N.Y. Struggles to Aid Child Prostitutes

Posted on request:

Bill Would Divert Girls to Social Programs; Opponents
Say Threat of Jail Is Needed
By Robin Shulman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 13, 2008

NEW YORK — The girl is very slight, pretty, with
glasses, nervously fingering the blue and gold beads
on a bracelet she made herself.

She seems like a typical shy high school kid. Little
about her suggests the tortured story she tells: At 14
she ran away from sexual abuse at home and met a
24-year-old guy who seemed like he wanted to be her
boyfriend — until he told her he wanted to be her
pimp.

“I was like, wow,” recalled the girl, now 16, though
she looks younger. She was shocked, but desperate, she
said. “At the time I needed a place to sleep, so I was
like, ‘Fine, I’ll go along with it.’ ”

On and off for the next two years, she said, she
traded sex for cash, under the control of several
different men who took most of the money for
themselves. Her work as a child prostitute caused her
to be arrested in March and placed in detention.

“The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach,” said
the girl, who did not want her name to be used, like
several others who worked as prostitutes and gave
interviews for this article. “Most of the time we do
not have the right to say yes or no.”

Now New York is struggling with the question of how to
treat young girls who are involved in prostitution.
Are they criminals — or child abuse victims?