THE EFFECTS OF "NO SUCH THING"
Garrett:
I saw your article http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-adv-foster-overflow-20150301-story.html and it’s important we stay on this story
because there is a huge crisis going on from what I’m seeing and honestly the
media seems to be the only way I think something is going to be done about
this. Since I started www.sexworkersanonymous.com
back in 1987 – I’ve tried to stick to working with adults (those over 18 years
old) with respect to helping them get out of the sex industry. However,
the world is changing and I’m finding that I’m getting increasingly sucked into
this issue because really the only difference between a juvenile and an adult
is only one day after their birthday.
There was a huge crisis going on back in the late
1970’s. A lot of kids were winding up on the streets because their parent
were on hard drugs. In the 1960’s the drugs were mostly weak pot, LSD,
and a lot of booze – but when cocaine started coming into this country with
Iran Contra – suddenly a whole generation of crack babies were being born
because of this new drug on the streets. Teens who had turned to
prostitution to survive were going into foster homes, group homes, etc., only
to be even more victimized where they couldn’t get away. You have no idea
the stories our members have told me from that time period where they were
being locked into programs where the staff was raping them, or even selling
them to the pimps. The shelters back then were either victimizing these
kids or they were completely useless. The minute the pimps would show up
demanding them back with guns – the shelter would comply. Then we
had Father Ritter supposedly molesting the boys coming into Covenant House for
over 10 years before that was stopped. None of this was hitting the press
because bad publicity meant people were going to lose their jobs.
So Lois stepped up in 1979 and opened www.childrenofthenight.org for
those who were involved in prostitution in some way. She had to because
these boys and girls needed extra protection. Because those targeting
them were not pedophiles in the traditional sense, their type of predators was
going unrecognized. Which is how I first met Lois – I knew anyone under
18 years old I was helping to escape the streets and pimps I could bring to
her. I was working at this time as a madam and escort while trying to
remain “independent”. So any time I’d come across someone who was under
18 and needed help to escape the streets or some monster – I’d take them to her
without one bit of concern. I was seeing her do wonderful work.
Most important, the kids were safe with her. I’ve now gone on to see her
kids graduate college, get married, have kids, etc.
The traffickers and pimps I was dealing with at the time
were very careful to only work with those over the age of 18 years old.
I’m going to invite you to watch a clip from a Bruce Lee film from 1973 because
I want you to see something that I feel had he lived, he was going to try and
do something about the fact that there were no laws on the books against the
sex trafficking of adult American women. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PGjCWpbt4U
What this CIA man was saying was absolutely the case back then – the law
couldn’t touch traffickers targeting adult American women. It was truly
open season back then on ADULT women. Realize the world didn’t even
acknowledge this was happening – so why would there be a law against it?
Remember the term “sex trafficking” wasn’t even coined until the passing of the
Trafficking Act of 2000.
So I ran into a huge problem though when it came to where to
take someone who was over 18 years of age who needed help to get away from a
pimp or trafficker, and yes there’s a difference in my vocabulary. The
pimp has a relationship with their victim very much like a domestic violence
type of abusive relationship. However, the traffickers were straight up
selling people like property where they are “owned”. Some were selling
women to men in other countries like the Sultan of Brunei and his family.
I know this because “brokers” had approached me as one of the top three madams
operating in Los Angeles at a time when there was no internet. Meaning if
you wanted someone who wasn’t on a street corner then you had to either deal with
me, Alex Adams or Cheri Woods. Between us we covered all of southern
California’s “high end” prostitution. So we were approached to sell
“white women” who had no family for $25,000 a throw back then. It was a
very sophisticated racket back then where these sales would take place at the
Beverly Hilton and the Beverly Hills police were part of this operation.
Meaning we had no where to run.
Not when the treatment centers, homeless and domestic
violence shelters were refusing to take us in out of a fear of HIV/AIDS back in
the 1980’s. This is why I took a warehouse I had been using for my
prostitution needs and converted it into the first “safe house” for adults in
1984. That got me arrested however when an angry pimp called the police
claiming I was running a brothel. The clips are at www.hightechmadam.com She
testified against the pimp and the charges against me were dropped – sure.
