Attacked repeatedly by clients: an ex-prostitute tells of her ordeal

News 21 March, 2018
  • Photo Fotolia

    Valérie Fortin

    Wednesday, 21 march, 2018 18:56

    UPDATE
    Wednesday, 21 march, 2018 19:00

    Look at this article

    SAGUENAY | Roxanne (fictitious name) was a young girl without history when she decided to settle in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean a few years ago.

    • READ ALSO: street gangs involved in prostitution in the Saguenay–Lac-Saint-Jean

    When she arrived in Saguenay, she quickly started looking for a job to be able to rent an apartment. “When I arrived here, I had nothing, no money, no friends,” said Roxanne, in an interview with TVA News.

    Hardly major at the time, Roxanne responds to an offer of employment to become a receptionist in a salon of massage therapy, where she is immediately hired. “It’s clean. It the air of a spa. It is beautiful inside. This is a poster of posters prohibiting sexual acts towards the masseuses”, described the young woman.

    But after a few weeks, Roxanne discovers what is really happening behind the walls of this living room. His bosses ask him first to do massages, before the urge to do more.

    “It happened gradually. The lady that I was committed to become my friend. It has made it so that I have confidence in it. She told me “no, it is just massages. I’ll send you the right customers, you’ll see”,” said Roxanne.

    The owner of the place did everything for Roxanne to feel beautiful, important and desired. “Obviously, when you have nothing, you don’t work, try it again a new life, you are likely, if you are easily offended”, she said.

    “It was more intense. They offered me money for sexual services and it was at every appointment,” she added.

    The worst was however to come. “There comes a certain time of good customers, there are more. These are men who seek to have power over women. It could be physical abuse, or sexual touching that I didn’t want to. If you said “no”, your “non”, it was in the vacuum, explained the young woman. It could go up to of sexual assault. It could happen three times per day on six appointments”.

    In addition to being assaulted and attacked repeatedly, it is operated. He / she must give two-thirds of the money she earns to the owner of the salon. “Me, I found myself with 60 $ of times in a day, for three or four clients an hour each.”

    Alone, weakened and riddled with shame, Roxanne does not know how to get out of this vicious circle. “I was taken. I couldn’t get out. I was too naive… Too rooted in there. Anyway, you don’t know where to go. You have shame also”, she told.

    Unfortunately, the isolation often becomes the reality of women caught up in the world of prostitution. “There are several women that one is not able to go to simply because they do not even know that there are services that exist in the region where they are currently,” said Joannie Dionne, the speaker of the House ISA, an organization that helps women who are victims of acts of a sexual nature.

    Roxanne, she finally found the door where to knock, but the damage was already done. “You sell as a product. You can’t live normally after that. You have the clients on the skin. You remember their smell, their aggressiveness, their words can hurt”, she entrusted.

    By her testimony, she hopes to make people think and wish that the women of the region are wary. “Me, my goal is that nobody goes in here. It looks so beautiful at the beginning, so easy to do. But behind the scenes, it’s so dark, so hurtful to become an object like that without that you do not know.”