Guest Feature: Lubbock in the Dark III: Prostitution

WARNING: Mature and disturbing themes follow, detailing some ugly details of prostitution. Kids, talk to your parents before you read this.

Ruth Bradley is a crack reporter and an official Friend of the Brink. She's got a five-part series on social issues in Lubbock, Texas running in the Texas Tech student paper, the Daily Toreador. We'll link to the articles, and we'll also run them here since you have to sign up to view them on the site.

Anita Morales was 14 years old when she first sold her body for sex. The price was $30.

She took cues from her friend Lita, a fellow homeless teen, who had worked the streets since she was 12 years old.

"She told me to take the money up front and just go in there, take off my clothes and lay on the bed," Morales said.

Morales knew she needed the money. But she did not know how she would feel after the stranger had finished.

"It made me want to hide," she said. "It was a mark that had been placed on me - like somebody just threw paint on me. I felt like everybody could see it."

That same day, Morales and Lita spent their earnings on drugs and got high together.

"Right then and there, I felt that I had found the escape for the disgrace I had just endured," Morales said.

It was an escape into a cycle Morales said most women on the street are caught in - one of shame and dependency.

"(I) continued in my prostitution," she said, "so I could continue in my escape, and in doing so, I became an addict."

Eighteen years later Morales sits in a Lubbock County Jail cell. She is small, 5 feet 5 inches, with large eyes and curly hair pulled into pigtails. She has worked the streets off and on ever since that day.

"It's not something that I like to do," she said, "but it seems like its something that's calling me back."

Morales is incarcerated on charges related to her drug abuse for the second time. The first time, she spent her time and money on a correspondence course, earning her associate degree in child psychology. But when she got out of prison, she found the degree was not enough to get her a job. A fast food chain told her she was overqualified. Other companies couldn't see past her criminal background.

"When times get hard, I go back to what I know," Morales said. "For me, that's prostitution."

Sex workers like Morales are more common in Lubbock than people think, said Cpl. Theresa Bulls of the Lubbock Police Department.

"Most people don't see them for what they are or know about it, but it's been a problem," she said.

The exact number of women is difficult to pin down because many prostitutes come through Lubbock only to leave soon after for another city, Bulls said.

Morales recalled a group of at least 15 to 20 women that she used to work with on Lubbock streets. Freddy Harris, outreach worker for the Lubbock Regional Mental Health Mental Retardation Center, said he knows of at least 25 women working in Lubbock now. He said he believes there are many more he does not know of.

"I think in some parts of the community, some citizens see it as a big problem," said Lubbock City Councilwoman Linda DeLeon.

DeLeon said she receives one or two complaints a year about prostitutes in her district. One complaint involved a group of prostitutes who were working a corner near a school bus stop.

Residential sightings do occur from time to time, Bulls said.

"A lot of these neighborhood kids are going to know who they are for what they are," she said. "They become desensitized to the actual problems that are going on. It tells them it's a way of life."

Prostitution is a misdemeanor for the first two convictions and a felony for the third, said Bulls. Several times a year, the Lubbock Police Department conducts stings in which officers go undercover to catch women in the act of prostitution or men in the act of soliciting.

"It's prostitution for (men), just like it's prostitution for the women," Bulls said. "Both people are guilty of it."

And prostitution is not just a crime - it's a crime that attracts other crimes. Bulls said prostitutes tend to be surrounded by theft, drug abuse and crimes of violence - even murder.

In September 2005, pregnant prostitute Summer Baldwin, 29, was beaten to death, stuffed into a suitcase and left at a Lubbock city landfill. In 2004, Linda Trevino Carbajal was found dead in the middle of a road just outside New Deal, killed by a blunt-force head wound. In 2003, in a ditch west of Slaton, the body of Cynthia Palacio was found, partially nude and strangled to death. All were friends of Morales.

After the murders, Morales said she and her friends started a "buddy system," watching out for each other more, making sure they knew who their friends were "dating" (a term the women use for having sex). But violence still occurs.

