SEXUALLY EXPLOITED WOMEN GET CHANCE TO RESET LIVES
Organization addresses numerous needs, including housing, writes Valerie Fortney
She was living on the streets at age 12, driven from a fractious childhood home after being abandoned by her alcoholic mother. While other girls her age were still playing with Barbie dolls, she was turning tricks for adult customers just to survive.
“By 15, I was a junkie, too,” says Grace, a young woman now in her 30s whose soft features and dewy complexion are in stark contrast to the life story she shares on a recent day. “It led me down a bad road fast.”
Grace, not her real name, could easily have become another statistic, one of the daily tragedies from the world of prostitution, drugs and crime.
Instead, the mother of two is on an entirely different path today, thanks to the help and sanctuary she is receiving from Reset Society of Calgary, an organization that provides support and assistance for women and girls who have experienced, or are at risk of, sexual exploitation and/or sex trafficking.
“I’m not running from my problems anymore,” says Grace as we chat at Reset Society’s new southeast headquarters. “I am dealing with everything I need to deal with, helped by the wonderful ladies here.”
Better known by its former name, Servants Anonymous Society of Calgary, the nearly three-decade-old organization has long striven to rescue women and girls from sexual exploitation and also provide them with wraparound programming that addresses everything from housing needs to employment and parenting issues.
Reset Society is one of the 12 recipient organizations of the 2017 Calgary Herald Christmas Fund. Its executive director, Theresa Jenkins, says that its share of the funds raised from the Herald’s annual campaign will go to both raising awareness of its services and the issues around sexual exploitation, along with increasing its programming capacity.
SOPHISTICATED PREDATORS
“There has always been a need, always been a wait list here,” says Jenkins. Today, she adds, their services are needed more than ever. “The Calgary Police Service says there are over 3,000 women at any time, working, being exploited or sex trafficked in Calgary alone,” she says, “and they say that’s probably a low number.”
The internet has only added to the problem, often making it even more difficult to detect. “So much of it has moved from the street to online,” she says of the growing practice of sophisticated predators luring girls and young women into the sex trade via social media connections.
The recent opioid crisis has also exacerbated the dangers for women and girls — who, Jenkins notes, come from all walks of life — who are being sexually exploited. “We lost three women this past August, in a two-week period,” she says of past and present clients who all died of accidental overdose. “Their lives have become increasingly more dangerous.”
Still, Jenkins says, for her and colleagues at Reset Society, the successes make all the hard work worth the effort. “You’ll see someone come in without a flicker of hope in their eyes,” she says, “and two weeks later, it’s like they are a completely different person.”
That pretty well sums up Grace’s feelings when she arrived earlier this year at Reset, her preschooler son in tow. “It was hard for me to believe in myself,” she says of the effects of more than two decades on and off the streets, which was also marked by several relapses after stays at drug treatment centres.
After Grace and her little boy were given a roof over their heads while she attended the program, she plunged into fulltime courses and classes that dealt with all aspects of life.
Grace says she now has a goal of becoming a health-care worker helping the elderly and is excited about being a better mother to her two children. She credits the support received from Reset Society for transforming her life, both externally and internally.
“I never looked forward to the future before,” she says, the basic concept of hope eluding her most of her life.
“I do now, she says, that flicker of hope now a bright, burning flame, “and it is amazing.”
The Calgary Herald Christmas Fund supports 12 local agencies addressing social issues of poverty, hunger, homelessness, isolation, education and violence. All proceeds raised from donations go to these organizations.