 EJ Love is a Love and Sex Coach, Sexual Healer / Tantra Practitioner and Expert on Soul TV. She helps people to heal and empower themselves in love, intimacy and sex. She has worked in the sex industry since 2009 and often speaks from her own personal experience sharing her message through speaking events, media, radio shows and writing articles, books and blogs. www.facebook.com/EJLoveAngel. www.EJLove.com www.SoulPriestess.com. Every year women who work in the sex industry are assaulted, raped and even killed.
Almost to this day four years ago I was one of them. I was too afraid to share my story publically but now that I am fully out, today I want to share it with you to help bring awareness to this issue. It is a pretty crazy story and the whole time I was going through it, it felt like something out of a thriller movie! Whenever I used to share about it with friends, it would make my stomach churn, but I know the importance of sharing the full story and bringing awareness of how this can happen to anyone and how I got lucky, how I managed to escape but was too scared to go to the police and report it. It often makes me wonder who else he did this to, what if he did the same thing to other women before or after me. I don't think I would be the only one and what if the other women didn’t get away? It was 3am in the morning, this was back when I used to work late nights and I received a call from a guy wanting an outcall. I had been working as an escort for two years and on the most part my experiences had been really positive. So going to an outcall at 3am wasn’t unusual for me, these were usually from the men who had been up partying and seeking company and fun. I was a bit tired so I wasn’t sure I wanted to go out at that time of night which I told him. He told me on the phone that he had seen escorts the previous few nights but that they weren’t quite what he was after and he wanted to make sure that I was the woman in the photos. Sometimes people in the industry use fake photos, but I have always prided myself on being who I say I am, and often at times being too honest and probably giving out too much information about myself which I would soon discover on this night. He said that I sounded lovely and exactly what he was after, so he wanted an hour to two hours to start with. There were no red flags or alarm bells ringing for me at that stage and it was a lot of money so I felt I couldn’t turn it down. I decided I would just drive there myself since it was only ten minutes away. In Queensland there are laws that say that we can only have a driver that is a qualified security guard, so we are not allowed to have friends or other people be our drivers, if we are caught using someone who is not then we would end up in court both slapped with a fine. In my eyes that is a ridiculous law, actually Queensland has a number of laws that are not conducive to our safety and I would love to see that changed! When I arrived, I parked across the road and knocked on his gate and as soon as he opened it he asked ‘Hey, did you get your driver to drop you off?’. He seemed normal and nice and it seemed more from a caring place and it didn’t seem to come from a place of trying to suss me out. Silly me said ‘oh no, I just drove, I can do everything myself’. First mistake – yes way too honest. I always tell someone where I am going and who I am seeing and their details, so I had already let a friend know where I was and that I was okay. The first thing I do when I arrive is let them know that I am okay. So at this stage, I have arrived safely and he has paid me upfront for the first hour. Everything seems normal. Then we talk, and we talk, and we talk. We talk about business, entrepreneurship and the law of attraction. He tells me about his overseas truck business and I am thinking this guy seems really cool and because we have been talking business I share with him about my other business that I run and we are bouncing ideas off of each other. He was taking drugs and told me that it was speed, and looking back I think he may have also been on meth but clients being on drugs is quite normal for bookings at this time and back then it didn’t bother me if clients were on drugs. His cute cat comes in and I am patting it because I love cats, and he says how and he can’t believe his cat likes me, that his cat doesn’t like anyone. He is telling me all these stories, like how someone stole his identity once, he is going on about how other escorts that have come to his place and stolen his stuff and I explain to him that I am not like that so he has nothing to worry about and I am sorry to hear that happened to him. I reassure him that there are trustworthy people out there. He says that they were on drugs and he felt like they were just wanting to take his drugs. He was showing me the two packets he had there, one of LSD and one of speed and the difference of the way they looked. I tell him how I used to be a big party girl too but hardly take drugs these days. I say that I’ve always had a high tolerance, but that I’ve never had anything trippy, that it just doesn’t interest me. He pulls out these leather gloves that someone tried to steal once and wants to show me how beautiful they are and tells me to try them on so I can feel how amazing they are, which I do. None of this is seeming odd to me….yet. It’s not unusual either for guys to talk about other escorts they have seen in bookings. The hour flies by and I am wondering if he is wanting to move to the bedroom at some stage, so I check in to see if he is wanting another hour as I am starting get really tired so I say to him ‘he better use the energy I still have whilst he can’. He books another hour but says he is happy just chatting for now, that he is really just enjoying my company. By this stage he has somewhat earned my trust and we are getting along great. He offers me a drink and says do I want a little speed in it just to help me stay awake because he wants to keep hanging out with me and will probably book a few more hours. Now, this is a part I have really had to own here and I almost didn’t want