*[Note: The following is an excerpt from a memoir about Rachel Lloyd’s experiences as a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation and her work over the last 15 years running Girls Educational And Mentoring Services ().]

Summer 1989, England

The van leaves at 5am to get us to the Estée Lauder factory for our 7am shift. It’s still dark outside and it’s too early for me to engage in the chatter of the other girls in the van. I sit smoking and staring out the window thinking how much I hate this job. Still, it’s something, and it’s helping pay the bills at home, stave off the foreclosure, keep me stocked in cigarettes and weed and those are the critical things right now. The social workers have stopped coming to visit, the school has stopped calling. No one seems to notice or care that I’m not in school or that I’m working full-time at 13. I’m working through the temp agency as a 17-year-old named Rose Johnson, after my great-aunt; the job before that was Bailey Johnson, after the singer Pearl Bailey; the next place I think I’ll be Cyd Johnson after Cyd Charisse. I can only work for a few months at each place before they start catching on that the National Insurance Number I gave them doesn’t match with my name, which is also made-up, and begin to ask too many questions for which I don’t have any answers. I’m a few years off from being able to work legally so I’ve been bouncing from temp agency to temp agency, having figured out that they’ll pay you through their own books for the first two months while they’re waiting for your National Insurance Card, which in my case will never arrive. One temp agency won’t pay me for a month so I spend all month walking five miles one way, doing a 12hr shift and walking five miles back.

Most of the girls that I hang out with are “Estée Lauder girls.” It’s a badge of honor to work at Estée Lauder as it’s considered one of the posh-er factories. It’s also a lifer factory, with mostly women and a few men who have been there for 15, 20, years. In an industrial city like Portsmouth, with unemployment rates, school drop-out rates, teenage pregnancy rates and crime rates that are all higher than the national average, getting a secured job is a victory. Lifers look down on those of us who are temps, treating us with disdain. Girls who show real respect for the work fare better. I, on the other hand, make no secret of the fact that I believe I can do more than this. The women there make me sad. They all look so much older than they are, and whatever dreams they might have had have been drained out of them by the monotony of sitting next to a conveyor belt for years. The older women look at me with a mixture of scorn and regret.

Darky

I’m under no illusions though, that I’ll ever get hired on permanently. I’m forever in trouble. Talking too much. Getting up and leaving the line. Not being quick enough. I loathe the sit-down jobs that require real dexterity. I am, as my grandmother says, cack-handed and therefore screwing the cap on hundreds of bottles of Red Rose nail polish in 20 minutes is beyond me. I prefer the end of the line, boxing and packing, loading up the palettes, working up a sweat.  There I can move around and talk freely. The line manager calls me “Darky,” as in “Darky, get this box,” or “Tell the darky that she has lunch-break now.” I know I’d have a case for racial discrimination if I wasn’t already working illegally. So I save my indignation and spend my shifts day-dreaming about ways to get out.

Other than the “free” samples that somehow wind up in my pocket at the end of the day and the factory discount store where I stock up on so much “Beautiful” and “Youth Dew” that I gift everyone I know with it for three Christmases in a row, I really hate Estée Lauder. I hate the potpourri factory next, although there I’m able to pick up some Christmas shop-lifting orders, and then hate the aircraft parts factory, the IBM factory where we have to wear cover-ups that look like bio-hazard suits, the Tampax factory where no one ever wants to admit they work, and the Johnson & Johnson factory where I can never shake the smell of baby shampoo off my skin. As the months pass, I see myself becoming one of the women that I pity. Getting up, going to an awful, mind-numbing job, coming home, voluntarily numbing my mind with weed and alcohol, going to sleep, doing it all over again the next day.

The Most Obtainable Goal

I cannot share my friends’ enthusiasm for this life, no matter how hard I try. I feel destined for something more; although having dropped out of school, I’m aware that my options are limited. The pressure to have a baby, at 13, already feels intense. The desire to create a family, to have someone who will love me is overwhelming at times. All of my friends are older than me, although still mostly teenagers, and I’m one of the few that hasn’t already had at least one child. Having a baby, getting a council flat, working and living and dying here, feels like the most obtainable goal.

