DEAR OFFICE OF VICTIMS OF CRIME
Jody Williams, Founder & Director
Sex Workers Anonymous
www.sexworkersanonymous.com
(702) 468-4529 Telephone and (888) 253-9619 Toll Free
August 12, 2015
Re: Grant Awarding
Greetings:
I'm writing you as the founder of the modern day sex trafficking movement. I can say that because I spent years searching for a way out of the sex industry for myself, and also for those who I saw being pimped and trafficked as well. There is a difference. The only program I could find in the 1980's that even understood what the differences were – as well as having a solution for them - was Children of the Night formed in 1979. They had a hotline they created which was different for teens than the Runaway Hotline in recognition that a certain sub-population would be either having to run from a pimp or they would be treated differently by the juvenile system because of being identified as a prostitute. However, the cut-off age for them was 18 years old and I was in my 20's.
Witness protection existed. If you look at my news clippings at www.hightechmadam.com I want you to please note my name there is a male spelling of Rene Le Blanc. The reason for that is simple – the DA was trying to convince me that I could testify against the trafficking that I'd witnessed and he would take care of me. I considered it briefly but then a man came to the very hotel room I was staying at with a gun and refused to leave. The police shot him dead. Then a woman who looked like me that i'd loaned my car to was broadsided by an illegal alien paid to do so and also died.
On top of it – the men I'd seen sell women to drug dealers during Iran Contra were men within our own government. Anyone who has seen the documentary “Cocaine Cowboys” knows how cocaine was being brought into this country through corruption opening those channels. Because prostitution was a crime, and because the men I'd be charging could block up evidence against them based on the need for “national security” - I knew I'd never be able to properly present my case of how I'd been forced to do what I was doing when I was arrested. So I knew witness protection wasn't structured properly either.
The Mary Magdalene Project existed. A residential program for those wanting to leave prostitution. However, I didn't need a residential program. Besides, their residential program wasn't set up for my needs. I had people trying to kill me, two people had already been murdered, and they weren't set up in such a way as to offer me proper security. I also couldn't be a resident because I had house payments, car payments, a mother I was caring for, and even a dog I wasn't able to take into the program with me had I decided to try it anyway.
However, neither of these programs, nor even Linda Lovelace who stepped out to the media to say she'd been forced to film the XXX film Deep Throat at gunpoint – set about to change our very legal system to have trafficking recognized the way I did when I stepped up to that first talk show stage in 1987. I called out for this change by telling the public that those of us who were being forced to be in sex work, in it's many forms, were victims – not criminals.
Yet we were being treated as such across the board with no consideration as to whether we were forced or not to be doing what we'd been arrested for. When I set up the first 800 international hotline for adults to call who wanted out of the sex industry, no matter what their reason, offered up our 12 step program as an “alternative to incarceration”, and also offered to be an expert witness in prostitution cases to explain when a victim is being forced or not even when they don't realize it – in a world that thought sex trafficking had become an “old wives tale” or “urban myth” - that made me the founder of the modern day movement.
Recognizing that a true sex trafficking victim CAN'T call the police for help for one reason or another – I set about establishing ties within the front lines of the sex industry itself telling those on the streets, in the massage parlors, inside the strip clubs and the legal brothels to give me a call when they saw pimping and/or trafficking so I could go in and pull the out of the situation. Why me? Because they wouldn't dare call the police for fear they'd be arrested also. That or bad publicity would result.
Take the legal brothels for example. Do you honestly think they're going to call the police on a case of sex trafficking when that would result in very bad publicity? They won't when a prostitute is raped or physically assaulted – so why would they if they're trafficked or pimped? So for years other SWA members and myself would take flowers into the brothels under the guise of it being a church outreach – and then letting everyone, including the madams, know about how we could get them out of there whenever they wanted to go without involving the police, or the press. Then when a madam would see a horrible case like this woman was going through – we'd get a phone call to “come and get her”.http://www.blogtalkradio.com/stopsextrafficktalk/2013/07/08/hear-from-a-nevada-brothel-prostitute
But our biggest problem was funding. We were all having to do this on our own dime. I was having to pay for $1,000 a month 800 phone bills for our hotline by working two jobs. The first safe houses were houses I could buy in Nebraska for $5,000 on my credit card. The roses we'd get donated from local flower shops we were carrying into massage parlors and strip clubs all over the country. There was no funding because no one had believed this even existed back then remember?
