After a Life as a Meth Addict, Stripper, and Dominatrix, Dee Roman Helps Others Escape Similar Fates

When most of us say, “I’ve been bad,” we mean something like: We went off our diet and we didn’t go to the gym. Or, We gossiped about a friend behind her back. Or, We got so involved in our own angst, we didn’t pay enough attention to a child’s, or friend’s, or sibling’s problem. Maybe we overdid some midlife woman’s controlled substance, like Valium or a diet pill. Something like that.

For Dee Roman, 52—a vibrant woman with a bouncy voice who looks (given her history) startlingly fit—“I’ve been bad” means 100 times the “normal” middle-class, midlife woman’s version of that word. Roman was meth-addicted and sex-trafficked; her last boyfriend had tried to kill her six times (once by putting a gun in her mouth); and she had experienced the deaths (by murder, suicide, accident, or illness) of dozens of relatives and friends. “I count 59 deaths,” she says.