The following quotes are from Christine McDonald. She was recently interviewed in an article for http://northeastnews.net/
Local effort seeks to end prostitution ‘from all angles’ was written by Abby Hoover on October 23, 2020.
http://northeastnews.net/pages/local-effort-seeks-to-end-prostitution-from-all-angles
“I guess it’s multi-faceted, number one, the girls have a place to go consistently to take a shower, grab a sandwich. They have needs, their challenges that got them into the places where they’re at oftentimes have left them excluded and invisible, or dropped through the cracks of systems and institutions.”
“The reality is, if we didn’t have buyers, we wouldn’t have traffickers exploiting our most vulnerable.”
“We’ve been trying to arrest our way out of this, and that hasn’t worked. [The prostitutes] go in, they get arrested, they move them to another corner, and then we create insurmountable barriers by giving them a criminal record that when it is time to get out, nobody wants to rent to them, nobody wants to hire them, nobody.”
“I’d never had a job and when I tried to get some services when I was in my 30’s, people had told me that my arrest record was too long. I had felony convictions and my chances at success were too small because my barriers were too huge.”
“Even a sandwich comes at a cost, even something as simple as going to sleep in safety comes at a cost, or the privilege of having healthcare, being treated, comes at a cost, and whether that’s your body being exploited or whether that’s a monetary cost, the rest of the world doesn’t operate in that same way.”
“You can choose to come in here and you can choose to go back out, but hopefully every time you choose to come back in, you’re reassured that you are worth a pathway out.”
“If we could start shifting those conversations about, ‘We need to do something about these girls’ to, ‘We need to understand there are men driving from all over the state and across the state line, other counties, to pay for these girls. Some of these girls grew up in Northeast and now they’re being paid for by people who are not necessarily from the Northeast community.” -Christine McDonald
Christine McDonald is working with Relentless Pursuit Outreach and Recovery in Kansas City, MO. Their location is at the corner of Independence and Quincy Avenues.
https://www.rpor.org/our-story
Below are links and highlights to Kansas City’s Memorial to Sex Trafficked Individuals at Lykins Park.
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Contact Information:
Christine C. McDonald
636-487-8986
Christine.CryPurple@gmail.com
“Love your neighbor, all of ’em.” -Christine Clarity McDonald
Through The Eyes of Grace –Christine C McDonald
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEj5RbFpuzjx_CuksAqgyXA/featured
