SID: Hello, Sid Roth, your investigative reporter here with Carol Reed. Last week hopefully you met her husband Isaiah Reed. Carol as I look at you right now I have to tell you something. I can’t imagine a woman that was beaten at one point eight hours, beaten, physically beaten, living the life you lived as a prostitute, and I look at you right now, I’m going to have to ask you a question because I see this, but I’m going to have to ask you this – you don’t look remotely like – I didn’t know that person but that person doesn’t even exist. Does she in your mind?
CAROL: No, you know when God heals you He makes you whole. And so all of those things even they were things in the past, there’s no remnant of it, there’s no scars left there only to be used to help other people. Yeah I went through a lot of those things but today they are empowering me. They are not anything that holds me down.
SID: And I notice you can even talk about it.
CAROL: Yeah.
SID: Which, if it wasn’t for the fact that you know, that was a different person. But, someone doesn’t wake up one day and say ‘I want to be a prostitute.’
CAROL: No.
SID: It’s a gradual little by little – I know you can from a nice middle-class family in L.A. – but your stepfather tried to rape you and you ran away from home. And I guess that’s when it really began?
CAROL: You know I really believe when I was a child you know the devil studies you from when you were little. And he put those things that were insecurities in me and he just blew them out of proportion, and when they weren’t dealt with they simply grew with me. And so every times there was another part of me that was insecure, he just blew it out of proportion. I believe when my mother’s husband tired to rape me that was my fork in the road and I said to myself well, if they think I am a prostitute then I might as well be one. And so I literally allowed what I heard in my psyche to manifest in reality, and I bit the apple.
SID: Now what was the carrot? What were you after? What was your goal back then? CAROL: I really wanted love, number one, was always one of the most things that I have ever wanted. But I really wanted to be an entertainer and I felt as though there was really no way for me to get in to entertainment because of the media it shows women using their bodies and I looked at myself at one point of my life and said, well I’m beautiful, I can use my body because that’s what the media says you know, they’re looking for the glamorous girls and every guy wants a glamorous girl on his arm and so I used my body actually it was a weapon against myself. You know no one was interested in who Carol was on the inside, they just wanted to see who was this trophy baby that they could put up on their shelves or carry on their arms, and I let it get the worst of me.
SID: So why did you stay in it, though?
CAROL: You know when you are in a lifestyle like that, after being in it so long you know it’s like a voice speaking into your ear what else can you do? You don’t have any skills. You’re not marketable. You know, where else are you going to make this kind of money? I was making anywhere from nine to two thousand dollars a day being a prostitute. The devil makes sin look good. And so I was drawn even more and more, and the one year was four years, four years was eight years, eight years ten years, ten years twenty years! And the next thing you know I look back and where’s Carol at? Carol is this drug addict and this prostitute looks in the mirror, I can’t stand myself. There’s no other choice for me.
SID: There was a young pimp that was taken with you and was stalking you and your father killed him.
CAROL: Yes, I had a – because of low self esteem I sought out somebody that I thought that I could groom and make him into this man that I wanted, because you know all of the men that I had before had let me down and so I met this young man and I told him too much information about me and he took it the wrong way and when I decided I wanted to get out of the relationship he began to stalk me for two weeks and one day, August 23rd, after bringing taking my son getting ready to take my son into the babysitters he came out of nowhere and was going to kill me and my son. And that day I felt death in the air, I could feel demons in the air to gather a soul back, and also feel angels in the air. I knew death was real but I didn’t know who was there to collect until he asked me where was my father at; and immediately he said that, on his face I could see death and I began to beg him and ask him to run, but it was too late. The next thing I knew my father pulled up behind me and within a matter of seconds he pulled out a nine millimeter and shot this man five times in front of my face. And my world shattered that day because I had destroyed two people’s lives because of my insecurity. You know and it the thing that the devil will use whatever he can do to hold you back from being who you were created to be.
SID: Isaiah Reed.
CAROL: Yes.
SID: When did you meet him and you didn’t realize he was even a pimp.
CAROL: I met Isaiah Reed in 1985. I used to live with Jim Brown the football player and one night after coming from a restaurant, I was on my way out and he came up to me and handed me some keys to a Rolls-Royce and I asked him in a not polite way to get away from me, and then when he decided he didn’t want to I gave him my phone number and he began to pursue me. You have to understand because I suffered from a low self-esteem so bad, anyone that seemed interested in me I gave them my attention because I needed his validation to make me be somebody because I didn’t know who I was. And he sought me out and began to call me, and I was in this big case with Jim Brown it was all over the news about raping some girl, and it wasn’t true but –
SID: The football player.
CAROL: The football player, Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns –
SID: Right
CAROL: And so we won the case, and Isaiah who was at that time known as Prophet, he called his self Ricky Williams, he called me and asked me would I come to Hawaii to celebrate winning this case and I thought sure, what girl wouldn’t take a trip to Hawaii. And so unbeknownst to me, I flew over there and fell in love with him. And I can remember I thought to myself that either he’s one of two things, either he’s a drug dealer or he’s a pimp, and when I asked him, he told me he was both. And I figured okay, you know, even if he is a pimp I can get rid of two of the girls, I’m cute enough, I can run them off. But then I asked him how many girls he had, and he said, well I have seventeen. And I was like wow; you know that’s quite a few young ladies you know. But it was something that was in me because we had had sexual relations even though I wanted to leave him; I was still drawn to him. And I couldn’t deny the fact that there was something between us and I began to work for him knowing that he was going to pimp me and I was in total agreement to do it. You see a lot of people have it misconstrued that a lot of young ladies are prostituting themselves are being forced to prostitute themselves when it’s a free choice. I had a free choice. I chose to do that.
SID: Yes, but when the other women saw he favored you, what did one woman do?
CAROL: Well, in 1989 I got pregnant and I said surely he’s not going to make me work the streets anymore and the other girls were very upset because they had been with him for twelve-fourteen years, and here I cone along and I’m pregnant and I can remember when I was pregnant one of the girls kicked me in my stomach, and uh, when I delivered my son at seven and one half months, my baby weighed three pounds, three and three-fourths.
SID: Did Isaiah have you working the streets while you were carrying the baby?
CAROL: Isaiah had me working the street, and also myself. You have to understand something about –
SID: I’ll tell you what. Hold that thought. We’ll be right back in a moment and we’ll bring the man who became her husband, Isaiah, here.
