Breaking the cycle

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NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Wednesday, April 8th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Nick Eicher.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: escaping the grip of meth. 

This story contains an element some parents may find too strong for younger listeners. We’ll pause for just a moment.

For one young woman in Kentucky, meth addiction led to years on the streets—and a life she couldn’t seem to leave behind until an unexpected encounter opened a different path. For privacy reasons, we’ve chosen not to use the woman’s last name.

WORLD associate correspondent Amy Eytchison has the story.

AMY EYTCHISON: When she wasn’t snorting, smoking, or shooting up meth, Victoria Faith worked at a sex shop in Louisville, Kentucky.

Her father was a single parent who tried, but couldn’t help his teenage daughter.

VICTORIA: My dad’s always like, always always been my safe place. I think it just got to a point where like he kind of had to cut me off and he told me: you can stay here, but you can’t use drugs. So I made the decision myself to be homeless and live on the streets. 

By age eighteen, she was living in a tent, pitching it in parking lots, under bridges, anywhere. Soon she was doing too much meth to work—or to sleep.

VICTORIA: I ran the streets all the time. Like I didn't I had no purpose, I was just literally just seeking my next high.

She tried to get sober, but felt trapped. Sometimes she’d do anything for a fix.

VICTORIA: It was selling my body to get what I thought I needed to survive. So I mean, I hung out with a lot of drug dealers and I just traded my body for what they had.

Victoria was heading down a path paved by her mother, an addict who abandoned her and her dad when Victoria was nine months old.

But her life took a strange turn one spring night. 

On the way to a liquor store, she argued with the driver and jumped out of his car. All her belongings scattered onto the pavement.

VICTORIA: And this lady approaches me. She’s like, Oh hey, can I help you? I look up, No, lady, I’m find, I'm good. And I really wasn’t good. I really was in a very, very bad space.

Next thing Victoria knew she was in the car with the woman and her husband, answering questions about her life, about Victoria’s Bible. She’d covered it in notes and gel pen drawings.

VICTORIA: You know meth addicts, and they love to draw and they love to stencil, and they love to color. You get an obsession and you want your thoughts to be out because you’re such a prisoner to the mind. And so they write and they write and they write. 

Victoria was writing prayers to a God she didn’t know—in a Bible her grandmother had given her. She hung on to it because something about it made her feel safe.

When Victoria refused help, the woman handed her a card with a phone number, and said:

VICTORIA: You call this number if you need anything, if you need clothes, if you need food, if you need a job, anything you need, you call this number. 

Victoria called her dope dealer instead—then disappeared into the rainy night. 

But months later, she was desperate to find a job and place to live after ten years on the streets. So she called that number. A different woman answered: the founder of a ministry called Scarlet Hope.

The staff saw Victoria for what she was: an addict who was being exploited and trading sex for survival. And those trades made her a victim of trafficking.

Heather Jenkins, Scarlet Hope’s director of outreach in Louisville, says that traffickers look for people on the fringes of society, loners or addicts, and use provision to draw the person in.

JENKINS: A lot of the women who are doing survival sex are homeless. You know, they're bouncing from shelter to shelter, home to home, or living on the streets.

She says this sad cycle is hard to break.

The Scarlet Hope team helped Victoria onto the road to sobriety. They connected her with Christian counseling, community, Bible study, fitness classes, and job training. That job training required her to pass repeated drug tests.

This combination clicked for Victoria. Twelve-step recovery programs had not.

VICTORIA: I mean, when I walked in there, like, you would have looked at me like I was crazy. I was thin as a rail, I was strung out, and I mean, those women looked at me and they loved me... because that’s what Jesus would do.

Ghizelle Ward—a substance abuse counselor—says recovery stories are as diverse as addicts themselves.

WARD: A spiritual component of recovery is pretty common. What that spirituality looks like is contingent upon the person, but I know that’s an integral aspect of recovery.

I spoke with experts who say there’s a connection between addiction and trafficking—most survivors have substance abuse as well as other mental health issues.

Ward says it takes grit to grapple with what got them addicted.

WARD: Everybody for themselves has to find out what works for them. And has to be willing to face the pain that kept them in escapism. And not everybody's willing to do that, or not everybody is capable of doing that…

Victoria was willing. By December 2019, she had been clean for a year and a half. She started an internship that led to a long-term office job. 

Today she has a house, a truck, a Christian community, a whole new life.

VICTORIA: If that lady wouldn’t have approached me, my life probably would have never changed..

This particular Thursday night, Victoria is going with Heather Jenkins to the strip clubs of Louisville. They pray, prepare food and hygiene bags, and then they go out in pairs.

VICTORIA: If my testimony can help you know, one of the women in the clubs or anywhere on the streets, if it can help anybody, like, I'm all about that. I know exactly where they're at, I've felt all the feelings that they feel. 

Now she’s one of the “church ladies” walking boldly into a strip club. They’re places of particular importance to both Victoria and Jenkins. Victoria’s mother worked in one—and Jenkins’ family owned one.

Here’s Jenkins again:

JENKINS: We see a lot of generational sin when it comes to this kind of work. Moms did it. Aunts did it.

Victoria says that legacy stops with her.

VICTORIA: It says that the sins of the mothers and fathers will be passed along, but those generational curses can be broken through the power of Jesus Christ. I know that for me personally, I definitely feel that God has broken the chains on my generational curses…

She’s grateful her dad and grandmother have lived to see their prayers answered. And she still clings to that beaten-up Bible her grandmother gave her a dozen years ago. It holds the legacy she wants to focus on.

She points to the dedication page she tucked inside after it fell out long ago.

VICTORIA: Here's what it says, “To Tori: [because that's what my grandmother calls me] Anything you need to know about life is in this book. When you pray, always say one for me. I love you. Let's always stay close.”

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Amy Eytchison.

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