"Many lured to the life by food, shelter and drugs"
Posted: Wed May 07, 2008 2:51 pm"One girl's story: Pimp bought me for $400
PROSTITUTION STUDY | Many lured to the life by food, shelter and drugs
http://www.suntimes .com/news/metro/935552,CST-NWS-prost07.article#none
May 7, 2008
BY ANNIE SWEENEY Crime Reporter
At 15, her mother put her out because she was too much of a reminder of her father.
First, she slept in hallways but eventually a couple of drug dealers offered her a place in exchange for sex.
Then, a woman paid the dealers $400 for her. Soon after, the teen had new clothes and was dining out. She also was prostituting for the woman at a hotel room near Midway Airport -- first taking about eight clients a day and later 15.
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Brenda Myers-Powell stands in front of the West Division building where she began a life as a prostitute at the age of 14.
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That anecdote is one of many collected by Chicago researchers who interviewed Chicago prostitutes controlled by pimps.
It highlights what their work found: Chicago prostitutes sometimes are recruited into the life with the promise of nothing more than food and shelter or to support a drug habit. Money is sometimes withheld or stolen.
Some others are forced to stay after threats of violence. In several cases, they are pimped along networks stretching over state lines.
In Chicago, it's no different, researchers say, than international pipelines where people are bought and sold into sex work.
"How dare anyone call it prostitution,'' former prostitute and study interviewer Brenda Myers-Powell said of the 15-year-old working near Midway. ". . . That's trafficking. All day long.''
The study involved interviews with 100 prostitutes up to age 25 and it will be released today.
According to the findings, 70 percent were recruited into sex work and about half of those were coerced. Twenty-eight percent of the participants reported working in other states on a regular basis.
"We have a sense that these girls and women go out in front of their house. But they are involved in a business, the sex trade,'' said Jody Raphael, who authored the study and is a staff attorney at the Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center at DePaul University. "Their pimps take them where the demand is.''
The pimps cited in the study would likely be covered in a pending expansion of federal sex trafficking laws, experts said.
The change in law would make it easier to seek federal prosecution for domestic trafficking by expanding the current requirement for conviction of "force, fraud and coercion'' to include "persuade, induce or entice.'' Under the law, pimps who recruit girls or women by taking advantage of problems such as drug addiction, sexual abuse and homelessness could be charged federally."
PROSTITUTION STUDY | Many lured to the life by food, shelter and drugs
http://www.suntimes .com/news/metro/935552,CST-NWS-prost07.article#none
May 7, 2008
BY ANNIE SWEENEY Crime Reporter
At 15, her mother put her out because she was too much of a reminder of her father.
First, she slept in hallways but eventually a couple of drug dealers offered her a place in exchange for sex.
Then, a woman paid the dealers $400 for her. Soon after, the teen had new clothes and was dining out. She also was prostituting for the woman at a hotel room near Midway Airport -- first taking about eight clients a day and later 15.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brenda Myers-Powell stands in front of the West Division building where she began a life as a prostitute at the age of 14.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That anecdote is one of many collected by Chicago researchers who interviewed Chicago prostitutes controlled by pimps.
It highlights what their work found: Chicago prostitutes sometimes are recruited into the life with the promise of nothing more than food and shelter or to support a drug habit. Money is sometimes withheld or stolen.
Some others are forced to stay after threats of violence. In several cases, they are pimped along networks stretching over state lines.
In Chicago, it's no different, researchers say, than international pipelines where people are bought and sold into sex work.
"How dare anyone call it prostitution,'' former prostitute and study interviewer Brenda Myers-Powell said of the 15-year-old working near Midway. ". . . That's trafficking. All day long.''
The study involved interviews with 100 prostitutes up to age 25 and it will be released today.
According to the findings, 70 percent were recruited into sex work and about half of those were coerced. Twenty-eight percent of the participants reported working in other states on a regular basis.
"We have a sense that these girls and women go out in front of their house. But they are involved in a business, the sex trade,'' said Jody Raphael, who authored the study and is a staff attorney at the Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center at DePaul University. "Their pimps take them where the demand is.''
The pimps cited in the study would likely be covered in a pending expansion of federal sex trafficking laws, experts said.
The change in law would make it easier to seek federal prosecution for domestic trafficking by expanding the current requirement for conviction of "force, fraud and coercion'' to include "persuade, induce or entice.'' Under the law, pimps who recruit girls or women by taking advantage of problems such as drug addiction, sexual abuse and homelessness could be charged federally."