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The Boy in the Doorway
Simon Mason • 18 January 2021
For those of you who are interested, there is a part of the 12-step recovery process that ‘suggests’ we try to make amends to those people/communities we have harmed.
I say ‘suggest’ because you might be surprised to know, there are no real absolutes in recovery, not in my experience anyway, the only ‘suggestion’ I have adhered to without question, is to not use that first drink or drug, no matter what. (15 years and counting this year)
While I briefly have your attention, I’d like to debunk another myth if I may.
I don’t believe in ‘god’ certainly not any theocratic/religious god anyway, some of my friends do, many are agnostic, but nobody has the right to tell me or anyone else what I ‘need’ to believe in.
I ‘believe’ in the shared experience and wisdom of others who have stayed clean/sober too and that is why I find so much ‘power’ from attending fellowship meetings whenever possible.
It is precisely for these reasons, the ‘amends’ and the need for others walking the same path, that it was suggested to me in early recovery, to start a fellowship meeting in Stoke Newington, Hackney, the neighborhood that had been exposed to years of my two-bob junkie behavior. I did ‘things’ that impacted on my community and wanted to try to put some of that right where possible. I’d moved away for the first few months of my recovery but returned to my little flat after six months.
There is line in the 9th-step, the ‘amends’ step that says, “We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so, would injure them or others”.
My ‘idea’ at the time was to approach the various shop-owners I’d been pilfering from for years and ‘own’ my previous behavior, it was suggested to me, that this course of action may indeed result in further injuries, mainly to me as most of the people I intended to approach were possibly not that bothered about hearing from one of the (retired) major players in the sale of stolen salmon/razorblades/coffee/anything I could get a tenner for, and might perhaps enjoy the opportunity to clump one of the ‘kind’ of people who were/are the bane of their livelihoods.
So ‘we’ started a meeting in Stoke Newington, the ‘we’ being me and Carrie and a few other like-minded souls who were all just trying to get another day clean.
Carrie, she’d be the first to admit it, could be ‘difficult’, one of her biggest problems was her inability to forgive herself for that, to accept herself and care about herself as just another human-being, who’d experienced such deep trauma, that being ‘difficult’ was merely a consequence of her own experiences, many of which were indeed so deeply traumatic, that the healing from them might take a very long time.
In recovery, we get time, not so much in active addiction.
Addicts don’t really ‘like’ time though, much of what we’re attempting to do in active addiction is to either distort or avoid the passing of it completely, that’s why drugs are so attractive to us, they disconnect ‘us’ from ourselves, others and the archenemy, our feelings and the hours/days/weeks that attack us with those feelings.
One of the truisms I heard in early recovery is “If you want to know what the problem really is, stop using drugs and you’ll find out.”
Obviously, staring at yourself in a mirror while trying to inject heroin into your neck is a strong indicator that you ‘might’ have a problem with drugs (in my experience) but for many of ‘us’ it is only when we manage to stop that kind of self-destructive behavior that we begin to get a clearer understanding of the reasons why we suffered that sort of shit for so long.
It’s not really ‘normal’ that kinda stuff is it?
*Reality klaxon alert*
SOME PEOPLE JUST GET ADDICTED TO DRUGS BECAUSE MOST DRUGS ARE VERY ADDICTIVE
*Has quick vape*
So yeah, ‘we’ started a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in N16, it’s still there today and over the years, I’ve witnessed people walk through the door and find what they needed to improve their lives, often beyond measure.
The ‘Boy’ in The Boy in the Doorway, did exactly that, he’d sat begging outside Sainsburys on the High Street for years,
“Wrapped up in shadows and sorrow, hiding from history.”
I walked past him often, we spoke a couple of times then one day he wasn’t there anymore, and I assumed he’d died, like Gary and ‘fat’ John his brother, Kevin, Pete, Scouse, Rena, Graham, Juno, the list goes on.
He hadn’t died.
“Went past the boy in the doorway, saw he was gone.
Heard he’d moved to the coast for a cure, his time here was done.”
He came back from the coast, clean for the first time In his life and has remained so, he’s been to college and is now qualified to teach art, his childhood dream now becoming a reality.
I love him like a brother and find him inspirational in ways that words cannot adequately express.
Marie came to the meeting too, she knew Carrie well, they’d used together, they’d both resorted to what many women sadly find themselves having to do to support a vicious and soul-destroying addiction. They’d both experienced the violence, the degradation, the humiliation, the rapes, the seemingly insurmountable tsunami of self-loathing that stems from all this.
By the time Marie arrived at the Stoke Newington meeting, Carrie had relapsed back into active addiction and was again exposed to the daily nightmare of standing on Shacklewell Lane as local men cruised by in their cars looking for another woman so damaged, they would climb inside for less than £20.
Think about that for a minute.
I’m not a woman, I’m not going to even try to explain what that must feel like but there was one incident that occurred that gave me just the slightest insight into how these things play-out for women who find themselves in that position.
I lived a few doors up from Carries flat, Shacklewell Lane was a 2-minute walk from ours and so I drove along it regularly. I was coming home after work one night, dark, cold wet, hostile, miserable in the extreme. (the weather not me) There’s a small park, the Island which creates the opportunity for cars to circulate along that particular stretch of Shacklewell Lane, drivers can go round and round looking for women like Carrie. That night, I slowed down as I approached the island, the car in front of me was stationary, so I also came to a halt, when suddenly, there’s a tap on the car window, rain and condensation making it difficult to see either in or out, and then there’s a face,
“Business mate, business?”
Then silence and a tiny, helpless scream as Carrie realizes it’s me, her friend not some creepy curb-crawling scumbag.
The look on her face, the shame, the absolute horror she was instantly assailed by as she started to cry,
“Oh fucking hell, no Simon…sorry I’m really sorry, I’m so sorry”
She scurried off back into the shadows and sorrow of Shacklewell Lane, I never saw her alive again.
Carrie Louise Althorpe died April 1st, 2017.
