Dignity Programs of Catholic Charities, an organization dedicated to helping women get out of the life of prostitution, held speeches at the Civic Space to begin their eighth annual Candlelight Walk in downtown Phoenix, Site Director Carrie Mascaro said.
“We walked to remember the women who have died in the life of being prostituted, and to hopefully have it be the one night of the year when no woman is bought or sold,” Mascaro said.
People at the event wore shirts donning No. 13, Mascaro said, because that is the average age women enter prostitution. Mascaro said people are wrong in thinking that prostitution is a chosen life style.
“At 13 years old you don’t really have a choice,” Mascaro said. “Nobody chooses to have a life like that. They are often very controlled by pimps and if they want to leave they are told that they’ll be killed.”
Mascaro said the event was a huge success.
“This was the biggest walk we’ve had to date, and we only hope that it gets bigger and that people are more aware of the lifestyle of prostitution,” Mascaro said.
Dominique Roe-Sepowitz, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, said she works with the group throughout the year and brought as many of her students as she could to the walk to raise awareness that prostitution is a problem that impacts many people.
“This is an important problem for women and their children and their families,” Roe-Sepowitz said. “It’s not just one person that’s impacted.”
Two of the most common reasons people enter prostitution, Roe-Sepowitz said, is because they think it’s the only way they can survive or because they come from areas where prostitution is normal. Roe-Sepowitz said she and the Dignity Programs of Catholic Charities want to work with both of those types of risk groups.
“Kids who are unhappy we want to make sure that they have information and places to go … as well as people who think it’s a normal part of their community⎯it isn’t,” Roe-Sepowitz said. “It is a not a normal part of the world. It doesn’t need to be.”
Social work graduate student Diana Haymore said the event was shocking in a good way.
“We got to see how a group of people can affect their community just by walking and holding signs,” she said.
Haymore also said she thought the group achieved its goal.
“Just by walking, so many people stopped and were looking and seeing what we were doing, and I even saw people get out of their cars to ask what was going on,” Haymore said. “I think most definitely we raised awareness.”
Contact the reporter at salvador.rodriguez@asu.edu