However, the police then came and charged my mother with
pimping me. That became a whole new case where I was on probation until
1986. It was after then I realized something still needed to be
done, but I wasn’t going to operate a residential program after this so we
launched the hotline and 12 step program, originally Prostitutes Anonymous,
back in 1987. We also launched the first alternative to
incarceration and diversion program here in 1987 also thanks to a lot of
support from then mayor Tom Bradley, Chief Gates and Sheriff Block.
But because prostitution was/is a crime – we were still not
having this population we were helping able to access any money through the
victim assistance programs. I was told that if I was to help the
push towards the passing of the Trafficking Act of 2000 that we would be able
to unlock money for these victims to get the same services that any victim was
getting otherwise who was in a different profession. Because even
those in “legal” professions that were part of the sex industry such as
stripping, pornography, etc. were still being denied the same assistance as a
housewife or secretary.
I had no idea then what bringing money into this field was
going to create. Now to help get this law passed, I embarked upon a lot
of media to raise awareness that many of us who were being treated as criminals
were not there by choice. Therefore, it was wrong to treat them like
criminals when they weren’t there by choice. This was the intent of our
alternative sentencing program – to take those who had been forced to be where
they were arrested and get them free and in recovery. Because when the
police would do a raid on a brothel then – everyone was arrested including the
prostitutes as criminals. They were treated the same as the pimps running
the place. But for those who were there because they were sold into being
there, or were there by force in some fashion – it was wrong to treat them as a
criminal.
After this Act was passed, the TVRA of 2003 was passed which
was a revision that’s just flipped everything on it’s head. It’s created a
“money madness”. I’ve attached a clip here for you to see what I
mean. Here is a prosecutor who is now LYING about someone being a
trafficking victim to get access to not only the victim assistance money – but
also to go after grant money for trafficking which is now being made available
from three major sources right now (1) the Catholic Church, (2) the Hunt
Foundation, and (3) the Office of Victim Services. http://traffickingandprostitutionservices.blogspot.com/2016/03/just-like-we-predicted.html
What is written about here I’ve been seeing going on for a few years now.
What you may not be aware of however is one of the ways
these people have been going after grant money. Up to 2002, we had a
chapter of our program in every major city of the USA. We were being used
by the courts as an “alternative to incarceration” both formally and
informally. Formally we were part of the “Program for Female Offenders” in
Allentown, PA for example. Informally, if you were convicted of
prostitution you could ask the judge to come to our program and the judges were
granting this all over the USA, Puerto Rico, even Hawaii. Because
prostitution is illegal – we had a very hard time finding meeting space that
would rent to us. Imagine if you owned a building would you rent a space
for a bunch of hookers to meet? Especially ones who might have a pimp
looking for them? A violence, dangerous pimp? Not many would so we
were meeting in donated space given to us by the Salvation Army or Catholic
Charities depending upon who had a shelter in that town.
After the TVRA of 2003 was passed – suddenly our meeting
space was revoked. I started getting phone calls from all across the USA
from our chapter telling me we have “been banned from the property”. We
weren’t just asked to stop holding meetings – we found ourselves banned from
the property. It was more than being banned even as anyone who was a
member of our program who was working in their program with helping prostitutes
was fired. If we had a “sponsee” the group was working with – we were
forbidden to even speak to them. Kathleen Mitchell had been running a
chapter of ours out of the Catholic Charities in Phoenix since 1991. We
were told she had “retired” and Catholic Charities had now taken over the
program and our meetings “were out”. I found out later this was a
lie – they were continuing to hold meetings they CALLED “Prostitutes Anonymous”
– but they were run in line with “their” philosophy. What this meant was
every member in the meeting was told they were a “victim”. I’ve got a
tape here of a member in Phoenix describing what it was like “before” and
“after” this take-over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_TD_X3uOiA
Of course I’m wondering why since our program is
effective. I’ve even got outside validation of that now in the 10 year
study published in “Leaving Prostitution” by professor Sharon Oselin who even
has interviews with prostitutes saying it was our program who turned them
around. So why boot us out when we were effective? To apply for
grants to fill the now empty positions that’s why. What this “gold rush”
has created is a bunch of people now claiming there are “no resources” when in
fact there are.
