Prostitution in Houston: Women tell their stories in their own words

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Prostitution and human trafficking are happening right here in Houston, and it's a bigger business than you might realize.

The women trapped in it are best equipped to tell its story.

"You feel like you as a woman have no value," KJ Hall said. "You have no control over your life."

"I had a lot of bad experiences out there. It is what is it -- addicted to drugs and prostituting," Rochelle Jamison explained. "I got arrested 33 times. That was only in Houston alone."

Prostitution and human trafficking are happening right here in Houston and it's a bigger business than anyone might realize.

"I was waking up in the morning at five and going to see him before he would go to work," Bunny Saad added. "Then, I would come home and get the kids ready to go to school. Whenever I got them ready and out of the house, I basically was dropped off at a club and didn't get picked up until the club closed. I learned about Bissonnet, I learned about hotels, I learned about in calls, out calls. All the wordings, how to word things so you don't get arrested."

ABC13 visited Bissonnet Street in southwest Houston to see what was happening.

In so many ways, the area is a slice of our city.

Vendors from all over the world hawk their goods from nondescript strip malls.

In the mornings, the drop-off line at Best Elementary stretches across the block. But the children clutching lunch boxes and a hand from a parent aren't much younger than the ones working the corners.

"I told them the truth. I'm 13 years old, and I told them that, and they didn't care. I would walk around, look sexy. I would have my lingerie on, even if it's raining or snowing. I would have lingerie on, and guys would stop, and I would have to go up to their door," said a 13-year-old whose identity we are protecting for her safety. For purposes of this story, we're calling her Lilly.

"I was thinking about leaving, but that wasn't a choice for me. They said, 'You're in the game. You're going to stay in the game.' They started shooting me up with a drug. I've had eight overdoses now. It was seven before Thursday. Not even your worst enemy, nobody should go through what I went through. I've seen some stuff, I've heard some stuff, I've had stuff done to me. It's not worth it," said a 15-year-old whose identity we are also protecting for her safety. We're calling her Stevie.

"I don't believe that turning tricks and being a prostitute is a choice. It wasn't really a choice for me," Hall said.

Police say Houston's geographical location, cultural diversity, and city planning make it the number one city in the country for sex trafficking.

It seems so many of these women get into sex work in the same way. And they stay for the same reasons.

Their stories:

Police say Houston's geographical location, cultural diversity, and city planning make it the number one city in the country for sex trafficking.

Lilly (name changed):

"Around 8 years old was the first time I got touched by my uncle, and it kind of messed me up a little bit," she said.

Lilly's parents divorced. She was put in foster care and ran away. That's when she met a man.

"He was like, 'You look like you're going through a lot and you need money. Do you know about the game?' And I was like, 'What game?' He told me, 'The pimping game.' I asked what that meant, and he was like, 'Well, you give a little something to get a little something.'

She did what he told her to.

"When you're walking the blades, you just walk around, look sexy. I got like $10,000 a night maybe. I remember getting raped a lot. Like, men would rip off my clothes and take advantage of me. It got to the point where I didn't really care anymore. I wasn't really happy with how I was living, but I didn't care, so I just got used to it and kept going."

By then, her parents had disappeared.

They didn't want a daughter who was working for a dangerous man.

"I didn't get to keep 50%. He just took it all. I couldn't talk to anybody. When I had my phone, he had full parental control on it," she said. "I never thought I would have to do anything like that just to get clothes or get food. I told myself I was a run-through, I was disgusting, I didn't have anything to do with life. I wanted to kill myself, I really did."

Today, Lilly is back in foster care.

"To be honest, I'm kind of not over it. I'm really not forward. I'm stuck in it in a time loop. I see everything, I have nightmares every night. It just hurts, it does, because I'm young, and I don't deserve this," she said.

Stevie (name changed):

"My mom was strung out on drugs. She was in and out of jail," she said. "I go to church. I go to Bible study on Wednesday and then they took me from my granny. CPS did. When I was in CPS, they kept moving me around, bouncing me around. I felt like I had nobody at all."

So, Stevie ran away.

"It started with me being homeless, staying in tents, and me just begging every day for money and stuff. He was a mac, you know? There's a gorilla pimp, and there's a mac. A gorilla pimp beats a woman. A mac, they're a pimp still, but they talk you into it. They lure you in," she explained.

Soon after starting sex work, Stevie tried to leave.

"That wasn't a choice for me. They said, 'You're in the game, you're going to stay in the game.' They started shooting me up with a drug," she said. "You make the money, but you don't keep the money. You keep giving it every day. You're giving yourself to somebody to give money to somebody else."

Stevie has overdosed on drugs multiple times.

"I have an STD. I have syphilis. It's on my skin. I treat it, but it could come back any time. My son, because I was pregnant when I had syphilis, he has it, too, and that's not fair. It's not fair at all," she said.

Stevie is 15 now. She has two kids and custody of neither.

"I beat myself down every day because I did something I didn't want to do, and I have to live with something I can't get rid of maybe," she said.

KJ Hall:

"I used to say, 'Why me?' Now I'm understanding, 'Why not me?'"

KJ was sexually abused at age 3. She grew up like so many, wanting love.

"No one should have to be that grown. I had to be that grown, but no one should have to be that grown," Hall said. "It was empty. There was no feeling."

By her mid-20s, she was addicted.

