Girls Like Us (17 page)

On the streets, it’s even harder to tell the good and bad guys apart. Cops see men buying girls on the street and look the other way, cops taunt girls and call them names, and some of the johns are cops themselves. The overwhelming majority of girls I’ve worked with have reported being threatened with jail if they refused sex with a cop, and some girls who refused and were arrested were forced to have sex at the precinct anyway. Some cops would take money from the girls when they spotted them on the streets, knowing that they could never report it. In 2008, a New York City detective was arrested and charged with pimping a thirteen-year-old girl whom he had lured, drugged, and threatened with violence.

To be fair, these officers don’t represent every police officer. Most cops are apathetic toward the girls, not abusive. Yet, like the johns who wouldn’t dream of having sex with just “any” teenage girls, most of the cops who do use their power and position to abuse girls in the sex industry would never threaten a female drunk driver with arrest in exchange for sex. The fact that girls are “already out there” makes them less of a victim, less deserving of rights or boundaries.

Girls who are raped and assaulted by johns or pimps know that their abuse will not be taken seriously. The rape of a prostituted girl or woman is considered by many to be a contradiction in terms and the police normally believe that what girls claim to be rape is really just a question of not getting paid for their services. In fact, many cops literally call it “theft of services.” How can someone be raped when they’re already having sex anyway? What we’ve learned in the sexual violence movement over the years is that rape has little to do with sex, and everything to do with power. Being raped feels just as scary if you’re a girl on the track who’s been sold to seven men that same night as it does to a “regular” woman or girl. If you’re considered sexually experienced, or even sexually active, the degrees of harm done by sexual assault are often measured out according to your level of “culpability.” While this view isn’t limited to girls in the sex industry and is also often imputed to victims of sexual violence who are considered promiscuous, women and girls in the sex industry are obviously seen as the least affected by sexual violence.

Working with the girls at GEMS over the years, I found that this theme continually emerged. In case after case, I saw that girls weren’t being taken seriously, that their experiences of victimization were often disparaged at best and blatantly mocked at worst. In defending a sixteen-year-old rape victim, I was threatened with arrest. A cop told a girl he really couldn’t see why she didn’t just leave the man who had forcibly kidnapped her. A girl from Spain who got recruited in the United States and spoke very little English was told that because she hadn’t used the word “force” in reporting her rape at the hospital, the police, who did not speak Spanish, could not charge the perpetrator. Another girl’s body lay misidentified in a morgue for over a month while her family, having been brushed off by the police, frantically searched for her.

It’s difficult to view yourself as a victim, no matter what happens to you, when your pimp, the men who buy you, and even those who are supposed to protect you see you as incapable of being victimized. Prostitution is viewed as a victimless crime, a statement that denies the humanity or victimhood of the women and girls involved. Women in the sex industry, and therefore trafficked and sexually exploited girls, are not believed to be capable of being hurt or raped. In fact, rather than being seen as victims, they’re seen as willing participants in their own abuse and are often perceived as having “asked for it.”

I meet Krystal in the hallway of the Brooklyn Supreme Court. She’s late. Two police officers have driven her from a chain hotel upstate that the district attorney’s office has paid for. She looks like she’s barely slept, which I soon discover is an accurate assessment. Her hair is askew and despite my lectures on what to wear to court, she obviously just grabbed the nearest thing to her. Unfortunately, the outfit that she’s picked is a denim mini-miniskirt, construction Timbs with no socks, and a tight-fitting, wrinkled T-shirt. I’m taking a wild guess that this is the outfit she wore till the wee hours. It’s not exactly court attire and definitely not the outfit that we’d agreed on. Krystal’s long, long legs make the skirt, which is short, look even shorter. I’m horrified. Today is a huge day; she’s testifying in the trial of her ex-pimp and I’m already nervous about how she’ll be perceived by the jury. I drag her into the bathroom, before anyone else in the court corridors sees her, and try not to yell at her about her fashion choices on one of the most important days of her life. She tells me she thinks she looks OK. I try to explain that there’s OK for going to the bodega and OK for going to court, but we’ve already been down that road before and clearly it had little effect. I know she’s nervous and I don’t want to make it worse, but there’s no way I’m letting her walk into court like that. I’m already worried about how well she’ll do in her testimony: She’s scared, and when she gets scared, she gets sullen. A pouting and sullen “former child prostitute” in a skirt short enough to be a belt is unlikely to win any supporters on the jury, and I’m guessing she won’t impress the judge, either.

