From Exploitation to Exhultation: Escaping the Sex Industry

This is our American stories and you're about to hear any credible story of hope and redemption is Madison to bring you the story might be kind and intelligent girl but enter the sex industry might make a lot of sense if we had a bit about her childhood. I was raised in a neighborhood really chaotic home in the neighborhood I grew up in Domino's wouldn't deliver after and the police actually wouldn't even come to my house after dark. My mother and my stepdad had a very tumultuous relationship so there was a lot of screaming and fighting and yelling. I also was sexually abused throughout my life by multiple people, both men and women and rate. I got my first suicide note. When I was eight years old when my first attempt was on 12 and I figured it was just a matter of like finding the right method my abusers was my mother's boyfriend and at that time I was 13.

I finally started standing up for myself a little bit more and getting a little feisty and hormonal as teenagers do and so I actually ran away from home to get away from the situation and my mom called me and said okay Harmony you can come home it'll be fine.

He's gone he left and I came home and she actually followed him to Canada and left my brother and I with $20 and a book of stamps and the food stamps and the $20 rent out very quickly and I remember I would buy tortillas and butter because it was the cheapest thing that I can get in my neighborhood, but once the money was gone. I started stealing from the liquor store to support my brother and I remember no every time I did that I felt really afraid. I was in get caught and mostly because I was afraid of what would happen to my brother and I got arrested and where would he go so I would actually have them stand outside on the corner and just told him anything happens, if anything goes wrong you just run home as fast as you can and it was that summer that I became involved with an older boy in my neighborhood, he would come around and find my brother and I food so that we didn't have to deal it and he would make me feel protected in the neighborhood I was in tell me know about your back.

I'll take care of you on I'm looking out for you will protect you and really that's all I ever wanted from a man was to feel protected and to feel provided for and so he kind of filled that void that I had and what ends up happening is I formed a very deep attachment to him and I really develop this kind of idea that I couldn't survive without him and in some ways. That summer I really did need him to survive but the relationship became physically and emotionally abusive. He was my exploiter and essentially my pen. That relationship led me to working in the sex and the straight age of 19 as a stripper and every night, came home, gave him all my money and he actually started using me to recruit other women from strip club to work for him as well and they were giving him their money and my first night showing up to the ship to the strip club.

I walk up to the DJ booth and never forget.

He said what's your name and harmony and he turned around and started writing my name harmony in dry race on the whiteboard behind them because that's where they put the list of girls that were working that night and seeing it in black and white like that really freaked me out and immersing takedown, erasing all the money and really from that moment developed this persona that was Monique and Monique wasn't a real person.

She was alive and really it was a mask that helped me to deal and survive in the environment.

Separate what I was doing from who I am, felt that way, but she wasn't a real person. She just was a compilation of other people's fantasies. Monique was whoever the customer wanted Monique to be the problem with that is that over time I really began to Lucite of who Harmony was. There is just really this stripping of who you are in the boundaries that you get to have as a human being. But you know it's one of the things I think creating an alter ego type thing that helps us as women who are in those situations cope and survive, but it also perpetuates the lie because they hate you like being here if you like what you do. Monique was a great way to get exercise. Nobody cared about who Harmony Weiser my hopes and dreams and wants and needs and feelings because my job was to be with other people wanted me to be to not have one of my own.

This thing is is that a lot of women up to 90% of us have a history of childhood sexual abuse. Those of us end up in commercial sex century and that's not a coincidence when a person is victimized. There is an experience of an extreme sense of powerlessness over your own body and in that moment being victimized.

In those moments you don't get to say what happens you don't get to have boundaries or stand up for yourself is your powerlessness situations might history of sexual abuse taught me to be comfortable with not having boundaries of my body and it also may be full comfortable with being sexualized and objectified, and those are pretty much job requirements and there was a little bit of avoiding me that sometimes the customer spelled as well. Even in the relationship I had the exploiter it was all based on having boundaries and I stayed. I stayed because I didn't think I was worth more and every negative thing he said about me actually just validated what I already believe to be true about myself and I stayed.

