By founding the SAGE Project [Standing Against Global Exploitation], a service agency for all survivors of sexual exploitation, Miss Hotaling rescued and restored hundreds of people who previously had no hope.  As an innovative and passionate leader committed to ending the commercial sex trade, she rescued girls who had lost their personhood while serving as a sex slave to some evil pimp or criminal network.  Her social programs have been replicated nationwide.  She was especially concerned about those, like the victims in Baltimore, who were headed for an “undetermined” death.

Norma established services led by peers — those who had “been there, done that” as she explained — who could help those who felt that they had no hope.  Norma became the voice of survivors of commercial sexual exploitation.  She worked to dissolved myths about prostitution. She sought to prove that prostitution was the world’s oldest oppression rather than a so-called sex worker’s profession.  She worked to end the claim that prostitution is a victimless crime.  She established “john” schools that taught first offenders about how prostitution harms women and communities.  She was a beacon of courage and an extraordinarily effective champion of victimized and marginalized children and women.

She also worked to teach public officials how to help victims — not by providing condoms and emotional support, but opportunities to get out of the bondage to pimps and criminal networks and the opportunity to heal and be restored to the same quality of life that freedom offers to all. She received numerous awards for her work, including recognition for Oprah Winfrey as an “Angel” who works to better the lives of others.  Norma Hotaling used her public speaking platform to describe experiences from her own prostitution that moved her audience to tears while educating them about the cruelty of prostitution.  She made it clear that almost everyone in prostitution had a burning desire to get out. 

Norma could have ended up a tragic statistic, but she turned her tragedy into heroism.  She urged people to stop treating human beings as commercial commodities.  She advocated for those who had no voice — just like those who stand in vigil in Baltimore in recognition of the humanity of those hundreds of anonymous women whose deaths seemingly warrant no investigation.

Norma used to say that caring for prostituted persons was like caring for orchids.  She said, “They die so easily.  But you take the dead-looking stem to someone who knows orchids and that person can look at the root and say, ‘Look!  There's still a little bit of life here.’”