• 14 years old is the average age of a runaway’s first act of prostitution.
• 72 percent of teen prostitutes believe that they have no other way to support themselves.
• 48 percent of adolescent female prostitutes were sexually abused within their family (and 1 out of 10 families are involved in some form of incest).
• 72 percent of teens use drugs while engaging in prostitution.
• Only 3 to 5 percent of sexually transmitted diseases are from prostitutes.
Sources: “Runaway Me: A Survivor’s Story” by Evan Karl Cutler at http://www.vis.colostate.edu/~scriven/Runaway/statstcs.html and the website of the H.I.P.S. Network, a Washington D.C.-based organization that helps prostitutes at http://www.hips.org