A leopard-print sign hanging on Andrea Smith’s front door announces, “I am a luxury few can afford.” Three years ago there was heavy truth in that statement. Smith was bringing in about $2500 a night turning tricks.
“I charged $500 for a half hour, full service — meaning blow job and sex — and $1000 for the girlfriend experience. That was the loving, the hugging, the kissing, the affection, and the holding. A lot of people wanted that because they might have a girlfriend or wife at home, but they wanted something [different] with me.”
Smith gave up drugs and prostitution after a severe beating handed down by her pimp and his friends landed her in the hospital and caused her to miscarry twin babies. She is now living at a seven-acre women’s rehabilitation center in San Diego with her two children, a sixth-month-old and three-year-old. The program provides a free two-bedroom, furnished, apartment for up to a year until Smith gets back on her feet.
“I was introduced to the life of prostitution when I was 11 through my mother. I was selling my body in order for her to get high off of crack cocaine.”
[For more of this story, written by Siobhan Braun, go to http://www.sandiegoreader.com/...-trafficking-shame/#]
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