SPECIAL REPORT: SELLING ATLANTA’S CHILDREN
Runaway girls lured into the sex trade are being jailed for crimes while their adult pimps go free.

By JANE O. HANSEN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Jan. 7, 2001

The courtroom door opened, and a guard led the defendant inside. She was dressed in standard jailhouse garb--navy jumpsuit, orange T-shirt, orange socks and orange plastic flip-flops. Metal shackles around her ankles forced her to shuffle.

"All rise," the bailiff said. The judge entered and took her seat on the birchwood bench while the defendant sat down at a table and chewed her finger.

At issue was what to do with her.

She had been in and out of an Atlanta jail since August. It was now November. Her sister was in another jail. As lawyers and officials debated whether she should remain behind bars, probation officer Gail Johnson asked if the defendant could address the court.

A little girl, her hair pulled into a tiny pigtail and her head bowed, rose from the defendant’s table. She was 10-years-old, a runaway and an alleged prostitute.

"I think I have been locked up long enough," the girl said in a small, high-pitched voice. She began to cry and rubbed her eyes with balled-up fists. "If you would just let me go home…"

But for children like her and her 11-year-old sister, also an alleged prostitute, it’s not that simple.

In Atlanta, prostituted children often go to jail while the adults who exploit them go free, court records show. Attitudes toward prostitution are partly to blame, say Juvenile Court judges and others. But a lack of children’s programs in Georgia, particularly for girls, has left some judges no choice but to place exploited children, such as these, in detention for their own safety.

"The last thing I want to do is detain her, because it comes across as punitive," said Fulton County Juvenile Court Judge Nina Hickson. "But I’ve got to make sure that she’s safe."

In Georgia, pimps are rarely arrested, even when the prostitute is a child. When pimps are charged, their cases often are dismissed or result in a small fine, court records show.

There are no reliable statistics on the number of prostituted children, although Atlanta judges say they are seeing an alarming growth in their courtrooms. But statistics for adults show a clear disparity in the system’s treatment of pimps and prostitutes. Since 1972, 401 adults--nearly all women--went to prison in Georgia for prostitution; no one went to prison for just pimping.

"I think there was an unwitting bias that the woman was the perpetrator," said Mike Light, Department of Corrections spokesman and a former parole officer. "She was the one out having sex…The pimp was just collecting the money."

Atlanta police say it’s harder to arrest pimps than prostitutes. And prosecutors say it’s difficult to build a case against pimps because prostitutes often are reluctant or scared to testify against them.

"We need evidence," said Carmen Smith, solicitor general for Fulton County State Court. "We need witnesses."

But critics say too often, police and prosecutors fail to distinguish between prostitutes who are adults and those who are children, such as the 10- and 11-year-old sisters. Many child prostitutes are runaways who are often escaping physical or sexual abuse at home and then are exploited on the streets.

Yet in the eyes of law enforcement, said Judge Hickson, "these girls aren’t seen as victims. They’re seen as consenting participants."

Juvenile Court judges and others have begun pressing for change in Georgia to bring harsher penalties against those who exploit children. They want the Georgia Legislature to make the pimping of children a felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison. They want authorities to become more aggressive in arresting and prosecuting men who pay to have sex with underage prostitutes, as well as the adults who sell them. And they want some alternative for helping these girls other than putting them behind bars.

In recent months, local and federal prosecutors have begun to respond. The Fulton district attorney’s office has brought felony charges against about a dozen alleged pimps believed to have prostituted children. The U.S. attorney’s office hopes to bring federal charges against pimps under the nation’s racketeering laws.

Still, says DeKalb County Juvenile Court Judge Nikki Marr, not enough is being done for children whose lives may already have been destroyed.

"It’s not a priority," she said. "That’s what it comes down to."

Youth center like an adult prison

In the waiting room at Metro Regional Youth Detention Center of Atlanta, the state’s largest youth jail, the public telephones are only four feet off the ground--about the right height for a child. But everything else about Metro looks and feels like an adult prison --with razor wire outside and electronic doors inside. Children are often taken to court in shackles.

"Whoever had her on the streets should be behind bars," said Johnson, the probation officer for the 10- and 11-year-old sisters.

This particular day, she had come to pick up the older sister and transfer her to Girls and Boys Town in DeKalb County, the only emergency shelter in Georgia designed especially for girls. Finally, a bed had opened up for the child.

Girls and Boys Town offers up to 30 days of counseling and education in an unlocked residential facility. Judges from as far away as South Georgia have sent girls there. But with only 16 beds, there is sometimes a waiting list.

The 11-year-old had been waiting in jail for three weeks, since she had been picked up as a runaway and charged with lying to police about her age.

The day Johnson retrieved her from Metro, the child emerged in the hot July sun hugging a teddy bear.

"I love him because he’s pretty, soft, he has all kinds of decorations on him," she said. Even the guards were upbeat to see her leave.

"Look what she got on," Johnson muttered. "She’s a baby herself."

The girl was dressed in high-heeled sandals and a skimpy sundress, her peach-colored bra peeking out from the low-cut top. As she walked toward the car, she teetered on the heels, like a child playing dress-up. But she worried that if her brothers saw her, "they’ll tell me I’m too grown."

On the way to Girls and Boys Town, Johnson stopped at McDonald’s to buy the girl lunch. Over a Happy Meal, the girl said her older stepsister, who had given her the shoes, and a cousin had introduced her and her younger sister to prostitution after taking them to a hotel on Fulton Industrial Boulevard.

"They told us to stay on the streets," the girl said. "If anybody tries to talk to us, talk to ‘em."

Atlanta police had picked her up on Bankhead Highway after a man flagged down officers, saying he had found a runaway child. She told the officer what she was doing and said she and her 10-year-old sister were staying in a hotel, but she insisted she was 14.

