Ads from the June 12 Valley Advocate:
“Consenting Adults” proclaims one of the ads above. An odd phrase to apply to a legitimate massage service, but perfectly understandable for a commercial sex business. Smokescreen phrases like these are often employed by defenders of prostitution in attempts to stifle debate. They are not convincing. Studies that show a majority of prostituted women want out, and claims that only “adults” are involved are ever more questionable. S.M. Berg has kindly granted us permission to reprint the following from the anti-pornstitution website, www.Genderberg.com.
News Roundup: Prostituted Women and Girls Getting Younger
Shame of children for sale
February 12, 2006
The Sunday Mail (QLD)
Queensland youth groups say they are helping dozens of children every week who are selling sex to survive. “People are getting younger and younger,” said Kerrie Counihan, head of Cairns group Youth Empowered Towards Independence. “They are 12, 13 and 14. Three years ago it was 15, 16, 17. They’ll give sex to get a bed, to get food, to get attention, clothes, money and drugs.”
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
January 22, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
New York Times
CALCUTTA
Historians will look back in puzzlement at the way our 21st century
world tolerates the slavery of more than a million children in brothels
around the world.
India alone may have half a million children in its brothels, more
than any other country in the world. Visit the brothel district in
almost any city in India, and you can meet 14-year-old girls who have
been kidnapped off the street, or drugged, or offered jobs as maids,
and then sold into a world that they often escape only by dying of
AIDS.
…
All around India and the world, girls are still locked up in
brothels as Geeta was. Indeed, sex trafficking is one problem that
appears to have become worse around the globe, as organized crime,
increased mobility and the rise of markets have turned pubescent flesh
into a tradable international commodity. Moreover, fear of AIDS has nurtured markets for virgins and younger children who customers think are less likely to have H.I.V.
Call for action on complaints
By Brian Hutton
12 January 2006
Belfast Telegraph
Mr McCarthy said there is a continual nightly “rat run” of men of
all ages driving through Alfred Street, Adelaide Street and Linen Hall
Street in search of sex.
“If you drive around any night you will see the prostitutes. There are about 20 or 30 on any given night and they are getting younger,” he said.
“You can also see cars with pimps in them. They (the prostitutes) are being controlled – it’s not freelance.”
Israeli Project Aids Teens, Young Prostitutes
By Brenda Gazzar – WeNews correspondent
January 6, 2006
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2588
TEL AVIV, Israel (WOMENSENEWS)
The average age a youth in Israel starts to engage in prostitution is 11 or 12, Fridman said.
But Kadman of the National Council for the Child, a Jerusalem-based
lobbying group, says he believes that a deteriorating economy,
government cuts in social services for children and youth, and the
availability of pornographic materials that seem to legitimize sex with
children are significant reasons for the situation in Israel.
It is also not surprising that
pre-teens are involved in prostitution since in recent years, children
can be found on the streets at a younger age and have sexual relations sooner, experts say.
By Dave Wedge
Boston Herald
Thursday, November 17, 2005
“We’re seeing a trend now – it’s a lot easier to sell girls than it
is to sell drugs,” said Boston police Sgt. Detective Kelley O’Connell.
“Because they’re normally getting shot over drug turf, not over putting
a girl on the street. But now we’re seeing pimps fighting over girls
and gunplay.”
O’Connell said Boston street gangs are more frequently getting
involved in underage prostitution to supplement – and sometimes replace
– drug running. Last month, Dorchester pimp Bertrand “Jungle” Scully
was given 10 years in prison after a jury found him guilty of shooting
an associate of a rival pimp. The motive for the shooting: The rival
lured a 17-year-old hooker away from Scully, prosecutors said.
“We’re seeing a trend of younger
recruitment with regards to teen prostitution,” O’Connell said. Pimps
troll MBTA stations and Internet chat rooms in search of girls as young
as 12 to add to their stables, she added.
Young Lives for Sale
Why more kids are getting into the sex trade–and how the feds are fighting back
By Bay Fang
U.S. News and World Report
10/24/05
Thousands of young girls and boys are falling victim to violent
pimps, who move them from state to state, which makes it a federal
matter. The younger they are, the more they’re worth on the street. “There is a greater and greater demand for younger and younger kids,”
says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children. “America doesn’t look. People are shocked and
horrified when they hear these girls’ stories. They say, ‘That doesn’t
happen here. It happens in Thailand. Or the Philippines.’ But once you
start shining a light on it, you find it everywhere.”
