Sex buyers made her feel she'd 'never be of value again.' She proved them wrong.
Even the squatters — who'd left behind needles and syringes, condoms and soiled blankets — had used and abandoned the old house on North Parker Avenue in Indianapolis. Stefanie Jeffers felt fear and uncertainty grip her as she stepped inside for the first time.
Could a place so damaged be the answer to the dream that kept her awake at night? Could she ever ask vulnerable, forgotten women to feel safe here?
"People had come in and defaced it, and made it ugly, made it unsafe and filthy," Jeffers said over coffee at Pia Urban Cafe, near the now renovated house. "I’m glad, though, that the house was the way it was because there’s a huge parallel, not just to the women we work with, but to me. I was that woman who had allowed people to come into my life to destroy, deface and degrade me. To make me feel worthless, and to make me feel like I would never be of value again."
Back when she was dancing in strip clubs, in the years when she met men at hotels to exchange sex for money, Jeffers could easily have been dismissed as a lost cause.
Post 30 and trapped in addiction, she appeared, like that old house, to be beyond repair.
But Stefanie Jeffers' story wasn't finished. Her path to health and hope, in fact, was just beginning.
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She had family and friends who didn't give up on her. She had a home to go back to for healing and refuge. She had faith in a power much stronger than herself. So one day, nearly 15 years ago, Jeffers walked out of the clubs for the last time.
"It’s never easy to walk away from the life, but I had some things that made it easier for me," she said. "I had someone give me a chance on a job. I had worked as a paralegal once, but I had a three-year gap in my resume. I still had a lot of things to work through — my own trauma, my own pain, my own addiction. Going back to what other people call normal life didn’t seem possible to me. But I had my faith — my faith is in Christ — and without it, I don’t know how I ever would have left and stayed gone."
Today, Jeffers is healthy. She appears confident and strong. She's married and the mother of two daughters. And, as founder of the nonprofit Grit into Grace Inc., she's passionate about helping women like herself who've suffered abuse and exploitation in the commercial sex trade.
She's also on the verge of realizing a dream, one centered inside that once scary old house on Parker Avenue.
On Saturday, Jeffers and her team will celebrate the opening of the Dream House, 859 N. Parker Ave., a day center where women walking the streets as prostitutes, dancing in clubs or working in other branches of the sex industry can find help to earn a high school diploma, obtain a driver's license or enter a treatment program.
Jeffers said the center will offer grief counseling, art therapy and training in life skills. Hot coffee and a home-cooked meal also will be available each day.
'It’s not just a prostitute. It’s a human being.'
The goal is to offer a safe place for women to rest and to believe that their current reality doesn't have to define their future.
“We want to help women change their lives if that’s what they want to do," Jeffers said. "Even if women decide that they ‘want’ to work on the streets the rest of their lives, they still have a place at the Dream House. It’s important to me for women to know that the love we can show and the resources we have to offer are unconditional. Falling and failing is a part of the process. Sometimes you can’t see a way out, and that’s OK.”
The center is set between East 10th and Washington streets, which long have been the hubs of street prostitution in Indianapolis. The people working the streets, on the lowest rung of the sex trade's hierarchy, face danger and degradation every day. They're forgotten, ignored, judged
Jeffers has a message for those who pay to exploit them and for those who look the other way.
“It’s not just a prostitute. It’s a human being," she said. "When you begin to understand the things that lead someone into that lifestyle, when you see their story, then they become more than just what they do. They become someone's daughter, sister, mother, aunt and grandmother. These are human beings who have real lives and real traumatic histories too. This is not always as simple as choice. Sometimes the only choice a woman has is that she doesn’t have a choice. This is survival."
Jeffers has another message, one for those uncertain if they can ever leave the sex trade: It's not too late.
"I had a woman text me this morning to tell me that she might not want to meet anymore because she's older and maybe it doesn’t matter anymore," Jeffers said.
How old is she? I asked.
"She’s in her 30s," Jeffers answers. "I left the life when I was 33 and I'm 48 now. So I know for a fact, that's a lie. There is not a woman who is too old, there's not a person who's too far gone, that there isn't hope."
Old houses, with care and restoration, can be made new. Dreams can live there again.
It's true of broken people, too.
Tim Swarens is a columnist at The Indianapolis Star, where this column first appeared. You can contact him on Twitter: @tswarens.
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Sex buyers made her feel she'd 'never be of value again.' She proved them wrong.
