I am currently reading “Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution: One Brave Woman’s Account of the Violence that is Prostitution [Kindle Edition], by Rachel Moran (see http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00C7735X8?ie=UTF8&ref_=oce_digital). The author grew up with two mentally ill parents. Her father committed suicide when she was still a young girl.  Rachel’s mother’s schizophrenia worsened following his death leading to increased pressure on Rachel and the other children of the family to grow up before their time. For example the author relates how she had to collect her younger sister from the hospital unaccompanied by her mother while still a young child.

The pressure cooker environment leads to Rachel leaving home in her early teens. She moves from hostel to hostel experiencing periods of homelessness in between. Due to hunger she turns to shop lifting but not being adept at it frequently ends up in the local police stations.

At the age of 15 Rachel’s 21-year-old boyfriend suggests that she enters prostitution. Believing that sex work will empower her Rachel agrees to this suggestion and at the age of 15 enters street prostitution.

I am under half way through the book and have therefore not formed a view as to it’s overall merits. What I can say is that Rachel Moran knows how to string a sentence together and that the reader feels compelled to agree with her assessment that given her chaotic childhood the author’s entry into prostitution was predictable (I don’t think that one can say inevitable).

I will post a full review once I have finished reading Moran’s book.