For the past four years, beginning when she was 14, Rachel lived a dangerous life. She was a homeless, drug-addicted teen who turned to prostitution in order to buy drugs.
But perhaps the most amazing thing about Rachel's past is how normal it was - up to a point.
"I lived the most wonderful life before I ran away," recalls Rachel, who asked that her last name not be used. "I got good grades. I had a lot of friends. I enjoyed singing, dancing and writing poetry."
Rachel, now 18, shared her story at the Madison office of Project Respect. The group, an arm of ARC Community Services, provides advocacy, counseling and crisis intervention for women with a history of prostitution.
Things started spiraling out of control when Rachel was 12. Her grandmother died of cancer and her mother's lover ended their 13-year relationship. Her mom turned to drugs, and Rachel ended up in foster care during her sophomore year in high school.
On the last day of 10th grade, Rachel, angry because she didn't have a ride to school, ran away from home.
"I slept in the bushes," she says. "I was all over Madison. I went to my mom's ex. I called my dad. He hadn't been in my life for my whole life, but I moved down South with him." That was in 2005.
The first couple of months of living with her father went okay. Then, Rachel says, he started abusing her physically and sexually. They would smoke crack together. Rachel decided to run again, away from her father but in the same state.
That's how Rachel, then about 16 years old, met a man we'll call Tony, who introduced her to his brother, a pimp. The brother pimped her out to his father, whom we'll call John. He was 53.
"Ifelt like Iwas dreaming, that it was unreal," says Rachel. "I led such a sheltered life before, but itwas okay because I had tofeed my crack addiction."
Rachel says she was expected to be a sex slave to John, and was pressed into service making drugs. "I cooked crack in rooms with other women," she says. "They were kept naked so they couldn't steal anything."
At one point, she says she saw John with two duffle bags full of crack. The quantity amazed her: "When you go from a small bag of crack, to a larger bag, to many kilos, to duffle bags, it's just hard to comprehend."
A way off the street
Project Respect, located in an undisclosed address in downtown Madison, was founded in 1981 by the Task Force on Prostitution and Pornography. It was originally run by the City Attorney's Office as an alternative to jailing or fining prostitutes.
Over time, the program's mission has become more encompassing. It now helps former prostitutes stabilize their lives, get treatment for alcohol and drug addictions, find transitional housing and receive counseling.
"We want women to know that what has happened isn't who she is, it's what has happened to her," says Jan Miyasaki, the group's project director since 1993. "There is a way out and off the street, and we can help her."
Project Respect is funded by the city of Madison Office of Community Services, Dane County Human Services and the state Division of Public Health. Miyasaki says it works with 65 to 75 women per year, on an annual budget of $110,000. Women enter the program in various ways. Rachel's route was especially circuitous.
Rachel didn't leave Tony and John until a chilling situation involving a shooting left her fearing for her life. She was told by the men not to discuss what she witnessed. To this day, she's afraid to name the state she was in or the men she was with, for fear they might find her again.
In early 2007, Rachel made her way to a truck stop and hitchhiked across several states back to Wisconsin. "I rode with truckers and didn't have to use sex to get home," she says. "I was dropped off at East Towne, and my mom's ex-girlfriend picked me up. I was now a runaway from two states and thinking I'm a grown-up girl."
Rachel ended up in the Darbo-Worthington neighborhood, on Madison's east side, living in the basement of an apartment building, smoking crack and prostituting herself.
"I didn't care how much money I made, $5 or $10 prostituting, as long as I had enough to buy a bag of crack. I didn't shower for weeks, I didn't eat for weeks, and when I did eat, it was out of the dumpster. I had no shoes in the winter and almost lost my feet to frostbite."
Rachel lived in Darbo for a year and a half before her mother and a Madison police officer put her in contact with Project Respect. It was the fall of 2007. Rachel was down to 82 pounds and having epileptic-like seizures.
"I was almost dead when they picked me up," says Rachel, who received a $28,000 scholarship to Hazelden, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Plymouth, Minn. She says the other patients were white-collar drug users and kids enabled by their parents who were incredulous about Rachel's history. She left the four-week program a week early.
