Child prostitutes sell themselves on Craigslist

[Schuyler Colfax]

WTF

SACRAMENTO, California (CNN) -- For more than two years, undercover cops on the Sacramento Police Department's vice squad have been working one of the most draining beats: trying to crack down on online child prostitution.


Police have nabbed nearly 70 girls under the age of 18 since 2005. Most of the girls were released to foster or group homes. Those are just the official figures; investigators think there are many more child prostitutes out there.

It is no easy task.

"We're asking these girls to do a big thing ... which is to stop what they're doing," said Sgt. Pam Seyffert of the Sacramento Police Department. "Stop what's working for them. Surviving is basically what they're doing."

Sacramento police are working with the FBI as part of a nationwide campaign to combat underage prostitution called Innocence Lost. The goal of the program, which is now in almost 30 U.S. cities, is to decriminalize the girls and concentrate on catching the pimps who control them.

"It really makes me angry," Seyffert said. "I think everybody on the team has different reactions to it, but I just flat out get really angry that some guy thinks he can take this girl and basically deprive her of her freedom."

It is not uncommon for the officers on the unit to put in 30-hour shifts. Oftentimes, their work is heart-wrenching.

Child prostitution is even tougher on the parents of these girls. Roslyn and Sergio's daughter had been missing for more than two weeks. They waited for hours at police headquarters in hopes that their daughter would be found.


Vice squad officers found her in a downtown apartment with Bruce William Carter, a 21-year-old man who police said had posed on the Internet holding fistfuls of cash. He pleaded not guilty to charges of statutory rape and was held in lieu of $35,000 bail.

The couple's daughter, who had just turned 17, was detained but not arrested.

"It hurt," said Roslyn, who appeared weary and a bit shell-shocked. "Because you don't want to see your children involved in things like this. You don't realize how dangerous the Internet is. Now, we got to keep her away from the Internet."

Police say most of the ads appear on Craigslist, the popular and free Internet classifieds site, under a category named "Erotic Services." Even though Craigslist has posted a bold disclaimer warning against human trafficking and the exploitation of children, law enforcement officials said it doesn't seem to deter girls from posting the ads or men who are searching for sex.

But why would a girl sell her body online?


To help answer that question, Sacramento police made arrangements for CNN to interview a 14-year-old girl who said she'd started selling herself as a prostitute at the age of 11.

"I wanted to feel loved. ... I wanted to feel important," said the teen, who wanted to be identified only as Monique.

She said she used Craigslist because it was free and she could post dozens of ads a day. Even though she understood the seriousness of what she was doing, she said she didn't care.

"You could put stuff in your ad like 'wet and wild,' 'fun and sassy,' things like that to catch their attention, to make them want you," she said.

Craigslist executives said they abhor the fact that their site is being used for child prostitution but believe that the problem could be harder to track if they removed the category.

"It would be a bigger problem if we removed that category and had those ads spread throughout the site," said Jim Buckmaster, chief executive officer of Craigslist.

Both legal experts and police say Craigslist bears no legal responsibility. Undercover officers said the fact that the listings can be traced helps them pinpoint the girls and sometimes leads them to pimps.

For her part, Roslyn has a strong message for the man arrested in connection with her daughter's detention.

"I want him to stay away from my daughter," she said. "I'm going to put a restraining order on him. Every time he goes near my daughter, I'm going to call the police and have him put in jail."

Even though they have more work than they can handle, vice officers hold out hope that they can save more girls from a life of prostitution.

[chitoryu12]

"I wanted to feel loved. ... I wanted to feel important," said the teen, who wanted to be identified only as Monique.

Oh, well that explains it. Emo, angsty idiots who think that the best way to feel loved and important is NOT to make friends and do something like do volunteer work or play a sport, but rather to get cash by fucking smelly middle-aged guys with gratuitous body hair.

[Venator]

Craglist? I'd have thought there was some kind of moderation/policing to stop blatantly illegal stuff like that.

"It hurt," said Roslyn, who appeared weary and a bit shell-shocked. "Because you don't want to see your children involved in things like this. You don't realize how dangerous the Internet is. Now, we got to keep her away from the Internet."

Now, let's say that she was being prostituted out the old-fashioned way, let's see how this works:

"It hurt," said Roslyn, who appeared weary and a bit shell-shocked. "Because you don't want to see your children involved in things like this. You don't realize how dangerous the street is. Now, we got to keep her away from sidewalks."

Yeahh... no .

[Sidewinder]

Craglist? I'd have thought there was some kind of moderation/policing to stop blatantly illegal stuff like that.

