It's cash, love, sex, attention, drugs and the thrill of getting away with it rolled into one is how prostitute Pam Bolton described it to the Chicago Sun-Times in 1995, weeks before being murdered herself. "This street life is more addictive than cocaine. More addictive than heroin," she said.
For years Hollywood has shown prostitutes in movies like Pretty Woman, Risky Business and Trading Places as victims of pimps, johns and bad childhoods who just need a little love.
Even the news media like to focus on women who are trafficked and forced into sex work.
But the truth is women don't get in cars because they have low self esteem, abusive parents or bills to pay.
And even the 12-year-old prostitute Travis so famously saves in Taxi Driver would likely be back on the street tomorrow. Mom and Dad, stuffed animals and homework are no match for a street addiction.
Some women who survived the Chicago scourge appear in a documentary, "Turning A Corner," by the Prostitution Alternatives Roundtable and Salome Chasnoff.
Nothing could break her addiction says one prostitute until a john dragged her two blocks with his car while fleeing the police and she almost lost an eye and had her face nearly scraped off.
Another's "wake up call" happened, she says, when her friend was found dead in the alley--and sexually mutilated.
"If I turn a date again, I'll use," says a third. "And if I use, I'll die."
Women are similarly overcoming the addiction in Ipswich says Brian Tobin, director of the Iceni Project.
"I have got a lot of respect for the women who after many years, are working so hard to live a healthy and better existence. We have the easy part. It is the women themselves who are having to elicit so much change and I think that is fantastic."
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