But honestly, working with them is like working with any distressed teenager.
Right now, most of my clients who reside in foster care are teens, and the overwhelming majority of them are girls.
Most of these girls were sexually abused at some point in their lives.
I wrote a novel about child prostitution. Please note that I don't particularly like the word "prostitute." I use it in my (first person) novel because the speaker's culture is not quite as politically correct as ours. I prefer the term "sex worker..." for adults. Because sex work is work. It's no more or less legitimate than any other service job, in a capitalist system. I don't support capitalism... I also don't support the State telling adults what to do or not do with their reproductive organs. If the sex is safe and consensual, it's not my business.
These kids are "survivors." They were not engaged in a voluntary exchange of services for a fee. They were exploited, and for the ones who were trafficked, they were conditioned... what we call, in the field, grooming.
I say "kids." If you've read my blog, you probably figure (rightly) that anyone under 25 is basically a kid to me. I define adolescence in terms of neurological maturity instead of social or legal customs that don't correspond to emotional maturity. That's not to say all adults are emotionally mature. They are not. But I don't expect people under 25 to be mature. I expect them to make rash and impulsive decisions. I think they need to develop their autonomy as they grow and experience more of the world to get toward that point in their life where they can effectively prioritize their own needs with their social obligations.
Legally speaking though, in this society, a child under 18 years of age cannot consent to sex with an adult. So it is not consensual, and therefore unsafe. While I understand that a young person may think of it as consensual and even enjoy the experience, my job is to protect kids from exploiters and abusers and yes, sometimes from themselves. I was sexually exploited when I was 16 (I was not trafficked, this was one event in my life, it affected me greatly, and I am still, as an adult, processing and confronting the trauma). When I was 16, I thought I had all the power in that relationship. And, in my experience, many children who were trafficked or exploited also believe this. That is one of the objectives of the "grooming" process.
One of my clients was recruited some time prior to my assignment to the case. The team's suspicions congealed on her 18th birthday. She left her placement, a juvenile residential treatment center, on the night of her birthday, spent it in a hotel with a pimp and a john, and returned at 2 AM. This was a pattern, and we, the team, recognized it too late. Because this happened on the night of her 18th birthday, even though she is on board extension with child welfare until age 21, Childline would not take the report.
I, a white man, was the one who had to break it to a black 18 year old woman, that as of her birthday, the law would no longer see her as a victim if she was caught. We have a safe harbor policy in Philadelphia. But the cutoff is age 18, even if a person was recruited by a trafficker prior to their 18th birthday, as this person was.
The client in question has some pretty serious mental health issues that undermine her connection to reality. I do not believe sex work should be illegal. But that doesn't mean I think it's a good idea for my very young and mentally ill client to be a sex worker.
There are a lot of things I don't think are good ideas. I think in the absence of the State and the capitalist system, most people, at least the majority who are not predisposed to anti-social behaviors, would not harm each other or steal from each other. I think structural poverty and limited access to high quality mental health services by people in poverty is a big part of the problem. The research supports me. You need only look at the evidence proffered by the ACES (Adverse Childhood Experiences) studies to know that capitalism is not working for kids. And of course, that means most kids, not just the ones who were sexually exploited or trafficked by predatory adults.
In my line of work, I am supposed to know how predators think. Honestly, it's like Frank Black's "faculty" in Millennium. I know how to adopt their POVs. I can see the world through their eyes. I see the cracks in the system they live in and exploit. I know how they operate and I see deep and disturbing parallels between them and the broader system of wage labor exploitation.
The honest truth about MOST "bad behavior" is that it is maladaptive coping. But some things go beyond that.
I am uncomfortable with the term "evil." I think it is too often applied to individuals to write them off as morally corrupt human beings, when the truth is that abuse, including bullying, perpetuates itself. It is a cycle and escaping that cycle should not be shouldered by any one individual. After all, it is society that too often fails survivors of abuse. Maybe these systems are "evil" (if that word is meaningful to you). I prefer to describe things in terms of consequences. "Evil" as a word has a lot of moral and religious baggage that doesn't align with my philosophical materialist, humanistic, and skeptical sensibilities.
I do believe some things are unforgivable. Forgiveness is not a right. It's an ideal.
But I can forgive the man who exploited me, stole my money and abandoned me, terrified, in a crackhouse. It is my choice to forgive. He was an addict without a support system. Society failed him, too.
In a different incident, when I was 18, I was attacked. I fought off my attacker and fled the scene. I didn't talk about this for ten years, not with my parents, or other family, or my friends. Eventually, in "Rentkids," I wrote about this, too. Do I forgive him? Not yet. Is it possible? Sure, why not? It's not what I think about when my mind drifts back to that night. I don't think "I hope he is hurting," I think "I am glad I am alive." Or the other night. I still blame myself, in a way I would never project on any of the kids I work with.
There is one man I cannot forgive, a Human Resources Executive who wielded significant power over me when I was at my most vulnerable and desperate. This was when I was severely injured, on the job, attempted to return to the job (and an unpaid internship through work that was necessary to complete my MSW). I was still affected by the injury (physically and emotionally) in ways that, due to Workers' Comp insurance policies, made it impossible for me to perform my job and also do 4 unpaid hours per day. I sought accommodations, I was not given any. So I looked up the relevant employment law and resigned due to a "medical quit." This HR executive chose to personally ensure I was denied unemployment compensation. Eventually I did get my UE. This was after months of terrifying, deep depression and multiple suicide attempts and police encounters during a time when I was in mental distress.
