Hookers for Jesus: Annie's Story

Hookers for Jesus

She was trapped in hell. Raped, beaten, and kidnapped--Annie Lobért was living within a prison of sex trafficking, drugs and prostituting. Her life continued to spiral out of control and spiritual and physical death was growing nearer.

Lobért eventually suffered a heart attack after an extended use of cocaine. She cried out to God to deliver her as she slumped to the floor. Her answer came swiftly. Later Lobért shocked doctors by miraculously escaping death and walking out of the hospital. Lobért vowed to destroy the sex industry and launched the Hookers for Jesus in Las Vegas, Nevada (2005) out of her pain--her desperation.

With the help of the Church at South Las Vegas, Lobért also morphed into a bold witness for Christ and started Destiny House, a transitional program to help women get out of the sex industry. Currently Lobért and her ministry team witness to women on the Las Vegas strip and night clubs by praying and giving gift bags filled with makeup, perfume and Lobért’s phone number if the women need to reach out.

There’s no avoiding the opposition--hate.

Lobért faces constant death threats, via social media, and on the streets, however. Not a surprise. The amount of money spent on prostitution is $30 million a day according to a report by the San Francisco Examiner (Top 5 Myths About Prostitution). After spending 16 years in the sex industry, Lobért says her determination is unwavering. She’s on a mission to set the record straight about prostitution and the definition of sex trafficking. She addresses the church’s blindness to the problem and lack of acceptance of women leaving the industry.

Life is sweeter for Lobért, 43. She found God, her divine healer, and lover. She also found true love in the marriage of Oz Fox, the guitarist of the 80s Christian rock band Stryper in 2009. Lobért has appeared on ABC News Nightline and The Tyra Banks Show and many other media outlets to share her testimony. Her ministry Hookers for Jesus also premiered on the Investigation Discovery Channel "Hookers: Saved on the Strip" in a three-part series in December. Lobért is witty and unassuming in her interview, giving us a grim look into the sex industry. This is Annie’s story in her own words and her mission to destroy the sex industry.

For more information or to get involved in Lobért’s ministry please check out Hookers for Jesus.

Written by Corine Gatti

A Tainted View of God

When I was kid I moved around seven times because my dad was always getting different jobs, and he was actually in the military as well when I was very young. He was a real strong disciplinary. I went to several different schools and because of that especially during grade school. I always had to make new friends, and I was really shy. I think that because the way I was raised that there was just rules in our house, and I really felt that I couldn’t do anything right. My dad and I never had a real relationship, so I took that as he didn’t love me and that he wasn’t interested. I was just this girl identifying with my friends’ dads and identifying with Disneyland. You know the Disney stories that they have of the night in shining armor coming to get you, loving you, taking you away, taking care of you, being your husband, and I went to church every Sunday. A relationship to God was alien to me. I knew he was up there somewhere, but he was judgmental. He didn’t like what I did when I was wrong and when I did do wrong, I felt completely condemned. And that’s what pretty much back then the culture of the church was, the type of denomination I went to. It was very strict and you didn’t really learn about God the way that you do now in church. It’s like he was a person … or not a person but a being that you could not contact. If you did talk to him, you had to pray and beg to talk to him. I mean this is just how I thought. In your childlike mind, I was never comfortable with saying he was my friend, or I know he loves me. I just never … you know I heard it in church “Jesus loves us … Jesus loves you” but come on, I was just thinking that just a human perspective do you really think he loves us? I thought Jesus was this character that you know was in the storybooks basically. Did he really live? Was he a real guy? Was he God? I wasn’t sure.

