My name is Tracy
I am for sale
I need real relationships
www.theythaughtmefrench.be
Focus group: Victims of abuse
Project type: Social
Prostitution is nothing new and Serve the City isn’t trying to stop it. But we are concerned for the people involved, especially women who are vulnerable, especially victims of human trafficking.
Prostitution arouses strong feelings. For some it is desire. For others, judgment. Serve the City wants to suggest another response: compassion.
Women don’t choose to be prostitutes. They don’t sit down with a career counselor and carefully weigh the pros and cons of business or medicine or selling their body every day. They work in prostitution when there are no other options. For some it’s because they have to feed their children or pay off a debt. Either they have no better options are they don’t think they have better options. And they are the lucky ones.
Then there are the trafficked. The sex slaves. Lured to the west by promises of a career or the lies of a boyfriend, they are trafficked across borders and sold to the highest bidder. They work in windows, back alleys…and some in Thai massage parlours.
That’s where we met Tracy.
There are 75 Thai massage parlours in the Brussels area. They offer regular massage but also erotic massage and ‘body-to-body’ massage. Some are in Belgium against their will. Many have been ‘married’ to Belgian men, some who beat them.
Serve the City works with Stop the Traffik to deliver Thai newsletters to massage parlours where women might be trafficked. The newsletters have information in Thai about Belgium, including news items and upcoming events. They also carefully provide information about how to get help. The newsletters start conversation, conversations start friendships, and friendships mean possibilities and hope.
Tracy’s life seems to be taking a turn for the better. Recently she was married by her own choice to a Belgian man who has children from a previous relationship. She finds herself now step-mom to teenage kids who don’t know what she does for a living. And she wants to keep it that way. But they can’t communicate because the children speak French and she speaks Thai. Tracy wants real relationships with her husband and new step-children so Serve the City offered to help. Now she meets weekly with a volunteer who is teaching her French.
Tracy is a prostitute. Tracy is a woman. Tracy is a mom.
We know them by their needs.
What if we knew them by name?
