NO JUDGMENTS, JUST SUSTENANCE

Assistance Center In Baltimore Shows Prostitutes An Alternative

Denise Sauers was 14 when a man she thought she loved gave her cocaine. She
tried it.

Thus began the second half of her life: one long trip into hell --
addiction, homelessness, prostitution, prison.

Now, she is headed slowly back. With a limp acquired jumping from a window
to escape "devils." With wracking seizures and infections. But with a
fragile, exhilarating sobriety.

"I never dreamed I'd be clean," said Sauers, from Montgomery County. She
said she has God and the YANA Project to thank.

YANA stands for You Are Never Alone. Last year, its modest, powder-blue row
house on West Pratt Street in Southwest Baltimore, an area plagued by drugs
and AIDS, was a beacon of hope to Sauers and hundreds of her street-sisters.

Founded in 1996, the nonprofit organization has a unique mission in the
region. As promoters of the "collective healing and survival" of women
involved in prostitution, YANA's nine professional staff members routinely
provide everything from hot meals and free condoms to medical help, grief
counseling and job training. Many of the women find YANA themselves or are
guided there by outreach workers. Some are referred by courts and police.

There may be as many as 1.5 million prostitutes in America, according to
police and the New York-based National Task Force on Prostitution, a loose
coalition of sex workers' rights organizations. About 100,000 prostitutes
are arrested annually, according to federal statistics. However, assistance
programs, like YANA, number in the scant dozens.

"Prostitution is not a choice in and of itself. It's what you do when you
feel you have no choices," said YANA Executive Director Clark Williams, a
veteran of the sex-crimes unit in the Brooklyn, N.Y., district attorney's
office.

"There is nothing magical we do about the issue of prostitution," he said.
" But if someone is involved in prostitution, that tells us a whole lot of
stuff."

On winter days, a steady stream of women come to YANA for a coat, a cup of
coffee or a plate of spaghetti in the sunny dining room, or for a good cry
or a visit to the nurse.

Some are high when they visit -- it's the only way they feel normal.

Some, like Sauers, are clean now, and they are amazed at how it feels not
to have to wake up and sell sex for another hit.

Some come for help finding a place in a shelter or getting a referral to a
coveted slot in a drug treatment program.

Many have lost everything -- homes, children, jobs, identification cards.
They can use YANA as an address to begin regaining their place in the world.

A majority report childhood physical or sexual abuse to their counselors
here. Many have been raped and beaten since. About 40 percent have tested
positive for HIV.

"We always remember women are more than just prostitutes," said case
manager Aprylle Sturdivant. At YANA, clients are said to be "involved in
prostitution" or "prostituted women," but that is only the beginning of
their stories.

When they go upstairs for counseling, the rest comes out. To confront the
pain and rage that lie at the heart of their lives takes huge courage.

Williams calls it "loss and grief work."

"There is so much untreated grief from childhood," he said. It's YANA's
philosophy that these women can begin to regain control of their lives only
if they are offered compassion and a safe place to explore their pain.

Bernadette Walinski said the love she has found at YANA has been lifesaving.

"If it wasn't for YANA, I would have committed suicide or homicide. I'm not
kidding," she said, blue eyes flaring.

During her youth in Baltimore, her hardworking parents warned her about the
dangers of heroin. But "I was one of those children who had to learn for
themselves," she said.

She turned to selling sex and shoplifting to support her habit, and she was
arrested for shoplifting in Howard County. Since being referred to YANA by
the judge, she has gotten sober.

"I started using when I was 14. Stopped at 39. All those years stopped me
from growing inside."

She described an emptiness that she's slowly overcoming. "That infinite
hole we get inside is being filled," she said. She calls it the "God hole,"
and she said it is being filled with grace and kindness in this plain but
powerful place.

She's working as a janitor now, cleaning offices at night.

"I've been living on my own for eight months. I've been paying my bills.
Living in my own place. I got a nice new little car."

She is determined to go back to school.

Walking his beat in this Southwest neighborhood, police officer Will
Narango always keeps a stack of YANA's business cards in his pocket. They
display a red rose and the promise "You Are Never Alone."

He has been working in the neighborhood since about the time his
15-year-old daughter was born. He has watched the girls in the neighborhood
grow up, too: "Young kids with hopes and dreams."

Some have ended up on these streets.

Young women from the suburbs have, too -- Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery,
Baltimore counties, their addictions luring them to this neighborhood.

"It's like moving next to a shopping center," said Narango, 46. "The drugs
are here. The johns are here."

Women working in prostitution have often been seen as fallen women or
criminals. In this day of AIDS, they may also be seen as dangers to
society. Yet Narango has less sympathy for the men who pay them for sex and
then bring illnesses back to the suburbs. "Leeches, parasites," he calls them.

He has known women from these streets who have been killed or horribly
maimed. And most, he believes, have been abused for much of their lives.

"They are more victims than criminals," Narango said. "Let's face it."

Under Maryland law, soliciting for prostitution is punishable by up to a
year in prison and a fine of up to $ 500. Long ago, however, Narango
concluded that efforts to lock up women for selling sex are futile if they
simply return to the same streets and the same addictions.

To Narango, YANA is a godsend. He works with the court system to get women
referred to the counseling center, and he continually sends women there
himself.

One recent day, as he wrote a citation for solicitation, the woman shivered
in the cold.

"Why don't you go up to YANA for a coat?" he asked her.

YANA was started by a licensed social worker, Sid Ford, who was moved by a
news report about the kidnapping and torture of two prostitutes.

She began ministering to the women of Baltimore, offering counseling and
condoms out of her car. She got her first grant, $ 50,000, from the Sisters
of Bon Secours, a Catholic group. Since January 2000, YANA has been
independent from Bon Secours Hospital, which the sisters founded.

Such assistance fills a vacuum, said Priscilla Alexander, of the National
Task Force on Prostitution. "There's a desperate need."

Now YANA has a $ 400,000 annual budget, receives funding through the
federal Ryan White Care Act and Violence Against Women Act, and has
received a $ 400,000 two-year grant from the Open Society Institute, a
foundation established by philanthropist George Soros.

The Open Society Institute, which has an office in Baltimore, wants to
encourage the outreach that YANA's small staff does -- visiting city
neighborhoods and area truck stops and prisons, getting the message of safe
sex and sobriety out to women.

"Outreach is an effective way to get people into treatment," said drug
addiction treatment researcher Robert Schwartz, of the institute.

When Sauers was working the streets to support her $ 200-a-day addiction,
Narango told her to try YANA. She wasn't ready. She ended up in an Anne
Arundel County prison on a parole violation. Despairing, she posted her
card from YANA on the wall of her cell and thought about its message, "You
Are Never Alone."

When she was released, YANA was waiting for her. She started talking to
Williams.

"I poured my guts out," she said.

Then she started working with therapist Amy Durkin. "I'd call her when I
was cold, homeless."

YANA found her a place in a shelter. Even sleeping in that grim place where
she has to stuff her ears at night to keep out the roaches, she can say
without hesitation: "I never dreamed I would be so happy."

With the help of YANA, she continues to examine her life, the place where
addiction and prostitution became synonymous. She continues her
minute-to-minute fight to stay clean.

As she stands on the corner, waiting for her bus, the drug dealers are
selling heroin. Some of the pills are called Bill Clintons. Some are called
Rockefellers. She gets butterflies in her stomach.

"I've got money in my pocket," she thinks. "Please, God. Let this bus come."

And, finally, heaven sends a bus.