Pushout

by Monique W. Morris

  “How’d you get kicked out of foster care?” I asked.

  “’Cause I kept running from my group homes. I kept going back to prostitution. I kept doing hecka stuff, so like, once I got back [in juvenile hall], they kicked me out of foster care.”

  I wondered if anyone had ever come looking for her. Jennifer had been out of school for three years, hustling to survive in a world that saw her as expendable. How could her extended absence from school pass under the radar for so long?

  “When you were enrolled in school, did the school or district come looking for you?”

  “No, my foster mom didn’t even know,” Jennifer said. “My school never called her.”

  I looked at her face. She had a persistent furrow in her brow, which made it appear that she was frowning or squinting even when she was not. A youthful innocence remained in her spirit, even though her eyes knew a lot more than her age suggested.

  “What was it like trying to manage your foster care and go to school?” I asked.

  “I didn’t feel supported at all. It was hard,” she said. “Plus, the foster kids . . . Like, I fought a lot and my foster mom didn’t do anything. So I had a lot of fights. . . . It was just hard.”

  Managing school and life was difficult for Jennifer, who mentioned that she often felt that the only person she could rely on was herself. Her independence is what also led to her conflict with other girls, and in some instances her suspension from school for skipping class or fighting.

  “What are some of the things that would start the fights?” I asked.

  “Uh . . . a lot of people didn’t like me because . . . you know how some kids don’t like you because of the way that you dress? And I used to dress raggedy because I didn’t have anything. Like, my foster parents would buy me shoes from [a budget store]. So I would fight them because they would talk about me.”

  Then she mentioned that she had once been in a gang.

  “It’s just . . . it’s a squad, not a gang, really,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Did they ever encourage you to go to school?”

  “Mm-mm,” she said, shaking her head.

  I understood that the “squad” had not encouraged her to go to school, but wondered if that was really at the heart of what prolonged her sexual exploitation.

  “No,” she said. “I got into prostitution because the guy that raped me, he forced me on the track. Basically, I didn’t go willingly at first, but ever since he did that to me, my whole life just changed, and that was at twelve years old. Ever since then, my life’s been off-track.”

  She spoke the words with such direct honesty that I suspected she had told this story before. Her youth was obscured by a very painful and complicated past. Her large wide eyes continued to squint as she discussed her struggle to learn and to acquire skills that could help her earn a living without having sex.

  “Has anyone worked with you to try to help you get what you need to get back in school or talked to you about how you can make the transition off of the street?” I asked.

  “No. Nobody really helped me. Honestly, it took me about four years to get back on track. I’m just now getting back on track. So all this stuff I go through, I go through myself. I encourage myself.”

  Jennifer sighed as she retold her story of personal pain and struggle for redemption. The persistence of her frown when she spoke was a subtle cue that she did not like what she was saying or that she was at least aware of how it might sound to someone meeting her for the first time. I held no judgment against her, and I let her know that. The safety of our space mattered, and I really wanted to better understand how her story might inform ways to rebuild a path from confinement to school for her and for other girls in similar situations. We talked about how being sexually exploited was a significant factor both in her school failure and in her attempt to recover from other traumatic experiences in her life.

  “I did it ’cause I didn’t have nobody. I did it because I hated myself. I did it because I didn’t love myself. I did it because I never had anything. So when I was hustling, I would hustle hard to get what I need and want . . . to make myself look good and feel better. So I started selling my body.”

  “Was there anything about that that kept you out of school, though?”

  “Yeah . . . money. It’s just great. When I hustle, I ho by myself. Like, it’s . . . better. Like, you know some of these young girls when they hustle, they hustle with they friends or hang out with their friends. Like, I don’t know. I felt like a businesswoman. You know?”

  When Jennifer detached from the man who raped her, she began working for herself. She needed money not only for herself but also for her child, who was a toddler when I met Jennifer. In fact, she credited pregnancy as her best educational experience.

  “Being a mother is a blessing,” she said. “And it taught me how to have patience, ’cause I really don’t have patience.”

  Parenting teens often face tremendous obstacles to completing a high school education, but more often than not, girls interpret their parental responsibilities as an incentive to perform better. While these girls are plagued by social narratives that warn of an end to their lives if they have a child as a teenager, they also understand their heightened responsibility and make great attempts to rise to the occasion.

  Notwithstanding their resilient attitudes, earning a diploma can be a difficult process for girls who have become pregnant during their high school years, particularly given the hurdles associated with it. Some schools unlawfully bar pregnant girls from attending school or discriminate against them in other ways, including penalizing their success or ridiculing them.7 When girls are able to attend school, they often face the additional hurdle of finding child care or recuperating credits that were missed.

  When I spoke with Terri, another girl from the Bay Area, about her experiences as a teen parent, she offered that school remained a priority for her, even if it was difficult to go every day.

