Chattanooga ministry embracing women in need to free them from prostitution and addiction

Mimi Nikkel poses for a photo Friday, June 1, 2018 at The Spot in Chattanooga, Tenn. Nikkel is the executive director at Love's Arm Outreach Ministries and has raised more than $148,000 to purchase a home for women who want help transitioning out of prostitution and addiction.

A sex-trafficking survivor who suffered decades of sexual abuse first freed herself, then started Love's Arm, a nonprofit that has rescued more than 70 women out of a lifestyle of addiction and prostitution.

"Our mission is to engage in relationships with persons in addiction-related prostitution and offer them ways out of the cycle of shame and into the community of grace," says Mimi Nikkel, founding director of Love's Arm Outreach Ministries.

This year she seeks money to purchase a home where she will offer housing and a two-year program to transition former prostitutes and addicts to a new way of life. She calls the holistic recovery program Rahab's Rest, named for a biblical harlot who became a paragon of virtue.

The home will be free to the six women who live there.

"We're in it with them for the long haul," says Nikkel, who has operated Love's Arm Outreach Ministries for 13 years.

She's already raised $198,000 toward a $250,000 matching grant to fund the home. She'll continue collecting money until June 15, when the challenge ends. Then she'll purchase property for the home.

If all goes as planned, the house opens in September.

Former sex worker Natashia Wilson says her life proves the house is needed.

She came to Chattanooga at age 34 to get away from the cycle of prostitution she faced in her hometown of Las Vegas.

She knew no one here, but a Las Vegas nonprofit called The Cupcake Girls connected her with Chattanooga Room in the Inn, a shelter open to homeless women and children that helps women regain their independence.

While living at the shelter, Wilson enrolled at Chattanooga State Community College in 2016, though she'd never learned to read well. Her formal education ended in ninth grade when she dropped out of school to work full time in the sex industry.

With the help of tutors and teachers, she graduated in May 2018 with an associate's degree in human services. She entered Love's Arm after a counselor at Chattanooga State recommended it to her.

Although Wilson excelled in Chattanooga, her son, who eventually came to live with her here, did not. She returned home thinking she could provide a better life for him there.

Her life in Las Vegas is still a struggle. She has yet to find a job and she's homeless, staying in shelters. But she has set her sights on opening a house similar to Rahab's Rest in Las Vegas and is working with city officials toward that goal.

"(Most) of these women who come out of prostitution don't have family to return to, and their friends are in the same situation so you have got to let your friends go. So if you don't have family and you don't have friends, who else is there if you can't turn to society for help," says Wilson.

Having a house allows women to get grounded so they can focus on improvement, she says.

"You cannot be at peace and work on things if you're wondering how you're going to eat, where are you going to live," says Wilson. "I'm glad Mimi is doing this because it's going to give the ladies somewhere to be comfortable and safe so they can work on what they want to do after prostitution."

Chattanooga needs a home for the women in this community who have been trapped in the trauma of sexual abuse, addiction, prostitution and sex trafficking and now need a place to recover in their own community and to be re-established, says Nikkel.

There are no homes here, says Nikkel.

"We've been in partnership with other programs in Nashville, in Alabama, in North Georgia and in other areas of East Tennessee for many years now in placing these women into another city for their recovery. But we think it's just as important that this city have a home for them to find their healing and restoration as well," she says.

Love's Arm has helped to transition 72 women out of prostitution in the 13 years it has existed, Nikkel says. She has had to send all of them away for treatment.

"Our heart is that the work of restoration and recovery stay here in Chattanooga so that the process of reconciliation with families is done at the same time," she says.

Chattanooga has great residential programs for women, but they focus on a particular population like homeless women with children or domestic violence survivors. None of them focus on women affected by sexual abuse, prostitution and addiction, she says.

She sees women involved in prostitution and addiction as victims because more than 80 percent of addiction-related prostitutes have been sexually abused as a child, she says.

About 85 percent of prostitutes suffered childhood sexual abuse, according to the Love's Arm website. Some 68 percent of them have been raped.

Love's Arm representatives visit strip clubs and go out to the streets to minister to women in street prostitution. They visit jails to minister to women there, and they reach some women by hosting drug recovery groups. Some women call the Love's Arm hotline.

Nikkel says Love's Arm meets people where they are in life and engages them in relationships based on trust and respect.

Nikkel works in partnership with the nonprofit Thistle Farms in Nashville and will implement its Magdalene House model of residential care at Rahab's Rest.

Magdalene is Thistle Farms' residential community for women in recovery from trafficking, prostitution, drug addiction and homelessness. Its mission is to ensure that every resident has access to the services and opportunities she needs to heal and thrive, according to the agency's website.

They've been working the model for more than 21 years and have had more than 200 graduates, according to Nikkel.

"It's the most successful model in the country," she says.

Contact Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.