RESEDA : Program for Ex-Prostitutes Is Persevering

Outside the Reseda house, a repair crew has just finished removing the rest of the brick chimney downed by the Northridge temblor. Inside the quake-damaged home, the work of the Rev. Ann Hayman and Binah Waite, co-directors of the Mary Magdalene Project’s residential program, never seems to end.

Mixing compassion, time and attention with healthy doses of surrogate parenting, they’re helping women repair lives scarred by years of prostitution. In some ways, the two repair efforts share a certain parallel.

Women trying to leave “the life” find the road back from the streets filled with unexpected twists, turns and major stumbling blocks. The world’s oldest profession is not a victimless crime, contends Waite, who’s been working with the project for 10 years.

The victimization of any prostitute usually begins with childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse, she says.

Patricia Sales, 38, says she was arrested four times for prostitution in 2 1/2 years. “When I got arrested the last time, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore,” she says.

Sales arrived at the Mary Magdalene house in April and says she believes she finally has the support, stable home life and help she needs to handle her grief over her son, who died from leukemia. “Something would always happen the other times I tried to quit, which left me feeling I had nowhere to turn but back to the streets.”

Luckily for Sales and the other five women now living at the facility, the January earthquake did not bring down the house and their recovery efforts. It did, however, inflict between $50,000 and $60,000 in damage, knocking down the chimney, breaking water pipes, smashing windows and cracking plaster. It also created major problems for the Mary Magdalene Project’s expansion plans. When it hit, the project was ready to move forward with its plans to purchase an apartment building to house more women.

“Unfortunately, the two buildings we were looking at ended up being red-tagged,” or uninhabitable, said Hayman. Now, she says, the project at some point will probably use the $300,000 in its acquisition fund to buy a vacant lot near its location to construct its own building.