Airdate: Hookers for Jesus

With a title like Hookers for Jesus being screened just before Easter you’d almost think Foxtel was asking for trouble.

But the synopsis suggests there’s a little more to this than meets the eye.

Las Vegas has America’s worst sex-trafficking problem and Annie used to be one of the city’s most notorious hookers. Eventually the drugs, pimp-beatings, and rapes exhausted Annie’s spirit, prompting her to look for a different way to live. Lying in a hospital after a drugs overdose she discovered religion. And when she awoke she determined to help girls trapped in prostitution. A one-woman mission, “Hookers for Jesus”, was born. We watch her race around the Las Vegas Strip spreading a message of love and hope. It’s religion as it’s seldom seen. Although Annie was motivated by a religious conversion, this film concentrates on the human stories of struggling to improve lives seemingly shunted into dead ends by sexual abuse and male control. Time is spent around the charity’s HQ, “Destiny House”, whose approach is based on giving girls back their self-esteem. We hear the backgrounds to the sad lives so readily covered with make-up and forced smiles. The candid responses of the girls, their families and pimps make for a fascinating insight into this unforgiving world. The paths to rehabilitation were never smooth, but the girls always showed a heart-warming resilience and their bright, eccentric personalities give the film life. And during the time she was being filmed, Annie herself went from someone struggling to get over self-loathing to being engaged to eighties’ heavy metal guitarist, Oz Fox. However the story is not one of simple redemption. Returning after some time we find that one of the girls had gone back to their pimp and another one went to jail. Another girl had moved in with a boyfriend. We then finally get to see Annie’s personal transformation made complete when she married Oz, and honeymooned with him on his comeback tour.

9:30pm Wednesday April 4 on Crime and Investigation