to share this because it is something I have had to take responsibility for. Although, I have never bought or taken drugs to do this work, on the odd occasion when clients have offered me drugs particularly in a late night booking I would say yes, especially if it was a long booking and also knowing I have high tolerance I would never have that much or get out of control or messy and always have my wits still about me. I had only ever had an issue once before with a client on drugs which was a 24 hour booking where the client had been on it for days and had flipped out, but that is a story for another time. So I said yes and I watched him put a small pinch of it in my water, it felt like it was nothing compared to the crazy all weekend benders I used to go on with my friends before I even worked in the sex industry! He asks me if I would help him with his truck business, that he needs to do a western union money transfer to overseas tomorrow and all I need to do is use my ID to make the transfer and he will pay me $400 because he has lost his ID so he can’t do it. He says we can just go down to the Post Office when it opens at 9am and do it which is just around the corner. I ask him, what it is for and he says just for a delivery. I am thinking, what kind of delivery? Hmm... He won’t go into too many details but he shows me the address of where and who it is going to. I am thinking well it is an extra $400 and he will be paying me until then, I am sure it will be fine. The speed is helping me to stay a little more awake but not having too much of an effect on me and we just keep hanging out and talking as it starts to get daylight. We just hang on the couch having a cuddle which he says he is just happy to do right now. I am thinking, 'wow, this is such an easy booking!' The speed wears off and he offers me some more, but as I am driving up to Brisbane that day which I told him, I didn’t want anything else. So he makes me a berocca and as he did it he said under his breath ‘this is what we give the girls with high tolerance’. I didn’t really register what he was saying at that time, but looking back it all made sense. He then says to me casually ‘you know girls like you go missing all the time and nobody notices’. To which I said ‘oh if I went missing, people would notice’. Then he said ‘and if I was going to bury someone, I would be taking the body way out into the hinterland and I would dig the hole at least 6 foot deep so nobody would find them.’ I looked at him, like what the fuck did you just say?! Then he said ‘Oh but I would never do something like that’. He then went on to talk about bikies and how he has all these connections with them and gets into telling me some sordid story, and now I am starting to feel really unsafe. As it is now daylight he opens up all the windows but leaves most of the curtains closed. I notice him looking out towards the window like he was looking for someone out there and I start to get paranoid. Suddenly I am starting to feel really scared. The curtains are flapping around with the breeze coming through the window and I am starting to trip out. Not in a way where I am seeing things, I am just more feeling paranoid and I sit down just needing to get my head straight. He asks if I am feeling okay and I say ‘No I am feeling really hot, uneasy and sick.’ Then he says that I must have had too many drugs, to which I say 'I have only had the tiny bit and it already wore off'. I know my body and what happens to it with certain drugs and when it wears off, I am back to normal. This is not a feeling I have felt before. He starts to get a bit nasty, saying ‘well obviously you can’t handle your drugs.’ He gets on his phone and is talking to someone about meeting them somewhere and then coming over to the house. I am starting to freak out, feeling extremely unsafe and all these things are running through my head. Like what if his friend is coming over and they are going to do something to me? What if something happened to all those other escorts he talked about. Why hasn’t he tried to be physically intimate with me this whole time? Maybe this western union money transfer is super dodgy? What was with the gloves? What if he has killed and buried these other escorts and he is going to try and frame me for it because my fingerprints are now in those gloves? What if I was going to end up buried too?! Yes, there were some pretty crazy things running through my head! So I think, I just need to play it cool and get the fuck out of there. Even though I am tripping out a little, I still have a fair idea of what is going on but I don’t think he realises that. I also know I have to pretend like I am not scared, that we are cool, because I am afraid of what he may do if I don’t go along with what he wants or that I am suspicious. I say 'I just need to leave now because my friend will be waiting for me' which they were as we were both going to Brisbane together today. He says, 'well let’s go to the post office now and then you can go.' I am afraid that if I say no that he may do something irrational, so I plan that I will just get in my car and say I will meet him at the post office but really I will get the fuck out of there. But he says, let’s go in his car to which I say no I would rather drive (there was no way I was getting in his car, and be kidnapped and buried, I don’t think so!!). I was trying to play it cool so he didn’t no I was clued on to what was going on, a part of me knowing that what he was wanting me to do was dodgy and the other part of me working out a plan to get out of there. So he says, 'okay let’s just go in your car and you can drop me back on the way.' Oh man, he is not giving me much options here. So he gets in the car and maybe I think I will just do what he wants, then drop him back and go, to keep him happy. So on the way to the post office he starts touching my shoulder and my leg, this is the first time he has really touched me intimately all night and I twitch and pull away. I notice him slyly put what looks like one of those drug baggies down the side of my seat. I am wondering if I am just seeing things though! He says to me ‘now before you go to Brisbane make sure you pump your tyres up to 42 psi, it will help you drive a lot better.’ I am thinking, 42 psi is extremely high! That seems very odd. We get to the post office. We walk over the carpark. The line at the post office is massive, almost out the door. When we are standing there, he stands well away from me, as though he doesn’t want to be seen next to me. I am texting my friend telling her I am the post office with this guy. There is a guy behind me on his phone and I am starting to get paranoid again feeling like I am being watched and wondering if this whole thing has been planned out. Everything in my body is telling me don’t’ do this. I know I have to tell this guy that I can’t do the transfer, also knowing that all my personal details will be on that form. I am grateful that this line is so long which is giving me time to think. I turn to look at him and I say ‘I am so sorry, but I can’t do this, I am feeling really sick’. Surprisingly he says it is okay and we leave the post office and go back to the car. As I drive back towards his place the car suddenly stalls in the middle of the road and we pull it off to the middle of the road where there is a turn to go into a petrol station. He opens up the hood, has a look, says he has fixed it and then shuts it and gets back in the car, into the driver’s seat. I refuse to get back in. There is no way I am getting in the car with him driving it. I tell him to just drive it over to the petrol station so I can fill it with petrol as it was low and I walk across. He tells me I am just being silly. I go into the petrol station whilst he fills it up, I text my friend seeing where she is and I tell her to come and get me. I have decided to just leave my car there and go. All that mattered right now was my safety and I didn’t know how else to get out of this situation. I knew this guy was dodgy and I didn’t know what he was capable of. When I came out he was pumping up my tyres… to 42 PSI. He saw me on my phone and asked me what I was doing on it. I told him that I was getting a friend to pick me up, that I didn’t feel okay to drive, so I was going to leave the car here and get someone to pick it up later so he would need to get a taxi back home. This is when he completely flipped out. He started to get really angry and looked at me and said in a raised and agggravated voice ‘why are you ruining my life?’ Me, still calm, said ‘What do you mean? Why are you getting so angry?’ He calmed down a little bit and said ‘because if something happens to you, I will be the last person you were seen with’. There were also cameras everywhere at this petrol station which would have seen the whole conversation. I said ‘why is something going to happen to me?’, thinking what if he is planning to do something to me? He said ‘well, You may just walk in front of car or something because you have psychosis’. Ummm… okay, I was thinking what is this guy on, actually he was on a lot of things, so it was more like he was the one with pyschosis! Then he said ‘I’m going to call the Police, you need to go to hospital’ Still calm I said ‘I’m fine, I am just getting my friend to pick me up, I just need to go to the toilet first’, I needed to kill time. He said ‘okay just meet me right back here’. He also still had my car keys. Whilst in the toilet I was having thoughts of what if he did call the police? This is not going to look good for me - here is this escort who has been drugged or in their eyes is on drugs, would they even believe my story? What if he did put a bag of drugs in my car and they searched it? I mean how is this going to look? What if he called the police and reported me driving to Brisbane? What if my car tyres blew whilst I was driving and I had a car accident? I just knew that I had to leave the car here and go. So I was just going to wait in the toilet until my friend got there and make a run for it! I was only in there for about 5 minutes before she text me to say that she was there. Phew. I was almost out of this awful what felt like a life threatening situation. As I walked out looking around for her car, what looked like a police car drove in and I saw him have this this look on his face of joy, we were both initially thinking that it was the police before realising it was just a security car. And then I ran… I ran so fucking fast into my friend’s car, I ran for my fucking life. I turned to her and said ‘Go, go, go, get the fuck out of here’. He was jumping up and down and yelling and putting his hands on the car trying to stop us from leaving. Let me tell you we got out of there so fucking fast… and bolted it to Brisbane. I was so shaken up and my friend was too from the whole ordeal, but it was such a relief to be out, and be safe! So I had left the car and the keys with him, it was actually a hire car so I had texted him just to leave it and I would get it picked up. He had taken it back home to outside his place, with the keys in the car and said I could pick it up from there. I locked myself in a hotel room in Brisbane for 3 nights and I had put a table up against the door, with a frypan and a knife. I was so afraid that he was going to come after me and somehow find out where I was. I was in Brisbane to work so it would have been easy enough to just make a fake booking however I chose not to see any new clients, only my regulars, it was nice to have men with me in the hotel who I felt safe with. Over those three days I wrote about everything that happened, I did some research and I documented it all and I sent it to a friend and I told them that if anything was to happen to me, that they were to take this to the police. He texted me a night later, asking me to come around to his place. Telling me that there was another girl there for us to play with, as though nothing had even happened. I told him that it was best that we just leave things be, that my car would be picked up in the next day or two and that we don’t speak again. I told him that I wouldn’t say anything as long as he left me alone but that if anything was to happen to me