Child Prostitution is America's Dirty Little Secret

Carissa Phelps was only 12 years old when she ran away from the Fresno County group home where her mother had left her. Hungry and alone, the runaway was befriended by a man three times her age. And the price of a hot dog and Pepsi was all it cost the man to get her to a seedy motel.
Carissa soon found herself drawn into the world of child prostitution. It begins with men who first befriend lost girls like Carissa, then force them to have sex with other adult men and take whatever money they earn. Twenty years later, Carissa has managed to escape the desperate "survival sex" lifestyle that has become a dead-end road for many young people.

Others, however, are not so fortunate. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, child prostitution has become a problem of epidemic proportions, with estimates ranging between 300,000 and 800,000 (five million or more are prostituted globally). Those figures are likely even higher when one considers how many street kids -- runaways, thrown-aways and cast-offs from the foster care system -- remain unaccounted for in America. Left to fend for themselves, these young girls and boys quickly become prey for small-time pimps and organized sex-trafficking rings.

Amazingly, many children are introduced to prostitution by family members or acquaintances such as parents, older siblings or boyfriends. The internet, especially websites such as Craigslist, Facebook and MySpace, has made it even easier to prey on children without being easily detected by law enforcement.

Child prostitution is America's "dirty little secret," one that cuts across racial and socio-economic divides. As Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin observed, "It's one of those issues that doesn't get discussed and therefore there's an assumption that perhaps either it doesn't exist at all or the young women and girls who are prostitutes are there by their own free will." Yet there is little to suggest that these children ever willingly choose such a lifestyle. Even the term "child prostitute" is something of a misnomer, suggesting that it is the child -- and not the adult handler -- who has opted to sell him or herself for sex.

Children who are sold for sex (the majority are female) typically range in age from 11 to 17, with some as young as 9 years old. Once they have been lured or forced into prostituting themselves, these children are subjected to a full range of injuries, diseases, pregnancies, mental issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder and depression and drug addiction, not to mention criminal and delinquency charges if they are caught. For those who are "rescued" out of the system, the stigma of having once been part of the sex trade is hard to overcome.

Yet while most people are barely aware of the sex trafficking industry, it infects suburbs, cities and towns across the nation. "This is not a problem that only happens in New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco," stated Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. "This happens in smaller communities. The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it."

Unfortunately, Americans have become good at turning away from things that make us uncomfortable or stray too far from our picture-perfect images of ourselves. Yet the harsh reality is that this epidemic is largely one of our own making. Simply put, we have failed to prioritize or protect our young people, leaving them to fend for themselves.

There are a multitude of factors that have contributed to the explosive growth of child prostitution in recent years. These range from the rampant availability of porn over the internet and the unabashed peddling of sex by advertisers and the entertainment industry to a complete lack of role models for young people and a failure by religious organizations to engage or impact them in any meaningful way.

Yet it is the family -- and its breakdown over the past 40 years -- that has had the greatest impact on young people today. The rise of single-parent homes, the drop in marriage rates and soaring divorce rates are a testament to this breakdown. Just consider the family background of a child who has fallen into prostitution: typically, it includes an absentee parent, marital separation, domestic violence, substance abuse, prostitution activities within the family and neighborhood influence.

Sadly, while we as a society have failed to adequately register the importance of family on our children, those who prey on young people understand it all too well. According to a study conducted through the University of Pennsylvania, 75% of known child prostitutes work for pimps, who are adept at creating a pseudo-family environment by promising money, love and affection to children coming from dysfunctional homes who are seeking care and nourishment. These sexual predators then strip these children of whatever money they make and severely abuse them in order to establish a relationship of dependency.

So where does this leave the thousands of young people forced to sell themselves for sex every day just to survive to see the next day?

There are few cut-and-dried solutions. We can continue to throw money at the government -- with its task forces, sting operations and initiatives -- and comfort ourselves that something is being done. We can continue to give money to our churches and synagogues in the hopes that they will do something, perhaps by focusing on the inner cities and offering counseling and assistance to these cast-off children. We can even contact our representatives and insist that they get tough on crime by showing "no leniency" to sexual predators.

However, until each of us gets serious about this crisis, until we all start doing our part to target the underlying societal causes -- poverty, drug abuse and dysfunctional family units -- the gains will continue to be minimal. And tragically, it will be the children who pay the price for our neglect.

Telling Truth Proves Healthy

Telling the public the truth about medical mishaps has not provoked mass hysteria as feared - instead, it is proving healthier for patients and the health system, officials say.

Speaking this week at the launch of the New Zealand Incident Management System for "sentinel" (serious) events, Director-General of Health Stephen McKernan said the public had a right to know that when something went wrong, it was acknowledged and something was done about it.

