Norma Hotaling Norma Hotaling was internationally renowned for her advocacy work on behalf of victims of sexual violence, in particular prostitution and trafficking. Her work led to a 2004 California law that allows prosecutors to charge pimps and johns with child abuse if they prostitute a minor. Hotaling herself had endured the worst type of violence. When she was three years old, she was sexually abused for the first time, with further occurrences between the ages of five and seven. She went to school in Palm Springs, but by the time she was 18, she was on the streets selling sex and soon became a heroin addict. In 1989, after 21 years in prostitution, Hotaling turned herself in at the nearest police station and insisted that she be put in jail, where she stayed for six weeks, almost dying during drug withdrawal. She soon began to devote her life to helping other women. First working with AID’s sufferers, in 1992 she founded Standing against Global Exploitation (SAGE), a San Francisco-based centre offering services to help women out of prostitution. She began meeting regularly with community leaders, explaining that the women were not there out of choice, but that the curb crawlers were. Ironically, it was her collaboration with the police officer who had arrested her countless times in the 1980s for soliciting, Lieutenant Joe Dutto, that enabled her work with sex buyers to take off. She contacted him after hearing of his concern about the spread of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases in the city, and, by then armed with a degree in health education from San Francisco state university, offered her skills. Hotaling devised a program that was to become known as “the John’s school”. Called the First Offenders of Prostitution Program (Fopp), charges against first offenders were dropped if they paid a $1,000 fee and attended a day-long course, including sessions run by former prostitutes, on the realities of the sex trade. Most of the fees went to help women attend the SAGE program. “I was scared,” she said about the first time she ran Fopp. “I knew they would hate me. But, at the end of the program they were all crying.” The program was lauded in a 2008 U.S. Department of Justice study, which concluded that men who attended the "john school" were 30 percent less likely to be rearrested for soliciting a prostitute than men who did not attend such a program. In recognition of her work with SAGE and Fopp, Hotaling received more than 20 awards, including Oprah’s angel award in 2001. She also advised governments on how to tackle trafficking and prostitution and addressed conferences all over the world. Asked how she managed to work with women with complex problems, Norma said: “It’s like caring for orchids. They die so easily. But you take the dead-looking stem to someone who knows orchids and that person can look at the root and say, ‘Look! There’s still a little bit of life here.’” Norma died in her San Francisco home after a short battle with pancreatic cancer. She was 57. Honored by Roma Guy |