I size her up. “What?” she whines. Despite the fact she’s got six inches on me in height, most of it in those legs, I know we’re about the same size. When we were trying to get her out of New York for her safety, she’d stayed at my house for a few days and, as the girls liked to call it, “gone shopping” in my closet. I look at myself in the mirror. Damn, I was kind of feeling my outfit today. It’s new and I look all pastel and preppy.

Ten minutes later, she walks into court wearing a mint green linen dress from H&M, low white heels, and a white cotton cardigan from JCPenney. I walk into court wearing a teeny-tiny denim skirt, Timbs with no socks, and a tight-fitting, wrinkled T-shirt. I hold my bag in front of my legs to try to hide how ridiculous I look, but it doesn’t really help. The assistant district attorney, whom I’d seen earlier this morning, does a double take and raises his eyebrows. I shrug, whaddya-gonna-do style, but I’m fairly mortified and also extremely cold as my bare thighs hit the wooden bench. Mainly for Krystal’s sake, but a tiny bit for mine, I pray that her testimony will be brief.

As it turns out, Krystal’s preppy outfit doesn’t even matter. She’s rightfully nervous and is clearly thrown off by the sight of her pimp, Pretty Boy, in the courtroom. He knows it and stares intently at her the whole time, breaking eye contact only to scribble furiously on his pad after she answers a question. Adding to the intimidation are the glares of some of his family members, who take turns staring at her, at me, and at her case manager, the only people there for Krystal. I’d instructed her to look only at us, but her gaze seems inescapably pulled in his direction. Three years since the last time she saw him and he still wields control over her.

The direct examination from the ADA, who clearly hasn’t prepped her properly, is terrible. As I’d predicted, fear has set off her defense mechanisms, which to people who don’t know her and people who don’t understand the effects of trauma, just appears to be sullenness and resistance. Krystal finally manages to look away from Pretty Boy but then just stares at her feet and barely mumbles into the microphone. She has to be directed over and over again by the judge to speak up, which begins to embarrass her, which in turn comes out as frustration. The mic is loud and the courtroom is quiet, so after the fifth time the judge rather sternly instructs her to speak into the mic clearly, her annoyed teeth-sucking is heard by all. We’re off to a bad start.

The day doesn’t get better. Krystal is confused by many of the questions and predictably reacts to confusion with frustration. At one point, the ADA asks her the same question in three different ways, as he’s not satisfied with her answer. Krystal clearly thinks he’s stupid, and to complement the teeth-sucking she now stamps her foot in frustration, visibly and audibly, in the witness stand. A couple of jurors snicker. The rest look at her with disdain. To verify that she was indeed “working” for the defendant and was arrested for prostitution multiple times, the ADA admits into evidence a Polaroid photo taken after one of the arrests and it’s passed to the jury. Even from the court benches, we’re sitting close enough to see the picture as it’s passed from person to person: Krystal at fourteen, already tall and developed, in a skimpy bikini top and short shorts. The men on the jury are quite obviously leering, looking long and close at the picture as if it’s a complicated diagram of blood-spatter patterns. The thoughts in their minds might as well be displayed across a ticker board. The women on the jury hold it like it’s radioactive, looking scornfully at Krystal fidgeting on the witness stand. The picture has told a thousand words, all of them harsh judgments about the “type” of girl who would “choose” to do this. The fact that she’s fourteen in the picture doesn’t seem to register with anyone. The fact that an adult man is accused of beating her, brainwashing her, and selling her on the streets doesn’t seem to provoke any empathy or sympathy. There’s no smoking-gun picture of him brutalizing her with a baseball bat. There’s just a girl in “provocative” clothing, pouting at the camera, and charged with having sex for money. Any chance of being perceived as a victim has just disappeared. In the jury’s minds she’s been branded as a “bad” girl, “loose” girl, and “dirty” girl, and all the JCPenney white cardigans in the world won’t make that go away.

