution: 11

 

Percent younger than age 18 at entry: 42%

VIOLENCE IN PROSTITUTION

Traumatized individuals tend to minimize or deny their experiences, especially when they are in the midst of ongoing trauma, such as war combat or prostitution.  This leads to a decreased rate of reporting violent crimes.   Please understand these girls are afraid of their pimps, and if they told everything that is actually going on behind closed doors, they fear violent retaliation from the pimp or death.  I can personally relate to this myself!

 

Threatened with a weapon: 78%

 

Physically assaulted:  82%

Raped: 82% --many women in this business are confused of the definition of rape.  If rape is as unwanted sex act or coerced, then the statistic would be a much higher percentage.  Some women in prostitution assume there is no difference between prostitution and rape, and they only call it rape if they were not paid, regardless of the violence of the act—asking them is like asking someone in a combat zone if they are under fire.  A significant percentage of women currently prostituting deny rape and other violence because it would be too stressful to acknowledge the extreme danger posed by johns and pimps!

 

Raped more than five times: 73%

 

Current or past homelessness:  84%

 

As a child, was hit or beaten by a caregiver until injured or bruised: 49%

 

Sexually abused as a child: 65-95%

PROSTITUTION AND PORNOGRAPHY

 

Upset by an attempt to make them do what had been seen in pornography:  32%

 

Pornography made of her in prostitution: 49%

DRUGS AND ALCOHOL USAGE

 

Drugs:  75%

 

Alcohol: 26%

WHEN ASKED “WHAT DO YOU NEED?” TO PROSTITUTES

 

Would you leave prostitution: 87%

 

Need home or safe place:  78%

 

Need job training: 73%

 

Need health care: 58%

 

Need peer support: 50%

 

Need legal assistance: 42%

 

Need alcohol and drug treatment: 67%

 

Self defense training:  49%

Need Physical protection from pimp:  28%  Note:  most women will not say that they need protection, because they are mentally still “in love” and in denial that the pimp will come and look for them.  I believe the percentage is as high as 80%, from experience of knowing what the pimps are capable of.

 

Need child care: 28%

Need individual counseling: 48%   Quick to note from experience with myself and friends, most women are in denial of the fact that they need counseling, and avoid it by doing drugs and drinking. So I would comment this is a much higher rate than reported, more like 85%.  Most would have already developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder the first time they were sexually violated.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: definition—psychological consequences of exposure to, or confrontation with, stressful experiences that the person experiences as highly traumatic.  The experience must involve actual or threatened death, serious physical injury, or a threat to physical and/or psychological integrity.  

People most likely to develop PTSD:  PROSTITUTES, PORN STARS, rape victims, battered women, childhood sexual abuse, a person experiencing psychological or physical torture,  witnessing the death of a loved one, natural catastrophes, bad trip on drugs, and WAR or COMBAT EXPOSURE .

PTSD has been called “shell shock,” “battle fatigue”, “accident neurosis”, and “post rape syndrome.”  It has been often misunderstood or misdiagnosed, even though the disorder has very specific symptoms that form a definite psychological syndrome.  In some cases the symptoms of PTSD disappear with time, but in most cases they will persist for many years, and cause severe depression, nightmares, insomnia, night terrors, anxiety attacks, flash backs, emotional detachment or numbing of feelings, hyper-sensitivity to loud noises, altered state of mind, loss of appetite. Many need professional help to successfully recover from the psychological damage that can result from experiencing, witnessing, or participating in an overwhelmingly traumatic event.

These girls experience rape, pimping, (psychological torture), physical abuse, medical conditions that threaten death,, addictive behaviors such as drug usage, cutting, bulimia, poor self image issues, suicidal, anxiety attack, and mood swings.

These girls need OUR help to recover—they need pastors, family, and friends all to support them as they “walk out” their pain.

Diagnosis of PTSD per country of prostituted respondents:

 

Canada:         74%

 

Colombia:      86%  (get this—this is were it is LEGALIZED)

 

Germany:       60%

 

Mexico:           54%

 

South Africa: 75%

 

Thailand:       58%

 

Turkey:          66%

 

USA:               69%

 

Zambia:          71%

Diagnosis of PTSD for combat war veterans:  69%.  This is very interesting to note—these women in the sex industry are just as traumatized as someone in combat on the front lines!!!

