When Jacqueline Montero takes her seat in Congress next month, she will bring not only an unusual past but an unconventional agenda for change in this socially conservative Caribbean country.
Montero was sexually abused as a child. She married at 16 to a man who beat her. And she worked as a prostitute for years to feed her children. Now, after a decade of activism for women's rights in the Dominican Republic, she hopes to put her life experience to work following her election to the Chamber of Deputies as part of an opposition coalition.
"I know the hardship that forces someone to go out on the street because your family doesn't have food," Montero told The Associated Press in the Santo Domingo office of the non-governmental organization she runs to promote the rights of sex workers.