I saw Marie every week, she came to the meeting, she got clean in NA meetings, a demonstration of such heroic conviction to the recovery process and the compassion and encouragement offered by other members to those who arrive in need of our support.
She’d read a book about another addict’s story of addiction and his own recovery process in NA meetings, which briefly detailed that individuals own experience of enduring chronic withdrawals from heroin/crack. Getting clean in meetings, cold turkey, no detox, no rehab, just the meetings and the people who supported him. She believed that what was written in that book was honest and that she could also achieve the same results. It was and she did.
There’s many ways ‘we’ can share a message of hope, some people forget that, I can forget it too, but I try not to.
Marie eventually returned to her hometown of Southend, and just as I and John, (the boy in the doorway) had also experienced, she discovered that it is possible to stay clean in those places that had witnessed so many of our nightmares, it is possible to try and make our amends to those communities who had been affected by our behavior during those times.
Another truism I’ve heard many times over the years, is that ‘if’ an addict puts even half the energy into their recovery, that they put into their using, they will not only stay clean, but they might also do remarkable things.
*2nd Truth Klaxon*
THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE REMARKABLE THAN AND ADDICT/ALCOHOLIC GETTING AND STAYING CLEAN/SOBER (In my opinion)
Marie knew that she had something to offer, particularly to other women who were still standing on street corners at the mercy of men wishing to exploit their vulnerability, often for less money than the price of a round of drinks. She ‘felt’ that Carrie wanted her to try and do something to help those women.
There were no services whatsoever available to the ladies of Ambleside Drive in Southend when Marie returned to live there, a few years clean, still very much in her own process of addressing her own trauma and the consequences of her own addiction. She chose to address these, face on and part of that process involved trying to create something that could help others.
No formal ‘qualifications’, no money, seemingly very little interest at first from those apparently charged with trying to help some of the most vulnerable women in society.
“What did we do as a society to allow these women to become victims to drug addiction and sexual exploitation? “
Like I said earlier in this piece,
‘If’ an addict puts even half the energy into their recovery, that they put into their using, they will not only stay clean, but they might also do remarkable things.
Marie and those she gathered together to assist her have done something truly remarkable you can read all about it here.
https://www.aspirationsprogram.co.uk/
Hightown Pirates are a collective of musicians in various forms of recovery from addiction, we have always included women in our number, some of whom have also experienced similar things to Carrie and Marie.
“We sing our songs to the empty rooms, we’ll kiss your scars until you love them too, the lovers and the others, the dreamers who can never ever sleep.”
We are entirely self-supporting, no label, no management and zero interest from an industry that literally dances on the graves of those artists who did not survive their own addictions, but still make huge profits for the record -labels who ‘own’ their songs.
We are releasing our latest song on Valentines day 2021, it’s called The Boy in the Doorway, songwriter Simon Mason, wrote it about Carrie and John.
We would urge you to donate anything you feel comfortable with, to the following link so that the work being undertaken by the charity can continue to help those it seeks to serve.
https://www.aspirationsprogram.co.uk/sex-worker-outreach
It will be available on all digital streaming platforms on February 14th.
“We keep what we have, by giving it away.”
It is dedicated to Carrie and the countless other who are no longer with us.
Marie asked me to add her words to this piece, so here they are.
“Firstly, I think I need to get the point across that women with an addiction problem do not choose to sell sex! I certainly didn’t when I was asked in school what I wanted to be when I grew up did not say I want to sell my soul over and over again sometimes for the price of McDonald’s Meal Deal. I’d have answered I want to be a writer. Women who sell sex had Hopes, dreams & Aspirations. Cruelly taken away from the need to numb the pain most likely from adverse childhood experiences, or a absent parent.
When I came back to Southend I moved back near the red-light area. I’d see women I’d used with still there in the dark, in the rain more often than not withdrawing. I’d cringe because I knew the night(s) they had ahead of them. Long lonely gut wrenching, soul destroying, heartbreaking nights. What I also noticed was the women who weren’t around, the women who were dead, my using friends, a mother a daughter a sister an aunt, not going home to their families ever again.
A few months after moving home I got the news our beautiful Carrie had taken her own life, I was devastated, I mean really devastated. After her funeral on the long train ride home I thought about Carrie and the high volumes of women who I knew had died. I started to cry uncontrollably. It was then I knew I had to do something.
I don’t have any qualifications, I was living in hostel after being made homeless, but I knew my experience was worth something, in fact any using addict who has got clean experience is priceless. I started calling drug commissioners asking what was in place for the women who sell sex. I was told there was a woman’s group at 10am on a Thursday at our local drug and alcohol service.
10am? A woman who sells sex would not have long crawled into bed at 10am.
So, I got up and took on a functional skills course at my local college, which ironically, is situated on the red-light area. I went on every bit of trauma Informed care training I could get my hands on; I attended every meeting within local services I could get in to, being a voice to the women who had lost theirs. In March 2020 I went to the £1 shop and brought condoms, toiletries, and chocolate, put them into bags with my phone number and headed off on to the red-light area with a friend from the local soup kitchen I was volunteering at.
It took time, perseverance, and courage to go back to the corner I sold myself so cheaply from. Then it happened the women one by one started to call my phone. I’ve built up strong trusting relationships with the women where others haven’t been able too.
We fundraised in the same way I used to graft for my crack. We got enough money for a venue right by the red-light area. We spent months in there painting and creating a trauma Informed environment for the women.
When the first woman came through the door her words “ This is my safe place from him “ she is talking about her abusive partner.
I was asked yesterday “ What would success look like to me?”
My answer?
“ If we can exit one woman from the trauma and damage that street prostitution brings and she makes it out like I did, that’s what success looks like to me.”
Our outreach service is named after our dear friend Carrie, as you said Simon there’s many ways to carry a message, Carrie has certainly left a powerful message.
“Spoke to the boy in the doorway, same place as yesterday.