While Krystal seems to have forgotten that the ADA is actually the one in the legal process who is on her side, I haven’t. If direct is bad, cross is going to be awful. When it comes to the defense’s turn, he paces like a wild animal about to attack his prey. He tries to make a couple of jokes to relax her defenses but she’s not buying any of it; she knows where this is headed. When he finally pounces, it’s actually worse than I’d imagined. He’s got her in tears within a few minutes, angry and even more defensive that she’d been on direct, and contradicting herself with every other sentence. I feel physically sick and consider standing up and yelling something inappropriate with the hopes of causing a mistrial, just to end her misery. In the end, though, all I can do is sit there. An ineffectual advocate unable to defend her or protect her. It’s horrifying to watch, made more so by the smug look on Pretty Boy’s face. He’s smelling an easy win.

Halfway into the afternoon, as Krystal stumbles, cries, and at several points completely refuses to answer, the judge calls a recess until the next day. As Krystal and I switch back clothes, I try halfheartedly to encourage her, but she doesn’t want to hear it. She’s shut down and I don’t push it. She never asked for this. The cops and the DA wanted her to testify and yet she’s the one being humiliated and intimidated in a public courtroom in front of the man she fears, and used to love, the most. I give her a hug and tell her I’m sorry this is happening and that it will be over soon. She wants it to be over today. She hates the lawyer, she hates the DA, she hates the judge, and did I see him staring at her, his family, too? She knows they’re going to come after her. I tell her that she has a restraining order, yet feel disingenuous as the words come out of my mouth. What good is a restraining order against someone who really wants to hurt you? I offer to treat her to McDonald’s. A Band-Aid on a boo-boo. The sort of thing you do for a six-year-old who fell off his bike and needed a stitch. Not a remedy for a teenage girl who’s testifying in a hostile court against a murderous pimp.

She barely survives another excruciating day of cross-examination in which the defense attorney manages to confuse Krystal thoroughly about dates and times. I’ve told her that if she doesn’t remember that it’s better just to say that, but he’s hammering her so hard, I doubt if she could even recite her date of birth properly at this point. It’s agonizing to watch, particularly since it’s obvious to everyone but exhausted, numb Krystal where’s he going with his questioning. He’s able to back her into a corner and have her swear up and down that on these days—yes, she is totally sure, yes, positive—she was threatened and assaulted by the defendant and forced to work on the streets. As he walks back to the defense table, he asks her one last time, for effect, if she’s sure. Yes, she is. He waives a piece of paper triumphantly at the judge, “Well, Ms. Jenkins, it would’ve been hard for my client to do the things you said he did on the days that you were positive that he did them when he was incarcerated in Rikers Island jail at the time.”

There’s a glimpse of comprehension on her face when she realizes the trap that was set for her. Her whole body visibly crumples on the stand but the defense attorney continues pummeling her like a boxer up against the ropes, going in for the final kill until she no longer says anything, her chin pressed to her chest, eyes closed, willing herself to be somewhere else, anywhere else.

And then it’s over. We get into the car and I drive away as quickly as possible. She’s quiet. I want to scream and curse. Why didn’t the ADA prep her better? Why didn’t they call me or someone else as an expert witness to help the jury understand how trauma affects a victim’s ability to testify in an open courtroom? Why can’t she get witness protection now after everything she’s risked?

She doesn’t want to think about any of that ever again. Two days later when we get the phone call from the DA’s office, she’s not surprised. She didn’t really expect to be believed anyway.

In her book
Sex Crimes
, former prosecutor Alice Vachss describes how victims of rape are perceived as either “good” victims or “bad”: “In New York City, good victims have jobs (like stockbroker or accountant) or impeccable status (like a policeman’s wife); are well-educated and articulate, and are, above all, presentable to a jury; attractive but not too attractive; demure but not pushovers. They should be upset, but in good taste—not so upset that they become hysterical.”

Commercially sexually exploited girls don’t have jobs or impeccable status. They sleep all day and get up at night, doing the same thing over and over again so they have a difficult time remembering specific dates and times. They have mixed feelings toward their pimps and feel guilty about testifying. They’re often angry, rightfully so, and they each handle the trauma of testimony differently. Domestically trafficked girls who have learned that comfort is rare, that tears get them only more beatings, and that staying numb is the best way to survive, fare badly in the courtroom process. There is little understanding from justice officials and juries of differences in cultural responses and the varying effects of trauma. Girls are seen as either having a bad attitude or not being upset enough. If they are not
good
victims, in other words, they are not
real
victims. And this is true even when they are being framed as victims or witnesses. When they are the ones facing charges, the odds are skewed even further against them.