Norma Hotaling

Hotaling, Norma. “San Francisco’s Successful Strategies: Prevention Services for Girls and the First Offender Prostitution Program.” San Francisco's Successful Strategies, Purdue University, 2001, www.purdue.edu/hhs/hdfs/fii/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/s_mifis06c08.pdf.

The work environment at SAGE was conducive to recovery, as Hotaling believed that employee participation in self-care was crucial for healing the many different types of trauma which clients and staff may have experienced. SAGE employee Francine (under pseudonym) said: "Over the years there were hundreds of women who came to SAGE who had prostitution issues, criminal justice issues, and substance abuse problems. I would guess at least eighty percent had been sexually abuse as children. Norma very much encouraged clients and staff and she would ask: what do you do to take care of yourself? Hotaling set it up that if you were at work and there was an acupuncture session going on, you could go sit in on the group session. You could also get personal session, but not on company time. She encouraged massage, medical care—all those things were considered important to Norma. Every Friday was a staff meeting and that was important because it was a time when all of us got together to share. Working at SAGE was unique because at most jobs you can’t do those kinds of things.”

SAGE contributed to the health and life of San Francisco community in many ways. SAGE employee Angela (under pseudonym) observed, “SAGE saves the community a ton of money—money that would that otherwise be spent in jail days, spent on a hospital bed, spent on emergency room visits, spent on foster care and a whole bundle of services for children whose mothers were not able to get into a good program and get clean, stay clean, and care for their kids themselves.”

SAGE began on a small scale, but the organization ascended to become an internationally recognized agent of change. At its peak, SAGE employed thirty-five to forty full-time employees – most of whom had come to SAGE for treatment. The organization owned its own building on Mission Street. Francine, a SAGE employee, said, “Norma was so proud of SAGE and SAGE’s building at 127 Mission... It was a million-dollar property on Mission Street, three floors, a big building and she would say proudly 'Look, a building owned and run by a prostitute.'"

SAGE was an innovative organization. It was the first to use a holistic approach to rehabilitate its clients, and most importantly, Hotaling insisted that “survivors of the sex industry are going to be the leaders.” By establishing the John school in San Francisco SAGE was also one of the first organizations to seriously address the way in which men fuel demand within the sex trade, and to point out that if the demand side for prostitution could be made to decrease, the supply side would decrease as well."There never was an analysis about the demand that is created by men; the focus was always on the woman – just get the women off the street. Nobody knew how to talk about the men.”

Hotaling was diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer in April 2008. She chose not to participate in chemotherapy, opting instead for alternative treatments. She conducted one oral history interview with Luis Enrique Bazan following her diagnosis. She died at the age of 57 on December 16, 2008.

In 2001, SAGE and Hotaling won the Use Your Life Award from Oprah's Angel Network.

In 2000, SAGE's Peer Educator Training Program won the Peter F. Drucker Award for Non-Profit Innovation through the Ford Foundation.

In 1998, SAGE's First Offender Prostitution Program/John school won the Innovations in American Government Award from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In 1989, Hotaling turned herself into jail and began her recovery process from drug addiction. She credited her choice to the fact that she had a circle of friends and family members who could serve as role models. As Hotaling healed from her addiction and trauma, she worked in San Francisco's jails as a counselor for prostitutes and addicts. It was during her jail work that she made the personal and institutional connections that became vital to founding and building SAGE.

Although the details of much of Hotaling's first two decades of life are shadowy, what is certain is that she was working as a prostitute by the time she was eighteen. She moved to San Francisco in the 1980s. Hotaling was addicted to heroin and remained an addict for twenty-one years. However, she had a life-saving realization in the 1980s: "I realized that if I stayed in the sex industry, I was going to die. That was clear to me… It was during the time when AIDS was hitting the streets and people were getting infected."

Norma Hotaling (July 21, 1951 – December 16, 2008) was an American women's-rights and anti-sex trafficking activist. Hotaling was a former prostitute and heroin addict who drew from her personal experiences to create new methods for getting women and men out of prostitution and into what she saw as healthier lifestyles. She founded the San Francisco non-profit SAGE (Standing Against Global Exploitation) in 1992. She championed holistic methods of "treatment" for former sex workers, and her methods because popular worldwide. As part of her own rehabilitation, Hotaling earned a bachelor's degree in health education from San Francisco State University. In San Francisco, she and SAGE became well known for focusing on men's roles in prostitution by establishing the First Offender Prostitution Program or "John" school, to combat and lessen the demand for prostitutes by males. In April 2008, Hotaling was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer and died eight months later. SAGE continued to operate until 2014.