When someone suggests that I should try modeling, I jump at the chance. I trek up to London to visit agencies and manage to get signed. All the other girls have their pushy stage-mothers with them. I’m always alone and have a hard time being pushy, but still I manage to get a little work for some teen magazines which gives me a level of celebrity status in our town, and also gets me jumped by several groups of jealous girls. I will myself to grow the requisite five additional inches needed to sign with a better agency but I stay short. Still, I see modeling as my only ticket out of a town that can offer me nothing but the hopeless future I see in everyone around me. When photographers ask me to pose more “seductively,” to slip my shirt off, to do some “artistic” nude shots for a calendar that I know will end up on some car mechanic’s garage wall, I comply. Anything that’ll get me out. Anything that will make me feel less invisible.

Damaged Goods

While there are clear systemic and social issues that leave children vulnerable, the recognition of this reality presents a constant challenge in advocating for exploited girls. In describing the poverty and the abuse that girls experience prior to their commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking, the response too often is that these girls inevitably aren’t really going to have great lives anyway. I remember arguing fiercely with a lawyer one day who was representing a 13-year-old, who’d been charged with a serious crime that her 35-year-old “boyfriend” had committed. I wanted him to fight for her to be charged as a juvenile so that her record would eventually be sealed. Snorting with laughter, he said: “It’s not as if she’s going to be a brain surgeon, so does it really matter?” It appears that if you’re already considered damaged goods, or doomed to a life of poverty, then being further victimized is not quite as bad.

For a time, one of the most widely referenced articles on commercial sexual exploitation in the US was a 2003 Newsweek cover story entitled: “This Could Be Your Kid.” The article’s sensational claims of “suburban teen prostitutes” and otherwise “normal” girls who simply sold sex for designer clothes, dismissed the real issues of commercial sexual exploitation, such as race, poverty, homelessness, abuse, ineffective city systems and a public policy that blames the victims. The public reaction to this article motivated by fear of “inner-city issues” affecting their own children was starkly portrayed by a “counselor,” who was quoted in the article as saying: “People say, ‘We're not from the ghetto.’ The shame the parents feel is incredible.” The unsubstantiated claim that 30 percent of prostituted youth were from middle or upper class backgrounds completely ignored, even if this “fact” were true, the other 70 percent of youth from low-income backgrounds. It was as if this 70 percent didn’t matter as much because their abuse was inevitable anyway.

At Risk

All of this is not to say that only socio-economically disadvantaged children are at risk. While there aren’t clear national statistics on the socio-economic backgrounds of children who are commercially sexually exploited, we do know that there are children who are recruited into the sex industry who don’t fit the commonly understood profile of an “at-risk” child. These are children from middle-class backgrounds, children who haven’t suffered extreme trauma or abuse, children who have been sheltered and cared for. Commercial sexual exploitation can happen to any young person. Every parent should be able to have a conversation with their child about the sex industry and how children are recruited. The Internet has opened up a whole world of information to children, and yet it has also brought the threat of predatory strangers right into our homes. Global accessibility means that a teenager in Ohio can connect online with a teenager in Liverpool, yet it also means that a 30-year-old man who trolls the chat rooms looking for children can instantly connect with a 13-year-old in his community. Exploiters are utilizing the Internet more and more to search for vulnerable children and adolescents, who can be used for both sexual and commercial purposes.

Children are vulnerable just by virtue of being children. Getting frustrated with your parents, thinking you’re invincible, engaging in risky behavior, being interested in relationships, particularly with older men, and being enamored with money and consumer goods are all part of most American adolescents’ experiences. In the heady mix of hormones, wanting to belong, confusing messages about love and sex, and a desire to be independent, it’s easy to lure an otherwise well-adjusted 14-year-old girl into a meeting, into a car, into a bed. Pimps understand child psychology and adolescent development well enough to know the dynamics at play, and can skillfully manipulate most children, regardless of socio-economic background, prior abuse, or parenting, into a situation where they can be forced or coerced into being sold for sex.

Yet, it may take longer to manipulate the well-adjusted 14-year-old, and in the process she’ll be missed pretty quickly by her parents, who’ll notify the police, who may put out an Amber Alert. There might be a story on the 11 o’clock news about her disappearance, and once she’s found, the perpetrator is likely to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But if you shift some of the variables in the case — make the child a child of color, a runaway, a child in the foster care system, a child no-one’s really going to miss, a child so starved of attention and affection that anything you provide will be welcomed, a child who’ll be seen as a willing participant in her own exploitation — the story changes dramatically. There’s no Amber Alert, no manhunt, no breaking news story, no Nancy Grace coverage, no police investigation, no prosecution. It’s just another “teen prostitute,” another one of the nameless, faceless, ignored, already damaged 70 percent.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

Image: Copyright © All Rights Reserved

The post Girls Like Us: Risk – Children and the Sex Industry appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

*[Note: The following is an excerpt from a memoir about Rachel Lloyd’s experiences as a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation and her work over the last 15 years running Girls Educational And Mentoring Services ().]

