The saying “the
world’s oldest profession” portrays prostitution as just another career choice. However, and particularly with
respect to street prostitution, entering the sex trade may not be a voluntary, premeditated career choice. Rather, it may
be a last resort option. While there is a growing body of research investigating life on the streets for prostituted women
(Brannigan & Gibbs Van Brunschot, 1997; Farley, Baral, Kiremire, & Sezgin, 1998; Farley & Barkan, 1998; Yargic,
Sevim, Arabul, & Ozden, 2000) no research to date has described the recruitment process into street prostitution. This
paper presents information on some of the pathways to street prostitution. Both pimp recruitment techniques and social influences
that leave prostituted women feeling that they have few alternatives to working on the streets are described.
Prostituted children and
women come from a variety of backgrounds. Women of every education level and family background are involved in the sex trade
in Western Canada. These women often share the feeling that they had no choice but to become involved
in prostitution. Unfortunately, once involved, many feel that it is very difficult to leave prostitution (Nixon, Tutty, Downe,
Gorkoff & Ursel, 2002). A study conducted by Farley and Barkan (1998) showed that 88% percent of the prostituted women
they surveyed wanted to leave the sex trade.
The realities of life on
the street include physical and sexual violence, substance abuse, risk for disease, exhausting working hours, poverty, degradation
and marginalization by society (Bagley & Young, 1987; Benoit & Millar, 2001; Cooper, Kennedy, & Yuille, 2002;
Dalla, 2000, 2001; Erikson, Butters, McGillicuddy, & Hallgren, 2000; Farley, Baral, Kiremire, & Sezgin, 1998; Farley
& Barkan, 1998; Nixon et al., 2002; Silbert & Pines, 1983a; Weiner, 1996). In a study of five different countries,
Farley and her colleagues (1998) found that 62% of respondents had been raped since entering prostitution. The majority of
respondents reported current health problems as well as reporting a current substance abuse problem. In another study, Farley
and Barkan (1998) found that 68% of prostituted women met full criteria for Post-traumatic Stress Disorder according to DSM-III-R
criteria. The realities of life on the street also often affect more than just the prostituted women; Weiner (1996) found
that over two-thirds of prostituted women had at least one child.
Research has revealed that
the majority of women (ranging from 40% to 80%) working in street prostitution are involved with pimps at some point (Barry,
1995; Norton-Hawk, 2004; Silbert & Pines, 1983b; Williamson & Cluse-Tolar, 2002). However, this research has not focused
on the techniques used by pimps to procure these women. The only research investigating why women enter prostitution has involved
looking at drug-addiction and abuse as factors. Studies of crack-addicted women have found that a number of these women started
in prostitution to pay for their drug habits (Erickson et al., 2000). Silbert and Pine’s (1982) groundbreaking work
showed that 27% of the prostituted women that they interviewed started prostituting to pay for drugs. Research has linked
a history of child abuse with entering prostitution (El-Bassel, Witte, Wada, Gilbert & Wallace, 2001; Widom & Kuhns,
1996). While clearly not all women who experience abuse enter prostitution, research shows that the vast majority of women
in prostitution appear to have suffered sexual abuse as children (Dalla, 2000; Farley & Barken, 1998; Silbert & Pines,
1983a) or as adults prior to entering the sex trade (Campbell, Ahrens, Sefl, & Clark, 2003; Cooper, Kennedy & Yuille,
2001). Psychological research has carefully correlated the relationship between abuse and drug use with entrance into prostitution
(McClenahan, McClelland, Abram & Teplin, 1999). This research, however, does not ask the women to describe the decision-making
process that led to them working on the streets. This paper is interested in providing a more detailed description of what
circumstances or which peers encouraged these individuals to prostitute themselves.
An understanding of not
only why, but also of how women become involved in prostitution is important both for trying to help these women exit the
trade and for preventing more women from being recruited into the trade or seeing the trade as their last resort option. This
paper is unique in that it explores the role of pimps in the recruitment of women into street prostitution. Women, particularly
adolescent women, appear to be enticed by pimps into a life on the streets through five powerful forces: love, debt, addiction,
physical might, and authority. While some pimps may favor one type of recruitment technique over another, they may use multiple
and different recruitment techniques with different women. In addition, non-pimped introductions to street prostitution are
discussed.
