Prostitutes talk about life on the streets

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Drug addiction has a tight grip, and there's no place where it is more evident than in Charlotte's prostitution industry.

WCNC spent months looking at the hard life of the city's prostitutes and their struggle to get off drugs.

Here, cracking down on prostitution is a citywide effort, thanks to a rehab program that's unlike most in the country.

WCNC was there as more than two dozen women were locked up in the middle of a Saturday afternoon.

“It’s someone’s mom, daughter, best friend, a sister,” said Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Officer Ken Faulkner. “These women range in ages from teens to their 50s. We’ve seen it all.”

You may see addicts just hurting themselves, but officers say look closer.

“The prostitutes, the drugs -- that brings drug dealers, which brings other types of crimes, violent crimes, drug crimes everything in between,” he said.

Neighborhoods are caught in the middle. WCNC cameras caught the pictures first-hand when we went on the streets with CMPD after dark. It didn’t take us long to see prostitutes looking for a trick.

“This is the way I choose to live. I feel stuck,” said one woman who goes by Peanut. She’s a mother of three who told us her crack habit keeps her on the street.

“I know I’m powerless over this drug,” she said.

Also feeding her habit are the johns that pick her up. Peanut told us she’s picked up by all types of men, even business executives.

“He may want to give you a hundred dollars,” she said.

With the arrests, often come drug charges.

“It’s pretty rampant,” said Rachelle Castro with the McLeod Center. She is one of several counselors who join CMPD on their prostitution stings. They push rehab on those arrested, trying to convince the girls to get clean and get off the streets.

“We teach them they are not bad people like they’ve been led to believe,” she said. The McLeod Center has a rehab program specifically geared towards prostitution. Along with attacking the drug addiction, they teach life skills like balancing a check book and how to interview for a job.

“They just don’t know what to do a lot of times, they don’t have the social interaction, the social skills that some other people did,” she said.

Kim, a former prostitute who sold her body for sex for more than 20 years, said, “I didn't care if I was going to be locked up again. I just knew I needed help.”

She can’t count the number of times she did it. She talked to us during her third try at rehab. It was the longest she’d been clean, and she credited McLeod.

“It’s hard putting your life together,” she said.

Kim was working to get a full time job, a hard task if you’ve never known anything but the streets.

“It just goes to show you what the drugs will do to you,” said Officer Faulkner. “These girls don’t want to grow up wanting to be a prostitute.”

Peanut knows addiction has a tight grip. She told us herself that night on the streets.

“I know it’s worth nothing, but I’m still chasing something for no reason,” said Peanut

Kim is still working to find full-time work.

“Everything about me has got to change. If I don't change I will be doing the same thing over and over,” said Kim. “I don't want to live like that anymore.”