Pubdate: Mon, 07 Aug 2000
Source: Register-Guard, The (OR)
Copyright: 2000 The Register-Guard
Contact:  PO Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440-2188
Website: http://www.registerguard.com/
Author: Tricia Schwennesen, SAFE SPOT FOR PROSTITUTES: HOPE STREET

"Pretty Woman" doesn't work here.

It's not Julia Roberts in hot pants and vinyl thigh-high boots roaming
Eugene's west Jefferson neighborhood. It's women, young and old, singles and
moms wearing sweatpants and tennis shoes selling sex acts.

It's quick cash. It's hard drugs. It's survival.

Social service officials, police and former prostitutes say more than 90
percent of the women working Eugene's streets are in it for the drugs. The
drugs are the only "medicine" that makes an addict feel well.

But for a new drop-in clinic that will open next month for Eugene's
prostitutes, feeling well isn't the objective. The objective is to make them
feel valuable and see life's possibilities away from the streets, said Jean
Daugherty, director of women's services for Sponsors Inc., the nonprofit
transitional living program for men and women getting out of jail.

"We're trying to provide hope," Daugherty said, which is why the clinic will
be named the Hope Street Project.

The clinic may be just the type of opportunity that could break the cycle of
prostitution and drugs for some women, said Eugene Police Lt. Pete Kerns.

"I've never met one woman who wanted to be a prostitute," Kerns said. "They
were paying for their home, their food and mostly their drug."

And the bottom line is that no matter how long the list of social services,
or how many nights spent in jail or the constant coaxing from friends and
family to leave the business, a woman can't be deterred from prostitution
until she's ready, Daugherty said.

In the meantime, the clinic is a place where a woman can feel at ease. It's
a place without judgment. For two hours every other Tuesday, it's a safe
haven from the dangers of the streets. For that reason, Daugherty isn't
publicizing the location.

The women can get social service referrals at the clinic - from where to
find drug treatment to how to get some job skills - as well as peer support
from former prostitutes and necessities such as food, clothes and
toiletries, Daugherty said.

Peer counselors

Sara, one of the women who will be a peer counselor, has been out of jail
less than 90 days, but said she never wants to go back to her street life.
What she brings to the clinic is personal experience and understanding.

The 38-year-old said the devastation of losing her husband of seven years
and her 2-year-old son in a car accident drove her to numb the pain with
heroin.

"We had a house and cars and good jobs - a wonderful life," she said. "And
then, one day I woke up on the living room floor, the electricity was off,
the furniture was gone and the cars, too."

She lost seven years to heroin and three to prostitution.

"It's like a slow suicide," she said. "You can eat it, snort it, smoke it,
shoot it. Usually, I did enough that it knocked me out. I relaxed. No fears,
no feelings, numb - which is exactly what everyone ou there is looking for."

She moved and cut off friends and family.

"You have to do dope to work the street, and you have to work the street to
do dope," she said. "I wanted to die. It didn't matter."

Then after being released from the Lane County Jail about 50 times after
arrests for prostitution and drugs, Sara decided she'd had enough. She tried
to get help everywhere: Serenity Lane, the private for-profit treatment
center; the Buckley House, Eugene's detox center; and even the jail.

"I went to the hospital so full of infection and abscesses that they asked
me to leave," she said. "I was sick of it, sick of the men, sick of my
friends who were stealing from me and I didn't eat for six, seven days at a
time." Now she works at a drug rehabilitation clinic and she plans to go
back to school.

"Eventually, I'd like to talk to other girls out there - that they can do
it," she said. "There's no right thing you can say to everybody, and there's
nothing anyone could have said to me until I was ready."

After months of meetings by Eugene's Prostitution Task Force and working
with women like Sara in the Sponsors program, Daugherty said she saw the
need for a bridge between life on the streets and the possibilities.

Prostitution ordinances

At first, Daugherty volunteered to begin a support group for prostitutes,
but she said she had little response from task force members, and her
clients said it wouldn't work. What the women said they needed was a safe
place to go. The drop-in clinic seemed the ideal first step, she said.