Our chapters regrouped and found new meeting space
elsewhere. Some started holding meetings in their homes even. We
continued to offer our program up for those wanting help to leave the sex
industry whether that desire was to get away from a pimp, or simply to
retire. Which caused a conflict if you can imagine because here there are
now groups claiming they need money to do the very services we’re doing, and
doing without applying for grant money. So people started being
threatened with their jobs if they let any prostitute even speak to us.
Since I couldn’t find an attorney willing to sue over something like this with
no financial reward at the end of the rainbow – I went to the ACLU. This
became the ACLU v. Catholic Bishops lawsuit which stated they could not refuse
to allow referrals to “outside” groups, such as ours, simply because of a
philosophical difference of opinions. See the TVRA of 2003 stated money
could only be issued to “faith based” groups and those who were
“anti-prostitution” and “of the believe prostitution is not work but a
violation of human rights”.
Well we’re none of those because we’re a 12 step
program. Back in the days of Prohibition, many believed alcohol was a
“tool of the devil”. This is why many churches back then went around
having men sign “pledges” not to drink. The alcohol industry wasn’t too
happy about them either – so as to avoid butting heads with them or the church
– AA has their “traditions” which mean we aren’t a church, nor can we take a
stance for or against anything. After the ACLU v. Catholic Bishops
lawsuit was won however nothing changed. We still were not getting
referrals because of the fact we will not engage in things like “protesting
rape culture” as one example.
Now I was not alone on this obviously – many groups,
doctors, and licensed therapists, were finding they were now being blocked from
working with prostitutes by a new system that had developed. A group
called CAASE had gone to 11 states and set up programs in connection with the
local police, a local task force, and the local Salvation Army and Catholic Charities
– where instead of a prostitute being referred to our outpatient program as an
adult – they were now being taken by the police to these shelters, and under
threat of arrest, told they had to stay there in these shelters, and go along
with their program ‘or else’. We STILL were finding we not only
were not being given referrals but any of these prostitutes who did reach out
to us were being either arrested, or booted out into the streets. To try
and stop this, this lawsuit was filed and won. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agency_for_International_Development_v._Alliance_for_Open_Society_International,_Inc.
That prompted some kind of back lash against our
program. Now there is no legal reason to block a prostitute from coming
to us for assistance. We don’t believe in putting these men and women
into residential programs because that’s not teaching them how to care for
themselves. Since we weren’t going away, and we’ve been continuing to
provide recovery for our members (you can hear some testimonials to that effect
at www.leavingtheliferadio.com),
we started becoming the victim of some kind of stalking campaign nationally and
online. I have had to shut down our online forum because it was
attacked. I’ve had to remove our members room on our site for members to
speak to each other because someone went in there and started “outing” members’
identities and posting photos of their children online, even reporting their
whereabouts for their pimps to see.
Whole forums were being set up where each new member was
told that I was “back pimping”. One group of people in Atlanta were told
that I was operating a child trafficking ring, while others in California where
told I was now “producing porn”. To back up their crazy claims they set
up sites like www.sexworkersanonymous.net
I don’t have the money to pay for every domain extension out there – so these
people have set up sites like this to further make their smears appear to be
the truth.
Where it got crazy was when our local chapters started
reporting back to me police harassment, stalking, and outright threats.
We had group chairs calling me up saying they had found gasoline poured all
over their front porch, their cars broken into with threats left inside, their
homes broken into where the only thing removed was our literature, they were
being followed, their front doors were being kicked in, oil was poured on their
flowers in their yard, and all kinds of other insanity to the point where I’ve
had to put our local meetings on a higher security level for their own protection.
We had to remove all local meeting information off line to force all calls to
come through me for the group’s security – which of course then prompted an
accusation that we are now a “cult” because I’ve had to start screening all the
calls to protect the local groups and members.
How does this tie into your article? A campaign by
these same people started up entitled “No Such Thing’ pushing to have juveniles
not arrested on prostitution charges. Now I’m sure Lois Lee can
explain to you what happened to the numbers of juveniles who got involved in
drug crimes once they started doing the same thing to juveniles caught running
drugs back in the 1970’s. Well – it created such an increase in teens
involved in prostitution it’s one of the reasons I understand she opened CON in
the first place. I don’t remember the law off hand – but I’m sure Lois
can fill you in on this who I am sending a copy of this letter to.