On the “strolls” of Sunset Boulevard and Figueroa, in South-Central
Los Angeles, girls step out from the shadows in tiny skirts and
stiletto heels. Detective Keith Haight sizes them up. He doesn’t bother
stopping unless they look underage, but it’s hard to tell nowadays. Haight
has been working these streets for 25 years and has seen the girls
getting younger. This drop in age is due both to the rise of the
Internet, which provides ready access to child pornography, and to the
fear of HIV/AIDS. “Back then, if you found a 15- or 16-year-old, that
was a big deal. But now, they’re 11 or 12,” he says.
“The average life expectancy of a child after getting into
prostitution,” says Johnson, citing homicide or HIV/AIDS as the main
causes of death, “is seven years.” Tom O’Brien, the criminal division
chief of the Los Angeles U.S. attorney’s office, describes a
conversation he had with one 14-year-old prostitute who was testifying
against her pimp. “I told her, ‘When I was your age, I thought I’d live
forever.’ She looked me in the eye and said, ‘Mr. O’Brien, I’ll be dead
before I’m 21.'”
TURKMENISTAN: Prostitution on the rise
05 Sep 2005 17:56:20 GMT
Source: IRIN
ANKARA, 5 September (IRIN) – Poverty remains the driving-force
behind rising levels of prostitution in the energy-rich state of
Turkmenistan, where upwards of 44 percent of the country’s population
reportedly lives on less than US $2 per day.
“For a certain part of the female population who are unemployed,
prostitution is the only means to provide for themselves and their
families,” Farid Tuhbatulin, chairman of the Turkmen Initiative for
Human Rights group (TI), said. “Never
before have so many women and even under-age schoolgirls worked the
streets or gathered in special places, offering sexual services.”
“There is an unprecedented situation in Turkmenistan when [some]
husbands, fathers and brothers push their wives, daughters and sisters
into illegal ways, including prostitution, because they don’t have a
job and means to get by,” Tajigul Begmedova, head of the Turkmen
Helsinki Foundation (THF), said from the Bulgarian city of Varna.
After Vick’s death, prostitution again sullies streets
BY RUBÉN ROSARIO
Posted on Thu, Aug. 18, 2005
Pioneer Press
The street flesh trade in the Saintly City is way up this summer,
say those in the know. The number of “Johns” getting busted is
virtually nonexistent.
Blame the Vick effect.
“It’s crazy out there again, and I’m convinced it’s because he’s no
longer around,” says Vednita Carter, who runs Breaking Free, a St.
Paul-based program that tries to get prostitutes in the Twin Cities
area off the streets and back on the right track.
Carter is referring to the late St. Paul police Sgt. Gerald Vick.
The 15-year police veteran and vice unit supervisor who was fatally
gunned down after a May 6 encounter with two men outside a Dayton’s
Bluff bar.
“We’re noticing a lot more younger girls on the streets, and also it’s become more open,”
says Timothy Smith, 40, one of half dozen Breaking Free outreach
workers who troll the streets daily and nightly in pairs. “There are
kids out there 13, 15, junior and high school age that are out
there, looking for action or for a pimp.”
“We have received reports from patrol officers about increased activity,” says St. Paul police spokesman Paul Schnell.
MINORS ARE PROSTITUTED IN FARM LABOR CAMPS IN SAN DIEGO
El Universal (The Universal Newspaper)
Anabel Hernandez (Third and final part of a series)
January 11, 2003
This is hell… virtual fields on fire. “When I came here, in one
hour I counted that one little girl had been with 35 men, one after the
other. She just lifted her skirt. It is just vaginal masturbation,”
notes Patricia.
“The girls that I saw that time [in the fields] were very young,
they were not over 14 years old. they had been sold a lot to ‘los
gringos’ (American men).”
The ages of the girls that are
brought here are younger as time goes on, now from nine and ten years
old. “I once saw a seven year old girl. What was a seven year
old girl doing in a place of prostitution? She wasn’t anyone’s
daughter, they were using her,” recalls the doctor in her desperation.
We are talking about defenseless persons, who have tragic histories
behind them. They live in a condition of post-traumatic stress
syndrome, and in that condition they cede all authority to their
victimizers.
