Ann Bartow of Feminist Law Professors says (bold emphasis Professor Bartow’s, italic emphasis mine)
...
Officials say a 16-year-old girl who recruits children as prostitutes is being sought as a priority.
Special Agent Melissa Morrow, of Washington’s FBI, said adult prostitutes who were among those arrested tipped authorities off about the girl.
“She is currently 16 and started when she was 13,” Agent Morrow said.
“Now she is out there recruiting other juveniles as well,” she said, adding that finding her was “at the top of our list”, the Associated Press news agency reported.
The 13 to 17 year olds are recognized to be victims, but the “adult prostitutes,” anybody 18 years old or over, are arrested as criminals, rather than rescued…
Including, I’m guessing, the adult prostitutes who tipped authorities that a juvenile was recruiting other underage prostitutes.
I mean, geez gang, you don’t have to like prostitution to recognize that if child prostitution is really a concern of yours then you really want adult prostitutes on your side of the law. And the best way to get that would be, maybe, you know, not arresting them for prostitution.
(Let alone “rescuing” them by… having the cops who were shaking you down for sex last week “rescuing” them this week with… arrests, strip searches, jail time, and — if I recall correctly — zero consideration for arrangements for the often-latch-key children of “rescued” prostitutes. Beyond the standard “one phone call” thing. But I digress…)
Seems to me you can even be dead cynical about prostitution and still have the system work — legal sex workers aren’t exactly going to sit around smiling when their livelihoods are undercut by children.
And by the way, it doesn’t sound like the “rescued” children are faring much better. Here’s the LA Times, via Professor Bartow again.
“We may not be able to return their innocence but we can remove them from this cycle of abuse and violence,” said FBI Director Robert Mueller.
...
Most of the children are put into the custody of local child protection agencies.
Yeah, because juvenile holding facilities, group homes, and foster care are such bastions of compassionate intervention.
That’s not to say there aren’t numerous ways to actually, you know, rescue coerced or even self-emancipated juvenile prostitutes. But when the only hammer you’re even remotely interested in using is the criminal justice system child sex-workers no less than adults are just going to get nailed.
I mean, seriously, you go spending multiple years and millions of dollars arranging multi-state arrests, and making pious statements about lost innocence and rescue, you damn well ought to have a better idea for what to do after the rescue than putting children “into the custody of local child protection agencies.”
Just sayin’
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And another thing! When are we going to start seeing regular and spectacularly publicized, perp-walked-on-CNN prosecution of johns for pedophilia, statutory rape, and anything else on the books when they buy sex with children?
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Oh, and while I’ve been meaning to mention this in its own post, on a related note check out the embedded Cherry.tv video at Nikol Hasler’s Midwest Teen Sex Show. It’s actually chock-a-block with hints about why early sexualization doesn’t particularly do young people any favors.
Submitted by 2735 (not verified) on Wed, 2009-02-25 07:40.
I agree that there are problems with the System. But those problems are not something wrong with this batch of arrests/rescues/whatever. I'm not comfortable criticizing a huge action for using the best tool they have, even if it's not a great tool. Local agencies are what we have to work with.
Besides, you are to some extent defining 'child sex worker' as 'failed by System'-- and if there were any other System in place, you would use the same definitions. If there were a comprehensive and completely separate program to treat and (rehabilitate? deprogram? train as non-sex-workers?) child sex workers, I expect that you would see child sex workers as having been failed by that system, too, because aren't they still on the streets?
[Hi Diatryma. It's not as bleak as all that. First because I'm sure it's possible to design and/or designate programs targeted to the circumstances of sold children. It's just that as far as I know there aren't that many such programs in place because until *very* recently they've just been tossed into the juvenile/criminal justice system. And second because if there was such a system I wouldn't expect them to successfully deal with every child, and therefore I'd be more sanguine when children fell out of the system and/or fell back into sex work. Finally, I *really* don't object to multi-state efforts to curtail commercial sexual exploitation of children (believe me, I really, *really* don't object to that at all.) It's just that based on my own experience as a homeless youth I don't care for the self-congratulatory use of the word "rescue" when I get the *strong* impression their main purpose is the (entirely laudable) investigation and prosecution of the adults who are trafficking the children. --fl]
Submitted by 2735 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-02-24 17:11.
What else is there to do with kids removed from bad situations? Do you declare that all these kids are so broken that the system cannot handle them, even though it does its best with others? Do you remove them from places where they might have family/friends/someone and put them all in one big child-sex summer camp until the trials?
I think that local child protective agencies are about the best they had. You work with the system you have, and you work to make it better-- but it's not the job of the sting people to fix DCFS across the country.
[Hi Diatryma. If I thought a child-sex camp was a good idea I'd say fine, send them (back!) to group homes and foster care. But then if I thought that I'd have named my blog something else. It's not that I think they're too broken for CPS, it's that I'm not confident that most state's are that well setup to deal. If I'm wrong about that I'm happy to issue a retraction and/or apology... it's just that based on, especially, the LATimes article, it doesn't sound like putting them back in the system that's generally already failed them is going to do much more than make higher-ups feel good about themselves. Otherwise I promise I wouldn't feel quite so cranky about what happens to the kids. I'd continue to feel cranky about arresting instead of recruiting adult sex-workers but that's another story. --fl]
Submitted by 2735 (not verified) on Tue, 2009-02-24 20:47.
>>Yeah, because juvenile holding facilities, group homes, and foster care are *such bastions* of compassionate intervention.
I work with teenage psychiatric developmentally delayed kids in group homes. The sad truth is that some of the kids are amazingly damaged from inutero experiences, family violence, sexual abuse and almost the most frightening are those affected by lead. (The lead paint kids can turn basically feral as teenagers.) Yes indeed the State run stuff can be pretty dang awful. But there is compassionate invention in the system too.
My wife works in foster care and adoption services. If you're ever interested in caring for 2 year old girls who shove things up their vaginas, we can set up an interview. Or perhaps you're willing to help with a four year old boy whose Dad is in jail for killing Mom in front of him. The greatest struggle in the foster care system is the total disinterest of "normal folks" in any willingness to help. Though really, who can blame anyone for not wanting to bring a not so small ball of misery, fury and chaos into their home. Seriously, some kids go without foster homes even with a $1-2000 a month stipend attached to them. I shit you not.
For those working inside the system, our jobs mostly feel like building sandcastles below the high tide mark. Failure is constant. You get a kid right, on a stable med regime, grades good in school, then you suddenly have $4000 of property damage over something so inconsequential it boggles the mind.
But sometimes. Sometimes. Not often, but sometimes. You really do actually rescue a kid.
That rant over, I guess it all comes down to whether or not you think a young girl is better off being pimped out by Interstate trafficing pedophiles, or... well... nearly anywhere else in America. Group homes may suck, but not that bad. Bed, food, roof, clothes, medical care, transport to school, books and adults that don't rape you.
What say you?
[Hi Anon. I don't want to speak harshly of the work you do, especially under the circumstances you frequently have to operate under (e.g. low budgets, low staff, insufficient medical assistance, legislative and judicial impediments, ill-informed drive-by rabble rousing from "crusading" editorialists, etc.) Nor, under those circumstances, do I want to belittle the perhaps necessarily low success rates you refer to -- no matter how rewarding those successes admittedly are. It's just that I don't consider returning displaced children back to the system many, many of them have already been through "rescuing." Just changing the term from "rescue" to "off the streets and back into the system" would resolve my biggest objections. Thanks. --fl]