Public defender seeks to help teen prostitutes

Molly Ball

Friday, July 29, 2005 | 10:50 a.m.

The public defender's office has decided to defend teen prostitutes rather than their pimps, reversing a long-standing practice.

"I want to keep these minors from committing more serious crimes," Public Defender Phil Kohn said of teenagers arrested on prostitution charges.

"We want to change their lives, and we have a better chance of doing that."

The move is one of the efforts of the office, and the juvenile justice system's, to step up services for youths trapped in the degrading and exploitive life of prostitution, mostly girls aged 13 to 17. Officials believe Las Vegas has the worst underage prostitution problem in the nation.

The public defender policy stems from the way the office handles conflicts of interest, which arise whenever two indigent people accused of crimes are on opposite sides of a case, usually when a witness against one accused criminal is himself a criminal defendant.

To avoid having the public defender's office defend two people with conflicting interests, one of the parties in this situation will get a contract lawyer, a defense attorney in private practice who is paid by the county to defend the indigent.

Prostitutes and their pimps are a prime example. To make the case against an accused panderer, police rely on prostitutes' testimony. But since prostitution is illegal, the prostitutes are also accused of criminal activity.

In the past, Family Court referees have automatically appointed contract attorneys to teens accused of prostitution, on the assumption that public defenders would represent the pimps down the line, Kohn said.

The referees have been instructed to stop that practice and start appointing public defenders to the teens. That is for a few reasons, Kohn said.

First, just because a prostitute has been caught doesn't mean a pimp will ever be caught or prosecuted. Second, the teen accused of prostitution is far more likely to be too poor to hire a lawyer, Kohn said.

"We know these girls don't have money for counsel, but there's a good chance the pimps will have money," he said.

But most importantly, the public defender's office has the resources to help youths it sees as victims of the prostitution game. The office has social workers on staff, and its juvenile unit has expertise on youths in general, and youth prostitution in particular, that a contract attorney probably doesn't have.

"I've yet to see a prostitute who does not tell us that it all started with her being molested," Kohn said. The girls need therapy and other help to heal their wounds and get them out of their trade -- whereas with adult men accused of pimping, "we're not going to get those guys into counseling," Kohn said.

The public defender's stepped-up efforts to advocate for teen prostitutes reflect its newly energized juvenile division, led by Chief Deputy Public Defender Susan Roske. Previously threatened with an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit for its dire understaffing, the division has gained personnel and become more vocal in the past year.

Roske has argued that police and prosecutors' routine practice of detaining teens accused of prostitution-related offenses for weeks on end violates their rights.

Police say the girls have to be kept in jail to "deprogram" them and help them turn their lives around. Roske says the girls are being used for their potential testimony, not helped, and jailed even though they are low-level, nondangerous offenders.

Officials are working on a potentially mutually agreeable solution to this conflict: a "safe house" where young prostitutes would be detained, but in a nonjail setting where they would have access to services to help them change their lives.

"This started with an attempt by myself to help broker the friction between the district attorney and the public defender on the teen prostitutes," said Juvenile Judge William Voy of the safe house project.

"We all agree teen prostitutes are victims," Voy said. "We confine them for their protection. But that interferes with the public defenders' concept of due process. I said, is there a place we can put them that isn't a jail?"

Voy and county Juvenile Justice Director Kirby Burgess have been pushing the idea and say Sheriff Bill Young is on board. Metro Police Sgt. Gil Shannon said the sheriff consulted the vice detail before agreeing to the idea.

Shannon said the vice cops are wholeheartedly supporting the proposal because they want to "change the quality of life for victims."

Officials are working with grant writers to see if a source of funding outside the county can be found for the project, Voy said.

Kohn applauded the idea. It would put the teens "in a situation where they can get counseling, get supervision, self-esteem -- all the things these children lack, as opposed to a harsh custodial environment," he said. "We want to change their behaviors. We don't just want to punish them."