In the debate about prostitution that has unfolded on this blog and elsewhere, one of the thorniest issues has been those women who are not obviously coerced and participate in the high-priced call girl services.
I lived with a brilliant and dynamic woman who, unbeknownst to me, had once worked as a high- priced call girl servicing powerful men like former Governor’s. She and Annabella, the 22-year old escort girl whose client list included the Governor’s, have something in common. Both were abused as children.
Annabella has yet to reveal the specifics of her abuse, but according to her Tescort.com profile it was bad enough that at 17 she left home and eventually turned to prostitution. In the case of the woman I loved, whom I shall call Lara, she was repeatedly molested by her mother and also by her uncle who made her perform oral sex beginning at age 4. Lara, like Annabella, also became a call girl in her 20s.
My relationship with Lara confirmed in the most heartrending way everything that I learned in a series of investigative reports I had done back in the1980s on sex workers. The vast majority, as experts continue to document, are childhood victims of some combination of emotional, sexual and physical violence. To cope with their trauma, many call girls become split personalities, which explains why so many Jean and the media continue buying into the myth of the care-free, “happy hooker.” When I met Lara she was 35, a brunette with the look and persona of a slightly shy and gentle grade school teacher. But there was another Lara, the “blonde Lara,” whom I discovered one afternoon in a box of old photos and diaries. This Lara wore the same sultry, sexually charged look that radiates from Annabella’s Tescort photos.
The “blonde Lara’s” diaries revealed her gradual descent into sexual and psychological hell. The first stop was stripping, followed by big tips for back-room oral sex, and, finally, full-blown prostitution. And here’s where it gets complicated. Lara wrote with graphic detail of feeling empowered by certain parts of her body, their seductive strength, and her ability, often times, to climax in unison with the men who were paying her. Clearly, she was rocket fuel for the sexual fantasies of two of her regular clients, and the other an infamous running back who, without a doubt, did not see her as a victim but as someone who enjoyed her work.
But, the Senator and running back only knew the “blonde Lara” of immense sexual power and self-confidence. The Lara they did not meet and would never know was the “brunette Lara” whose childhood memories were triggered one night while fellating a wealthy client. “Suddenly” she wrote, “I was a little girl in our basement looking up at the face of my uncle and my mind froze in terror.” Later that night, in the shower, she described how her quiet sobs turned into primal, irrepressible screams as the memories began flooding her brain until, finally, she collapsed on the floor suffering a complete mental and nervous breakdown. Over the next few years, with the help of a therapist, she began processing her recovered memories and came to understand that hyper-sexuality is a common manifestation of incest. And, she came to understand that her need to be the seductive initiator of sex as an adult (and as a prostitute) was a direct response to her powerlessness as a child to stop the sexual assaults.
This counter-intuitive dynamic is well understood by mental health experts but is too subtle and complex to be grasped by the Jean, or the general public. This needs to change and the sooner policymakers realize that prostitution is primarily about child-abuse, the sooner we will arrive at intelligent solutions to what really is a serious crime with a daisy chain of victims.
As for Lara, I would like to report that her ending was a happy one. It was not! She eventually became a published author, but her personal life remained a struggle. She was never able to trust my genuine love for her – nor anyone’s for that matter. The abuse from her mother and uncle left her completely incapable of trusting human beings and the only love she believed in was her cat’s. Like many incest and abuse victims she encountered chronic, neck and back pain, and, of course, depression. Tragically, in 1993 she died of a staph infection. Her parents, who denied the abuse, and from whom she was permanently alienated, never learned of her brief turn as a call girl.
Annabella, in the meantime, needs to be treated as a VICTIM! The national media can help by focusing a very tight lens on her childhood and the predators who traumatized her as a little girl should be pursued as aggressively as the predators who exploited her as an escort. And, finally, a tantalizing postscript. Lara was convinced that the men who paid her for sex were also – in varying degrees – scarred as children. No one should be surprised, therefore, if one morning we wake up to read that, in this ongoing drama, “Client 9” recovers a repressed memory of his own.
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