CHILD PORN AMONG FASTEST GROWING INTERNET BUSINESSES
Since 1997, the number of child pornography images on the Internet
is estimated to have increased by 1500%.3 NCMEC’s congressionally
mandated CyberTipline received 21,603 reports of child pornography in
2001, and in 2004 it received 106,176 reports – a 491% increase over a
four-year period.
It is estimated that 20% of all pornography on the Internet involves children. “Traditionally,
we have viewed pedophiles as the users and distributors of child
pornography,” said Allen. “However, we are shocked to learn that the
consumer market for child pornography is growing and becoming much
broader. Younger and younger children are being victimized, and the
content is becoming more graphic and more violent.”
Sex Trade / Trafficking interview
http://www.videodocument.org/uganda/files/HealthDialogue/sextrade.html
Solome Mukisa:
Sometimes I talk with the prostitutes, and they say that when you do
not use a condom, you are paid more. And if I am going to earn money, I
will want to earn a little more. So very often they will not use the
condom. This gentleman is sick. He is already rejected by the wife
because she knows there is a problem … Its terrible. It’s terrible
because some of the prostitutes we have are very young. As young as 14.
They cannot make a decision. They don’t even know that AIDS kills. They
are not informed. They are out there to make money. So I am sure that
if there is any growth in AIDS, it is more with the prostitutes.
Yevette Hockburg: And
now they are getting even younger children. They say they are virgin,
so they are safe. They are getting little girls, even as young as 8
years old.
Solome Mukisa: Exactly.
Yvette Hockburg: In many countries around the world.
Underage prostitution reaching crisis level on streets of Oakland
The Oakland Tribune
June 7, 2005
THE YOUNGEST girl arrested in a prostitution sting last week was
12. Just 12 years old. That’s an age associated with dolls and
jump-ropes, not johns and pimps.
In recent years, the number of underage prostitutes on Oakland’s streets has increased steadily.
In the last 18 months, it has exploded. City officials say last year
211 underage girls were arrested. This year isn’t even half over, and
more than 300 have been arrested.
“It’s a geographic epidemic,” said Nola Brantley, director of
parenting and youth enrichment for the George Scotlan Youth Center in
West Oakland. “The numbers are growing, and the girls are younger and
younger. A few years ago we saw girls in the older end of junior high
school age. Now we’re seeing girls entering junior high school.
Twelve-year-olds are giving strangers (oral sex) for $3.”
“It’s normal for young girls in the city,” she said. “They’re not
embarrassed to tell their friends they’ve worked as a prostitute. To
them it is part of normal culture. It is so rampant. The models are
everywhere.”
Trafficking in U.S. serious, experts say
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050609-020153-8400r.htm
By Angela Woodall
UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Washington, DC, Jun. 9 (UPI)
And they are getting younger. Frank Barnaba, who runs the Paul and
Lisa Program, an outreach program for sexually exploited youth, said
that in 1990 most underage
prostitutes that came to the program were about 16. Now he sees them as
young as 9 years old. Most often their age is between 11-14, according to the FBI and other agencies.
Delivered by: Judge Nimfa Cuesta Vilches at the 4th World Congress
on Family Law and Children’s Rights 20-23 March, 2005, Cape Town, South
Africa
In Colombia and Ethiopia, the abduction of women and children for
trafficking is common, while women and girls from orphanages, abused in
their childhood and coming from dysfunctional families are high-risk
ones in Romania. In Bulgaria, most victims of trafficking are between
15-21 years of age and are still schoolgirls or girls with only primary
education. United Kingdom police confirm that the girls are getting progressively younger, mostly 13 years old in Korea.
[not prostitution, but related]
Reported sexual abuse of children surges in Japan: survey
Source: Agence France-Presse
TOKYO, May 12= Reported sexual assaults of children have surged 70
percent over the past decade in Japan, according to a newspaper poll
published Thursday.
Police received 2,607 reports of
rape or other sexual assaults on children aged 15 or younger in 2004
compared with 1,503 cases in a similar compilation done by police for
1994.
Japan has gradually been stepping up enforcement of laws to protect
children from sexual exploitation after a string of bad publicity in a
country where the age of consent is 13.
Story by JENIFER B. McKIM
The Orange County Register
March 12, 2006
In Orange County, a growing number of girls like Hanna are being picked up for prostitution,
county data show. Nearly 200 girls have been referred to probation for
prostitution-related charges since 2001, the Orange County Probation
Department says.
