DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF SCOTT TROIANO
1974 - 2004
For three years, I worked as a topless dancer in Hollywood California. I left the business with a very different attitude towards it than when I entered it. Contrary to my expectations, working in this world had a deeply negative impact on me and put my life in serious danger. And like many survivors of the sex industry, I found hope and healing when, after years of skepticism and resistance, I allowed Jesus Christ into my life. Thanks to His infinite mercy and my newfound faith as a Roman Catholic, I ultimately found the strength to walk away from this world and all that came with it.
The sex industry - pornography, prostitution, strip clubs, human trafficking - is a multi-million dollar enterprise. There are over 2,400 strip clubs in the United States which employ an estimated 200,000 women. Many women are attracted to the allure of glamour and fast, easy money. But I learned that this business takes more than it gives. I eventually realized that I was hurting myself and other people by being a stripper. For a long time I felt bad about my past, but through my faith I accepted God's forgiveness and I forgave myself.
I ask you to please have compassion for the men and women who, for various reasons, find themselves working in this world. It is so important to judge the sin and not the sinner. Many people in the sex industry come from very difficult, abusive backgrounds and are suffering in this business. So often those who get involved in this world do not truly understand the harm that they are doing to themselves and others, nor are they aware of the physical, emotional and spiritual risks they are taking. I certainly had no idea, not until I was well into it and very nearly lost my life.
Please refer to the links on the sidebar for the many resources available to you if you were formerly or are currently involved with the sex industry, either as an employee, business owner, or consumer. There are many hands outstretched to provide you with the spiritual, emotional, and physical support to help you put this painful world behind you. These are people who have been through the same kinds of things as you have, and care very much about you and want to help. They provide everything from temporary housing, job placement, and counseling. I have corresponded with many of them and I have found them to be immensely kind, compassionate, and nonjudgemental.
Jesus came to heal the sick and the suffering. He truly is the Divine Physician - I know, because He healed me. He came that you might have life and have it abundantly. He kept company with saints and sinners alike because He loves us all equally. Since I left stripping and accepted His love and His help, my life has dramatically improved and I can finally say today that I have true joy. I now have hope, when before my life seemed so hopeless. May this website bring you a little closer to His saving, merciful love. You too can become a new creation in Christ.
P.S. Even if you are not interested in becoming a Christian, this website and the resources listed have something to offer you. The purpose of our reaching out to people in the sex industry is to help, heal, and offer compassion, nothing more. Whether you choose to join us in our walk with Christ is for you to decide. You can even decide to remain in the industry and still receive our assistance, our support, and our prayers.
My Story
"You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:27-29).
I grew up in a broken home, and while a very young child I suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of my father. My mother finally got fed up with him and threw him out of the house due to this and the fact that he refused to work and support our impoverished family. Later, I was sexually abused by my mother's fiancee. Because of what he did, she thankfully decided not to marry him. But the emotional scars remained. I grew up an outsider and a misfit, and I eventually married a physically, sexually, and emotionally abusive man. At his hands, I ended up in the hospital. Several more abusive relationships followed. My self-esteem continued to suffer, in spite of extensive secular therapy and New Age and eastern spiritual practices. I was raised Buddhist and taught not to trust in an external God, but to rely upon my own inner strength, the so-called "God within." As a struggling artist, I went from low-paying job to low-paying job, some of these situations being quite abusive. This series of experiences was one factor which led to my becoming a stripper.
The other factor was cultural. Raised in post-sixties Berkeley under the ideology of the radical feminism that is so widely embraced there, I was taught by the prevailing culture that what I did with my body “a woman’s choice” and that I should "liberate" myself from the traditional Judeo-Christian concept of womanhood which extolled the virtues of being a wife and mother. Sex was primarily for pleasure, not reproduction, and abortion needed to be kept safe and legal.