Because they stopped arresting juveniles on prostitution
charges in 2015 here in Los Angeles as part of this “No Such Thing” campaign,
this means there are no solid HIV/AIDS results coming in anywhere because
prostitutes aren’t tested by the state unless arrested in California. Now
there is a confirmed HIV/AIDS epidemic going on with sex workers down in
Mexico, as well as China, Korea and Thailand. There have also been
confirmed high rates of infection in various cities of the USA at this time.
But we have no numbers now on how many juveniles who have engaged in
prostitution are infected because without the state taking those states – any
test results are considered “confidential”.
This isn’t what concerns me so much. For one thing,
they’ve gone nuts. This push to not arrest a juvenile on prostitution
charges – led to a dilemma when Latesha Clay was arrested in Michigan with a
gun because she was supposedly robbing her tricks. I say she was probably
protecting herself, and her two small children, with the gun. But when
the state won’t give out welfare to a juvenile mother unless they have a GED
(what teen mother does have a GED I ask you), and there’s no foster parents,
this pushes kids onto the streets just like Latesha. Now because of the
gun, they then charged her as an adult because again of this push to not arrest
juveniles for prostitution. However, as an adult they’re supposed
to refer mothers to me in order to keep their children.
One of the reasons why the Mayor, Sheriff and the Chief of
Police back in the 1980’s allowed us to set up our program in the first place
was because of a study we did back then learning that every single woman who
was being locked up on prostitution charges had AT LEAST TWO children who were
then being put into the foster care system. To further help us sold
this problem, the abandoned Via Avanta drug program was re-opened by Tom
Bradley where we took women who were in Sybil Brand Womens Jail and pregnant
and mothers who were HIV positive and he moved them from the jail into that
program where they could be with their children and also receive better medical
care.
But they put to the head of the line those who came to our
program instead of being incarcerated mothers. Now in Michigan up until
this madness with the church people (I don’t know what else to call them sorry)
it was a part of their probation system that you couldn’t even graduate off
probation unless you had shown you had attended our program for at least one
year. Now I’m hearing that Latesha Clay was sentenced as an adult
and incarcerated with her two kids put into foster care? It’s certainly
not because some people think I’m “pimping” because I don’t run our Michigan
groups!
Now when I heard about the 11 year old girl that was pimped
out of the youth center here in Los Angeles, I also learned that we went from
3000 (approximately) to 900 foster parents in Los Angeles in one year –
2015. I at first thought that maybe if I got certified as a foster parent
that maybe I could help out. I know Lois only has so many beds – so I
thought maybe I could become a foster and get more involved with the epidemic
I’m seeing of juveniles now being lured into not just sex trafficking – but
pornography. Now let me explain something – most pimps I’m seeing in Los
Angeles are not using guns on their victims – but the camera. You can
slap a college degree on these women all you want but I’m finding no one is
hiring them if their porn is online. If they do hire them, all it takes
is one photo online to be emailed to their boss and then they’re fired.
So a gun isn’t necessary any longer with most of the white pimps anyway.
Because our Los Angeles chair was being threatened – she
withdrew from contact with people like LA Probation. So I also started
talking to them again about resuming our more formal “alternative to
incarceration” programs. I was told “no decisions can be made right
now because we don’t have a head of Probation”. Seems the woman who was
in charge had to step down because she was sleeping with her boss. Also
seems they can’t make up their mind if they want to break from being joined
with juvenile probation as well.
This creates a problem for me also because while joined now
with juvenile probation – there’s this faith based group that wants to have the
juveniles to themselves. Which is fine because I don’t work with
juveniles generally – but as long as the two groups are connected then it is
going to give us a problem. So I’m being held off from doing
anything with the adults right now on probation because they’re telling me
they’re looking for someone to be in charge first to make that decision, which
takes me back to the foster care system. Which again I wondered why
the sudden drastic drop. So I started talking to some local foster
parents who have recently walked away from their posts about why they’re doing
this and the answer I’m getting is always the same – corruption and
abuse.
These people are reporting to me widespread corruption and
abuse and that no one is doing anything about it. They’re reporting to me
that the ones who can be “turned out” are being targeted by the pimps and that
they can’t get anyone to listen. I’m even hearing from parents who are
telling me their daughters are being taken from them for “no reason” and put
into these programs where they are disappearing right out of them, trafficked,
and then when they’re all used up, then just dumped right back like nothing
happened.