He’s all wrapped up in shadows, sorrow, hiding from history.
But he’ll still raise a glass to his demons, pick fights with reality.
Don’t you know that I’d put some skin on those bones, he won’t let me.
But I looked straight into his eyes and I told him, I care.
And I whispered, very softly, don’t be so scared.
Hey man, you seen our Carrie? she don’t answer her phone.
Don’t you know that died, just last week and she died, cold and alone.
So, go dance to some sad songs, she’d like it that way.
Then go sit in your circles, maybe I’ll join you one day.
And she looked straight into my eyes, and she told me, please care,
And she whispered, very softly, don’t be so scared.
Went past the boy in the doorway, saw he was gone.
Heard he’d moved to the coast for a cure, his time here was done.
But the girl that sits in his place, looks exactly the same.
She knows all the words to my song; she don’t know her own name.
And she looked straight into my eyes, and she said, please won’t you care.
Then she whispered very softly, don’t be so scared.
And she looked straight into my eyes, god knows what she’ll find there?
I say ‘suggest’ because you might be surprised to know, there are no real absolutes in recovery, not in my experience anyway, the only ‘suggestion’ I have adhered to without question, is to not use that first drink or drug, no matter what. (15 years and counting this year)
While I briefly have your attention, I’d like to debunk another myth if I may.
I don’t believe in ‘god’ certainly not any theocratic/religious god anyway, some of my friends do, many are agnostic, but nobody has the right to tell me or anyone else what I ‘need’ to believe in.
I ‘believe’ in the shared experience and wisdom of others who have stayed clean/sober too and that is why I find so much ‘power’ from attending fellowship meetings whenever possible.
It is precisely for these reasons, the ‘amends’ and the need for others walking the same path, that it was suggested to me in early recovery, to start a fellowship meeting in Stoke Newington, Hackney, the neighborhood that had been exposed to years of my two-bob junkie behavior. I did ‘things’ that impacted on my community and wanted to try to put some of that right where possible. I’d moved away for the first few months of my recovery but returned to my little flat after six months.
There is line in the 9th-step, the ‘amends’ step that says, “We made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so, would injure them or others”.
My ‘idea’ at the time was to approach the various shop-owners I’d been pilfering from for years and ‘own’ my previous behavior, it was suggested to me, that this course of action may indeed result in further injuries, mainly to me as most of the people I intended to approach were possibly not that bothered about hearing from one of the (retired) major players in the sale of stolen salmon/razorblades/coffee/anything I could get a tenner for, and might perhaps enjoy the opportunity to clump one of the ‘kind’ of people who were/are the bane of their livelihoods.
So ‘we’ started a meeting in Stoke Newington, the ‘we’ being me and Carrie and a few other like-minded souls who were all just trying to get another day clean.
Carrie, she’d be the first to admit it, could be ‘difficult’, one of her biggest problems was her inability to forgive herself for that, to accept herself and care about herself as just another human-being, who’d experienced such deep trauma, that being ‘difficult’ was merely a consequence of her own experiences, many of which were indeed so deeply traumatic, that the healing from them might take a very long time.
In recovery, we get time, not so much in active addiction.
Addicts don’t really ‘like’ time though, much of what we’re attempting to do in active addiction is to either distort or avoid the passing of it completely, that’s why drugs are so attractive to us, they disconnect ‘us’ from ourselves, others and the archenemy, our feelings and the hours/days/weeks that attack us with those feelings.
One of the truisms I heard in early recovery is “If you want to know what the problem really is, stop using drugs and you’ll find out.”
Obviously, staring at yourself in a mirror while trying to inject heroin into your neck is a strong indicator that you ‘might’ have a problem with drugs (in my experience) but for many of ‘us’ it is only when we manage to stop that kind of self-destructive behavior that we begin to get a clearer understanding of the reasons why we suffered that sort of shit for so long.
It’s not really ‘normal’ that kinda stuff is it?
*Reality klaxon alert*
SOME PEOPLE JUST GET ADDICTED TO DRUGS BECAUSE MOST DRUGS ARE VERY ADDICTIVE
*Has quick vape*
So yeah, ‘we’ started a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in N16, it’s still there today and over the years, I’ve witnessed people walk through the door and find what they needed to improve their lives, often beyond measure.
The ‘Boy’ in The Boy in the Doorway, did exactly that, he’d sat begging outside Sainsburys on the High Street for years,
“Wrapped up in shadows and sorrow, hiding from history.”
I walked past him often, we spoke a couple of times then one day he wasn’t there anymore, and I assumed he’d died, like Gary and ‘fat’ John his brother, Kevin, Pete, Scouse, Rena, Graham, Juno, the list goes on.
He hadn’t died.
“Went past the boy in the doorway, saw he was gone.
Heard he’d moved to the coast for a cure, his time here was done.”
He came back from the coast, clean for the first time In his life and has remained so, he’s been to college and is now qualified to teach art, his childhood dream now becoming a reality.
I love him like a brother and find him inspirational in ways that words cannot adequately express.
Marie came to the meeting too, she knew Carrie well, they’d used together, they’d both resorted to what many women sadly find themselves having to do to support a vicious and soul-destroying addiction. They’d both experienced the violence, the degradation, the humiliation, the rapes, the seemingly insurmountable tsunami of self-loathing that stems from all this.
By the time Marie arrived at the Stoke Newington meeting, Carrie had relapsed back into active addiction and was again exposed to the daily nightmare of standing on Shacklewell Lane as local men cruised by in their cars looking for another woman so damaged, they would climb inside for less than £20.
Think about that for a minute.
I’m not a woman, I’m not going to even try to explain what that must feel like but there was one incident that occurred that gave me just the slightest insight into how these things play-out for women who find themselves in that position.