I remember going to parochial school when I was … I think I was in third and fourth grade, and I remember learning songs about Jesus. I remember learning The 10 Commandments and one of my teachers Ms. Barbara was like you know Jesus loves us. For a split second, I thought to myself yes he does because the way she treated me, she was so full of love and she played her guitar and she taught us songs and I felt that conviction in my heart that maybe it was true that he loved me but in all reality. I did the normal Christian thing. I accepted him into my heart when I was five years old because I went to Sunday school because that’s what everyone did … they raised their hand “Do you accept Jesus into your heart? Well put your hand up today.” And that’s what I did. Did I understand what it meant? Probably not, you know? And so I go through my life raised in different schools and eventually going to a school in Wisconsin, very small graduating class, and I started to develop as a young lady. At 13, 14 started developing beauty as a woman and the boys started noticing me, and since I wasn’t getting attention from my dad well, you can kind of imagine. Any boy that paid attention to me I was like whoa this is awesome! This guy likes me! It was like this rush, and I felt valued for a minute. I felt important but each boyfriend that I would have I would get my heart broken.

Rebellion

When I graduated high school I had this vendetta. I wanted to move out of the house because I didn’t want to be around my parents anymore. I just wanted to get away from everyone, and I wanted to move to the big city, get a job. My sister had gotten a job at a very important company, and I wanted to get a job there too and I just wanted to make something of my life. I wanted to go to music college. I wanted to sing. I wanted to play the piano. I wanted to play the guitar and I wanted to be a career woman as well. And so I moved to the city and got my job within one week I’m not kidding you, a really good job actually. I mean even though it didn’t pay much it was a job with benefits. We had health insurance. We had car insurance. We had a 401K plan presented to us. It was a nice job at American Express at the home office, and I still had this itch in me to go out to the clubs. I wanted to drink like I was doing in high school and me and my girlfriends you know I got this fake ID, and I went out to the clubs, and I was 18 by that point.

One night we met these two guys that looked like they were very wealthy that told us they were real estate guys, and they also were car dealers, and we believed it. My girlfriend went with one of the guys and he bought her this huge diamond. I mean it was beautiful … huge, and she told me I think I’m going to get engaged to this guy, and I said you better get that checked, to make sure it’s not a cubic Zirconia. Well, she went and got it checked and it was real. It was worth a lot of money. At that point, I was completely against it, and they never divulged to my friend or to me that they were pimps until later. Oh I found out … the day that I found out for sure that my girlfriend had a pimp was the day that … well, she called me up when I was at work and said hey you know I quit my job, and I’m moving to Hawaii now. And she said hey I’m here Annie you … if you want to go to school or whatever you want to do with your life. I’m making a lot of money you could come here really quick, and you could make the same kind of money I am. And I said well, what are you doing, and she goes well I don’t really want to talk about it over the phone let’s just say you don’t have to have sex but you can make a lot of money.

At that point, I had met this boy working out at the fitness club that I totally fell in love with that moved to California because he had to leave because he was on a four year leave and his time was up to go back to California where he was from. Couldn’t afford to go out to California, and I had never been there, and I thought to myself well I can get a ticket, so I can see him one last time and spend a week with him and so for her to fly me to Hawaii sounded like a great idea. She paid for the ticket. I got there … the first night, I got to Waikiki, I sold myself with her to some Japanese guys. And that’s what started it in the long road of prostitution aka being sex trafficked … same thing.

Prostitution, Sex Trafficking and Money

I’m here to tell you I might have gotten into it [prostitution] as a choice to make money but let me tell you the truth there is a percentage out there that people say that only three percent of prostitutes actually get out. So you explain to me what part of sex trafficking that isn’t and when I actually started selling myself it was independence. I didn’t have anyone. I was very proud and haughty. I got back to Minnesota, quit my job … actually I had three jobs at the time. I had a job at American Express. I had a job at a very fancy Japanese restaurant at night and then on the weekends I worked at Guillermo’s Pizza. So I had three jobs because I was the type of person I work hard for what I do, and I actually like to work. I like to be busy getting something done. So being a type A personality, it was real easy for me after making that kind of money … making $500, $1000 an hour whatever it was in Hawaii that I made for a couple weeks. But having no pimp and having no one to report to. I could buy what I wanted to. It was like Pandora’s Box. You open that up and cannot close it. Power, control, prestige, you know money, cars, jewelry, designer clothes, status … heck yeah come on!