The thing is Garrett – when a juvenile was arrested on
prostitution charges, there was a way to follow up on that case. I’m
completely at a loss now because this language thing has gotten completely out
of hand. I literally called the jail and said that I wanted to talk to
them about a program where I could come in and work with the “prostitutes’ in
the system and I was told “we don’t have any prostitutes in our jail – only
human trafficking victims”. Okay enough is enough here with this drive to
find “trafficking victims” to the point now where I can’t even get the services
to prostitutes who need them. Latesha Clay is being treated at 15 like a
criminal only because she didn’t have a pimp?
The only way I know how to deal with this kind of corruption
and insanity is media pressure. So I was hoping you and I could open up a
dialogue about these subjects for the sake of getting help to these
kids. As I said, I’ve tried to stay only focusing on adults up
until now but since they stopped arresting juveniles for prostitution charges
two thing I see are happening. The first is that it’s now “game on” as
far as targeting of juveniles for prostitution. Let me ask you something
– if you were a pimp today who would you pimp? Someone who could be
arrested or someone who can cry “victim” and not be touched? In fact, she
can even play this “victim” role right up into getting all kinds of help while
sneaking off to see him when no one is looking. Second, they don’t arrest
them so then what? What I’m hearing is they’re targeting the parent, and
arresting them. Then putting that same child in foster care where they
are now under LESS supervision by the SAME PIMPS.
It does not help that I’m also dealing with completely fake
programs that have been set up for phony TV shows, money laundering, or baby
mills. Yes baby mills. Just take Mercy Ministries for example which
was based right here in California. They set themselves up as a “safe
house” for “trafficking victims” that were so bold about their targeting of
pregnant strippers they had adoption applications right on their
websites! http://rhrealitycheck.org/article/2012/02/21/dark-side-mercy-ministries/
The expose on them didn’t come out until 2012 – but that was after I started
complaining to anyone that would listen that I’m having to fight with THEM now
ON TOP OF FIGHTING THE PIMPS to get help to them!
Because that’s what’s happening right now – the seeking of
“trafficking victims” in order to tap into grant money has become such a drive
that I’m now literally having to fight not just with pimps now -but with these
programs trying to “sell” them into going into their program so they can parade
them around to raise money. The problem isn’t so much even with those
that are using them in the adoption mills as it is when they’re using them
strictly to try and raise money. They seek them out, get their stories,
and then refuse to help them saying “there’s no money”. Then they go and
apply for their grants or hold their $50,000 a plate luncheons using these
stories – while leaving the prostitute who thought they were going to help them
in the lurch. I can name at least 10 women I’m speaking to right now in
our local program who told me they were being promised help for as long as a
year they never got – which these nonprofits and charities used their plight to
raise money for themselves. During this time they were not told that we
could help them because there’s no money in that tune.
Anyway, I’ve got some people within the foster care system
that are saying some pretty scary things about what’s going on in the system
right now, and something needs to be done about it. Something also needs
to be done to let these parents know where they can get some help. I set
up SWAN www.swanfellowship.webs.com
for the same reason as to what happened to my mother – they arrested her
because of my actions and she’d done nothing wrong. If you look at Heidi
Fleiss – they went after her parents. They went after Jeane Palfrey’s
mother but I was able to convince them it would be bad press for them so they
dropped pursing Jeane’s 94 year old sick mother. But I assure you I’m
hearing that while they may not be arresting the juveniles for prostitution –
they are arresting their parents and then putting those same kids in the CPS
system and that’s just not cool.
There was a documentary on TV yesterday about the corruption
they exposed with respect to drugs in NY in the 75th precinct.
What I’m seeing happening right now, after they took off the pressure of
arresting juveniles for prostitution, is the same system is now transferred
onto prostitution. There’s no way to get caught with the drugs and even
the judges, prosecutors, and cops are now partaking in the product (the
same as they did the drugs).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/18/2-los-angeles-police-officers-charged-with-repeatedly-raping-women-under-threat-of-arrest/
So if you’d like to talk to some of these people within the
foster care system about what’s going wrong – please just let me know.
Thanks.
Jody Williams
(702) 468-4529
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