Young Lives For Sale
Why more kids are getting into the sex trade--and how the feds are fighting back
Ownership. Cindy (not her real name) is 14, with dyed blond hair and an $800 trap. Her pimp was Michael Thomas, FBI officials say, whose street name was "1-8," a reference to time in an Oklahoma City gang. He had tattooed on his girls' bodies the letters POE, for "Pimpin' One Eight." He would buy girls from other pimps, for as little as $50, give them names like Orgasm, and send them out to truck stops, charging $60 for oral sex, $80 for intercourse, and $100 for both. When Cindy told Thomas she wanted to leave his "stable," he had another girl stab her in her arms and hands, according to the FBI.
A University of Pennsylvania study from 2001 estimates that close to 300,000 children nationwide are at risk of falling victim to some sort of sexual exploitation. Outreach workers concur, saying that of the 1 million to 1.5 million runaway children in the country, about a third have some brush with prostitution. "When we began initiating investigations around the country," says Johnson, "we found it everywhere we looked."
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. "If you go to the bus station, you can see the runaways coming off the buses, and you can tell the pimps waiting for them."
Many of today's pimps have gang ties, and they've moved from murder and robbery to pimping. "There has been a trend of organized crime moving away from traditional commodities like drugs, tobacco, and arms, to kids," says NCMEC's Allen. "They are reusable, inexpensive, with a huge consumer market that is enormously profitable with next to no risk. Nobody cares. Nobody is looking for them. They are the forgotten."
Kristie has a ponytail and eyes that dart around the room. Sometimes, it's easy to forget that the articulate teenager prowling for johns is just that--a teenage girl. She glibly instructs a visitor on how to outsmart the vice cops. "You never offer anything until you're up in the room with him," she says. "You tell them you're a private dancer. When you hug him, make sure he only has one wallet--if he has another lump, it could be a badge. Check to see that there's luggage in his room, with the tags still on it. And always, always, say you're 18."
Eyes and smiles. At truck stops in California, girls often wear jeans and carry a backpack, looking as if they're studying. "But there is something about their eyes, and the way they smile at you, that tells you they're not just regular kids," says James Morrow, an outreach worker for a nonprofit called Children of the Night, who used to frequent truck stops to educate both the girls and the truckers--until threats from the pimps made that too dangerous. Sometimes the same girls will travel to Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma, greeting truckers in each place by name.
advertisement
