BRIT SCHULTE with contributions from JUDY SZURGOT and ALISHA WALKER
Incarcerated survivors have had little to no voice in mainstream movements against sexual violence. This is an unacceptable elision, as sex workers—who too often face both sexual violence and incarceration—have among the most nuanced and considered senses of consent in sexual encounters, whether transactional or personal. Those in the trade ought to be some of the first to whom we look for insight into combatting sexual violence both inside and outside the criminal legal system. Judy and Alisha, two formerly and currently incarcerated sex working and survival-hustling women, lend their voices to this book to find a place for themselves in building the movements against sexual violence.
WHEN I WAS forwarded Judy’s petition and affidavit, I had to read it almost a dozen times. I couldn’t believe it. I actually thought the case details had been typed incorrectly. I reread it aloud. As someone who’s worked on popular defense campaigns of criminalized survivors, I should not have been surprised. The system of punishment is working exactly as designed: to punish cash-poor women, to punish Black people, to punish drug-using people, to punish sex working folx. To punish survivors.
Judy and I started our letters frequently by sharing favorite quotes of inspiration and hope. Our correspondence had an intentional positivity that at times strained against the respective terrors on either side of the wall. I signed her up for the Sex Workers Outreach Project (SWOP) Behind Bars newsletter, which she was eager to receive. She wrote to me about missing her daughter most of all, about the separation being unbearable. Being connected to community on the outside, coupled with a larger-than-life imagination, helped Judy distance herself from the violence of the everyday; the evil banality of prison life.
Judy wrote:
Thanks for signing me up for the newsletter. I’d like to get involved with something bigger than me. I like keeping busy and speaking up for things I believe in. I wish I could start a newsletter or some type of outlet in here for women so they know they ain’t alone. Court for my daughter was this morning, they ended up excluding me from the conference call so now I’m waiting ’til this afternoon to know what’s going on.
Judy is a thirty-four-year-old working mother, a former drug-using person (at the insistence of her ex) who was engaged in survival work and straight work while living with domestic abuse. She did what she had to do to take care of herself and her daughter. Like so many other criminalized survivors, Judy was forced to labor against her will. Judy became dependent on the substances her ex pushed to dull the mental and physical pain of abuse. Her ex and one of his acquaintances ensured she had little to no independence. Much like the violence that would come from being incarcerated by the State of Illinois, her movements were dictated and restricted, and her ex punished her for resistance.
CONSENT
Consent in survival work is often mischaracterized as nonexistent: no agency, all exploitation and violence all the time. Providing for yourself and your family while surviving abuse means your ability to consent is under constant threat of attack, but that doesn’t mean that it disappears. Lines, boundaries, and thresholds shift, flex, and alter based upon what would immediately reduce harm toward yourself and your loved ones. People do what they have to do to be as okay as they can be. We need to talk about what creates these conditions, rather than victim blame folx who make day-today decisions in order to survive.
Judy describes her survival in the face of abuse, and her description reinforces the shifting nature of consent in survival work:
Now with strangers, when I was on the street, I was extremely shy. I didn’t even know to call strangers “baby” at first, to sweet talk them. Then the more I hustled, the meaner I got. Though, looking back, I never put myself in (well, in my mind) complete danger … I hated being touched, and would cringe and flinch when I’d have to allow a vic [trick] to feel me up to prove I wasn’t a cop. And if they didn’t give me the money within a few moments of being in the car with them, I would leave; all my intentions were of taking the money and running, so too much chit-chat or touching would make me physically sick.
Throughout Judy’s marriage, her life was characterized by acts of survival, punctuated with emotional, physical, and financial abuse. Her ex would regularly hit her in public or berate and attack her in front of close family members. When money ran out, he would force her to pick up clients as a sex worker. Judy was arrested for prostitution numerous times. Sometimes, Judy’s ex would pose as her pimp, showing up and robbing clients who paid for a date.
Even though she never wielded a weapon and was a survivor of domestic abuse at the time, Judy was convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to fourteen years in prison.
RESISTANCE
In the face of the deadening evil of the carceral system, Judy advocated for herself, researching Illinois domestic violence law, searching for ways to survive this punishment no one should have to face. Using the prison library, Judy found the law that would eventually aid in her own release from prison: a provision that protects defendants who are or have been victims of domestic violence from being punished for criminal acts committed while living through that abuse. Their conduct can be justified by their status as “victims.”