In the small number of cases in which things went wrong, the authorities had to be "honest with patients and their families, find out what happened, why ... and how to stop it happening again"."One preventable death is one too many."

Quality Improvement Committee chairman Pat Snedden said the committee had asked each of the 21 district health boards for their policies on incident management and disclosure and received 46 policies.

Policy around the new system is still being developed, but a central Web-based repository for incident reports feeding into continuing training for health workers is planned.

Mr Snedden, who also chairs Auckland DHB, said when Capital and Coast was forced by the ombudsman to release details of serious events to The Dominion Post, every other board knew it could have been them.

"We quickly realised there was no value in pointing the finger at each other, but there was value in self-examination and in sharing what we found."

However, in the process of putting together the report - which detailed 182 serious events in 2006-07, including 40 deaths - the committee found that while boards had their own systems for dealing with such events, "almost no one was sharing what they had learned with anyone else".

Though they had been reluctant to air their "dirty laundry" in public, boards learned the public wanted to know the truth. "Far from encouraging hysteria, truth-telling gives them some perspective on the process."

Further, dealing with the media in a professional and open way had led to more objective reporting.

Both the health and disability commissioner and the ombudsman had highlighted the importance of disclosure and engaging the public, he said.

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Dolce & Gabbana - spring/summer 2009 menswear collections

Italian designer team Dolce & Gabbana kicked off Milan's fashion week in relaxed style, taking inspiration from oriental kimonos to kit out men in silk evening pajamas for next summer.

Asian-style prints of dragons and butterflies decorated robes and shorts in black, white, grey, sepia and ivory for the duo's signature line. Naomi Campbell modeled one of their designs as part of the spring/summer 2009 menswear collections.

Evening jackets teamed with black trousers also sported the prints, in a collection said to reflect "the relaxed lifestyle of the modern man".

A variety of light and dark blues, and natural hues from beige to brown, were used for formal striped suits and casual wear, topped on the runway with dark-rimmed glasses.

Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce tucked tight-fitting shirts -- often diagonally-striped, with small bow ties or chine jersey shirts with cotton collars and cuffs -- into drawstring trousers with a loose leg, or paired suits with bow and skinny ties. Jackets had small shawl lapels, single- or double-breasted.

The designers used crocodile and suede for jackets and for limited edition sneakers that also came in mixed leathers.

Models, some of whom were sent out with double-handled bags, wore python, crocodile, eel or patent leather sandals, as well as slippers in various leathers and colors.

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Designer brands Sex and the City fashion 'dull'

Legendary fashion designer Vivienne Westwood has hit out at the 'Sex and the City' movie, branding the fashion "quite dull".

Despite her creations featuring in the hugely popular film, the 67-year-old admits she was not impressed by the outfits she saw on the big screen.

She said: "'I thought 'Sex and the City' was supposed to be about cutting-edge fashion and there was nothing remotely memorable or interesting about what I saw. I went to the premiere and left after ten minutes."

'Sex and the City' is famed as much for its fashion as its racy storylines.

Sarah Jessica Parker revealed prior to the film's release that her character Carrie wore an astonishing 81 outfits in the movie - including a wedding dress created by Westwood.

Parker vowed fans would love the outfits shown onscreen, saying: "The movie doesn't disappoint! It certainly doesn't disappoint in fashion."

Sarah's co-stars, Cynthia Nixon, Kim Cattrall and Kristin Davis had 200 outfit changes between them.

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Samsung and Sprint have collaborated together on a touchscreen handset - The Samsung Instinct

Samsung and Sprint have collaborated together on a touchscreen handset that could finally give the iPhone some decent competition. The Samsung Instinct is an EV-DO Rev.A handset with GPS and access to Sprint TV, together with a 2-megapixel camera with video recording, Bluetooth 2.0 and microSD storage supporting up to 8GB cards. However the interface deserves some attention too, with haptic feedback, single-touch access to favourite functions.

Samsung Instinct, exclusively available from Sprint, has a high-tech look with large, vibrant touch screen featuring localized tactile feedback, called haptics, which allow the virtual QWERTY keypad and other operations to become a sensory experience. The device also offers a Voice to Action button providing many functions using voice activation including call, text, picture messaging, traffic, movie, sports, news and search.

“Instinct brings customers what they want with the immediacy they want. Every decision during the development process focused on simplifying the user experience,” said John Garcia, senior vice president of Product Development and chief marketing officer for Sprint. “The end result is a great looking phone that makes the value of Sprint’s fast NOW Network come to life, but most importantly, it is fun and easy to use.”