Method
Information in this paper
came from two sources. The first source of information was interviews with formerly prostituted women, parents of prostituted
women, VICE officers, outreach workers, health nurses, and other social service providers. These ‘informants’
were primarily contacted through and interviewed at the Prostitution Offender Program of British Columbia. The interviews were conducted by the first three authors. Twenty-two informants
were interviewed and asked questions regarding their personal knowledge about how children and women began working in prostitution.
The informants included 10 formerly prostituted women, 5 VICE police officers, 4 social service providers, and 3 parents of
prostituted women. The informants’ qualitative information is presented anecdotally.
The second source of information
was responses provided by 44 women involved in the sex trade who were interviewed at a Vancouver
safe house for prostituted women. The primary purpose of these research interviews was to explore the variables associated
with psychological responses to trauma (e.g., dissociation, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, eyewitness memory); these
results are reported elsewhere (Cooper, Kennedy, Hervé & Yuille, 2002; Cooper, Kennedy & Yuille, 2001, 2004; Cooper,
Yuille & Kennedy, 2002). Women were contacted through the safe house and offered $25 for their participation. Interviews
were conducted by female researchers who had been trained in and used the semi-structured Adult “Step-Wise” Assault
Interview protocol (Yuille, 1990). Women were asked the open-ended question “Who turned you out or how did you begin
working on the streets?” Twelve participants were not included in the analysis because a response to this question was
not elicited due to incomplete interviews or their response was not transcribed due to inaudible cassette tapes. Thus the
final sample for this paper was 32 women.
The average age of the
women interviewed at the prostitute safe house was 34.5 years (SD = 7) with a range
from 19 to 45 years old. The average age reported for beginning work in prostitution was 21.3 years (SD = 9) with a range from 10 to 45 years old. Forty-one percent
of the women reported starting on the streets under the age of 18. Fifty-three percent of the women reported their ethnicity
to be of First Nations descent, 31% reported European descent and 16% reported being a mix of different heritage ethnicities.
This paper is primarily
qualitative research with the goal of informing the readers about the human experience in the phenomenon of street prostitution.
The use of more than one type of informant (women involved in prostitution as well as numerous individuals familiar with street
prostitution) increases the credibility of the qualitative data collected (Fade, 2003; Mays & Pope 2000). To minimize
researcher bias through interpretation in presenting the results (Mays & Pope, 2000), the qualitative analysis is followed
by a quantitative summary of the responses provided by the women interviewed at the safe house (see Table 1). The data from
the informants was not analyzed quantitatively, but rather presented anecdotally as examples of the different introductions
to prostitution that were uncovered.
Results and Discussion
The frequencies of the
responses provided to the open-ended question are presented in Table 1. These responses, as well as information provided by
key informants interviewed through the Prostitution Offender Program, were categorized into two major areas: pimp recruitment
techniques and non-pimped pathways into prostitution.
Recruitment Technique
Life with Pimps: An Element of Terror
Black’s (1990) law dictionary
defines a pimp as someone who obtains customers for a prostitute. The reality of most pimps, however, is that they use manipulation,
threats, and violence, in order to keep prostitutes from leaving the trade and that they live entirely off the women they
recruit into prostitution. Pimps are not there to protect women from violent customers or “johns.” Instead women
reported that it was the pimps from whom they often needed the most protection. Research has consistently revealed that pimps
are often perpetrators of violence against prostituted women (Benoit & Millar, 2001; Nixon et al., 2002; Sanders, 2001;
Silbert & Pines, 1981, 1983b; Williamson & Cluse-Tolar, 2002). Not surprisingly, many pimps are psychopathic (Greaves,
Spidel, Kendrick, Cooper, & Hervé, 2004) and psychopathy is strongly associated with all types of violence (Hare, 2003).
