Carla van Raay | |
---|---|
Born | 1938 (age 84–85) |
Occupation(s) | Author, counselor, former nun, teacher & call girl |
Notable work | God's Callgirl |
Carla van Raay (born 1938) [1] is an Australian author, counselor and former nun, teacher and call girl.
Born in Tilburg, Netherlands, van Raay moved with her family to Australia in the 1950s. [2] Her father obtained work as a gardener at a convent school in Kew, Melbourne, run by the Sisters, Faithful Companions of Jesus, founded in early 19th-century France. Through this employment, he was able to have her enrolled as a student at the school. As a child she suffered sexual abuse from her father, from ages 3 to 12. [3]
After graduation she joined the Sisters who ran the school as a nun. [4] The order sent her the UK to train as a teacher. Once trained, she taught in Brussels. She felt isolated as a nun, and in 1969 she obtained permission from the Vatican to leave. [3]
After leaving the order, van Raay worked as a teacher in one of the biggest schools in Melbourne. [2] Van Raay was soon married to a Scotsman, and they had a daughter. She later had an affair with a 19 year old and the marriage ended. She had a second daughter with another partner. [3] Living in Perth, [3] and With a young family to support, van Raay turned to prostitution in 1973. Initially she worked as an escort, as she had been naive about sex during her education. [4] After 3 months, [3] Once she had gained some experience, she set up her own massage service. [4] Van Raay worked as a prostitute on and off for 18 years. [3] by which time she was 52 years old. [2]
Her memoir, God's Callgirl, documents her childhood and career as sex worker, ending with her decision to leave that occupation. She was 65 years old at the time of the book's publication and a grandmother. The book sold 500,000 copies [3] and has been published in 7 countries. [5] She later wrote a sequel documenting that part of her life titled Desire. [6] In 2016 she wrote Healing from Abuse: A Practical Spiritual Guide. [5]
Van Raay now works as a counselor and healer for victims of sexual abuse. [2]
Jeanne-Paule Marie "Jeannine" Deckers, better known as Sœur Sourire and often called The Singing Nun in English-speaking countries, was a Belgian singer-songwriter and a member of the Dominican Order in Belgium as Sister Luc Gabriel. She acquired widespread fame in 1963 with the release of the Belgian French song "Dominique", which topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and other charts. Owing to confusion over the terms of the recording contract, she was reduced to poverty, and also experienced a crisis of faith, quitting the order, though still remaining a Catholic. She died by suicide with her lifelong partner, Annie Pécher.
Agnes of God is a 1979 play by American playwright John Pielmeier which tells the story of a novice nun who gives birth and insists that the child was the result of a virgin conception. A psychiatrist and the mother superior of the convent clash during the resulting investigation. The title is a pun on the Latin phrase Agnus Dei.
Magdalene asylums, also known as Magdalene laundries, were initially Protestant but later mostly Roman Catholic institutions that operated from the 18th to the late 20th centuries, ostensibly to house "fallen women". The term referred to female sexual promiscuity or work in prostitution, young women who became pregnant outside of marriage, or young girls and teenagers who did not have familial support. They were required to work without pay apart from meagre food provisions, while the institutions operated large commercial laundries, serving customers outside their bases.
Prostitution in Thailand is officially illegal However, due to police corruption and an economic reliance on prostitution dating back to the Vietnam War, it remains a significant presence in the country. It results from poverty, low levels of education and a lack of employment in rural areas. Prostitutes mostly come from the northeastern Isan region of Thailand, from ethnic minorities or from neighbouring countries, especially Myanmar and Laos. UNAIDS in 2019 estimated the total population of sex workers in Thailand to be 43,000.
The Levee District was the red-light district of Chicago from the 1880s until 1912, when police raids shut it down. The district, like many frontier town red-light districts, got its name from its proximity to wharves in the city. The Levee district encompassed four blocks in Chicago's South Loop area, between 18th and 22nd streets. It was home to many brothels, saloons, dance halls, and the famed Everleigh Club. Prostitution boomed in the Levee District, and it was not until the Chicago Vice Commission submitted a report on the city's vice districts that it was shut down.
The Faithful Companions of Jesus Sisters is a Christian religious institute of the Roman Catholic Church directly subject to the Pope. It was founded in Amiens in France in 1820 by Marie Madeleine de Bonnault d'Houët.
Prostitution is illegal in the vast majority of the United States as a result of state laws rather than federal laws. It is, however, legal in some rural counties within the state of Nevada. Prostitution nevertheless occurs elsewhere in the country.
