"Memoirs of a Sex Industry Survivor" by Anne Bissell

For well over a decade, I was a technical writer in the computer industry. Although successful for all intents and purposes, I did not feel I had overcome the shame and the guilt from my days as a college co-ed by day, and “escort,” or “call girl” by night. I still experienced nightmares, flashbacks, or what is commonly referred to as PTSD.

In 1987, I got clean and sober and began a spiritual journey. My AA sponsor wrote the Lord’s Prayer on a napkin and I began to find God. In 1991, I met a group of women who then called themselves Prostitutes Anonymous. I was shocked that they were openly discussing their pasts. One of their members convinced me to attend a meeting they were holding in the Los Colinas Women’s Jail. After carrying the dark secrets of my past for over a decade, I told my story for the first time in front of a group of incarcerated women. It was probably the most painful moment of my life, and yet it was also the most liberating.

Thus begun my journey, and from that moment on, I have never stopped telling my story to other women, and giving them an opportunity to share their truth with me. In sharing my woundedness, I am healed. On the back of our current brochure I said it like this:

If we can free one survivor from the bondage of sexual exploitation, than we have freed the world. If one voice is liberated, a nation is set free. For even the tiniest act of compassion frees those with the greatest hurt. If I have touched your life, than it is I who has been redeemed.

Whatever I have given you is really a gift to myself. If I can help one survivor see themselves in a new way, I have done my job.”

The Book Has Brought Visibility to Sex Industry Survivors

More importantly, Memoirs has brought visibility to the reality that the sex industry is something to survive from. I can’t tell you how many young women have told me, whether through emails, phone calls, or while I was at a book signing Breaking through the Glamour of the Sex Industry

The story of how I became involved with helping other survivors of the sex industry is documented in “Memoirs of a Sex Industry Survivor.” This story is the first of its kind, and the novel, based on my life, describes the harms done to participants in the “game,” or “the life.”

While the book is my story, it is also the story of other survivors, and the character in the book, “Juliet West” provides a role model who actually gets out of the industry, stays out of the sex industry, undergoes a healing and spiritual transformation, and then is able to help others get out. Currently, there is no other story available in mainstream pop culture.

Memoirs of a Sex Industry Survivor truly has been a launching pad for our organization. Because of this book, thousands have been able to see that there is an alternative voice to the constant buzz and hype created by the sex industry. One of the purposes of the book was to shatter the glamour around the sex industry, and we believe it has begun that process, that they had never thought of the sex industry as being something to survive from.

The book became a portal, an information pathway on the net, where anyone who googled “sex industry, help, prostitution, etc,

Anne Bissell/Executive Director
Email: sisasurvive@ yahoo.com
www.thesilverbraid. org
www.annebissell. com
http://www.vfjnw. org