Rhonda Ferguson, 32, knows her life is in danger, but the pull of addiction is stronger than her fear.
“I have a love affair with heroin,” she says, sitting in the West Baltimore offices of You Are Never Alone, an outreach organization that provides food, clothing, condoms, counseling and sometimes shelter for prostitutes.
Ferguson’s clear blue eyes belie the scabs lining her arms — abscesses from overuse of hypodermic needles.
“I love heroin more than my mother,” she says. “In fact, I stole from my mother to get it.”
Five years ago, she was living the American Dream as a middle-class mother on the Eastern Shore. “I had the three-bedroom home and a car in the driveway. I had the life, as they call it,” she says.
“My next-door neighbor rolled up one day with some coke,” she says. “I tried it, and it went from a weekend thing to fulltime. And that was it. That was all I wanted.”
Her husband then kicked her out a few years ago, she says. Left behind are three sons, ages 8 through 16, the eldest boy afflicted with a congenital defect that causes one of his legs to grow longer and requires occasional surgery, she says.
Today, she lives in constant fear.
In Baltimore, five women linked to prostitution have been strangled since April, and 26 have been slain since 1997.
Not too long ago, a short, stocky black man with “thick arms” picked her up on Carey Street in Baltimore, drove to Washington, D.C., and repeatedly sodomized her in a cemetery as she desperately cried for help.
“I was screaming for him to stop but the bastard kept going,” she says.
Dropped off on a street corner near Connecticut Avenue, the man ordered her to earn $200 by selling her body if she wanted to go home alive. Only a mad dash to a nearby community center and phone call to police saved her life, she says.
“I pounded on the door until someone answered,” she says. “I knew I had to get away from him.”
She later returned to the streets of Baltimore.
“Sometimes, I just want to go back to taking my kids to ballgames and eating crabs in the backyards on Sunday,” she says, breaking down into tears while Sidney Ford, executive director of YANA, comforts her.
Taking precautions
Many of the women working the Baltimore streets say fear has prompted them to change how they conduct business.
“We’re scared, all the women are scared; a lot of these women were found near where they work,” says Tina Duvall, 43, standing on the 2000 block of Lombard Street on a recent afternoon.
“I only see two men a day and that’s it. I get my $40 for everything I need and I’m done,” says Duvall, who charges $20 a pop for a “date.”
Limiting the number of clients is not the only safeguard women are taking. Armed with cell phones and a stable of existing customers, some say that’s enough.
“I only see guys who already have my number,” Ferguson says. “No new customers.”
Relatives speak of desperation in light of the recent rash of slayings as they try to wean their daughters off drugs.
“I tried everything I can to help. I don’t know what else to do,” says Helen Howard, mother of Michelle Wolford, a 38-year-old prostitute who identified suspected serial predator William Brown to The Examiner as the man who tried to kill her. “But she’s an adult I can only do so much,” Howard says.
“I’m really scared he’s going to come back,” Wolford says.
Brown is being held in city jail awaiting trial in connection with a double homicide and a brutal rape in which the victim’s ears were severed. Police are considering charging him with assault in connection with the Wolford case.
“Sometimes I just cry,” says Rebecca Castro, whose daughter Kathy has been involved in prostitution along Patapsco Street for several years.
“We’ve gotten her into drug treatment and she’s on methadone, but it’s still day to day,” she says. “All I can do is hope for the best.”
Kathy says she is doing her best to stay off the streets. “The methadone helps,” she says.
Methadone has been widely considered one of the best ways to beat a heroin addiction, but the costs of the treatment often prevent users from obtaining it.
“All of these women are dealing with the pain of early physical and sexual abuse, the pain of which often leads to addiction,” says Ford, YANA’s executive director. “And of course, addiction can lead them onto the streets.”
Retired Sgt. Craig Gentile, the former head of Baltimore City’s vice squad, surveyed nearly 100 prostitutes during his tenure.
“I asked a series of simple questions. ‘Have you ever been sexually abused?’ Ninety-eight percent said ‘yes.’ ‘Have you ever been physically abused?’ Ninety-four percent said ‘yes.’ It’s not hard to figure out,” he says.
“I had a stepfather who did things to me he shouldn’t have,” Ferguson says. “But it’s not something I want to talk about.”
Ferguson then showers, eats and departs from YANA Southwest Baltimore headquarters. “I know it isn’t pretty,” she says as she heads back to her corner. “But until I can get on methadone, I have to do something.”
