Former Prostitute Rescues Girls from Sex Trade - Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City

Former Prostitute Rescues Girls from Sex Trade

Rachel Lloyd provides housing, education and job training for exploited teens

Faiza Elmasry | Washington, D.C. April 22, 2011

After escaping a life of prostitution, Rachel Lloyd established Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City to help young women leave the sex trade.

Rachel Lloyd understands why and how young girls become prostitutes. She was once once herself.

"I grew up with a lot of trauma and dysfunction in my family," she says. "So by the time I was like 13, I dropped out of school. I was working full time in factories and restaurants. I began to model, a kind of nude modeling, so I was already on the periphery of the sex industry."

Looking for a new start, Lloyd left her home in Britain for Germany. She ended up working as a hostess in a Munich sex club at the age of 17. After three suicide attempts and one effort by her boyfriend/pimp to kill her, she found shelter in a local American church. She eventually immigrated to the United States and vowed to not only change her life, but also to help young women in need.

Lloyd recounts her story in "Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale; An Activist Finds Her Calling and Heals Herself." Lloyd began that healing process by going back to school when she was 23.

"Once I started getting my formal education, my confidence increased and I began to learn stuff. I got my undergrad in psychology and my grad degree in applied urban anthropology," says Lloyd. "I knew I needed that to have a level of credibility. Otherwise, I would have always been seen as ‘former prostitute Rachel Lloyd who has a story.'"

GEMS

In 1998, Lloyd decided to take action against the problem that had almost destroyed her life.
She founded Girls Educational & Mentoring Services (GEMS) in New York City. The nonprofit has grown from her small apartment to two offices and 25 full-time staff. A 2008 documentary called "Very Young Girls," highlights her work.

"The core of our work is the direct services to young girls and women," Lloyd says. "That looks like street outreach, outreach into detention centers, group homes, anywhere we know that there are young people at risk."

GEMS offers these young people not only a safe refuge and hot meals, but also job training, education and unconditional support. Raising public awareness about the plight of teen prostitutes and changing social attitudes, Lloyd says, are critical to ending the problem.

"If you feel like your family, your community, your place of employment is always going to look at you as a prostitute and you’re scorned and ashamed for that, then you might as well stay because what’s the point of trying to move forward, if people are always going to look down at you?"

GEMS representatives - young women who've made the transition from the street to a new life - go to conferences, detention centers, local high schools and churches to talk about their experiences.

"They are the best advocates, the best peer mentors for girls who may be nervous about speaking up or ashamed or feel like they can never tell anyone," says Lloyd.

Making changes

GEMS also advocates for legislative change. In 2008, the organization played a key role in successfully lobbying New York legislators.

"We actually passed the first law in the country - The Safe Harbor for Exploited Youth Act - which means that young people under the age of 16 can’t be charged with an act of prostitution," Lloyd says. "It becomes a child protective issue as opposed to a juvenile detention issue."

Lloyd would like to see every state in the country pass similar legislation.

Kudos

In recognition of her efforts, Lloyd has received numerous honors, including the Reebok Human Rights Award.

"This award is actually recognizing probably for the very first time publically that the commercial sexual exploitation is a human rights issue," she said.

For Lloyd, what’s more rewarding than any recognition she receives are the success stories of those young girls, when they leave the streets, get an education, find a job and start a new life.

Former Prostitute Rescues Girls from Sex Trade

Article and Video from VOA

Teen Dating Violence - Grieving Mother Fights Dating Violence

Grieving Mother Fights Teen Dating Violence

One in three high school students has been or will be involved in an abusive relationship

Faiza Elmasry | Washington, D.C. February 08, 2011 - VOA

Lynne Russell holds a picture of her daughter, Siobhan,

 who was killed by a former boyfriend at the age of 19.

Photo: VOA - F. Elmasry

Many people tend think of high school romances as harmless infatuations which can dwindle away or blossom into innocent love. But the reality is that an alarming number of these young relationships can become abusive and even dangerous. In fact, one in three high school students has been or will be involved in an abusive relationship.

