Young Lives For Sale
Why more kids are getting into the sex trade--and how the feds are fighting back
LOS ANGELES--Kristie was 13 when she met the first of her four "daddies." She had run away from home in the Southwest, and friends introduced her to a tall, good-looking man, who said the red-haired teenager was sexy and had potential. Pretty soon, he had her prostituting herself on the streets of Las Vegas--and then Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Phoenix. She and her "wifies," the other girls working under the same pimp, most of whom were also in their teens, would be brought to a city, work from 7 p.m. until sunrise, then move on. The now 15-year-old (who, like the other girls, doesn't want her real name used) stopped only after she was arrested, in July. From the beginning of the year until then, she estimates, she had over 100 sex partners--but she had long since stopped counting.
The trafficking in children for sex was once thought to be a problem beyond America's borders. But the FBI and the Justice Department have now started focusing intently on the issue--and what they've found is shocking. 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."
Getting serious. Two years ago, the FBI and the Justice Department launched something called the Innocence Lost initiative. More than 40 FBI agents have been dedicated to task forces in the 14 cities with the highest incidence of child prostitution--places like Atlanta, Detroit, and Minneapolis. Since the campaign's inception, the feds have obtained almost 40 federal indictments of accused sex traffickers and pimps. Earlier this month, a federal grand jury indicted Jaron Brice, 29--also known as "Jay Bird" and "Daddy" --in Washington, D.C., on 17 counts related to the sex trafficking of minors. And "in a few months," says David Johnson, director of the Crimes Against Children unit of the FBI, "there will be a round of cases that is bigger than anything that's happened before. We are not looking just to do a quick arrest; we are trying to remove an entire enterprise."
The roots of Innocence Lost can be found in investigations begun in Oklahoma City back in 2003, after a series of murders of prostitutes who worked at truck stops. "We went out and said, 'Is there some federal intervention we could do to combat all this violent crime?' " says Mike Beaver, the FBI Crimes Against Children coordinator in Oklahoma City. "The more we looked, the more we determined that we needed to work child prostitution." The investigations led to the discovery of a loose network of more than 45 pimps and over 100 prostitutes, who recruited girls from Oklahoma City and followed trucking routes to Denver, Miami, Houston, and Dallas. Fourteen pimps have since been convicted on federal charges as a result of the Oklahoma City probes, with sentences as long as 210 months. Three major interstates cross Oklahoma City, and the truck stops here, such as Pilot and TravelCenters of America, are like little cities, with everything from restaurants to TV lounges. The parking lots can cover acres. The back row of each lot is known as "Party Row," and the truckers know that's where the girls are. Law enforcement officers monitoring CB radio traffic regularly hear girls ask, "Hey truckers, anyone want some commercial company?" If someone responds, they switch to a different frequency, then get down to business. "I'm blond-haired, blue-eyed, 34C . . . if you want to play with this baby doll, tell me what color your house is," she will say, referring to his truck. He will often flash his lights so she knows where to go. A girl can have dozens of "dates" a night but will not stop until she has made her "trap," the amount of money she has to bring home to her pimp.
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