Before reading this article, I knew that child prositution occured somewhere in the world. However, it did not occur to me, EVER, that it happens in our country and infact happening so close to home. Over this 72 hour "crackdown" 69 children in the United States of America were recovered from their so called "pimps". That many kids in a matter of three days. I am very shocked and appalled. Then to continue reading and to find out that in our own state capital, Sacramento, 7 children were recovered. I had absloutely NO IDEA that our country had such a problem with exploiting young children, some even as young as the age 13 and thought that i should share this with the rest of you.
Are any of you as shocked about this as I am? Please tell me i am not the only one in disbelief.
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I am really not suprised at the fact that child prostitution exists in this country. Not that it is a good thing, but considering the levels of poverty, high percentage of sexually active teens, and the high percentage of teens participating in risky, I am not surprised. Also, there are states that allow teens to work in strip clubs which opens the doors for teens into the sex industry. Though it is sad to find so many teens engaging in child prostitution, I find it appalling that people are just finding out about this. I have read many stories about how many teens participate in child/teen prostitution (one instance where two teens were pimping out other teens as prostitutes).
I think the first step in solving this problem is awareness. If the public is unaware of this problem, there is no way to solve it. Therefore, I think teen prostitution should be a major issue that should be put out into the open and should be fixed.
Like Ayaka, I also think that awareness is key to stopping these types of problems. However, when any of these stories makes major headlines, it get a lot attention and donations/funding etc. But after a while people tend to think, "Oh I did my part that's it." They don't seem to understand that these problems are constantly growing. After they "do their part," they just forget about it. I think we need awareness, but also need a way to get people more involved into actually stopping these things from happening.
I remember from last year's debate unit that Sandy, Gurjote, Kalie, and Amrit (I hope that they do not mind that I am using their names in this post) debated for/against the legalization of prostitution, so like Ayaka and Kelly, I am also aware that prostitution is a big issue in America, as well as other parts of the world. Child prostitution is one of the main points of the debate for/against and I definitely think that there needs to be stricter laws to enforce that child prostitution does NOT happen. It is a different case if it is involving adults who are making their own decisions to participate in prostitution, for whatever reasons, but to force a child to unwillingly lose their innocence at such a young age is just cruel.
Here is a link if people want to view the pros and cons for the legalization of prostitution:
http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=25
Sorry, I meant to say that child prostitution is one of the main points AGAINST the legalization of prostitution, not both for/against it.
Wow. I am extremely disgusted by these facts. I agree with you, Drea, in that I really did not know that child prostitution was something that still existed in the United States. Although I knew that it must have existed (i.e. Sonya in Crime in Punishment), I figured it was something of the past that only still occurred in extremely poor regions.
I am also a little confused with the decision to "crack down" on child prostitution. Shouldn't they always be trying to strongly eliminate child prostitution? Does this mean that they just spent more time and money for a couple of days trying to eliminate it?
However, I don't think simply arresting people will be enough. As I earlier mentioned, in the book Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, Sonya is forced to turn to prostitution because of her family's low income. Although this was a while ago in Russia, I believe that this still applies to present day America. If families are struggling and can barely stay alive, the children may even see it as them doing something good for their family. The problem is not just arresting people, but raising awareness. Like Ayaka said, people need to know about what is going on, and know that there are many other options.
Sorry to be Negative Nancy, but this did not surprise me. Newsflash, child prostitution exists. That shoudn't be too shocking. And while we talk a lot about the fact that it does happen (and yes, awareness is step one), what are we going to do about it? Clearly, criminalizing prostitution hasn't done much to stop child porn/prostitution/trafficking. Therefore, I want to pose the question, how do we solve this problem? Do we crack down more? But we have to remember, this is a money game. While it may seem horrible, exploited children may not be high on the priorities of legislators. So now what?
Courtney- The crack down refers, I believe, to an attempt by law enforcement for a few days to be stricter than normal. These typically result in many fewer lawbreakers (in this case, child prostitutes)for a period of time.
What surprises me about this article is that this is the fifth such crackdown, but they are still finding 6, 7, 8, or even more child prostitutes in one city. How many crackdowns will be necessary to nearly eliminate this problem?
Im not in a bubble and think that the world is perfect. I know that child prositution does occur and that the world has a problem with it, but i did not know that AMERICA had a huge problem with it. I haven't seen any major articles in the newspapers nor have i really hear about it from anyone else. So in that case, since there are people out there who don't know about it, like me, I think there needs to be more efforts to let people know about this problem. I agree with Kathy and that maybe more crackdowns should happen to catch people, and maybe something needs to be done in the legisaltion to make the punshiments more harsh, or have more police efforts with this as another top priority!
Prostitution was always a problem in the United States. What makes it even worse is that prostitution is growing at an alarming rate and it's even more tragic that young children are the cause of this. Personally, prostitution is straight up wrong and unnecessary no matter what the situation is. It's wrong for a person to expose oneself to a total stranger, moreover with a younger type of audience.
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