  “I missed some days [at school] because I have a baby, and I had to find a babysitter. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t . . . People [at my school] help you. . . . Like, they was helping me find a day care to where I could take [my daughter], and stuff like that. It was people there that were helping me. . . . So I just try to get my work and then go home, but sometimes I’d rather be at school. It seems like you can’t do anything without school. You can’t get out of this mess that we in unless you go to school.”

  Terri was also coming to terms with school attendance as a condition of her probation. The juvenile court, understanding the value of education, had prioritized school attendance in her district, which meant that truancy was no longer just a decision not to go to school—it was also a violation of her agreement with the court.

  “That’s the main thing that they look at,” Terri said. “If you go to school or not. That’s one of the first things that they look at . . . they want to know, what are you doing besides . . . you know . . . doing the stuff that you’re already in trouble for. They want to know if you’re going to school. Are you there? Are you on time? That’s one of the main things that they do push here. Go to school. If you don’t, then you’re just going to be right back [in juvenile hall].”

  Contact with the criminal legal system might be the first time a girl has access to medical screening. For some, this experience may reveal a host of health conditions that affect their ability to return to school, including pregnancy. However, being in juvenile hall or other forms of detention is about more than gaining access to health care. Just as there are relationships that make girls vulnerable to contact with the criminal legal system, there are also a number of relationships within the justice system that keep girls from reconnecting with school and performing well when they are there.

  Going Back to School

  School administrators are often unsure how to play an effective role in interrupting the pullout of sexually exploited girls from schools. Though many teachers and school leaders unders
tand what a challenge it is to compete with the lure of money and the adult influences that place children at risk of harm, they have also largely been absent from the public discourse on how to keep our girls from becoming throwaway children. For many educators, classroom deportment drives much of their approach toward these girls. Julio, the principal of a California high school, shared his perspective on the matter.

  “A lot of it is behavior,” he said. “But the behavior comes from first and foremost a lack of success in school, a lack of socialization for one thing. They are not socialized properly. They never had that experience.”

  Julio continued to describe how a particular girl, a Black girl who was being introduced to a class as a new student, displayed behavioral issues that complicated the school’s ability to respond to her needs.

  “We had a girl who would just act out with one of our teachers,” he said. “As soon as she got there, and we couldn’t figure it out, and so the teacher asked for her file and started reading over it, and she had a long case of issues in school and there have been issues of abuse, and one of the triggers for whatever reason was older white women. The teacher was an older white woman, and it set her off.”

  “So what was your approach?” I asked.

  “Because she has special ed, because she has an IEP, I’m going to bring in somebody to work with her one-on-one, and so I did do that. We will work with her one-on-one in a special class, and [the specialist] worked with her a couple of periods and tried to transition her. So what we have seen is a big improvement, actually work is getting done, and then the acting out in the other classroom is not there anymore. So we are not where she can be in a classroom with a teacher yet, and you know logistically I can’t replace the teacher, but what I can do is provide some outside support for her.”

  Still, this principal lamented, external supports and specialists require funding. “If a child isn’t in school enough, then that child may get misdiagnosed,” he continued. “That process takes time, but if the child is not there, it won’t happen, so year after year it’s compounded. . . . And then in the school sense too—when funding gets cut, then the kids ultimately suffer. Kids are resilient, and those that are on the college track are going to stay on the college track. It’s the average kids that are going to suffer because of [a lack of] funding.”

  Public education remains one of the nation’s most ripe environments for inequality. From Julio’s perspective as a principal, chronic absenteeism made it difficult for the school to reach out to students who might have special learning needs. The structure of the learning environment made it difficult to develop innovative approaches for girls in trouble with the law, many of whom are also being trafficked. Indeed, though many of the girls in his school had a history of sex trafficking, he felt that there was little he could do to intervene. He did, however, feel that the school could be an important partner.

  According to Jennifer, a special education student who was never able to fully develop her relationship with school, educators and other key stakeholders have to take a more proactive role in explaining to girls why education is so important to their development.

  “Make them care more about their education,” she said. “’Cause a lot of these girls don’t think education is important, or why, like, ‘What is education going to do for me?’ It’s going to do a lot for you. You have to go through a process to get what you want. Just like you have to hustle for a lot of money to get what you want, like the new Jordans or whatever, you got to go through that process of getting your money. Just like education.”

  In a separate conversation, Diamond agreed. When I asked her what might keep her in school, she replied, “Like, probably, more attention. More attention and providing of what I ask. Like, if I ask that I need something, it’s not that I’m trying to annoy you. I’m trying to ask you for things that I really actually need.”

  “When you think about the other needs you have in your life,” I said, “how can the school help you so that you don’t have to do anything illegal to get it? What do you need to stay focused in school and doing what you’ve got to do?”