The lack may be due to a limited budget (Craigslist is a commercial site, which means the moderators won't work for free) or because the sheer number of posts on that site overwhelmed the moderators that are there, allowing the child prostitutes' ads to slip through their net.

[Johonebesus]

Craglist? I'd have thought there was some kind of moderation/policing to stop blatantly illegal stuff like that.

I'd imagine a lot of ads don't explicitly state the whore's age, but just use "code words" like young or twink.

[Venator]

Craglist? I'd have thought there was some kind of moderation/policing to stop blatantly illegal stuff like that.

The lack may be due to a limited budget (Craigslist is a commercial site, which means the moderators won't work for free) or because the sheer number of posts on that site overwhelmed the moderators that are there, allowing the child prostitutes' ads to slip through their net.

I'd imagine a lot of ads don't explicitly state the whore's age, but just use "code words" like young or twink.

Good points - I decided to look up Craigslist myself, and dug out these statistics:

Q: How many classified ads does craigslist receive?
A: craigslist users self-publish more than 30 million new classified ads each month

Q: How many job listings does craigslist receive?
A: More than 2 million new job listings each month

Q: How many images are uploaded to craigslist?
A: More than 10 million new images per month

Q: What about craigslist discussion forums?
A: More than 90 million user postings in 100 topical forums

Q: How many employees does craigslist have, and where are its offices located?
A: 25 of us work out of a victorian house in the Inner Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco

Emphasis mine. That explains why they couldn't keep things nice and tidy...

[Darth Wong]

"We're asking these girls to do a big thing ... which is to stop what they're doing," said Sgt. Pam Seyffert of the Sacramento Police Department. "Stop what's working for them. Surviving is basically what they're doing."

That leads to a question: what social services are available for teenaged runaways?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Not much that don't involve returning them to their parents, as far as I'm aware.

[Venator]

"We're asking these girls to do a big thing ... which is to stop what they're doing," said Sgt. Pam Seyffert of the Sacramento Police Department. "Stop what's working for them. Surviving is basically what they're doing."

That leads to a question: what social services are available for teenaged runaways?

I know of a few shelters in Toronto which try to rehabilitate runaways, get them housing, jobs, etc, and only allow parents to contact them with the kids' consent.

But of course, they're not that widespread, and to my knowledge they're NGOs and have to somehow fund themselves.

So it tends to boil down to back home or foster system, neither of which are very appealing to most runaways.

[Kanastrous]

There are a number of houses in Los Angeles like the "My Friend's Place" facilities, but judging by the number of young street people you see, their resources are probably inadequate.

[Darth Wong]

This is the problem with our social values: we want to fight child prostitution but our idea of fighting it is arresting the child prostitutes, without giving them anywhere to go.

[Alyrium Denryle]

"We're asking these girls to do a big thing ... which is to stop what they're doing," said Sgt. Pam Seyffert of the Sacramento Police Department. "Stop what's working for them. Surviving is basically what they're doing."

That leads to a question: what social services are available for teenaged runaways?

The sound you hear is the sound of me laughing because it is preferable to crying.

In the US as far as I know there is almost nothing. I say almost nothing instead of nothing only because there are a few underfunded NGOs that try, but dont have the money to help more than an insignificant fraction of the actual teenage homeless.

[Adrian Laguna]

Chicago has resources for homeless youth, but I am not entirely sure of their extent and efficacy. The phrase "undersized and underfunded" probably applies. That I know of, they are all private, and I have no idea whether they receive any government money. If they do, it's likely from the City not the Feds.

The one I'm familiar with is the Howard Brown Health Center's Broadway Youth Center. It's a pretty small place, I'd be surprised if it can handle more than two or three dozen people per day. It offers free meals every week day from 1 to 3 in the afternoon, has a shower (or two), a laundry service on Thursdays, and I think they offer free clothes from the Brown Elephant (a thrift store) on Mondays. It's only a few blocks away from were a lot of young (mostly black, largely transgendered) prostitutes hang out. Or hung out, apparently they recently got permanently chased away by the cops, thanks to complaints from the neighbors.

[Oni Koneko Damien]

"We're asking these girls to do a big thing ... which is to stop what they're doing," said Sgt. Pam Seyffert of the Sacramento Police Department. "Stop what's working for them. Surviving is basically what they're doing."

That leads to a question: what social services are available for teenaged runaways?

In Chicago, it's basically the same as what is offered to the homeless: A few places ranging from 'poor' to 'arguably more dangerous than sleeping on the streets'.