The girls are getting younger, dropping in average age from 17 in 2001 to just past their 16th birthday last year. The youngest was not yet 12.
Misery of Greece’s sexual slave trade
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=268461
Mail and Guardian online
Christine Pirovolakis | Athens, Greece
05 April 2006
Prostitution is legal in Greece. -sam
While the number of trafficked woman in Greece has dropped in recent years, the number of trafficked children from neighbouring Albania, many under the age of 13, is on the rise.
“What we are seeing now is that there are more children, 12, 13 and 14 years of age, on the streets,
but the government and the Greek population do not want to see that
they have a big problem on their hands,” says Konstandis Kabourakis, a
doctor with ACT UP.
Bella English
Boston Globe
June 21, 2006
The impetus for the change is that prostitutes are getting younger.
When Leora Joseph agreed to manage teen prostitution cases for the
Suffolk County district attorney’s office, she thought she’d get a
couple of cases a year. Instead, there are about 100 blue folders in
cabinets or on the office floor. “Until a year and a half ago, DSS
would rarely send us these cases because they were worried we would
prosecute these girls,” says Joseph, who is in charge of child abuse
cases for the DA’s office. “Now that we’re all working together, they
send us so many, I’m beyond buried.”
Not only are there more girls, they’re also younger than ever.
Because of the Internet, pedophiles have easy access to child
pornography and escort sites, and johns believe that young girls are
less likely to carry diseases. The pimps are happy to comply; the
younger they are, the more money they bring in.
Olinka Briceno, director of an
outreach program for at-risk girls, has seen the age drop over the
years she has been at A Way Back, a project of Roxbury Youthworks. “I’ve seen over 120 girls, and they just keep getting younger.” Four
years ago, the average age was 15 or 16; now the girls are 12, 13, or
14. “The youngest we had was 11…”
KENYA: Booming tourism boosts juvenile sex trade
MALINDI, 17 July (IRIN) – Sixteen-year-old Judy (not her real name)
sits in a nightclub sipping beer with two other girls in this coastal
resort town popular with foreign tourists thanks to its numerous beach
hotels and villas.
She is one of a rising number of under-age girls who have taken to commercial sex due to poverty or the allure of easy money from tourists.
“Now there are so many children in the [night] clubs and the wazungu [white men] are only interested in them.
Competition is stiff especially during the low season [the months
preceding the European summer when tourist numbers are low],” she said.
“These kids ask for peanuts.”
Kenya earned US $648 million from tourism in 2005, a 15 percent
increase on the previous year, according to the Kenya Tourism Board,
which put the total international visitor arrivals at 1.7 million, 21.4
percent higher than in 2004.
Seems to be no stop to teen prostitution
Sunday, July 23, 2006
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fd20060723t2.html
Yet even though the plight of girls like Eri has received a barrage
of attention in recent years, it seems the enjo-kosai problem has
gotten worse rather than better, Friday discovers.
“The ages of people doing it are always getting lower, with an increase in the number of junior-high schoolers,”
says a tout who has worked Shibuya’s streets for years. “But what’s
more, there are a lot more regular girls . . . from good schools on the
game.”
Kenya: Parents Accused of Luring Girls Into Prostitution
http://allafrica.com/stories/200608070962.html
“Parents, especially mothers, have not supported programmes aimed at promoting education among girls,” said Tankille.
He said cases of rape, child prostitution and school drop out were rising.
As a result, the district is experiencing one of the highest girl
school dropout rates, and poor performance in national examinations, in
the country.
Most of the affected girls are between 12 and 15 years old.
Keiyo District Commissioner Mabeya Mogaka on Sunday said they were
also investigating claims that nine girls from one secondary school
were pregnant. Already, 18 girls from four primary schools have been
confirmed pregnant.
INDIA: Police crack down on prostitution in Agra
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1924487.cms
More and more girls, some still infants, are being groomed to become prostitutes in the Taj Mahal city of Agra.
The innocent girls, brought here from other parts of northern
India, are being allegedly injected hormones to induce puberty. Some
are being registered in schools with names of strangers as their
mothers.
Medical tests conducted on girls freed from the clutches of women
who claimed to be their mothers revealed that they were not blood
related.
One such woman, Reshma, claimed that the girls taken from her
custody were her daughters. The police got her examined at the
Government Women’s Hospital here where a doctor, Neeta Kulshrshtra,
ruled that Reshma had never given birth to any child.
