” When people think of prostitutes they probably wouldn’t imagine a 13-year-old girl. Thirteen-year-olds are still supposed to be wondering how to French kiss.
I laughed when my editor told me that the former prostitute I was going to interview was 13, but it wasn’t funny. I felt overcome with disbelief and sadness. What kind of cards had life dealt this kid to make her resort to the deplorable life of prostitution?
I was tense a week later as I walked up the cement stairs leading to “Children of the Night,” the teen shelter which was housing this girl. I took a deep breath as I waited for the girl to appear. I swore to myself that if she had a baby face I wouldn’t cry. Instead of the girl, I got a woman named Vikki who had arranged our interview. She told me that the girl wasn’t there. Vikki said that the girl had taken off the night before and probably wouldn’t be coming back. She explained to me how teen prostitutes—who are used to their own rules and a lot of money—find it hard to adapt to the strict rules of a shelter like Children of the Night, so they split. Vikki couldn’t guarantee that the girl had gone back to prostitution, but it was a possibility. I hoped to myself that she would be alright. She was only 13.
The 13-year-old was gone; however, Vikki said that there were other girls who were willing to talk with me. The first was “Sherry,” a pretty white girl wearing a blonde wig and casual skirt. The three of us went onto the patio to conduct the interview. As Sherry sat down she took off the wig to expose her natural, shorter blonde hair. At first Sherry appeared to be maybe 19 or 20 years old, but as I looked closely into her face beyond the glossy lips and heavy black eyelashes I could see that she was younger. Sherry turned out to be 15.
Sherry ran away when she was 14
She was from Las Vegas. She had been in Los Angeles with Children of the Night for four months, but before that, she worked on the Vegas strip as a prostitute for one year, meaning that she was 14 when she started. Sherry’s mother was a drug addict. Sherry ran away—not from her mother, but from the child protective services that threatened to take her out of the home.
Sherry had worked for money once or twice she said, but she preferred drugs as her payment, particularly an upper called methamphetamine. She’d stay up on meth, sometimes for as many as four days, then pass out from lack of sleep. It might seem hard to visualize a 14-year-old selling her body or a grown man actually paying for it, but like I said, Sherry looked older than her age and, according to Sherry, guys generally didn’t ask her about her age. If they did, she’d say she was 18.
I asked Sherry if she had been a virgin when she started selling her body. An adult who works with teenagers told me that a “trick” will pay a high price for a girl who’s still a virgin. I thought that this could have been the case with Sherry, but she only laughed and said that she lost her virginity when she was 13, before her days of prostitution.
Does it feel good to be out on the streets and have guys want you all of the time? No, said Sherry. “At first it did and I thought my self-esteem was rising, but it wasn’t. It was just the drugs that made me feel good.”
And guys didn’t want her all the time. Sherry went days, sometimes weeks, without a trick, or tricks would sometimes have sex with her and leave without paying. (Many prostitutes are raped.)
Sherry lived and spent the majority of her time in a hotel room that was in her friend’s name. She would leave to meet a trick who would get her drugs and that was all. Fear made her live alone and kept her indoors; ironically, it was also fear that kept Sherry in the streets as a prostitute.
“I was scared,” she told me. “I was in so much fear that my fear took over me. That’s what kept me out there so long. It was like I was in shock. I couldn’t do anything. I would never want to go back to that lifestyle.” From the direction that Sherry was heading in when I interviewed her, she won’t go back to that lifestyle. She was six months sober when I interviewed her.
Shenara began working on the street at 13
I interviewed “Shenara,” at Children of the Night’s second-hand store where she worked. She was a very relaxed girl of 15 1/2. She had a smooth chocolate complexion, short curly black hair and glossy lips like Sherry. Shenara and I arrived at the store and sat down on an old plaid couch. She began by telling me how her older sister would come home wearing fancy clothes and looking like a glamour queen. Shenara’s sister told her that she too could have those things if she was willing to work for it. Shenara was, so at 13 1/2 she was introduced to her older sister’s pimp and a life of prostitution.
“Yeah,” recalled Shenara nonchalantly, “he would beat me with hangers and leave welts on my skin. Then he would tell me to cover them with something.” I tried to conceal my look of disgust when she said this. I was reminded of a book I read called Pimp by Iceberg Slim. It seemed as if every pimp read out of the same pimp manual and took the same pimp class out of some O.G. pimp’s garage. Shenara’s pimp also took her virginity. I suppose that the act officially made her his property.
She explained how they would move from circuit to circuit, from San Diego to Arizona, from Arizona to Los Angeles, from Los Angeles to Sacramento, depending on the pace of the track and whether or not cops were jogging on it. The preferred track would be one which had a high demand for prostitutes and a low supply of police. Sometimes Shenara said that their pimp wouldn’t travel with them. In that case the girls had to wire him their money, which would become his money.
“He wouldn’t let us have any money,” said Shenara. “We would all go to the mall to go shopping and he would buy things for himself with the money we gave him. We couldn’t even ask for anything.”
Shenara soon left this pimp and began working for another one. Her new pimp had a best friend who seemed to have better qualifications so she left her second pimp for the best friend. Shenara eventually grew tired of him also and returned to her first. Then she proudly became the “bottom ho,” meaning that she called the shots. Once she told him to get rid of the rest of the girls in the stable, and he did.
At no time did Shenara consider moving back home with her mother. She said the only time her mother paid any attention to her was when they were fighting.