I lived a few doors up from Carries flat, Shacklewell Lane was a 2-minute walk from ours and so I drove along it regularly. I was coming home after work one night, dark, cold wet, hostile, miserable in the extreme. (the weather not me) There’s a small park, the Island which creates the opportunity for cars to circulate along that particular stretch of Shacklewell Lane, drivers can go round and round looking for women like Carrie. That night, I slowed down as I approached the island, the car in front of me was stationary, so I also came to a halt, when suddenly, there’s a tap on the car window, rain and condensation making it difficult to see either in or out, and then there’s a face,
“Business mate, business?”
Then silence and a tiny, helpless scream as Carrie realizes it’s me, her friend not some creepy curb-crawling scumbag.
The look on her face, the shame, the absolute horror she was instantly assailed by as she started to cry,
“Oh fucking hell, no Simon…sorry I’m really sorry, I’m so sorry”
She scurried off back into the shadows and sorrow of Shacklewell Lane, I never saw her alive again.
Carrie Louise Althorpe died April 1st, 2017.
I saw Marie every week, she came to the meeting, she got clean in NA meetings, a demonstration of such heroic conviction to the recovery process and the compassion and encouragement offered by other members to those who arrive in need of our support.
She’d read a book about another addict’s story of addiction and his own recovery process in NA meetings, which briefly detailed that individuals own experience of enduring chronic withdrawals from heroin/crack. Getting clean in meetings, cold turkey, no detox, no rehab, just the meetings and the people who supported him. She believed that what was written in that book was honest and that she could also achieve the same results. It was and she did.
There’s many ways ‘we’ can share a message of hope, some people forget that, I can forget it too, but I try not to.
Marie eventually returned to her hometown of Southend, and just as I and John, (the boy in the doorway) had also experienced, she discovered that it is possible to stay clean in those places that had witnessed so many of our nightmares, it is possible to try and make our amends to those communities who had been affected by our behavior during those times.
Another truism I’ve heard many times over the years, is that ‘if’ an addict puts even half the energy into their recovery, that they put into their using, they will not only stay clean, but they might also do remarkable things.
*2nd Truth Klaxon*
THERE ARE FEW THINGS MORE REMARKABLE THAN AND ADDICT/ALCOHOLIC GETTING AND STAYING CLEAN/SOBER (In my opinion)
Marie knew that she had something to offer, particularly to other women who were still standing on street corners at the mercy of men wishing to exploit their vulnerability, often for less money than the price of a round of drinks. She ‘felt’ that Carrie wanted her to try and do something to help those women.
There were no services whatsoever available to the ladies of Ambleside Drive in Southend when Marie returned to live there, a few years clean, still very much in her own process of addressing her own trauma and the consequences of her own addiction. She chose to address these, face on and part of that process involved trying to create something that could help others.
No formal ‘qualifications’, no money, seemingly very little interest at first from those apparently charged with trying to help some of the most vulnerable women in society.
“What did we do as a society to allow these women to become victims to drug addiction and sexual exploitation? “
Like I said earlier in this piece,
‘If’ an addict puts even half the energy into their recovery, that they put into their using, they will not only stay clean, but they might also do remarkable things.
Marie and those she gathered together to assist her have done something truly remarkable you can read all about it here.
https://www.aspirationsprogram.co.uk/
Hightown Pirates are a collective of musicians in various forms of recovery from addiction, we have always included women in our number, some of whom have also experienced similar things to Carrie and Marie.
“We sing our songs to the empty rooms, we’ll kiss your scars until you love them too, the lovers and the others, the dreamers who can never ever sleep.”
We are entirely self-supporting, no label, no management and zero interest from an industry that literally dances on the graves of those artists who did not survive their own addictions, but still make huge profits for the record -labels who ‘own’ their songs.
We are releasing our latest song on Valentines day 2021, it’s called The Boy in the Doorway, songwriter Simon Mason, wrote it about Carrie and John.
We would urge you to donate anything you feel comfortable with, to the following link so that the work being undertaken by the charity can continue to help those it seeks to serve.
https://www.aspirationsprogram.co.uk/sex-worker-outreach
It will be available on all digital streaming platforms on February 14th.
“We keep what we have, by giving it away.”
It is dedicated to Carrie and the countless other who are no longer with us.
Marie asked me to add her words to this piece, so here they are.
“Firstly, I think I need to get the point across that women with an addiction problem do not choose to sell sex! I certainly didn’t when I was asked in school what I wanted to be when I grew up did not say I want to sell my soul over and over again sometimes for the price of McDonald’s Meal Deal. I’d have answered I want to be a writer. Women who sell sex had Hopes, dreams & Aspirations. Cruelly taken away from the need to numb the pain most likely from adverse childhood experiences, or a absent parent.
When I came back to Southend I moved back near the red-light area. I’d see women I’d used with still there in the dark, in the rain more often than not withdrawing. I’d cringe because I knew the night(s) they had ahead of them. Long lonely gut wrenching, soul destroying, heartbreaking nights. What I also noticed was the women who weren’t around, the women who were dead, my using friends, a mother a daughter a sister an aunt, not going home to their families ever again.
A few months after moving home I got the news our beautiful Carrie had taken her own life, I was devastated, I mean really devastated. After her funeral on the long train ride home I thought about Carrie and the high volumes of women who I knew had died. I started to cry uncontrollably. It was then I knew I had to do something.
I don’t have any qualifications, I was living in hostel after being made homeless, but I knew my experience was worth something, in fact any using addict who has got clean experience is priceless. I started calling drug commissioners asking what was in place for the women who sell sex. I was told there was a woman’s group at 10am on a Thursday at our local drug and alcohol service.
10am? A woman who sells sex would not have long crawled into bed at 10am.
So, I got up and took on a functional skills course at my local college, which ironically, is situated on the red-light area. I went on every bit of trauma Informed care training I could get my hands on; I attended every meeting within local services I could get in to, being a voice to the women who had lost theirs. In March 2020 I went to the £1 shop and brought condoms, toiletries, and chocolate, put them into bags with my phone number and headed off on to the red-light area with a friend from the local soup kitchen I was volunteering at.
