I’ve still never seen my family. You have to understand I turned my back on them the same way they turned their backs on me. I wasn’t from a family that had dinner together or enjoyed each other’s company. I had uncles who had done time for murder and drug dealing. An aunt of mine tried to stab one of my brothers to death for selling her dog to buy coke. If you left something of value in the house when you came home it would be gone. Usually my father would have sold anything of ours to get drink or pot. The only real Christmas present I ever received was a small gold necklace from another hooker. I was brought up to be a hard-nosed bitch and I’ve stayed that way most of my life. The only thing that made me feel good was having my own money and a place to live. My family never wanted to know me when I had nothing so they still got nothing and I don’t want to know them.
We have had to sort a few problems out over the years. For instance, one guy phoned for an escort and after fucking her for three hours kicked her out in the street after knocking her around a little. She was more concerned that she hadn’t been paid but we had to send someone round to collect, with interest of course. Another girl phoned in sick, telling the receptionist that she couldn’t work for a few days as her boyfriend had hurt her when she told him she was breaking off their engagement. When she came in to work we found that he had cut off her engagement finger with a pair of pinchers. He said that no other man would put a ring on her finger. He was right about that. From what I gather someone hit him down in their car and broke his legs, can’t think who may have arranged that.
One pretty girl who worked as an escort for me had a problem with one of the customers. Seems he paid her extra to film their bedroom antics. A few guys did this as some kind of male ego thing. They would show their friends and tell them the girl was an old girlfriend of theirs. Well, this customer filmed them together and paid a little extra. Somehow, he found out where the girl lived and stopped her as she left for work. He told her he was going to copy the video and put a copy through her family’s door and all the houses in the neighbourhood. The deal he made with her was that if she visited him late every Saturday night for the next two months she could have the original back. She started doing this but he was getting rougher with her on each visit. He wanted to do things that hurt her, taking great pleasure in doing so. She told me how stupid she had been and could I sort it out. As luck would have it about three days later he had an accident at the apartment that he lived alone in. From what I’ve been told he had a few broken bones from accidentally falling down the stairs, three times.
I decided to quit when one girl got busted by the cops for drug running and she told them about my operation. They already knew about my business but due to its nature they found it hard getting evidence. After all, what customer would tell the cops that one of the girls sucked his dick. It was the last thing they wanted in the papers. Any cop stopping someone coming from any of my premises would find they were just visiting a masseuse for a back or shoulder injury. Maybe they’d say they were a member enjoying the sauna facilities. Any which way, the customer was not going to admit to visiting a hooker. The girl told the cops she was hooking for me and how things worked. I was arrested and both my parlours closed down. They wanted business records, member lists and bank details. Turns out I was down on paper as just covering my bills each month and not making that much. My member list had gone missing when our computer crashed so they could only hit me for what the girl said. I pulled in every single cent that was owed to me and sold off the parlours and anything I could so they couldn’t get much money off me. They knew my massage parlors were glorified brothels and that I wasn’t declaring all the money I was earning and maybe I was laundering drug money. They were looking for property that I owned in the USA but who’s to say I didn’t own property in other countries.
After eight months of court and legal battles I ended up doing a few years in prison for drug and prostitution offences. I had a good run for my money and what goes around will one day come back around. I did my time, and they took money off me but I don’t regret a single thing. I know it was harsh being away from my man and friends, it hurt me real bad. We have been together over nine years now and he started off helping me with my accounts. He was a friend of a friend and was unemployed so he came on board as my accountant, strictly cash in hand at first. He never once complained about my lifestyle and has been the greatest love of my life.
I worked hard for the thousands they took off me but it was still a better life than if I had stayed at home with the family. In prison I just read everything I could and educated myself by taking classes. I had a vision of one day having a small farm to run with all different types of animals around. I had seen so many nice ranches on my visits to Mexico over the years that the life appealed to me. On my release I eventually moved permanently to Mexico and I now live with my boyfriend on a large farm. He works here all day, planting, digging and sorting out the hired hands. This is the family I dreamt of as a young, streetwise girl. We grow and sell our own food and have two small adopted children and life is quieter. The only girls we have working for us are fruit pickers and we have made some good friends with the neighbouring farmers and their families.
Did I manage to put cash away or did the police take it all? Let’s just say, I’m very comfortably off, just. It’s amazing how much cash you can make selling fruit and vegetables. Pity I didn’t save some of the hundreds of thousands that I earned, I never was good with book-keeping.
Chapter 20
Stephanie
Age: 24
Northampton
BOTH MY MOTHER and father were alcoholics so my childhood was full of arguments and violent incidents. By the age of fourteen I didn’t really want to come home to all the shit that was happening there. The front window of our home was always boarded up as either my mother or father would regularly throw a bottle through it during their violent fights. The whole street had us marked as trouble makers due to my father getting into fights with the neighbours, when he was pissed. I was marked as a bad one before I was given a chance and the only real friends I had were from other bad families as the parents of the good children stopped them bothering me.
