“See you didn’t know about this, you didn’t know that there were some women like that here did you? You didn’t know that there was somebody to reach out and hold your hand until you can learn how to walk. And that’s what we do.”
Brenda Myers Powell and Stephanie Daniels Wilson, founders of The Dreamcatcher Foundation, are in the van they use to carry out nightly rounds on Chicago’s most dangerous streets. In the vehicle with them is a 19-year-old girl. Her story is heartbreakingly familiar to the others who are approached by The Dreamcatcher Foundation—peppered with abuse, sex, and drugs. Most have lived on the streets since they were as young as four years old, existing in the vicious world of sex trafficking that has swallowed far too many girls in the city’s impoverished West Side.
Brenda and Stephanie spot these young women on street corners and invite them into the Dreamcatcher van, offering clothes, condoms, and a listening ear. These gentle interventions are void of judgment and pressure, the lasting impression on these girls being that they could seek help if and when they wanted to.
Their stories are shared in a silently powerful documentary film called Dreamcatcher, directed by British filmmaker Kim Longinotto. The film focuses on Brenda, whose zesty and warm personality makes the film as intriguing and heartening as it is harrowingly grim. While her irresistible demeanor was exactly what convinced Longinotto to take on the film, it was also the survivor-driven agency that Brenda advocated for which makes Dreamcatcher stand out in the mainstream narrative on prostitution and human trafficking.
In an interview with Women in the World, Brenda said, “I saw a lot of TV shows, movies, different stuff about human trafficking and the girls and all of that. And I hated it. I hated the storyline…I wanted [people] to know that [prostitution] came from a lot of pain. It came from a lot of pain before they got there.”
Brenda is not a stranger to pain. Growing up with an alcoholic grandmother as her sole parental figure, she was molested by her grandmother’s friends since she was a toddler, entering into prostitution at age 14. She was raped and tortured by pimps and customers during her 25 years as a prostitute, adding in the film that she had been a victimizer to other girls as well. “You cannot survive out there and only be the victim,” she said in a conversation with Homer, an ex-pimp and friend who she now works with to spread awareness on sex trafficking.
Her life took a turn when her last customer threw her out of his car. Her dress got caught in the door and she was dragged on the road for six blocks, losing all of the skin off one side of her face. After receiving help from a safe house and volunteering with sex workers, Brenda started the nonprofit Dreamcatcher Foundation with her best friend Stephanie, who is the mother of a former Chicago gang leader. Aside from the women they meet on their routine street rounds, the foundation works with prostitutes in jail and runs an after-school club for at-risk girls. The experiences of the high school girls are tragic—most of them reveal that they have undergone sexual harassment and abuse.
According to Brenda, the foundation has gotten in touch with 2500 young women in the span of their work, and 87 girls have been saved. Her outreach under the foundation is currently unpaid and she is now raising money to set up the Dream Center, a space that helps women move out of prostitution.
Dreamcatcher is a compelling film that digs into the heart of the many struggles faced by women caught up in the damaging web of sex trafficking. In an industry that offers almost no chance of escape, Brenda encompasses a glimmer of hope as a woman who has been through it all and gotten out alive. Dreamcatcher is her way of making sure other women are able to come along with her.
