Women Send Words from Prison

Next Thursday Billie becomes a performer, as she reads the testimony of another former inmate and abuse survivor in the one-time-only performance of Any One of Us: Words from Prison: Miami. She'll share the stage with author and performer Eve Ensler, whose Obie-winning play The Vagina Monologues has been translated into 24 languages.

Also onstage will be one of the authorities who ran the prison where Billie stayed, Dr. Laura Bedard, deputy secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections. She'll read alongside Miami-Dade Commissioner Kathy Sorenson, broadcast journalist Hunter Reno, and ex-inmates like herself. But most important, the proceeds from the show will fund the publication of an anthology of testimonies from women like Billie. The books will be given to girls in Florida's juvenile detention centers, 64 percent of whom have been sexually abused.

The con whose most creative act was a planned prison break has a new mission: using her talents to inspire hope.