The girls had been tutored to say that Reshma was their mother.
Girls of 11 fund drug habits as prostitutes
Islington Gazette
In 1999 the focus shifted to girls, aged 11 to 18, who are at risk of being sexually exploited.
But just a few years on, project manager Gloria Stott has told of a
worrying development which has seen the project come under increasing
pressure to accept girls as young as eight.
She said: “The age of the girls we are able to work with remains
constant however there does seem to be a worrying shift in terms of increasingly younger girls coming to our attention.
“This is forcing us to re-think the way we deliver some of our
services because what is appropriate for a 15-year-old girl will not be
appropriate for an eight-year-old.”
I got this one from Twisty’s blog.
Cops: More teenage girls becoming prostitutes
http://www.insidebayarea.com/trivalleyherald/localnews/ci_4392588
As the unit attempts to crack down on the problem, it has come
across a troubling trend: More than ever, detectives are finding
teenage girls — some as young as 13 — on the streets selling their
bodies for profit.
“The more operations we do, were finding more and more young girls out there.”
Montreal Gazette
November 07, 2006
As a backdrop to sentencing arguments for Alain Jean-Pierre, 31, a
métro police officer convicted of living off the avails of
prostitution, Det.-Sgt. Dominic Monchamp painted a picture of a
burgeoning business in escort agencies, massage parlours, strip clubs
and pornographic movies.
He said his specialized squad, set up in 2002 with 15 full-time
investigators, has since been reduced to eight members for the entire
province despite the rise of exploitation of increasingly younger girls.
International Child Sex Trafficking — Ravaged Innocence
Matthew Robb, MSW, LCSW-C
Social Work Today
http://www.socialworktoday.com/archive/swsept2006p22.shtml
According to Norma Hotaling, executive director of San
Francisco-based SAGE Project, brothels are routinely staffed with
children aged 12 to 16, but customers can procure them as young as the
age of 5. Improved air and road
travel in developed countries eases the Western sex tourist passage
into the most remote “brothel villages” of southeast Asia and Central
America. There, aid workers have noted increasing demand for younger
and younger girls. Staff reports are replete with instances of
Japanese businessmen soliciting oral sex from girls as young as age 5
and engaging in intercourse with 10-year-olds.
“Remember,” Hotaling says, “this is a $52 billion worldwide annual industry run by organized crime. As demand increases for children, so too does the need for supply. It feeds on itself like a wildfire.
Hotaling cites a recent Frontline (National Public Radio) broadcast
that identified the world’s four major receiving countries of
trafficked women. “All have legalized prostitution,” she says. Noting
that child sex workers are especially prized by customers, she contends that prostitution and pornography are quintessentially antichild, antiwoman, and antisociety.
Smith agrees. She says studies demonstrate a clear link between prostitution and pornography, and the demand for younger children. Her organization’s own investigation shows that children are featured in at least one in five online pornographic images.
Asian Week, Jan 12, 2007
Oakland Vice Mayor Jean Quan, when she joined the council four years ago, said the issue was “under the surface.”
“This year, we [were heading] toward over 600 arrests of girls
under 18,” she said. “We didn’t know [how big the picture was]. We had
a woman come in from the Asian [Health] Clinic a year ago who said, ‘We
couldn’t figure out why these girls had so many
sexually transmitted diseases, and we figured it out that these girls are working as prostitutes.’”
“What’s troubling is that the
girls are younger and younger,” said Quan. “The girls that are targeted
now are between 13 and 15 years old.”
Lower Nob Hill new magnet for prostitutes
The Examiner, Eleni Economides
Feb 15, 2007
San Francisco
The City’s prostitutes are getting younger
and the pimps and johns are getting more knowledgeable about using
technology to avoid the law, according to activists and officials
working to reduce the sex trade.
UK Northampton news
Daniel Owens
The number of girls illegally trafficked into Britain in recent years is believed to have exploded.
Sam Benfield, spokeswoman for the Sex Workers Around Northampton
(SWAN) project, said: “Historically, we have had cases of underage
girls working as prostitutes in Northampton and we have had cases of
trafficked women. In the past few years we have seen girls as young as 14 working on the streets.”
The 13-year-old Prostitute
http://nymag.com/news/features/30018/
“Let me tell you,” he said. “I’m a pimp, and you’re a ho.” “What do
you mean I’m a ho?” she asked. She knew the word only as an insult, as
in, you’re nasty. “No,” he said. “You’re a moneymaking ho.” “Is that
good?” she asked. “Yeah,” he told her. “That’s good.” She was 13 years
old.
