'Jailing Girls for Men's Crimes' (2010): Is a 13-year-old girl prostitute selling sex on the streets a criminal?
B.W. was 13 years old when she offered to perform oral sex for $20 on an undercover officer in Texas. The officer arrested her and booked her as an adult. Despite evidence that B.W. had a history of sexual and physical abuse, was living with a 32-year-old “boyfriend”under Texas law was considered incapable of consenting to sex because she was under 14, the county DA charged her with
“As a nation, we’ve graded and rated other countries on how they address trafficking within their borders and yet have effectively ignored the sale of our own children within our own borders,” said Rachel Lloyd of the New York-based anti-trafficking organization Girls Educational and Mentoring Services , in her testimony before Congress.
However, the federal directive has been slow to take hold on the state and local levels: Police officers across the country still arrest sexually exploited girls and treat them as criminals. And studies show there are plenty of girls out there to arrest.each year are victims of commercial sexual exploitation within our borders. The Justice Department’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section estimates that nearly 300,000 U.S.
The decision to prosecute these girls rather than provide a safe harbor only makes them more vulnerable and more numerous. A 2010 study shows that 500 girls aged seventeen and under are sold for sex each month in Georgia, with 7200 men paying for sex with adolescent females . Meanwhile, as in Texas, the considerably older pimps and buyers almost always avoid arrest.
Rather than blaming the victims, advocates around the country are calling on governments to stop arresting these girls and instead provide them with the social services they need, reserving criminal prosecution for the perpetrators the pimps and johns.
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