How about HOLDING UP a MIRROR to yourself, holier-than-though Americans?
"New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, opposes the bill, saying that the best way to keep girls from running away from services is to keep them in the criminal system.... Las Vegas has decided to arrest and detain young people to keep them safe."
Just one more example of a fascist society that, of course, has money for wars, etc, etc, and nothing to take care of kids.
I get tired of repeating myself, folks!!!
"New York struggles over child prostitution; Criminals or abuse victims?" by Robin Shulman, Washington Post | July 18, 2008
NEW YORK - The girl is very slight, pretty, with glasses, nervously fingering the beads on a bracelet she made herself.
She seems like a typical shy high school kid. Little about her suggests the tortured story she tells: At 14 she ran away from sexual abuse at home and met a 24-year-old guy who seemed like he wanted to be her boyfriend - until he told her he wanted to be her pimp. "I was like, wow," recalled the girl, now 16, though she looks younger. She was shocked, but desperate, she said. "At the time I needed a place to sleep, so I was like, 'Fine, I'll go along with it.' "
On and off for the next two years, she said, she traded sex for cash, under the control of several different men who took most of the money for themselves. Her work as a child prostitute caused her to be arrested in March and placed in detention.
"The whole thing makes me sick to my stomach," said the girl, who did not want her name to be used, like several others who worked as prostitutes and gave interviews for this article. "Most of the time we do not have the right to say yes or no."
Now New York is struggling with the question of how to treat young girls who are involved in prostitution. Are they criminals - or child abuse victims?
Governor David A. Paterson is considering signing a groundbreaking bill that would divert young girls arrested for prostitution to social programs rather than punish them.
The bill, known as the Safe Harbor Act, stipulates that the first time girls 15 and younger are arrested for prostitution, they should be designated "persons in need of supervision," not delinquents, and get counseling and a safe house to protect them from pimps.
Advocates say the bill helps to redress an inequity in state law, which sets the age of consent for sex at 17 but sets no age limits on the crime of prostitution, so that if a 12-year-old is paid for sex, even if she turns the money over to a pimp, she can be arrested, charged with an act of juvenile delinquency, and prosecuted.
"This law is going to protect children who mostly come from broken or dysfunctional families, who have either been enticed or coerced into commercial sex, who need help," said state Assemblyman William Scarborough, a Democrat from Queens who sponsored the bill. "We will surely spend much more on these children if we do not get them out of this life."
But prosecutors have argued that it is necessary to hold the threat of jail over young girls to encourage them to testify against pimps. And the administration of New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, opposes the bill, saying that the best way to keep girls from running away from services is to keep them in the criminal system. "Legal leverage is the best way to provide services," said John Feinblatt, the mayor's criminal justice coordinator.
Across the country, cities and states are grappling with this issue. Las Vegas has decided to arrest and detain young people to keep them safe.
Boston considers them child abuse victims and generally does not charge them but treats them. San Francisco has a hybrid model of arresting girls and then diverting them to services.
These questions arise because incidences of very young girls being coerced or forced into prostitution have become alarmingly common, according to law enforcement agencies, researchers and advocates.
The age girls most frequently enter prostitution is between 12 and 14 years old, according to a University of Pennsylvania study, which also estimated there could be several hundred thousand youth being paid for sex across the country.
And although prostitution in New York has largely been chased from the Times Square area, the streetwalker culture - often built on young girls - is thriving in poor neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens."Truthfully, readers, the whole industry makes me ill.
AmeriKa is Sick with a CAPITAL S!
