Churches helping prostitutes walk away

Stacy J. Willis

Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 | 5:07 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

Fifteen years of getting paid for sex brought her to Jesus. It was either that or suicide; she had loaded the gun and was thinking about shooting herself when instead she dropped to her knees and asked God for help.

She had prayed for help before -- when customers were violent, when one of her friends had thrown herself from a balcony at the Luxor, when another of her friends was shot by a customer at the Rio.

But this time -- kneeling at the foot of her bed, with a plate full of methamphetamines in front of her and a crucifix on the wall overhead -- she was sincere about wanting to change her life. She wanted out.

Across town at about that same time, at the International Church of Las Vegas, the Rev. Denise Goulet was praying to meet a prostitute.

"I had a heart for the prostitutes in this town," Goulet, an evangelistic Christian, said. "I was asking the Lord for a prostitute to contact us."

That was about two years ago. The story unfolds predictably: the prostitute, Anne, goes to church, Goulet finds her and helps her get off of drugs and out of "the game," and the two plan to start a Christian mission to help other prostitutes who want out.

But the catch is that they don't have much success. Not yet.

Nor have any of the other churches in Las Vegas that have "had a heart" for prostitutes. In Las Vegas, a place where part of its reputation is built partly on an underground network of prostitution, there is no sizable, established program aimed at helping people leave the sex industry.

Despite wild growth and a lot of effort devoted to building a family-oriented community, Las Vegas is also still a place people come to sin, not to recover.

"The hardest part about quitting was driving by the casinos knowing that I could go into that bar and make $1,000 (by soliticing sex)," Anne, who asked that her full name be withheld, said.

"It (prostitution) is all over this town. You may not see it, but it's here and that makes it hard to leave. And it's really hard to find help."

That's not the case in other prostitution-laden metropolises. In Los Angeles, for example, there are a host of "exit programs" -- most rooted in churches. They provide shelter and temporary assistance to women, children and men who have been dependent on prostitution money for their livelihood. They also help by referring prostitutes to drug and alcohol recovery programs, counseling, health care providers, and job training. Additionally, some programs work with courts and cops to provide alternative sentencing programs.

But in Las Vegas such programs are few, according to local prostitutes, church leaders and law enforcement officers. In fact, program coordinators in California report being called to help Las Vegas' sex workers.

"We get a lot of referrals from Las Vegas," says Diane Carter, spokeswoman for Los Angeles' Children of the Night, a nonprofit that helps underage prostitutes. "The police department there is very good about calling us."

The Rev. Anne Hayman, director of the Mary Magdalene Project in Van Nuys, Calif., says she has bought women bus tickets out of Nevada to get help. Her program, which is funded by private donations, has helped more than 120 women out of prostitution since 1980. It was started by volunteers at a Presbyterian church.

"I don't know why Las Vegas hasn't gotten a good program going," Hayman said. "I was in Las Vegas about 10 years ago and we met with a group of ministers and community leaders and gave them the model we used to establish our program. I don't know where they buried it."

In fact Las Vegans have attempted to start programs several times, but most programs have not stayed afloat.

Between July 2000 and June 2001 Metro Police officers made 4,162 prostitution-related arrests, according to Lt. Terry Davis in the vice unit. The year before, they made 3,981 prostitution-related arrests -- although the arrest numbers fall short of indicating the extent of prostitution in the city.

Although there is a diversion program for prostitution customers in the municipal court -- a program meant to discourage first-time offenders from returning to prostitution -- there is no municipal assistance available to help prostitutes leave the business. Typically prostitutes have more trouble escaping because they are economically dependent and sometimes face violence from pimps should they try to leave.

"We are in need of more programs to help adult women leave prostitution," Davis said.

Roxane Clark-Murphy, evaluation coordinator of alternative sentencing for Las Vegas Municipal Court, said the city isn't turning its back on women trapped in prostitution.

"I don't think the city of Las Vegas turns away at all. We treat these as serious cases. We recognize the problem," Clark-Murphy said. But the problem, she said, extends beyond a lack of programming.

"The issue is not just Las Vegas. Women's issues are always on the back burner everywhere," Clark-Murphy said.

But prostitution researchers around the nation say Las Vegas' acceptance of women as sex objects is, by design, abusive.

