SPOKANE, Wash. — A once well-known strip club, Deja Vu Showgirls, has been reborn as a center to help victims of sex trafficking.
Helping Captives, a Spokane Valley Christian group that works to help victims of human trafficking, closed a deal to purchase the property in January.
The group received the key to the building Wednesday night.
“We took out one of the stages to kind of build more room. And so, all this has kind of happened in one day,” Caleb Altmeyer, the founder and CEO of Helping Captives, said.
The location became Deja Vu Showgirls in 1989. It closed in recent years and has been abandoned.
Altmeyer claims they spent Thursday working to remove pornographic images on walls, drugs and the strip club stages that were left behind.
The organization estimates it will take one or two years to finish the project.
“The building and the lot… is about $900,000… So, for the next 6 months, we’re really going to focus on just raising the money, and then after that it’s going to have to be completely gutted and fully remodeled,” Altmeyer said.
The building will provide medical, spiritual and emotional care to victims of sex trafficking.
“Now, we’re going to turn this place from a, uniquely enough, a place that exploited women to a place that’s going to heal women that have been exploited. We’re pretty excited about the journey,” Altmeyer said.
