Women Find Answers Through Trauma Intervention Program
During the years she spent surviving on the streets, “Lotus” lived the life of an abuse victim, a drug addict, and a prostitute.
But after graduating from Catholic Charities’ DIGNITY house and ASU’s Esuba Arizona trauma intervention program, this woman began a new life – as an educator working with ASU assistant professor Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz and her graduate students to help former prostitutes rehabilitate themselves and stay off the streets.
“Going through Esuba helped me recognize different forms of abuse – from abuse of myself to mental abuse to drug abuse,” says Lotus, who is currently attending Gateway College to gain the computer skills she needs for a job at a law firm. “I hope that by volunteering as a co-facilitator at Esuba meetings, I can help somebody else see Esuba is a safe place to talk and bring things out into the open.”
Originally a program for Florida correctional institutions, Esuba (“abuse” spelled backwards) has proven effective in enabling prisoners to reverse the negative effects of abuse and reform. In 2006, Esuba’s research director Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz decided to see how an Esuba program could work outside correctional facilities when she began teaching at ASU’s School of Social Work.
“I knew Esuba was effective in improving self-esteem and awareness of abuse, so I wanted to start an Esuba program in Arizona,” states Roe-Sepowitz. “I also wanted to look into the community because my interest area has always been these really high risk women – sexually abused or raped women.”
Through Esuba, ASU graduate students work with former prostitutes at DIGNITY (Developing Individual Growth and New Independence Through Yourself) House, a transitional program that offers the only Arizona treatment program specifically for prostitution. Under the supervision of Roe-Sepowitz, graduate students learn how to facilitate group therapy sessions as they help former prostitutes confront and deal with traumatic issues.
“The women in Esuba have often been on the streets for twenty years or more,” states Roe-Sepowitz. “And because they’ve had a life filled with trauma and drug abuse, they’ve been masking a lot of the things they feel and have experienced, such as child abuse, rape, and self-mutilation. Esuba gets them to talk about their experiences, which often helps these women relieve themselves of their trauma.”
Although Roe-Sepowitz finds some women enter the program expecting ASU volunteers to tell them how to fix their problems, she emphasizes Esuba Arizona is designed to support former prostitutes as they learn how to help themselves.
“We’ve had women ask us, ‘Tell me how to detect a bad man’ or ‘Tell me how to not to pick a man who’s going to beat me’,” she recalls. “So we asked them to tell us how they learned the men in their pasts were abusive, and they started sharing their stories, which helped them find their own answers. And many of these women get the chance to be role models for other women – they co-facilitate meetings, show other women how they dealt with abuse issues, and teach what they’re learning.”
Kathleen Mitchell, director of DIGNITY House, finds that there are several benefits to having an ASU professor and graduate students volunteer in the transitional program.
“Seeing women with degrees shows these women they can further their education too,” she says. “We have a woman who’s earned her master’s degree, women who have gotten their bachelor’s, their AA degrees. Some women have graduated from DIGNITY House and have gotten into good careers; some are running halfway houses for other women. And school is really important for our women to get back on track.”
Mitchell speaks from experience. After going to jail in 1989 for operating a prostitution enterprise, Mitchell found there were no programs to rehabilitate and educate prostitutes. In response she worked with the program coordinator at Durango Jail to create prostitution treatment programs for jails; partnered with Catholic Charities, an Arizona social service organization, to create the DIGNITY transitional program; and teamed up with Esuba Arizona when Roe-Sepowitz proposed a partnership. She appreciates the passion ASU volunteers bring with them, stressing that services for prostitutes continue to be in short supply due to lack of government funding.
“Getting out of prostitution is like climbing out of the water after being submerged for a long time – it’s cold and if you don’t have someone to wrap a blanket around you and make you feel safe, you’re going back in,” she states. “So having ASU students volunteer to work with these women really helps them leave that lifestyle.”
Many of the graduate students that volunteer for Esuba Arizona, find that working with the women helps shatter their stereotypes of prostitutes and gives them greater insight into the effects of abuse.
“When you think of a prostitute, you don’t think of someone who can be friendly,” says Allison Ward, a graduate student getting her Master’s in Social Work who volunteered in Esuba Arizona last year. “But these women are very smart and beautiful people. I always tell them ‘I’m going to learn a lot more from you than you will from me.’”
Ward, who is writing her thesis on the effectiveness of Esuba programs, recalls that when she began volunteering, the stories she heard from the women could be emotionally taxing. She credits Roe-Sepowitz with providing debriefing sessions for volunteers after their meetings at DIGNITY House, allowing students to talk about the sessions and address any stressful issues they experienced.
But not all of Esuba Arizona’s sessions deal with traumatic issues. According to Lotus, some of her favorite parts of the program include building gingerbread houses during Christmas, celebrating birthday parties, or exchanging compliments with the women. Such positive social activities go a long way in building up self esteem and improving communication skills, which Lotus knows are vital in staying off the streets.
“Dominique and her students are role models – as women we can watch what they do, listen to what they say, learn to talk like they talk, and step out of the gutter and be ladies,” she states. “I want to work to be trusted like they are, to be admired like they are, and to be able to share any piece of my past to help somebody else.”
Esuba Arizona engages abuse victims in a twelve week program that addresses topics ranging from sexual abuse to child abuse to strategies for improving one’s future. To learn more, please visit Esuba’s web site.
Since 2002, Dr. Dominique Roe-Sepowitz has been the research director of the Esuba program in Florida. To learn more about Dr. Roe-Sepowitz’s work, please visit her web page.
DIGNITY (Developing Individual Growth and New Independence Through Yourself) is a support group for women who want to leave prostitution. Developed by Kathleen Mitchell and supported by Catholic Charities, an Arizona social service organization, DIGNITY’s services include both diversion and transitional programs. To learn more, please visit Catholic Charities’ web site and read the Phoenix New Times’ article on DIGNITY house.
Michael Jung, ASU in the Community feature writer
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To learn more about how ASU is engaged with the community, please visit ASU in the Community’s Program Database which connects you to a wide variety of specific ASU outreach efforts.