Just Sitting Here Reading... And Remembering

Well for the last two days I have been sitting here on the computer pretty much reading blogs... I like reading about what everyone else is doing and thinking about... I am fascinated by other people's stories.

I have a new favorite on the list called HeroineGirl which is a really good read. It is a lady in Australia who was abused sexually and emotionally as a child, ran away at fifteen and then found herself prostituting and addicted to Heroin before she hit her twenties. She is writing a memoire that is going to be published and her blog is a mix of memories from the past and her life now. She is off the heroin and is doing great... but still working through the demons. I have almost read every one of her posts! I do that when I find a really good blog with a really good story.

I am reminded of a girl I once knew who was pretty much lost to drugs and prostitution when she was only twelve years old. Lisa was the daughter of one of my mom's best friends, me and my sister used to go over and play in the basement with Lisa, and her siblings... until things turned really bad for both her and her family. I got the full story in my last year of college when I was doing a documentary film on child prostitution in Calgary and we interviewed her mother for the film.

Lisa was approached by a group of teenagers while hanging out with her friend in the mall. The older guys befriended them, and started to hang out with them daily buying them gifts that their parents would never be able to afford. They also supplied them with booze, pot and probably some coke as well... at least at the beginning. After about a month Lisa was presented with a bill "she didn't think that all of that stuff was free did she...". Lisa was only twelve years old and petrified that they would tell her parents about her debt or even worse that they would hurt her family so she took the other option presented and decided to pay off the debt on her back. Things got worse... a lot worse as Lisa spiraled into the world of drugs, gangs, violence and prostitution.

Her parents tried everything they could but they could not get their daughter back, she was addicted to the drugs and the money... and the lifestyle became the only life she knew. Her family's life as they knew it fell apart behind her... they were not able to cope with what had happened to their life, her parents divorced and tried to move on, and her siblings got lost in the shuffle and just tried to cope, but I have to say one thing... they never gave up on trying to get her back.

Lisa was locked up repeatedly between twelve and eighteen. Her mother told me that the crown prosecutor told her when Lisa was seventeen that they were just waiting for her to become an adult so they could lock her up for good. Well it happened... In November 1994, Lisa became the second woman in Canada to be labelled a dangerous offender (a label that even Karla Hamulka does not have) and sentenced to an indeterminate sentence. Lisa was sitting in a jail cell while I was interviewing her mother. The last I heard Lisa was out of jail and living with her mother, but she was not doing that well. After being institutionalized for more than half her life and living in a sub-culture with rules and norms very different from the rest of society she was having real hard time coping with life in the real world. The lack of structure, and not having someone to tell her when to eat, sleep, and brush her teeth was too much for her, she was lost... that was a few years ago and I really wonder how she is doing today.

Thanks go to HeroineGirl for sharing her story... and good thoughts and wishes go out to Lisa and her family. I really do hope that things are going good for all of you these days...

The documentary was completed before PCHIP (Protection of Children Involved In Prostitution) legislation was passed in Alberta, Canada. We interviewed young prostitutes aged eleven to eighteen and parents of prostitutes who were fighting to change the laws and be able to protect their daughters. These were the pioneers of PCHIP. I was told by an eleven year old I was interviewing that when her mother would come and drag her off the streets she would simply call the police to have her mother charged with unlawful confinement. The pimps would move the kids from city to city across Canada if the parents became a hassle, and if the girls were picked up and said they did not want to go home they were given twenty bucks and sent back onto the street. I am really happy to be able to say that law enforcement and social agencies are now trying to work together and are doing A LOT more to protect young girls from themselves... it hasn't changed things too much, but at least it helps a bit.