Monthly Archives: January 2009

A Letter to Nowhere

Posted on by rmott62

I have no idea where the johns who chose to be sadistic to me are. I not sure if all of them are still alive.

They came from all over, so I suppose they could anywhere.

But I have decided to write a letter to say what I could never say to their  face. This letter will go nowhere, but may show who I really am.

In this I write as “I”, but it is connected to many prostituted women and girls who had to lived inside conditions like I did.

“Dear John,

You brought me as easy as you would buy a cup of coffee. I meant that little to you.

Was I alive to you, or was I just something that you fucked, beat up and said you may murder. What was I to you.

Was I some doll who should not speak, certainly not complain.

Was I a robot made of flesh who made the right  noises to prove you were a stud.

Was someone who had step out that cheap porn you had watched, someone who never felt pain, someone who comes on command.

It that why you brought me.

I remember that johns like you who say they are on the left.

Say they hate the suffering of the oppressed. Hate that humans  torture animals and other humans. Hate war. Hate rapes of good women and children.

As they fucked me, they spoke their politics to me.

My torture did not count. Not it was reframed as my lifestyle.

I was never raped, not when it was a mutual business exchange.

How could I be suffering when I took the money.

Well hell, I hate to explode your bubble, you did sexually torture me. You did rape me. You did mentally abused me. You did bring close to death.

What I am saying there is no justification that is good enough for how much you destroyed my life.

The moment you chose to buy me, you were choosing to rape me. It was your choice to beat me up. It was your choice to strangle me.

It was your choice to anally raped me until I lost consciousness. Your choice to deep-throat me until I know I was drowning.

It was your choice to join in with the gang-rapes of me. It was your choice to put my body way it limit of endurance.

It was you that was angry when I dare to “die” without your permission.

Damn it, john, you are a sadist, you are a rapist, you should be locked away from the world.

And then there are your continual lies.

When I was under-aged, you knew.

I was 14, but I looked younger.

You know I was ill, know I was vulnerable, know I was dead inside, know I was pushing beyond hope. You know that and fucked me anyhow.

I have seen photos of me then, I have seen how thin I was,  and how haunted I looked then. I seen that I deserved looking after, not being passed round johns as their fuck object.

You john chose to fuck and buy someone who was on the edge of death. That is your sickness – it is nothing to do with who I was.

What did you care who I was.

Did you know that I had a mind, that I had interests outside all that fucking.

Did you know how much I was determined to live, when dying would of been so simple.

Why would you care.

No, I suppose you believed my life stopped until I was in a room, a graveyard, behind a pub, in the toilet, in a car with you. Only then was real to you.

But I was never real.

Not when all I was was a fuck-object. All I was was holes to be filled, all I was was wetness on command, all I was was noises to get it over and done with.

I was never a person to you.

Damned it, do you even know what colour my eyes are.

Well you won’t see this letter, but then johns like you will say –

It not me, it those other bastards who disrespect prostitutes, that do those things.

All I know, is I know you even if I blank out your faces. You have left your marks inside every cell of my body.

You shown me hell, but my revenge is show the world who you really are. Not the charming face you show the world.”

A Lull in My Mind

Posted on by rmott62

This January has been very hard.

I feel my death very strongly. He was a rock in my life.

Whether he know much of my life or not, I always felt his presence dragging me forward. Sometimes he was very distance to me, but there a love that there.

This month, memories of the violence of my years in prostitution have come clearer and clearer. As I view my existence than, I see the connections with the terrible conditions for the majority of prostituted women and girls now.

I cry for my Dad. I cry for my stepmum. I cry for my sister and brother.

I cry that I was raped. I cry that I was trapped. I cry that I got used to gang-rapes. I cry that I knew sexual torture.

I cry that I forgot to flinch with beaten up. I cry that I could not response to all the hate words that throw at me.

And

I cry that millions of women and girls labelled as prostitutes are raped over and over, till their bodies and minds are dead.

I cry that millions of women and girls labelled as prostitutes are trapped mentally by closed off from the outside world. Trapped physically inside brothels or by threats of violence for imagining they can leave.

I cry that gang-rapes is used day-in and day-out to control prostituted women and girls.

I cry that the sexual torture of prostituted women and girls is dismissed and made invisible. That it not viewed as a human rights issue, but as fault of the individual prostituted woman or girl.