Rachel was arrested on drug charges in September 2008 and spent time in jail in a county just outside of Madison. Now sober for five months, Rachel is staying with a good friend and gaining her life back. She has a job with a local sales company, and has signed up to earn her GED through Operation Fresh Start, a nonprofit group that helps young people learn job skills by building affordable housing.
"I wouldn't have hurt this long if I had stayed in foster care," she now realizes. "I thought I was going to die out there and that I'd never breathe a single sober breath again."
Stay here for sex
How big of an issue is teenage homelessness and prostitution in Madison? It's hard to quantify.
"There's no way to know how many teens are homeless, as some double-up by staying with friends after they've left their home," says Erika Schneider, a street outreach specialist. "Others are involved in prostitution and haven't been caught." Schneider works with Briarpatch, an arm of Youth Services of Southern Wisconsin, a nonprofit group dedicated to preventing teen homelessness and assisting homeless teens.
Schneider, 31, says it's not uncommon for teens to end up in arrangements similar to Rachel's after she fled her father's home. There's even a term for it: "stay here for sex." Individuals emerge who offer shelter, food and in many cases drugs to young girls and boys in exchange for sex. Schneider, who had some contact with Rachel after she fled such a relationship to come back to Madison, says a red flag in identifying such situations is an older man who seems to be hovering around and guarding a teen.
In 2008, Briarpatch served 2,236 youths, a decrease of 25% from the 2,975 youths served in 2007. Briarpatch uses four categories to track contacts with runaways. "At risk/at home" kids still live at home but are at risk for running away. "Throwaways" are children who've been kicked out of their homes, often upon turning 18, and receive no parental support; some are gay kids who've come out to unaccepting parents. "Runaways" are those who have left home of their own accord; and "homeless" kids are those with no place to stay, in some cases still bound to families in the same predicament.
The National Runaway Switchboard ( Over the course of many months, Schneider continued to see Star on the street and was able to slowly gain her trust. During their conversations, Schneider learned that Star had been abused at a very young age by her father and was placed in foster care. She'd run away from the foster care and had been homeless for two years. "I gave her food, hygiene items, safe-sex kits and our Briarpatch contact card," says Schneider. "When she was high, she seemed comfortable with her lifestyle. But when she was sick or withdrawing she was more open, telling me about prostituting and her relationship with an older man, with whom she was exchanging sex for shelter, food, drugs. He was also pimping her out and taking the money." Schneider says she was eventually able to get Star into a rehab program. "She did very well there, but after three weeks decided to run away.I didn't hear from her or see her for months." Then one of Schneider's co-workers reported seeing Star with the older man, both high on drugs. The man "tried to pimp her to my co-worker even after he identified himself as an outreach worker with Briarpatch." Schneider saw Star a few times after that, but she was always with the older man and could not be separated. Star also became resistant to offers of help. "After another few weeks," says Schneider, "she had disappeared for good." Building trust Erika Schneider has been working with homeless teens for more than a decade, including the last two years at Briarpatch. She and fellow outreach specialists Tyler Schueffner and Conor Murphy, both 30, walk State Street and the Capitol Square, visit bus transfer stations and other sections of town looking for homeless youth. The Briarpatch outreach workers offer hot coffee and doughnuts to the homeless who congregate in the basement of the State Capitol daily. Says Schueffner, "The key is to build trust among all homeless, not just the teens but the adults also, so that if there is a teen who needs our help, the adults know who we are and will share information." On a recent afternoon visit to the Capitol basement, Schueffner and Murphy found about 25 homeless men and women. Some were playing cards and socializing; others sat by themselves. According to Murphy, at least nine teens known to Briarpatch were there. The pair handed out cereal bars, T-shirts and caps; the homeless gathered around to accept these free items. Murphy quickly wrote down requests for boots and other items that he promised to bring on his next visit. Schueffner has worked at Briarpatch for 2½ years and has logged more than 1,300 hours in the field searching for teen runaways and homeless. Murphy started as a volunteer crisis counselor with Youth Services and was hired as a street outreach specialist in September. One of the trio's missions is