I WAS A
SEX WORKER – NOW I OFFER HOPE Maxine is 47 and a former sex worker from Liverpool. She has an infectious smile and beams with pride when she talks about how she supported other women as part of her rehabilitation programme.
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he often comes back to the city to visit her mum. And she’ll always go to the streets she worked for 25 years. But these days it’s to share her story and urge women selling sex to find a new life.
“I’d get clean but if you don’t have a support network or change your environment the rot sets in deeper and deeper. I had so much help from so many services but my life was a catalogue of chaos.”
As a young carer for her disabled parents Maxine used sport as an escape and showed great promise as a gymnast. But at the age of 15 tragedy struck when she fractured her back, leaving her unable to walk for a year.
Getting money to feed her habit wasn’t easy. She saw how quickly it could be made on the streets. “I’d stopped feeling. I knew right from wrong but I’d lost touch with reality. You’re in survival mode yet you wish you were dead.”
I learned to hide stuff, but I didn’t deal with my feelings of worthlessness.
During that time her mum left the family home. Maxine blamed herself for not being able to fulfil her caring role. She bottled up her feelings and her opiate based painkillers helped mask the emotional as well as the physical pain. Anxiety and depression followed. She recalls: “I learned to hide stuff, but I didn’t deal with my feelings of worthlessness.” At 18 and part of the 80s rave culture, she found herself isolated from childhood friends. “I wanted to be accepted so I drank and smoked weed, then went on to hard drugs. I was still functioning. I didn’t realise how quickly they get a hold of you.”
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I knew right from wrong but I’d lost touch with reality.
Some of Maxine’s friends did die, often in horrific circumstances. Now she knows the experience has left her with post traumatic stress. Back then she just became more streetwise and hardened to her environment. At one point she was told by the family not to attend her father’s funeral. “I was really close to my dad; he’d followed me across the country trying to help me so it hurt to stay away. It was heart breaking.”
Determined to complete her training to become an embalmer she took part in endless rehabilitation programmes, giving birth to her first child during that time. But in her mid 20s the drugs took a hold and Maxine went to prison for theft, fraud and dealing drugs. In the years that followed she lost custody of all four of her children.
When she first met Armistead outreach worker Jo Lightwood Maxine wasn’t up for hugs or small talk, she just needed condoms for the night ahead. “You become suspicious of everyone. I couldn’t bear anyone touching me. I couldn’t work out if it was real affection or a way of finding out what I could offer.”