"I didn't know how to stop. Something felt so completely wrong if I didn't have a bottle in my hand by 3 p.m.," she said. "I started having sex for drugs and alcohol with whoever would give it to me."

She never worked the streets, but she met men at bars and clubs.

"I kind of played a trick on myself when I called it being a call girl because I felt so sophisticated because I wasn't out turning tricks, but I was turning tricks," she said. "I would go to people's houses, and I didn't think anything of it when I'd walk in, and they'd walk in and they'd deadbolt the door. Anything could have happened to me. Anything."

Hall no longer works in the sex industry.

But she hasn't forgotten where she's been.

"I don't believe that turning tricks and being a prostitute is a choice. It wasn't really a choice for me. Nobody does these things because they just want to," she said. "Honestly, I feel like it has to start with cracking down on the predators, not the women that don't know any better or the ones that want out but don't know how to get out."

Bunny Saad:

Bunny was a junior at Cy Falls High School when she ran away with her boyfriend.

"I really just wanted to get away from my family, and at the same time, I had this dream of really being a wife and being a mom. Even though I was young, that's what I wanted. I was fed that I would have that, and it's really not what happened," she said. "I learned about Bissonnet, I learned about hotels, I learned about in calls, out calls. All the wordings, how to word things so you don't get arrested."

At her new home, her boyfriend made the rules.

Soon, they had two kids.

"I felt like a piece of meat that had to throw on the most uncomfortable shoes I owned for hours a day and either walk or dance or do something I didn't want to do," Saad said. "I was making over $200,000 a year for 10 years, and I never saw any of it."

They got married, and soon, her husband became physically and psychologically abusive.

Bunny turned to drugs.

"I went from being a teenager living with my parents to being a prostitute. I didn't know anything. That's all I knew -- how to use my body and how to work in a world that I shouldn't have been in," Saad said. "It's really hard to get out of that. It's kind of like an object in motion is going to stay in motion, you know what I mean? You have to have money to wake up, to turn the light on, to have your alarm clock go off, to get on the bus, or start your car."

Today, Bunny is in a drug rehabilitation program.

"Addiction is for keeps," she said. "I'm sober for the first time in eight years, and it feels amazing, like really good, and I've never been able to say that about my life."

Police's response

A unique new policy from the Houston Police Department strives to address prostitution and human trafficking- starting on Bissonett Street.

For decades, Bissonnet Street has been at the center of Houston's prostitution industry.

The most dangerous and notorious stretch of road is just over a mile long, from the Southwest Freeway to the Beltway.

Businesses there have closed over the years, creating a loop of dark side streets where workers can circle around and drivers can easily find what they're looking for.

As part of a new policy to stop crime, Houston police are now closing off Plainfield and Center Parkway between Bissonnet and the Southwest Freeway, making it impossible to drive through the dark side streets.

"There are some nights there could be close to a hundred women walking this loop up here," Houston police Commander Reece Hardy said. "We would make a ton of arrests out there, I mean hundreds of arrests, and it wouldn't seem to make a dent in the activity that was going on. We make 10 arrests a night, and there's another 100 transactions a night while we're booking those prisoners in the jail. So, it was kind of like spinning our wheels."

For the past eight months, Houston police have put up barricades every night. Now, they're permanent, drilled into the concrete. From 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., you can't stop even if you want to.

And it's mostly worked. At least more so than the department's previous policies, which were focused on arrests.

"If we go and make an arrest, that officer has to transport that individual to JPC (Harris County Joint Processing Center). They're tied up for three to four hours, making that arrest, and they're not out there. So, while they're gone, the activity continues," Hardy said. "We didn't want to go heavy enforcement, we wanted to go heavy visibility and keep traffic moving. Don't let them stop in the middle of the street and talk to anybody. They've got to keep going."

Business owners are seeing a difference.

"I know that some of the girls aren't willing to do this, but for the money, so they have their own process," explained Christina Hsu, who owns a business in the heart of the area. "That's why we need to fight it all together. I'm so happy and very, very relieved that effort has been put in."

"There's probably a lot of victims who have run into police officers and didn't get the help they needed. There are a lot of police officers who have run into the same victim over and over and over who have refused services, and so, it's real easy to get cynical and say they don't want help," Hardy said. "So, what I try to remind my officers and everyone is that it may take 24 times for it to be successful, so don't give up on the 23rd try because the next one might be the one that takes."

Bissonnet has seen an improvement. No question. But, you don't have to look far to know it's still happening.

On Airline Drive near Crosstimbers Street, women walk up and down the streets, ending up in motel rooms and cars, only to come out and do it again a few minutes later.

On the Gulf Freeway near Hobby Airport, women wait by nearby motels, waving at drivers who know exactly what they're coming for.

Sex work has increased in these areas since the Bissonnet closures.

"I don't know that the oldest profession in the history of mankind is ever going to go away. I think that here in Houston, we have a responsibility to create a safe of an environment as possible for the people that work and live here, and that's what we're trying to do," Hardy said.

"It has been since the dawn of time," Jamison explained. "Prostitution was in the Bible. I don't think it's going to stop."

If you or somebody you know is struggling to get out of the sex industry, there is help available. The "We've Been There, Done That" nonprofit program operates out of the Harris County Precinct 1 Constable's Office. Call 832-273-6273 to learn more.