Tori's Story
The average age for a girl to enter into prostitution is 14 years old. Perhaps you’re saying “what? That can’t be right.” I would love to share in that astonishment and disbelief. However, for me that statistic was pretty much my reality. Today, if you look up “prostitution” in a dictionary you will most likely find a very liberal definition for the word limiting it to sex for money. Prostitution is not so easily defined and is definitely packed with much more meaning than those three little words. Ex-hooker, Annie Lobert defined prostitution this way: “the practice of engaging in relatively indiscriminate sexual activity, in general with individuals other than a spouse or friend, in exchange for immediate payment in money or OTHER valuables.”[1]
I wasn’t standing on corners or even selling myself for money, but I was using my body in sexual ways to get what I wanted, those “other valuables”. Whether it was a ride somewhere, or beer or just a general need to feel loved and valuable, I gave myself away.
There are several forms of prostitution. There are the obvious ones like streetwalking, massage parlors, the brothels and escort services, but there are so many forms of prostitution that go unlabeled as such when truth be told they are indeed ways to engage in sexual activity for some sort of profit. Pornography is just one other example of prostitution, as well as strip clubs and peep shows. The list can go on. Today, human sex trafficking/forced prostitution is the “second largest criminal industry in the world and it is the fastest growing criminal industry.”[2]
Did I think at 13 or 14 years old when I began to let boys touch my breasts and feel me up that I was engaging in prostitution? No. Certainly not. In fact, I would say I really didn’t understand the implications of the choices I was making. But the hard reality is that I was beginning a trend in my life towards prostitution. By 15 years old, I began having sex with a steady boyfriend who was an adult. He used me and during that time I was okay with it because I for once felt loved, even through the violence that existed there. It was also at 15 that I was first paid to strip for a crowd by a family member. I was stuck in a downward spiral.
I had moments of clarity in my life through my teens. I was raised as a child with a good moral compass and I knew who God was. I had started a relationship with Him at the age of 7. I can’t tell you 100% why I traveled the road that I did or what caused such a turn in my life. The best I can say is that I was running so hard looking for something and looking in all the wrong places. I could give you many contributing factors but the bottom line is I made choices in the midst of my circumstances that led me to where I was. Sadly, so many girls don’t really have the choice to enter the sex industry or not. And in many ways, many of my choices weren’t really true choices at all.
Much of high school years are a haze to me. I began dating men old enough to buy me alcohol. I was drinking heavily trying to numb life and many times just trying to forget it. I tried many times to reconnect with God, even through different religions. I was searching and unwilling to look in the direction where I knew the answer was. I was running from God. How could He love me? After all I had done and all I had said, how could anyone really love me, let alone God?
By the time I was 17, I was biding my time waiting for the day that I turned 18 and was legally able to work in clubs. Within what seemed only days of my 18th birthday, I found myself working in a strip club in Toledo. Why? Because I believed the lie that there was no place else that I could earn as much money as in a club, naked. I believed the lie that it was a legal form of entertainment, when the reality is I could have used a fake ID and stripped in clubs long before I was 18, like many girls did; and never mind all the illegal things going on inside the club. I believed the lie that stripping was harmless. I didn’t think about the people on the other end, like wives, mothers, children who were affected, just the guy in front of me and the cash on my garter. But the biggest lie and probably the most damaging lie that I believed was that I was in control. I had power. I, for once, set the rules and I, for once, was valued. Valued because there was now a set price for my affection and attention. I now had a price tag, set by the club that pimped me.
I remember the rush that I would feel throughout the night, going home with more cash than this poor piece of trash had ever seen and unable to sleep because of the adrenaline pumping in my veins. Often I would spend hours in the early mornings at the local Meijer’s blowing every penny that I made on crap that I didn’t really need, trying to fill an emptiness that was ever-widening in my soul. A couple of years later when I officially left the business I didn’t have a penny to show for my efforts. I left more broke than I was going in.