And according to state law, she is a victim, yes—of statutory rape,
since the legal age of consent in New York is 17. But since the rapist
paid money for the privilege, she’s also a criminal, subject to arrest,
prosecution, and incarceration, no matter how young she is. And
the prostitutes are getting younger. The consensus among the police
officers, juvenile-rights lawyers, and prosecutors on the front lines
is that more and more are entering the life as young as 12 years old.
(PDF)
Boston Sunday Herald
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Pimps are known to troll Downtown Crossing, MBTA stations and malls
looking for vulnerable girls, Bridge counselor Anneli Strandberg wrote
in a memo. Some pimps pose as modeling agency scouts or simply claim
they are looking for a girlfriend.
“The average age of teen
prostitutes (has) dropped from 16 to 13 and pimps are bodly advertising
their escort services on Web sites such as craigslist,” Strandberg said.
Sierra Leone: Prostitution Now a Concern in Kenema
http://allafrica.com/stories/200706060854.html
Concord Times (Freetown)
Mohamed Massaquoi
6 June 2007
I loathe the first sentence
blaming teen girls for the prostitution increase instead of men
increasingly seeking young girls, and what’s this “CSW” shit replacing
the remotely human term “sex worker”?. -sam
The high number of teenage girls
posing as Commercial Sex Workers (CSW) in Kenema district has increased
the rate of prostitution in the township and has become the latest concern to be expressed by residents.
CSW could be easily noticed along ‘How For Do Lorry Park.’ Identified as Aminata Conteh for this publication, a 13-year old girl
disclosed to Concord Times she and her colleagues traveled from
Freetown, Lungi and Bo to Kenema to sell their bodies in return for
financial reward.
“We are getting more customers as our clients prefer sleeping with teenagers,” she disclosed, adding that her parents forced her into the trade at this early age.
“My mother asked me out of our family house in Freetown. I was left
with no option but to join my colleagues do prostitution. Kenema is one
of the areas we are making a lot of money,” she said.
Conteh said they are not happy with their current status but they don’t have any means to make their living.
131 arrests in child prostitution sting
By Angela Woodall
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_6394466
MEDIANEWS STAFF (San Jose Mercury News)
July 17, 2007
OAKLAND — More than souvenirs and overpriced beer was being sold
at the 2007 All-Star game in San Francisco last week. Like other large
sporting events, the playoff game was a magnet for pimps and their
increasingly underage prostitutes.
The age of prostitutes is
dropping, while the number of sexually exploited girls and boys is
rising — most between the ages of 11 and 14, experts said at a news conference Monday announcing the results of the sting.
The youngest children bring in the most money and business, said
Lt. Kevin Wiley, who led the sting for the Oakland Police Department.
Since 2002, the number of sexually exploited minors in Northern
California has tripled, according to Assemblyman Sandre Swanson,
D-Oakland.
Lust for minors growing in India, says survey
Hindustan Times
October 3, 2007
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=8f44ac77-4428-42f3-ae17-6f446539e3f8
Lewis said that a recent study of trafficked women in Nepal to
India had revealed that there is an increased demand for younger women.
In 1980s, women between 14-16 were preferred, then the age in 1990s went down to 10-14 and now it is even less than 10 years.
Study of trafficked women in Nepal showed that 60 per cent of
positive HIV cases were of girls below the age of 15. And, all of them
had got the disease from their male clients going for unprotected sex
because the kids are not in a position to protest.
The Child Porn Pipeline
A child victim’s story of betrayal and despair
By Lou Michel
The Buffalo News
10/15/07
[Link to series in The Buffalo News]
A majority of the children are under 13 years old and increasingly
include toddlers and infants. “We are seeing younger and younger
[victims],” Lear said. “It’s every age kid you could imagine. Very
brutal. That’s very common now.”
“These guys are raping infants and toddlers,” said Flint Waters, an
investigator with the federal Internet Crimes Against Children Task
Force. “You can hear the child crying, pleading for help in the video.
It is horrendous.”
Subcategory: pimps getting younger
Police say teen pimp lures girls into illegal sex in Dallas
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
By REBECCA LOPEZ / WFAA-TV
Investigators said the 13-year-old lured other girls to Club Metropolis, enticing them with the promise of money and even forcing some of them to dance and sell their bodies for sex.