Deceit of Riches

I would roll up with a Mercedes Benz drop top, stepping out of the car with Chanel shoes with a Versace bag with … I should say Chanel bag because I didn’t have any Versace bags … Chanel bag and having my Versace shades and thinking I was Miss Queen Bee of everything. Just the haughtiness that comes with having money it just overtook me. It’s like a disease like once you have easy money, and it comes quickly and fast like that you can’t … it’s so hard to control. I’m not joking-- it’s a mad rush to your heart. Your pulse starts quickening and you think of all the things that you’ve always wanted to do because I wasn’t raised in a wealthy home. You know more often than not for going to school I had to have garage sale clothing I’m not kidding you. We weren’t poverty stricken but my mom and dad, they had four children and that’s a lot to provide for and my dad didn’t have an executive corporate job.

My dad was always a manager wherever he worked, but it was really not … I didn’t have all the things my friends had … brand new Nike [sneakers]. If you didn’t have Nikes you weren’t cool and that’s just how it was. If you didn’t have Gloria Vanderbilt jeans you weren’t cool. And so I always wanted those things, and I never had them so of course when I got that money in my hands I was like whoa! I’m about to do this and just so excited for my future because I knew that nobody knew what I was doing it was totally secret, and I could do this really quick get in and out. And I could finally go to college because back then they didn’t even have the internet. I didn’t know how to apply for a grant. I didn’t know I could. There was no scholarships all … there was two scholarships offered to our school, and a boy got it and a girl … the class valedictorian got the scholarship and there was no offers for people that might have had a little bit less grades than her and him.

I thought to myself well I’ll just pay for my education through doing this. And it was such a great plan in my mind. It was such hope in my heart to finally make it in my life I could prove the guy that hurt me in high school that broke my heart wrong. I could prove to my father that I was a smart girl, that I was beautiful, that I was going to be very successful in my life, and that he could be proud of me like he was of my brothers. And so all these thought processes going on in this teenage mind that’s basically virgin to the world I mean don’t know anything about anything. And I go back to Minnesota, I quit my job, start working escort services, I start to really sneak around … honeymoon at first in escort services because I didn’t quit my jobs right away I did work for a little while I would say maybe a month or two and then I quit my job because I didn’t want anyone to know what I was doing and I wanted to make sure that this was the right thing. So one day I was in the music studio because I like to sing, I was doing some background vocals for a friend, and I had this huge cell phone, my pager’s going off because back then they had pagers and he asked me what I was doing and I said to him, I have to go take care of something I’ll be back in about an hour and a half and he was like what are you doing dealing drugs? And I said no and I pretty much told him what I was doing I said I am an escort. He then he took out his Bible because he was a Christian and he said look Jesus loves women like you that are doing this Annie. And I looked at the passages he showed me, and he was talking about the Bible and about God and for a minute in my heart I remembered my roots, and I did realize I was doing something wrong and I got a pang of guilt in my heart, for what I was doing because I knew what I was doing was wrong.

A Charmed Life

In Minnesota the money is so different than compared to Las Vegas and in California. It’s just way different. People don’t have as much in Minnesota. The tips are less. The tips are even less with the escort services, and I was sitting there … actually not sitting there I was dancing one day [stripping], and it was a good shift at a good club that I actually liked working at because I used to make good money there and this guy walked in just like a Denzel Washington character straight from the movies. He was handsome, charismatic, good looking, full of personality … a charmer. If you ever want to see a charmer that would be him … you could look up his face in the dictionary. He sat down and started tipping me while I was dancing and bought me a drink, started romancing me, started taking me out to dinner you know buying me flowers, buying me clothes and just treating me like someone I’ve always wanted to be treated like. Like a lady! And then I got comfortable enough with him to share with him hey please don’t be mad at me but I not only dance I have clients that pay me more to do extra because you know what I found out about him? I found out that he was dealing with cocaine. And I was so heartbroken. I didn’t want him to get in trouble and end up in jail for years so that’s why I shared this information with him and I told him I’m against this but I’d like you to quit dealing drugs. I don’t want you to do that anymore I’m in love with you, and he was in love with me and he bought me and ring and said we could get married one day.

