Woman Priest, Abused As Child, Rescues Prostitutes; Now They Make Scented Lotions
By Greg Garrison
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - The Rev. Becca Stevens, an Episcopal priest, rescues prostitutes and puts them to work making scented lotions and soaps. Stevens will be in Birmingham on Wednesday to talk about the ministry, speaking at Canterbury United Methodist Church in Mountain Brook at 6 p.m. The event is open to the public. "I'm bringing the message that love heals, and we don't have to leave anybody behind," Stevens said. In 2000, she started Thistle Farms in Nashville, an outgrowth of her ministry, the Magdalene residential community, that rescues women and offers them a job. "We have a manufacturing company that manufactures and sells bath and body products, oils, lotions, soaps, candles," Stevens said. The business enterprise keeps growing. "So many people were coming," Stevens said. "So we opened a cafe." It's called the Thistle Stop Cafe, a play on Birmingham native Fannie Flagg's novel, "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe." Stevens felt the need to help other women because of her own experience as a child. "At 5, my father was killed by drunk driver," she said. "My dad was an Episcopal priest. After his death, an elder in church sexually abused me, in the church. That's the beginning of where this ministry started for me. I needed to believe that there was a healing community. I felt a need to reach out to women on the streets." Most of the prostitutes she meets were child rape victims first. "They typically experience their first rape between age 7 and 11, and hit the streets at 14 or 15," she said. From 2005-2012, 80 percent of the women who came to Thistle Farms graduated from the program clean and sober, Stevens said. "We employ over 70 women, 50 of them graduates of the program," she said. "They work through a recovery program. Women heal and they go back and heal whole communities." She encourages them to share their own stories, to help others. "They remind everybody to have the courage to speak their own truth," Stevens said. "We teach them to value healing more than keeping secrets. The shame and addiction have no power over us today." Stevens said her own experience of being molested in church – the place that was supposed to protect her – is not unusual. "The church is not synonymous with a safe community," she said. "It should be. Having the churches welcome us in, that's a sign the churches want to be healthy, to honor women and protect the kids." Stevens said it was the man who replaced her father as priest who molested her, when she looked up to him as a spiritual authority figure. "You can imagine how vulnerable you are as a kid," she said. "I thought, 'This guy thinks I'm special.'" As many as 85 percent of prison inmates experienced some time of abuse as children, Stevens said. "The red carpet to prison is molesting children and having broken families," she said. It creates psychological problems and troubles that last a lifetime. "I'm still trying to figure it out," she said. Churches should be part of the solution, Stevens said. "We need more strength and courage to speak love and healing," Stevens said. "We need each other. We need each other so we don't get jaded. We need to share the news that love heals, that hope doesn't die, so we can inspire each other to keep going. The church is moving into a place of servant leadership. It's bold leadership. We need to be on the streets, engaged with people. The church needs to be unafraid to be with people in recovery, with people in prison. They need leaders to speak boldly, teach radical service, radical love. The most powerful part of the gospel is love without judgment. We're going to speak boldly about that." Contact: ggarrison@al.com
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