My story wouldn’t be complete unless I told you that throughout it all – God was with me. When I was not faithful to Him, He remained faithful to me. I know that now. And I guess deep down I knew it then. The Bible says, “The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:8) See, when I was a child, I began a relationship with Jesus Christ and because of circumstances and choices I lost my way, but He never lost site of me. I can’t tell you how many times He sent people in to find me or He would use family members and friends to speak to me, to which I can tell you that I didn’t listen.
In all my searching for love and acceptance, I had denied myself the love of the One who loved me all along, the Author of love, Jesus Christ. I had refused to let Him love me with His unconditional, unwavering, everlasting love. Because I along my path developed a warped sense of what love even was, I had convinced myself that I was unlovable. I believed that lie and I was wrong. Jeremiah 31: 3 says that God has loved us with an everlasting love; He has drawn us with loving kindness. He will build us up again and we will be rebuilt. His love is everlasting. It is unfailing.
He was there with me. Like a shepherd watching His sheep, He protected me in many ways. I didn’t stay for the after-hour parties. I didn’t get caught up in the drug scene and I didn’t go home with regulars. I did my job and that’s it. For the most part I followed the rules, no one touched me, I just danced. I, at this time would have been defined as bisexual, not because of attraction but because of the practicality and the money that came with it. I watched the magazine girls come and go. At the time I thought these girls had “made it.” They were in the big time, traveling between clubs, posing for spreads in magazines, even big ones, like Playboy. It wasn’t long and I found myself wanting that, thinking it would bring me an even bigger value.
So how did I get out? As I said before I was raised a good girl and God in His faithfulness would use those seeds planted in me to pull me out from under the bondage that imprisoned me. Despite my devotedly taking birth control, I became one of those less that 2%. I ended up pregnant. During my time at the club, I had watched many girls abort their pregnancies because of the chance of “ruining” their bodies and losing their place in the business. Abortion was something that from a young age, I knew I could never do. I would have this child. I danced until I was 8 months pregnant and I returned after my child’s birth, got myself back in shape and worked for several more months.
However, there was a part of me that came alive when my child was born. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t come home and face this infant. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to tell this piece of me what I did every night and why I wasn’t there to rock them to sleep. I wanted so much more for my child than I ever had. So I quit. This was one of the hardest things I ever did. I went back to real jobs and real work and real money.
God knew me. Numerous times in His love letter to us, the Bible, we are told that He knows us. In Exodus, He knows us by name. In Psalms, we are told that He knit our very being together in our mother’s wombs. In Matthew and again in Luke, we are told that the very hairs on our head are numbered. God saw me. He was with me. He loved me. And He knew me. He knew exactly what would draw me out and like Jeremiah said, He drew me to Himself.
This wasn’t all some kind of magical revelation. It wasn’t something I figured out right away. It was a process. It is a process that I still live today. That process began with me calling out to Jesus and allowing Him to speak to me giving me answers that I never thought of. (Jeremiah 33:3) All those years that I thought I knew what freedom was I was really living in bondage. I believed that I was the portrait of freedom. I could do anything and everything. I was in control, yet I was trapped. It wasn’t until I truly began that relationship with Christ again that I discovered that it is only in Him that I am truly free to be myself. To be the woman that He created me to be. To be the woman that He loved before I ever left my mother’s womb. It is in Christ today that I find my freedom: freedom from shame, freedom from guilt, freedom from the lies that I believed; freedom from the men that used me; freedom from the darkness that surrounded me and freedom from condemnation. My freedom is realized in His forgiveness. It is actualized in my relationship with Him. In Christ alone, I am free to be me. A me that is not pimped, but instead loved with an everlasting love. A me that is able to accept that love and allow it to change my life everyday! God’s love that now flows through me pours out of me to others.