Section 15 099-0384, a new domestic violence provision of the Illinois Public Act, went into effect on January 1, 2016. It reads: “At the time of the offense, the defendant is or had been the victim of domestic violence and the effects of the domestic violence tended to excuse or justify the defendant’s criminal conduct. As used in this paragraph (15), ‘domestic violence’ means abuse as defined in Section 103 of the Illinois Domestic Violence Act of 1986.” This new domestic violence provision should have been invoked at the time of her trial, but she had inadequate counsel who did no research or advocacy on her behalf. She had also been assigned to a court-mandated substance abuse program at Cook County Jail, but a Sheriff’s deputy refused her admission, citing her high bond and “violent crime” conviction. She received no support while incarcerated to manage the substance use into which her ex had coerced her.
Judy writes about her release:
To my knowledge, I’m the first person released under this new domestic violence law. I set the precedent. It was by chance that I read about it in the prison library. Can you believe that?
When I received “the word” from my contact, I literally screamed out loud and shook my phone wildly in the air. “She’s fucking out!” I said to no one but myself in my apartment. That first text from her—“Hey girl hey it’s Judy —made my month, my year. Even still, it was a sobering moment amid the celebrations as we both acknowledged that post-release (the inevitable parole and probation period) would come with different methods of confinement and punishment.
Still, Judy is out. She woke up free from prison on November 30, 2018. There is so much new work to be done supporting her and her family as she builds a new way for herself, with the State of Illinois attached to her ankle. Mainstream movements against sexual assault have little room for such an “imperfect victim,” but Judy’s experiences with her abusive ex-husband, the police, and criminal courts show us why women, femmes, trans, and gender nonconforming people do not report sexual assault through law enforcement channels. The carceral system suspends your consent, disallowing you from actively participating in healing and justice as a survivor. It demands your re-traumatization, revictimization, your money, your time, your freedom, your children.
What happened to Judy remains unexceptional and to be expected from a system founded upon the cruelty of carcerality. Judy was released but her friend, and mine—Alisha, whom Judy met when she was incarcerated at Decatur Correctional—is still behind bars for an act of self-defense.
“JUJU, LELE IS LOOKING FOR YA”: FINDING CONNECTIONS
Judy describes how she connected with Alisha:
Alisha heard about me and my case through you, Brit. I went by JuJu inside and people kept saying “JuJu, LeLe is looking for ya.” But I didn’t know LeLe yet so I stood her up the first few times she tried to get in touch. Finally one day at the gym, she came up and was like “Girl, I’ve been trying to meet up with you. Brit says we should talk!” We became fast friends. Ended up we knew a lot of the same people outside, so it was amazing that we never bumped heads. She was very adamant when we first met, “You better be down with hos, I just wanna make sure you won’t be doing any ho-bashing.” I told her, “Oh no! Whores are my best friends! No ho-bashing here. You know what I’m in for? You don’t gotta worry about me.” But I didn’t want to socialize a lot in general because of my depression. I didn’t leave my room a lot. I didn’t want to accept the fact that I was there. I wish I could’ve but it was too much inside, and missing my daughter. LeLe and I have very similar stories and life history. I even told my Dad about her. She’s awesome.
Judy and Alisha have both characterized their life stories as similar even though they identify with their respective hustles differently. Their differences are less important than their camaraderie. Perhaps it was the violation of consent that renders them so similar: both doing what they needed to do, proficiently. When they failed to acquiesce to the demands of men who did not share their level of risk or need for survival, they were both subject to the bootheel of the state.
Judy and Alisha had the same original counsel, two men notorious for their predatory behavior toward women facing criminal charges in Cook County. Judy remarked that one of them made unwanted sexual advances toward her. Alisha attests to the same aggressive, sexist behavior, such as being asked to wear a “schoolgirl uniform” for him during one of their meetings. These were men who were supposed to defend Judy and Alisha in court, advocate for them, not sexually harass and intimidate them. They both remember feeling torn between refusing, reporting, and dismissing these men because of the charges they were facing.
Judy lost at trial because her lawyer forced a plea deal of fourteen years. The judge was set on sentencing her that day and didn’t want the “hassle” that goes along with picking a jury—something Judy was originally insistent upon. The attorney attempted the same with Alisha, but she refused the deal. In turn, he never requested bond for her. According to the Chicago Community Bond Fund, “Inability to pay bond results in higher rates of conviction, longer sentences, loss of housing and jobs, separation of families, and lost custody of children. Paying bond … restores the presumption of innocence before trial and enables recipients to remain free while fighting their cases.”
THE PARADOX OF “VICTIMHOOD”
Because Judy was married to her abuser, the title of domestic violence survivor was extended to her, and was sufficient to win her petition for release. She was deemed a “victim” deserving of freedom, support, and access to community. Alisha would not be afforded the same. Victimhood is conditionally offered to sex workers when society deems us in need of rescue. Alisha—surviving an attack on her life—was an affront to a society that already believed her disposable. It bears mentioning that both men who were violent toward Judy and Alisha were white.
