Moran - Paid for: my journey through prostitution

Paid For, My Journey through Prostitution

Copyright 2013 by Rachel Moran

First American Edition 2015

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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Moran, Rachel.

Paid for : my journey through prostitution / Rachel Moran. First

American edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-393-35197-2 (pbk.)

1. Moran, Rachel. 2. ProstitutesIrelandDublinBiography.

3. ProstitutionIreland. I. Title.

HQ188.A5M67 2015

306.74082dc23

2015009736

ISBN 978-0-393-35198-9 (e-book)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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PAID FOR

My Journey Through Prostitution

RACHEL MORAN

W. W. Norton & Company

New YorkLondon

Further praise for PAID FOR

Rachel Moran takes us where no readers have ever gone: into the deep hell of being prostituted, into what happens after the door closes and youre alone with a john, into the experience itselfand into survival and escape. Anyone who believes sex work is chosen or a job like any other should read Paid For for its exposure of misinformation and myths alone. But the book is more: Moran writes so well that her story will scorch your heart, even as you realize this is a first: hers is a voice that has never been heard before.

Robin Morgan

Through her profoundly personal account, Rachel Moran unmasks the extreme violence of the commercial sex trade. Her solutionpenalizing the demand for commercial sex by holding pimps, brothel-keepers, and buyers accountable for the harm they causecomes from both her firsthand experience and a deep analysis of the realities of prostitution. I salute Rachel for her courage, candor, and commitment in writing this game-changing book.

Yasmeen Hassan,
global executive director, Equality Now

From one survivor to another, Paid For got to the heart of what sex-trafficked and prostituted women face on a daily basis. Rachel, you spoke for those survivors who cant speak for themselves, and for those who have been lost to the life.

Vednita Carter, founder and
executive director, Breaking Free

Paid For is a political weapon of such force and magnitude you almost feel you need a permit to carry it around!

Taina Bien-Aim, executive director,
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women

Rachel Moran demolishes the Pretty Woman myth with the stark reality of the lived experience of her young years in prostitution. This memoir makes a strong case for the Nordic model law that criminalizes the buyers whose money drives the trade that treats women as objects for sale.

Terry ONeill, president, National Organization for Women

Paid For is a deeply moving personal story combined with a brilliant analysis of the forces that drive the commercial sex industrya must-read for all.

Jessica Neuwirth, founder,
Equality Now and Donor Direct Action

With rare courage and candor, Rachel Moran strips away the many falsehoods and fictions that disguise sexual slavery as sex work and shows it for what it really ishuman exploitation and degradation. The power of Morans narrative is that it is at once deeply personal and smartly political, as she reclaims her life and self-worth by owning her own story and demands realistic public policy solutions to save others from the complacency and complicity that have made sex-trafficking possible and even acceptable. In the great tradition of antislavery literature, from Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs to today, Moran confronts us with truths that we dare not ignore and with guides on organizing that we all can, and must, support. She wants us to become abolitionists. After reading Paid For, we will know why we should.

Randall Miller and Stacey Robertson,
co-directors, Historians Against Slavery

Foremost, I need to thank my son who, in telling me to write this book in my own name, showed himself to be more of a man than many who are decades older than him. Id also like to thank my friends, who know who they are, and Fergal Tobin and all at my Irish publishers Gill and MacMillan, for believing in this book from the outset. Id like to thank Amy Cherry and all at Norton for embracing this book and for being a joy to work with, and Catharine MacKinnon for recommending it to Norton in the first place, and for her long-standing and impassioned stance against the cruelty and inhumanity of the sex trade.

I would like to record my gratitude for the work of the women whove come before me, from Josephine Butler to Andrea Dworkin, and the many women, like Kathleen Barry, whove made hugely significant contributions along the way.

I want to thank all the sex-trade survivors, feminist activists and allies I have come to know, both in Ireland and abroad, who are far too numerous to mention but whose courage and conviction continually bolsters my own. In particular I would like to thank the women who work with me in SPACE International (Survivors of Prostitution-Abuse Calling for Enlightenment) and the activists who sit with me on our Board: Vednita Carter, Julie Bindel, Norma Ramos and Agnete Stroem.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the men who speak out against the sex trade, in particular Former President Jimmy Carter. The sex trade damages all of humanity, and we need men to fight against it alongside us, for their sakes and our own.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rachel Moran grew up in north Dublin city. From a troubled family background, she was fourteen when she was taken into State care. She became homeless and got involved in prostitution at age fifteen, and was exploited in Dublin and other Irish cities for the following seven years.

In 1998, at the age of 22, she liberated herself from that life. At 24 she got on the path to further education, gaining a degree in journalism from Dublin City University, where she won the Hybrid Award for excellence in journalism.

She speaks internationally on prostitution and sex-trafficking and volunteers to talk to young girls in residential care about the harms and dangers of prostitution. She lives in north Dublin.

http://theprostitutionexperience.com

(SURVIVORS OF PROSTITUTION-ABUSE CALLING FOR ENLIGHTENMENT)

INTERNATIONAL

SPACE is a new international organisation, formed to give voice to women who have survived the abusive reality of prostitution. SPACE now includes members from Ireland, Germany, Denmark, France, the UK, USA and Canada. It is an independent organisation and its founding member is the author of this book.

SPACE is committed both to raising the publics consciousness of the harm of prostitution and to lobbying governments to do something about it. We press for political recognition of prostitution as sexually abusive exploitation, and, as a response, for criminalisation of the demand for prostitution.

Membership of SPACE is restricted to formerly prostituted women, from any country, who believe in the right of all people to live free from the oppression of paid sexual abuse. We call for enlightenment because before we can expect social change, prostitution must be recognised for the abuse that it is.