Aid program for teen prostitutes looks for a second chance

She was 16 the first time she had sex for money.

The john picked her up in Kent and drove her to his home in Seattle. She remembers his living room was decorated with wedding photos and pictures of his children.

The now-19-year-old Tacoma woman had to go to Los Angeles, site of one of three residential programs in the country specifically for prostituted youths, for help escaping her pimp.

If Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess has his way, other girls won't have to travel outside King County to find safe housing, specialized social services, educational programs and the vocational training they need to break free of the streets and begin healing from the traumas of sexual exploitation.

The city, in partnership with King County and the United Way of King County, was just about to launch a two-year pilot project for prostituted youth when King County Executive Kurt Triplett announced in late August that he was cutting money for the program — roughly $480,000 a year for two years — because of the county's woeful budget situation.

But Burgess wasn't about to go down without a fight.

"We're not going to give up on launching this program," Burgess said. "There's no place in Seattle or King County or anywhere in the state of Washington where children forced into street prostitution can go to receive the services and safety they deserve."

On Thursday, during its first round of 2010 budget negotiations, the Seattle City Council briefly discussed allocating $150,000 for the pilot project. Council members will vote on the issue during a second round of budget talks in mid-November. If the program survives that vote, it would be incorporated into the budget that goes before the council for a final vote on Nov. 23.

"I'm hopeful. I think there's good support," Burgess said after Thursday's budget talks. "Getting the city to put its own money toward the project will make it easier to convince private foundations and individuals to also contribute."

March start is goal

The program is expected to cost $1.4 million over two years. Burgess said he needs to have roughly $700,000 in hand by late January to launch the pilot at the end of March.

The program also will receive approximately $47,000 each year for the next two years from the city's Sex Industry Victims Fund, which gets money from fines paid by convicted johns.

The United Way already has committed $100,000 for the project next year and expects to support the program in years to come, said Mary Shaw, the agency's director of planning.

"Runaway and homeless youth are increasingly being recruited into prostitution," Shaw said.

In addition to the United Way money, Burgess said an anonymous donor has pledged $100,000 to the pilot project and a local attorney has pledged $20,000.

There are 300 to 500 juvenile prostitutes — most of them girls, ages 11 to 17 — in King County at any given time, mostly in Seattle and cities to the south, according to a report on juvenile prostitution commissioned by the city last year.

Nationwide, there are only three cities — Los Angeles, New York City and Atlanta — with residential-recovery programs for prostituted youth.

The Seattle pilot project, which Burgess and others hope will become a regional and national model, will aim to provide housing and services to 30 girls a year and provide "aftercare and delinquency prevention" for 15 more girls, including those who "age out" of the program when they turn 18, Burgess said. Police, juvenile-court officials and social-service providers will refer teen prostitutes to the program.

A life transformed

The former teen prostitute now living in Tacoma credits her stay at Children of the Night in Los Angeles with saving her from an early death.

The johns were bad enough, she said: "They're nasty, disgusting perverts."

But she received even worse treatment at the hands of her pimp and his "pimp partner," two Bloods gang members from California who she first met when they pulled her into their car as she stood outside a convenience store waiting for a friend.

Sitting in a restaurant in Tacoma earlier this month, the woman recalled one night when a group of gang members came up from California to visit the two pimps, crowding into a motel room somewhere south of Seattle. She accidentally made eye contact with one of them — a serious breach of pimp rules that landed her "out of pocket," a catchall offense for prostitutes who talk back, fail to turn over their earnings or acknowledge a man who isn't their pimp or a paying customer.

The punishment: She was forced to strip naked, ordered into a cold shower and beaten with a belt. Her pimp and his gang-member friends then took turns raping her.

One night, a motel clerk called police during a confrontation between the woman and her pimp. She was detained and agreed to go to Children of the Night.

It wasn't an easy transition. She was "angry at the world" and lashed out by cussing staff members, breaking things, punching walls and refusing to do her homework, she said.

"I expected to go there and have people think I'm a slut, I'm a whore," she said.

Instead, she said the structure and unconditional love she received finally broke down her resistance, giving her the strength to testify against the two pimps and to complete her high-school education.

"I ... realized the world wasn't out to get me," she said. "I realized I probably would not be alive if they hadn't come and got me out of that. I'd probably be dead or severely strung out on drugs."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com