A Canadian woman says: “What rape is to others is normal to us.”  A Thai woman said, “I hate that I have to have sex with someone I don’t like or love!”  For the vast majority of the world’s prostituted woman and me personally, prostitution and trafficking are experiences of being hunted down, dominated, sexually harassed, and assaulted.  We are treated like commodities into which men masturbate, causing immense psychological harm to the person acting as their receptacle.

There is widespread misinformation about prostitution, based on the media that neutralizes the harms described above.  This is then spread throughout organizations that present prostitution as legitimate, that it is merely “unpleasant labor” for the women involved.

It’s a LIE people--

Prostitution is MULTITRAUMATIC whether its physical location is in clubs, brothels, hotels/motels/john’s homes, motor vehicles or on the streets.  Women have said that they felt safer in street prostitution compared to legal Nevada brothels, where they were not permitted to reject any customer.  Others commented that on the street they could at least refuse dangerous-appearing or intoxicated customers.  Raphael and Shapiro (2002) found that women in Chicago reported the same frequency of rape in escort and in street prostitution.  Also reported there was no difference in the incidence of PTSD in the two types of prostitution, suggesting that the trauma that results in prostitution is the same for ALL who are in it.

What are we to do, as citizens of the United States and the world?  There are no accidents; the harm of the sex industry out weighs the good.  The institution of prostitution is carefully constructed and promoted.  Those of us that are concerned with global human rights MUST ADDRESS the social invisibility, the MASSIVE denial regarding its harms.  If you think that it is not affecting you or your life, then maybe you haven’t been in Las Vegas lately to see all the girls being pimped at the bars, maybe you haven’t noticed all the adds in magazines, newspapers, and on billboards—maybe you haven’t noticed the “pop ups” of pornography on your computer, maybe you haven’t noticed that it is considered “cool” to be a porn star—maybe you haven’t noticed our little girls dressing sexier at younger ages, maybe you haven’t noticed the media throws the term “pimping” out there like it is acceptable and cool, maybe you haven’t noticed that our music is filled with themes of degrading women—and if you have, what are you going to do about it?  It will continue to grow into a larger MONSTER if we continue to “accept” this social behavior.

 

“I feel like I imagine people who were in concentration camps feel when they get out….It’s a real deep pain, an assault to my mind, my body, my dignity as a human being.  I feel like what was taken away from me in prostitution is irretrievable” (Giobbe, 1991, cited by Jeffreys, 1997 w/permission of Melissa Farley)

 

 

 

“I felt lied to, cheated, violated, I felt that sex was an evil act of domination, not real love…there were times that I wanted to really hurt my customers, because if I could get them back with the abuse that they were forcing on me and my friends….I could at least appease my pain and insanity—and justify revenge for all the girls that have been hurt or killed.”  (Annie Lobert, , former prostitute and stripper, 2006)

 

 

 

“I felt like I couldn’t go anywhere,  I couldn’t function socially as a human being, and when I did go somewhere, I felt everyone knew what I used to do for a living….I felt dirty, cheated, disrespected, violated, a  worthless individual to society. I didn’t know who “Annie” was anymore.  I often wanted to end my very own life.  This is a battlefield of the mind—and if you don’t get out and get help, you will lose your very own soul and go completely insane.”  (Annie Lobert , former prostitute and stripper, 2006)

There is one thing that I ask of all of you…please do not judge these girls/men any longer that are in the sex industry.  Know that most of them are being “forced” to do it physically or mentally by manipulation of people around them.  Please open your eyes and see that we are ALL being lied to—that most of these girls do not like what they are doing, and that it is all “acting”.

 Every time you say, “Those girls like what they do”-- pick up a ”porn: magazine, watch a ”porn” video, click onto that website, call that lady of the night,  listen to music that degrades women (most hip hop) or go to that bachelor party, strip club, know this:

 It could be your sister, your mother, your best friends girl—and then think,  is it all really worth the “thrill” of self gratification that lasts only a couple minutes?  You are destroying lives of countless women while you do it—feeding the monster the sex industry has become.  And now YOU are part of it too….for there must be ENABLERS to create VICTIMS.

Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy report...by you reading this we have all shed “light” on the sex industry!

All statistics and some information used with permission by Melissa Farley, from “Prostitution and Trafficking in Nine Countries: An Update on Violence and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder”  www.prostitutionresearch.com