Anecdotal information provided by informants described violence perpetrated by pimps for such reasons as not meeting their
quota, being suspected of talking to police, trying to exit the trade, or just “getting out of line.” It was reported
that many pimps beat "their" women regularly, often without any precipitating factors, in order to show them who is in control
and to keep them so scared that they do not even think of attempting to exit the trade.
The beatings that women described were unique to pimping and the sex trade. One form involves beating
the women with a “pimp stick” which is a coat hanger that has been unraveled and doubled over. Often the pimp stick is heated on a stove to increase the degree of pain. One formerly
prostituted woman interviewed reported being unable to look at wire coat hangers and having to stock her house only with plastic
hangers, even years after exiting the industry.
Despite reports that the majority of pimps used violence to keep the women in the trade, violence was
rarely reported as being used to first get the women into the trade. Instead, most pimps one or a combination of the following
five techniques: 1) “love,” 2) “debt,” 3) drugs, 4) brute force and straight-out kidnapping, and 5)
position of authority.
Love. Sixteen percent of the prostituted women interviewed
described being turned out by a boyfriend or a pimp to which they had an emotional attachment. The seduction process was also
described by informants from the Prostitution Offender Program. It appears that pimps were able to convince underage girls
to prostitute themselves by pretending to love them. Playing on their vulnerabilities, stereotypes, and insecurities, pimps
could distort a young woman’s sense of right and wrong with alarming speed. Several ways that this seduction process
could occur were reported but, in most cases, a pimp would scout out a vulnerable, insecure teenager and woo her with attention
and gifts. Not only would he wine and dine her, but he would make sure that she was aware of how much money he had been spending
on her. Then, after the girl had fallen madly in love with her new ‘boyfriend,’ the pimp told her that they were
out of money. The girl, knowing how much money her ‘boyfriend’ had spent on her, felt responsible for the situation
and was willing to do anything to help. And so, with the help of her ‘boyfriend,’ the girl found herself prostituting
on the corner to bring home some money.
Another common scenario reported was of young women, who, feeling very grown-up with their new older ‘boyfriend,’
agreed to sneak away for the weekend. Upon arrival in an unfamiliar city, however, the situation suddenly changed and the
only way to survive the boyfriend’s financial emergency was to work a few hours on the street. The pimp or ‘boyfriend’
discouraged the young women from calling home for help by telling them that their parents would be very upset if they knew
that their daughter was really away with a man when they thought that she was just staying at a girlfriend’s place in
town. Once the young women realized that they weren’t just working the streets for a few hours, the pimps moved to more
aggressive tactics including threatening to tell parents that their daughter had slept with strangers for money. If the girls
could withstand that shame and still insisted on calling home for help, the pimps then turned to threatening the girls or
their families with serious harm.
The combination of having
their hearts broken, the shame of having been prostituted and fear of the pimp, kept young women on the streets and afraid
to ask for help. Women, who had the world at their feet only days before, were left emotionally shattered, ashamed, disoriented,
and afraid.
However, there was another
element that often kept these young women with their pimps: many women still continued to feel emotional attachments to the
man who betrayed them. It could be argued that these women were demonstrating a form of traumatic bonding similar to that
seen in battered women (Dutton, 1995). Dutton’s description of these dynamics in battered intimate relationships could
also describe the prostituted woman’s relationship with a ‘lover’ pimp as, “the development of strong
emotional ties between two persons, with one person intermittently harassing, beating, threatening, abusing, or intimidating
the other” (p. 190). Prostituted women reported having trouble giving up the fantasy of a perfect life that the pimps
promised them and thinking that time on the streets was only a detour before their real future together would begin. Some
women would never label the man who turned them out as a pimp; to them he’s the man they love and they believe that
they are showing their love to him by earning money for him. These same women often justified the beatings they regularly
receive from their pimps in much the same way as battered women; they reported that they felt that they must have deserved
the beating. Parallels exist among the reactions of prostituted women and the descriptions of battered women who have been
shown to deny or emotionally numb themselves to the level of the violence that they are experiencing (Walker, 1998).