By fifteen I was using speed or acid just to get through the day. At night it was either marijuana or alcohol to get to sleep. I did try many times to sort myself out but the problem was that everything was so available to me. All the friends I was going around with were getting drugged up or pissed so no matter how hard I tried I ended up wasted. I couldn’t get away from that way of life and I guess I never will. We would steal from our families or burgle someone’s house just to get enough cash to get high. I remember breaking into an old lady’s house and stealing about £200 and a few gold rings. It didn’t bother me that the old woman didn’t have much money as my needs seemed greater than hers.
From the age of eighteen I was sleeping with any boy who would put a roof over my head. Drugs had taken such a hold on me that from the moment I woke up till the moment I went to sleep my main thought was drugs. I started taking smack and my life went into a complete downward spiral. I left home and moved in with my grandmother but I stole money from her and was kicked out on the streets. I think my grandmother had this idea that she would sort me out, get me off the smack and find me a nice boyfriend. She really had no idea what hold the drug had on me and how it eats away at you.
If I couldn’t get any smack I’d buy methadone from some of the smackheads I knew who were getting it from the treatment centres. The centres made sure that before leaving the building you drank your methadone. The smackheads would pretend to swallow it and on the way out I’d kiss them and that way they would pass it on to me. From mouth to mouth, not very hygienic I know. The other way was that the smack-head would take an empty coke can with them and pretend to wash the taste of the methadone away. Of course they would just spit the methadone into the can and I would buy it off them outside. These methods were used by smack-heads up and down the country until the treatm
ent centres and clinics got wise to it. Funny thing is that the smack-heads would sell their methadone to make enough money to buy smack, which to me just seems a vicious circle.
I moved from one drug den to another, sleeping in the clothes I wore from one day to the next. I remember being right off my head in one smack-head’s house when another girl gave him a blow job for some crack. Along with a few others I just sat there and watched and before long, when I couldn’t get any smack, I’d give blow jobs or sex just to feed my habit.
It didn’t really matter what the guy looked like as long as I got my drugs. When you’re a full-blown druggy you have no self-respect or morals at all. The one thing that mattered was how to get your drugs. Heroin is like wrapping yourself in a warm comforting blanket. It has the ability to make the bad things in life disappear. Imagine if there was a legal drug that had the same effect but was safe to use. Every fucker in the world would take it, wouldn’t they?
Along with a few other girls I started walking the streets and actually earning good money for selling my arse. That was the first real money I had ever earned and most of it went on drugs. I started to buy myself new clothes and because I had moved into my friend’s flat I was able to take hot baths and look after myself a bit better. My friend was also a smack-head and explained that if I was going out on the streets at night with her, if I looked like a druggy then both of us would get no business. That’s the only reason I started washing and changing my clothes. I had to attract men to get money so I could get smack.
The girl I was living with was all right at first but because she was hooked like me she would steal money from me or not pay back what she owed me. One night she explained that she had a three-year-old little boy who she turned over to her mother to look after. She didn’t give a fuck about him and was only glad that he was young enough to forget about her. He’d only take up money that she could be spending on smack. I found out that she had been taking smack when he was still in her womb so he was born with a drug problem. Like me he had no chance in life. After finding out she was three months pregnant I decided to move on. I’d been in trouble for shop-lifting and the probation officer helped me fill in forms to get a council flat. Not long later I got my own flat and moved out, before she had another smack baby.
I managed to cut my drug intake down thanks to counselling but still sold myself to pay my bills and enough for the drugs I was still taking. Another smackhead who I knew well had nowhere to live and I let him move in with me. He knew how I was getting my money and that didn’t bother him as long as we had enough cash for smack. I started to work a few nights a week in a massage parlour. The money was good and it was safer than walking the streets. The customers liked me as I was a little friendlier than the other girls and didn’t rush them. I must have sucked and fucked hundreds of men while I worked there. I’d charge anything from £25 to £75 a customer depending on what service I provided. One customer asked me how much I would charge if he could film me making love to his wife. I turned that one down, not my scene at all.
I felt safer working at the massage parlour than I did on the streets. I’d been roughed up a few times by drunks on the street so knowing I could press a panic alarm made things easier for me. I always felt the parlour could use a security guard but the owners said that they never had any trouble so I was happy to know at least the receptionist would come if I pressed the alarm button, which was more than I was used to. At the end of the day the business I was in was risky no matter where I worked from. We often got undercover police in so we would have to work off our gut feelings about a customer. I suppose from working on the street I learned to read a man by his facial expressions and body language. Often other girls said the way a copper walked gave him away. I guess it’s just something you pick up or develop like a sort of sixth sense.
