Experts believe that within 48 hours of leaving home, a teen runaway will be in danger of being lured into prostitution, either in exchange for necessities or by pimps posing as modeling scouts. “Girls will go ahead and run away and exchange sex for shelter, and that’s exploitation,” said Olinka Briceno, co-founder of the Cambridge-based Vox Project, which is launching a national campaign to raise awareness about sexual exploitation, prostitution and human trafficking.
Since 2005, the Teen Prostitution Prevention Project at the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office has identified 135 underage prostitutes in the Greater Boston area alone. A whopping 70 percent of those prostitutes are runaways, said DA spokesman Jake Wark. Department of Social Services Chief of Staff Mia Alvarado is working with the DA’s prevention project to create a nine-bed residential program that would give girls an escape from the streets.
Beginning in 2005, DSS outreach workers fanned out around Suffolk County to identify teen prostitutes and convince them to leave the streets, Alvarado said. But she said one meeting is not enough. Typically it takes several tries before workers can convince a girl to come in and accept help. “There are youths who are tired of being beaten, raped and abused by the people who put them into this business, but it does take a long time,” she said.
Though the project has identified more than 100 underage prostitutes in Boston, social workers know many victims remain hidden in the shadows. “We’re really only hitting the tip of the iceberg,” said Shiela Y. Moore, executive director of Bridge Over Troubled Waters Inc., a Boston-based shelter and service agency for runaways and homeless teens. “It’s big business. There is a lot of money involved and there are a lot of guys out there. It’s happening in front of our faces.”
Pimps are known to troll Downtown Crossing, MBTA stations and malls looking for vulnerable girls, Bridge counselor Anneli Strandberg wrote in a memo. Some pimps pose as modeling agency scouts or simply claim they are looking for a girlfriend. “The average age of teen prostitutes (has) dropped from 16 to 13 and pimps are boldly advertising their escort services on Web sites such as craigslist,” Strandberg said.
originally published in the Boston Herald, April 1, 2007