It's a step in a slightly different direction than the one proposed by the
city's 22-member Prostitution Task Force, made up of residents, police and
social service representatives.

In its quest to rid the west side of a problem that neighbors say makes the
area unsafe and unlivable, the task force, with the help of the city's
Police Commission, devised three possible ordinances. City Council members
are scheduled to act on the three proposals today. They would allow the city
to:

- -Prosecute prostitution-related cases in the state courts to allow the
option of going through drug court, a yearlong program that requires drug
treatment and mandatory visits before a judge once a month. It also would
allow penalties to be increased up to $1,000 and/or 100 days in jail for the
first offense and a $5,000 fine and/or a year in jail for subsequent
charges.

- -Prohibit cruising, or repeatedly driving around designated street blocks,
to crack down on johns looking for a "date."

- -Designate a certain area of the city as a prostitution-free zone where a
Municipal Court judge could exclude people who are arrested on
prostitution-related charges for up to 90 days and up to a year if
convicted.

Daugherty said she doesn't disagree with the ordinances, but she thinks the
solution should reach deeper. Drug court is a viable program, but a
prostitute must opt for that as her penalty. In most cases, the women would
rather do a couple days in jail and be back out on the streets as soon as
possible, she said.

In fact, Daugherty said she doesn't know if - or how many - women will take
advantage of the clinic. "At this point we hope to identify their needs and
build around that," she said.

The program has no funding, a church has offered space for the meetings,
supplies have been donated and people from various social agencies will lend
their expertise. Also, several other women with histories of prostitution
have offered to be available as peer support.

"No single tactic like this, or the ordinances, or more law enforcement or
drug treatment is going to solve the problem," Kerns said. "We have to use
them all at once to be effective."

Last year, police arrested 36 women 137 times on prostitution or related
charges, mostly in the area just west of downtown. So far this year, police
have made fewer arrests, and Kerns attributed that in part to greater
publicity about the problem. Police also arrested 196 "johns" over the past
three years.

`It can be achieved'

Thirty-five-year-old Patty said each woman on the street has a story all her
own, and even she defies the stereotype. Originally from the East Coast, her
family was more than middle class and she spent most of her time on the
country club circuit.

An acquaintance offered her crack. Just one try and she was hooked. For
three years, she was constantly chasing that first high. Both Patty and Sara
asked not to have their last names used because they're trying to start new
lives.

"If there were clean needles, and I could crush it up and cook it up, I'd
shoot it up," Patty said. "It's a huge rush that leaves you wanting, and
your body needing more."

For a time she worked as a bartender to pay for the crack, then it became a
$500-a-day habit. She moved in with a crack dealer and before long was
prostituting to avoid smoking all the dealer's dope, she said. Her family
was appalled. "One day I was engaged to a millionaire and the next I was
with a 60-year-old... crack addict," she said.

One time a john attacked her, tied her up and tortured her, she said, but
she was back on the street less than hour after escaping.

She kept getting arrested. After serving six months of a four-year sentence,
she had her parole transferred here from the East Coast to go to a treatment
program. She relapsed once, bought heroin in the park and was arrested. Now
she's attending the state's drug court.

"I feel like I have my strongest program ever," she said. "It's just every
single day, I pray that I don't go back to what I was doing."

Patty said she never would have sought help on her own and needed the push
of drug court.

"I needed it to come to me and I want to be able to go to women and show
them," she said. "I've literally slept on the street, in abandoned houses
and crack houses. I want to show women they can do it. It can be achieved."

TODAY

Eugene City Council: Members are scheduled to vote on a series of proposed
prostitution ordinances at a 7:30 p.m. meeting in the Council Chamber, City
Hall, 777 Pearl St. More information: 682-5017.

THE HOPE STREET PROJECT

What: A drop-in clinic where prostitutes can get referrals, crisis
counseling, peer support, food and clothes.

When: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. every other Tuesday starting Sept. 12.

Where: To find out where to go or how to make a donation, call Jean
Daugherty at 485-6738.

Donations needed: Good, usable women's clothes, small nonperishable packages
of food, sunscreen, shampoo, conditioner, lotion, feminine hygiene products
and toiletries.
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MAP posted-by: Don Beck