That's something Lynne Russell knows about first hand - her daughter was killed by a former boyfriend. Now Russell campaigns to make sure that no other parents would lose a child to dating violence.

Siobhan's story

Siobhan Russell was 16 when she began dating her boyfriend. He killed her three years later.

"Siobhan dropped out of high school with about three months to go because of this relationship," says Lynne. "She had a revelation one day that she needed to get out, go back to school and start her life all over."

Her mother says Siobhan ended the relationship, enrolled in a new high school and graduated with honors, even winning a scholarship. But then the past caught up with her.

"The relationship became lethal when she was moving on," says Lynne. "On Easter Sunday 2009, for some reason - we still don’t really know the truth - she paid a visit to her ex-boyfriend’s house. He deliberately and brutally killed her."

After her daughter’s murder, Lynne discovered hundreds of e-mails, text messages and diary entries that painted a disturbing picture of the torment Siobhan had gone through for more than two years.

DASH

Hoping to keep her daughter’s memory alive, Lynne looked for a way to give hope and advice to other teens who are or could become victims of dating abuse. On October, 16, 2010 - on what would have been her daughter's 21st birthday -  Dating Abuse Stops Here (DASH) - was established. According to Lynne, the website educates teens and their parents about dating violence.

"We decided that we have the ability with Siobhan’s story to get the message out," Lynne says. "So we are showing what dating violence is, what dating abuse is, what type of behaviors constitutes dating violence - whether it is emotional, sexual or physical."

The Russells’ neighbor, Wendy Claunch is DASH’s co-founder. In fact, the whole neighborhood got involved in launching the website.

"It’s amazing how it came together virtually from the germ of an idea, to a session in my basement with the neighbors, to try to come up with a name for the group," says Claunch. "We had kids coming up with names. We all just kind of brainstormed. We’ve gotten videos there, really some powerful videos of all different girls who have lost their lives to dating abuse."

Siobhan's father wishes he'd had the information in time to save his daughter.

"If I knew then what I know now, I definitely would have seen, I believe, some of those signs and would have taken some action to stop the relationship as it was at the time," says Andy Russell. "When you look at the behavior of an abuser, it’s very difficult for someone to break that relationship. On average, it takes someone six or seven times to get away from that relationship."

Siohan’s high school classmate, Meagan Wray, says her boyfriend was also abusive.

"For me, I really had faith that he would change, I really had faith that things would be better. You care about the person, and you try and you try and you try, and nothing ever happens. But you want them to stop acting that way, so you keep trying to fix it," she says. "He kept trying and he kept trying and he kept trying. He would always call me. He would always text me. Eventually, I just [thought] 'Okay, you have to stop.' And when I was telling him that I was done with him, I brought someone with me."

Campus violence

Dating violence is a serious problem among college students, as well, according to Connie Kirkland of George Mason University Sexual Services. Raising awareness about dating abuse, she says, is crucial to ending it.

"I think awareness is absolutely the key - to know that you have options, that getting text messages from your boyfriend or girlfriend 50 or 60 or more times a day is not right, that it’s not love," says Kirkland. "Because initially partners think, ‘Oh he loves me. That’s why he’s asking me where I am, that’s why he wants to know what I am doing.' In fact, it’s control. It’s manipulation. It’s not being loving."

Kirkland says technology has provided abusers with new ways to hurt their partners.

"People can say things in a hurtful way by writing it on text or e-mail and in a controlling way, much more than they would if they were talking, having a face-to-face conversation."

But while the Internet provides more opportunities for dating abuse, DASH founder Lynne Russell says it is also a powerful tool for combating it. Young people and adults from the U.S. and more than 40 other countries have visited her website. She is confident that message will be heard and her daughter’s story will help keep other teens safe.

 

 

Grieving Mother Fights Teen Dating Violence

Article from VOA