To change that, we had to get federal recognition. To get that – we first had to be believed by the public this was real. To do that – I drug on talk show stages, and weekly cable shows, and in front of reporters, other survivors who had come to us through our hotline, or who we'd sought out ourselves we knew needed help. I drug them from 1987 until Michael Horowitz wrote the Trafficking Act of 2000.
However, in 2000 when he wrote that Act – Sex Workers Anonymous (known as Prostitutes Anonymous at that time) was a major presence in the USA and even Canada. We had a chapter in every major city of the USA. No one would give us free meeting space but the Salvation Army, Catholic Charities, and/or the Goodwill. The courts, and local police, were giving us referrals when someone was arrested, or found being trafficked, or simply said she wanted to quit sex work. Social workers and drug treatment centers were giving us referrals while we were giving them trainings in how to work with us. Our program was so effective I set up the first program at Mission College in 1991 specifically to train counselors and social workers on the methods we'd found to be effective in working with us as well as I set up continuing education through CADCEP.
I falsely thought that federal recognition would allow us to pay these members doing these jobs from outreach, to after-care, to advocacy who were creating history by stopping the previously almost universal relapse rate for “our kind” prior to our program being created. A program which wasn't created by copying Alcoholics Anonymous verbatim. For one thing, sex work is not a “life long genetic terminal and incurable disease” such as alcoholism is. We can't tell our members if they don't work our program they'll die for one thing – nor they have to belong for life or they'll relapse either.
So to stop the previously almost 100 percent relapse rate our kind suffered from (one study claimed 98% of us would return to sex work even after being offered their freedom and unlimited social services within two years with the current system we had), a relapse rate that had cops, social workers, and counselors not wanting to work with us because they felt we were just “hopeless” and “wanted to be out on the streets” - I had to create this program because remember in 1987 NOTHING existed for us as adults that worked. I had spent seven years combing the USA myself looking for such a solution and found nothing.
So when I decided to start PA – I did so after doing extensive interviewing of existing systems ranging from treatment centers, to the Mary Magdalene Project, Children of the Night, Covenant House, the jails, the police, everyone. I also interviewed over 2,000 prostitutes who were male and female from both the legal and illegal parts of the sex industry. I needed to find out why no other program was working, where our system was failing them – and then set about to find mentors who could help me create a program that worked.
Which I did. After gathering together founders of other 12 step programs, directors running the offices of 12 step programs, people who had been sponsored by men like Bill Wilson and Jimmy Kinnon, people from other movements such as one of the founders of EST and Lifespring, men who founded the National Council on Sexual Addiction, Patrick Carnes, as well as another 2,000 prostitutes who had found their way out for more than two years (the two percent who had made it) – I was able to create a system and process that worked. If you doubt me look at my own recovery. I was a “career criminal” according to the DA in my trial, and I had a $1500 a day drug habit in 1984 when I was arrested. I've now been drug free and sex work free since 1985. That fact alone is a miracle in itself. Everyone else like me ranging from Heidi Fleiss to Kristin Davis and even Jason Itzler have relapsed. Not me.
Thinking federal recognition would allow us to be like how Narcotics Anonymous works with the drug courts – I sacrificed a great deal to assist in creating the environment that allowed that Trafficking Act of 2000 to be passed. Then the movement was “hijacked”. Not just in my words but also the word of Michael Horowitz who wrote that Act who says the same thing. In one swoop – all of our meetings had our meeting locations yanked out from under us. The stress of getting phone calls from all over the country with prostitutes saying “where do we meet now?” at me while I was trying to work at job and take care of my family (mind you we didn't have paid jobs then for this work) was too much.
I had a stroke in 2000 and was rushed to the ER. I was in and out of ICU for almost a year. I had to stop answering the hotline which is how and why the National Trafficking Hotline was born. My stroke had caused a gap in services as far as those calls. Then people came to me and asked me if I would say certain things I knew not to be true. That if I said them I'd lose the credibility and respect of the very community I need to trust me in order to help them. So I refused. That's when these “fake” survivors like Samoly Mam, and “fake” rescuers like Ben Hilliar were born. People who became spokespeople for these fund raising campaigns whose battle cry was always "give us money because no services exist" when in reality services did exist already that needed the funding they were not siphoning away from us.
Why? Because I'd made it "cool" that's why to be "fighting sex trafficking". Cities who were losing funding due to terrorism dying down were looking for new ways to pump money into the police departments. When 2008 hit – donations to homeless shelters as well as domestic violence shelters were horribly cut. So city, county and state agencies saw a way to pump money into their budgets in a way they wouldn't have to answer for it. When asked for proof of where the money was going – they could just claim “confidentiality” of the victim. It also became a brilliant way for a politician, or someone in office, to advance their career.