The question of choice impacts the way that domestically trafficked girls are viewed and treated by our society. Many people believe that girls “choose” this life, and while it is true that most girls are not kidnapped into the sex industry, to frame their actions as choice is at best misleading. It is clear from the experiences of girls, that while they may have acted in response to individual, environmental and societal factors, this may not necessarily be defined as a choice.

Webster’s Dictionary describes the act of choosing as “to select from a number of possible alternatives; decide on and pick out.” Therefore, in order for a choice to be a legitimate construct, you’ve got to believe that: a) you actually have possible alternatives; and b) you’ve also got to have the capacity to weigh these alternatives against one another and decide on the best avenue. Commercially sexually exploited and trafficked girls have neither – their choices are limited by their age, their family, their circumstances and their inability to weigh up one bad situation against another, given their developmental and emotional immaturity. Therefore, the issue of choice has to be framed in three ways: age and age-appropriate responsibility, the type of choice and the context of the choice.

Age Factor

The age factor is perhaps the most obvious reason that discussions around true “choice” are erroneous and unhelpful to the debate. There’s a reason that we have age limits and standards governing the “choices” that children and youth can make, from drinking, to marrying, to driving, to leaving school, and that is because we, as a society, recognize that there’s a difference in child/adolescent and adult development.

There’s also a fairly obvious reason that the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 and its reauthorizations in 2003, 2005, and 2008 have all supported a definition of child sex trafficking where children under the age of 18 found in the commercial sex trade are considered to be victims of trafficking without requiring that they experienced “force, fraud, or coercion” to keep them there. For victims of sex trafficking aged 18 and over, the law requires the “force, fraud, or coercion” standard. In defining the crime of sex trafficking, Congress created certain protections for children. It’s taken as a given that children and youth are operating from a different context, especially in light of age of consent laws. 

Not only are choices shaped by external limitations decided by age, they’re also dictated by the psychological and emotional limitations that is adolescent development. In hindsight, as adults looking back on our teenage selves, we can recognize our own impulsivity, risk-taking, our need for peer approval, rebellion against our parents, our limited understanding of consequences – in short, all the characteristics that define being a teenager. Very few adults would honestly want to revisit the naïveté, vulnerability, and often flat out ignorance of adolescence. Many parents don’t trust their own 16-year-old to drive their car, pick their own “good enough” friends, or stay home alone for the weekend without hosting a party. Yet, interestingly, I’ve met lots and lots of adults who feel that a 16-year-old is completely mature enough to be considered fully capable and competent of making the choice to be in the sex industry. 

Given their age and psychological development, children and youth often make decisions that are not in their best interests, or that perhaps are unsafe. It’s an unwise choice to meet a stranger in person whom you’ve only met on MySpace, not brilliant decision-making to get in someone’s car when you barely know them, nor is it a great idea to run away from home with $6 in your pocket and nowhere to go. Yet none of these “choices” are the same thing as “choosing” to be in the commercial sex industry – even if they end up leading down that path. It can also be an unwise decision to go home with someone you’ve just met, particularly if you’ve been drinking, and yet making that decision in no way means that you “chose” to get raped. 

Rock And a Hard Place

The discussion about lack of choice based on age is not to suggest that teenage girls and young women are mindless, helpless or totally without agency. One of the greatest joys of my work is getting to spend time every day with girls and young women who are smart, insightful, thoughtful, capable of real leadership and have much to offer the world around them. Girls are capable of making choices – within a safe and healthy context, and with the safety-nets of responsible, caring adults ensuring that those choices are age appropriate. Yet for most sexually exploited and trafficked girls, the safety-nets aren’t there and they are left choosing the lesser of two evils. Children who are abused or neglected at home cannot simply “choose” to go get a job, earn some money and move out into a safer or more pleasant environment. In the mind of a child or teenager, running away from a bad situation may seem like the most logical option, yet it’s the context of the choice that’s most important.

