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by Tom Matlack
Germaine Lawrence provides
the highest quality residential
treatment services in New
England for troubled adolescent
girls. They serve girls whose
behaviors may include school
failure, suicide attempts, cutting,
sexually acting out, drug or
alcohol abuse, running away,
eating disorders, aggression,
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become the leading treatment
center for teenage girls who have
been sexually exploited.
Germaine Lawrence has developed a continuum
of services for girls who have been commercially
sexually exploited. Our programs combine
intensive clinical services, education support at
Germaine Lawrence or the public high school,
social and life skill development, and a structured
living environment to help girls manage their
emotions, learn new skills, and successfully
transition back to their families.
As girls progress in treatment, we help them expand
their community connections through off-campus
jobs, volunteer mentorships and community-based
activities. We also help them develop relationships
that will provide continuity and on-going support
after they leave Germaine Lawrence.
David Hirshberg is the executive director
of Germaine Lawrence.
Amy Corbett is the clinical director of the
ACT Group Home.
Nikki Valila is the program director of the
ACT Group Home.
MATLACK: David, I understand that here at
Germaine Lawrence, you treat a number of
acute problems for teenage girls and are very,
very successful with all the populations, with the
exception of one: girls who are sexually exploited.
I’d like a little bit about the other things you do, and
then what the data is on that population.
HIRSHBERG: The great majority of our girls have
been—have experienced traumatic sexual and
physical abuse. But they develop a wide variety of
behaviors—problematic behaviors that lead them
to come to Germaine Lawrence: Some of them
hurt themselves; they might try to commit suicide;
they might cut themselves. But one or the other,
they hurt themselves. Others hurt other people:
They physically assault people; they sexually
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get into criminal problems. So that’s another big
group. Perhaps the biggest group, though, runs
away from the abusive setting. And when girls run
away, they’re real lucky because there are guys
everywhere who are ready to take care of them.
Isn’t that nice?
These guys give them a place to stay, they give
them food, they give them alcohol and drugs. And
the girls say, “This is a great guy.” And so having
sex with him is great. And they don’t see it as
trading sex for a place to stay or food or drugs and
alcohol. They just see it as, I got a new boyfriend.
For many of the girls, it stops there. But for some
of the girls, they get coerced to be prostitutes.
We also have girls with eating disorders, about
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tend to have the same type of trauma background.
With these girls, in general we’re successful with
about eighty percent of them, and then we follow
up research and we know that even after a year,
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well. So that’s the success.
MATLACK: $QG VXFFHVV PHDQV GH¿QHG DV QRW
repeating the behavior that got them here?
HIRSHBERG: That’s right. Still living in a stable,
safe place. Still going to school or working.
Not having been institutionalized or arrested,
imprisoned. The population that we’re getting
the worst outcomes with were the girls who’d
been sexually exploited. And I think there were a
number of reasons for that. One is that their family
situations were worse than average, and when
girls don’t have a support system that they know
they’re going to go back to, they’re less hopeful.
It’s hard work to be in treatment. If you don’t know
you’re going to get something out of it, you’re more
likely to give up. But the other side is, they have
a fantasy that their man is still out there for them.
If they get sick and tired of us, they can go back
to their boyfriend, their pimp, and even though
it was bad last time, they tend to forget the bad
part. The great majority of these kids stabilize, do
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months. Or even at discharge. So what we wanted
was more of a continuum, including a group and
