Prostitute, 15, couldn't find help to get out

While her high-school classmates were chasing boys or hanging out at the mall, Stephanie walked "the track" along Aurora Avenue North, eagerly scanning the passing cars for her next customer.

The baby-faced Tacoma girl with a porcelain complexion and a glittery nose stud estimates that she was paid for more than 1,000 sex acts during the nine months she was a 15-year-old prostitute in North Seattle. Although she no longer works as a prostitute, Stephanie concedes she would still be on the streets if her boyfriend — who was also her pimp — hadn't been arrested and imprisoned.

Just weeks from her 17th birthday, Stephanie today struggles with the memories of her past. She's been diagnosed as bipolar. She's out of school, without a job and still infatuated with the man who she says began controlling her life when she was 14, beat her and made her walk the streets to prove her love. She readily concedes she could go back to prostitution despite the intervention of her family and police.

Though prostitution is a crime, Seattle police Sgt. Ryan Long says that Stephanie and the more than a dozen juvenile prostitutes they encounter each year also are victims — girls without direction, role models or self-respect who are preyed upon by men who take advantage of their often troubled pasts. Police, prosecutors and mental-health providers have offered many of these girls advice, a shoulder to cry on or a meal, but Long said there is little else they can do to help the girls leave the streets.

State Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, has long pushed for legislative funding to help juvenile prostitutes get mental-health services, vocational training and funding for housing. Last week, her attempt to secure money for aid for juvenile prostitutes was defeated in Olympia for the second year in a row when it didn't make it past a Senate vote.

"It was timing. The bill had no opposition, it was just a factor of the short session," said Kohl-Welles, who plans to reintroduce the bill next year. "There were too many bills and too short of a time."

Kohl-Welles and Seattle City Councilmember Nick Licata are still searching for funding to provide some sort of safety net for teenage prostitutes. Kohl-Welles said she is pushing for $100,000 from the state operating budget to help provide mental-health and other services for juvenile prostitutes.

"They are a big cost to society and the criminal-justice system," Kohl-Welles said. "Many prostitutes go through the revolving door of the local jails; they don't have anywhere else to go. This is a way to get them out of the sex industry."

Licata said his staff is studying the cost to create a safe house for juvenile prostitutes in Seattle. Currently, at-risk youths can access services at Seattle's Spruce Street Secure Crisis Residential Center, but the home is not designed solely for juvenile prostitutes.

"Up to 300,000 minors across the country have been exploited for prostitution," Licata said. "It's just outrageous that we're seeing children being taken off the streets and turned into prostitution."

Stephanie, who lives in a Pierce County apartment with her mother, said she has attended some counseling at Children of the Night, a Los Angeles nonprofit recovery center that has been helping underage prostitutes for nearly 30 years. Licata and Kohl-Welles said they hope to build a similar program locally.

Stephanie and her mother, Christina Williams, agree there's a need for local resources.

"It's a very fast life," Stephanie said. "You can't ground a girl, you can't make me stay somewhere unless it's a really good program."

Williams said she hated sending her youngest daughter all the way to California for help. She also sees the development of local counseling programs and support groups for the parents of prostitutes as "vital."

"I tried to help her," said Williams, who has a different last name than her daughter. "I kept looking at her baby picture and thought 'this is not what I wanted her to grow up and be.' "

Long, of the Seattle Police Department's Vice Unit, said he and other officers often book teenage prostitutes into the King County Youth Service Center, the juvenile jail, rather than taking them to Spruce Street because the latter isn't a lockdown facility.

"We will often select jail because we know they won't be allowed to walk out the door," Long said. "We would prefer to have a way to get them off the street and initiate help. There is no bridge between police and social-service providers."

Long said juvenile prostitution is a growing problem in Seattle, where police have investigated seven cases in the past five weeks, including one in which a 23-year-old Seattle man was arrested after allegedly coercing a 12-year-old girl into prostitution.

Looking for love

Stephanie said she had a tough childhood and was looking for love and support when she met Jason Fisher in an online chat room when she was 14. She and 18-year-old Fisher quickly started a sexual relationship.

"All my life he was the only guy who made me feel special," she said. "Girls my age are looking for guys to take care and pay attention to us."

On July 1, 2006, hours after agreeing to work as a prostitute, Stephanie put on a pair of "booty shorts," a ripped T-shirt, high heels and a thick coat of makeup. She gave herself the street name "Cynnamon" and earned her first $100 within 20 minutes, she said. She was arrested for the first time two days later.

Stephanie says she survived on the streets without alcohol or drugs. Her sole motivation was praise and an occasional "I love you" from Fisher, she said.

"The greatest joy for me back then was to bring him money," Stephanie said.

Though Stephanie pulled in nearly $500 a day working along the stretch of Aurora known to prostitutes and police as "the track," she said the money wasn't enough for Fisher.

Fisher gambled away the money she earned, beat her if he was unhappy, called her names and followed her, demanding that she work harder, she said.

Within months, the beatings worsened and escalated into death threats, Stephanie said. She begged police to take her to jail so she could get away from Fisher. She went to Children of the Night in Los Angeles last February and stayed about three months — until she was desperate to see Fisher.

In May, shortly after returning to Aurora, Stephanie said, she'd finally had enough. She helped the Seattle Police Department Vice Unit go after Fisher. He was eventually arrested after fleeing to California.

Fisher returned to Washington and is serving about 10 years in prison for promoting prostitution, witness tampering and eluding police.

Though Stephanie says she is thankful that she is off the streets, the pull of her life with Fisher remains obvious. She says she regrets never saying goodbye to him and wishes she could've been a better girlfriend.

She said Fisher can still easily control her, and she believes that if he told her to head back to the streets she would prostitute herself again.

"In his eyes love was conditional. Only if I brought him enough money," she said.

Seattle police Detective Bryan Van Brunt, who led the investigation into Fisher, said he checks in with Stephanie about once a month to make sure she's staying out of trouble.

"I'm worried about her," Van Brunt said. "This guy has friends he can still have contact with, and who knows what his friends are willing to do. He threatened me; what's to say he won't threaten her?"

Van Brunt believes that juvenile prostitutes have a better chance than adults to turn their lives around after police intervene. But he also believes there needs to be more resources to help them get back on their feet.

"The juveniles are much more impressionable. They don't have the maturity or lifelong learning that adults do," he said. "Adults are more set in their ways; they're not as susceptible to influence and guidance."

Jennifer Sullivan: 206-464-8294 or jensullivan@seattletimes.com