Most exploited girls have two options, a rock and a hard place. It’s a concept that seems clearer when applied to trafficking victims from other countries who are rarely presumed to have made “bad choices.” Some of these women are cognizant of the fact that they will be working in a brothel when they reach the US, but they are in no way prepared for the brutalities that they will face, the slavery which they’ll endure or the reality that they can’t just leave once they’ve earned enough money – no matter what they were originally told. Others may enter into a green card “marriage” only to find out that they will be a sex slave. These victims, many of whom are adults, have made choices. Others are tricked into believing that what awaits them is legal employment, a chance at a real future. Their vulnerability makes them the ideal recruits, their need makes them believe.

But these choices are clearly in the context of having little to no other legitimate options. Desperation and lack of options make for poor decision-making, but provide ripe pickings for the traffickers. Their choices do not mean that they deserve to be trafficked, nor does it mean they wanted to be enslaved. In the same way, neither do the decisions that girls in the US may make with the hopes of securing a better future, someone to love them, food and clothing, a sense of family, or a chance to escape their current abuse, mean that they deserve, want or have chosen the life that awaits them.

This Life

Nicole and I are working together on a writing exercise I’ve assigned about what she likes about herself. Not only is the entire concept tough for her to wrap her mind around, but she’s struggling with the writing. I know that she feels limited by her literacy skills and talks about herself as stupid and worthless, and so the exercise feels like a good way to figure out where exactly she’s at skill-wise and try to encourage her self-worth at the same time. It’s not going well. She can only come up with two things she likes about herself, her hair and her feet, so I give her ideas: “You’re kind,”  “You’re funny,” “You’re a good friend.”  She screws up her nose in disbelief at them all but with much prodding tries to write them down anyway. She writes slowly and carefully, putting a lot of thought into each word and it quickly becomes clear that she has very little basic knowledge even of phonics and how letters combine to make different sounds.  

At 19, Nicole’s literacy skills are equivalent to that of a first grader. It’s obvious that she has a pronounced learning disability and I’m angry that she was able to make it through to the 6^th grade in the New York public school system without anyone taking the time to help her build the most basic skills. I try to imagine how difficult it is for her to navigate a world surrounded by words that might as well be in Greek. I understand why she feels that being in this life is the only thing that she’s capable of doing. It’s hard to imagine a life of possibilities when she can’t even read a book, fill out a job application or decipher a street sign.

A Hundred Years Ago?

Many girls, even in this country, are growing up in a society that does not provide real and viable opportunities for the future. At the same time, they’re living in a culture that increasingly teaches them that their worth and value is defined by their sexuality. Parallels can be found between girls in poverty in this country and girls in poverty internationally, as well as with girls growing up over 100 years ago.

In an article on the commercial sexual exploitation of girls and the abolitionist movement in Victorian England, author Deborah Gorham writes of a young woman who “allowed herself to be entrapped in a French brothel because life had given her little reason to believe that any genuinely satisfactory possibility existed for her. In a society that told a girl who had no possessions that her chastity, at least, was a “precious possession,” some young girls might well have been led to believe that they might as well sell that possession to the highest bidder.” If the word “chastity” was substituted for “ sexuality” or “ body,” then this paragraph could easily have been written about commercially sexually exploited and trafficked girls today in the US.   

With this is mind, the issue of choice must be carefully framed and understood in the context of the individual and cultural factors facing girls at risk. The sex industry may initially appear to provide a life of economic freedom, independence and a secure future with someone who loves them in contrast to the bleak futures that they may believe are their only alternatives. Selling sex may seem like a small price to pay, particularly for girls who have been abused and raped. Combine the power of media images of young women as sexual objects with the girls’ familial and environmental situations, and the trap is set. It is often not until the reality of the situation begins to sink in, when the situation becomes too toxic or she finally accepts the reality that her boyfriend is actually a pimp, that a girl may choose to go. At that point, it is no longer a matter of  choice, but rather  a matter of escape.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

Image: Copyright ©  All Rights Reserved

The post Girls Like Us: Choice – Young Women in the Sex Industry appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.

*[Note: The following is an excerpt from a memoir about Rachel Lloyd’s experiences as a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation and her work over the last 15 years running Girls Educational And Mentoring Services ().]

“John” is in some way a fitting moniker for men who buy sex. Like John Doe, and Dear John, the name is used as the generic catch-all for the anonymous “everyman” who makes up the millions of men in America who buy sex from children. Those of us who have been exploited by the sex industry know that Johns represent every walk of life, every age, every ethnicity, every socio-economic class. Judges, mailmen, truck drivers, firemen, janitors, artists, clergy, cops, drug dealers, teachers. Handsome and rich, poor and unattractive, married, single and widowed. Fathers, husbands, sons, brothers, uncles, neighbors.