While the process of recruiting
a new girl usually takes between three and six months, some pimps needed as little as 24 hours to turn the world of an impressionable
young woman upside down. According to the women and informants interviewed, pimps were often charming, intelligent, and good
judges of human nature. As an example of the latter, one pimp openly shared his technique with VICE officers, describing how
he always looked for a group of three girls to find his next target. Out of the three girls, he would always go for the one
that was the second most attractive. His reasoning was that the most attractive girl was used to getting most of the attention
and wouldn’t be wooed so easily. The least attractive girl would be suspicious and wonder why he was paying attention
to her. The middle girl, on the other hand, would be flattered to be the center of his attention.
The ‘love’
form of recruitment was the technique seen with women who did not have a history of abuse or who came from stable, middle
or upper-middle class households. VICE police officers reported that pimps would refer to young women from a good
home as “in-for-a-million” girls. The reasoning was that healthy, good-looking young women can be worked for long
hours on the higher scale strolls (e.g., Richards & Seymour streets in Vancouver)
where they would bring in more cash per client. Pimps bragged to police that they could make a million dollars off of a drug-free,
high-end girl before she became useless, a physical and emotional ghost of her previous self. The other factor in the “in-for-a-million”
play officers reported was that, if young women from a good home have parents who attempt to rescue them from the street,
the pimp now has enough personal information to blackmail and humiliate the family if the girl does successfully leave him
and return home.
This form of pimping, in
which the girl forms an emotional attachment to her pimp, is the most desirable method for pimps for recruiting new girls.
Not only are the girls unlikely to turn on their pimps whom they “love,” but they are also easier to manipulate
and control than women who fear their pimps, as with pimps who practice a ‘gorilla’ technique (see below), and
would run away if they felt that they could. One prostituted woman bluntly described her boyfriend turning her out at age
16 as follows:
I
was dating someone who was 31. I had a legal job and was in school and one day he came home and he said he needed money for
his daughter from his first marriage. And I told him I couldn’t do anything because I wasn’t getting paid till
next Friday so he came home that night with a pair of heels and mini skirt and took me outside and told me to take what they
gave me.
Debt. A second
technique used by pimps to recruit new women was to give them gifts, clothing, money or drugs, under the guise that they were
being given for free. However, after a period of time, the women were told that they had accumulated a large debt. If the
women were unable to pay, one or a combination of several scenarios were reported to play out. The women may have felt that
they had no alternative to working on the streets as suggested by their ‘new friends.’ The pimp may have claimed
that his and her lives were in danger unless he repaid the money to his debtors. Pimps may have used other women that they
were prostituting, or “main girls,” to befriend the women and shower them with wealth. Almost 19% of the prostituted
women interviewed reported being turned out by a female friend, but since follow-up information was not elicited on these
responses, the authors do not know if these friends were working for pimps. The “main girls” then told the young
women that her pimp would harm both of them unless they both worked on the streets.
This debt technique differs from the ‘love’ technique in that there was no intimate relationship
between the pimp and the woman. With no easy alternative for repaying the debt and under the threat of physical harm, the
women were introduced to the street as a way of earning money. Thinking that this would only be a short-term thing until the
debt was paid off, the women prostituted themselves. Unfortunately, however, the debt never got paid off, no matter how much
money the women brought in. Instead, the women, terrified of their pimps, stayed out on the stroll.
Drugs. Addiction
to drugs as a reason for entering the trade was a common theme among women who entered the trade at a young age. Sixteen percent
of the prostituted women stated that they began working on the streets to support a drug habit. Young women who left home
or who were kicked out for drug use described being turned out by drug dealers. Drug addicted young women, who were unable
to get other jobs partly due to being underage or having no fixed address or phone number to leave potential employers, reported
sleeping with drug dealers in exchange for drugs. Dealers might put young women up in their apartment for a few weeks and
supply them with drugs. The dealers then informed these young women that the only way they would continue to get drugs would
be if they slept with their friends. Once the young women agreed to this ‘favor’ they were asked to take it a
step further and work on the streets. The shame of having slept with these men to procure drugs was reported to have broken
down their resistance to the idea of working on the streets. This technique is different than the ‘debt’ technique
in that women were not working to repay a debt, but rather were working for their next ‘fix.’ The women who were
recruited by this method would acknowledge that they were addicts before they turned to prostitution.
