Archives: New York Daily News

      COUNSELOR TRIUMPHS OVER LIFE ON THE SLIDE; [SPORTS FINAL Edition]
      TAMER EL-GHOBASHY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER. New York Daily News. New York, 
      N.Y.: May 14, 2001. pg. 1
      Full Text (542   words)
      Copyright Daily News, L.P. May 14, 2001
      Rachel Lloyd has a deep scar across the palm of her right hand that 
      required 17 stitches - a brutal reminder of a beating she endured from a 
      crack-addicted pimp.
      But the scar is also an emotional token of a journey that took the 
      26-year-old from a life filled with abuse to one of helping others.
      For Lloyd, the founder and executive director of a Manhattan- based social 
      agency, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, the personal struggle 
      inspired her new mission.
      Lloyd's tough life began in Portsmouth, England, in a neighborhood where 
      "choices for youth were limited: The boys got locked up and the girls got 
      pregnant."
      But Lloyd did not get pregnant - instead, she dropped out of school at 13 
      to support her alcoholic mother but was quickly lured into the fast-cash 
      world of drugs.
      "I was raped and hospitalized for suicide attempts three times, crying for 
      help," Lloyd recalled.
      At 17, she moved to Germany, hoping for a fresh start, but found herself 
      "penniless and desperate."
      She turned to stripping and prostitution.
      "I turned my first trick in a strip club in Munich while tears ran down my 
      face," she said. She worked as a prostitute for two years and left only 
      after her pimp tried to murder her.
      Lloyd's road to recovery began in a small church in Germany, where she 
      found "not only spiritual counsel, but also a job, a home and 
      unconditional love and support - and I began a slow journey back to 
      health."
      As a missionary, she came to New York in 1997 to work with adult women in 
      prison who had been prostitutes. But it was the chance encounters with the 
      16- to 21-year-old sexually exploited girls that piqued Lloyd's interest.
      "I knew this is where I was meant to be," she said.
      During her work in prisons, Lloyd studied and earned a GED and a 
      scholarship to Marymount Manhattan College, where she is in her junior 
      year pursuing her bachelor's in psychology.
      Convinced that she had found her calling, Lloyd established GEMS with $30 
      and a borrowed computer.
      Now, with a staff of three full-time and three part-time women, Lloyd 
      counsels young women from Rikers Island and the Bronx Horizons Juvenile 
      Center.
      "In these young women I saw so much untapped potential that was being 
      hidden under layers of abuse and pain," Lloyd said. "In these women I saw 
      myself."
      Last Thursday at a ceremony in Long Island City, GEMS was one of 10 
      nonprofits to receive the Long Walk to Freedom Youth Activism Award from 
      Community Works, a group that provides arts education to New York public 
      school students.
      "It was my duty to recognize her," said the Rev. Alfonso Wyatt, chairman 
      of Community Works Youth Advisory Committee. "Through her work, I know 
      people would understand the plight of sexually exploited girls."
      Melvonne Garcia, a 19-year-old former inmate who is a youth mentor with 
      GEMS, said, "She's real. If I call her at 11 p.m., she picks up the phone 
      and talks to me. That's why I love Rachel."
            [Illustration]
            Caption: WILLIAM MILLER SURVIVOR Rachel Lloyd, 26-year-old founder 
            and executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, 
            with GEMS volunteers Yolanda Fontanz, Melvonne Garcia and Parisse 
            Daves at last week's awards ceremony.




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