that everything that happened had been documented and would be taken to the Police. He called me crazy to which I mentioned that 42 PSI in my tyres would have meant it was more likely for me to have an accident and they could have blown out, to which he called me stupid and said no he said it was ‘level 2 psi’ and went on about traction and speed and blah, blah, blah… it seemed he was the stupid one as there is no such thing as level 2 psi and now I had proof of his intent to harm me. I had his address, I had his name. I had googled him and found out about his business (his non dodgy one) and I found photos of him online. So as you can imagine, I am sure he was afraid that I would go to the Police. But I didn’t because I was afraid that if I went to the Police that I would be in danger. He had talked about his connection with bikies so I thought what if he sent someone after me? This was such a scary experience I couldn’t imagine going through it again. However, later on I found out that was all bullshit as a friend of a friend knew of him and he was not liked by the bikies. Secondly, I didn’t want this dragged through court and my name everywhere and people knowing about my working as an escort. Plus, would they believe me? I would have to own the part where I did take that speed and what would they think of me? Maybe they will think that I just brought it on myself? That I should have known better. That maybe I had made the whole thing up. And what about my other business? How would that effect it? At the same time I had set up a charity for the disabled, and had been running charity events and been in the media for this, how would this reflect on that? But there was this big part of me too, that felt what if I was not the only one? What if he had done this to other women? What if this was his ploy, his game, his tactic to do what I believe was drug dealing? What if other women were not so lucky? What if there were other women who with less tolerance, who took more drugs or who were more easily manipulated and taken advantage of? Who knows if there were women who went missing and were buried and nobody knew? What if he does this again? I also thought maybe he said that all just to scare me so I wouldn’t report him. But I know he did have the intent to harm me when I didn’t do what he wanted, even just doing what he did to my tyres was proof enough that he was capable of that. Eventually the hire car place picked up the car and we never spoke again. I don’t know what happened to him and I pretty much just tried to not think about what happened and move on and not speak about it. Maybe if this had happened to me outside of escort work, I would have reported it. So today, today I will no longer be silent as I finally speak out! Because THIS IS NOT OKAY and we need to bring awareness that this is happening all the time and I think we often don’t feel safe to talk about it, in case we are not believed, in case we are judged, in case our name is dragged through courts and media and even using the fact that we are sex workers to twist it around or make it more newsworthy, rather than just being a story about a woman who was assaulted or killed, they will focus on the person having been a sex worker. I am simply a woman and what I do doesn’t define who I am, I should not be made to feel like I don't have the same rights. So this may sound like a thriller movie or a novel, but this a real life story that happened to me and I am not alone. This happens all the time to people all over the world and so many of us are afraid to speak out. So there are people who do this out there that are getting away with it over and over again. I am sick of the stigma that sex workers have to deal with and the shit that we have to put up with it because of it. I am here to say NO MORE. I refuse to be stigmatised. I refuse to keep my mouth shut. I refuse to be stereotyped. I refused to be shamed and judged. Because I am not ashamed. I am an empowered woman who chooses to work in the sex industry and I should be able to feel safe in choosing that. I should feel like I have the same rights as any other woman who is assaulted at work. I was so scared for my life and I never want to experience this feeling again and I wouldn’t wish this is on anyone. There are other women out there that aren’t so lucky. I believe I can be a voice for all these women who can no longer speak out and I will not be silent. If you go to http://www.december17.org/. You can see all the women in the sex industry who have been killed this year, this doesn’t even account for all the women who have been raped and assaulted. These are women just like me, just like your daughter, your mother, your sister, your friend – how would you feel if this happened to them? Or even to you? We need to stop this. Please Share this post to help bring awareness to this. Please support my Naked Woman Rising Movement where I will be sharing more about my experiences - https://www.thunderclap.it/projects/50552-naked-woman-rising-movement Launching soon:- www.tinyurl.com/nakedwomanrising Much Love and thank you for your support, EJ Xx P.S. On reflecting on everything that happened, I made commitments to myself and boundaries to help keep me safe. These are just what worked for me, but no matter what situation or choices we make we should always feel safe in our work. - I don't see clients who are drunk or on drugs. - I never take drugs whilst working (I gave up drugs completely not long after this). - I don't work after 10pm. - I don't do party bookings. - I don't do Outcalls to houses. - I always have some form of security/driver who check in with regularly. - Someone always knows where I am and has the details of who I'm with. - I always follow my intuition even if it means turning away money. I've turned down so many bookings that don't fit in to the above, but I've had plenty of amazing clients. No amount of money is worth risking my safety, but in saying that I shouldn't have to feel afraid at work so it's time that we bring more awareness and light to this issue! Comments are closed.
|
Sex Worker Voices
|
RSS Feed