The “Gorilla” Technique. Termed the “gorilla pimp” in vice circles because of their primitive-like behavior, some pimps do not use charm or manipulative techniques. Instead, this technique
relied on brute force to put new women on the street. Ranging from threats to beatings to straight-out kidnapping, a pimp
using this technique never tried to deceive the young woman with promises of love or glamour. He made it clear that her job
was to turn tricks on the corner and that if she did not follow through, there would be grave consequences to her and her
family.
None of the women interviewed at the safe house reported beginning on the streets in this manner. This
technique was described by informants and they acknowledge that it is infrequently used as it evoked little loyalty from the
prostituted woman. What may be more common is for a pimp who recruited a young woman using another technique to eventually
turn to ‘gorilla’ tactics.
Authority Figures. The
final technique described for recruiting women into prostitution was for people to use their position as an authority figure.
Most often, this technique was seen with parents or family members. Over 12% of the prostituted women interviewed reported
being forced to work on the streets by their mothers, fathers, foster parent or older sibling. One informant told of being
sold by her father at the age of ten to an American man at a truck stop. She was returned to her father by Social Services after being sexually abused by
a number of men. At age 12, her father injected her with cocaine and she was forced to prostitute herself on the streets to
support their joint drug habits.
Informants and the women interviewed at the safe house indicated that women who were turned out by
their mothers reported a greater variety of introductions into the trade. Some women were expected to prostitute to support
their mothers’ addictions. Other women worked with their mothers in prostitution. Some women reported being discouraged
from entering prostitution by their mothers but were exploited or turned out by the men they met through their mothers. One
woman reported being turned out by her mother at the age of ten. Another woman described being turned out at the age of 12
by her brother, “Well it was through the sexual abuse. My brother, I learnt that way. Because he was paying me.”
These families often had numerous people involved in sexual exploitation, from uncles to brothers.
Non-pimped pathways into prostitution
While pimps were responsible
for introducing many of women into the sex trade, many other factors can also lead women to the streets. These include severe
drug addiction, being in desperate financial straights, socialization and normalization of the sex trade, coming from an abusive
home, and leaving another form of prostitution. These pressures are not mutually exclusive, and in fact, often occurred simultaneously.
However, each is discussed in turn below.
Substance Abuse. Addiction to drugs and/or alcohol resulted
in some women working in street prostitution in order to finance their habits. As
discussed above, 16% of the prostituted women interviewed identified drugs as the reason that they became involved in street
prostitution. Since no follow-up questions were included, the authors cannot split the drug addicted group into those who
worked for pimps or drug dealers and those who did not.
In some addiction cases, prostituting was a last resort and followed, or accompanied, other forms of
criminal activity such as theft, robbery, and fraud. The ability to make ‘instant cash’ and the flexibility of
hours not only led many addicted women into prostitution but also kept them there. The work was always there even if they
disappeared for extended drug binges and their need for more drug money kept them returning to the streets (Erikson et al.,
2000).
Some women also turned
to prostitution to support their partners’ drug habits. In cases where the couple had become addicted to drugs, the
women reported starting to work on the streets in order to support their habits. Their partners may then have been considered
to be living off of the avails of prostitution, qualifying them as pimps, but generally these women denied that their partners
had any involvement with the decision to begin working on the streets. In the
situation where a woman was prostituting herself to support her partner’s drug habit, the partner himself was also often
involved in criminal activity.
Financial Difficulties. While financial difficulties due
to addictions are a common theme, financial difficulties unrelated to drug or alcohol addictions have also driven some women
into the commercial sex industry. Over 12% of the prostituted women interviewed identified economic necessity (unrelated to
addiction) as the primary reason that they began working on the streets. Bagley
and Young (1987) reported that 80% of the women they interviewed felt that financial needs or other problems left them no
alternative to entering prostitution. Miller and Schwartz (1995) reported that prostituted women who began as young runaways
turned to prostitution as they felt that they had no other potential source of income. Women who began working on the streets
for economic necessity often turned to drugs in order to numb themselves from the reality of prostitution. Once addicted to
drugs, it added another level of financial difficulties, leaving them feeling trapped (Erikson et al., 2000).
