Child Prostitution Out of Shadows in Seattle

Posted on 13. Jan, 2010 by Rob Belatucadros in Foreign and Domestic Intelligence, Health, Hidden Crimes, Rob Belatucadros, Top Stories

Some change comes quietly.

But something has changed, those who watch such things will say, in the way Seattle and its environs view the girls and boys selling their bodies from the cities’ sidewalks and hotel rooms.

Those who make it their business point to the concrete — a first-of-its-kind shelter for prostituted youth, a new law that raises the stakes for those selling sex with children, a win against a pimp ring — and pass along the word of mouth that the kids are getting younger, the pimps a little meaner. But the hint, they’ll quietly allow, is that something larger and less tangible is happening.

About that crime of the shadows — child prostitution — the public is starting to care.

Those youths — at least the girls, initially — are the target of a joint Seattle-King County effort scheduled to launch this spring. The first of its kind in the area, the program is designed to help child prostitutes break away from their pimps, and the life, by providing shelter and treatment.

“The perception is that they are just prostitutes, nobody cares,” said Sean O’Donnell, a senior deputy prosecutor attached to the special assault unit. “The perception is, they’re signing up for this. …

“They’re people. They’re girls. They should be worrying about what they’re wearing to their high school dance and not whether they’re going to bring in quota.”

That’s a King County prosecutor — a law-and-order guy whose office walls carry a portrait of Winston Churchill and a clipping of Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer — arguing that children who are technically criminals are victims. The fun part for O’Donnell and his cohort, at least by his estimation, is that jurors have begun to agree.

A recent study commissioned by the City of Seattle identified 238 children involved in prostitution in the city. The total number, according to the assessment, was likely 300 to 500 kids in the Seattle area.

Some of those girls come from loving homes, said Julie Kays, the special assault unit deputy prosecutor. Others have fled sexual abuse at home or fallen into drug addiction. Source>>>