a community where we could work with these kids
in a less acute setting and get them back in the
community where they’d start living a more normal
life while still getting treatment from us.
MATLACK: Let’s talk about your group home. How
many girls do you treat here?
HIRSHBERG: Let’s start here. How many girls are
in My Life My Choice right now?
CORBETT: With the kids in my group there are
fourteen. My Life My Choice is a psycho-ed group
on high-risk behaviors in the streets.
HIRSHBERG: And then there are some other girls
probably even in ACT who are not in that.
CORBETT: So I would say we have seven girls,
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part of My Life My Choice, but we know that they
have been sexually exploited.
MATLACK: And how many girls are in the group
home?
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MATLACK: How long do they stay there?
CORBETT: It really varies. Yeah.
HIRSHBERG: It’s not like it’s a six-month or twelve-
month program. We have one girl who’s been here
from Day One. She’s doing really well.
CORBETT: And it does really vary on sort of their
level of commitment and what they want to get out
of the program. Some of them, like this girl who’s
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it as her home and Arlington is her community and
she’s made excellent progress. And then there are
other girls who have a family to go back to and
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of work here and then they go home and continue
to have supports to remain off the streets.
It’s pretty incredible to hear the stories from the
girls and actually think about the reality—like the
things that they experience, and the fact that there
can be pimps in any neighborhood, and a pimp
can be a man or a woman.
MATLACK: So give me an example of a story of
a kid—don’t use their names, but what their life
really is like before they get here.
CORBETT: So an example that I can think of that
actually is a huge success is a young woman
who grew up being involved with the Department
of Children and Families. Did not have any
involvement with her father. Mom raised her but
sort of had her own mental health issues. And
so this young woman grew up in foster care,
residential placement. Was running constantly
beginning at age 13. Was actually placed here
when she was 14 and stayed probably for six
months, I would say, and then left again. And she
was actively being exploited, both in Boston, New
York, and at that time wasn’t at a place where she,
for whatever reason, was ready to get out of the
life. I think there were days where she wanted out,
but then the draw was so powerful because she
got a lot of money and had really nice things. She
really glamorized it for a while and even to this day,
she’s been out of the life for almost two years. But
her ongoing struggle is the desire to have really
nice stuff and go out to nice dinners, stay in fancy
hotels, but also she knows it was so bad for her,
the abuse that she experienced and the violence. I
don’t know what it was that clicked for her but two
years ago she made the decision to stay out of the
life and has really engaged in her treatment and
has a job, does speaking engagements in Boston
telling her own story, [and is] going to college.
MATLACK: Just to be clear, what age are we
talking about?
CORBETT: I would say 13 to 18 currently? But
we’ve had girls here who were 12 who were
exploited.
VALILA: Yes. I think one of the biggest issues,
though, with girls coming in is trust. They don’t
trust anybody. Amy’s work in therapy is really
just developing that relationship with that girl,
through consistency, showing up every day, just
kind of being there. And it could take weeks or
months before a kid’s even willing to have a basic
conversation.
CORBETT: The other thing that I think is a big
part of the initial treatment is education. A lot of
the girls come in and don’t actually acknowledge
that they’ve been exploited. Like David said, they
identify the man as their boyfriend and really sort
of have almost been brainwashed. So we go a lot
of education from Day One, talking about the risks
on the streets, having survivors come in and share
their own stories with the girls—being really real
about it. And that has proven to be pretty effective
with our girls, at least. Then I’ve seen that they
begin to start making the disclosures themselves.