The Path to Destruction 1

This man [pimp and boyfriend] was the ticket for me. Like it was my knight in shining armor basically. And I noticed that he was really protective of me, and it didn’t seem like jealously or abuse at the time because I was flattered by his wanting to be around me all the time, wanting to know where I was all the time, calling me all the time and I started to honestly feel like he really cared about me. And I trusted him with everything in my life, and I brought him to Vegas with me because my girlfriend was living here and I just wanted to come down here for a couple months, six months max. The first night that I worked I came home, put my purse on the table, and he said: “Where’s the money?”

I said “It’s in my purse, why?”

He goes “…well break yourself.”

I said: “Excuse me? What are you talking about?”

And he proceeded to take the money and took me out to the back and beat the living daylights out of me.

And he said: ‘“I’m a pimp. This is how it’s going to be. If you really love me, you’ll do this. You better listen to me!”’

The Path to Destruction 1

I was scared to death, frozen. This guy broke my nose, blood everywhere. One of my eyes was sealed shut, lumps all over my head, kicking me in my back, my stomach, punching me and shoving my face in feces. My girlfriend had two large dogs in her backyard. And that was my wakeup call, and I realized oh my gosh. And you know I stayed with that man … and it sounds insane … for many years, five years, and he brought home girls that were underage that he had gotten fake IDs for and I got to know the girls. And at first I would get mad … some girls he’d bring home that were 18 to our house, and I had to train them I would get mad at first and hate them because I was jealous that they were around him and I wanted him all to myself even though he was beating me on a regular basis. It wasn’t all the time and he would stop for a couple of months and then it’s called being out of pocket with your pimp.

Then it would be like a slow romance and just treating me really nice for a length of time and then he all the sudden would fly off the handle at the littlest, simplest things I would do that he didn’t like. And I was his bottom girl which means I was the main girl. But every girl that I got to know especially the girls that were underage when I found out that they were for sure underage, and I verified it I panicked and I thought to myself I’m going to go to jail. I can’t do this to these young girls. Oh my gosh I’ve got to get them out of here. And I would lie to him and say oh they left, and I would actually get plane tickets and bus tickets for. One of the girls I got a bus ticket and another girl I got a plane ticket for and I would help them leave and escape away from him. Because I didn’t want to deal with it, and I didn’t want them around him, and I didn’t want them being abused like me and I told them I would lie to them. I’d say he doesn’t love you. Just like he lied to me that he loved me I said because he loves me and then I would show them this love letter that he wrote to me while he was in prison and say he loves me and so it was just like a total mind trip … the whole situation. And I always was in the back of my mind planning to escape, but I knew if I tried to he would kill me. So I was stuck.

For the last couple of years, I was with him, I just despised being there. I just always felt like fight or flight. I lost so much weight, I would starve myself because I couldn’t even eat I was that upset all the time. I couldn’t sleep at night. I hated it. And I gave him every single dollar just like the girls there that came around us that he had they gave him every single dollar.

Trapped

The only money we were allowed was to buy condoms and McDonalds when I went out to work every night. I worked every single day of the week. I worked Christmas. Do you know how hard it was working Christmas Eve? Oh my gosh when I was little we went to Christmas Eve service at our church! Midnight would strike and I’d look at the clock, and I would cry because it’s like I realized that God hates me. I felt that God hated me like look what you’re doing. And I had no way to get out … stuck! Because I knew if I walked, I knew if I tried that he would make sure that it wasn’t a safe journey. And I had friends that were dying in the process and that had gotten murdered by their pimps … murdered by johns, which is another word for tricks and these are high class escorts. This isn’t you know on the track, I’ve got no teeth left addicted to crack. No we’re talking about girls that were beautiful that some even came from nice homes. Yes, there were girls from broken homes as well but these were girls that were my home girls and it gave me serious heartbreak and I realized I wasn’t going to get out of this alive and I had to plan my escape. You know and I did leave him but he kidnapped me and I went right back to him because I was afraid to leave again.