to promote safe sex by handing out safe-sex kits consisting of three condoms, instructions on condom use, a 211 First Call for Help card and contact information for Briarpatch. "Sex has become so desensitized," says Murphy. "Twenty years ago we would have said, 'What are these kids thinking?' Now it's the norm." The street outreach specialists visit schools and present information about Briarpatch as a preventative measure for kids contemplating running away. "If you don't have a support network," Murphy says, "when you hit the streets and you get hooked on drugs and sex, it will totally devour you." The Briarpatch workers also coordinate with other local agencies to find transitional housing and jobs for the homeless. "We do a lot of networking in the community and have to know what services are offered by the agencies," Schneider explains. The apple and the tree Trendell Johnson, 20, is a Briarpatch success story. He'd been a member of the Mickey Cobras gang since age 9, carrying on the tradition of a father he never met. "My father was killed in a gang fight in Chicago when he was 19 years old," says Johnson, who has already outlived his old man. "It was a month before I was born. He was a high Mickey Cobra, and sons follow in their fathers' footsteps." The Mickey Cobras gang originated on Chicago's west side in 1954. Originally called the Egyptian Cobras, from the 1970s through the 1990s, the Mickey Cobras had a strong presence in Cabrini Green, one of Chicago's worst housing projects. Membership has spread throughout the country. When Trendell was 5, his mother moved him and his three siblings to Madison. He got into gangs and trouble here, repeatedly ending up in juvenile court. "The gang was my family, my anchor, my boys," says Johnson. "You don't snake it out, you don't make it out." In 2002, when he was a freshman at Memorial High, Johnson was involved in a 42-student fight and expelled. It was one of three times that he was expelled from Memorial for fighting. In 2004, Johnson's family moved to Smyrna, Ga., where he ended up on in the juvenile felony wing of a prison facing a life sentence for severely beating a man. There Johnson found religion, at age 17. "It was terrifying. I was facing life in prison, and I had nowhere else to turn," he says. For reasons Johnson does not understand, the charges against him were dropped, and he was released to return to Madison in 2006. He enrolled at West High, but was kicked out for fighting. Johnson was 18 and still had to finish his senior year. Worse, his mother asked him to leave the family home, where he had been living. He moved in with friends and lived in his car for a while before finding his way to Briarpatch. Over the last two years, Schneider has worked to help Johnson rebuild his life. "We both had to learn to trust," Schneider says. Johnson agrees: "I didn't trust white girls, but now I don't see race. We both worked it out. She's a good friend, here to help." Johnson graduated from West in 2007 and is now attending MATC for a liberal arts degree. He has his own apartment and recently started working at a bank. He is a funny, gregarious guy, with a ready smile. He prefers to be called "T Blessed," the name he uses when he performs Christian rap at the Memorial Union, the Loft and churches. His religion is the most important thing in his life. BRIARPATCH STATISTICS, 2008 Street Outreach Program annual budget: $90,000 Of the 3,191 total clients: 589 were 11-14 years old WHERE TO GET HELP ARC Community Services
Youth Services annual budget: $1.8 million
Number of sex-protection kits distributed: 1,750
Number of food/drink items distributed: 2,224
Number of clients obtaining permanent/transitional housing: 20
Total number of unduplicated clients: 2,236
Total clients (including duplicates): 3,191
At-risk/at-home clients: 2,359
Homeless clients: 731
Runaways: 22
Throwaways: 79
1,780 were 15-18 years old
365 were 19-24 years old
1,677 were male
1,489 were female
25 were of unknown gender
2001 W. Beltline Hwy., Suite 102, Madison 53713
608-278-2300
ysosw@youthsos.org
Youth Services Briarpatch 24-hour helpline
608-251-1126
800-798-1126 (toll-free)
Project Respect
608-283-6435
www.arcomserv.org
IT'S SO NICE TO SEE WHERE I HAVE BEEN
By Rachel, age 17
Taking a part of me away that was put here for the cause.
The cause that somehow I'm supposed to fulfill but I can't because I'm gone.
But I'm not gone completely
I just need to search for myself
through the maze of where no one has thought to look for me yet,
deep, deep in that hole in the middle of the road.
Deep in that hole in which I'm unsure I've fallen or jumped into.
Either way, I'm missing, but not anymore because I see myself down there
And I yell to myself "It's so nice to see me, where have I been?"
I've been down here stuck in this hole and I can only get out on my own.
I need you my better half to help me out.
As I look from above, I want so bad to help myself out.
But then I am afraid that the best part of me will be stuck down there too.
My survivor.