Police estimate there are hundreds of teenage prostitutes on the streets of Dallas because there is a big demand. Recently, they found a 12-year-old girl dancing naked at a nightclub.
Police
said the young girls aren’t acting alone. They say some of the same
people who are pimping out the adult prostitutes are the same ones
exploiting young girls.
A horrible achievement
Atlanta’s child prostitution business is booming
http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/a_horrible_achievement/Content?oid=66047
Published 04.26.06
By John F. Sugg
According to the FBI, Atlanta is among 14 cities vying for child prostitution capital of America.
Even
more disturbing for Espy was finding a photo of a girl no older than 5,
posed for prostitution. “We still don’t know who she was,” Espy says.
About a dozen girls each month go through the Atlanta juvenile court system as victims of sexual exploitation. Typically, they’re 10 to 14 years old, and the average age is getting younger.
“The men prefer children because they often think there’s less chance of disease,” says Emmett. “That’s not the case.”
The age of entry is going down nationally, as Denver demonstrates with it’s younger-than-averageness that won’t be for long.
Prostitute Numbers Expected to Jump During DNC
J. C. OConnell, Colorado Confidential on April 15, 2008
Women in Denver typically enter prostitution at the age of 11 or 12, slightly younger than the national average, Sharp said.
Software tracks child porn traffickers online
By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-04-15-childporn-side_N.htm
Bell says child porn has become more graphic, involving ever younger children. “Five years ago, I never saw babies,”
he says, and now there are “baby rape rooms” and videos of newborns. He
says traffickers are savvier, too, using more encryption and new ways
to distribute it, including cellphones.
Surprise pimp, associates sentenced to prison
by Brent Whiting – Apr. 4, 2008
The Arizona Republic
In
Hill’s case, Phoenix investigators said they identified at least three
girls, ages 14 to 17, they believe he used as child prostitutes.
Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas said such cases “speak to a tragic trend of pimps seeking younger and younger girls to engage in acts of prostitution.”
It also speaks to some elements of pop culture that glamorize prostitution, he said.
Oakland pimps prey on youth
By Kamika Dunlap and Barbara Grady, Apr 21, 2008
http://www.mercurynews.com/crime/ci_8995639
The
Internet and cell phones also made it easier for pimps to prey on
children. And social workers say even popular culture plays a role. The
glorification of sex and pimping in music and fashion sends a message
the lifestyle is OK.
Now the children are younger than ever before, and the problem is bigger than anyone imagined.
Pimps
can earn more for younger, healthier and prettier girls. Girls age 11
and 12 can earn as much as $500 a day for their pimps, police say.
See also:
Child Prostitution: The Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children
Country by country reports focused on CSEC, commercial sexual exploitation of children, teenage and underage prostitution, forced prostitution, and sex with children in general.
New York Times: “The Girls Next Door”; Worldwide Sex Trafficking; Role of
Porn
If anything, the women I talked to said that the sex in the U.S. is
even rougher than what the girls face on Calle Santo Tomas. Rosario, a
woman I met in Mexico City, who had been trafficked to New York and
held captive for a number of years, said: ”In America we had ‘special
jobs.’ Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more
adventurous, harder.” She said that she believed younger foreign girls
were in demand in the U.S. because of an increased appetite for more
aggressive, dangerous sex. Traffickers need younger and younger girls,
she suggested, simply because they are more pliable. In Eastern Europe,
too, the typical age of sex-trafficking victims is plummeting;
according to Matei of Reaching Out, while most girls used to be in
their late teens and 20’s, 13-year-olds are now far from unusual.
Salon: Atlanta’s underage sex trade
The
problem isn’t restricted to so-called Hotlanta; Herbert notes,
dispiritedly, that “the overall market for sex with kids is booming in
many parts of the U.S.” But the city’s role as a convention and travel
hub has given it a particular boost. And advocates say that the
prevailing preference for ever-younger prostitutes — fueled by “the
cultural emphasis on the sexual appeal of very young women and girls”
and “the widely held belief among johns that there is less risk of
contracting a disease from younger prostitutes” — has pimps and sex
traffickers recruiting more at-risk kids than ever before.