Shenara and the other girls in the stable (before he got rid of them) had a daily routine. They would wake up, get dressed, eat breakfast, and be out in the streets working by 9 a.m. At 1 p.m. they would come inside to change their clothes and have lunch. After lunch Shenara and the girls would go back out into the streets and work until 8 p.m. They’d find a place to eat dinner then promptly return to their sidewalk and work until 11 p.m. After they finished working Shenara and the other girls would go out and party. I asked her if they ever slept, but Shenara told me that they didn’t because they were usually drugged up on meth, which will keep you awake for days if you take enough.
After my interviews at Children of the Night, I met up with Lee Jett, an organized crime detective for the Los Angeles Police Department. Part of Jett’s job is to expel pimps and prostitutes from Los Angeles streets, particularly pimps. When teen prostitutes are arrested, they have to either go to a shelter or Juvenile Hall. That’s what happened to Shenara—after her arrest, she chose to go to Children of the Night.
But Det. Jett said he’d rather arrest a pimp than a prostitute. “They [prostitutes] are treated as the victim,” Jett said.
Who are pimps anyway? They’re usually syrupy sweet talkers ranging in age from just turned adults to middle-aged losers. (With their communication skills they could all probably get jobs in public relations or marketing; unfortunately, an office and desk doesn’t interest them. )
Det. Jett told me how pimps like to prey on impressionable teen runaways, trapping them with their silky jive talk. He said that pimps will promise these girls (and I say girls because pimps rarely if ever go after boys) money, clothes, glamour, a comfortable place to live and a friend whom they can trust and depend on. If anyone thinks that these girls are stupid, they’re not. They’re young and scared. Det. Jett said that some pimps, such as Howard Draper who is now doing time for pimping, will instill fear into their girls by beating, stabbing and burning them.
Det. Jett took me with him one day on a ride along to Sunset Blvd. I wanted to observe the prostitutes in their own environment and talk to some of them. As we drove, Det. Jett would spot a prostitute walking down the street and get out of the car to talk to her. He would speak to her until she admitted that she was a prostitute, then turn her over to me.
Their pimp seemed to be watching closely
“Silhouette” and “Shadow” were somewhat hesitant to speak to me in the beginning. They weren’t sure what my intentions were and Det. Jett and I suspected that their pimp was watching us even though Silhouette and Shadow denied having one. We came to this conclusion because a guy immediately drove into the parking lot of The All American Burger where we were standing and began watching all of us. He then relocated inside of the restaurant to resume his spying. He came outside later to use the pay phones; yet, he always kept an intense eye on us.
I explained to Silhouette and Shadow that I wasn’t out there to pass judgment. Teen prostitution is something that kids need to know about. Many teenagers go through problems that they don’t know how to handle and turn to the streets for the answer. Ultimately, prostitution becomes their lifestyle because they need to survive. For a teenager under 16 who can’t get a work permit, prostitution seems like the only way. Silhouette and Shadow saw where I was coming from after that and relaxed.
Of the teen prostitutes I spoke to at Children of the Night and on Sunset one thing was always common—their family background. Teenagers run away from home, not from selfishness, not for a life of adventure, but because they’re abused and have nowhere else to go. Silhouette told me that she ran away from home for a number of reasons. The main one was her family. They didn’t get along. Some of her male relatives liked her though; liked her enough to rape her. Silhouette said that at least she didn’t have to think about her problems while she was out on the street. She was too busy.
Who’s going to these prostitutes? Everyone? No one? Sherry said that she mainly got regular guys. You know, men that could get her drugs, but not Shenara. Shenara’s clients were white-collar professionals; men who would still be in their suit and tie when they came and picked her up, including “law-abiding” police officers. Detective Jett mentioned that he’s had to arrest police officers in the past for getting caught tricking.
Billions of dollars are spent on prostitution each year in the United States, according to Helping Individual Prostitutes Survive (H.I.P.S.) Network, a Washington D.C.-based organization that helps prostitutes. Silhouette and Shadow both said that they charge $150 for half an hour and sometimes make up to $1,050 a day on weekends. Someone’s going to these girls and they’re willing to pay a high price. According to Runaway Me: A Survivor’s Story by Evan Karl Cutler, the demand for an underage prostitute is approximately equal to the demand for an adult one. Sometimes it seems as if every adult yearns to have sex with a teenager. If you don’t believe me then do a search for “teen prostitution” on the Internet and try to count the ads that appear.
These teens long for a normal life. None of the girls that spoke to me enjoyed what they were doing or had done, nor would they recommend the life of prostitution to another. One of the major problems that teen runaways find and Det. Jett touched on is the lack of resource centers, let alone good ones, for teens to go to. Children of the Night is an example of a good shelter; unfortunately, there aren’t enough of them. Sherry heard about Children of the Night in a Vegas club and caught a bus all the way from Las Vegas to Van Nuys where the shelter is located because she wanted help, but in Las Vegas there was no adequate help. That seems to be the problem today. People are not willing to invest their time or money into building more shelters for these teenagers in need.
Some Hollywood citizens call the cops when they see prostitutes. They’re tired of walking outside to get their morning paper and finding used condoms in their yard. I’m sure we can all sympathize, but why not call a shelter instead? The fact is 40 percent of prostitutes are under the age of 18 and 90 percent of prostitutes are runaways, according to the H.I.P.S. Network web site. Shelters want to help get teen prostitutes off the streets as much as you want to see them off, but they can’t do it without support.
“Children of the Night,” like most other shelters, is licensed to house a specific number of teens. After the slots are full, teens are put on a waiting list. That’s ridiculous. If kids are seeking help they shouldn’t have to wait on a list to get it. The resources should already be there. It’s hard enough for teens to fight off prostitution. It shouldn’t be even harder to find help.
If you would like to help, call Children of the Night at (818) 908-4470.”