|
Underage sex trade still flourishing online |
 |
 |
 |
|
Thursday, 20 January 2011 17:14 |
|
Las Vegas, Nevada (CNN) -- Her ankles and wrists are shackled. She's wearing used sweats in the bright colors of the jailhouse, orange, blue and yellow. She shuffles to the courtroom to face the judge, her mother, and an uncertain future.
Selena is a 13-year-old who was sold for sex.
She wants to go home to her house in the suburbs and the baby sister she hardly knows. And now, facing a sympathetic judge and a loving mother who wants to make sure she's safe, Selena is being told she can't go home.
"I want to go home and I want to be with my family, that's all I want," she tells Juvenile Court Judge William Voy, her face bathed in tears. "This isn't making me any better in here."
Selena was arrested by undercover police on the Vegas strip on prostitution charges. But although she exchanged sex for money, in the eyes of the law, she's a victim, by virtue of her age and the circumstances under which she was sold: by a pimp on the website backpage.com, a pimp who used drugs to entice her, and took everything she earned.
"It made me feel so nasty, I always just want a shower and get it off. I was like, oh, it's so disgusting," she said. "And it never made me feel pretty, not one time, not one time."
Read Full Story - CNN
|
|
|
County cracking down on teen prostitution |
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, 12 January 2011 09:17 |
By Christopher Cadelago
Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 2 p.m.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/jan/11/county-cracking-down-teen-prostitution/
A move to toughen penalties for street gangs engaged in pimping and pandering got a boost from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors Tuesday.
Supervisors unanimously called for state legislation that would add pimping, pandering and human trafficking to the list of activities required to define a criminal gang. The board also endorsed firmer penalties for people convicted of prostitution-related crimes on or within 1,000 feet of a school.
|
|
Law enforcement takes aim at curbing teen prostitution |
|
|
|
|
Thursday, 18 November 2010 06:54 |
|
By Kristina Davis
November 9, 2010
Local law enforcement officers who investigate human trafficking are seeing a disturbing number of cases involving teen girls who are being pimped by increasingly violent street gang members, a concern that has prompted officials to take aim at the prostitution problem.
After listening to a 45-minute presentation on modern-day pimping, the county Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved a measure to explore creating a full-time comprehensive task force that would address the issue regionally and push for stronger penalties against traffickers of teen prostitutes.
The task force would possibly blend the resources of two multiagency efforts that already exist — the San Diego Anti-Human Trafficking Task Force, which the Sheriff’s Department runs, and the Innocence Lost task force, which the FBI leads.
Read Full Story in Union Tribune |
|
|
Teenage prostitution targeted in East County |
|
|
|
|
Thursday, 18 November 2010 06:31 |
Schools teaming up with law enforcement to learn how to identify, help vulnerable girls
By Steve Schmidt - Union Tribune
Saturday, November 13, 2010
There’s a growing front in San Diego County efforts to combat the trafficking of teen prostitutes — the neighborhood school. Educators and law enforcement agencies have started teaming up to learn how to identify and help girls who may be vulnerable to exploitation by street gangs and pimps. Police and sheriff’s investigators told the county Board of Supervisors last week that they are uncovering a disturbing number of cases of girls who are being pimped out, often under the threat of violence. “We’re seeing a larger number of girls being directly recruited out of our middle schools and high schools,” Deputy District Attorney Gretchen Means said in an interview.
|
|
Online sex ads complicate crackdowns on teen trafficking |
|
|
|
|
Wednesday, 15 September 2010 06:19 |
By Steve Turnham and Amber Lyon, CNN Special Investigations Unit
(CNN) -- Behind every adult service ad on the internet is a story.
Sometimes it's a story of a grown woman who has chosen prostitution as a path to a better life. More often, it's a story of a woman being forced to sell her body by a pimp.
And then there are the children, and the mothers that miss them.
"They told me to look on Craigslist and it almost blew my mind," the mother of one missing 12-year-old told CNN. "She was there with a wig on. She was there in a purple negligee.
"She's a normal 12-year-old -- Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers, they're her favorite," the mother said. "She's always screaming and hollering and singing. She's a great young lady."
Read Full Story on CNN
|
|
|
|
|
|