Normal?

Yet calling men who buy sex from children “Johns” minimizes the harm they do.  At the very least, they are statutory rapists and child abusers. That said, the reality is that most men who buy sex from trafficked and exploited girls aren’t really pedophiles, as backwards as that may sound. Most of these men aren’t specifically attracted to children, and viewing men who purchase children and youth for sex as pedophiles leads to a sense that it is isolated behavior among men who are “sick” and “perverted.” We can overlook the fact that most the men doing the buying are what we would consider “normal.” Many of these men wouldn’t dream of sexually abusing their daughters, but when it comes to a “prostitute” even a “teen prostitute” they figure it doesn’t really matter. She’s already out there. She kinda wants it anyway. She is working her way through college (even if she does appear to be in junior high). She needs to feed her kids. I’m actually helping her. There are a million rationalizations that men employ to deny the exploitation that they’re a part of. 

The buying of sex is so normalized, that while we may frown upon it if you get caught, there is an underlying belief that men have needs, and that sometimes those needs may be legitimately, if not legally, fulfilled by purchasing someone. While not all Johns are looking to purchase a minor, there is a demonstrated link between the availability of the adult sex industry and the commercial sexual exploitation of children. A University of Pennsylvania study stated that: “Without equivocation… the presence of pre-existing adult prostitution markets contributes measurably to the creation of secondary sexual markets in which children are sexually exploited.”

While many men would argue that they want someone who is of age, ultimately they do want someone who looks clean and fresh, more likely to at least look disease-free. That desire generally translates into buying young girls. In research done by the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE), of 113 men who purchased sex, 76 percent of interviewees stated that the age of the woman was an important factor and 80 percent stated that they felt most men preferred young “prostitutes.”

There are hundreds of thousands of websites featuring legal “teen” or “barely legal” pornography and over for “teen sex” and “teen porn.” Clearly the demand is there. While few men would argue that they are looking for a 12-year-old, they might admit to looking for a 17- or 18-year-old, even if she looks 14. They rationalize that she didn’t tell the truth about her age, so how are they supposed to know?

Lack of Consequences

Lawrence Taylor probably didn’t know that the girl he was purchasing for $300 was 16-years-old. It’s impossible to know if he would’ve cared how old she was if he hadn’t been caught. Reports claim he was “devastated” when he found out her age. Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps he also had no idea that she was under the control of a pimp, had a black eye and bruised face when she came to his hotel room and had a history of abuse and neglect.

And yet, men do know that the women and girls they’re buying are exploited and harmed. In the CAASE research, 57 percent of men who bought sex believed that the majority of women in the sex industry had experienced childhood sexual abuse, and 32 percent believed that most women entered the sex industry before the age of 18. Twenty percent thought that they had probably purchased someone who had been trafficked, either internationally or domestically, against her will. Forty percent had bought sex from a woman who they knew had a pimp or “manager.” Forty two percent believed that prostitution caused psychological and physical harm. So, if men know that the sex industry is harmful to girls and women, why do they still participate in it? Many of the men in the study, and men I’ve talked to, cite peer pressure; being introduced to the sex industry by family, friends, even co-workers; the belief that women in the sex industry are “different,” and therefore, more acceptable to abuse. Most men cited the lack of consequences as a factor in their decision to purchase sex.

In most cases though, men don’t ask the questions that they really don’t want to know the answers to. Easier to go along with the fantasy when she tells you her name is Extasy or Seduction, that she’s 18, 19, 20. When men are cruising the streets, scrolling through the ads on the backpage, ordering a girl from an escort agency, buying a lap-dance, they don’t want to really know how old she is or what her life is like. Most men would rather believe that she likes it, that she likes them, and that there’s no real harm being done. Ultimately, however, most men in that situation just don’t care. 

Bad Dates

Like almost every woman in New York, I’ve had my share of bad dates. The guy who took me to a nice restaurant only to discover at the end of the meal that he’d left his wallet at home, or the guy who decided during lunch at his house that I’d be interested in his photo album of all his ex-girlfriends, including the pictures of them naked.

Yet for the girls and young women we serve, a “bad date” means something else entirely. A bad date is a euphemism for being raped, being kidnapped, being held at gunpoint or having a knife put to your throat. A bad date is when you get raped and are told by your pimp that you better get back out there. There are a few cops who take this type of violence against women and girls in the sex industry seriously but for most cops, getting raped by a John just means that the girl didn’t get paid.

