Unseen

- I'm not gonna lie, yes I have prostituted.

Prostitution has been since Jesus walked.

I'm not saying it's right and I'm not saying it's wrong.

It's a moral judgment on each individual.

Now when you start taking people against their will

or raping 'em, beating 'em, or robbing 'em,

then I say, the hell with you.

Had I ever had a conversation with the man previously?

No.

Had I ever seen him?

Yes.

But I sensed nothing, I sensed nothing.

Before he put the gag in my mouth, I could have screamed,

but something said don't do it.

But after he had his way with me the first time,

he never took the gag off anymore.

That day went by and it turned into another day.

He said, "You might as well say your prayers

"'cause I'm gonna feed you and then I'm gonna kill you."

And then he went to sleep.

The detective told me, "You are very lucky, young lady,"

while he's taking these photographs.

He said, "Just last week,

"we found a lady cut up in a suitcase."

That man had no intentions of me coming out that house.

But God said otherwise.

- Yeah, I was overachiever, I was a A-student.

I had the best friend and we would always compete in school.

I loved going to school, I love learning.

I was the president of the National Junior Honor Society

as I got older.

I was going to be a cosmetologist.

A cosmetologist or a welder.

- A welder? - A welder.

- Or maybe a 18-wheel driver, a truck driver,

but that was my vision.

My mother and father were married

and I think they got divorced

when I was about three or five.

I can remember the divorce.

I'm this little bitty girl, I had two ponytails,

a brown little flower dress on, sitting in the courtroom,

when my mother was getting a divorce.

When my mom divorced my dad, my dad divorced us.

He would always promise me he was gonna come and get me

or come and see me, so I would sit in the window

and wait for my father who would never show up.

That's how I learned about prostitution.

I would sit in the window on 93rd and Cedar

and watch the women of the night tour, or the day,

'cause they were out in the day with boas

and little hot pants, I didn't know what that was but,

sittin' in that window, waiting for my daddy.

- What I heard about crack in the early '90s

was that it was addictive.

People would do some of everything to get it, rob and steal.

Turned people into bums.

I know I didn't wanna be one of those people.

When I was 13, 14 years old, becoming a teenager,

I wanted to go to all the parties,

I just wanted to party, have fun.

And I started disobeying my mother's rule.

As a mom, you know,

I know exactly what my mother was talking about, you know,

'cause now I'm raising kids of my own.

The day that I tried crack cocaine, I was with a neighbor,

we were doing other drugs, marijuana, alcohol.

She used crack cocaine and I asked to try it.

And I tried it and I was high.

It was a rush

that I can't really describe.

It was a rush that come over your body

and then it goes away very quick.

So you have this high sensation for five minutes

and then it's gone.

It was maybe once a week

and it grew to where it was a couple times a week,

to where I had somebody supply me,

to where I had to buy it on my own,

to where I had no money to buy it on my own,

so I had to use other means to get it on my own.

In about the year 2007,

when I moved on Imperial Avenue,

other people in the neighborhood did drugs.

People were kinda,

they were a little more generous at that time

because I was the new person on the street.

- Even as a child, Mount Pleasant was uniquely different.

It was like a city, town, country,

all pulled together as one community.

You felt safe in Mount Pleasant and we loved it.

In 1983, I started my ministry here

in Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church.

It was still a vibrant area,

but there was definitely a difference.

Jobs were beginning to thin out.

When jobs are leaving on the right hand and the left,

your community is far more vulnerable

to some of the vices that destroy.

There was a time when a preacher, or a pastor,

or what have you, or a reverend was walking down the street,

things that were out of sorts would stop.

Things that were perhaps not that right,

that behavior would stop until the pastor, the preacher,

the reverend had gone by.

Now, the respect level is somewhat different.

In the beginning of my addiction, I went through a phase

common things escaped my mind on how to do them

I couldn't wash dishes.

I would stand at the sink and literally could not figure out

what to do first.

It was like my mind was blocked, I would just stand there.

Standing on top of piles of clothes.

Like, I didn't know how to sort clothes.

It like drained me of my sense.

It drained me of my sense.

All you could think of was crack, crack, crack, crack,

crack, crack, crack.

It was like Hurricane Katrina came through

and ravaged my whole life.

Everything in my house was just about gone.

My children's TVs are gone,

all the electronics are gone, Xboxes.

If it was worth something, I'd sell it.

My husband sold my son's bike.

It was horrible, horrible.

I remember once coming home with a pocket full of money,

a pocket full of dope, and when I get home,

everybody is on the porch.

And I'm catching it from everybody.

My mom, my cousin, my four children, my neighbor,

my son's friends, everybody was just on the porch.

And I decide that I'm not gonna stand here and take it

and I walk off, and my 10-year-old daughter follows me.

And, you know,

I couldn't choose my child over the dope.

We fought and argued, she laid in the middle of the street

on Broadway just to get her momma to come home.

And I couldn't

choose my child over dope.

- I went up the first part of the steps.

And that's when he came behind me and put me in a choke-hold

and told me that if I screamed,

fought, or tried to get away

that he would kill me.

I screamed and that's when he jumped up

and started closing the windows.

But I was sitting right in front of this window

and I'm telling God that I find myself in a situation

and to please

don't let me die when I come out that window

because I'm about to jump.

- Cleveland EMS and Fire, what is--

Hurry up to 12205--

- Slow down so I can get the right address.

12205 Imperial.

She fell out the window upstairs on the second floor.

Is she awake?

- She kinda awake, going in and out.

- Is she breathing? - Yeah.

- Which window did she fall out of,

first or second? - I don't know.

Shit, you ask me all .

I woke up.

I asked the nurse for a telephone,

because I needed to call my husband.

She told me, "Your husband rode with you in the ambulance."

And I told her that was not my husband.

Anthony was a mean child.

The fighting, you know,

let's say you and I were brother and sister.

I would never at you

in a way that I would do a stranger.

Whereas Anthony, he would come at my like I was a stranger.

For some reason, he felt like Mother didn't love him.

Before everything hit the fan,

he had said a couple of things to me,

saying that he didn't think Mommy loved him.

And I'm looking at him like he crazy,

like are you serious?

I think it was the other way around.

I don't think that he loved my mother

the way he should.

And when he showed the lack of compassion,

she just kind of let him do his own thing.

But he was always a mean child,

very aggressive, all the time.

- When you're in the streets and you're involved

with street people and drugs,

everybody is for theirself, basically.

So you start to harden up yourself

in order to fit in with that lifestyle.

Because if not, you will be crushed.

I can remember times that I have been sitting up somewhere

getting high and I started to think about my children

and you know, wanna talk about my children.

And even cried before, you know.

And people say if you gonna be doing that,

you need to go somewhere else.

My children, I remember them