MATLACK: So was her pimp a man or a woman?

CORBETT: She had a few pimps and they were

men. For a period of time, she worked for herself
and she got to keep the money at that point.

MATLACK: From a clinical standpoint, what’s the

damage that’s done to these girls and how do you
go about trying to repair it?

CORBETT: They struggle with depression and

oftentimes, our girls will continue running as a
form of retraumatization. So they’re reenacting the
trauma and going back on the streets knowing that
these bad things are going to continue to happen
to them. A lot of the girls have such attachment
issues, so that kind of impacts their decision to be
on the street.
VALILA: I think even the initial interview, it’s very
blunt interview. All these girls are here to focus on
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them into a safe environment. In a much smaller
environment. We only hold eight girls max, and it’s
a two-story house. So it’s much more homelike,
smaller. It just—it has a safer feeling.
MATLACK: And the interviews?
VALILA: They’re interesting. What kids will tell,
what they won’t tell. I pick a lot up just from
watching body language.
MATLACK: Well, what can you tell from body
language?
VALILA: By the way they’re sitting. Are they
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of open-ended questions, and I kind of give a lot
at the beginning to kind of let them know I know
what’s going on out there. So it gives them the
space to talk.
Or, they’ll change their story midway through. Or
earlier on the interview, they might tell me one
thing but as they get more comfortable, later on
they tell me a totally different story. So I really just
try to spend a lot of times trying to get to know
them at the beginning [and see whether] it’s going
to make sense for them to come there. Very
nonjudgmental, and I try not really to lead them.
I just kind of let them go, and then I go back and
follow up with questions.
HIRSHBERG: When we started the program
two years ago, there was no requirement that
the girl acknowledge that she’d been involved
in prostitution, or that she’s ever been sexually
exploited in any form. What almost inevitably
happened [was], in eighty, ninety percent of the
cases, the girls would disappear after a while,
because why would you want to live in a group
home for no reason? So just about a year ago we
renegotiated with the Department of Children and
Families, and we now require girls to acknowledge,
and ACT stands for—
VALILA: Acknowledge, Commit, Transform.
HIRSHBERG: So to be admitted to this program,
which is really wide open, they have to acknowledge
and have some commitment already to get help.
Otherwise, they need to be in one of our more
highly structured, acute programs, where they
have fewer choices. So we have fewer girls go into
this program now, but they’re doing much better.
MATLACK: So just tell me a little bit about what
the program is at the home.
VALILA: It’s a group home, serving girls ranging
from 13 to 18. But the real mission of the program
is to create this kind of environment where girls feel
safe and comfortable to talk about what’s really
gone on. So it’s kind of like that nonjudgmental
environment. Also, really thinking about the way
we greet kids from the moment they walk in the
door. So let’s say we have a kid who comes to the
program, is doing really well. And then a couple
weeks into their treatment, the streets are calling
to them and for whatever reason, they run away.
How do we greet that kid when they come back
to the program? But the way we greet them is,
we’re so happy to see you, we’re glad that you’re
safe. And we really saw a shift in the response we
were getting from kids when they returned. I also
would say for a period of time, a lot of kids weren’t
running at all. We really had created this sense of
community in the house.
MATLACK: And then in terms of these girls, if part
of the draw is purely economic, how do you kind of
build up the alternative, if you will, to the glitz and
glamour of what a pimp might be able to offer?
VALILA: I think one of the immediate ways we
do it is, we have a monetary system. So the girls
are used to money. The girls are used to seeing
money, holding money, having nice things. So we
have a system in which we are encouraging girls
to do what they’re supposed to be doing. So if
they go to school, if they participate in their group
therapy, if they don’t run—they get paid. We have
chores as well. But we really encourage them
to do positive things, and they get a really nice
allowance at the end of the week. We try to come
up with activities that are out in the community, that
maybe they’ve never done before. So exposing
them to new sports or museums or just things that
they might’ve never thought they were good at.
Just have fun. Be kids.
CORBETT: And increase their self-esteem.
MATLACK: But is there any kind of idea in terms
of how you get a kid like that on to a trajectory
where they’re going to have an ability to support
themselves in a way other than being prostituted,
in terms of longer-term kind of career goals or any
of that kind of stuff? Or are they just too young for
that?
ends up being abusive to the most vulnerable?
HIRSHBERG: Yes. But if you go back and you
read your basic history of war—and human—it’s
just a history of warfare. But if a city actually said,
“Screw you, we’re not giving in” and there was a
siege, and they lost, the men got killed and the
women got raped. The history of rape is part of the
history of humanity.
MATLACK: You don’t think it’s a recent thing?
HIRSHBERG: That’s exactly what I’m saying.

CORBETT: No. I think that that stuff we are talking
about every week with them, we do an independent
living skills program as well. We talk about money
management and goals are, what [they] want to
study in college and how [they’re] going to get
there. We do a lot of education on basic budgeting
and money management to help them.
MATLACK: I want to kind of switch gears a little bit.
What responsibility do we have as men? How do
you make sense of the men who are using these
girls, who are having sex with these girls, who are
pimps for these girls?
MATLACK: I’m trying to say we’re actually not that
bad. We just kind of lost our way.
HIRSHBERG: One of the great anomalies of my
life is that I’ve been the head of agency that serves
women and almost exclusively has women working
here, and one of the ways I bond with the women
here is I say, “Yeah you’re right. Men suck.”
(Laughter.)
MATLACK: Well, my whole organization’s called
The Good Men Project. So it’s about men being
good. So I’m not going to buy it that we suck.

HIRSHBERG: Well, Tom, I’ve been here over thirty HIRSHBERG: There are good men, but I’ve
years, and I review every girl that enters Germaine become much more pessimistic about humanity.
Lawrence. I think that’s over six thousand. And And I focus on men more than women because
what that does is it makes me become very… men have been the dominators, right? This is not
negative about human nature, that I expect much QHZV :H KDYH GH¿QHG FXOWXUH :H¶YH EHHQ LQ
less of men than I would have. I was brought up in charge. We’ve been in control. And I don’t think
[around] nice, responsible people. And I thought
that’s what the world was like. And now I’ve met
thousands of girls who’ve been terribly abused
overwhelmingly by men. There are terrible—
women do terrible things, too. I can’t take them off
the hook. But that said, the amount of horrendous
abuse, mind-blowing abuse that…would have to
come out of a novel, that’s what I’ve been seeing
for thirty years now.