[1] http://powerhouse-ministry.org/annielobert_prostitution.aspx
[2]http://www.pcsao.org/WeeklyUpdate/2008/HumanTraffickingResourceGuide.pdf
I wasn’t standing on corners or even selling myself for money, but I was using my body in sexual ways to get what I wanted, those “other valuables”. Whether it was a ride somewhere, or beer or just a general need to feel loved and valuable, I gave myself away.
There are several forms of prostitution. There are the obvious ones like streetwalking, massage parlors, the brothels and escort services, but there are so many forms of prostitution that go unlabeled as such when truth be told they are indeed ways to engage in sexual activity for some sort of profit. Pornography is just one other example of prostitution, as well as strip clubs and peep shows. The list can go on. Today, human sex trafficking/forced prostitution is the “second largest criminal industry in the world and it is the fastest growing criminal industry.”[2]
Did I think at 13 or 14 years old when I began to let boys touch my breasts and feel me up that I was engaging in prostitution? No. Certainly not. In fact, I would say I really didn’t understand the implications of the choices I was making. But the hard reality is that I was beginning a trend in my life towards prostitution. By 15 years old, I began having sex with a steady boyfriend who was an adult. He used me and during that time I was okay with it because I for once felt loved, even through the violence that existed there. It was also at 15 that I was first paid to strip for a crowd by a family member. I was stuck in a downward spiral.
I had moments of clarity in my life through my teens. I was raised as a child with a good moral compass and I knew who God was. I had started a relationship with Him at the age of 7. I can’t tell you 100% why I traveled the road that I did or what caused such a turn in my life. The best I can say is that I was running so hard looking for something and looking in all the wrong places. I could give you many contributing factors but the bottom line is I made choices in the midst of my circumstances that led me to where I was. Sadly, so many girls don’t really have the choice to enter the sex industry or not. And in many ways, many of my choices weren’t really true choices at all.
Much of high school years are a haze to me. I began dating men old enough to buy me alcohol. I was drinking heavily trying to numb life and many times just trying to forget it. I tried many times to reconnect with God, even through different religions. I was searching and unwilling to look in the direction where I knew the answer was. I was running from God. How could He love me? After all I had done and all I had said, how could anyone really love me, let alone God?
By the time I was 17, I was biding my time waiting for the day that I turned 18 and was legally able to work in clubs. Within what seemed only days of my 18th birthday, I found myself working in a strip club in Toledo. Why? Because I believed the lie that there was no place else that I could earn as much money as in a club, naked. I believed the lie that it was a legal form of entertainment, when the reality is I could have used a fake ID and stripped in clubs long before I was 18, like many girls did; and never mind all the illegal things going on inside the club. I believed the lie that stripping was harmless. I didn’t think about the people on the other end, like wives, mothers, children who were affected, just the guy in front of me and the cash on my garter. But the biggest lie and probably the most damaging lie that I believed was that I was in control. I had power. I, for once, set the rules and I, for once, was valued. Valued because there was now a set price for my affection and attention. I now had a price tag, set by the club that pimped me.
I remember the rush that I would feel throughout the night, going home with more cash than this poor piece of trash had ever seen and unable to sleep because of the adrenaline pumping in my veins. Often I would spend hours in the early mornings at the local Meijer’s blowing every penny that I made on crap that I didn’t really need, trying to fill an emptiness that was ever-widening in my soul. A couple of years later when I officially left the business I didn’t have a penny to show for my efforts. I left more broke than I was going in.
My story wouldn’t be complete unless I told you that throughout it all – God was with me. When I was not faithful to Him, He remained faithful to me. I know that now. And I guess deep down I knew it then. The Bible says, “The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Deuteronomy 31:8) See, when I was a child, I began a relationship with Jesus Christ and because of circumstances and choices I lost my way, but He never lost site of me. I can’t tell you how many times He sent people in to find me or He would use family members and friends to speak to me, to which I can tell you that I didn’t listen.