It took time, perseverance, and courage to go back to the corner I sold myself so cheaply from. Then it happened the women one by one started to call my phone. I’ve built up strong trusting relationships with the women where others haven’t been able too.
We fundraised in the same way I used to graft for my crack. We got enough money for a venue right by the red-light area. We spent months in there painting and creating a trauma Informed environment for the women.
When the first woman came through the door her words “ This is my safe place from him “ she is talking about her abusive partner.
I was asked yesterday “ What would success look like to me?”
My answer?
“ If we can exit one woman from the trauma and damage that street prostitution brings and she makes it out like I did, that’s what success looks like to me.”
Our outreach service is named after our dear friend Carrie, as you said Simon there’s many ways to carry a message, Carrie has certainly left a powerful message.
“Spoke to the boy in the doorway, same place as yesterday.
He’s all wrapped up in shadows, sorrow, hiding from history.
But he’ll still raise a glass to his demons, pick fights with reality.
Don’t you know that I’d put some skin on those bones, he won’t let me.
But I looked straight into his eyes and I told him, I care.
And I whispered, very softly, don’t be so scared.
Hey man, you seen our Carrie? she don’t answer her phone.
Don’t you know that died, just last week and she died, cold and alone.
So, go dance to some sad songs, she’d like it that way.
Then go sit in your circles, maybe I’ll join you one day.
And she looked straight into my eyes, and she told me, please care,
And she whispered, very softly, don’t be so scared.
Went past the boy in the doorway, saw he was gone.
Heard he’d moved to the coast for a cure, his time here was done.
But the girl that sits in his place, looks exactly the same.
She knows all the words to my song; she don’t know her own name.
And she looked straight into my eyes, and she said, please won’t you care.
Then she whispered very softly, don’t be so scared.
And she looked straight into my eyes, god knows what she’ll find there?
And I told her, very softly, I used to sit there.”
A former addict is earning the trust of women who sell sex on the streets of Southend as she devotes her life to giving them a route out.
In this highly personal and powerful blog, Marie Edmonds, founder of the Aspirations Days Program and Carrie's Outreach, shares her experiences of addiction and selling sex. Prostitution has been a common issue around the globe for hundreds of years. This bizarre, degrading and frightening way to earn money has led men and women to their death, caused harm to the communities the trade is offered in, and caused massive long-term effects, mentally, physically and emotionally to those involved. The effects are devastating. In Whitechapel, East London, in April 1818 ‘Jack the Ripper’ killed five vulnerable women. Five women who, from witness accounts, were seen to be drinking somewhat heavily in the local joints before they took their trade on to the back streets of Whitechapel. This would lead you to believe each woman was suffering an alcohol problem. This happened, it was real, a man cutting women who sold sex into pieces and taking their lives. In Ipswich, Suffolk in, November 2006 five women who sold sex were killed by strangulation in the space of six weeks. All these women were known to local services for suffering with heroin, alcohol and crack cocaine problems. One woman was interviewed on the news saying how she didn’t want to be out there but didn’t have much choice as she had to feed her addiction problem. Just one day later her body was found a few miles from where the interview had taken place. One of these women had only given birth to a baby boy a few weeks before she was killed. All the women were someone’s child or their sister, their aunt or a mother to their own children. They were all extremely vulnerable women, forced to sell sex on the streets due to their drug addiction, with the consequences proving fatal for them. These are just two accounts in one country that illustrate the devastating effects of prostitution. Ten women killed while out trying to fund a habit they had no choice over, while trying to avoid the pain of underlying trauma. I’m certain that none of these women had any understanding of why they were using, they didn’t even know why they were putting themselves in such high-risk situations to fund their drug habits. For them, their thinking was just to earn a few pounds so that they didn’t need to suffer the effects of withdrawals. A total loss of control over their lives, values, morals and respect for themselves will have taken place, desperation of the highest form. I am mentioning these cases because I sold sex to fund my addiction in the Whitechapel area at the time the women were being murdered in Ipswich. I didn’t want to ‘work’ the streets in my local area down to fear of somebody I knew seeing me. I remember the news being flooded with images of these woman, I remember the warnings for women selling sex in Ipswich and the surrounding areas not to go out onto the streets, and I remember the police presence in Whitechapel being stepped up. The police would get out of the car, ask if we were ‘ok’ and warn us about what was happening to the women in the Ipswich area. Did this stop me going out on dark nights? No, it didn’t. Was I scared? I was absolutely petrified. So why couldn’t I stop? The answer is I had totally lost all my power to heroin and crack cocaine. I started taking crack and heroin when I was just 17 years old, when I was still a child. I was not aware of the dangers or the effects addiction would have on me, or on my children’s lives. The effects were devastating and that I still live with them today. Even after being in abstinent based recovery for over 6 years, I still live with the effects of selling sex. The harms I caused to myself, and that other caused me, have left me with deep rooted pain and trauma and I live with complex PTSD. I live with nightmares, triggers, and sadness for the young girl I lost to the men who bought me so cheaply. After coming into recovery, I wasn’t even aware of the effects selling sex had on me. I was walking around consistently angry. The nightmares I was having I just put down to coming out of my addiction. I couldn’t manage or maintain friendships or my relationship. I just put it down to defects of my own character. As I moved further along in my recovery, my mental health was deteriorating. I experienced anxiety, panic, fear and a feeling of constant dread but I wasn’t making the connection. Nobody in meetings could diagnose me. My support network didn’t say anything. In fact, I was pushing my friends away daily. Nobody could hug me. If my sponsor went to, I would cringe inside. I was in pain from deep-rooted trauma caused by own actions to feed my addiction and I wasn’t even aware. Then someone saw me. Chip Somers from Private Practice, London kindly reached out to me and offered me some free Skype counselling. I had had therapy before but that was when I was still using drugs and consequently, I was never open or honest in my sessions. I gave him my background. My mother also suffers from the disease of addiction, my father had left when I was four and I was rejected daily by Mum because I got in the way of her using. I see this today as neglect and mental abuse on a child. Hugs were not a common thing in our house. There were different men coming into the home and sexual and physical abuse took place. I briefly touched