My name is Catrina Cabe and I am the founder and director of Cry for the Broken Ministries. I was born in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia.
I moved out when I was thirteen due to a lot of sexual, emotional and physical abuse. I packed a bag, stepped out onto the freeway and was willing to go wherever the wind took me. I always stayed with a low-level drug dealer. I engaged in survival sex so that I could have a greater chance of staying high and staying alive.
When I turned eighteen I went to the strip club up the street because I knew the girls made a lot of money there. I had acquired a minimum of four hundred dollars a day drug habit. When all of the strip clubs got sick of me because I was severely underweight. I had track marks all over my body. My last memory of the club was being picked up and thrown out the back door.
The only thing that I knew to do was to go back to survival sex. I had already become Hepatitis C positive. I contracted HIV (virus). I suffered so many rapes and so many beatings. I was walking down 23rd street. It was raining, sleeting and snowing. I was barefoot. My feet were so cold that I couldn’t feel the glass cutting my feet on the sidewalks. I had just had enough. I threw my arms up in the air and said, “God, can you not even see me anymore? Something has got to change.” It was a long progression into the hell on earth that I had created for myself. The road trip back was nothing.
In the midst of that, after a couple of years of sobriety, I said, “Man, how can I not go back and tell these women that there is hope?” From my own experiences, I felt like I had a unique perspective on not what these women wanted but what they needed. What’s going on right now in the streets of Chattanooga is not God’s will. It’s going to take a revolution to turn it around. It’s going to take realizing that these women’s lives are precious and that they are worthy of salvation. If only one of them ever comes off the street and goes to Heaven, Jesus would have died for just her.
I started Cry for the Broken. He (God) led me here to Clear Creek and I obeyed. I could not have been met with more support and better reception. If anybody is thinking about coming to Clear Creek and they think that they can’t come here because they have a past, just take a good look at me and how much I’m loved. We are going to meet you where you are at. We are going to tell you that we know what’s going on and it’s okay.
We always pray before we go out. When we go out to minister, the first thing we do is that we hit the high prostitution areas in Chattanooga. We locate one of our girls, then we get out and I always approach from a distance. I approach with a smile on my face and a wave. That way she knows that I mean her no harm. I offer her food, water, and hygiene products. Most of the time they accept that. Additionally, I offer them a prayer. If they do accept those things, great but we don’t hold them hostage with prayer because they are addicted. They are enslaved and if we are holding them hostage with prayer, they are not receiving that prayer. All that I want and all that I will allow myself to pray for is God's will. As much as I love them and all of the wonderful things that I could hope for them, God loves them so much more. His plan for them is so much more amazing than anything any of us could ever imagine. He’s shown me that.
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