According to the police report, the patrol officer called the youth squad and explained that two girls were working as prostitutes. The officer asked how to handle it, thinking the youth squad would want to investigate. Instead, the officer was told to drop the child off at the county shelter.

"I found this odd," the officer wrote in the report. "I was concerned that someone was prostituting these girls out of a hotel, and I could not even get an investigator to give advice."

Eventually, the officer charged the child with false information and obstruction. A spokesman for Atlanta police said officers did subsequently investigate but found no evidence of prostitution.

In a separate interview, the 10-year-old said the boyfriend of a relative had made the children prostitute.

"He forced me. He wouldn’t let me go," the 10-year-old said, sitting in Hickson’s chambers. Speaking softly, the child sat hunched over with one hand partially covering her left eye, the other holding her right cheek. She never smiled.

"He told me he’d kill me if I left," she said.

At first he "was buying us stuff." She realized something was wrong, she said, "because of what he wanted in return." He wanted money "by me prostituting."

"I was really scared," she said. "He’d pull my hair, and he punched me."

The child said if she could, she would "change back the hand of time. I would change all this. It’s not worth seeing your life taken by prostitution stuff."

But she also didn’t think it was right that she and her sister had sat so long behind bars.

NO MORE CHILDHOOD

Georgia judges no longer send adult prostitutes to prison. Adult prison beds are increasingly reserved for violent offenders.

But the opposite trend is occurring in Georgia’s youth jails and prisons, where the beds are increasingly used by nonviolent offenders, including child prostitutes. In 1999, four of five admissions to Georgia’s youth jails were for non-serious offenses; girls are the fastest-growing population.

Many child prostitutes enter the Juvenile Court system charged with something other than prostitution, primarily running away. The number of runaway girls arrested in Georgia skyrocketed between 1988 and 1998 from 312 to 1,645 a year. Not all runaways become prostitutes, but national studies say up to a third of runaway and homeless youths exchange sex for shelter, clothes and money--what experts call "survival sex."

The 10- and 11-year-old sisters wound up behind bars because they kept running away from home in violation of their probation. But both girls were also in jail because there was no other safe place for them.

"They need treatment," said Alesia Adams of Victims of Prostitution, a new program in Fulton County to help child prostitutes. "These two break my heart. There’s just no place to put them."

Atlanta vice Detective Herman Glass says many of the underage prostitutes he has arrested need years of therapy. Without it, he sees the same faces recycling through the criminal justice system.

When he recently arrested a 19-year-old girl prostituting on Metropolitan Parkway, he realized she was the same girl he had arrested six years earlier, when she was 13.

"The system has failed her," Glass said with emphasis. "She still is out there prostituting. There is nothing for these girls."

Glenda Hatchett, a former Fulton Juvenile Court judge, said putting prostituted children in the state’s youth jails was the wrong solution, but she sometimes had no choice.

"There were times I was concerned about her getting back with her pimp and disappearing," Hatchett said. "I have put girls in Metro until I could figure out where else to put them." But it was a Catch-22, she said, in which the victims were further victimized and exposed to hard-core criminals.

Judge Hickson is similarly frustrated. She said she looks into the eyes of children who have been prostituted and she sees nothing. No hope. No dreams. No more childhood.

"Now that I have a daughter of my own, it affects me emotionally," she said. "Seeing the despair and no life really affects me."

FRUSTRATED WITH THE CASE

By fall, Hickson had become particularly frustrated with the case involving the 10- and 11-year-old sisters. Both girls were back in jail.

At the November court hearing, the judge accused child welfare officials of dragging their feet in finding an alternative placement. She had never intended to keep the girls at Metro more than a few days, she said, and she was angry she had to convene court to force them to act.

Everyone in court agreed the girls needed residential treatment. But nothing had worked. Girls and Boys Town had kicked out the 11-year-old for disruptive behavior. A group home in Griffin had made the girls leave after they locked themselves in a bathroom and yelled obscenities. A mental health program had rejected the girls, in part because of their history in prostitution.

Officials with the Fulton County Department of Family and Children Services said in court that the girls’ mother had been uncooperative, and they were worried about sending the children home. Because of the girls’ history of running away, the officials asked the judge to keep them in jail until they could find a suitable placement.

At a minimum, they asked that the girls be sent home with electronic monitors.

But Johnson, the probation officer, argued the child welfare agency had done nothing to help the mother or find an alternative.

The judge had heard enough. She addressed the 10-year-old.

"I don’t want you locked up either," Hickson said to the girl. "But I’m also concerned about your safety and whether you’re going to stay with your mom. Are you going to stay at your mother’s?"

"Yes, ma’am," the girl said, and she put her face in her hands.

The judge announced her decision. Custody would remain with DFCS, but both girls were going home that day, and they were going home without electronic monitors.

After the hearing, the child said she was sorry for what she had done. "I was just following my sister, and I got in some trouble," she said, her eyes red from crying.

She said she would like to tell other girls her age, "Don’t get yourself caught up in something like this. Don’t be around the wrong people. Stay in school. Don’t waste your life on something like this. Some people have caught HIV and AIDS."

She said she wanted to go back to school. Her elementary school has a mentor’s program and more than anything, the child said, she wanted a mentor.

"It would help me be better off in life," she said. "Much better than I am."

That day, both girls went home.

"No place for these kids"

Today, the 11-year-old seems to be doing well at home, officials say.

But less than three weeks after the 10-year-old went home, she ran away again. In early December, police picked her up and returned her to Metro. Judge Hickson says officials will try once again to find a place to rebuild her life.

In the meantime, the child remains in jail.

"It’s not the judge’s fault. It’s not anybody’s fault," said Adams of Victims of Prostitution. "There’s just no place for these kids to go."