#99 FiLiA meets: Angelika Chaffey - You My Sister
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Angelika Chaffey discusses You My Sister, new charity set up to support survivors of the sex trade - whose work is heavily informed by exited women. You My Sister’s first project was to create a unique mental health recovery programme specifically tailored for women who have exited any branch of the porn/sex trade. This has been created and will be delivered with survivors and is a hugely powerful form of peer-led guided recovery. It is run online so, in theory, women from anywhere in the world could take part! The course takes women through their journey, from understanding why they entered the sex industry, how the industry works to keep women trapped within it through to exiting and moving on. The emphasis is on understanding in a supportive setting with others with similar experiences and on ending self blame, self hatred and shame and instead for women to learn to like themselves, forge positive relationships, rediscover what they enjoy. Angelika joins FiLiA’s Gemma Aitchison in discussion about her work and this course, which will begin 9th October 2020.
Links:
Find out more about the course, email to enrol: courses@youmysister.org.uk
Find You My Sister on Twitter and Facebook
Get in touch: i@youmysister.org.uk
This audio was edited by wonderful FiLiA volunteer Suzi Sevgi.
Transcript
A – My speciality is being a mental health recovery trainer, I’m specialising in mindfulness, in self-compassion, in domestic violence recovery and I think this is how I’ve been found by You My Sister. I’ve been approached to develop a similar course that benefits women who have exited the sex industry.
G – So You My Sister is the organisation that you’re part of now and the course is with them. Is that right?
A – Yes, exactly.
G – This course is aiming at women who have exited prostitution and escaped that world. I sometimes think that victims and women are expected to just pick up their lives and just be fine and there isn’t really support out there. It sounds like this course is really needed. Could you tell me a bit about it?
A – The main purpose of the course is the recovery element. Just getting out doesn’t mean you are fine. The abuse that you’ve been exposed to is quite a lot, which I have learned when I was developing this course together with two young ladies who actually have been in the industry and were absolutely invaluable in putting this course together. So I got an understanding of how abusive the whole environment actually is. You don’t just recover from abuse out of the blue. You need support, you need help. A lot of it is done by a shift in perspective because there can be quite a lot of shame and guilt involved and – why did I get in and why did this happen – so there are all sorts of difficulties when the women come out of it. – Do I declare when I meet someone what I’ve done? – all these kinds of issues, we are discussing in the course and we are aiming to help women to get to place emotionally and mentally, so their recovery really speeds up.
G – It sounds like those women will need a lot of support and the expectation to just be okay. Because of the shame, a lot of women might not feel like they can ask for help from their GPs or something like that.
Where is the course available for these women? Where can they access it?
A – The best thing would be is to contact You My Sister. If they go on the website and send an email, that would be amazing, then they will be in touch with us. The course originally was planned as a traditional classroom setting but Covid changed the ball game now completely so the course will be an on-line course.
Every method has 2 sides. It has advantages and disadvantages. It’s lovely to meet and connect in a classroom setting and have informal chats and connections in the breaks. Obviously you won’t get that so much on-line. But the on-line advantage is that we don’t have to find women in the same area to put them together, they can come from anywhere in the country and that makes it perhaps more accessible to some women and also they don’t have to declare where they are living. So it’s more safe for some of them to take part, depending on their circumstances.
G – With the shame element of things, that’s one barrier taken away being on-line.
So they just contact You My Sister via the website. What is the website?
A – Youmysister.org.uk
G – Is there a payment for the course?
A – The course, as far as I understand, will be free of charge at the moment. We hope to work together with other organisations. St the moment the course is free. The idea is that it will always be free for participants.
G – So free for the women and try and improve how the professionals support those women in the future.
Could you tell me a bit about the course, what’s involved, some of what it covers?
A – It is very interactive. The course is designed to draw out the experiences of the women, to actually make them talk and to think and to help them shift perspective. Once we can shift perspective, we can look at things that happened to us from a different angle. That really helps in moving on because sometimes you get stuck.
The course really helps women to change their view of what happened to them, why they did it, exploring their motivation. It’s always easy to raise the moral finger but this goes a bit deeper. There are reasons that people end up in that industry and it’s often vulnerable people who get drawn into it for all sorts of reasons. We want them to see that and acknowledge that they have usually been failed many times by the system before they go in.
So, taking away the self-blame is one of the key issues. Also asking them to connect and seeing that others have similar experiences, that might help as well, to get a greater understanding, particularly the getting in part of it, that there are certain ways that we have identified as to how women actually end up in there.
G – What’s really important hearing other people is that you can be really judgemental towards yourself, but a person in a similar situation, you can look at that situation and see how these things happen and then maybe apply it to yourself. We are our own harshest critics. Society grooms women to be critical of themselves in the first place.
I also think it’s important for people to recognise, whether they are part of the sex industry or not because society objectifies girls and women, there’s an element of almost grooming girls into the sex industry. We’re all supposed to perform like porn stars in the bedroom and look like the women. The sex industry is very much part of society and its expectation of women. So the fact that we’re also exploited and do the most work and get the least amount of money is easy to see how this happens.
A – It’s very easy, I think you are right. The objectification of women is the first step. It’s so normal.
Young girls don’t really see it, it’s just the way society is so taking it a bit further might not seem so bad to them, a great opportunity, you can really earn some money. Then it gets muddle with the empowerment bit and seems to be very attractive initially until they are in and then they find out how it really is.
That’s what I really learned from the 2 girls I worked with. It was quite shocking to see because I had no idea about the industry and what goes on in the inside. It’s shocking how easily young girls can get recruited in. Recruitment seems to take place at university level offering the girls an easy and quick way out of paying their tuition fees and making extra money which has a devastating effect on them and many do not then finish their degrees. That’s really worrying.