Like Cyntoia Brown, Alexis Martin, and Chrystul Kizer, the details of Alisha’s case have been misrepresented by a host of mainstream publications. Alisha is a twenty-seven-year-old artist, poet, and sex worker from Akron, Ohio. In January 2014, when she was nineteen years old, Alisha was attacked by a client in his Orland Park home. He became angry when Alisha refused unsafe services, punching her in the face before grabbing a knife from the kitchen. Alisha managed to wrestle the knife from the client, stabbing him. He was found dead in his house three days later.
Despite that no physical evidence had been recovered from the scene, Alisha was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. At her trial, the prosecutor portrayed her as a manipulative criminal and spoke disparagingly about her profession. A jury convicted her of second-degree murder, and Alisha was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Her counsel was inadequate, failing to file crucial motions which have since been major impediments to even initiating a proper appeal. Currently, advocate organizers in the Support Ho(s)e collective coordinate the Justice for Alisha Walker Defense Campaign to fight for her freedom and materially support her while she’s inside. Other grassroots organizations, like Survived & Punished and Love & Protect, have continued to raise awareness around Alisha’s case and connect it to other cases involving Black, Brown, and Indigenous survivors, both trans and cis, who have been criminalized for acts of self-love and self-defense.
Alisha was sex working largely of her own volition (compelled by capitalism to labor), though a third party managed her bookings. Her attacker was a known client. Sex workers have their own harm reductions tools—like bad date/dog lists—but they aren’t foolproof. Alisha essentially experienced workplace violence and because of racism, whorephobia, and the criminalization of sex work, it was inconceivable that Alisha was acting in self-defense. The judge essentially said she shouldn’t have fought back and lived. It did not help Alisha’s case that the sister of the deceased was also a Cook County judge, and the brother of the deceased a prominent lobbyist in Illinois. His sister was even given access to the judge’s chambers during sentencing. Alisha remembers watching the sister holding the purse of the forensic specialist who took the stand for the prosecution during her trial.
Alisha does not characterize her work experiences as inherently exploitative. She was proud of her self-sufficiency and ablility to support her family (mother, father, little sister, little brother). She felt empowered, learned self-love and confidence, but also experienced violence and messy management situations. She contends that yes, all those things are possible to feel and experience at once.
Alisha reflected on consent, work life, and her current incarceration:
Consent for me has always been the same: if I don’t want to do it I don’t, or if I’m not sure about the risk I don’t do it. With clients in particular, I won’t even allow kissing—it’s too personal, nor do I allow finger penetration or any unprotected contact while I’m working for that matter. Those are my hard boundaries when I’m working. However, in my personal relationships, I’m pretty open to whatever would make my partner happy, but that of course comes with how much trust I have in that relationship and how affirming it is for me. Listen, prison has sent my body to shit. I’m not offered adequate food or nutrition that I (and all people) need to be healthy; nor do I have the right to do with my body as I please—from being outdoors in the sun, to sex, my hair color or hairstyle, they dictate every choice of change. I cannot care for myself by seeking medical attention when I actually require it, and I’ve gone without much human touch (platonic or otherwise) for over five years. I did not consent to that. I did not consent to losing loving touch and embrace. I do not consent to these strip searches and their violent cavity searches. Consent does not exist in prison; you are state property.
Alisha’s unapologetic working identity lives in her visual art and poetry. Her organizing on the inside, and her own political education, have gotten her in trouble with correctional officers, prison counselors, and the prison administration. She’s taken time and care to meet with people who have had similar life and work experiences, doing that essential and difficult work of breaking down stigma and shame. Through those acts of self-love and care she’s expressed becoming more emboldened in her personal commitment to organize toward destigmatizing sex work. Her thoughts around prison abolition, state violence, consent, and decriminalization of the sex trades seem to be ever deepening and informing one another.
THE VIOLENCE OF THE STATE
Prison reminds me of warehouses for people who society doesn’t want anymore … they just throw them, us, away.
—Alisha
To me, there’s no clearer cause for Judy’s and Alisha’s incarcerations than the hatred and contempt judges have for criminalized survivors, especially those who are cash-poor, drug-using, mothers, and sex workers of color. These systems of punishment are designed to cage and remove from public view all of the above. It is not shocking to me that both Judy and Alisha were and are incarcerated. What is shocking is how Judy escaped a punishment designed for her. What can sometimes take years of outside-inside collaborative organizing, popular defense campaigns, petitions, direct actions, and astronomical legal fees, Judy managed to coordinate and discover, and then self-advocate for new legal representation. This tenacity in the throes of incarceration is incredible and worth celebrating.