The Escape

I left and planned my escape. I stashed money from him. I hid at one of my girlfriend’s houses one of the phone girls that worked at the escort services and thank God for her because she was just so worried about me but after I got reestablished I was working there during the day hiding from him. He found me at a gas station and kidnapped me. And then I went to a pimp’s lair … I was kidnapped into the car, hit over the head and I was being beaten and spit on and yelled at for the next six hours until like seven in the morning from that point on.

I didn’t have my cell phone he took my ID, he took everything I had. And then he proceeded to have a gun to me and said you better take me to your house where you live. So I had to take him to my townhome where I was living it was on the lake. And he had a girl with him and she was sleeping in my bed that night and in my car with my things. I didn’t have any furniture yet because I had just left him. And I escaped out of there just by calling a friend in the industry that her boyfriend and her came and I had the neighbor next door help me escape. I had like cut-off shorts on and a Hard Rock T-shirt I’ll never forget what I was wearing. He cut all my hair off like all of it. He just butchered it. I mean I was cut on my head I had like an inch and a half, two inch gash on my forehead and on my hairline. I needed stitches actually. I have a scar there now but my nose was broken again and just bruises, bumps, my face … you couldn’t recognize me. I could barely see out of my right eye because both my eyes were … my left eye was closed and my right eye I could barely see out of it from being hit so hard. I escaped because when he fell asleep he had the gun on his chest pointed at me until he fell asleep and with his hand on the trigger and I pretended I was making some soup in the kitchen and I made a bunch of noise with the water and I slid the sliding glass door open and knocked on the next door neighbor’s window and of course they looked at me like I was crazy because I was scared to death. Thank goodness they were home and I told them put me in your trunk so you can hide me and drive me out of here. I told them that my captor he has a gun and he will try to shoot me please help me. So they drove me out of there and I met my friends and my friends helped me escape. So that’s just one instance of being kidnapped. This is how serious these women that work in this industry … most of the girls will not tell you they have a pimp.

Lies

Girls that are working for the pimps will lie to the police. Because if they do tell they will get most certainly, severely physically abused if not murdered. I’m telling you. The pimps what they do is they’re sex traffickers. I know where your family is I will kill them. I’ll kill your friends. They’ll ransom your children if you have children and say you won’t ever be able to see your child again if you don’t do what I want. And so do you see how I entered into prostitution at free will but how it got me? Just frozen … and then not knowing anymore now I have to make up every dollar I made him. I made him millions of dollars. He had a gambling habit … he gambled craps so almost everything he made went to his habit and his car addiction and his designer suit addiction. So I was really bitter.

When I got away from him I wanted to make it again. I wanted to make the money again that I made when I first got into the industry when I was 18. I was 23 when I got away from him and I remember just being so bitter and broken and I just have to get away and make my money. I ended up being with another abusive person in my life that abused me mentally and physically again and almost the same scenario happened. Even though he didn’t have any pimp friends he might as well have been a pimp. So it was really hard for me to honestly pull my whole brainwashed mind back to reality because I was brainwashed. I believed nobody could love me because I was a prostitute. I truly believed that it was my fault that I got pimped. I willingly … even though it wasn’t willingly a thing … I had to do it out fear.

