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. The year-old wants to focus on improving opportunities for women, a significant challenge in a country where about 35 percent of households are led by single mothers in poverty. She plans to introduce legislation that would prohibit discrimination against specific groups considered vulnerable, including LGBT, sex workers, people with AIDS and the elderly.
The walls of her office are adorned with diplomas and posters from international conferences dealing with sex work. Activists say the significance of her election transcends her relatively minor legislative position because she will be a powerful voice for largely unrepresented people.
Others see her elevation as a sign of social progress. By some estimates, there are , Dominicans selling sex in the country of 10 million or abroad. It is illegal to operate a brothel or sell the services of someone else, but enforcement is sporadic. Montero, repeating her oft-told life story, grew up poor in a foster family where she was sexually abused by a male relative. She says she began working as a prostitute in Santo Domingo while still a teen after her abusive husband left her alone with a young child she could not support.
She had worked as a prostitute for a decade before then. Montero became politically active through her visits to a clinic that specialized in providing services to sex workers and or people with HIV. That experience continues to feed her belief that prostitutes should receive the same benefits as anyone else in the Dominican Republic.
Today, Montero still lives in a poor district of Haina. She has three of her own children and has adopted 12 children of prostitutes who she says might otherwise have been aborted. She is a deeply religious person who refers to God frequently in her speech and earned a degree in theology from Universidad Cristiana in She was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, later became a Mormon and now identifies simply as Christian. She had already become well known as an activist, sparring in the media with religious and political leaders.
