Call for Help for Norma Hotaling
Jul 5th, 2008 by admin
Frequently Asked Questions for Norma Hotaling
Q&A with Norma Hotaling
Q: You’ve increasingly emphasized the decriminalization of minors involved in or victimized by Commercial Sexual Exploitation (CSE), and have advocated that people need to stop using the term “child prostitute”. What’s behind this?
A: It’s a false premise, and a harmful one, that children can be prostitutes. We have to make it clear that if you have sex with children, whether it’s under the guise of prostitution or not, it’s child abuse, sexual abuse of children. By using the term ‘child prostitute,’ we’re basically creating a whole group of children whom it’s considered acceptable to sexually abuse. If we call it what it is—statutory rape and the sexual abuse of children —then we can prosecute the real criminals: those who traffic, pimp, and purchase sex with minors.Q: You’ve said that The SAGE Project, Inc. is as much about healing and resilience as it is about the victimization of adults and children through commercial sexual exploitation. Can you say more about this?
A: It’s crucial to provide safe, compassionate, and realistic outreach and services to those who wish to exit the sex trade safely and healthfully. It’s also crucial to raise awareness about what commercial sexual exploitation really is, and what it’s about. To some degree, talking about that requires talking about how girls, women, boys and men are victimized through commercial sexual exploitation and the violence that often comes with it. However, so many survivor stories are also about healing, recovery, empowerment, giving back, resilience and strength, that it’s important to talk about that, too.Q: What do you think about the argument that working with people in the sex industries is a lost cause— or the idea that women and girls in prostitution are too hard to help?
A: The women and girls that we work with are the discards of society…the throw-always. I include myself in that description. We’ve come as close to death as anybody could come and still survive. Most people think “they will never recover, they will never heal, and all they’re going to do is cause a lot of trouble and cost a lot of money.” But we’ve proved them wrong. We’ve not only asserted that women and girls are worthy of help; we have shown that with the right nurturing and the right environment, we can do more than heal. We can be so incredible and give back to our community and help make it safe for other women and girls.Q: What was it like to start SAGE?
A: We basically started with nothing. I was using my savings to start SAGE. I had no staff. No one was helping me. Nobody even thought it was an issue. If you were to ask people about prostitution, they would say, “Oh, it’s a victimless crime.” My life wasn’t reflected in that. So what I had to set about doing was to begin to change the society’s whole perception of prostitution and sexual exploitation.Q: What makes SAGE different from other recovery programs in San Francisco?
A: Most of the time in drug treatment, women go for services, but no one talks to them about prostitution, nobody addresses childhood sexual abuse, nobody addresses domestic violence and sexual assault. There’s not much attempt to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder or depression. They treat the women as offenders and as drug users— as the problem. The people who come here for services are provided with a trauma and drug recovery program. We deal with trauma through acupuncture, breath, movement, and art work, massage, talk therapy. Most importantly, we use a peer education model. Survivors come in here and they see other people that look like them and have been exactly where they are. The peer education program helps people start to trust again, sometimes for the first time in their life.Q: What philosophies guide the program?
A: One of the basic philosophies of our program is unconditional love. That might sound very unprofessional. You certainly don’t read it in the clinical textbooks and training manuals. But I tell my staff, “If you want to confront, if you want to shame, if you want to be mean to the women and girls, then this is not the place for you. If you want to provide unconditional love and support and an environment where people can heal very deeply, this is the job for you.”SAGE is also built on anger. There’s a lot to be angry about—girls being exploited and abused, becoming more vulnerable to entering into prostitution and drug use—the recruitment of young girls off of the streets. So anger feels very appropriate to me. It’s very important that I—and all the staff here—channel that anger in a way that’s positive. That’s how SAGE was built, and I’m very proud of that. I’ve been able to use this deep, deep rage that I’ve discovered in myself in order to make the world a safer place for women and girls.
Above is an example of the fierce wisdom that has characterized Norma Hotaling’s work for decades. A survivor of drug addiction, prostitution, every form of brutality and prison, Hotaling created SAGE, Standing Against Global Exploitation, the first first survivor-led service provider for domestic and international victims of sex trafficking. She also helped to pioneer an internationally lauded program which successfully reduced the demand for commercial sexual exploitation. Her program has been replicated in over 70 communities around the world.
Now she needs our help; she has been diagnosed with inoperable cancer. She has health insurance which will cover only the basics. If you can, please support her by donating through the Friends of Norma.
H/t to Donna Hughes DIGNITY Listserv.
Heart
Heart,
Thank you for making me aware of this amazing woman’s life and work.
We are blest to be here with her.
Donation done, what an amazing human being she is; a women who despite her own problems loved other women and cared for them.
Thanks Heart.
I am deeply saddened to hear about Norma Hotaling.
I have found her work and life very inspiring, and has help me to believe in hope when I was in despair.
I wish their a group like SAGE near where I live, for most services even do not want to hear the word “prostitute” or just deal with symtoms real than the whole women.
Thanks for printing that FAQs piece.
I have never understood why girls who are prostituted are treated as criminal and non-victims. This often leads to viewing prostituted girls as if they “force” men to use them for sex. Rather seeing the violence.
Also as most prostituted girls end up growing to 16/18 and still in the sex trade, many choose to view all prostituted women and girls as criminals or empowered women.
Anything to make the violence vanish.
SAGE and Norma Hotaling do amazing work to show the reality. And give women and girls their lives back.
Norma Hotaling is a class act, huh? This:
I tell my staff, “If you want to confront, if you want to shame, if you want to be mean to the women and girls, then this is not the place for you. If you want to provide unconditional love and support and an environment where people can heal very deeply, this is the job for you.”
So beautiful.
I’ve been wanting to blog about teenage prostitutes in the Pacific Northwest, an article I read last week, but it is so devastating to think about and write about that I keep not doing it. Norma Hotaling has been thinking and writing about it and working to change things 24/7 for all of these many years, it’s hard for me to even imagine.
Well, thanks women. Rebecca, everything you said, so true as always. Here in the U.S., in general, women who have been arrested for having been prostituted are labeled “sexual offenders”! It’s despicable and so wrong.
Of course, men label prostitutes as “empowered” or the “sexual offenders”, and this reminds me of what mAndrea said at feminazi wordpress, and I always quote it, because it rings so true:
“What kind of character trait is required before one can eliminate all educational opportunites for a group, and then turn around and laugh at that group because they have no education?
What kind of character trait is required before one can eliminate all job opportunities for a group, and then turn around and laugh at them because they have no alternative but to use the only thing they do have - their body - as a bargaining tool?
Really, what kind of character trait is required before one can be that much of an asshole? Because whatever kind it is, men sure do have an abundance. ”
Bless Hotaling, what an amazing and wonderful woman. Who the hell says women are not as strong as men? If men were in our shoes for one damned day they wouldn’t last!
Thanks so much for your generous support, women!! Look at the difference it has already made for Norma Hotaling:
<blockquote>”By using the term ‘child prostitute,’ we’re basically creating a whole group of children whom it’s considered acceptable to sexually abuse.”</blockquote>
That is the problem, isn’t it? That prostitution is considered “acceptable” in the first place, and it shouldn’t.
Isn’t the use of unconditional love amazing? I think that’s precisely what’s missing of every single program aimed at helping people.