Mother reaches out to ladies of the night
For International Women's Day, we profile the faces of women rarely recognised in HK. Today: a former prostitute
On the face of it, Winnie seems to be a typical mother - she speaks proudly of her 14-year-old son's grades in Primary Six, and is anxious over his performance in Form One this year.
But she has always been treated by society as an outcast - nurses have refused to treat her without gloves, while neighbours avoid sharing the lift with her.
Why? Because Winnie used to sell her body to feed a heroin addiction.
'Neighbours looked at me with disgust and sometimes called me a whore to my face,' she recalled.
'Whatever I do with myself should be none of their business - after all I am not robbing or hurting anyone else, just trying to make a living, and I deserve to be treated like a human being.'
Now in her 40s, Winnie turned to prostitution at 21, after clients at the massage parlour where she worked began offering her 'a large amount of money - more than $1,000 in those days' for sexual services.
Having descended into heroin addiction, because 'all my friends were doing it and I didn't think I would get addicted', Winnie needed money to fund her habit.
She eventually found herself on the lowest rung of the sex industry ladder, walking the streets looking for quick cash in return for sexual favours.
Winnie's husband - her childhood sweetheart - also had a chronic heroin problem that prevented him from getting a job, making her the only breadwinner.
'There is so much social stigma,' she said.
'Once, a police officer found heroin on me, but he was still very polite and courteous, and asked me what I did for a living. When I told him, the courteousness immediately ended and he began using foul language.'
The turning point came when Winnie's addiction made her look so ill that she could no longer sell her body.
Instead, she began selling pirated CDs, and in 2001 wound up in prison for a year. By the time she was released, she was determined not to take heroin again.
Soon after, Winnie began regularly helping out at the offices of Action for Reach Out, which offers support and counselling to sex workers, where she found 'peace and stability' within herself.
Though Winnie had previously been hostile towards volunteers from the group who approached her while she was working the streets, she is now a full-time self-help co-ordinator helping to map out its strategies to aid sex workers.
'Even my son now seems less naughty and happier,' she said.
'I am treated better by society now, but I still want to tell people not to see women through different-coloured glasses just because they cannot find an alternative to prostitution.
'Treat them like ... human beings, too, and don't discriminate against them.'
Action for Reach Out executive director Nancy Leung Lui Mo-ching pointed out that many sex workers suffer from extremely low self-esteem.
'They get blamed for sexually transmitted diseases when it's the men who won't wear condoms, and they get blamed for stealing other women's husbands when it's the men who seek them,' she said.