To make matters worse, while a teenager, I witnessed the emotional hell my sister endured in the aftermath of her abortion, which left me traumatised. She went from being a troubled teenager to becoming severely emotionally ill, suffering from an eating disorder, alcohol and drug abuse, and sadly, more abortions. I shuddered at the idea of ever going through such an ordeal myself. Meanwhile, I was filling my head with the dogma of the deep ecologists and animal-rights advocates who asserted that there were far too many humans on the planet as it was and that humanity was facing a disastrous "population explosion." Then there was witnessing the difficulties my mother had raising children by herself in utter destitution. Motherhood looked like a trap and a prison to me. So in my early twenties, I had myself sterilized by undergoing a tubal ligation surgery, for the low price of forty dollars, courtesy of Planned Parenthood.
It is shocking to look back and reflect on the total lack of preparation I was given by the Planned Parenthood "counselors" with whom I was required to speak prior to the surgery. They told me nothing about the health risks associated with tubal ligations, and there are serious ones. And they failed to detect in my psychological screening interview that I was suffering from chronic clinical depression and anxiety and was in no way fit to undergo such a radical and life-changing form of contraception. But that's Planned Parenthood for you. When the doctor found out that I was having the procudure at such a young age, he called me the night before in hysterics, trying to talk me out of it. But I had made up my mind and was adamant. This rejection of the possibility of motherhood at such an early age laid the groundwork for the choices I would make later. Twenty years later, I would come to regret this decision.
Emancipated from the "burden" of having to raise children, I proceeded over the next fifteen years to express my right to do with my body what I wanted to, when and how I wanted to. Then came that fateful night when a boyfriend took me to a strip club for the first time. My boyfriend was a regular patron of strip clubs and his sister was a former stripper and porn actress. He seemed obsessed with strippers and pornography. Watching the women on stage, the thought occurred to me: “Now, there go some real feminists! Taking charge of their bodies and their sexuality with no apologies, and getting paid for it!” It looked like such a glamorous job, and besides, I needed work, and I was having a hard time finding a job in Los Angeles that paid the rent, even a temporary job. Before long, I put on those ridiculous platform shoes, joined my liberated sisters on stage, and I became a stripper.
To best illustrate my misguided attitude towards sexuality and the body, one that I believe is held by many people today, I cite this passage from Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, “Deus Caritas Est,” or, “God is Love”:
The Greeks—not unlike other cultures—considered eros principally as a kind of intoxication, the overpowering of reason by a “divine madness” which tears man away from his finite existence and enables him, in the very process of being overwhelmed by divine power, to experience supreme happiness. All other powers in heaven and on earth thus appear secondary: “Omnia vincit amor” says Virgil in the Bucolics—love conquers all—and he adds: “et nos cedamus amori”—let us, too, yield to love. In the religions, this attitude found expression in fertility cults, part of which was the “sacred” prostitution which flourished in many temples. Eros was thus celebrated as divine power, as fellowship with the Divine.
The Old Testament firmly opposed this form of religion, which represents a powerful temptation against monotheistic faith, combating it as a perversion of religiosity. But it in no way rejected eros as such; rather, it declared war on a warped and destructive form of it, because this counterfeit divinization of eros actually strips it of its dignity and dehumanizes it. Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had to bestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing “divine madness”: far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man.
Hailed as the oldest of its kind in Los Angeles , the club where I worked, Jumbo's Clown Room, is a popular hangout for entertainment industry people of all stripes, from the aspiring, yet-to-win-an-Oscar screenwriter to big-name celebrities and rock stars. Really more of a "go-go bar" or a "bikini bar" than a strip club, the dancers were required to wear pasties and we weren't pressured to sell lap dances to the patrons. It was also owned and managed by women. These factors made me feel more comfortable about working there, even though the money was far better at the "hustle clubs." Jumbo's was no big money club, but I didn't care. I wanted to dance, not hustle lap dances. We made our money on stage tips and were paid an hourly wage (albeit an illegal wage of $5.00 per hour - well below the state required minimum of $6.75.) This is not the case in most strip clubs, where dancers rely almost 100% on lap dances for their income. All of these factors made it somehow acceptable in my mind to work at such a safe and worker-friendly environment. This bar seemed harmless because there wasn't the curtained "VIP booth" or pressure on the women to get "intimate" with the customers. But I learned first hand, even at this "Disney version" of strip clubs, that being employed in the sex industry is anything but "sexy." It is a lifestyle that is unhealthy, unsafe, and only results in misery for everyone involved. And it is just as destructive and addictive for the people who work in it as it is for the people who patronize these establishments.