Two women interviewed at the safe house reported beginning in street prostitution to support their
children. For example, one woman stated, “welfare wouldn’t help me...and the ex...didn’t want anything to
do with me because he found out that I was pregnant.” Another woman stated that her husband did not know that she began
working on the streets to help pay for food after the birth of her second child.
In some cases, entry into street prostitution began with women accepting financial assistance from
men in exchange for sexual services. For example, one woman interviewed at the safe house, who started working at age 19,
reported being stranded in a strange city after a fight with her boyfriend and stated: “I just was at a restaurant having
coffee and, um, a rich man made me a very generous offer. Asked me if I was all right, if there was anything I needed help
with. I explained that I had no means of getting home, and he bought me a ticket home and gave me money as well in return
for sex which took about 4 minutes.” Being turned out by a stranger was different than the pimping techniques described
because the man did not stay involved or benefit from her earnings.
Socialization/Normalization. Informants reported that the
more entrenched young women became in the life surrounding prostitution, the more likely they were to become prostitutes themselves.
The glamour of ‘easy’ money and a care-free lifestyle initially obscured the harsh realities of life on the streets.
Some young women reported being impressed by the fact that prostitutes seemed to have cash in hand and could easily afford
to take cabs everywhere that they went. The fact that they were only taking cabs to and from work went unnoticed.
Many times the road to prostitution began with a friendship. A young girl, who was experiencing the
angst of being a teenager, met another young girl who seemed to be living a life of freedom. The new friend had money, cool
clothes, took cabs everywhere and was free from the tyranny of her parents. The young girl eventually became aware of where
her new friend got the money from, and it seemed so easy. From there it was just a short time before the girl turned to the
street herself, chasing visions of freedom and wealth. This route to the streets had young women deciding on their own to
begin working on the streets along side their friends, in contrast to those women who acknowledged that they were recruited
by women, or ‘main girls’ who worked for pimps. As mentioned above, 19% of the women reported being turned out
by female friends but because no follow-up questions were asked, the authors could not split these friends into those working
for pimps and those who were not. Previous researchers reported that half of the 14 women they interviewed entered prostitution
because they were drawn by the “thrill and adventures of the life” (Potterat, Phillips, Rothenberg & Darrow,
1995, p. 333).
A number of young women
reported entering the trade after working as babysitters for prostitutes. These young women were hanging out downtown and
accepted work as live-in sitters. After a short while, these young women were well versed in the world of prostitution, they
had normalized this lifestyle, and it became relatively easy for them to be lured to the street. Normalization also occurred for daughters of prostitutes. Unfortunately, this normalization was also often
accompanied by stigmatization of the family and by the belief that prostitution was the only work available.
Past History of Abuse.
Previous research has indicated
that high levels of sexual abuse are often suffered before entering street prostitution (e.g., Bagley & Young, 1987; Nadon,
Koverola, & Schludermann, 1998; Silbert & Pines, 1983a; Potterat, Rothenberg, Muth, Darrow, & Phillips-Plummer,
1998). Over 96% of the women interviewed at the safe house in Vancouver
reported having been sexually assaulted prior to entering the sex trade (Cooper, Kennedy, & Yuille, 2002). Seventy-three
percent of the women reported experiencing childhood sexual abuse as measured by the Childhood Trauma and Abuse scale (Bristowe,
Kennedy, Cooper, & Yuille, 2003). Despite these high levels of abuse, only one woman interviewed linked her history of
abuse with her decision to enter street prostitution: “A friend of my mine I was watching and she got out and got money
and I had been approached while I was waiting. And I figured I’m getting molested at home so why not get paid for it
and get my rent covered.”