Brainwashed

People misunderstand this is that these women are brainwashed and so women that are in love especially … the cycle of abuse just like domestic violence … they are frozen and they’re stuck. It’s kind of like you see the door out but you’re too afraid to get up and walk because you know someone is watching you and if you do walk towards that door you’ll get shot. Is it worth it? Do you just stay and cope or do you run for that door and possibly die? So finally, I realized if I don’t run for that door to get out of this I’m going to die right where I’m at. I was at the breaking point and was at that point in my 10th or 11th year and I started doing pills because I had cancer. I lost my hair for the second time in my life but this time to cancer, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma going through chemotherapy treatments, radiation treatments for two years. It was awful.

I had tricks beating me up, raping me and just you know this low feeling of low self worth, that I can’t do anything right and I could never get together my plans that I really had to go to school. They never manifested because once you make fast money you lose it just as fast. If you don’t know where to put that money and you’re not stable mentally and emotionally and physically there’s no way you’re going to be able to hold onto that money. If you’re in a constant state of trauma … how does a trauma victim hold onto that money? You don’t. So pretty much I paid off everyone around me to help me. You know like you’ll love me if I give you this or maybe they’ll love me if I do this for them or take care of them. I was always wanted to be the Band-Aid for the problem. Like my first boyfriend/pimp. I wanted to be his nurse. I wanted to make him better. I didn’t know this at the time but he was severely abused by his mother. He was a boy that was on the street at a very young age and learned how to pimp at a very young age and deal drugs and be a craps dealer. And I was so frozen in my thought process that I never really thought that I could get out of the pit that had been dug for me. And know this that a lot of the girls that are out there right now are in this dark place. Where they don’t see two feet in front of them. All they see is where they are. It’s just their basic needs and a safe place to sleep. So you can see how it attacks someone right?

Pimps and the Sex Industry

Every industry in the sex industry you’re going to find the pimps. They are there behind the porn. They are there behind phone sex. They are there behind a brothel and I don’t care if it’s a legalized brothel there’s a pimp behind that. If there’s girl working there or in two weeks after they get off they have someone that they’re giving all their money to trust me. Not every single girl but a vast majority of them … yes. You’re going to find it on the street and you’re going to find it in the escort services. And then you’re going to find them at the very high class concierge like we see in the movie Taken. We had opportunities to do that by the way. To go to another island and get paid 100 grand a month to be with a very royal figure that was actually kidnapping women so it’s in every spectrum, every culture. Prostitution is one of the oldest professions in the world and there’s always going to be a pimp and there’s always going to be a customer to buy. I’ve lost my hair for the second time in my life. I’m sick. I have to get better. I have all these big medical bills coming in. To this day I owe money to the medical bills.

But I was seeing this client regularly that felt really bad for me and he saw me go through my chemo and saw me go through basic hell and he was very sympathetic and compassionate with me. He said Annie I’m seeing you slowly destroy your life … I started doing coke at that point … he said you’ve got to get sober and you have to get out of this business. It’s going to kill you just like your friends. He said who are you kidding here? I said well what am I going to do? He goes well I don’t want you to go back to work. So that day I quit the escort services and cried and felt good about it. He said I’ll teach you my job what I do at the automotive business industry and I learned a new trade. I became really successful. We started flying back and forth to Japan. I felt like my whole life was behind me. Nobody knew what I had done …only him and a few various clients that he had that met me through them. I got sober and started to really blossom as a corporate businesswoman. I finally had something that I could believe in within myself. I can do this right. I can build this business with him and we can build these partnerships and I can be a successful woman. And the day came when we hooked up with the wrong people in the business and we basically lost everything overnight. And here I was living in a million dollar home that I for the first time didn’t sell my body for or so I thought because I was still compromising and was faced with the fact that I was about to lose everything again.