Nikki tells me one night that she doesn’t remember how many times she’s been raped, but she thinks it’s over 20. Her experience isn’t uncommon. When attention is paid to commercial sexual exploitation, law enforcement and public rhetoric focus their outrage on the pimps, rarely mentioning the Johns, the buyers who fuel the industry. An assistant district attorney in New York tells me sincerely one day that “the Johns are not the problem.” To ignore the demand side of the issue makes no sense, and trivializes the harm done by the buyers. Yet the girls and young women we serve don’t make that distinction at all. If asked, who’s worse, pimps or Johns, most would not be able to chose. They’ve experienced rapes, gang rapes, guns in their faces, beatings, sadistic acts, kidnappings – all at the hands of Johns.

Disposable

In 1992, Aileen Wuornos, erroneously dubbed “the first female serial killer” and later portrayed by Charlize Theron in the movie Monster, stood trial for the murder of Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old John. She claimed it was in self-defense. While clearly Wuornos had severe psychological issues, likely due to her history of childhood sexual abuse and then later commercial sexual exploitation starting at age 11, is it so difficult to imagine that perhaps Mallory, who had indeed served time for attempted rape, was actually trying to rape her?

Perhaps it was her own trauma that triggered her assumptions and her violent reactions, and that would then lead her to kill six more men over the course of the next year. Yet, despite Wuornos’s apparent mental health problems, her assumptions weren’t totally off-base. In studying the habits of serial killers who prey upon prostituted women and girls, it is clear how disposable these women and girls are seen to be. A Canadian commission found that women in the sex industry are 40 times more likely to be murdered than other women. Another study put the estimate as high as 130 times more likely to be murdered.

In 2003, Gary Ridgeway, the notorious Green River Killer who for over two decades had preyed upon women in the sex industry, finally pled guilty to 48 counts of first degree murder, although police suspected him of many more. Out of respect for the victims, we decided to honor them by putting their names and pictures up on a wall at GEMS. Next to their names were their ages and as I walked by the haunting display, I kept noticing the ages: Opal Mills, 16-years-old; Debra Estes, 15-years-old; Delores Williams, 17-years-old; Colleen Brockman, 15-years-old. In fact, 27 of Ridgway’s known victims were under the age of 18.

This makes Gary Ridgway one of the most prolific child serial killers in the United States. Yet all of the media accounts of the victims called them “women,” not children. So why were they all portrayed as adult women?

Ridgway himself seemed to have an answer in his allocution at his final hearing: "I picked prostitutes as my victims because I hate most prostitutes and I did not want to pay them for sex. I also picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up, without being noticed. I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

He was partially right. While his anger towards women and girls in the sex industry fueled his killing spree, picking “prostitutes” as victims was a strategic move. These women and girls were seen as less important, less like “real” victims, their murders less likely to be given the resources that other, more legitimate victims would receive. What he may also have realized was that just by virtue of being in the commercial sex industry, adulthood and maturity were imputed to these children. They were now seen as adult women, despite their ages, simply because they were also seen as “prostitutes.”

Post-Scriptum

I sit on the end of the bed. I’m not really sure what to say. I’d been warned that Sequoia’s face would look bad, but hearing about her assault and then seeing the evidence all over her battered and fractured face is something else entirely. Her upper lip is split completely in two, her jaw is broken, her nose as well. Most of her teeth are gone. I hear my sharp intake of breath. What kind of person would do this to a child? She is sipping fluids through a straw.

I think of her, less than two years previously, at her Youth Leadership graduation, dressed up like a little girl at her first communion, replete with a white frilly dress and Shirley Temple curls. My social worker Julie and I had joked about how she looked like a tiny China Doll. Now that doll has been mutilated, her delicate porcelain features smashed. Quoia, always a petite child, is dwarfed in a big adult-sized hospital bed, surrounded by curtains with Little Mermaid cartoons on them.

Somewhere, out there, there’s a man who nearly beat a child to death and left her by the side of the road. I wonder about this man, what he does for a living, if he’s married or has a girlfriend, if he has children of his own. I wonder if anyone in his “real” life suspects what kind of man he is. I wonder when, not if, he’ll do it again to another girl whom he views as disposable property. And I wonder if she, like Sequoia, will survive and if anyone will notice if she doesn’t.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect 51³Ô¹Ï’s editorial policy.

Image: Copyright ©  All Rights Reserved

The post Girls Like Us: Johns – The Men Who Buy Sex appeared first on 51³Ô¹Ï.