Also, because that's only ever some modeled relationships was abuse and so it was normal to me and I honestly thought all men were like there were times I would even think about leaving him but I would think, what's the point because at least I know it sets him off. At least I know what makes him tick and I can kind of manage and navigate this abusive situation, but if I leave him who knows who I'm to end up with.

I was in complete denial and wishes so deceived and confused and hopeless and felt completely trapped the big catalyst for change in my life began with a friendship. I met a girl and her friendship change my life. She loved me unconditionally. She never judged me. I found out that she was a Christian and I actually was comprised because I would've expected her to be maybe judgmental based on experiences in the stories my mom told me about her being discriminated against by Christians going up and she grew up on Army bases and was the only non-Christian family there and the other children were allowed to play with her so I grabbed his thinking Christians are judgmental and not safe people. So I was really surprised this person was a Christian because she was so loving and kind and I just felt like I couldn't lie to her and so I was honest with her about the circumstances in my life. I did tell her I was a stripper and to my surprise, that didn't push her away. But also, I appreciated her friendship with me was not contingent on me, going to church with her.

She would take me to coffee and ice cream and really just showed genuine care for me as a human being. And it's because of that that I finally did feel safe enough and comfortable enough to go to church with her and the church was the last place I wanted to go. I thought if there is a God and I am not convinced there is. I didn't think you would want anything to do with someone like me but I eventually took her up on her offer. After months and months and months and went to church and I just sensed that I was home and I really felt like I didn't know much, but I knew that I wanted you back there when the doors were open. Although Harmony was experiencing new beginnings. The real change in her life did not occur overnight. I was still working at the strip that I was still in the abusive relationship and one thing I appreciate about that friend that she never said okay listen now to your church. You need to stop cussing ethical breakup of the boyfriend put on some clothes, like here the things you need to do to be a Christian. She just really gave space for the Holy Spirit to do work in my heart eventually led to change my life and I really needed because if she had started to try to control my behavior then I really think it would push me away, but she understood that Christianity and Jesus is not about behavior modification and heart transformation that leads to life change when we come back more of this remarkable story Harmony dust Grillo stored beer on our American story stories in the story Harmony dust and here again is medicine continue with this remarkable store.

After signing a church home where she felt accepted.

Harmony finally decided it was time to end her abusive relationship with her exploiter and one day she felt up the courage to try and get her car back from he had been driving it and keeping it from her for a while.

She asked the youth pastor at her new church. He would come along with her.

The youth pastor had no idea what he was getting into.

I just cracked my boyfriend and he is like a church and we pull up and you know it's not a good neighborhood and these pastors can look around like what is going on and my ex-boyfriend is likely to get my car back and he grabbed me and he said no, you're not through me against the car and then he said on the go upstairs, get my God, kill you, he's gonna need incoming and to me this whole interaction was very normal. The youth pastor was freaking out so I'm standing there like I need to get my car back in the ashes like we need to go and so finally convinced me to get in the car and leave. And he called the police and I'll never forget as a female officer and she said here. I want you to take this and she was handing me a domestic violence pressure and I said I don't need that and she was like I want you to take business and I don't need that and she set it down on my coffee table in a room when she left I picked that brochure up and I had been in the seven year long abusive relationship, but it wasn't until that moment that I really realized that it was an abusive relationship because I was in such a deep level of denial you see the billboards of domestic violence victims in the black eyes and never seen the face and I've never had a black eye and therefore this is not a mistake violence, but it wasn't until that moment, I really realized I just lived in denial all of those years about it.

I didn't see him as my exploiter.

I didn't see him as a pimp. I saw him as the hope of my life crazy enough. Basically all of that left me with this very strong desire to feel a sense of safety that I never had. And so my life did change, and it was from that place of just revelation and so I remember for weeks on end. I'm hearing the pastor talk about the fact that I was created with a purpose and I remember being in the strip club one night and looking around and realizing I was truly created with the purpose.

This cannot be it.

