Anonymous Group Offers Refuge From Sex Industry : Recovery: Prostitutes, pimps, madams and pornographic actors trying to start new lives are finding a helping hand.

Unable to pay her way through college in Baltimore in the late ‘70s by cleaning houses and working on campus, Cathy decided to try something different.

Through her friends, she heard about a job in which she could make enough money to pay her $400-a-semester tuition and living expenses. She could even work at home and get extra work on weekends and semester breaks.

Prostitution paid the bills for Cathy from the time she was 18 until she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts.

“It seemed to me a very logical way to earn money for college. That was my goal,” said Cathy, now 31, who worked for a madam and often turned tricks in her bedroom without her mother’s knowledge.

She left “the life” behind in Baltimore and buried her memories 10 years ago when she moved to San Diego to get married.

Now, with the help of a group called Prostitutes Anonymous, Cathy and other former prostitutes are digging up and putting to rest the past that haunts them.

The group is part of a nationwide, nonprofit organization dedicated to the recovery of men and women addicted to the sex industry.

“We started (PA) because there just wasn’t any help available,” said PA founder Jodi Williams, who in 1985 made headlines across the country as the “High-Tech Madam” when the elaborate computerized organization she ran with her mother was uncovered just three blocks from a Van Nuys police station.

(Williams, who was known at the time as Rene LeBlanc, was grossing $30,000 a month from the operation, which was equipped with closed-circuit television to screen arriving customers and a videocassette recorder to play pornographic movies. Williams spent three months in jail, and her mother received a one-month sentence.)

The lack of support for the organization is a result of misconceptions about prostitution, Williams said.

“There was some (misunderstanding) that it had to do with sex addiction, but it doesn’t,” she said. “Some of our members don’t even have sex with their clients. Some people think they have problems with drugs. Over one-third of our members never touched drugs.

“We felt it was an addiction to the sex industry.”

Based on the 12 steps for recovery formulated by Alcoholics Anonymous, the organization seeks to be a refuge for former male and female prostitutes, pimps, madams, former pornography actors and others who have sex for money. The organization has groups in several states and continues to expand. There is even a telephone hot line: 818-905-2188.

To get the word out about the meetings, Suzanne, who worked on the streets of downtown San Diego for 13 years, ran classified ads in newspapers.

The meetings began in Ocean Beach but were moved to the downtown YWCA in November because of its central location. Although she has received dozens of responses, attendance Wednesday nights has been small, with a maximum of five people. Suzanne attributes the low turnout to the newness of the group.

The small group gathers at 6 p.m. in a tiny room at the YWCA, 10th and C streets, which they rent with donations collected at each week’s meeting. Like Alcoholics Anonymous, each woman begins speaking by telling her first name and admitting her addiction.

During the sessions, the women talk about feelings of shame and anger, relationships, misconceptions about prostitution, achievements and offer advice to other group members.

“There is so much shame around prostitution,” said Cathy, who never told her family, her former husband or her current fiance about her past. “A lot of people want to get out, but have no way to do it. They are sucked in and feel it is their only means of support. This gives you a way to talk about it.”

Now, there is only a group for women, but Suzanne plans to organize a men’s meeting. In addition to the YWCA meetings, Suzanne and Cathy hold a weekly group at the Las Colinas Jail for women in Santee.

When people are addicted to the sex industry, they crave attention, money and power, Williams said from her Reseda home, where she lives with her husband, also a former prostitute, and their 9-month-old daughter.

“I got into the transaction, the money, the control,” said Suzanne, now 31, who made her home on Market Street where she danced nude at Cindy’s (since torn down) and where she met her current husband.

“I had control. I could tell the john what was going to happen, how long it was going to take and how much it was going to cost.

“It’s hard to look at myself in the victim role because it really worked for me. I loved it. I loved the money. I hated the sex.”

Cathy, who often cries when she talks about her prostitution during her college years, said she became obsessed with the idea of trying to get her clients to be her “sugar daddies.”

“My focus was on, ‘How can I get all of these men to take care of me?’ It was like, ‘If I cry, this one will give me $100.’ ”

Williams tells of a man who has been out of the business for several years but misses being told he is beautiful.

Getting out of “the life” is often not as easy as some think. Not only are there the emotional aftermath and sexual dysfunction to work through, but adjusting to the more mundane can be difficult.

“You can’t stay up all night,” Williams said. “A lot of us had people cleaning our houses for us. We have to learn how to do that. It takes about two years to settle down and get into the swing of things.”

The biggest problem Williams faced when she started the organization four years ago was finding members.

“Most are very isolated. They don’t read the newspaper, magazines or talk to each other. They do watch TV,” said Williams, who started a major media campaign with four appearances on “Geraldo” and two on “Sally Jesse Raphael.” She has even made a TV documentary and taped public service announcements that run on Los Angeles stations.

When word of the group began to spread, it not only reached the ears of people wanting to get out of the sex industry but also piqued the interest of the Los Angeles police as well.

“The first year, the police were trying to bust me. They thought it was a game. They even sent an undercover cop to my work pretending to be a telephone repairman,” said Williams, who now works as a paralegal.

Williams uses her own money to send out newsletters and starter manuals to members. She hopes the sales from a yet-unpublished book she has written about PA will help start groups in other countries.

The book is titled “Sold Out” and contains recovery stories from about 20 members, including Cathy, and information about how to start a group. If Williams can’t find a publisher, she said, she will make copies of the book herself on a copy machine.

“It’s important for people to know that there is help available.”