MEMORIES OF NORMA HOTALING - FOUNDER OF SAGE

I remember I was staying home with my newborn, so it must have been about 1991 when I got a call from a payphone from Norma Hotaling. She was fed up and disgusted with being on drugs and a prostitute. She also felt like we all did in the program Prostitutes Anonymous I was running, and on the hotline she called me on, that to treat us like criminals while rapists and child molesters were able to avoid jail by going to programs like Sexacholics Anonymous was just wrong on many levels. So she wanted help with what we'd started calling "post prostitution syndrome", as well as she wanted to do something in San Francisco to change things. When Margo St. Jamees lived in San Francisco, there was a lot she was doing behind the scenes, as well as in the public eye, to help all of us on many levels. But it was just about this time she had left the USA and moved to England. Before leaving the USA Margo told me she was just getting too much harassment/threats from the Nevada Brothel Association (i.e., Joe Conforte and other brothel owners, one of who was connected to the Hell's Angels and the Margo Compton case which was hot and heavy about this time period also), and so she was going to start directing her efforts more into the legalization of medical marijuana. So after she moved, it was like Margo dropped off the face of the earth to me and I lost all contact with her. In the way things do, it was just about the same time when I got this call from Norma. I explained what the 12 step program was about, and also explained in order to start a chapter of PA up there, she'd also have to work the program so she knew what to offer those who came to the meeting. I explained how we were using the meeting to provide an alternative to incarceration for those charged with soliticaiton, or otherwise facing jail time on a prostitution charge where there wasn't mandatory jail time, but we also had connections with residential treatment programs such as the Mary Magdalene Project in Reseda, CA for adults that could be a way they could do their "time" in a private home rather than inside of a jail cell. This was really driven home when I saw madams like Cheri Woods and Jody Gibson having to do their time in death row in California. She was eager to get her Recovery Guide and Step Working packet. I of course would never have talked about her call or anything to do with her when she was alive, but now she's passed on, and I don't know of any surviving children who can be affected by my telling her story here, I can now talk about her part in history. She ate up her step work and called me every week so we could go over her step work and writing assignments. She was also going to NA meetings and staying clean. But every time I spoke to her, she was just outraged at how prostitutes were being treated by the police and courts in San Francisco, and wanted to do more. See when an addict or alcoholic stops using, their income and material resources just flourish. However, when a prostitute who pays her rent, maybe even supports her kids, has to stop working in the industry, she's now not just out of a job, but she's having to change her whole career. Not easy when you have a criminal record either as Norma did. She claimed she'd called me that first day from the police station after her last arrest just tired and disgusted. Now I don't know if that's true or not, but it says a lot about her state of mind and intentions when she called us. Yes, it's almost impossible to get many kinds of jobs when you have a record for prostitution. So if you just stop, then you have to find a whole other way to pay the rent before the next month of rent is due, or you're homeless. So we need more in the way of resources, help to bridge the gap from when we quit to when we can support ourselves in another way, food, transportation, etc. ESPECIALLY if we can't even call on an old client and ask him for help, there is the very real problem of when quitting prostitution, how does one pay the rent that most addicts don't have to deal with when they go into recovery. So like Paige Latin was when she first started a Prostitutes Anonymous chapter in Vancouver, she found the need for material resources so important that she also decided to create a "sister" project. In Norma's case, housing especially was scarce as rents have always been high in San Francisco. So within a matter of months, Norma was talking to me about wanting to form a program like many of the others in our program had done. So I put her in touch with those women - women like Paige Latin, or Brenda Myers Powell, and others who also formed a sister/related program to provide things like transitional housing, job trainiing, drug treatment, therapy, etc. Setting up such programs always required getting donations and grant money, as well as working with city/county officials, and often taking a position within the political community as well. While the 12 step program had to stay away from the issue of law making or any stance on prostitution, you had to take one when getting any type of grants from the local, or national, sources because of prostitution being illegal. Mind you, the Trafficking Act did not pass until the year 2000 - so this was when what's called a "sex trafficking victim" today was not called this back then. Back then, ALL were identified as "prostitutes" i.e., "criminals" within the legal system. So in cases like this we'd encounter, we would have to talk to the judge in order to explain why their case should be treated differently than someone who was either using sex work to put herself, or himself, through school, or an addict supporting their habit with prostitution. For those who were proud sex workers, the system also viewed them as "criminals". But for those needing to leave a pimp, this made the need for immediate transition housing even more important of an issue. So feeling strongly there was a need for this program that provided things like housing, treatment, etc. - Norma founded SAGE. Here's a video with Norma -

Keep in mind, we are an "anonymous" program and have a tradition about keeping "anonymity at the level of press, radio and films", so we always tried to separate out the 12 step group from our public work as she did when doing interviews and not mentioning anything about her "affiliation" also with the 12 step program of www.prostitutesanonymous.com