Rethink Resources

Here in Milwaukee, the local paper reports on recent cases of teens involved in having sex for money off Craigslist.

Last week I blogged about Dallas County needing some encouragement to take action on a strip club that had a then 12-year-old girl dancing at the club. Turns out the law didn’t specify a penalty for sexually oriented businesses that hired minors and that’s about to change.

In Florida a man was arrested after an sexually assaulting and trying to pimp out an 11 year old girl.

In Detroit, schools are seeing a dramatic rise in homeless children from preschool to high school. And they know a lot of youth and families hide their homelessness so the numbers are higher still.

Lastly a report details the widespread abuse of teens inside juvenile correctional facilities across the country and what’s being done about it.

Craigslist child sex ads lead to arrests (Wisconsin) Wednesday, April 9, 2008 A 15-year-old girl who ran away from home in western Wisconsin sold sex acts in Milwaukee to men who found her ad and photo on Craigslist, according to court documents. The girl, who said she took a Greyhound bus from her home in Onalaska to Milwaukee in the fall, told detectives she had sex with 10 men in 14 days, earning $1,500, according to a search warrant unsealed this week.

Dallas city council to fix strip club loophole (Texas)Wednesday, April 9, 2008 Adult entertainment, like topless clubs, should mean just that. Except in the Dallas city ordinance covering a sexually oriented businesses or S.O.B., that doesn’t say minors can’t work in one. That’s about to change.

Law & Disorder: Man charged with raping 11-year-old girl (Florida) Tuesday, April 8, 2008 A 31-year-old Jacksonville man has been charged with capital sexual battery and child abuse after a young girl told authorities she was brought to St. Johns County to prostitute herself and was raped. The 11-year-old girl was found with Kenneth Bernard Silas of the 1300 block of Dancy Street inside an abandoned house on County Road 208…The girl told detectives she was awakened at 3 a.m. Sunday and told to put on a black dress and necklace and that she needed to prostitute herself or her relatives would be harmed. She later told investigators she was raped by the man when they came to St. Johns County.

Metro Detroit schools coping with surge of homeless children (Detroit) Monday, April 7, 2008…The 8-year-old is one of a growing number of homeless children attending schools throughout Metro Detroit, where the number of children known to have no fixed address has shot up by more than 70 percent in the last three years. Cherish has lived in two shelters since her family was evicted from their Detroit home in November. The state Department of Education estimates it’s serving about 20,000 homeless students statewide, including 3,540 in Detroit alone. And those are just the children they know about.

Sex abuse, violence alleged at teen jails across U.S. (Mississippi) Friday, April 4, 2008 Girls as young as 13 say they were shackled for weeks at a time in Mississippi. A Texas teen was allegedly offered birthday cake in exchange for sex….The U.S. Justice Department has sued nine states and two territories alleging abuse, inadequate mental and medical care and potentially dangerous methods like the use of restraints.