Vanessa, thirty-five, had three children with an abusive husband. She “lost her mind, started doing heroin”, after losing the children, who were taken away and given to her mother. The drugs led to homelessness and prostitution. She grew up on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, but now spends her time in Hunts Point, “trying to survive everyday. Just doing whatever it takes”.

A girl holds her brother in her arm as black smoke rises after an oil well set on fire in the center of al-Kayyara town to the south of Daesh terror organization-held Mosul in Iraq on October 25, 2016. The oil well in the center of al-Kayyara town, which was set alight by retreating Daesh militants in advance of the Iraqi army's takeover of the town on August 24, 2016 has still not entirely been put out. The raw petrol which is still alight is creating black clouds above the city. The residents and wildlife beneath this polluting smoke cloud may find their health at risk. The effects of the fire in the town center on unprotected civilians' health can easily be seen on the hands and faces of children playing on the street. (Photo by dris Okuducu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Revelers dressed as Father Frost, the equivalent of Santa Claus, dance during a parade in Almaty December 28, 2014. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov/Reuters)

Secret arrive during the 1st Gaon Chart K-POP Awards at Blue Square on February 22, 2012 in Seoul, South Korea. (Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)

A girl dressed as the Virgin Mary poses for a photo during the Lantern Festival celebrating the eve of the nativity of the Virgin Mary in Ahuchapan, El Salvador September 7, 2016. (Photo by Jose Cabezas/Reuters)

Pilot Robert Johnson, with the Trojan Phlyers Flight Demonstration Team, flies a North American T-28 Trojan above Gary, Indiana, on Thursday, August 8, 2024 ahead of the Chicago Air and Water Show. (Photo by Tess Crowley/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Drag queen Lior Israelov (L), who goes by the stage name Suzi Boum, and his transgender sister Arizona pose for a photo in a studio In Tel Aviv June 3, 2015. While Tel Aviv has become a world-class destination for gay tourism, the holy city of Jerusalem was the scene of an attack by an ultra-Orthodox Jew that killed an Israeli teenager at an annual Gay Pride parade on July 30. The assailant, who called the parade an abomination against God, has been charged with murder. (Photo by Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Piper Hoppe, 10, from Minnetonka, Minnesota, holds a sign at the doorway of River Bluff Dental clinic in protest against the killing of a famous lion in Zimbabwe, in Bloomington, Minnesota July 29, 2015. A Zimbabwean court on Wednesday charged a professional local hunter Theo Bronkhorst with failing to prevent an American from unlawfully killing “Cecil”, the southern African country's best-known lion. The American, Walter James Palmer, a Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to kill the lion, has left Zimbabwe. He says he did kill the animal but believed the hunt was legal and that the necessary permits had been issued. (Photo by Eric Miller/Reuters)