  “I don’t know about the other girls that’s in the sex industry, but for me, like, I like to talk about it and get it out of my system. . . . I don’t know, cry about it and stuff. I think that would help me better because, I don’t know, I like to share.”

  Narrative is a powerful tool for learning and for rehabilitation. In Diamond’s response and in Jennifer’s call for a space that would allow her to talk through the importance of education were requests to rebuild a relationship—not just with individuals but with school as an institution.

  I asked Diamond if there were things that could happen in the school environment or with teachers that might help her transition back into school smoothly. We talked about the potential for school-to-career programs that might help her understand the connections between her education and work. Like Jennifer, she felt making this connection was necessary, and particularly appealing to girls who have been trafficked.

  “I think that would help. . . . I can’t speak for nobody else. But like, I think that would help because, for some reason, for some kids, coming [to juvenile hall] won’t help them . . . I probably need counseling. Like, I’m trying to get stronger, but my boyfriend . . . he’s like, I don’t know . . . it takes a while . . . I think I’m processing faster since I been here. I should have never done that. I’m not making that mistake again. That person wasn’t right for me. I’m not taking that chance again. It’s going to hurt me in the long run. It’s not hurting him. He’s free right now . . . while I’m sitting here locked up twenty-four hours.”

  Then, Diamond started to cry as she came to terms with having been abandoned by a man she depended on to care for her—a man who sold her body and who did not come to visit her while she was in detention. A man who she suspected had moved on. I consoled her but also let her sit with the realization that this man might not be what she expected.

  “What kind of people do you need in your life, at school, to be successful?” I asked. “Like, what would your ideal counselor look like?”

  “I just need somebody that is not there just to listen, but who actually feels me . . . who knows where I’m coming from and really understands. . . . Like, ‘Oh, you been a prostitute, I feel you’ . . . somebody like that. . . . Somebody that’s going to be there when I need them, like . . . three times a week, four times a week. Like when I feel bad and stuff.”

  Regularly available counselors and therapists in school are critical to providing the type of emotional support that formerly trafficked girls need to heal from the pain and trauma that they have experienced. Otherwise, schools risk becoming a location where girls continue to experience harm. Diamond and I talked some more about how to avoid that.

  “So, aside from a counselor who would be there, how do you think schools in general could better respond to Black girls in crisis?” I asked.

  “Usually the teachers, like, will only connect with certain students that think they deserve more because they get straight A’s. There’s a reason why they’re getting straight A’s—because they’re faster learners. Y’all [are] teaching them more, and they study more and they’re getting more attention than the other kids. Like Black kids at home, we don’t get that much attention. Our mother and dad are working. Our sister is taking care of us. Our auntie, grandma . . . is taking care of us. We don’t have that attention that we want from our parents, that makes us disrespectful in class and make us be like, [to the teacher] ‘Bitch, I don’t care . . . I see my mama . . . I don’t see you. You’re not my mama.’”

  Though nationwide the numbers tell us that Black parents are involved in their children’s education—checking homework, talking about the importance of education with their children8—that was not Diamond’s experience. For many of the girls on the margins, their parents are also suffering from debilitating conditions of poverty, addiction, and their own tumultuous relationships with p
eople and with schools. Diamond was calling for a different reality, at least when she walks into school. In other words, for girls who have a history of sexual exploitation and abuse, school cannot ignore them or what they experience outside school walls. Even though institutions are prone to reinforcing or replicating the norms of society, Diamond’s path reveals why schools should actively work to generate a different culture, one that doesn’t prioritize high performers over everyone else. Our public schools—especially for these girls—need to be a place of stability and consistency, a place where new norms can emerge. For too many kids, school is the only place they can learn how not to play the circumscribed role the rest of the world casts them in.

  “So, basically, what I hear you saying is that you want somebody who cares about you,” I said.

  “Yeah! Exactly. Like, somebody that I can trust. Not somebody that I can be like, we’re cool one day and not cool the next day. How can I talk to this person? How can I ask them questions? Why would I raise my hand . . . [when the response is] ‘Why are you talking to me? Oh, do your work’? Okay, I just wanted to ask you a question. Okay, I won’t bother you. Okay, I’m not going to do the work. F——it. You know? [Then we] get careless because we don’t feel like it’s worth it if we don’t connect with that person.”

  Going Back in Time

  The steering of girls into sex work is a global culture, not just a decision point in the criminal legal system in the United States. Girls of all backgrounds are up against the sexist and dismissive notions that they are choosing a life of prostitution rather than being trafficked into it, though this characterization is significantly more common when it comes to Black girls. As Paris explained, Black girls are often trafficked by more than just a single individual. Latent in our willingness to cast them as “choosers” of this underground economy are racialized gender stereotypes about the hypersexualization of Black girls—a myth that was historically used to justify the rape of enslaved Black females, and which has since morphed into a stereotype about “fast” Black girls that renders them vulnerable to multiple forms of abuse.