"The whole essence of Las Vegas promotes prostitution. Prostitution is an industry that hurts women in every possible way they can be hurt -- economically, physically, mentally, emotionally. But somehow, the whole culture in Las Vegas turns a blind eye and says these women are expendable," said Melissa Farley, a clinical and research psychologist in San Francisco who runs the Prostitution Research and Education project. The project is sponsored by the nonprofit San Francisco Women's Centers.

Like it or not, Farley said, the Las Vegas economy is in some part reliant on prostitution. Some tourists come here with the intention of paying for sex -- and an entire arm of the economy is based on that.

"You have to start with people's attitudes," Farley said.

In fact the community's lackadaisical attitude toward the exploitation of women, Farley said, may be why Las Vegans who have tried to start exit programs haven't had much success.

Programs have come and gone: Prostitutes Anonymous, Sex Workers Anonymous, LuminoCity and a variety of other outreach efforts have disappeared.

Operators say they couldn't get enough financial and volunteer support to keep programs up and running.

"If you pull them off the streets, you have to have someplace to put them. You have to have food and shelter," the Rev. Tommy Starkes of Tropicana Christian Fellowship said. Starkes ministers to casino workers and has tried to minister to sex-industry workers.

"I know a lot of people nationally who are really trying to help prostitutes out of the business, but here, it's very challenging," Starkes said.

Part of the problem is making contact with prostitutes. When law enforcement officials recognized in the early 1990s that visible street prostitution on the Strip was bothering tourists, they began making arrests. That merely drove prostitution further into the out-call entertainment businesses, making it difficult for volunteers such as Starkes to make their aid available.

"I have tried on at least six occasions to go to the areas where you find people in this business, but it's difficult," Starkes said.

Anne, who was a prostitute in Las Vegas for nearly 10 years, said she was never aware of any programs that would help her get out.

"I spent a lot of time feeling very bad about myself and not knowing what to do about it. ... The main way girls try to get out is by getting a regular (customer) who will keep them," Anne, 35, said.

Additionally, Starkes said, he has difficulty getting volunteers to back efforts because people are more interested in building churches, not social services, in the rapidly growing area.

"The reason churches haven't established these kinds of programs here is that these kinds of programs don't build a church," Starkes said. "You don't get people who are going to contribute to your ongoing program. You get people who are going to get out of town.

"There is also some danger because you're eventually going to confront their pimps. If these women get well and get out of the business, then you're taking away their supply of workers, and they're not going to like that."

Richard Thompson, local director of Christian group Youth With a Mission said his organization tried to start a prostitution ministry called LuminoCity. The ministry was suspended because of a lack of volunteers.

"It's such a major need in Las Vegas. There are thousands of prostitutes here. It's unbelievable to me that there has never been an ongoing and strategic outreach to them. There needs to be something to help them get out of that lifestyle."

Thompson worked in a prostitution recovery group in Amsterdam, Netherlands, before moving to Las Vegas.

"Las Vegas isn't the worst place in the world but certainly trying to get a program going here is the hardest thing I've ever done. There is a dominant atmosphere here that makes it difficult. Although it is one of the foremost cities in America in terms of prostitution, the churches and outreach programs haven't kept up," Thompson said.

Although organizing an exit program is difficult, changing life after years of prostitution is far more so, Anne said.

Anne, a suburban girl from Minneapolis, began prostituting at the age of 17, and was taken by pimps to Houston before winding her way to Las Vegas a decade ago.

"You've suddenly got all of this money," she said. "That's the enemy...

"You plan. You say, I'll be out of this in two years. But you use the money to anesthetize yourself," she said.

She didn't think of herself as a prostitute -- in fact the term still makes her uneasy. She was a "working girl" or a "call girl."

"That's the deception," she said. With no job skills, no education, and a new drug problem, she didn't know how to get out of the business.

Eventually, she said, she suffered so much emotionally that she considered suicide.

The day after she had chosen to pray instead of shoot herself, she went to work at her escort agency. But while sitting in the lobby she asked a receptionist if she knew of a church -- and was referred to the International Church of Las Vegas.

Within days, she had met Goulet, and found the support she needed to get out.

"I went to (International Church of Las Vegas) high on drugs," Anne said. "But Denise didn't give up on me."

Goulet put Anne in a church-run house for pregnant girls, although Anne was not pregnant, and helped her get counseling. Anne is studying to be a Bible counselor at the church, and she and Goulet are hoping to develop an outreach to prostitutes.

"I am blessed," Anne says. "I didn't know if I would ever get out. And now I have a heart for everyone in prostitution."

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