At first it seemed like a fun way for me to make a living as I tried to break into the entertainment industry as an animator. But in a very short time, I discovered a much darker side to the job, and its unhappy, unhealthy, and sometimes deadly cost. Having participated in this world, I can say unequivocally that the strip club business is nothing less than an invention of Satan to destroy human souls by robbing people of their God-given dignity.
Many of the women in this profession end up in prostitution (becoming "take out" with the patrons), doing porn films, and modeling for adult magazines. I'll never forget one beautiful and highly intelligent young woman who decided to go down that road and started "acting" in porn films. She tended to laugh and joke a lot, but her eyes gave away her deep sadness. Strippers who end up staying in the business too long (and most do) often end up alcoholic, drug-addicted, lesbian, or simply end up going crazy. I was definitely drinking too much, a problem greatly exacerbated by the fact that as dancers we were encouraged to drink with our customers, thus making the bar more money. I was also partaking of the drugs that were readily available in the club. Some end up dead from the unhealthy lifestyle. A couple of the women were literally killing themselves with their drug habits. One told me that her kidneys were damaged from the drugs and that she didn't expect to live past thirty. She had been dancing for many years. The other dancer was struggling with methamphetimine addiction. The manager told her she needed to lose weight and she proceeded to waste away. Research shows that sex workers suffer from a high rate of mental illneses, especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Bipolar Disorder. I saw evidence of this all around me. One dancer I knew got her wake-up call when she was nearly strangled to death by her boyfriend, who was a bouncer at the bar. She quit dancing after that. He wasn't fired, oddly enough. Another who worked at my club died of AIDS. One, a "feature dancer," was relentlessly stalked by a customer with whom, lured by his generous tips, she took things a little too far - a common occurrence in the strip club world.
Every dancer I knew had problems of one kind or another. There were so many sad stories in that bar. One bartender whom I hung out with occasionally was a former stripper who made her big money in Las Vegas. Retired from dancing, which she hated, she was a prostitute using the bar to solicit clients. She owned a house, had a nice fancy car, and had several sugar daddies to pay for her jewelry and botox. But she was lonely and depressed. She knew how to use and manipulate men, but true love seemed to elude her. She struggled with a gambling problem and a shopping addiction. She also drank too much at times and once smashed up her nice new car. Her life seemed so empty in spite of her "success" in the sex industry.
I was finally chased out of the job by one of the regulars at the bar, a man named Floyd Nassif who turned out to be a deeply disturbed person who was involved in serious criminal activity. Under the guise of helping us, he had rented my boyfriend (and later husband) and I an apartment up the street from the bar for very cheap, but within a week we fled the apartment in fear for our lives. Immediately upon our moving into the place, his behavior radically changed. He began stalking me, calling me in the middle of the night, and insisting to my husband that he couldn’t live there - yet. By his own admission to my boyfriend later, Floyd had put a hit on my boyfriend's life so that he could kidnap and rape me. He had earlier bragged that he had “guys paid off,” certain cops "in my back pocket," and that his extremely wealthy family “owned Hollywood." I also later suspected that Floyd might possibly have been involved in a human trafficking ring, and this suspicion was shared by two highly intuitive friends with backgrounds in the criminal justice system and whose opinions I highly respect.
Meanwhile, one of the bouncers at the bar, a self-professed Neo-Nazi, was starting to threaten me as well. Ever since the shooting death of a drug dealer had taken place in front of the bar, the atmosphere of the place was different. I had the impression that nobody was supposed to talk about what had happened, even though the dealer was a longtime regular at the club. I was told by another bouncer that the murder had nothing to do with drugs - a flagrant untruth. And now this other bouncer was "joking" about torturing and killing me, acting openly menacing towards me, for no reason. Having nowhere else to go, my husband and I immediately moved out of town, losing most of our possessions and our rent money in the process. Later, I was informed by private detectives that this threatening bouncer and Floyd were involved in drug trafficking at the bar.