Gloria Steinem at Smith: Cooperation, Not Domination
…there
are more slaves in proportion to the world’s population–more people
held by force or coercion without benefit from their work–more now
than there were in the 1800s. Sex trafficking, labor trafficking,
children and adults forced into armies: they all add up to a global
human-trafficking industry that is more profitable than the arms trade,
and second only to the drug trade. The big difference now from the
1800s is that the United Nations estimates that 80% of those who are
enslaved are women and children…
Diane Sawyer Special Examines Prostitution in America; Challenge the
Valley Advocate “Rat King”
Escort Prostitution: A Response to Tom Vannah, Editor of the Valley
Advocate
Orlando Weekly Drops Adult-Services Ads in Wake of Police Sting; “Operation
Weekly Shame”
“New York Press No Longer Marketing Arm for
Prostitution/Trafficking”
Another Victory for NOW-NYC: New York Magazine Drops Sex Ads
Prostitution: Factsheet on Human Rights Violations
The average age of entry into prostitution is 13
years (M.H. Silbert and A.M. Pines, 1982, “Victimization of street
prostitutes, Victimology: An International Journal, 7: 122-133) or 14
years (D.Kelly Weisberg, 1985, Children of the Night: A Study of
Adolescent Prostitution, Lexington, Mass, Toronto). Most of these 13 or
14 year old girls were recruited or coerced into prostitution. Others
were “traditional wives” without job skills who escaped from or were
abandoned by abusive husbands and went into prostitution to support
themselves and their children. (Denise Gamache and Evelina Giobbe,
Prostitution: Oppression Disguised as Liberation, National Coalition
against Domestic Violence, 1990)
…Describing the trauma of prostitution, and its
consequences, one fourteen year old stated: “You feel like a piece of
hamburger meat — all chopped up and barely holding together” (D.
Kelly Weisberg, 1985, Children of the Night, Lexington Books, Toronto).
Prostitution Research & Education: How Prostitution Works
Real
sexual relationships are not hard to find. There are plenty of adults
of both sexes who are willing to have sex if someone treats them well,
and asks. But there lies the problem. Some people do not want an equal,
sharing relationship. They do not want to be nice. They do not want to
ask. They like the power involved in buying a human being who can be
made to do almost anything…
Testimony in Minneapolis: Prostitutes Blackmailed with Porn
Another
way that pornography plays a part in the lives of my clients is that as
young women, very young women, some as young as eleven, they want the
good things that they see on TV, and they see taking part in nude
modeling, taking part in movies–pornographic movies–as a way to be a
star, get to Hollywood. Now, this may seem foolish to those of you who
are adults and say ha ha, we know that is wrong. We are talking about
children who are very naive and are told that Marilyn Monroe made it
this way, Brooke Shields made a movie about Pretty Baby. You have been
there baby, you can do it.
On sale at Tesco: Kiddie Stripper Pole
Realities of Teen Prostitution Mock Notions of ‘Sex Work’, ‘Sex-Positive’, ‘Freedom’ and ‘Empowerment’; Media Glamorizes Pimps
Advocates for ‘sex work’ say it is or should be about free choice and
the empowerment of women. They claim that if prostitutes have troubled
lives, this stems from the fact that many (unenlightened) people find
prostitution offensive and the government doesn’t care enough about
prostitutes’ working conditions, rather than anything inherent in
exchanging sex for money or the common power differences between
prostitutes vs. pimps and johns. They ignore the fact that a large
proportion of prostitutes begin when they are underage…
The U.S. Department of Justice estimates that between 100,000 and 3
million American kids under age 18 are involved in prostitution and
they’re often targeted by sexual predators…
“They move them to evade detection,” says Ernie Allen, president and
chief executive officer of the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children, in Alexandria, Va…
Pimps are criminals, but often depicted in a glamorous way in movies
like “Hustle and Flow,” in music videos, and in national magazines.
For
example, in the Dec. 16, 2006 issue of Rolling Stone magazine, rapper
Snoop Dogg was featured on the cover with the headline, “At Home With
America’s Most Lovable Pimp.”
“I think in the last couple years we’ve seen a real increase in the
glorification of pimp culture,” Lloyd says. “Girls growing up now, and
boys too, are beginning to see this as cute and sexy or glamorous and
not really understanding the realities of the sex industry…”
“What
you see in the movies, what you see on TV — it’s not like that,” Sara
says. “They don’t tell you the part about the rapes. They don’t tell
you about getting beat up. They don’t tell you that you might die every
day.”
…an estimated 80 to 95 percent of child prostitutes have a history of sexual abuse…