Lost Childhoods: Child Prostitution in America

Lost Childhoods: Child Prostitution in America

“Jane” was 14 when she started. Others were as young as 12 and 13. No, they weren’t necessarily cutting class, sneaking out at night, breaking into their parents’ liquor cabinets, or getting too familiar with boyfriends, although they may have done all that. “Jane” and thousands of other young girls were and are employed as child prostitutes.

Their stories are disturbingly similar.

“Jane” was sent to day care where she was molested at four. Her mother was a junkie so she went to live with her pothead father whose roomie sexually abused her after which her dad rejected her. She then went to live with a woman, a family “friend,” who forced her to sell drugs and prostitute herself. She met a 36 year old man in Seattle who befriended her, promised her “a better life,” took her to Portland where he beat her until she agreed to work the streets.

An unusual, exceptional case? Not quite, unless one considers 100,000 to 1.6 million child hookers in America are unusual exceptions.

Those are the estimates of various analysts, the number disparity attributable to the secretiveness of those in the sex trade: “Sex trafficking is so widespread, said Nathan Wilson, founder of the Project Meridian Foundation in Arlington, which helps police identify traffickers and their victims, that ‘no country, no race, no religion, no class and no child is immune.’ He said 1.6 million children younger than 18–native and foreign-born–have been caught up in this country’s sex trade:” http://bit.ly/hRO72D

Americans dismiss those numbers at their and their childrens’ peril.

In a sense, it may be reassuring to discount horror stories involving Planned Parenthood such as PP employees and managers advising pimps on how to conduct their shild prostitution rings and on how to get std checks and abortions since their under-age sex slaves were foreigners, but far from all child prostitutes in America are foreign born.

. “Tysheena” was molested by a relative at 12, . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=4323)