Teresa of Jesus of Los Andes, born as Juana Enriqueta Josephina de Los Sagrados Corazones Fernández Solar, was a Chilean nun of the Discalced Carmelites. Fernández Solar was a pious child but had an often unpredictable temperament for she could be prone to anger and being vain but could also demonstrate her charitable and loving nature; she seemed transformed when she decided to become a nun and her character seemed to change for her sole ambition was to dedicate herself to the service of God. But her time in the convent was cut short due to her contracting an aggressive disease that killed her - she knew she would die but was consoled knowing she would be able to make her profession before she died.
Prostitution in Ireland is legal. However, since March 2017, it has been an offence to buy sex. Third party involvement is also illegal. Since the law that criminalises clients came into being, with the purpose of reducing the demand for prostitution, the number of prosecutions for the purchase of sex increased from 10 to 92 between 2018 and 2020. In a report from UCD's Sexual Exploitation Research Programme the development is called ”a promising start in interrupting the demand for prostitution.”
The Congregation of Our Lady of Charity of the Good Shepherd, also known as the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, is a Catholic religious order that was founded in 1835 by Mary Euphrasia Pelletier in Angers, France. The religious sisters belong to a Catholic international congregation of religious women dedicated to promoting the welfare of women and girls.
Prostitution in Singapore in itself is not illegal, but various prostitution-related activities are criminalized. This includes public solicitation, living on the earnings of a prostitute and maintaining a brothel. In practice, police unofficially tolerate and monitor a limited number of brothels. Prostitutes in such establishments are required to undergo periodic health checks and must carry a health card.
Melissa Farley is an American clinical psychologist, researcher and radical feminist anti-pornography and anti-prostitution activist. Farley is best known for her studies of the effects of prostitution, trafficking and sexual violence. She is the founder and director of the San Francisco-based organization, Prostitution Research and Education.
Maria Candida of the Eucharist - born Maria Barba - was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious of the Discalced Carmelites. Barba desired to become a professed religious in her adolescence but her parents forbade this and she was forced to wait two decades for her to realize her dream; she entered the order after her parents died though alienated her brothers in the process who refused to ever see her due to their resentment towards her decision. Barba became a noted member of her convent in Ragusa and she served as prioress for an extensive period in which she fostered a rigid adherence to the order's rule so as to live the fullness of its charism. Her devotion to the Eucharist was a focal point for her spiritual thinking and her own life and she wrote to an extensive degree on the Eucharist and its importance.
The Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God are an institute of religious sisters in the Catholic Church belonging to the Third Order Regular of St. Francis. They were founded in 1910 in Santarém, Brazil, by the Rt. Rev. Armand August Bahlmann, O.F.M., and Mother Immaculata, both natives of Germany, to educate the children of the poor throughout the world.
Dame Catherine Alice Healy is a New Zealand sex workers' rights activist, field researcher and former prostitute working for decriminalisation of prostitution and generally for the improvement of the sex work profession. She is the national coordinator and a founding member of the New Zealand Prostitutes' Collective (NZPC).
Blessed Maria Pia Mastena - born Teresa Maria - was an Italian Roman Catholic professed religious and the founder of the Religious Sisters of the Holy Face. Mastena fostered a deep devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus and tried to promote that devotion to others in her religious career as a nun. Mastena first desired the contemplative life but was denied this after she entered the convent since it was not a cloister. Instead she dedicated herself to teaching in several Italian cities after having left another convent and another religious order when she deemed contemplative life was not the life she felt God wanted for her. Her labors were dedicated instead to consolidating her new religious order which began to grow after World War II until her sudden death in 1951.
Natasha Falle is a Canadian professor at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, who was forcibly prostituted from the ages of 15 to 27 and now opposes prostitution in Canada. Falle grew up in a middle-class home and, when her parents divorced, her new single-parent home became unsafe, and Falle ran away from home. At the age of 15, Falle became involved in the sex industry in Calgary, Alberta.
Maria Maddalena Martinengo, born Margherita Martinengo, was an Italian Roman Catholic professed nun of the order of the Capuchin Poor Clare nuns.
Norma Hotaling was an American women's-rights and anti-sex trafficking activist. Hotaling was a former prostitute and heroin addict who drew from her personal experiences to create new methods for getting women and men out of prostitution and into what she saw as healthier lifestyles. She founded the San Francisco non-profit SAGE in 1992. She championed holistic methods of "treatment" for former sex workers, and her methods because popular worldwide. As part of her own rehabilitation, Hotaling earned a bachelor's degree in health education from San Francisco State University. In San Francisco, she and SAGE became well known for focusing on men's roles in prostitution by establishing the First Offender Prostitution Program or "John" school, to combat and lessen the demand for prostitutes by males. In April 2008, Hotaling was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and died eight months later. SAGE continued to operate until 2014.