Sex trade chills Atlanta streets                                          
                                                                           
By BOB HERBERT                                                            
New York Times                                                            
Published on: 10/20/06                                                    
                                                                           
                                                                           
The girl approached me on a desolate stretch of Atlanta's Metropolitan    
Parkway, about halfway between the airport and the clustered lights of the
downtown skyline. The night was unusually cold and she was shivering a little. She told me she was 15, but she didn't look more than 12.         
                                                                           
                                                                           
It was bad enough that the child was outside at all at midnight. The fact 
that she was turning tricks was heartbreaking. I explained that I was a   
reporter for The New York Times and asked if she would wait while I went  
to get someone to help her. She looked surprised. "I don't need any help,"
she said.                                                                 
                                                                           
                                                                           
I had already spent a night traveling with undercover vice cops, and they 
had pointed out the different neighborhoods in which underage prostitutes, some as young as 10, roamed the streets.                                  
                                                                           
                                                                           
"The girls are exploited in every sense of the word," said Lt. Keith      
Meadows, who heads Atlanta's vice unit. "The men are all over them ? the pimps, the johns. The girls get beaten. That's common. They're introduced to drugs. And the pimps take all the money. It's sad.                     
                                                                           
                                                                           
"I would say that in most cases, the girls never knew their fathers. A lot
of them were abused at home and they end up in the clutches of these      
pimps, putting their trust in someone they shouldn't have."               
                                                                           
                                                                           
Atlanta, for a variety of reasons, has become a hub of child prostitution 
and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation of children. The overall
market for sex with children is booming in many parts of the United       
States. In Atlanta ? a thriving hotel and convention center with a        
sophisticated airport and ground transportation network ? pimps and other lowlifes have tapped into that market big time.                           
                                                                           
                                                                           
"These guys are even going into rural Georgia and getting these girls and bringing them into Atlanta," said Alesia Adams, a longtime advocate who has worked with the courts and social service agencies to assist young girls who are lured into the sex trade.                                   
                                                                           
                                                                           
Kaffie McCullough, the project director of a federally sponsored          
intervention program, said Atlanta's juvenile prostitution problem "is a  
lot bigger than anybody would really like to know." The sex trade in      
Atlanta is "a huge, huge, huge industry," she said, and the involvement of
children younger than 17, which is the age of consent in Georgia, is a    
substantial part of it.                                                   
                                                                           
                                                                           
Stephanie Davis, the policy adviser on women's issues for Mayor Shirley   
Franklin, agreed. "Sex tourism is coming south," she told me. "There is   
advertising that I've seen on the Internet and other places that actually 
targets the New York market, urging men to come to Atlanta for the day and fly back home that night."                                                
                                                                           
                                                                           
The risks for pimps and other exploiters of children are low, and the     
payoff is often enormous. Demand is increasing for younger and younger prostitutes, in part because of the cultural emphasis on the sexual appeal of very young women and girls, and in part because of the widely held belief among johns that there is less risk of contracting a disease from younger prostitutes.                                                      
                                                                           
                                                                           
For the girls, life on the street can be hellish. A study released last   
fall by the Atlanta Women's Agenda, an initiative of the mayor's office,  
noted that the girls are always highly vulnerable to rape, assault, robbery and murder, not to mention arrest and incarceration. Added to that are the psychological risks, which are profound.                          
                                                                           
                                                                           
The girl who approached me on Metropolitan Parkway had walked alone across an empty, rundown parking lot. The usual practice, I had been told, was for johns in cars to pick up the girls and then drive behind an abandoned commercial building, of which there were plenty in the area.              
                                                                           
                                                                           
The girl said she had a "boyfriend," which is the word the girls use for  
their pimps. When I asked if her boyfriend knew what she was doing, she   
said, "He told me to do it."                                              
                                                                           
                                                                           
She lifted her chin and proudly showed me a cheap necklace she was wearing. "He gave me this," she said. "He loves me."                      
                                                                           
                                                                           
I tried to think of a way to bring the girl to the attention of some social service agency, or even the police. But taking her into my rented car, even if she had been willing to go with me, was out of the question. I looked around, hoping to spot a passing patrol car.                     
                                                                           
                                                                           
The girl's bangs fluttered as the wind picked up. She looked cold. "I gotta go," she said.                                                                                                                                   
                                                                           
Bob Herbert is a New York Times columnist. His column appears occasionally

The Juvenile Justice Fund has mounted a campaign called “A Future. Not A Past” to address this sexual exploitation, seeking to show that adolescents who are drawn into prostitution are victims of adult criminal behavior, rather than criminals themselves. The media has helped raise awareness of the staggering dimension of the problem, most recently in an article profiling the forceful response of faith-based communities.

This fight is to rescue girls who have been exploited and help restore their lives. Although we still do not have enough capacity to treat all the victims, the Governor’s Office of Children and Families has committed to develop a statewide system of care so that any girl who may have been exploited can be assessed and, if necessary, treated for the trauma that she has endured through commercial sexual exploitation.

But as a community we must do more than just rescue the young victims. We must move to stop the behaviors that are producing the victims. No community can afford to say “It doesn’t happen here.” From Dalton to Lilburn, communities large and small are learning that sex trafficking is just around the corner.

However, when it comes to stopping the behaviors that produce the victims, we have a long way to go. The behavior of the men who take advantage of girls should cause outrage — and from that outrage should come action — and that has not happened yet. We must insist that our law enforcement and publicly elected officials increase the frequency of arrests and prosecution of johns and pimps to deter others from seeking sex from our children. We also must change the cultural attitudes that excuse grown men who exploit young females.

Commercial exploitation of under-age girls is not a problem without a solution. No new technology or medical breakthrough is needed. We know what the solution is — we just haven’t summoned the public will to make it happen. Georgia has the laws to arrest and prosecute perpetrators. We just need to do it.

The FBI MATCH task force has made a good beginning, partnering federal and local law enforcement and arresting both pimps and johns. But one task force is inadequate to deal with a problem that is increasing exponentially, especially over the Internet, every month.

We need every law enforcement jurisdiction in the state trained on what to look for and how to address this issue effectively. Prosecutors must be supported in making their cases and elected district attorneys must understand that we will accept nothing less than zero tolerance when it comes to prosecuting these cases. There are fewer than 100 strip clubs in Georgia. Their operating permits can be inspected to ensure that all exotic dancers are actually their stated age.

Finally, we must look to ourselves and we must demand that men be held accountable for their behavior. Men must confront their friends, their brothers, their sons, and no longer excuse behavior that results in young girls being prostituted for their pleasure. If, as a society, we don’t hold ourselves responsible for taking these critical steps, if we excuse behavior that continually produces young victims who need to be rescued, then we will be committing our state, and our tax dollars, to an ongoing stream of victims.

Will we allow men with money in their wallets to continue buying sex with girls under age 18? Or will we at last say no?

Kaffie McCullough is the campaign director of A Future. Not A Past.