Dr. Sandra Morgan and Dave Stachowiak talk again to Harmony Dust about her book Scars and Stilettos and the work she is doing with Treasures, a Los Angeles, CA, based outreach and support group for women in the sex industry.

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Transcript

Dave: [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. This is episode number 173, Harmony Dust talks about survivor leadership.

Production Credit: [00:00:09] Produced by Innovate Learning, maximizing human potential.

Dave: [00:00:29] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie: [00:00:35] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave: [00:00:37] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, one of the many opportunities and blessings we have of having this show going now for seven-plus years, is that we’ve been able to learn and grow along with many of our guests and today we are going to be welcoming back a past guest to the podcast, who is continuing to learn and grow herself. So, this is an adventure and a constant state of learning for all of us as we so focus on in the Global Center for Women and Justice, don’t we?

Sandie: [00:01:18] Yes, I’m really excited. If you didn’t meet Harmony Dust before, go back and listen to podcast number 37. Harmony is the founder and executive director of Treasures, a Los Angeles, California based non-profit organization for women in the sex industry. When completing a master’s degree in social work at UCLA in 2003, Harmony founded Treasures as a dream born from a broken past and a heart healed by the love of God. Treasures is the first and only organization of its kind in the adult industry capital of the world, San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County and one of the few survivor-led organizations in the country. The mission of Treasures is to reach, restore, and equip women in the commercial sex industry and victims of sex trafficking in order to help them live healthy, flourishing lives. And we’ll talk some more about the Treasures outreach as we engage. But welcome to the show Harmony.

Harmony: [00:02:25] Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s good to be back.

Sandie: [00:02:28] Well I’m really excited because when I heard that you had written a Scars and Stilettos second edition I preordered my copy and it came last week.

Harmony: [00:02:41] Yay.

Sandie: [00:02:41] It’s so, so exciting. Tell us what’s new in it.

Harmony: [00:02:46] Yeah, well first and foremost people who are familiar with the first edition will notice the facelift, a completely new design and just updated with the times. But also in addition to that, there is a new epilogue, some new endorsements. And I went throughout and re-read the entire thing and was able to just use the past almost 10 years of experience since I wrote the first edition to insert new insights that I’ve had, a background of a person and as a leader and new parts of the story that I wasn’t necessarily completely comfortable sharing before, but I thought were important to include for the sake of giving other people hopefully some insight.

Sandie: [00:03:28] Dr. Henry Cloud, who I’ve read all of his books he says that your book exposes the realities of the commercial sex industry and inspires hope that freedom and healing are possible. That was amazing. Amazing.

Harmony: [00:03:44] Yeah.

Sandie: [00:03:45] And I think one of the things people don’t understand is that the hypersexualized media stories that we see in our movies and sitcoms that end in 30 minutes or whatever, those are not the realities. And so, it isn’t an easy thing to write this kind of story.

Harmony: [00:04:09] No, yeah, it’s not.

Sandie: [00:04:09] So tell us about what that’s like.

Harmony: [00:04:11] Well, first of all when I first started Treasures almost 15 years ago, I just really felt like there was such silence, especially in the church around stories of any kind of sexual brokenness at all. And so, for me, the charge that I felt was to break the silence and to encourage myself and the women around me who have similar shared experiences that our story matters. And it doesn’t matter if the church is uncomfortable, it doesn’t matter if the world at large is uncomfortable with hearing the truth and the reality of the commercial sex industry. We have to be willing to tell the truth. And so that’s kind of how things were about 15 years ago.

Harmony: [00:04:48] Now the pendulum has swung a little bit and now there’s a lot more not just tolerance for survivor stories but a desire to hear them. So, we have to be careful not to unintentionally exploit survivors by using their stories or asking them to share them when they’re not ready. So now my new message is my story matters but it doesn’t define me.

Sandie: [00:05:11] Can you back up just a little bit and define for everybody what is the commercial sex industry that you’re talking about?

Harmony: [00:05:18] The commercial sex industry includes porn, stripping, escorting, street prostitution, dominatrix, any area where sex is being bought or sold and people are being bought or sold for someone else’s sexual gratification.

Sandie: [00:05:37] Well and I always love the fact that you used the term commercial here because it clearly is a business and the business plan is to make money. So, it’s all about profit and greed. It’s really not about the sex.

Harmony: [00:05:51] Yeah and they’re such a facade of glamour around it, that I’m really passionate about exposing the truth and the reality behind it. And I think that not only is ...