on selling sex in the session. Chip was very good with me and held me and made me feel safe and supported through the process. At the end of my session Chip started to guide me on the areas that I needed to work on. I was stunned by his statement: “You need to look at the time you sold sex, Marie”. My response: “I’m OK. I was powerless. I know why I did it”. Little did I know that, by saying this, my mind was shutting out the trauma from those years selling sex. I will never forget his reply and it has stayed with me. Chip said: “Don’t be so bloody surprised, Marie! Selling sex is affecting every area of your life and there is a link to your past trauma that made you be able to go and fund your habit that way”. I was stunned, every part of my being didn’t want to believe him. I had always thought the link to my troubles was down to my parents. I do not blame or justify my using on my past, I take full responsibility for it. I’ve made some very poor choices in my using and there have been devastating consequences, not just to me, but for others too, but nothing has caused me more harm than selling sex. I’m extremely grateful to Chip and his support. I feel if it wasn’t identified when it was, the guilt, shame and anger I was carrying around, would have eventually taken me back to a relapse at some point. Since that session with Chip, I have completed the 12 Steps and looked at the time I sold sex. I added myself to my amends list as part of the process to make amends to myself. The Step Four process really wasn’t good for me in parts as the sexual inventory and abuse section was bringing my trauma to the surface. I was 15 months clean and writing around an issue I had no awareness of in myself. It was dangerous to my mental health and my recovery to unearth this stuff so early as I had huge amounts of shame linked to selling sex. The anger I had felt was towards myself for years I thought I was anger at the world. I remember heading out on to the red-light area for the first time like it was yesterday, I can remember thinking to myself “well, he’s taken it all from me anyway”. I was thinking about my abuser as a child. I don’t remember my first punter, I don’t remember my last, I don’t remember cars or names, but I remember men, lots of men and their smell. The winter months were horrendous. I stood out there hour after hour, the temperature below freezing and my withdrawals from heroin biting my skin and bones, with tears streaming down my face because I just want to go home. But I don’t, I can’t, I need my next fix. The summer months were not much better. It got dark later so less money was earned and more police were purging the area and my convictions were clocking up. There is nothing more embarrassing than having to stand in a magistrate’s court charged with soliciting and talking about the matter in a police interview wasn’t much fun either. Being locked up for nearly 24 hours in withdrawal is not the way to help a person who is clearly extremely vulnerable and damaged. Not once in the process of being given numerous court orders was I offered counselling or help around selling sex or addiction. No help was ever offered to me. One night, I had a really bad experience. A man had picked me up while I was withdrawing and I wasn’t able to do what he was asking from me. I was raped. I was held at my throat and forced into a sexual act I didn’t want to do. After I managed to get away when he was finished with me, I didn’t go to the police and I didn’t go home. I returned to the red-light area. I still needed the money for my next fix. This is the hold drugs had over me; it was a total loss of control. I was sore and completely numb to what had just happened to me. And this is how my life continued for 15 years. In and out of punters’ cars and, at some points, working in brothels. In the brothels my addiction would go through the roof as the people running these places were mainly dealers. Not once was I aware of the damage I was causing myself. Since coming into recovery in June 2014, it has been tough. Living with Complex PTSD has been one of the hardest battles I’ve had to deal with. My symptoms are feelings of anger, fear, dread, irritability, restlessness, discontent, and on a bad day I feel like I’m going to stop breathing. I get hyper vigilant, I have sleep paralysis, flashbacks and night terrors. I isolate myself to keep myself safe from the outside world. Today I have the awareness of what is happening and I know my triggers. I’ve learnt about my mental health by reading books and looking it up on the internet. I connect with other addicts who can hold me and who I trust. I feel it’s important when talking about my symptoms to find the right people, people who can just listen, not advise, and just let me be and people who don’t make the situation about them and dismiss my feelings. Whilst the 12 Steps are a great tool, some things they just do not cut it. The Steps are like the wind at the top of a volcano blowing away all the lava and dust, but under all that is the fire that is bubbling away under the surface, and for that I needed outside help. I’ve been in therapy for just over a year now, I get close to the core of the onion then stop because it gets that painful, but I keep going back. I will heal. I am healing every day I don’t pick up drugs, I’m healing in one form or another from my trauma. I’m most definitely not a victim of my past, and I take responsibility for the harms I have caused to myself. I’ve become a survivor and I refuse to let my addiction or mental health define me as a person. I’m a mum today, a sponsor, a sponsee, a friend an employee, an active member in the fellowship I attend. What I’m extremely grateful for is that I’m no longer a ‘sex worker’, a ‘working girl’, a ‘prostitute’. I’m me. I’m a recovering addict, free from the seedy streets, cars, and punters. When it’s dark and raining and I’m inside, an immense feeling of gratitude comes over me. I will never forget the street corners I stood on, the cars or smells, and I will always remember how lucky I am that I’ve gained control of my life. By healing and facing my trauma head on I will never have to subject myself to such pain and hurt again. I feel I would also like to add how some of my ‘clients’ became my victims. There were some very vulnerable lonely men out there, possibly with their own mental health problems and addiction troubles. Me being the very manipulative addict that I was, could spot these issues from a mile away and knew exactly how to let it benefit me. I had one re-mortgage his house to fund my addiction and he cleared any savings he had out of his account. I’ve had men who know absolutely nothing about addiction take me to houses to score drugs at 2 am. I’ve shouted at them, I’ve screamed at them when I think I can get away with it, I’ve stolen car keys, house keys and I’ve also taken money and run. This is known in the streets as ‘clipping’. There was often a comeback. I’ve been beaten up and attacked on several occasions by the men I’ve stolen from. Selling sex doesn’t just affect the person selling themselves. Married men get found out, destroying marriages. Neighbours must contend with these men driving round their streets at night and having women walking up and down, making a noise and leaving paraphernalia lying around for people to have to pick up in the morning. It affects everybody in the area. After sharing my own experience here, I wanted to talk to other women who had similar experiences to myself. I spoke to two women I know in recovery. I first met Jane in Holloway prison around 20 years ago. She