MAGDALENE
ON THE INSIDE
SHEILA
Meet Sheila, a Magdalene graduate who discusses the program with inmates at the Tennessee Prison for Women. Sheila is coordinator of Magdalene on the Inside and will lead courses on the effects of prostitution and trafficking, childhood sexual abuse therapy, twelve-step programs, healthy relationships, and communication.
PROJECT
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The Need
During an interview at the Tennessee Prison for Women, an inmate named Kay expressed a specific need for programs that address a woman's past sexual abuse. Currently, no such program exists at the prison. Kay couldn't remember if she was 12 or 13 when it started. She gently shook her head when she recalled the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her step-father. "I used to hide in my closet to get away from him. He would hug me too much and do things that were too awful," she said. At 14, Kay began smoking marijuana and drinking alcohol to escape thoughts of the abuse. Later, she says she started having sex with a 60-year-old man who gave her money. It was the beginnign of a life of prostitution that Kay says left her feeling worthless, hopeless and in need of something to ease the pain. That was the first time she tried crack but not the last.
On December 3, 2000, Kay was arrested on drug and prostitution charges and taken to jail. That was the last time she says she "shot up." A year later she was released from jail on probation and returned to the only place she knew. She says its was the same environment she had been in before, a world of drugs and prostitution. Kay was beaten by her pimp when she didn't return with the few hundreds dollars he'd expected. There she learned that a woman she knew on the streets had been murdered. Eventually, Kay was re-arrested and is now incarcerated at the Tennessee Prison for Women.
Many women who end up in prostitution were victimized at an early age. Research in the Journal of Women & Criminal Justice shows the average age for girls to enter into prostitution is 12 to 14 (Reid, 2010), and the main drivers of domestic prostitution are rooted in severe childhood abuse, traumatic loss and/or neglect. There is evidence that a large number of women who end up in prostitution have been sexually abused as children at much higher rates than other women. While not all victims of sexual abuse as children end up in prostitution, sexual victimization in childhood or adolescence has been found to facilitate a woman’s entrance into a variety of antisocial and self-destructive behavior patterns, including prostitution. (Silbert & Pines, 1981).