Drug-free sanctuary provides showers, meals and clothing for prostitutes in Tel Aviv’s red light district
The grimy streets of South Tel Aviv form the city’s epicenter for lusty crime — a haven for illegal aliens and a dangerous place where drugs drive the streets and streetwalkers solicit on virtually every corner.
Prostitution is legal in Israel and in this seedy part of town the ladies prowl the streets at night looking for clients. But when the dawn breaks they fade away and few care where they spend the day. Dave Fiquette does care. An American, he has set up a sanctuary in the Nave Sha’anan neighborhood where these women can rest, find a meal, clothing and most importantly, a respite from the vicious cycle of sex, drugs and abuse.
It’s called the Door of Hope and The Media Line got a rare glimpse of a day into the lives of some of these women of the night.
“The women I deal with are all going through about 2,000 shekels a day in drugs; they’re sleeping with 30 or more clients a day. And they’re getting raped and they’re getting beaten and they’re getting spit on, and they’re getting treated like garbage,” Fiquette tells The Media Line.
Gregarious and stocky, Fiquette walks about the neighborhood greeting people in his American-accented English. He points out the “Devil’s Motel,” a notorious brothel filled with tiny rooms, a meter and a half by two meters, rented by the hour.
“A lot of (the women I helped) died really horrible deaths in that building,” recalls Fiquette, 42, who grew up in Orlando, Florida and moved to Israel 12 years ago.
After having made a pact with God he began his rescue mission six years ago to save these women in the streets. He began with a table in the park, moved his operation twice to an apartment and today his safe haven located in a basement. Reached down a dark alleyway a non-descript door serves as the entrance to the Door of Hope.
A handwritten poster taped to the door says “No Sex.” Two flights below is a refurbished basement where they can find a bed to sleep, a kitchen for nourishment; fresh clothes; and even a make-up room. It may not seem like a lot, but to these women, it can be just what it takes to survive this period and build new lives away from drugs and sex-for-sale.
For his center to work he needed to build a sense of trust with the prostitutes
“I compare this work to taming a cat. You ever tamed a cat? Right, how do you tame a cat? You go out to where the cats at, then you put the plate of food down and you back away, and you give a certain safety distance and the cats will come and eat,” Fiquette says. But then the day will come where you put the plates down and the cats are there. They trust you more. Okay, now if you see a cat in your garden you go, ‘Ooh kitty, kitty.’ If you see a prostitute in your garden with a needle in her arm and a client between her legs, you’re calling the cops.”
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Prostitutes come from all walks of life, but most are foreign-born women whose lives fell apart. Some are homeless, most are junkies. They are generally emaciated malnourished women, unkempt and with visible needled marks on their bodies.
Yalena was seven months pregnant when she came to Israel from Kazakhstan. When her husband abandoned her and took the children, Yalena resorted to drugs.
”I was left without children, so I didn’t want to live. I had nothing to live for- I left my apartment, I left everything and I wanted to die,” says Yalena,
Yalena heard about the Door of Home from the girls on the street. There, she cleaned up her act. Now she helps others to shake the habit and start a new life and she is again pregnant.
“I don’t come every day, but I come to remember where I came from. I take some help, and also visit the people who help me,” Yalena says. “They prayed for me. The minute I came down here, I would feel secure.”
Elena is another success story. She says she used to be heavily addicted to heroin and opium.
“I lived on the streets for 10 years, without a house or a family or children. I lost everything,” Elena says. “I first met Dave (Fiquette) six years ago. I was living on the streets without a shower, food, clothes or a home. I would sell my body to buy drugs. There was no place like this yet. He would let us into his home to shower and change clothes.”
She has now been drug free for two and a half years and makes a respectable living.
“I keep myself, my house. Today I’m responsible for my life. With my own power I go to work in the morning. Today I don’t humiliate myself for fifty shekels. I earn them with dignity, with my own hands,” Elena says.
But not all of the women who found the Door of Hope have survived.
“In here you see pictures of girls who didn’t make it,” Fiquette says pointing to a board of photos of women. “She was killed by a client. This girl was beaten to death by her roommate. She died of tuberculosis.”
Alexandra. Once a nurse at Israel’s prestigious Rambam Hospital found herself on the streets following her divorce. She’s been on drugs and on the street for six years.
“It’s always dangerous, but I try to work and use properly, but there’s always danger” she says, her body shaking, her eyes never making contact. “I make about 500 to 600 shekels a day. I buy heroin, cocaine, everything.”
Alexandra said she sometimes stays with her 22-year-old daughter who is in the army.
“She understands that I’m not doing this because I’m fine. I try not to come home after I’ve taken drugs. I don’t want her to see me like this,” Alexandra says.
Fiquette says these women often lie about their names, ages and stories, but he doesn’t care. He’s only interested in gaining their trust and being able to help them.
The dilapidated building blocks in Nave Sha’anan lie on a virtual real estate gold mine and experts believe the red light district will soon become home to the next wave of expensive new buildings and prostitution will be pushed out. But for now, clients from all walks of life continue to come to the south side of town to patronize these women.
“I could get lynched for telling you this,” Fiquette says. “But that’s OK. Forty percent of our traffic through here is religious men. Then there’s the refugees. Then there’s soldiers, then there’s diamond dealers. I mean, I’ve seen guys drive through here with Mercedes. But, to put it quite simply, its men that are addicted to sex as these girls are to drugs.”
Fiquette is no stranger to drug addiction. A former junkie himself, drugs drove his own mother and uncle to suicide. Six years ago, Dave became the angel to the prostitutes after he found God. From a stand by the park nearby to two other locations within a four block radius Dave set up home and shop inviting these women in, and off the streets. Metal bars separated his bedroom from the shelter he created.
The exact number of prostitutes in Israel is hard to quantify. The government surmises around 10,000, but according to Fiquette the estimate on the streets is about 30,000 if you take into account escort services, call girls and homosexual, transsexual transgendered prostitutes.
Fiquette runs the Door of Hope for a meager $50,000 annually to treat about 300 women. This broke down to about $30 a week for every woman. He mission is to keep his haven open seven days a week, 24 hours a day. He is teaming up with Teen Challenge, an international evangelical Christian drug recovery program, to open a shelter outside the red light districts.
“People don’t know that there’s human trafficking, that there’s refugees, that there’s prostitution, that prostitution is legal in the land of Israel,” says Jimmy LaRose, a representative of Teen Challenge. “As a former addict, I did find myself walking down the street; just like these individuals, I was homeless. When I came to that point personally, where I was really willing to do whatever it takes, it was an organization like Teen Challenge; it was an organization like Door of Hope that gave me those first right steps in order to get well.”
At the Door of Hope, the images are shocking; the reality challenging. These women who walk the streets are also walking a thin line between life and death.