In all my searching for love and acceptance, I had denied myself the love of the One who loved me all along, the Author of love, Jesus Christ. I had refused to let Him love me with His unconditional, unwavering, everlasting love. Because I along my path developed a warped sense of what love even was, I had convinced myself that I was unlovable. I believed that lie and I was wrong. Jeremiah 31: 3 says that God has loved us with an everlasting love; He has drawn us with loving kindness. He will build us up again and we will be rebuilt. His love is everlasting. It is unfailing.
He was there with me. Like a shepherd watching His sheep, He protected me in many ways. I didn’t stay for the after-hour parties. I didn’t get caught up in the drug scene and I didn’t go home with regulars. I did my job and that’s it. For the most part I followed the rules, no one touched me, I just danced. I, at this time would have been defined as bisexual, not because of attraction but because of the practicality and the money that came with it. I watched the magazine girls come and go. At the time I thought these girls had “made it.” They were in the big time, traveling between clubs, posing for spreads in magazines, even big ones, like Playboy. It wasn’t long and I found myself wanting that, thinking it would bring me an even bigger value.
So how did I get out? As I said before I was raised a good girl and God in His faithfulness would use those seeds planted in me to pull me out from under the bondage that imprisoned me. Despite my devotedly taking birth control, I became one of those less that 2%. I ended up pregnant. During my time at the club, I had watched many girls abort their pregnancies because of the chance of “ruining” their bodies and losing their place in the business. Abortion was something that from a young age, I knew I could never do. I would have this child. I danced until I was 8 months pregnant and I returned after my child’s birth, got myself back in shape and worked for several more months.
However, there was a part of me that came alive when my child was born. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t come home and face this infant. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to tell this piece of me what I did every night and why I wasn’t there to rock them to sleep. I wanted so much more for my child than I ever had. So I quit. This was one of the hardest things I ever did. I went back to real jobs and real work and real money.
God knew me. Numerous times in His love letter to us, the Bible, we are told that He knows us. In Exodus, He knows us by name. In Psalms, we are told that He knit our very being together in our mother’s wombs. In Matthew and again in Luke, we are told that the very hairs on our head are numbered. God saw me. He was with me. He loved me. And He knew me. He knew exactly what would draw me out and like Jeremiah said, He drew me to Himself.
This wasn’t all some kind of magical revelation. It wasn’t something I figured out right away. It was a process. It is a process that I still live today. That process began with me calling out to Jesus and allowing Him to speak to me giving me answers that I never thought of. (Jeremiah 33:3) All those years that I thought I knew what freedom was I was really living in bondage. I believed that I was the portrait of freedom. I could do anything and everything. I was in control, yet I was trapped. It wasn’t until I truly began that relationship with Christ again that I discovered that it is only in Him that I am truly free to be myself. To be the woman that He created me to be. To be the woman that He loved before I ever left my mother’s womb. It is in Christ today that I find my freedom: freedom from shame, freedom from guilt, freedom from the lies that I believed; freedom from the men that used me; freedom from the darkness that surrounded me and freedom from condemnation. My freedom is realized in His forgiveness. It is actualized in my relationship with Him. In Christ alone, I am free to be me. A me that is not pimped, but instead loved with an everlasting love. A me that is able to accept that love and allow it to change my life everyday! God’s love that now flows through me pours out of me to others.
[1] http://powerhouse-ministry.org/annielobert_prostitution.aspx
[2]http://www.pcsao.org/WeeklyUpdate/2008/HumanTraffickingResourceGuide.pdf
"I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the yoke...I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts..." Exodus 6:6
"As long as you did what you felt like doing, ignoring God, you didn't have to bother with right thinking or right living,
or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now.
Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do,
and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life
right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death.
But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master." ~Romans 6:20-23
or right anything for that matter. But do you call that a free life? What did you get out of it? Nothing you're proud of now.
Where did it get you? A dead end. But now that you've found you don't have to listen to sin tell you what to do,
and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life
right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death.
But God's gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master." ~Romans 6:20-23
Artwork by Penny Collins