MATLACK: I have done quite a bit of work on

pornography, with the size of the industry as well
as the usage patterns and the usage pattern
particularly amongst young boys—which is
staggering. You think that we as a culture are
addicted to sex in a certain way that, unfortunately,
it’s that men, that the male of our species uniquely
sucks.
MATLACK: Let’s go back to these girls. Who are
the men who are both the pimps and the johns?
VALILA: I think just girls that are exploiting
themselves are getting younger and younger,
pimps are getting younger and younger. And it’s
nothing where it’s the 28-year-old creepy guy that
drives a Cadillac and has the gold teeth and the
big hat anymore. It’s the boy you sit in class with
the nice sneakers and the nice shirt and looks
just like everybody else. And I think that’s what’s
getting more and more scary about this, is it’s not
that easy to identify—the girls or the guys. So I
think for guys on some level—in some cases it’s
a generational thing, where they’ve been raised in
families where their dad was a pimp, and they’ve
become a pimp. That’s just what people do. And
same for girls. Maybe Mom is an addict or needs
to make money. And Mom starts exploiting herself
and then starts exploiting her daughter to make
money. So I think it can go both ways.
MATLACK: How are they doing it?
VALILA: Online. It’s great dough. Even at schools.
They know where the schools are. They know
where residential programs are. It doesn’t take
much to drive around, sit outside the school. You’re
maybe a half-decent looking guy. Our—most kids,
I would say—especially our kids, are dying for
attention. Hey, you want to talk to me? So—
HIRSHBERG: —and they learn their craft. They
know what a distraught, confused, lonely girl looks
like. The pimps hang out in Harvard Square, at
South Station, Downtown Crossing, all the T hubs
because they know that’s where the girls will show
up.
VALILA: Yeah. And then you got girls that are
working for guys, right? So down in Arlington
High. So you might have a girl that’s working for
this pimp, and he then asks her to go out and
recruit girls. So you have this girl that’s attending
Arlington, friends with other girls, right? She’s
not intimidating. She’s not this weird guy. And
she’s recruiting for him. You’ll see some kids out
there, but not as much as you used to. It’s a lot of
online—Craigslist, MySpace, party lines, all that
good stuff.
MATLACK: And who are the customers?
VALILA: That’s a good question.
VALILA: Well, the customers are men. It’s always
been men, in my case. The pimps are younger.
There are older men involved, but I feel like you
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but the girls are—
CORBETT: And I think it’s all races.
VALILA: I would say that about johns, but as far as
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African-American girls and Hispanic girls. You
don’t really see as many white girls—not that I
don’t think it’s not happening.
MATLACK: And do you think the johns, is there any
economic—is it poorer? Richer? Doesn’t matter?
VALILA: It’s all over the place.
CORBETT: Yeah.
VALILA: It doesn’t discriminate. You don’t have to
be wealthy or rich or single or “These are married
men,” or—it’s not just those creepy guys that they
show you on TV. It’s really something that’s kind of
all over the place.
MATLACK: How do you get at the bigger
problem?
VALILA: I do a lot of reading in general, and I also
had a background working in the courts. So I saw
the criminal justice side and really working with
these girls on criminal cases and whatnot. But I
think the start is getting to know these girls. These
girls know ten times more than I’ll ever know. So
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sure I know what I’m talking about. But a big piece
is getting out there to educate people. I think
there’s a lot more people talking about it now than
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often talk about is that the girls are victims, not
criminals, and that what the men are doing is
exploitation. It’s not just a commercial transaction.
And that’s what isn’t recognized, and the whole
system doesn’t recognize it. It’s starting to. There
are now some prosecutors and police and some
judges and states passing laws that [say] girls
are victims rather than criminals. But yeah, males
have been so in charge that it’s the exploited who
go to jail. It’s not the johns. And that’s the piece of
education I think is critical.
CORBETT: Right. There are so many myths that
are out there—
HIRSHBERG: —the New York governor with his
high-priced call girl. That’s what they imagine
it’s like, and it’s not. The great majority of [these
girls] have been raped and beaten and forced
into prostitution. This is not your middle-class
college-educated girl who says, “I can make
money turning tricks with CEOs.” That’s not what
it’s about. Ninety-nine percent of it is girls who’ve
been terribly exploited.
VALILA: There’s a grooming process. A pimp
doesn’t walk up to you and say, “Hi, I’m John. I’m
a pimp. Do you want to work for me?” I mean,