had been in and out of prison most of her adult life having resorted to shoplifting and other crime to fund her drug addiction. Like many of the women you meet in recovery, she had come from a very dysfunctional childhood. Jane grew up in a household where she was exploited in prostitution by her grandmother, a woman who Jane said had detached to her feelings around it. It was a business to her, a way to make money. Jane’s grandmother also sold Jane’s mother and sister for sex to men who would come to their house. Jane’s mum would self-harm regularly. It wasn’t until Jane came into recovery and did some work around the selling sex that she realised had been sold from the age of four. I asked Jane about her experiences selling sex, her childhood trauma and her addiction. Q1. At what age did you start selling sex? I now understand I was being exploited and sold from the age of four. When I was a young adult, I became a shoplifter for my drugs and then, with time, I started to sell myself. There was less fear of prison and it felt easier to do. Q2. Can you remember any thoughts or feelings that were attached to the time you were selling sex? I can remember the feelings felt like a familiar place: the feelings I got from my abuser. By doing the work, I know now I didn’t have a choice in what I was doing. My addiction had totally taken control over me. I felt desperate and guilty and full of shame and humiliation and my biggest fear was the fear of being seen. I didn’t want people to see me out there on the streets. Q3. Do you believe there is a link between childhood trauma and addiction? There is a link to these two things. Selling sex and childhood trauma come hand in hand, I don’t know about other people but for me it does. Q4. Were you offered any help or support from local services? People didn’t know I was selling sex. I did my best to keep it secret so nobody could really help me. There isn’t enough support out there still to this day and there is a great need for support groups and outreach teams to be set up, things such as gender specific groups. Q5. Do you think that selling sex should be made legal? No, I think it should be made harder. By having selling sex legal, the women are being enabled. There should be more programs set up to help women, and I feel they should be made compulsory. Things like outreach teams, safeguarding, groups on how to keep yourself safe out there. Explain a better way and safer way to dress, talk about birth control and STDS. Use the ugly mugs. Ugly mugs have photos of men with convictions against working girls printed on them, they get distributed by outreach teams in the red-light areas. Q6. What impact has selling sex had on your life? I’m 18 years clean, so by continuing to talk about it and helping others it doesn’t really affect me. Of course, it used to, but I’m better today, it’s given me purpose to help others. Q7. What work, help and support have you had to do to help you manage the affects selling sex has left you with? Through talking about it and 12 Step fellowships and step work. Writing about selling sex helps the healing process. Q8. What do you think private rehab clinics and local services should be doing to support men and women who are selling sex? More groups, more counselling, more information should be given in local service providers. Jane is very strong empowering lady who I meet in Holloway when I was inmate. She had created groups for women who had sold sex on the detox wings. This was the first time I had ever seen or experienced anything like it in the way of support. I felt love in that room, something I had not felt in a very long time. Women who sell sex come from an extremely dark and cold place, so to have experienced this support felt, and still feels, very special to me. Women would come in and share their stories with the inmates and told us how they got out of their addiction. All these seeds, I believe, were being planted. Jane now has a very successful woman’s house helping vulnerable women into recovery. She continues to do outreach work in the community. The second woman I went to talk to is very dear friend to me. She is one of the only people who I feel safe to open up to about any of my trauma including that from selling sex. She, like me, comes from a dysfunctional family background and had the same addiction problems as me. Kathy is about to celebrate 13 years of abstinent based recovery. I see her as one of the strong, loving caring and kind people that our fellowship needs. She is a great role model for women who are coming in new to us. Kathy is an asset and a very important part of mine and another women’s support network. Q1. What age did you start selling sex? I was in a sexual relationship with my brother from the age of 6. Then, when I was in my teenage years, I was having full on sex with my Mum’s friends in exchange for going out for nice meals and things like that. Then when I was heading in to my 20’s I started working to pay my bills, selling sex didn’t start due to a substance misuse problem but, in the end, I was selling sex to fund my habit. Q2. Can you remember any thoughts or feelings that were attached to the time you were selling sex? At first, I felt empowered. I felt I was independent when I worked in a sex parlour, I felt independent and in control. Then when it came to fund my addiction, I was in fear what my friends were starting to think. I saw what I was doing wasn’t right but I had lost all control. I had no boundaries at all. There were huge amounts of shame, guilt and disappointment attached to selling sex and the same feelings caused from the abuse by my brother were also coming up for me. At times I felt like an object, treated like meat. It is still very jumbled in my head, the order of how things happened. Q3. Do you believe there is a link to childhood trauma and selling sex? I wouldn’t be surprised if most people selling sex have suffered some form of childhood trauma. I can only speak for myself as yes most definitely. Q4. Were you offered any help or support from local services? No, I had no support from local services, none whatsoever Q5. Do you think selling sex should be made legal? Yes, I think women should have a right to do what they want with their own bodies but there should be more support around it. Women’s projects should be set up, and safer projects created in supporting the women in what they do. Q6. What work, help or support have you had to help you manage the effects of selling sex? Through the fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous, working the Steps, and my friends in my support network who I trust around this stuff. I do share a little bit about it in meetings but not much. I’m still waiting for therapy. Q7. What impact has selling sex had on your life? It affects my intimate relationships; in areas I struggle in them. Q8. What do you think private rehab clinics and local services should be doing to support men and women who are selling sex? There needs to be things like working women’s projects, people need to be out on the streets helping the girls, legal houses, handing out condom’s things like that. There should be services for the punters too, it’s just another form of addiction paying for sex. There should be a punters’ perspective too. Kathy is now teaching people how to manage their finances and is an active member of the fellowship she is in. She is a valid member of my support network who I aspire to be like when I reach her clean time. She is a strong, caring woman who I have the utmost love and respect for and who I’m extremely proud to call my friend.