It wasn't the first time mental illness affected my job. I've had to work my way back up from the bottom, twice. The first time was because I couldn't manage my work/life balance or my countertransference and boundaries, and I became emotionally enmeshed with a client. I regret this. I was unemployed for about a year and then I could only get direct service work, so I was on the bottom of the hierarchy again. It hurt my ego. It wounded me. Working helped me get out of the depression, and eventually, I became a Case Manager again. Because I love the work but hated the pay, I went back to school. I went into more debt than I will probably ever be able to repay in order so I could make $13,000 more per year as a Case Manager II then I made as a Case Manager I.
I never want to be a boss. I never want to be in a position where I would have to terminate another worker's employment.
When I think about that HR executive, my blood boils. I think about his smug smile, his condescending tone and words ("buck up, kid"), his upper middle class background, his paternalistic attitude, and I HATE everything about him. But people like this aren't the problem. A system where they rise to the top is.
Will I ever forgive him? Will I ever not hate him? I don't know. I only know that today, I am not ready to let go of that. I cannot blame the system for him. He used the system. But there were things he did in the process that were unnecessary and cruel. He pursued the denial of my UE benefits with aplomb, like he was putting me in my place. I despise HR as an institution. But most HR staff I know are good people who are trying to do the right thing. It's the people at the top who are rotten. There is more to this story, here, than unresolved trauma.
As a social worker I believe in the dignity and validity of human relationships. But not all relationships are healthy, and not all relationships are consensual.
Libertarians, conservatives, and increasingly more centrists and liberals think of contracts between employee and employer as contracts between equal parties, but they are not. They are asymmetrical, unequal social and economic relationships. Some bosses are good neighbors, good parents, and try to undo the damage the system has caused, as much as possible, but they have the ultimate veto power if positive change effects their profits. And as the militants say in the world of my novel, "A boss is a boss is a boss."
What does this have to do with sex trafficking? I'm glad you asked.
Everything. Because sex work is work and like all work, it is inherently not consensual or based on equal relationships. A worker must eat. A worker must have shelter and clothing, not just as a worker, but as a person. But the employer is not dependent on that one person's access to material security. The worker is replaceable. Even under regulated capitalism, it is in the design of the system that structural poverty is maintained, if necessary by a social safety net, and because of means testing and an often insurmountable welfare/employment gap, the safety net of the regulated liberal-capitalist welfare state keeps most people poor rather than lifting them out of poverty. Capitalism cannot sustain full employment because it would cease to function without a competitive and brutal labor market. It depends on a surplus army of disposable un-employed and under-employed people. These people are more likely than those at the top to have had the adverse childhood experiences the above study looks at. They are more likely to struggle with mental health challenges or substance abuse. And they are more likely to be written off by our society as failed human beings, collateral damage, than the utter parasites on the top. So, in essence, we are all "prostitutes" under capitalism. In my moments of despair in 2018, when I was forced to become a very unhappy Uber driver after graduating with a Masters' in Social Work, I wrote, with permanent marker, on my chest, in all capital letters: "WHORE."
Because this system made me feel like a failure, hopeless and helpless, and that is the last way I want anybody to feel.
And that commitment to an "ideal" about how to treat other people extends even to this hated man.
I only ask that after the Revolution, I be kept far, far away from him, and if necessary, I would rather be exiled than take a life. Even a life spent abusing and exploiting. I cannot write individuals off, no matter what they have done. That is what capitalism, even regulated capitalism, does. It is wrong, more wrong than my hating one man.
So this man, who I hate, I will never call him (as some anarchists would) a "garbage human being." I might think that. But to say it, to expect agreement, is not something I am prepared to do.
People think anti-capitalists are angry, and we are. But do they ask why we are angry? It is an anger born of compassion.
I am an exploited worker. It is not a consensual or equal relationship.
So I wrote a novel where sex trafficking is a metaphor for all capitalism.
What is it like to work wit Actual, Real Life Rentkids?
Why even ask that question?
It's like working with any distressed kid. Kids are kids. They tantrum and blow up my phone and apologize 20 minutes later hoping I'm not mad at them. They test my patience and my resolve. They make bad decisions and the adults in their lives react to them. Seriously, they're still kids. What happened to them didn't make them something other than kids.
They are searching for connections in a scary and hostile world.
I am much better at managing countertransference and boundaries than I was when I started. So, I do less harm, because I learned a better way. That better way led me to embrace Anarchism, rather than the vaguely left-liberal market socialism I considered ideal when I was younger. I thought I was a radical then. But in ten years, I unlearned a lot of things, and learned many better, more equitable, transformative and healing things.
I am a better social worker and a better human being now. I could not have done this kind of work when I started in case management.
It takes a big heart full of steel, steel forged in the fire of compassion and cooled by cold fury.
Yes, I am full of rage, but I have outlets that are constructive.
We are building the new society within the dying husk of the old.