Judy comments on the punishments that followed her outside of prison:
The second night in the halfway house, I asked my roommate if she thought I would wake up at Decatur [Correctional] if I went to sleep. She said, “You better not because that would mean I’d be right there back inside with you.” Immediately after getting out, I went to Walmart with my dad, and somebody named “Judith” was announced over the PA. I had a panic attack. I knew they had made a mistake and were coming for me. For days afterward I kept waiting for the knock on the door. For there to be guards. It’s very unreal. I’m still scared to believe it.
Since winning her release, Judy has encountered trouble accessing food stamps and other assistance programs. There have been numerous difficulties surrounding her driver’s license being reinstated and determining responsibility for parking tickets and moving violations incurred by her former counsel, after leaving her truck in his possession. After she was released and we were able to correspond via text, she characterized this as another kind of prison—one with a lack of access to movement, existing at the whims of probation. There have been issues with employment under these restrictions, common to those on probation and parole. Judy asks, “When is it a good time to say you’re a convicted felon when you’re interviewing for a job?” Despite all of these imposed obstacles, she remains committed to working and saving up, as well as dedicating herself to the fight to free others like herself from prison.
I’m able to sit with Judy at cafe tables now. We can text and call as long as we can both afford to pay our cell phone bills. Judy and I mostly get to choose (insofar as there remains the illusion of “choice” under capitalism) when and how we see each other. I have to travel almost one thousand miles to be searched, patted down, and then told where to sit to visit Alisha. Our calls are monitored, our letters read and sent back, deemed contraband, our emails screened and approved or denied on a whim. These are not conditions we consented to endure, and yet, this is how we negotiated a friendship and organizing relationship. I’m left with rage and love and a fierce sense of the need to fight to end confinement of all kinds. For Judy’s part, she “want[s] to be able to be a mom again. A good mom.” She said, “I wanna help volunteer and do whatever I can [for criminalized survivors]. I really do.”
To conclude, Judy and Alisha offer their thoughts on consent and violence.
Judy:
My ideas of consent are still pretty screwed up too. I’ve allowed people closest to me, especially a sexual partner, to take complete control and advantage of me. My mother was a wonderful woman, the best mom I could ask for, but she never gave the best advice. My first sexual relationship I wanted to stop was when I was sixteen. I was too young, and didn’t enjoy it. I talked to my mom about this, and she said I can’t just stop having sex now with my boyfriend, he would leave me. She said that all men want is sex, and if you don’t give it to them they will leave you for someone who will have it with them. I know now that’s wrong, and not true, but fifteen years later this is still instilled in me.
As far as consent in prison, besides the strip and cavity searches, which after three years became almost second nature, I never felt invaded or abused per se. I, unlike others, am very adaptable, I guess. A couple days of one thing becomes the norm to me; even uncomfortable scenarios become less and less uncomfortable. That was my defense mechanism for prison. Consent in prison is tricky. I never felt forced to do anything except stay there. I even had a run-in with a CO [correctional officer]—it started out as flirting and then went a little further, but when I didn’t wanna go all the way, we didn’t. So no, in my experience I had full consent over my body as far as anything sexual happening.
Alisha:
The #MeToo “movement” is supposed to give women a voice, and sometimes it does, but it does not give everyone a voice. Especially sex workers and prisoners. I was almost raped and killed. For defending myself, I am sitting in prison. “Me too” doesn’t cover me. I think it’s great as an idea, but sex workers are left completely out. I’m ready to get to work. I want to be an advocate, I don’t want anyone to ever have to experience what I did. I want to fight to decriminalize sex work and stop the victim-blaming, anti-survivor mentality that makes up this whole court and prison system.
What do our movements to end sexual violence offer Judy, Alisha, or any of the many others in similar circumstances? Radical community is almost certainly the only venue in which either woman will ever have the opportunity to air their grievances and offer support, sympathy, and empathic experience to others with similar survival narratives. Even the dream of full decriminalization of sex work is far from a guaranteed destigmatization of sexual violence against sex workers—a climate in which their (our) experiences are seen as equivalent to trauma and resistance outside of the trades. If our activism fails to recognize this, it risks becoming a hollow, respectability-driven movement that gatekeeps, polices, and filters out those whose stories are seen as somehow inadequate, sullied, or otherwise less-than.
Special thanks to Aaron Hammes for editorial work on this essay.