I used to subscribe to the belief that "exotic dancing" was an art form and a healthy expression of sexual freedom for women in our sexually free, post-feminist age. This is merely a lie propagated by Satan. Several times I quit, only to end up missing the thrill, the good money, the false camaraderie, and I went back to it. Like a spider's web, it ensnares you economically, emotionally, and physically and it initially tricks you into wondering why you ever did anything else for a living when this is so fun, easy, and lucrative. When the scales fell from my eyes and I finally became truly sick of the job, I found it very tough to find a source of income in Los Angeles that I could live on, and this was with a college degree and previous job experience. Imagine how much tougher is for women with no degree and no other job background.
Today, I look back on my behavior as a stripper from a spiritual point of view, through the eyes of the Holy Spirit, and I see it very differently than before. It is now clear to me that we were practicing a kind of witchcraft on the men, in the form of seduction, ritual sex magic, and manipulation. We dancers would bewitch and enchant the men with our serpentine, lurid dance moves, seductive looks, and beguiling, girlish prattle, all the while plying money from their wallets and getting them to drink "spirits" as the juke box blared out its raunchy rock/rap/metal lyrics. We were manipulating the men and we knew it. Quite a few of my coworkers were practicing witches, which I have heard is common among sex workers. I was engaged in occultism in the form of tarot reading and astrology. For a number of reasons, I have a strong suspicion that the club owner was a Satanist. Some of the dancers as well as the clients seemed downright possessed, or as if under a spell. This again is not to denigrate the women who end up in this type of work. But to call this profession "entertainment" is a gross euphemism, a a sugar-coating term no doubt coined by the exploiters who created this business in the first place. Until I honestly acknowledged the sinful nature of what I had been doing and the damage I had incurred upon myself and other people, I could not have fully repented to God of my sins, been forgiven by Him, and truly come to terms with my past. I would have lived out my years in a state of denial, unhealed, unreconciled to God, failing to acknowledge the damge that I had done to others and myself, and the damage that had been done to me by my exploiters.
Many, if not most, of our customers were married men with children. How sad that they were wasting their time and money with us when they should have been at home with their families. Others were lonely single men who were using us as a substitute for serious, committed relationships. These men should have been putting their energy into looking for a real partner instead of fostering hopeless crushes on us strippers. Again, time and money wasted. Just what the evil one loves. I now pray the Rosary and attend Mass every day, which has healed me tremendously from the spiritual and emotional harm that resulted from my participating in this dark and poisonous world. And I pray for my former coworkers and clients, my boss, even for the man who stalked me. I also pray that all strip clubs close down once and for all.
I converted to Catholicism the year I quit my job. I was already headed towards a conversion to Chrisitanity towards the end of my "career," and after much prayer, research, and exploration, I chose the Roman Catholic faith. This included studying the writings of the early Church fathers and watching programs on EWTN, especially the teachings on the Holy Eucharist and the other sacraments. I also have to credit the Blessed Virgin Mary for choosing the Catholic Church, for it was she who had initially drawn me to her Son. I had for many years been impressed by the deep Catholic faith of the Mexican and Central American people I had grown up around in the San Francisco Bay Area. Eventually, I bought a print of the Virgin of Guadalupe for my home, attracted to the mysterious beauty of this compelling image. Years later, when I attended my first Catholic Mass, a profound thing happened that convinced me that I was in the right place. I powerfully and tangibly felt the presence of Christ there. For many of the first Masses I attended, the tears would stream down my face as I felt Christ's mercy penetrating and healing my soul.