My Abyss

I felt I really didn’t have a reason to live anymore. I don’t think I intentionally meant to take too much [cocaine] but I did and fell back and had a heart attack and that’s when I decided to pray. And I had prayed before. I had used God kind of like a trick actually, like a sugar daddy because whenever I needed help I would pray to him over and over. And you know I know he heard my prayers because this time when I told him I was going to be out of it for good I meant it. Because at that point, I had started prostituting myself again down at the casinos. This time I was walking the carpet … that’s what they call it … I wasn’t working for the escort services. I was walking the carpet to feed my drug habit and to also. When you walk the carpet at a casino and you actually pick up dates that are at the various tables and the bars. You recognize the high rollers and you sit next to them and start playing and talking and you pick up a date. And you make an exchange. Very profitable actually because there’s no agency in between and I didn’t have a pimp.

Finally, it all hit rock bottom that day [August 2, 2003]. I told him what I was doing and he was devastated and I went to the hospital because he called the ambulance for me and I never picked up cocaine or a painkiller again after that. That’s when like I really … I mean my lungs were really damaged from the smoking of the coke and plus I was doing maybe two or three packs of cigarettes a day at the time. I quit smoking … just everything basically. I started watching television because I couldn’t sleep at night. Because at night usually I had been getting high and staying up for two and three nights straight.

My Salvation

I started watching Christian television. Unbeknownst to me Joyce Meyer came on I didn’t know who she was. She had this loud voice and I was like who is that chick wow? I feel like she’s yelling at me but I kind of like it because I need to hear the truth you know? I really wanted to hear the truth. I remember when she was saying to the television audience at two or three in the morning that God loves you. No matter where you’ve been. No matter what you’ve done. And I just sat there and balled and it clicked in my head. He absolutely did hear my prayer and I know not I know for sure he loves me. I had an inkling that he might a little bit because I’m out of the lifestyle but he really loves me. He loves me massively. So my friend went out and got me a Bible and I started reading the Bible. So for the first year and a half I didn’t go to church. God was healing my heart and he just basically I mean it was like the holy spirit was my guide and my mentor. God would speak to me. I know that sounds crazy to some people but in my head a voice would come and I would hear him speak softly to me. You’re my daughter. I love you. You’re my princess.

The Lost

I never forgot about my friends and I wanted to reach out to them and one day I was cleaning the house and I just had this inkling in my spirit that I’m going to go down to the Las Vegas strip and I’m going to go sit at one of the bars and casinos and I’m going to tell one of the girls that’s working there that God loves them. And that was the fall of 2005. I started doing that and that’s how Hookers for Jesus was born. I came up with the name because I am a hooker for Jesus. I believe that we are fishing people out of a drowning situation but I’m also a former hooker and it is what it is. It’s an oxymoron type of name actually and the reason why I picked that name is because I remember being arrested by the police and getting spit on, pushed down into the cement with handcuffs being arrested for prostitution and I also remember my pimp calling me a ho, a hooker, that I’d never amount to anything.

A New Life

Jesus loves us and I wanted to let the girls know that so I started bringing them to church and some of my old friends from the industry as well and I started seeing a transformation happen for them and finally feeling relief from their lifestyle. And I started taking the girls into my own little home and letting them spend the night to help them get away from their traffickers. I told my church that I would like to have a home one day for them. One day pastor Benny Perez [The Church at South Las Vegas] called me up and said hey, we’d like to give a home and that’s how Destiny House was born--our home for women. And I was being chased by the media anyhow just because of Hookers For Jesus but when we got the house wow the media really came after us.

Investigation Discovery was one outlet that came to us through mutual friends Sharon Lease and John Crow from Horizon Productions they approached me with this project and said Discover ID would like to do a documentary on you … on the girls at the house and what you do. It’s a three part special. It is three hours of my life intimately with each girl. And it’s about the church and my family and my husband because I’m married now and it’s a journey with each lady. One girl in there has a different story. One lady actually met her pimp while she was in the Navy and one girl Desiree was actually tricked by her cousin to come out to Vegas for a hostess job which that’s not what it was. She got trafficked that very night. And the other girl is the story of a sad runaway who ran away when she was 13 or 14 and was instantly out on the street and having to fend for herself so she turned to prostitution and eventually got with some pimps. So three stories of very real and raw women and I’m very honored to be paired with Discovery.

