A Harlot's Cry

For a while now I've been really interested in learning about the hideous human trafficking and sex slave industry. So far my interest has only got as far as reading books and articles and trying to learn as much as possible but I really want to DO something. I just heard about some more things going on in our city and I can't bear the thought of how these women are being abused.

A Harlot's Cry is a powerful account by Mary Francis of her 35 years in the sex industry and of the significant 16 years preparing her to become a victim of it. It's not a pleasnat read but I really believe we need to educate ourselves about what is going on in our cities. Mary was helped out of the strip club life by a charity I've been so thankful to learn about called Scarlet Hope. I'd really recommend reading their website and learning about their work. Here's a quick summary of it:

Scarlet Hope exists to share the hope and love of Jesus Christ with women in the adult entertainment industry. We believe that when Jesus gave us the Great Commission, He didn’t just tell us to share the Good News when people ask us about it; He commanded us to GO. As a group of God-fearing men and women, we meet people where they are, and through relationship building, we share the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Some extracts from A Harlot's Cry:

It turned out that Scarlet Hope was made up of women from several different churches all around the city who had been called to minister to and share the love of Christ with women just like me. It was amazing. The Lord was sending his servants to the forgotten places and forgotten people, and as a result, lives like mine were being saved.

As I write this nearly seven years after Scarlet Hope found me, I have not set foot in a strip club since my fiftieth birthday—at least not as a dancer. Instead, my calling has been to reach out to women who are where I once was by continuing to share my stories.

At this very second, a human being is being bought, sold, traded, given away, and too many times dying at the hands of a perpetrator, pimp, or someone who is supposed to love her. Sometimes victims take their own lives because they believe death will be a relief from the hell they are living. If it hadn’t been for Jesus, there were times when I would have done the same.

We as free people must be aware of the heinous evils that take place in our nation, maybe even in our own backyards.

But the real barrier to leaving a place like the sex industry is the darkness that longs to reel you back in. The darkness that whispers that this is all you are and all you can depend on in life, even as it hurts you and threatens to smother your soul. This darkness had chased me all my adult life, even appearing as demons in my dreams.

Neither education nor a good job nor a good man nor a good support system can fight darkness. Only light can. And so what brought me out of the sex industry was nothing the world had to offer, but only what God did. Jesus offered light, hope, and freedom where there had been only darkness, despair, and slavery.

Here are some more books I've read (all by non-Christians apart from Counter Culture):