Sex trade hierarchy. Another route into street prostitution
described by informants was through leaving another arena of the commercial sex industry. Some women initially sought employment
with escort agencies, attracted by the perceived time flexibility and money. While escort agencies may have begun as a more
empowered form of sexual exploitation, these women eventually become disenchanted with this form of prostitution. Women were
expected to be on call for 24-hour shifts which proved to be exhausting. Women often had to pay a high fee per shift to be
on call without any assurance that work would be sent to them. Fees were reported to be as high as $400 per night, which had
to be paid before they were put on the client call list. Often women could not choose how many shifts they did per week and
were forced to prostitute on the streets in between shifts to meet their financial needs. Women reported having to spend large
amounts of money to meet the dress and personal hygiene requirements of the agencies. Rules disclosed by former employees
included being required to wax all areas of their bodies and employers checking to make sure they had not shaved instead.
Somewhat ironically, some women left escort agencies to work on the streets because they no longer could tolerate the forced
sexual relations with the business owners.
Similar problems were associated with being prostituted through massage parlors. Dress, hair and hygiene
requirements were rigorous and expensive. One woman disclosed the lasting insecurity she felt from having to line up with
the other women whenever a client entered. The women who were not chosen were often left feeling rejected and inadequate.
While prostituting in a closed area like a massage parlor seems like a more secure environment, women were physically assaulted
by clients and told to endure it by the parlor owners. Women were also assaulted, including being pushed down a flight of
stairs, by the business owners. Those who were addicted to drugs had trouble keeping their jobs at massage parlors, being
fired after missing too many shifts.
While some women worked concurrently in different arenas of prostitution, others experienced a downward
spiral of being fired by escort agencies, blacklisted in local massage parlors and having street exploitation left as their
only option.
Free Choice. Over 18% of the women simply responded that
they had chosen themselves to begin working on the streets and offered no further explanation. For example one women responded
to the question “Who turned you out, or how did you begin working on the streets?” with “I turned myself
out. It was just me. It was me. I’m responsible.” She reported being ten years old when she made that decision
to begin working in street prostitution. It is quite possible that there was an external influence that helped her to this
decision, as many ten year olds do not know that street prostitution exists. No follow up questions were asked at the time
but the authors feel that future research should explore in more detail the decision making process that might precede such
a decision.
The diverse routes to street
prostitution presented in this paper lend support to Bullough and Bullough’s (1996) argument that there is no single
factor that can be considered causal to entry into prostitution. The most insidious and common pattern appeared to be women
being convinced to exploit themselves for the financial benefit of someone else. Betrayals by the people closest to prostituted
women appeared to be only the first injustice in a path that is rife with violence, degradation and extreme physical stress.
Limitations
Several important limitations
with this paper need to be taken into account. As stated earlier, the information gathered for this paper primarily focused
on street prostitution. More in-depth explorations of the quality of life and reasons for entering other areas in the industry,
such as escort agencies and massage parlors, need to be undertaken. Another limitation is the fact that this was a non-random
sample of prostitutes’ stories and informants. The authors have no way of knowing whether these findings are generalizable
beyond the women willing to be interviewed and who were present in this geographic location. Previous research has decried
the difficulty in securing a representative sample from an obscure and variable population (Potterat et al., 1998). Using
informants also has limitations in that it is not a systematic exploration of the topic, the informants may not be representative
of all social service agents working in this area and they chose which stories to share. Another limitation with the information
gathered from the women contacted through the safe house was that information was elicited through a simple open-ended question.
Interviewers did not challenge or ask the women to expand upon responses provided. It is possible that more information could
have been gathered about the decision making process for the women who stated that it was their own idea to begin working
on the streets if follow-up questions had been asked. Future research should explore this process in more detail. Also the
information provided here was anecdotal rather than quantitative. This paper does not offer predictions for who will enter
prostitution, but rather provides examples of how women have ended up on the streets.
Conclusion
Some research suggests that women who have taken responsibility for the choices that led them to the
streets nonetheless felt that they had few feasible alternatives (Dalla 2000, 2001; O’Neill, 1997). The goal of this
paper was to present information on the techniques or circumstances that led women into prostitution. These techniques and
circumstances range from various methods pimps use to procure women, to numerous psychological and sociological facts which
lead women to seeing prostitution as their only option. While the authors acknowledge that prostitution may be an informed
and free career choice for some women, this was not a premise espoused by the majority of prostituted women interviewed or
by the families of prostituted women and people who currently work with prostituted women.
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