come on now. They’re going to spend time getting
to know her, tell her what she needs to hear. Give
her everything she needs. And once that girl is in
love, all he has to say is, “an you help me out?”
And it’s over.
HIRSHBERG: The number of gang rapes is
phenomenal. That’s how they get broken in very
often.
MATLACK: Because at that point, they are just
kind of lost? They’re dissociated or…?
HIRSHBERG: Well, the pimp sets them up.
CORBETT: Yeah. Or they get addicted to
substances, which is another way that they
dissociate.
HIRSHBERG: The boyfriend gets them into heroin.
But there is this feeling of, “Now I’m ruined. I am
no good. No one could ever love me after this.
Except for him.”
VALILA: Right. Are you’re going to run to the police
and tell them you’re prostituting? Are you going to
run to your family and say, “This is what I’ve been
doing”? There’s a lot shame attached.
HIRSHBERG: The amount of shame is
phenomenal. And it’s a trap. See, when we talk
about trauma, we don’t explain well enough
sometimes what the impact of that trauma is, and
for some people, it’s what normal healthy people
think. That is, you’re furious of the people that
have hurt you. But that’s not what most trauma
survivors experience. They experience shame
and guilt. Worthlessness. Powerlessness. And
it’s from that perspective that you can understand
girls prostituting. I’m no good. I’m worthless. No
one could ever love me. Just give me the drugs. I’ll
do whatever you tell me. There’s this loss of self,
the loss of self-esteem is radical.
MATLACK: So in terms of the work that you’re
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that hole and create a loving environment where
those girls can actually get out of the hole?
VALILA:5LJKW$QGKHOSWKHP¿QGWKHPVHOYHV
CORBETT: Empowering them. One of the things
I really love about the house is that we use a
leadership perspective. So we’re really trying to
help the girls work through the problems that are
coming up in the house, or if there are rules that
they don’t like. Like bringing them to a community
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together, instead of us as the adults saying, “This
is the rule. This is what you have to do.”
MATLACK: So let’s go full circle. So you were
saying at the beginning that the kind of success
rate was eighty percent on girls who didn’t have
sexual exploitation as part of the history. So with
their new home, what’s the success rate?
HIRSHBERG: It’s too soon.
MATLACK: Too soon?
HIRSHBERG: Because it’s really just been since
last year that we took control of the program. But
we have a lot of girls now leaving successfully.
VALILA: They’re going home, going back to their
parents, going to foster care, going to college.
MATLACK: And before the kind of success rate
with those girls was extremely low?
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range.
MATLACK: They would go back to prostitution?
HIRSHBERG: They’d disappear. They’d run away.
And they may be in prostitution. It’s a shadowy
world, so we can never be sure. But—
CORBETT: You occasionally hear about them just
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MATLACK: So can that group of alumni from the
home also be a network for you to use as a tool?
VALILA: Yeah. It just seems that right now, we have
a couple of girls who have been there the longest
are leaving very soon. So those are two people
right off the bat that I would think of, of somehow.
How do we continue working with them? How do
we utilize them with new girls?
CORBETT: Right now, we work with this woman
in the community who is a survivor, and she’s
a mentor to many of the girls in the house. But
she and I also run a group—a relapse prevention
group—where we talk about these issues every
Tuesday. And it is so powerful to have the
perspective of a survivor, someone who’s been
there. And she is really trying to help train some of
Good Men Magazine +XI¿QJWRQ3RVW
the other girls who are younger to do speaking so
that she doesn’t have to do it all.
MATLACK: I haven’t really seen any, but has there
been any decent press that you can remember
that I should go look up on this issue recently?
Because I haven’t seen any, but that doesn’t mean
it didn’t happen. No?
CORBETT: There’s a lot of discussion about the
rapper, Necro, currently.
VALILA: His new song. I’ve never liked him, but—
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MATLACK: In a positive way?
VALILA: Oh, no.
CORBETT: Not at all. No. Actually the girls at the
group home, we read it last week in group and the
response was incredible because they were so
enraged. This rapper is performing in Worcester
and they want to protest and—
HIRSHBERG: (Laughter.) That’s great.
CORBETT: But what’s great is, there has been
enough of a response to this song and this rapper
that Best Buy has agreed to pull the album off the
shelves.
MATLACK: That’s great.
HIRSHBERG: Great.
MATLACK: You’re doing great work.
CORBETT: Thank you.
HIRSHBERG: Thanks.
VALILA: Thanks. Nice meeting you.
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