One night I was caught off guard and my gut feelings let me down. A customer came in late one night and asked if any of the girls were free. I was standing by the reception area and told him to follow me after he paid the receptionist for a massage. Once alone in the cubicle he asked me for straight sex. He was rubbing his hand up and down my leg so I knew he wasn’t a copper for a start. I got on top of him and took my time and he seemed to be having a good time. After I finished he paid me and must have been watching where I put the money, which was another mistake I made. I put the money in my coat pocket and that was on the far side of the cubicle, away from the panic alarm. I also turned my back on him and as I turned around he grabbed me by the throat and pinned me against the cubicle wall. I couldn’t move and was starting to black out from his grip on my windpipe. He was staring wildly into my eyes and I helplessly watched him lift his head back and bring his forehead crashing down on my nose, which exploded in a shower of blood. He let me fall to the floor as he took about £250 out of my coat pocket. I was too scared to cry out for help in case he kicked the fucking shit out of me. For about ten minutes after he left I just lay there crying and holding my face, too scared to move.
This was the first time in my life that I had really been a victim of a serious assault. I’d caught a black eye a few times and given as good as I got, but that bastard broke my nose and scared the life out of me. He could have done anything he wanted to me, I was so vulnerable; he could have raped or even killed me. I know some people who think that a prostitute getting raped means she hasn’t been paid. The threat of rape or murder is something that all prostitutes must be aware of, it happens all the time. The receptionist, after seeing my face as I left the cubicle, called the owners, not the police. They pleaded with me not to get the police involved as they would close the place down and offered to pay me half the money I’d lost not to. I didn’t even get to visit the hospital, just got driven home holding some wet tissue paper over my nose. There have been many incidents over the years but that was the scariest because he was so much physically stronger than me.
Within two weeks I was back at the parlour but I didn’t feel comfortable working there and finished about a month later. I started working from home, using the upstairs spare bedroom while my boyfriend stayed downstairs in the living room, in case I had any trouble. Now if someone answers my advert in the paper I usually have to travel to their homes, which I get paid good money for.
I try to be nice to all my customers as I know they may phone me again. I know some hookers who have grown to hate men over the years but I don’t. I have a costly drug habit and bills that need paying. I don’t sell my body because I like getting fucked by strangers every night. I sell it because I have to; it’s the only way that I can earn that sort of money.
I know I’ve hurt a lot of people over the years: my grandmother, boyfriends, friends and people whose houses I’ve burgled or stole money from. Deep down inside I think I’m still a good person and I’m sorry for all the trouble I’ve caused but it’s been drug motivated. Most of my old friends are either dead or in prison for drugs so I suppose in a funny way I’m the lucky one. I can’t see me ever completely beating my drug addiction but for the time being I’m surviving.
Chapter 21
Margo’s Story
IN THE 1990s, the city of Glasgow saw a spate of prostitute killings and a signal failure by the police and prosecutors to find and convict the perpetrators. One of those murdered was Margo Lafferty, the only one whose killer was eventually convicted. This poignant story about her appeared in the Sunday Herald of 25 February 2001, written by a fantastic writer called Jean Rafferty, and is reprinted here with Jean’s permission. I have chosen it to end this book as a harsh reminder of the dangers of what is sometimes called the oldest profession– J.D.
The place where Margo Lafferty died on February 28th 1998 was a grim tract of desolation in the middle of the city. In this muddy yard, just off streets that were thronging with people during the day, Margo, the latest but undoubtedly not the last prostitute to be murdered in Glasgow, fought bitterly with her killer, gouging proof of her desperation to live into his face. Afterwards the yar
d was locked and chained, no longer open to the contemplation of the curious. It was as if the people who owned it wanted to forget it had ever been the locus of such a terrible and violent event, wanted an end to their own unwilling involvement in it.
Such an end has not been possible for Margo’s mother Madge Lafferty, never could be for any mother who has lost a child. But Madge’s pain was compounded by having to live again the rawness of her daughter’s death. Just days before the third anniversary, she had to endure the suspense of watching Margo’s convicted killer, Brian Donnelly, stand trial all over again - not because further evidence had come to light but because the original trial judge had misdirected the jury. ‘Everything came to the fore again as if the last two years had never happened,’ she says. ‘I’ve just got to start all over again. You never come to terms with it. You accept it. You know it’s happened. I don’t sit and wait for her phone calls now, which I did for a long long time.’
She was there every day in Glasgow’s High Court during the first trial in November 1998, listening intently as calm-voiced pathologists and forensic scientists rehearsed the minute detail of her daughter’s injuries, the repeated blows to the head, the smashing of her head against a wall, the mad throttling of her neck that resulted in death by strangulation. They even described the contents of Margo’s stomach, the ordinary white bread, the orange segment she’d gulped down, the one cherry from a can of fruit cocktail.
By the time of the second trial Madge Lafferty was missing from the South Court for days on end, unable to listen to it all over again, unable to bear the photos of her daughter’s naked body curled up on her side as if in the foetal position. Unable to hear them talking dispassionately of the tide mark of dirt round Margo’s buttocks where her killer had dragged her across the stagnant pools and churned up mud of the yard. ‘When people hear the word “prostitute” they think, Dirty midden. But Margo used to do my head in with her showers and baths. She’d have three or four a day. She was so very, very clean. When she had her own wee house you could have eaten a meal off the floor. She was very particular about herself and her environment.’
Hookers: Their Lives in Their Words Page 18