Listening to the story of a former teenage prostitute from Wichita this week provides a glimpse into a troubled world of runaways and other youngsters forced to live on their own means.
But it’s a much bigger problem than the story told this week by the 15-year-old Wichita girl in the human trafficking trial of Marlin Williams.
Two years ago, ABC News reported a study estimating some 650,000 teenagers in the U.S. had sold sex for drugs or money. In Dallas, where the Wichita girl testified that Williams took her to work the streets, police found girls as young as 12 working in strip clubs this year.
The girl told the Sedgwick County jury this week Williams promised her he would take her off the streets as soon as he raised enough money to open his own club.
There also seems to be a part of popular culture, including the music of Lil’ Wayne, which the girl said she listened to and quoted on her MySpace page, that appears to promote treating women as sex objects.
Police intervened and sent the girl back to Dallas, where she is now in a state program for independent living and reunited with the daughter she had at age 14, then abandoned.
Still, thousands of others remain on the streets.
One Comment
So not much has changed from 25 years ago when I was a teenager and heard similar harrowing stories? I lived in a small town in SE Kansas yet I heard enough to believe that running away from one’s family would lead to prostitution, drugs, and possibly an early death.
I’m thinking today there are better resources & options for homeless kids, but maybe I’m wrong.