I cry that battering of prostituted women and girls is dismissed as “part of the job”, or viewed as porn.

I cry that language is full of words of condemning prostituted women and girls – that that language condemns all women, and makes male violence invisible.

This month, crying has ease my mind. Crying has made connections. Crying has given a small piece of peace.

Thanks For the Memories

Posted on by rmott62

Today would of been my Dad’s 73rd birthday. Although he died on the 5th, I wish to celebrate the pleasures that he put into my life. It did not take away the pain, but it give me inner strength and the ability to see the beauty in the world.

I remember little of my young childhood. But the good things are often linked to my Dad and his side of my family.

I remember many times on the beach in North Cornwall. There I was free, but always in the eyesight of my Dad.

He protected me when a small was biting me. He comforted me when a wooden surfboard scarped all the skin off my stomach.

I had a kind teasing relationship with him.

As my life with my mother became colder and colder, as the abuse from my stepdad became a norm, as porn was given to me as bedtime read – my Dad’s love and non-judging give the hope that I mattered.

But as the abuse increased, I was keep away from my Dad.

With hindsight, I see this was done for fear that my abuse would discovered. I know if my Dad or his relatives had known, they may of taken me into their hearts and homes.

I reacted with anger and blamed my Dad for not “saving” me. I thought he must hate me, so I chose to hate him and everything connected to him.

All I could see and feels was what I knew, I never knew the whole picture.

I never knew how much my Dad continued to love and to worry about me.

In my teens, when I was with my Dad, I reacted with anger. I would refuse to participate, I would beat up my half-brother, I would run away, I was intensely rude.

I forcing him to hate, but he always loved me – even when I pushed beyond his limit.

Now, I cry as I see my frustrated fury.

I could never stop or defend myself from the sexual violence I was living with – so all I could do to attack those who were never to blame.

It was one way of self-harming.

I never wanted my Dad to know that I had been prostituted.

When he found out last year, I was heart-broken, for I never wanted him to have that hurt. He never spoke of it much, but also I never felt judged by him or that I had changed because of that label.

It was never shame or guilt, that stopped me telling, it was knowing I did nor want to give that emotional pain.

When I could of told him, I discover that I love him too much, and after years of not knowing him as a person, I needed more as a friend than someone to guilt-trip with my pain.

I have no regrets that I close down much of my life from him – for in return he became one of my best friends.

We both loved books, loved 40’s movies, loved Cornwall, loved trivial parts of history, loved cricket and football and loved family gatherings.

The more I grow to know him, the more I discover we both loved learning and discovering the new. We both never lost seeing beauty when to outsiders our lives seemed negative.

Happy Birthday, Dad. I know your spirit is in me.

Alice Through the Looking Glass World

Posted on by rmott62

I find speaking with some people about prostitution, that my reality is turned upside down.

The more I remembered, the more I connect with other survivors – the less I can understand how liberals and the left view prostitution.

Recently I have words such as “sex workers”, “sexual outlaws”, “alternative sexuality” used to frame prostituted women. They are words that feel surreal to my experiences.

I was not a sex worker, for I had no employment rights – hell, I had no human rights. Whether or not I had been unionised, my rights were thrown out the window.

Personally, I wonder how an union would of protected me.

Not when my “bosses” would internally trafficked me to other parts of the sex trade, if I was considered a trouble-maker. Not when I was “punished” by gang-rapes. Not as johns bashed me. Not as I was raped over and over.

And how would unionised protect friends of mine who were murdered by johns.

Most unions protect workers after the event, and for the vast majority of prostituted women that is far too late.

As for the “outlaw” label, that is make the violence invisible. It is so glamorous to be an outlaw, portraying prostitution as an attractive game.

My mind switches off, as others say prostitution is fun, with some danger but that is the thrill.

Thrill of having every hateful sexual fantasy forced into my body and mind. Thrill of not knowing if a john may kill me or not.

Yes I was an out-law, in that the law did nothing to protect from male violence.

And “alternative sexuality”, that is a sick joke.

That claims that prostitution is just a sexual choice, nothing to do with men abusing power over prostituted women.

Without seeing this abuse of power, it become easy to make rape, sexual torture and mental abuse of prostituted women invisible. It makes all prostituted women into “happy hookers”.

This dismisses the vast majority of prostituted women who have lived a lifetime in male violence.

To not see the power that johns and the sex trade has over prostituted women is surreal.