I can show you an almost universal pattern that's emerged now that I thought would resolve itself when I had helped to expose Samoly Mam for a fraud – and when I showed how ATLAS in Las Vegas in 2007 received over $1,000,000 in grant money only to have not helped one single victim while I could document our hotline and program had processed over 300 such victims in Nevada alone that year because every penny she got was put into other programs while we were left out to dry with nothing. I had tried getting reporters to write about what happened – only to have those who tried threatened, and even fired for doing so. Bob Herbert as it was of the NY Times was threatened with a "baseball bat to the head" while Tom Ragan was fired for insisting the Review Journal print a story on our work - not just about trafficking but how we'd been fighting the brothel expansion in Nevada also. Plus we have nowhere to go to report that for all this money coming into these programs – we're not receiving services. There's no Internal Affairs - and the Attorney General's aren't complaining because they're getting federal dollar matching.
The person they're coming to for services, and with tales of how they're not receiving services in areas that have received substantial donations from agencies such as yours is myself. Here's proof about one such call that comes to me.
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/ikygm6xzb09frgk/LasVegasPhoneCall.mp4 So what do we do about that? They say shun her, smear her, and act like she doesn't even exist in the hopes we can either drive her out of what she's doing or so that anyone she tries to talk to about what's going on with these victims is ignored. It's a tactic so universal when it comes to money the Chinese are even now being sued for such smear campaigns by KFC who make up stories about KFC selling deep fried rats.
There is no law against lying in the media. 11. The Media Can Legally Lie - Top 25 of 2005 I had to learn this myself when I was seeing wholescale fraud being done in the news, in documentaries, in so called “reality” series. All media that is being used to manipulate programs such as yourselves that issue grants in the millions of dollars earmarked with the intent to help sex trafficking victims – not to advance a politician's career – and not to pump money into the police departments or homeless shelters.
But I can show you such lying and fraud it should be criminal. Plus they're now getting outright cocky about it as we've seen with “8 Minutes”. They staged large news spreads in the Los Angeles Times, and the OC Register, about non-existent outreach that men like Kevin Brown and Greg Reese were doing.
News spreads that resulted in $1.2 million being given to them to set up the OC Human Trafficking Task Force. Only one problem. They have to have some kind of program that looks like it's trying to help the sex trafficking victims and prostitutes. They can't put me on that task force because I'm trying to help real victims of real trafficking who are telling me they're being carted out of their homes by police officers, and slapped with phony prostitution charges on their records, by corrupt judges, and then when she reaches out to me for help I'm now threatened by an officer, and even an attorney – so no we can't have a group that would actually do something.
Because real sex trafficking victims in the USA today are like we saw illustrated with the recent DEA owned strip club in New Jersey. Real victims are like the women who were trafficked during Snoop Dogg's Playboy tour in 2003 – where the police, the DA's office, etc. didn't want to touch that case because they didn't want a Bill Cosby times 1,000 on their hands. So they can't work with me because I'm working with victims of men like Chris Butler and Kemp Schiffer. I'm working with victims like we saw in Operation Dollhouse where 24 Chinese women were taken out of a brothel where two cops were also found on the premises. Or like the Jessie Foster case where her murdered is an informant who is using his immunity to do whatever he wants to do with his prostitutes. So when I have other prostitutes coming to me for help to get away from him – the “system” doesn't want to work with these cases. So they have to shut me out – and create fake programs and fake victims and fake news stories.
Frankly, I could care less. Because before money came into this I used to have people I could go to for help. I figured let them do their thing and I'd just keep doing my thing on my side of the street for a while. I had reporters who would write stories on men like Chris Butler or even Operation Dollhouse. I had police who would come out and protest us while we extracted a victim from a house where they'd been locked in it for a year. I had churches who would donate us food, motels that would donate us housing, landlords who would give our victims a year's free rent while they got on their feet, even counselors, lawyers, and dentists who donated their services to our victims.
People who saw through the smearing because they could see I was doing the work. However, a different environment is in place now these grants are in the millions of dollars instead of $100,000 or less. Now they've started threatening people. Landlords that used to own motels and apartment buildings that would donate housing to victims - he got himself so hassled by the zoning department that he up and sold his properties in protest. Cab drivers who would give our victims free rides were fired. My ex-husband on the board of Pacifica public radio is being audited and told they'll lose the station if I even call in another show let alone come on air to talk about any of this stuff.
