Fed official urges battle against child prostitution

Jen Lawson

Friday, Dec. 12, 2003 | 8:53 a.m.

Calling child prostitution "a tragedy of national proportions," a federal official called upon child advocates, law enforcement officers and social service workers to do their part in helping combat the problem.

"Unless we shine the spotlight on the dark activities that are being done, we're not going to see any improvement," said J. Robert Flores, administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention based in Washington, D.C.

Flores appeared Thursday as a panelist in a national video conference dubbed "Working Together to Stop the Prostitution of Children." It was broadcast by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The broadcast, which was a cross between an educational documentary and call-in program, was aimed at educating juvenile delinquency professionals and sharing information on how best to address child prostitution.

About 20 local child advocates, social workers and healthcare providers gathered at the Southern Nevada Area Health Education Center's Child Abuse Prevention Program at 1094 E. Sahara Ave. to watch the live broadcast.

Debbie Barter, program manager of the child abuse prevention program, said her agency hosted the video conference because "in a broader sense, child prostitution is a form of child abuse."

Rap music that glorifies prostitution, video games that give points to players who kill prostitutes and pro-sex-trade documentaries such as "Really Really Pimpin' In the South" have contributed to the child prostitution problem in the United States, Flores said.

"We need to challenge people who continue to sell and market this garbage," said "The men who end up exploiting these children are getting a message that's very destructive."

A segment of the broadcast focused on child prostitution in Atlanta, in which one child advocate said, "we have more strip clubs per capita than Vegas."

In that city, police, prosecutors, juvenile court officials and social service workers worked together to break up a network of 14 pimps that prostituted girls as young as 10 years old.

A "Really Really Pimpin' In the South" tape was discovered and thought to be a training tape for pimps.

Some of the pimps were prosecuted on rape charges because pimps often have sex with the girls they prostitute and received sentences of 10 years to life in prison.

In Las Vegas, police routinely charge pimps with living off the earnings of a prostitute, providing transportation to a prostitute and living with a prostitute, Sgt. Gil Shannon said. All are felonies.

If the pimps place the girls in a "pipeline" that involves shuffling the girls around to different states, he could be charged federally with first-degree kidnapping.

But Shannon said pimps are usually convicted of just one or two of the charges and too often they end up back on the streets within a few months, or at most a few years.

Combatting child prostitution is a priority of the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Flores said. The problem is under reported, under recognized and underrated, he said, and "we as adults cannot afford to keep our head in the sand."

One of the goals is to quantify the problem. No solid numbers exist on how many children are working as prostitutes in the United States, partly because many of them use fake identification. Many child prostitutes also are runaways.

"It's an indictment of our parenting skills that we have these kids on the streets and no one is looking for them," Flores said.