But I cannot mention my departure from the stripping business and my conversion to Christianity without also mentioning a bouncer named Scott Troiano. He worked at a neighboring strip club in North Hollywood. In 2004, the year I quit dancing, Scott's life was suddenly and tragically cut short. I never met him, but he was my husband's best and very dear friend. He once saved my husband's life in an altercation involving an investor of one of the clubs where Scott worked. The man was deranged on coke and lunged at my husband with a knife. Scott tackled him to the floor. His death was a profound loss to those who really knew and loved him. I talked with some dancers as well as his close friends and family, and through them I learned what a special person he was. Only days after he died, I was actually visited by him in a dream that did not seem like a dream at all, but a very real encounter in which he was trying to convey a message to me. It was a short dream, lasting only a minute or so, but the impact was very powerful. In it he gave me a huge hug. I can only describe the feeling it left me with as one of total love. Something about this young man whom I had never met, and the devastating impact his death had on Scott's loved ones, pointed me to Jesus. Sometimes it takes a horrible event to jar you awake. I wasn't the only dancer who quit after Scott died. Several others who knew him also left their jobs. Within months after my dream, I left the business, and Hollywood, for good.
Scott was raised Catholic, and although he had not attended church for some time, I was told that he still believed very much in God and his heart had not been corrupted by the seedy world around him. This was demonstrated in his kindly compassion and concern for the vulnerable women he was in charge of watching over every night, making sure they got into their cars safely. I wish I could say that all bouncers showed this much concern for the girls. I'd say that among the five bouncers working at my bar, not one was actually there for the right reasons. They all were there to either have access to the dancers after whom they lusted, sell drugs, or to sit on their rear ends and get paid. Scott was not like that. So deeply was his loss felt that I was told the dancers at his club wept while performing on stage after he died. But after awhile, no one bothered to remain in touch with Scott's mother except two dancers. Sadly, he was planning to quit being a bouncer. He had been in the business for many years and like most people, it was getting to him and wanted out. He was planning to leave Los Angeles and pursue his true calling that year - working in criminal justice.
In Memory of Scott Troiano (1974 - 2004)
and visit Scott's online memorial.
Scott's story only proves how lethal this world is. Even at my own establishment, there were several violent deaths in just the three years I worked there. I can't even count the number of fights that broke out, or the number of times dancers (including myself) were physically and sexually assaulted by patrons. All the deaths involved either drugs, alcohol, or gang activity. A spirit of anger and violence seemed to hover over the club, especially at night. The dancers generally made more money at night, but I generally stayed away from the night shift, when it seemed to morph into an entirely different place, a place much more sinister, perverse, and dangerous, attracting all manner of disturbed characters. Even so, the environment was having a negative influence on me and my personality. It was making me more and more angry and depressed to be there.
The owner of my club, Karen Taylor, was a woman, but was hardly the concerned mother hen she professed to be. She had inherited the business from her dad, a purported circus clown. How a circus clown managed to save up enough money to buy real estate and start up several businesses in Los Angeles is a mystery. She did nothing about the man who stalked me or any of the other predators who terrorized the other dancers. In fact, her behavior was inexplicably hostile towards me when I explained to her what had happened to me later. For no reason, she refused to pay me my last week's pay. And when I demanded it from her later by phone and email, she called the police on me, claiming that I had threatened her. In fact, my husband and I had been continually threatened by her staff whenever I called asking for my paycheck. Of course, the officer took her side, not mine, even though I had tape recordings of her staff members making graphic death threats. The officer wasn't interested in hearing about it. Eventually, she was forced by the labor department to send me the check.
Like all strip club owners, her concern was with one thing and one thing only: money. She didn't care about what happened to us, she had her palatial home in the hills, her $60,000 Jaguar, and her Carribean vacations. It doesn't matter, a woman pimp is still a pimp. It became quite obvious to me soon after being hired that she was making that money from more than just selling drinks. Not only did I witness regular drug dealing take place at the bar, but some of the dancers engaged in prostitution using the hotel located across the street from the bar. Prostitution, drug trafficking, and money laundering are the real source of revenue at strip clubs. And this is all too often going on under the auspices of the local police, and sometimes the local politicians as well.
