Trying to get streetwalkers to leave the streets behind

CHICAGO — The woman leans back in the chair, her head flopping from side to side, her bloodshot eyes rolling back. High on heroin and cocaine, she struggles to keep her eyes open. There are lesions on her face, scars of hepatitis B. In a serrated voice, she tells the social workers she is ready to leave the street.

“I’m tired. I’m just so tired and scared,” says the woman, 26. “I know the next car I jump in may be the last.”

Just an hour earlier on this rainy Thursday night, she was arrested on a Chicago street for prostitution for the 13th time in five years. But instead of going straight to a police lockup, she sits in a windowless room at the Cook County sheriff’s office as three social workers lay out her choices: stay on the street and risk her life, or get help right now.

“You don’t have to go out there again. We’re going to find you some place to stay tonight,” said Brenda Myers-Powell, one of two counselors for the Cook County sheriff’s prostitution intervention team.

The “traffic response team” offers shelter, drug abuse counseling, child care and even jobs to prostitutes after their arrests. “Our goal is very simple: to try to reach a woman at her most vulnerable point and show her the way out,” said Dorenda Dixon, the program’s coordinator.

The intervention program is the brainchild of the Department of Women’s Justice Services, which for a decade has worked with female inmates in the Cook County Jail. The department says that over the years, more than 40% of the women in the jail have worked as prostitutes. So instead of locking up prostitutes again and again, the department is trying to help women deal with the problems that led them to sell their bodies in the first place.

The intervention program is in its infancy and off to a modest start. In its first test as part of a prostitution roundup in November, only one of eight women picked up agreed to join the program. She still attends weekly meetings with staff, is getting help with child care and has re-enrolled in college.

On a second roundup tonight, the 26-year-old is one of two women offered assistance to escape prostitution. The Tribune agreed not to name either woman.

Dressed casually in her long-sleeved shirt, pants and sneakers, she seems intrigued at the idea of leaving the street. She talks of her fear of dying, telling the workers that a friend was recently found dead in a park.

The coordinators tell her they can help. But soon the woman’s words of hope turn to denial. Maybe not now, she says. She and her girlfriend have a hotel room paid up for the week, and she doesn’t want to get clean without her friend.

“What’s going to happen is one of you is not going to make it,” Myers-Powell tells the woman. “She’s not here right now. But you are. You can get out, and maybe we can convince her to come and join you later.”

Myers-Powell speaks from experience. She was a prostitute for almost three decades, turning her first trick at 15. By the age of 40, she had been shot five times and stabbed more than a dozen.

She hit bottom in 1997, when a man who wanted his money back dragged her five blocks down a street. That attack required a week’s stay in the hospital and convinced her that her life was going to end if she didn’t get out.

In their dealings with the prostitutes, Myers-Powell and Marian Hatcher -- an assistant who is also a former prostitute and drug addict -- talk about faith, power and their own experiences on the street.

They hold the women’s hands and whisper support. They speak softly, trying to persuade them to open up, but they throw in stern warnings too. It’s a constant stream of conversation, coddling and coaxing.

But after half an hour, the 26-year-old is unmoved. She tells them she’s tired and just wants to sleep. She will not be convinced tonight.

Disappointed, Myers-Powell takes a tube of what looks like lipstick from her bag, hands it to the woman and tells her to open it. Hidden inside, where a pimp likely wouldn’t find it, is the group’s emergency hot line number.

“If you ever need us, you call us,” Dixon says, hoping they have at least planted a seed.

They have better luck with their second candidate, a 43-year-old woman with 27 arrests for prostitution and an abusive boyfriend.

She is high, talking so quickly that the social workers struggle to understand her. Dressed in an oversized gray sweat shirt, purple sweat pants and sneakers, she tells them she turns tricks for money for drugs. She’s been beaten, robbed and choked. She never felt like her life was worth much anyway.

But she tells the social workers she’s tired of it. She’s ready for help. They call a shelter hot line and arrange for a cab to take her to a safe location. They give her $5, but stress it’s only to be spent for food.

After the cab arrives, the women walk her to the front door and pull her in for hugs.

“Get a good night’s sleep,” one implores.

“You are angels,” says the woman, smiling awkwardly before hurrying to the waiting taxi.

The social workers will assign a case worker to contact the woman directly and walk her through the process of recovery.

They are hopeful but realistic about her chances.

“When the drugs wear off will be the true test,” Dixon says.

The next day, the woman wakes with no memory of how she got to a hotel room. She finds the hot line number the workers gave her, calls it and learns what happened. Two weeks later, she remains in drug treatment and is living in a shelter.

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