Research Log #5

Farley, Melissa. "Aboriginal Survivor from AWAN, Vancouver ." Prostitution
Research & Education. PRE, 1998-2010. Web. 13 Oct. 2010.
http://www.prostitutionresearch.com/survivor_writings/000245.html.    

The article, “Aboriginal Survivor from AWAN, Vancouver”,
was about a woman who had to move to Vancouver because he mother had died and she was being put into foster homes there. She said that she felt bad for her foster mom trying to live pay check to pay check every month. She met a boy who became her boyfriend. After awhile he persuaded her to prostitute so her family would have more money. She didn’t know that her current boyfriend would soon become her pimp. After she had been in prostitution for awhile she turned to drugs and alcohol. Her pimp convinced her that no one else would ever want her because she was now worthless and sadly she believed him and kept going along with what he told her to do. She turned to an organization that gave her no hope and that confirmed her destiny of prostitution. She was abused sexually and physically on the streets by knives and guns from so many men. She said that she was always hearing about women who were on the streets going missing and being murdered. She also said that many of her friends didn’t get to tell their story because they were found dead before they were able to speak out. There have been many suicides due to being a sex slave. Most women think it’s their only way out. At the time there were no programs the woman had known about for help to exit the streets. She claims prostitution is one of the oldest professions and it should not be left for the children to take care of it once they have to. Finally she ran away from her foster home and found a women in the feminist movement who helped her realize she was a woman and had rights and her destiny was not to be a prostitute.

A huge problem in this article is that the woman talked about how frequent is was not just how the women were sex slaves, but also about death. So many of these women’s lives turns out to be death weather or not if they take their own life or someone else takes it from them. The violence that she explained and what was normal for a prostitute to go through daily is so scary and no woman or anyone for that matter should ever have to go through what she and all the other prostitutes she knew went through. TO hear that a lot of woman feel like there’s nothing they can do to fix their lives and they are ruined forever, and to feel that the only thing to turn to is killing themselves is just horrible. Sex trafficking needs to stop and we as a nation need to work on it so our children and their children’s children do not have to endure the things these woman do today.