People need to understand that the sex industry kills - both the body and the soul. It seduces many young women who look at it as a fun and harmless way to make good money while they put themselves through school or pursue a career in "showbiz" - but that's a deception. I have talked to former drug dealers who used the same rationalisation - "I'm doing this just to pay my bills until I catch up with my debts, then I'll quit" - only to also invariably find themselves still stuck doing it, years later. I get annoyed with the movies and TV programs that attempt to glamorize this depressing, soul-murdering world. More satanic propaganda. Strippers and porn actresses are not happy, healthy people, and it frightens me that more and more girls and women are looking up to them, like I once did, as “empowered feminists.” If only they knew how deeply wounded most sex workers are, with an estimated eighty percent coming from emotionally and physically abusive homes. Strip club owners and pornographers are merely opportunists, profiting handsomely from the low self esteem and emotional woundedness of the men and women they exploit. So rife with physical and mental problems are the lives of porn actors and actresses that former adult film stars have created nonprofit organizations offering support services to keep them from committing suicide or overdosing on drugs. Please refer to Shelley Lubben's website to learn more about the tragic consequences of working in porn.
A "G-string diva" is a no one to be envied or admired. Contrary to what I initially believed, this is not an “art form.” It’s a tragic, lonely, and dangerous lifestyle. Behind the sexy stripper facade is a deeply wounded and confused little girl who needs help, who needs compassion, who needs Jesus. She usually ends up hating men for being stupid enough to give her money for gyrating in front of him. She knows deep down that he is exploiting her, and that she is using him. And she knows that the whole thing is a con game, no matter what she tells herself. One of the popular songs the women at my bar liked to perform to was titled “Living Dead Girl,” and for me, that epitomizes the state of an dancer’s soul. Don’t be fooled by her tough, hardened exterior. And by all means don't hate her or judge her. I found the dancers I worked with to be for the most part, sensitive, intelligent women, often quite creative and talented, with dreams of eventually getting out of the profession. But its not so easy, especially if they’ve been a stripper since they were seventeen. I had gotten into it in my thirties, and truly, I believe that this is partly what saved me from getting totally sucked in. I had a college degree, previous job experiences, an identity other than that of a stripper - not so for many of these women. I think a lot of my coworkers felt stuck. Their self-perception was warped from years of being a professional sex object. Over time, this happened to me too. Working in such a degrading, abusive environment, surrounded by low-lifes, was doing a demolition job on my self esteem, eroding my confidence and sense of dignity.
In compensation for these depressing feelings, some of my coworkers acted downright proud of their profession, strutting around as if they were “all that.” To some degree, I was proud of what I was doing too - after all, did it not take some guts to be a stripper? Were we not admired and lusted after by our male and female fans? I was constantly told by other women, even my own friends, how much they envied me for being a stripper, how bold and sexy I was. What a vain delusion we were living in!
I have seen firsthand how this profession destroys relationships and marriages. I never knew one stripper or client who had a happy relationship, myself included. I went out with a couple of men I met at the bar which both ended disastrously. As one dancer told me, "If you want a happy relationship, then get out of this business." This certainly proved to be true in my life. My relationship with my husband vastly improved after I quit for the last time (and we got married and stopped living in sin). But why, then, didn't she leave? Why did she put up with the losers she kept dating and their abusive behavior if she knew it was connected to her job?
We need to send our prayers to the San Fernando Valley, home of the American porn film industry. We must pray that the hearts of the men and women enslaved by this cruel business be healed by the love and mercy of Christ Jesus. As with all people trapped in a sinful behavior pattern, Jesus is their only hope. What I find particularly disturbing is that more and more women from mainstream society are getting into stripping and acting in pornographic films. The owner of World Modeling Agency, the porn industry’s leading talent agency in California, claims that in only a few decades, he has seen a huge increase in the number of visits to his office from young women eager to break into the adult film business. Pornography has become "normalized." Just look at the totally immodest fashion trends popular among girls and young women today. Our society is sexualizing girls more and more, at younger ages than ever before.
Let's pray that our misguided and wounded brothers and sisters - the strippers, the club owners, the bouncers, the porn stars, the prostitutes, and their clients - begin to see themselves as our loving Father sees them, that He wants better lives for them than this, that they are wonderfully and perfectly made, as unique and lovable children of God. And that they don't have to be abused and exploited to be loved or to earn a living.
|