This said that the smile on the prostituted woman’s face is real, not used to keep herself safe from violence. Not a smile of the living dead.

Not to see the power imbalance means refusing to see how far too many prostituted women are trapped both literally or with mental abuse inside the sex trade.

Not seeing power imbalance makes rapes into “sex between consenting adults”, makes being beaten up into “s/m play”.

Unless there a clear agreement between prostituted woman and the john – without fear of violence, fear of losing money, fear of mental abuse for the prostituted woman – there is a power imbalance.

But more, it is an abuse of the prostituted woman’s human rights to safety and a life of dignity.

When so many on the left care about human rights of so many, when the left campaign against sweatshops, when the left protest against torture – they ignore conditions that too many prostituted women have to live in.

Many prostituted women lived in conditions of imprisonment, but that is ignored. Many prostituted women are tortured for years on a daily basis, but that is made to seen a small problem.

Yes, I know a tiny majority of prostituted women are happy – but many could have their sexual lives without giving men permission to buy and sell women.

I don’t give a damn what anyone does with their sexual lives, but I do care that men are told that it is acceptable to treat a whole class of women as goods to be fucked.

For most men that choose to buy or sell women as sexual objects really don’t give a shit about how and why the prostituted woman is in the sex trade.

The men don’t care if it is rape, for he will re-frame it a business exchange. He will not care if she nor responsive, often because she has lived with years of sexual violence.

He will not care if prostitution could a place of desperation, whether poverty, being prostituted from a young age, a need for drugs and others places where she has lost hope. As long as he can come, why should he care.

Men that sell women, don’t care if his goods are beaten up, raped or murdered, for there is an endless supply of girls who he can “employ”.

I want prostitution to viewed as human rights issue, an issue of saying no torturing of prostituted women and girls.

But in the Alice Through the Looking Glass world, prostitution is viewed as sexual liberation for women.

No Space to Grieve

Posted on by rmott62

This week has been shit.

After space with my family and my father’s close friends, I allow myself to grieve my Dad. I let myself cry, I allow anger in. I could celebrate his life.

But then I came home. Home to visiting the medical centre, home to filling out forms.

And home to PTSD.

All the memories of the violence that men choose to put into my body came at me. All the hateful language that was used against me so I would remember I was sub-human.

As if I could forget.

I don’t need these memories. I want to grieve my Dad on my terms.

Yet again I am having to fill out DLA forms to show I am incapable of paid work.

I cannot mention that the major reason I can’t work is because I was mentally, sexually and physically tortured for round 21 years. That left me with huge amounts of trauma.

No trauma is made invisible, for often trauma happens because of having unacceptable violence done to someone who cannot defend themselves or find an exit.

Hell, mention trauma and maybe the authorities may need to punish the people who use violence to gain power.

 Mention trauma and maybe long-term recovery systems may needed to be all over the country and the world that specialise in extreme PTSD.

Places for soldiers who seen and felt a violence that their minds cannot take. Places for asylum seekers who know torture, losing everyone that matters, rape and mental violence. Places for teenagers that lived inside families or homes where rape and hate is their norm.

And places for exited prostituted women who have raped so much they have lost language for who they are.

No, don’t talk of trauma, say instead the individual is mentally ill.

Say that then all their words of torture, rape, fear for their lives can be put into the box of their delusions.

Don’t say they are lying, that is far too blunt.

Placed as delusions, then the listener or authority can rest easy, for then they fall into pity and ignore all the words of the traumatised individual.

To believe the words of the traumised is to believe in how much hate and violence is done on an ordinary level every day.

That is unacceptable, so block your ears, shut tight your eyes, and the traumatised may vanish.

But always behind is the shadow of their  pain.

Always the truth is waiting with endless patience to scream out

Bloody listen , it could be you next.

Dreaming of Suicide

Posted on by rmott62

I have no intention of killing myself, but thoughts of suicide are deep inside of me.

I live with pain, terror and the injustice most of my life – I live with it all and I am overwhelmed.

It comfort me to imagine my own death. For much of my life death was my only friend, now it is a shadow that follows me.

I am not scared of dying, but I am terrified of it going wrong and having more pain in my life.

I first thought of killing myself when I was nine.

I stood by my window measuring the height, with logic I know I would die so it was not worth it.

I wanted to die coz I could see my mother loving me. I could not see my stepdad leaving. I could imagine his hands not reaching into my cunt.

