a guide for moms/gramas to help girls caught in prostitution

Website links, books, organizations and other helpful anti-pornstitution activist tools

Moderators: delphyne, oneangrygirl, deedle, sam

a guide for moms/gramas to help girls caught in prostitution

Postby sam » Sat Dec 19, 2009 12:15 pm

The Women's Justice Center has produced the terrific, "A Guide for Mothers, Grandmothers, and Others for Helping a Girl Caught in Prostitution or Sex Trafficking."

http://www.justicewomen.com/guide/index.html

Introduction
Part 1 Warning Signs a Girl May Be Being Prostituted
Part 2 Starting Tips
Part 3 Making the Police Report
Part 4 If Your Daughter Gets Arrested
Part 5 Coming Back to a Future
Part 6 Six True Stories
Part 7 If Your Daughter is Found Deceased

Introduction


Every year tens of thousands of young people, especially young girls, become trapped into prostitution. Mothers, grandmothers, and others close to the young women, are usually the first to suspect the girl is in trouble. They're also the most likely to care deeply, and the most willing to fight long and hard to help the young woman. The purpose of this guide is to provide you with tips, information, and resources to help you fight as effectively as possible to help a girl involved in prostitution.

Helping your child is not going to be easy. As you're probably well aware, there are still very powerful prejudices and forces working against any young person in prostitution. There are the pimps and johns who treat her as merchandise, and control her with degradation, threats, and violence. There are police agencies that often treat her as a criminal. And there is much of our society that still believes it's the girls who are the root cause of the prostitution problem.

The good news is there is also a new and growing understanding that these young women are really the victims in an extremely powerful and harmful criminal system of exploitation. New laws are being passed to protect the prostituted child and to punish the pimps, johns and others who profit from or participate in the child's prostitution. And there is a growing array of services to help the young women recover from the many traumas of being prostituted.

It's nowhere near perfect yet. In fact, it's really only just beginning. There's no guarantee your efforts will meet with success, no matter how much you pour your heart into it. Along the way you'll probably encounter many professionals and officials who still believe that it is the prostituted young woman who should be blamed, scorned, discarded, ignored, arrested, or punished. But don't give up! There is new hope. Keep looking and keep fighting. Often you can find people ready and willing to help you right in the same program or agency where others have ignored you.

Your fight will be worth it. Prostitution is violent, and it does severe damage to a young person's body, mind, and soul. Melissa Farley, a respected prostitution researcher, has found that prostitutes often suffer more severe post-traumatic stress disorder that veterans of war. The best way to help is to get the girl out of prostitution as soon as possible. Your fight to help a loved one will also help all women and girls.

NOTE 1: Why just girls? Though much of the information in this guide can be applied to helping a young boy, or helping an adult female or male, there are enough differences for each group, in the dynamics of male and female prostitution, in legal status, or parental rights, that in order to avoid confusion, we focus here very specifically on helping females under 18 years of age. There's another reason, too. The overwhelming number of prostitutes are female, and the average age of entry into prostitution is between 12 and 14-years-old. Helping a girl gets at the heart of stopping prostitution.

NOTE 2:
Why mothers and grandmothers? We address this guide to mothers, grandmothers, and others close to the girl because we believe they have been seriously overlooked as a key resource in efforts to end child prostitution. The reason mothers, in particular, have been overlooked is partly due to the fact that many child prostitutes have been previous victims of child sexual abuse. And though the perpetrators of this earlier abuse are almost always male family members, many in society blame the mothers. They believe the mothers should have, and didn't, protect the child from the abuse.

Having worked for many years on cases of child sexual abuse, we recognize that many times mothers are not aware of the abuse their daughters are suffering. Other times, the mothers are being so severely abused themselves they've been unable to control or escape the abuser. We also recognize that there are mothers who did have the opportunity to protect the child and, in fact, did not. These mothers sometimes finally come to see the damage that's been done when the child is trapped in prostitution, and they realize it's never too late to wake up and fight. We also recognize that there are many girls who had perfectly healthy, happy childhoods who also end up getting trapped in prostitution.

We write this guide to support all the mothers who see that no matter what happened in the past, the moment is now to fight for your child's life. Our conviction that mothers and grandmothers are key in the fight to help child prostitutes is supported by the fact that almost all the calls we receive looking to help a prostituted child come from a mother or grandmother. We also want to support the many fathers, teachers, brothers, sisters, neighbors, clergy, aunts, uncles, police, social workers, advocates, etc., who are also ready to fight hard for the safety, freedom, and justice for prostituted girls.
"Your orgasm can no longer dictate my oppression"

Trisha Baptie
sam
chaotic good
 
Posts: 4391
Joined: Thu Dec 30, 2004 12:54 am

Return to resources

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 5 guests

cron