Well we can fit up to four [woman in Destiny’s House] but we’re currently looking for a larger location to have more ladies because we have more volunteers now and I have a great assistant who helps me … Samantha Summers. She’s actually in the third episode you’ll get to meet her. She’s a makeup artist but also a former sex industry worker herself. It’s kind of a roots story I was doing the ministry busy about my business and one of my best friends Heather Veitch from JC’s Girls. She was one of the first ladies to reach out to the women that were in a strip club. She’s a former stripper … beautiful girl and now you see a ton of ministries working out to strip clubs out of her inspiration. We’ve actually become very close because she’s the only person I knew that was doing a stripping ministry and I was the only person I knew doing a prostitution ministry so her and I became really good friends.

Marriage

Oz Fox from the band called Striper became friends with Heather and went to her Myspace. I was her top friend at the time and I was her top friend at the time. He clicked on my profile and read about my story and we became friends and we had a long distance relationship. We didn’t start dating right away but we just were very good like pen pals and I finally got to meet him in person. In that same year October [2008] we started dating and it was just a love whirlwind. He was fascinated by what I did and I love music and it was just a crazy pairing with us. I felt like God really handled this and maneuvered the whole chess game to where I could win. We got engaged in February 2009 and got married in June 2009.

If you listen to the lyrics of their music it will set you free. I love rock and roll always have … I used to dance to it when I was dancing. I’ve have some songs that I’ve written since I was a little girl and Oz is going to help me with those so Hookers For Jesus will have music available for purchase soon and the money will go to the ministry.

Pimps, Props and God

Now I have a great relationship with my Dad now but everyone … my family and all my old friends know what I do and they love me. You would think the percentage of women getting out of this is probably not good … without God no it’s not--but now there is hope. A lot of churches really don’t know how to deal with this. They don’t know how to handle the situations might pop up. Really, honestly these people are trying to get their lives back in order and to get their lives back. We can help them rebuild their lives. And I hope that some of the johns can realize these girls don’t want to be doing this. They really don’t. If you are talking about sex trafficking people are very interested and want to know about it but as soon as you say prostitution no one wants to deal with it and it’s the very same thing. It really is. I’ve had some pimps come up to me in the casinos say some pretty nasty things to me but I’ve also had some of them say some nice things and give me props. I’ve even had three of the pimps that were there the night of my kidnapping come to me and apologize. Hurt people hurt people and abused people abuse other people.

The Future

I’ve been writing for awhile now and it’s changed over the years. I’ve got a lot of things that I’m writing about the bible for girls that have been in the industry and from a woman writing from a perspective of where they are coming from. I’m going to be finishing writing my autobiography and I can’t say for sure that it will be out by the end of this year but definitely by 2012. I am really excited about the music and the book because I want to help people. That’s my heart.

Becoming a Trailblazer

Back in 2006 I wasn’t sure that I wanted to do this [ministry] I was very hesitant but ever since then it has taken off. A company in the UK called Voodoo Dog Productions is doing a documentary on us … on Hookers for Jesus. And it’s all about my life. From 2007 to 2010 it’s all about my life. We are actually a grassroots organization where no one else was doing this when we first started. God birthed all of this. I do not take credit for it at all. It was him that did this to me. He birthed Hookers For Jesus. He birthed Saturday Night Love which is our outreach to women on the strip. He birthed Ladies of Destiny which is our support group. He birthed Grace Chicks which is for women who are still working. It’s amazing what he’s done. I feel like an entrepreneur of sorts. I don’t know everything there is to know about non-profit but I’m learning.

Pressing into Thin Places

Pressing Into Thin Places expresses the universal fears, trials, disappointments, and joys that we experience in our day-to-day journey and encourages the heart and mind toward God by pointing to the wisdom, hope and faithfulness of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit. Read next feature >