A couple weeks ago I spoke with Harmony Dust (left in photo, click to enlarge), founder of Treasures, an L.A. ministry that reaches women in the sex industry. Harmony had a tumultuous childhood. She was sexually abused by two women at age 5 and an older boy at 7, and then raped repeatedly by an ex-boyfriend as a teen. "I had a really low sense of self-worth and my identity was strongly intertwined with my sexuality," she told me.
While Harmony was in college, she started dancing at the Century Lounge, a strip club near the L.A. airport. She was desperate for money to support her abusive boyfriend, his baby and the baby’s mother. At the club, men propositioned her every night, but Harmony created firm boundaries for herself–she’d never let an customer touch her, although many tried (Glamour Magazine, January 2007). "I was so unhappy. The pain was suffocating," she said. Other dancers caved in to pressure to sleep with regular customers, managers or club owners.
In a ballet class at Santa Monica College, Harmony became friends with Tanya, a young woman with a sparkling personality. Although she initially lied when Tanya asked about her job, the next week Harmony decided to be honest. Tanya’s reaction stunned her: "She didn’t judge me...She blew every preconceived notion of what I thought Christians were out of the water."
Tanya invited Harmony to her church, Oasis Christian Center. When Harmony finally visited and took her first step inside of a church, she loved it. She quickly became a regular at Oasis on Sundays, then on Mondays and Wednesdays for Bible studies. "There was a lot of instability in my life and I was looking for a home, an anchor," she said.
Six months later Harmony was still going to Oasis and dancing at the Century Lounge. On Wednesday nights, she’d go to church, then head straight to work. But, "I began to understand my value and purpose," she said. And Tanya allowed time for the Holy Spirit to work. "She never said, ‘Now that you’re going to church, you gotta change,’" Harmony told me.
Harmony said good-bye to the Century Lounge the night she realized that God was asking her to leave. She also severed ties with her boyfriend and sought healing. Eventually she married a godly man from Oasis and graduated from UCLA with a Masters in Social Work.
In 2000, Harmony followed a dream to reach women still trapped in the sex industry and headed back to the Century Lounge. Now, once a month she leads groups of young Christian women to clubs across L.A., visiting more than 100 each year. They distribute gift bags and messages that testify to God’s power to create "treasures out of darkness" (Isa. 45:3). Many women in clubs have responded.
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