Ex-sex worker recalls having to sleep with 20 men on her first night in a Queens brothel

An ex-sex worker who previously worked at the ‘Market of Sweethearts’ in New York describes how she had to sleep with twenty men on her first night.

Kika Certa arrived in the Big Apple from Venezuela after falling in love with a man and being under the impression she would be staying with his family.

Instead, Certa found herself on Roosevelt Avenue, also known as the “Market of Sweethearts,” in the city’s Queens section after being forced to work as a prostitute in the early 1990s.

Certa told the New York Post she had decided to speak out about her ordeal after hearing from Mayor Eric Adams that migrants were being used in the sex trade in Queens.

Under a pseudonym, Certa told the newspaper, with tears streaming down her cheeks: ‘My first night I slept with twenty men. I couldn’t tell who. They came in one after another. That was the worst night of my life.’

The 51-year-old said she was offered a place to stay in the city after meeting and falling in love with a man named Daniel in Venezuela.

Certa met his cousin Sandra, who lived in the city and with whom she would stay.

After arriving at JFK Airport in 1992, the offer of a better life changed and Sandra took the $3,000 she had saved and her passport from her after she landed.

Certa said, “I saved $3,000 that I brought here to the United States.

“I remember leaving the airport and they immediately took my passport and my money.”

After two weeks, the couple sat down with Certa and told her she would have to prostitute herself to pay a debt on Daniel’s behalf.

She recalled, “(Sandra) said Daniel lived here and he owed her a lot of money.

“And then she said, ‘You’re going to pay the money and the way you’re going to pay is you’re going to prostitute yourself.’

Certa was taken to a house at 92nd and Roosevelt Avenue, given the name Lily, and put to work as a sex worker.

She said, “When she took me there, she said, ‘This is a new girl. She’s fresh. She’s only twenty years old.’

Certa said every time she opened the door and there was a knock, a different man was there, paying $35 each and tipping her a few dollars.

She added: “I had no mind, no soul. I just get up in the morning and have something to eat, go back to sleep and wait for the time I have to go back to work.’

Certa told the Post that she tried to hide from Sandra but was always found and that she had been arrested five times.

She eventually demanded her passport back and agreed to pay the lady more money for her freedom.

Certa is now married and has three daughters, but is concerned about recent reports about Venezuelan women she sees working in brothels on the same street.

She said, “They’re not there because they want to be there. It’s because they’re forced to do so somehow and they break down in some way. Once they are broken, there is no way out.”

Mayor Eric Adams said earlier this month that the city has gained a huge new red-light district due to the arrival of Venezuelan migrants working as prostitutes.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen sex workers walking the streets during the day, with many aggressively soliciting, even as children come home from school or during lunch breaks, as reported by Pix 11.

Previously, the Bronx was home to the Big Apple’s highest concentration of sex workers.

Mayor Adams said the situation is just one of many ways the migrant crisis is impacting the city, which has received more than 120,000 new asylum seekers since last spring.

When asked by reporters about the open-air sex market, Adams said the situation had been brought to his attention and that he had visited the area himself, confirming that “illegal” activities take place in public at all hours of the day and night.

Adams continued, “This is what happens when you create an atmosphere where people cannot take care of themselves and have to resort to illegal activities to do so.

“When I talk about the spiraling impact of how this is going to impact our city, this is what I’m talking about.

“We are going to create generational problems based on the failure of the national government and that is an example.”

Prostitution is considered a Class B misdemeanor in New York, punishable by up to three months in jail and/or a fine of up to $500.

Patronizing a prostitute is a Class A misdemeanor and is punishable by up to one year in jail and/or a fine of up to $1,000.

We previously told how schoolchildren complained about being forced to walk through prostitutes in broad daylight in the Queens borough.

Jalene Lugo, 14, said she passed several provocatively dressed women in a doorway on 93rd Street earlier this week, and not for the first time.

“They’re gone during school hours,” the high school freshman told PIX 11 News. “They’ll be out with their pimps and they won’t care.”

Other residents described the scene as a “red light district, similar to Bangkok.”

Elmhurst resident Ramsay Frias told the outlet, “It’s scary that there is no moral compass anymore. It was never perfect when I was growing up, but right now it’s lawless.”

Jalene’s mother Massiel Lugo, a local activist who has previously held rallies on the issue, is calling for more to be done to keep the area safe for young people.

Lugo said: “We understand that these women need money, but they should not be doing this during school hours. We see more and more Latina women engaging in prostitution.”

She has created a petition to win back the community, which has collected more than 1,600 signatures so far.

In June, a branch in Woodside was closed following an undercover police operation. Two women in their sixties were arrested for prostitution.

Neighbors had been calling for its closure for some time, saying there were other brothels operating in the area Jackson Heights Post reports.