I could imagine dying, stopping. I wanted an end, I wanted to have some control.

All I could was to cut myself. I had forgotten how to cry. I know I could not complain.

As I cut my arms, I got some kind of rest.

But the violence went on and on.

There was no light at the end of the tunnel, except maybe an oncoming train.

As my stepdad increase his sexual violence, as my mother’s neglect smouldered me, as porn was suffocating me – death became my closest friend.

I read Edgar Allan Poe as if he wrote facts. I read Agatha Christie seeking out less painful poisons. I read of famous suicides – Cleopatra, Madam Bovary etc. I read Stevie Smith odes to death.

Death made far more sense than life.

Death was my way to be detach. As my stepdad rape me, I thought this cannot matter coz tomorrow I will dead. As I stared down into porn, I knew I could cut all those images out of my brain by dying.

I was desperate, but I had no help.

I had no help from the police. I would be arrested for being on the streets at 3 in the morning, being a public nuisance. Arrested for smashing windows, arrested for cutting my arms on a public street, arrested  for shouting at strangers.

Always it written off as mental health, no asking me why I was acting up.

Often all that happened with the police was they took me home. Saying as they saw where I lived how lucky I was, seeing I was so damned posh.

Sometimes the police would have cosy chats with my mum and stepdad. Then it was decided I was a  spoilt brat on the cust of being a delinquent. I would hear how my mum and stepdad had tried everything to keep me on the rails, how much they cared for me.

I thought if I stared hard enough at the police, they see my mum and stepdad were lying. That I would taken away, maybe my stepdad would get arrested.

Hell no, the police were seduced by Earl Grey and posh cakes.

I wanted help from school.

I got teachers saying I was clever, but my written work was rubbish. I got D’s and E’s in most of my work. The teachers were confused, saying the knew I knew the work inside out.

I never could concentrated.

I chose to be a truant, coz I thought everyone would see all I was a whore.

And I needed help from the medical system, and all I received was betrayal.

All my injuries were made invisible, made what they were not.

Children don’t get raped they get penetrated by inanimate objects. As I was told after I could stop bleeding from my cunt after my stepdad raped me.

Somehow I fall downstairs onto a broom handle, hell I was some kind of acrobat;

I was sent in and out the psychiatric system, but as it seen that I was mentally ill, no-one asked me vwhat was happening to me.

I first was in the mental health system aged seven. At that age I still thought the truth was listen to. I said –

I hate my stepdad, he hurts me. I want him gone. I want my mum back.

This was translated that I was jealous of my mum, coz I loved my stepdad more than her. And that I made up stuff of being hurt to break up my family.

I stopped saying much to anyone in the medical system.

All this was before I was prostituted. Then my death-wish was a stable friend.

Dreaming of death as I was raped over, over and over was some escape. What did gang-rapes matter when I could over-dosed it away. Why should I care that I was degraded, when I would make sure I would disappear.

I was living a slow death all the time then. My body was rotting away, it could hang onto life when pain and hate was poured into it.

I existed, but I was not alive.

The police were next to useless.

They raided clubs/private parties I was prostituted into. But it was for drugs, prostitutes were ignored, even it was clear that many were under-aged or under intimidation.

Hell, I was in a tourist, and having in the local paper words of prostitution raids give the city the wrong image.

Police did nothing about the rapes of prostitutes, nothing when prostitutes were beaten up – and turn a blind when prostitutes were murdered.

I had contempt for the police.

The medical system ignore my injuries. For their only use was for abortion and morning-after pills.

In this environment, dreaming of suicide was logical and somewhat restful.

Now, as everything is falling in round me, suicide thoughts are some comfort.

I will not act on them, I am too strong for that. I have too much self-respect now.

But, death is still a friend.

A Terrible Crash

Posted on by rmott62

I was doing alright, and then I crashed.

I have a terrible phobia of doctors, and today I went to a medical centre for much of the day. Because of my fear, I don’t go very often.

Again abuse gets in my way.

My phobia is because the signs of sexual violence on my body were ignored by doctors when I was a child. My injuries when I was prostituted were made into what they were not.

Like too many women and girls, any harms done to my body was made invisible by medical staff.

So I learnt not to complain and to pretend I felt no pain.

In the end, I learnt to ignore my own body.

Now I have high blood pressure and thyroid problems, which I “forget” to look after.