As for trying to put the pimps behind bars - Daniel Bogden, the US Attorney who was responsible for the G Sting arrests won't answer my emails begging for help. I've got a man in San Jose who ignored the threats to “back off” and he wound up with a TRO, a gag order, and his legally owned guns taken from him that he needed to protect himself. We're seeing even female FBI, female US Attorney's, female public defenders, all being threatened themselves if they don't fall in line with these agenda's and what these people want.
Here's just one example I can show you about what I mean - http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-public-defender-detained-outside-court-6046088.php
Judges are trying to register their complaints about this the best way they can - http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/05/orange_county_prosecutor_misconduct_judge_goethals_takes_district_attorney.html In response to what happened with what this judge did – the Attorney General's office said it would be “asking the UC Irvine professor of law to make a report” on the situation. Only to date, months later, he claims he hasn't been asked to do anything.
I was able to be part of the group of people who got an audit ordered against the Pasadena police. Only when the audit came in – it said they could repair issues like cops being able to fake cases with “more money and more training”. When I've asked where do we go from here – no one will answer me. Now with respect to the Orange County and Long Beach police – we have the situation I've outlined in the attached letter that's gotten completely out of hand.
In 2013, members of SWA had to go “off line” because they were being identified, then stalked, then threatened, simply for being a member, for knowing me, for having us helped them, etc. They were being “outted”, hacked, harassed, threatened, fired, etc. So I had no choice but to tell all of them to not be in online groups, to not identify online, to not speak my name online because people using search software would show up five minutes later threatening them. Local chapters of SWA were calling me saying they were finding gas cans on their porches, their homes broken into where the only thing taken was our flyers, they were being followed around during the day, etc. It caused great difficulty in keeping our members connected because of now having to be so secretive. Others just go so freaked out they've left our program entirely in fear and I can't blame them. These attacks broke down the stability of our program that took us decades to build.
Now I have sex workers through groups like SWOP, Desiree Alliance, and Red Umbrella – groups where we used to get most of our referrals from when one wanted to leave sex work, or was being trafficked – telling me they're now being identified, stalked, targeted, harassed and threatened by people who are directly connected to grant recipients. Only many of these groups are out of sex worker and members of SWA – so they're coming to me letting me know this is happening. Right now any sex worker who even says online they're going to call us for help – then gets bombarded with threats about what will happen to them if they even speak to us.
Why? Because the people you're giving this money to is not reaching victims. Not only is it not reaching victims – in some cases it's being used by traffickers to go after their competition. Pretty identical to how Elizabeth Adams, the Beverly Hills Madam, threw Heidi Fleiss, Cheri Woods, and myself to law enforcement when we would become competitors to her business. That's not fighting trafficking - that's working for the traffickers on a federal dime.
They're also discrediting me because they don't want you to believe me when I tell you what's going on. Only I can prove, document, and validate everything I'm saying is true. They can't. If these accusations that I'm a "5150" were true - then how come my bills are paid, my daughter with a brain tumor is getting cared for, I've got two dogs and a cat doing just fine under my care, and I'm even writing you this letter. If I was 1/2 as crazy as these people are trying to make others believe - I know many people who couldn't do what I'm doing so I doubt I'm "crazy" any more than any human being under the stress I'm under.
These people spent six months online trying to find someone, anyone, who would say something bad about me. The best they could come up with is a woman who is holding a grudge against me for 30 years now because I stopped talking to her when I was on probation, and she was still active in sex work, and I didn't want to risk violating my probation by speaking to her. She's held a grudge about that for years now.
Please help me do something about this. Because now it's reached the point where they are actively now standing inbetween me and real victims who need help. Not just me either – but anyone who tries to get real victims help is also being attacked, threatened, terrorized, and smeared. I can show you documentation of victims who have been reaching out to SWA for help since April of this year - who are now being THREATENED for reaching out for help this situation has gotten so bad.
We need to talk. Please read the attached letter and call me.
Jody Williams
(702) 468-4529
I just found this to support what we're saying is happening everywhere. http://nolongervictimsblog.com/2014/06/10/jl-mealer-arizona-the-truth-of-his-abuse-must-be-revealed-his-abuse-of-an-advocate-frauds/
I just found this to support what we're saying is happening everywhere. http://nolongervictimsblog.com/2014/06/10/jl-mealer-arizona-the-truth-of-his-abuse-must-be-revealed-his-abuse-of-an-advocate-frauds/
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