"He called me a stupid bitch ... a worthless piece of shit.... I had to tell people I fell off stage because I had so many bruises on my ribs face and legs.... I have a permanent twitch in my eye from him hitting me in my face so much. I have none of my irreplaceable things from my youth." - From the victim-impact statement of Felicia, minor prostitute-stripper enslaved by trafficker Corey Davis.The little Barbies
"Prostitution is renting an organ for ten minutes." - A john, interviewed by research psychologist Melissa Farley.
"Would you please write down the type of person you think I am, given all that you've heard and read?... I've been called the worst of the worst by the government and it's going to be hard for you to top that." - Letter postmarked June 27, 2008, to Amy Fine Collins, from Dennis Paris, a.k.a. "Rahmyti," then inmate at the Wyatt Detention Facility, in Central Falls, Rhode Island, now at a high-security federal penitentiary in Arizona.
In the Sex Crimes Bureau of the Brooklyn District Attorney's Office, in the pediatric division of Fort Bragg's Womack Army Medical Center, in the back alleys of Waterbury, Connecticut, and in the hallways of Hartford's Community Court, Assistant D.A. Rhonnie Jaus, forensic pediatrician Dr. Sharon Cooper, ex-streetwalker Louise, and Judge Curtissa Cofield have all simultaneously and independently noted the same disturbing phenomenon. There are more young American girls entering the commercial sex industry - an estimated 300,000 at this moment - and their ages have been dropping drastically. "The average starting age for prostitution is now 13," says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from "the life." Says Judge Cofield, who formerly presided over Hartford's Prostitution Protocol, a court-ordered rehabilitation program, "I call them the Little Barbies."
Comment: Despite the "happy ending" of this article, keep in mind that the federal government has estimated that at least 100,000 minors every year are sold for sex in the U.S. The men who purchase and pimp them are rarely punished. Run-away shelters, safe housing and services for these children are perennially underfunded. Instead, the most common reaction is to punish these victims.
Most children in the commercial sex industry qualify as victims under statutory rape laws. Yet Cynthia Godsoe, assistant professor of family law at Brooklyn Law School, could find not a single case of a customer of a trafficked child being prosecuted for statutory rape.
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Give restitution to victims of child pornography, but also recognize all child victims of sexual exploitation