My Dad’s death is hitting me very hard.

After being with many that loved him, I am now home alone, and I am crashing.

Please keep me in your thoughts and prayers.

Final Farewell

Posted on by rmott62

I have been away for a week, as last Wednesday my Dad was cremated and we had a Thanksgiving Service.

I say farewell to a wonderful man. I miss him in every cell of my body.

He was my best friend and a brilliant Dad.

Although I did have any desire that he read this blog, in my heart I know he would of been proud I was doing it.

In his simple form of Christianity he believed in giving voice to the voiceless, building up hope where all appears to be a void, and speaking truth to power.

This should done without ego. Each small change going towards a steady revolution.

I know as I write this blog, as I speak of my existence I could say in clear words to my Dad, I know I have a deep connection with his essence.

So he gone from being solid, but he has a place deep inside my heart.

Anniversity

Posted on by rmott62

Today I have been writing this blog for a year.

I cannot believe that I manage to keep it up – I feel pretty proud. I usually find it hard to stick to my projects, coz of my self-destructive tendencies.

I started this blog because of my grief at the terrible murders of prostituted women in Ipswich. These murders were a few of far too many murders of prostituted women and girls.

Most of these murders go unremembered. Many are made invisible, in at attitude that their deaths cannot matter coz their lives are of no importance.

I have been a writer for many years, so I saw a blog as one way to express my grief and anger.

I say and will say that the sex trade is built on the attitude that a whole class of women and girls have no rights, that their lives are of no importance.

Though I know that some women do choose to do prostitution, and may enjoy the work, I also know they are a tiny and privileged minority.

I do not write their lives.

I also do not write the lives of other prostituted women and girls.

All I write is what I have experienced, what I have heard or seen from friends who were prostituted. I write from words I have read, heard or researched.

I am not afraid to say my bias. I do not claim that I know the whole picture, but I do not trust those who claim that know “the truth” of the sex trade.

My blog speak that the sex trade tramples on the human rights of prostituted women and girls.

I say the sex trade is built on the bodies of it’s “workers”. Women and girls are murdered on a regular basis. Sexual torture is the norm of the “industry”. Rape is repeated over and over.

I say to survive to the sex trade it is necessary to deaden all emotions and to become the living dead.

I say that men who rape, sexually torture, buy, sell, and mentally abused prostituted women and girls do so coz they assume it is of no importance. It is consider to be a non-crime.

I say the vast majority of prostituted women and girls do not choose freely.

It is not a choice when poverty is the driving force. It is not a choice when there has been sexual violence as a norm before entering the sex trade. It is not a choice when the sex trade lies that it is an easy and liberating job.

When I write I am thrilled if my words connect with other survivors of the sex trade. If my words help them find a language for their lives, I feel deeply honoured.

This blog may help the struggle towards the abolition of the sex trade. That makes me very proud.

Recently I was at my Dad’s funeral, and in the eulogy it was said –

“And more fundamentally, in times of need I could always rely on his kindness, generosity, encouragement and support.”

I hope some of that has been pass down to me.

I want justice for who I was. I need justice for the vast majority of prostituted women and girls.

Motown is Under My Skin

Posted on by rmott62

Motown is 50 today. I am so happy to say –

Happy Birthday Motown. Thanks for planting so much joy into my heart. Thanks for giving the belief that dancing can make you forget.

I do not not when I first heard Motown, maybe before I had words.

All I know Motown is under my skin.

I know the sounds of Marvin Gaye, Temptations, Supremes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Four Tops, Jackson Five, Smokey Robinson and all the others sent to a place of joy.

God, I so needed Motown. The more my life became a life of pain and a life where I could not imagine an exit, the more I breathe in Motown.

Every time I hear “Baby Love” I almost cry with pure joy. In it’s simple words and tune, it grabs my heart and forces it to believe life is worth living.

Motown would make sing to a hairbrush. Motown would played on long car journeys. Motown would drown out housework.

Motown is part of the beat of my life.

But I hide from Motown during my years of prostitution.

The joy was too painful, when too much of my reality was torture. How can you have joy as your essence is slowly being destroyed.

Motown never went away, it slip in joy and planted hope into my heart.

Jackson Five were at their best when I was prostituted. Their wonderful songs made remember pleasure, made know I was still able to dance.

I will always have Jackson Five in my heart.

I am grateful to Motown.