G – We see don’t we, girls are taught that their self-worth comes from how they look and so it’s easy to see that empowering label as a good thing, if men want them then that’s their self-worth. I tend to think if it can make a man hard, it’s not empowering and it’s not feminism.
I just think with on-line stuff as well, it’s just everywhere, the expectation. Because everyone has a camera phone you’re supposed to look and be the perfect decoration all of the time, I would say for this generation more so.
A – I think this generation of young women are under even more pressure to look perfect than I had been. I grew up in the 60s so things were much more easier then, there was no internet or all this comparison. There was little bit obviously but no comparison to now. I think that makes a difference.
We also do on the course; we’re looking a little bit at these things as well.
Where does it actually begin? There are certain ways into it. The classic trafficking but that’s actually a small amount. There is more social grooming and system failures. Poverty is a great driver and already underlying abuse issues. There is a great relationship between women who have already been abused as children to end up in that industry, the chances are higher. So there’s quite a high % of connections there. So it’s basically perpetuated abuse.
That is also dangerous because if you have experienced abuse, to some extent, that’s normal because we can’t bench mark it unless we learn something different or unless we know this is not right. Maybe we feel this is not right but then this is how it’s done, this is how the family functions and it was very abusive.
The perpetuation of the abuse is quite ‘normal’.
We also know that abuse has a huge impact on mental health that needs to be addressed and there is definitely also a great link between mental health problems by the women who have exited the industry that might not have been addressed.
G – Absolutely. They are re-failed because they are left vulnerable to re-exploitation because they are not given any rehabilitation. There’s studies that show that girls who go into state care, removed from the family for whatever reason, it tends to be if you’re a care leaver you are more likely to be abused and go into the sex industry.
Then when you have places like Leeds where the state has decided that in a certain area, that’s okay, it looks like a factory, a state run factory of sexual abuse.
Are you excited for women to start accessing the course and to start getting help and sharing it around and changing people’s lives?
A – Very. For 2 reasons. The first is that I really believe that we have a fantastic course. I’m running a domestic violence recovery course at my work place. I work for the NHS as a mental health recovery trainer for many years. We have fantastic feedback on how it helped people. I can’t even tell you how many people have said – this changed my life – I just hope that this course will be the same for women who exited the sex industry.
We have put a lot of effort into it, a lot thinking and energy went into it. The exciting bit is to run it for the first time then you really know how good it works. I’m expecting there might be some adjustments needed, it’s always like that. There’s only so much you can think about. I think it’s a really fantastic course. The girls I work with say – I wish we could have that course.
G – That’s the perfect thing. For a survivor to say to you that they wished they had had it, that’s a brilliant thing.
A – It’s because of their knowledge and their willingness to share their experience that we have such an amazing course. A lot of credit goes to the two young women who worked with me on it because I have the experience of running these kinds of courses but without the inside information it has no substance. You can’t write this as an outsider. It’s completely impossible, it would be of any use.
G – I completely agree. The women who access the course, if they have any children in the future, that knowledge will be passed on to the children and to friends and things so it will have a ripple effect that you will never see but it sounds like a fantastic thing for it to be in the world.
A – Well it’s certainly something that isn’t available. I don’t think there’s a specific recovery programme for women who exited the sex industry at the moment in the UK.
What is also really unique is it is run by peer trainers, initially it will be run by me because I’ve been involved but there will be a trainer with the lived experience of being in the sex industry. That makes a big difference because women who come on the course, they will immediately feel, there is someone who understands what they’re talking about. So they can connect with the peers and I hope with me as well because of my background and knowledge of the mental health. But certainly with the peers as it’s really important because the peer element makes all the difference in the design and in the delivery. It’s absolutely crucial.
G – Yes, it’s for women by women. It sounds fantastic and something you should be really proud of. It sounds like really great and important work.
A – I am proud of our course, I must admit, I think it is really good, how good it is, we will test out, I’m really hopeful.
The course has 6 sessions. The first 4 sessions are expressing experiences in the industry and everything that goes with it. The last 2 sessions are about building the self-esteem and moving on because that’s really important.
Anyone who suffers from abuse, usually has diminished self-esteem and suffers from a lack of confidence and that has to be addressed. Obviously there’s only so much you can do in one course but you can plant a seed and then the women can take that seed away and explore other things that might be helpful for them once they’ve actually seen how they got in and what they can do now to help themselves to recover.
G – Absolutely, and I imagine quite a few of them will have complex PTSD with various symptoms of that and be on various parts of their journey in recognising what they went through. Some of them might be not wanting think about it all but at least there’s a life out there and support from yourselves. They will know they’re being judged because of the peer support element.
A – I think that’s really important as well and to get them away from the judgement and the blame on themselves is one of the major drivers of the course. As long as you blame yourself for something, it’s very difficult to move on. You’re stuck in limbo land. You’re regretting the past but you are not enjoying the present because you’re regretting so much the past. It really impacts on you and the future. If you’re not having a good space now in the present, the future will also not be that great. In moving away from the blame they are leaving the past behind, that is the main thing. We can’t change our past but we don’t have to re-live it constantly and we don’t have to live in regret and blame and shame. If you can get anyone away from that, that would be the biggest reward for us. That’s the reward for the facilitators that you can see that someone really moves on, that’s the best thing ever. I hope we can achieve that with this course.
G – it sounds amazing and very needed.
Thank you for putting the work in to create this and for putting this life-line out for women.
A question I ask on all my podcasts.
What is your favourite cake?
A – Tiramisu - or anything with chocolate will do.
I want to thank You My Sister for having the thoughts and the drive to do something like this because that’s where it all started.