So is from that Place that I was able to walk away from the industry and walk away from the boyfriend and just really began on his healing journey part of the journey was facing her past Army encountered many troubled people while working at the strip club but along the way she happened to meet one man who was different. A man in his 80s who seems to be just as lonely as she was. He was super sweet, very respectful, gentlemanly man. In fact, he would pay for table dance and that sort of thing.

But honestly that not why he was there he was there really mostly for conversation. In fact, sometimes when I would dance he I watched him avert his eyes and he just was more interested in resuming whatever conversation we had and he was a widow. His wife died and they had been married almost 50 years, and he missed her terribly and he would come into the club started out one night a week, two nights a week. By the end it was like three or four nights a week and spend a few hundred dollars each time just for my company and I remember thinking if I had met him under different circumstances.

He was such a sweet and kind man that but would it look like if she and my grandmother could offer each other companionship. When I finally quit stripping. He was really the only person that I felt owed an explanation to but I didn't want to just disappear. I wanted to let him know what was happening and I was I was leaving because I know that are relationship, however odd and strange it was, was a big part of his life and I called his house. Someone else answered the phone finding out that he was in the hospital.

Time that I quit just so happen to have a heart attack so I decided to go and visit him in the hospital to say a proper goodbye felt like it was the right thing to do. He was not well.

I could tell he was not well and I sat with him and I told him that I was leaving the industry and he was like good for you, sweetie. He was really supportive and kind and I didn't know what I could give him.

I just offered to pray with him at the end of the day you wanted to have a relationship with Jesus. I was able to pray with him that day, say an official goodbye it's not like I experience that a lot with them and work experience that is really kind people, but with him it was different. Eventually I got to a point where I realized that all the pain I'd gone through that there could be purpose and in that it wasn't just about me and I found myself sitting across the street from strip embraced work and was praying for the women and then realize like okay it's great to pray but I have to do some things there women and their their feelings Decided and so I started writing handwritten notes to give to them to put on their cars go anywhere they part the very first note that I left on the car. Women were cassette something to be effective hi my name is Harmony ice to work your tail and I just want let you know that you're not alone. There's a place for you and then it was really not moment that the provision of treasures dispersed treasures is an outreach group that supports women who are working in the sex industry meets these women where they are and helps to provide them with a way out of this effort is led by women who were previously in the same situation. So that's what I'm doing for the past 15 years is just amazing because on that as a result of being willing to let God use my story and the pain from my past to reach and help other people over the years Harmony has written a lot of cards. One response came from a woman who had had many door shut in her face. She asked Harmony for guidance and where she should turn. I encouraged her to connect with the local church because that was a really positive experience for me and I naïvely hope, and thought that it would be the same for her to get some community wrapped around her and she showed up at the church and she went to the alterity prayer the pastor's wife and she told the pastor's wife, single mom working as a prostitute she had been.

Traffic was down until working on her own as prostitute and the pastor's wife that I really wish you very uncomfortable and she was really getting benefit of the doubt church. She actually went to the church with her child. The next week she showed up to check her child in children's ministry. They said you and your child are not welcome. If the pastor's wife or anyone in the congregation truly understood the situation that led her into the they couldn't respond passion and maybe the more helpful and so I'm really passionate about training and educating and equipping people so that they can respond in ways that are helpful, loving and kind. We have seen some incredible stories and really am at a place in my life where I never want to go through all the things that I've been through again ever ever never wanted it used again. I never want to experience electron again. But what I can copy only say is that I wouldn't trade any of it for the person that come in all things really can work together for good.

If we let them process so I got to a point where I realized that all the pain I'd gone through that there could be purpose and great job to medicine for the story and to learn more about what home and her team do the treasures from a treasure.com all the pain I gone through was a purpose of it is all about me a beautiful story about one of redemption about God and face only just. Grillo stored on our American stores switch Subaru's $100 on average what you could buy his switch to progressive 30 years ago to buy tickets to the championship game between those two teams that didn't exist 30 years ago yellow big Alaska poultry, which is in the future will switch to progressive and save big, bigger, so savings cleared up when you