Morales was raped often, once for two hours straight. She was beaten and left for dead three times. Once, a client tried to stab her in the face. Her hand is scarred where she blocked the knife.

"I'm real paranoid now," she said. "It's a weird life. I don't even know why we indulge ourselves in this madness. 'Cause it is, it's crazy."

The majority of the women Morales knew are battered other ways, too, living this lifestyle to get away from abuse or neglect in their former lives.

"Most of us keep hoping we'll find someone who cares about us, just for us," she said. "But nine times out of 10 it doesn't happen because of who we are - what we've become."

Prostitutes also battle disease. Although most use protection, many men will pay extra if they do not. And even with protection, prostitutes always are at high risk.

"Sex workers have a lot of sex partners," said Vilka Scott, disease intervention specialist for the City of Lubbock Health Department. "When it comes to disease, the more partners you have the more disease you spread."

Morales said several of the women she knew had diseases, but worked anyway. And since the same men often come back looking for different partners, it is difficult to avoid having sex with someone who has a disease.

"We just can't pinpoint who they've dated," Morales said, "so it's like we're playing Russian roulette with our lives."

Harris regularly distributes free condoms to prostitutes on behalf of MHMR, a service that helps greatly, Morales said.

"If it wasn't for them, there'd be a lot of diseases going around," she said.

Although many women charge whatever they can, Morales has set specific prices: $40 for oral, $50 for sex, $60 for both. On a good night, Morales said she would date close to 15 men, and on a regular night, five or six. And then there were the nights when no one came. On these bad nights, she remembers walking aimlessly up and down the streets all night with the other women, because they had nowhere else to go.

Morales said each of the women she knew was special in some way - beautiful, or musically talented or kind.

"But they settle for less because they feel it's OK," she said. "They feel they're not worth more."

Bulls said she believes that many of these women started out as victims.

"But at some point, they have to realize what they are doing," she said.

When they do reach this moment, Morales believes most prostitutes do want to get out, but don't know how to escape.

"It's not like there's a prostitution anonymous," she said. "If there was something that could be offered to us, a majority would take it."

She paused and sighed deeply.

"How do you relieve your weariness?" Morales said.

Morales said she knows 14-year-olds and 50-year-olds who are prostitutes - little girls entering the nightmare that the woman standing on the corner next to them can't stop.

"We want to get out of this lifestyle so bad, but this is all we know," she said. "This is what we've been through, and change is hard, and change is scary."

She laughs.

"People don't just come up to prostitutes on the street and say, 'Hey you want another chance at life?'"

But some are beginning to. In Memphis, Tenn., that is exactly what Carol Wiley is trying to do with the faith-based "A Way Out" program, an outreach of Citizens for Community Values of Memphis.

"The goal is to help any woman to get out of the sex-for-sale industry," Wiley said.

The organization does this by providing counseling, drug rehab, housing and training for jobs and in parental skills. And they meet these women where they are, visiting street corners with their message of hope for those who want it.

Wiley said working with these broken women takes persistence.

"It's hard at times, but it's also a real joy when that light comes on and they get it," she said, "(that) they are worth more than standing out on a street corner."

Wiley said she hopes to help start other programs like theirs. More information about "A Way Out" can be found at www.ccvmemphis.org or by calling (901) 685-1493.

Other cities have programs that can help, though not specifically for prostitutes. Dallas, Houston, Temple and Corpus Christi have programs that can help these women to get off drugs and back to their lives, said Harris.

"In Lubbock, we don't have stuff like that," he said. "We're behind times. We're slow-motion."

Harris said he would like to see the city and churches get involved in helping these women by helping them get rehab, jobs and homes.

"If you're gonna take drugs out of this hand, put something in the other hand," he said.

Morales said she encourages prostitutes to look for that help and to learn to understand their value.

"Our lives are precious," she said. "And we're worth more than what we're settling for."


Copyright 2006 Daily Toreador


For more on the Memphis, Tennessee program A Way Out, see this article.


filed: social.issues