On 28th August 2020, Kye Lewis was convicted at Basildon Crown Court of two counts of rape. The court heard that, in July 2017, he had picked up a woman selling sex on Ambleside Drive and driven her to Sutton Road cemetery where he threatened her with a large knife, raped her vaginally and orally and then stole her bag. He was 18 years old at the time of the offence. Lewis was tried in November 2019 which resulted in a hung jury and a retrial was called, where he was found guilty by a majority verdict. Lewis will be sentenced in October 2020 but is already serving a custodial sentence for offences related to robbery, possession of an imitation firearm and car theft. During the trial, Lewis admitted paying a woman for sex but claimed he had never done so before and said that he would not rape a woman because he had a girlfriend at home. Lewis’ defence was that the woman had lied about being raped because he had underpaid her by £20. His defence barrister also mentioned that the woman had been using recreational drugs and alcohol that night so was not aware of what she agreed to. This case was covered in the local Southend press for several days and, for most readers, the details of the offences would have been shocking, but this trial comes just over a year and a half after another very similar case. In December 2018, Jaroslaw Halibozek was sentenced to 7 years in prison at Basildon Crown Court. He had picked up a woman selling sex on Ambleside Drive in June 2018 and driven her to Temple Farm Industrial Estate where he subjected her to oral rape and vaginal rape. In the space of less than one year, two women selling sex on Ambleside made reports of rape to Essex Police that resulted in custodial sentences and this only accounts for the reports that made it to a court hearing. There will undoubtedly have been women selling sex who made reports that did not reach the evidential threshold for prosecution or who never reported their experiences of sexual violence. Whichever way you chose to look at the numbers, it is clear that physical and sexual violence is being perpetrated against women who sell sex on Ambleside Drive in Southend-on-Sea at an alarming rate So, how do we, as a local community, respond to this? Street prostitution has existed in Southend-on-Sea, especially in the area around York Road and Ambleside Drive for many, many years. Various police operations have succeeded in moving the women selling sex from one road to another and various organisations have tried to support women selling sex but no intervention has had a significant impact on reducing the number of women selling sex and, more importantly, on the numbers of men buying sex. And this is what we often forget. In order for women to sell sex, there has to be a man who wants to buy it. Kye Lewis’s defence was based on two ideas: firstly, that a man with a girlfriend would not rape anyone and, secondly, that a woman who is using recreational drugs and alcohol cannot be trusted to know what has happened to her. Aged 18, Lewis went to Ambleside Drive with the intention of paying a woman for sex, in particular the type of sex he wanted regardless of the type that she was selling, and while she was clearly under the influence of drugs and alcohol. He asked the jury to believe that it is understandable for a man with a girlfriend at home to buy sex from a woman in the street but not that he would take that sex by force, with threats and without consent. The view that paying a woman for sex is fine but rape is not is common and convenient because it allows us to think that paying for consent is still consent. But can it be? The Sexual Offences Act (2003) states that, in order to consent, a person must have the freedom and the capacity to do so. When a woman is in desperate need of money for food or for her next fix, and when she is misusing substances and alcohol to be able to cope with selling sex, can she truly be said to have the freedom or capacity to consent? Would she make the same decision to perform a sexual act if the money was taken out of the equation? If, as Lewis’s defence barrister suggested, the woman was too drunk or high to known what she agreed to, how can she possibly have had the capacity to agree or consent in the first place? And what of the men who would pay that woman for sex? The typical media images of men who buy sex include the ‘Richard Gere in Pretty Woman’ stereotype, a knight in shining amour, rescuing the woman and buying her multitudes of gifts, or the desperately lonely and harmless man who can’t get sex unless he pays for it. None of those stereotypes paint the true picture of men who kerb crawl to buy sex. On Ambleside Drive, many of the men who go there with the intention to pay women for sex are average, everyday men who you would not look twice at in the street. They are professionals, businessmen and labourers in their work vans; they are young, middle-aged and getting older; they are single, in relationships and married with children. Men kerb crawl for sex with their child’s booster seat in the back of their car, they swing by Ambleside Drive on the way to work at 7am, they drive by in groups to find a woman they can take to another town, use for sex and then leave there to find her way back. None of these situations should be any less shocking than the stories that make it to the newspapers. None of the violence inherent in those situations is less shocking because the woman involved did not report what happened to her to the police. There are no easy solutions to the sexual exploitation of women in street prostitution in Southend-on-Sea. The needs of the women selling sex are complex. Many have experienced childhood sexual abuse, many are in abusive relationships with someone who coerces them to sell sex, most are actively addicted to drugs. Carrie’s Outreach is a first step in addressing the harms caused by prostitution to women in Southend-on-Sea. We are engaging with women selling sex on Ambleside Drive and letting them know that personalised, trauma-informed support is available when they are ready for it. We know women want support because they are using the dedicated outreach number to make contact and to share their needs and concerns. We are supporting women to attend appointments and to engage with local services, especially where they have struggled to do so before. Some of the most demotivated and disengaged women known to local services have been able to attend appointments and engage with professionals with support. We are supporting women to access housing so they are not sleeping rough or sofa surfing, which increases their vulnerability to sexual harm. We are providing condoms to the women to try to reduce the risk of sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. We are giving the women basic necessities, like toiletries, drinks and snacks. We are doing what we can to counter the relentless messages the women receive that they are not worth respect, care and human kindness. But what we can offer right now is not enough. As a town, we need a trauma-informed, high quality exiting program to support women to stop selling sex and to live lives free from exploitation and violence. We need to send a strong message that we will not tolerate the sexual abuse of women and that we refuse to make excuses for perpetrators of sexual harm. Supporting Carrie’s Outreach to move forward with our work on an exiting program and breaking the chains of addiction is a really good place to start.