JC's Girls, described as "a biblically based Christian ministry," was formed by Heather Veitch, a former stripper and nude dancer at various Las Vegas clubs and several Californian cities, who launched the project after a friend she had worked with at Club 215 Showgirls in Colton, Calif., died from the effects of alcoholism.
The JC’s Girls website has been a big hit among adult actresses and men addicted to adult content, toward whom the site is geared. Launched in August, the website has received over 40,000 hits since that time, encouraging many strippers to begin attending church. Veitch said adult stars and men alike continue contacting the group via its website, crediting the site’s creators with helping them discover Christianity and change their lives.
"Even though I had moved on and created this perfect Christian world for myself, a lot of people I cared about had not," said Veitch, 31, who has two children aged four and 13. "They were alone and dying,” she said. “My friend was angry and bitter and never had a chance to know that what she had done in her life could be forgiven. I knew I had to go back into the clubs and talk to strippers about God. There is nothing that they have ever done that God will not forgive them for."
Veitch, who became a Christian six years ago and currently works as a hairdresser, approached her pastor, Matt Brown, of Sandals Church in Riverside, Calif., and discussed setting up a group to visit strip clubs.
Brown helped her to form Matthew's House, which is promoted as a ministry that helps people working in or addicted to the sex industry.
“What we hope is that an adult performer could come to our church and then start a relationship with God and have him guide you through your life and have him tell you what you should and shouldn’t do,” Veitch said.
Veitch added that while she was working as a stripper with a self-proclaimed “drink problem and out of control lifestyle,” she felt too intimidated to visit churches.
"I thought, if it's like that for dancers, it must be a lot worse for porn stars. So we developed the website to reach out to them,” Veitch said.
The site borrows content from the glamour industry such as glamorous photographs taken by a porn film director of the three women behind JC's Girls, including teachers Lori Albee and Tanya Huerter, who grew up in Christian homes. Veitch said the photographs are intended to show sex workers that being a Christian is not the equivalent of "being locked up in a house with a Bible."
"It is not a sin to be attractive or dress cute," Veitch said, adding that most of the feedback she’s received has been positive and encouraging.
"I thought the girls would not listen to me,” Albee added, regarding her first “mission” visit to a strip club. “But when I spoke to one of the dancers, she told me, 'I can't tell you how many times I wanted to go into a church but thought I would feel like a pariah.' She had tears in her eyes."
Veitch added that her “main hope in this ministry is to let people know that there has never been anything that they have done that God would not forgive them for if they asked him with a sincere heart.”