Stop Child Abuse Now (SCAN) - 2690

Tonight's special guest is Jessica Wesley from Houston, Texas, a survivor of child abuse who grew up in Christian Science. "My mother was neglectful and abusive because of her mental illness and alcoholism. I blamed myself for my situations and felt all of it was my fault," she says, "especially when my parents divorced when I was fifteen. I then began to mask the overwhelming pain with drugs and alcohol." After her father died, Jessica began to seek out the attention of men to fill the emptiness that drugs and alcohol could not satisfy. "I was high every day, XTC, cocaine, LSD, marijuana, alcohol. I would stop at nothing to mask the pain and feel 'normal'. My mom started drinking alcoholically to cope with the divorce." Trying to support her alcoholic mother and a younger brother, Jessica found work as a waitress. A friend told her about a job at a local gentlemen's club. "I stayed for 10 years." Jessica became a blackout drinker and cocaine user. One night she woke up in the wee hours of the morning and found she had been sleeping on a pool table. "That whole day I was unable to keep any food or water down. Almost like my body was purging itself." She goes on, "I drove myself to the emergency room. Dehydrated and desperate for it to all end I felt my body shutting down and feared the worst." It was perhaps the best decision Jessica ever made. "It was there in the hospital that my life changed forever. I knew at that moment I had met my Savior and experienced God's amazing power of healing immediately. The old life was dead and I was made a new." It was a life changing experience. "I was transformed, fully restored, redeemed." After intense Christian counseling she's much better. "I now work with women and strippers to come out of that lifestyle."