Rethink Resources

Last month a report, “Who Pays the Price? Assessment of Youth Involvement in Prostitution in Seattle,” commissioned by the Seattle Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Prevention Division of the Human Services Department was released at a community meeting.

The report gives a lot of detail about what youth social service workers know and don’t know about youth involvement in prostitution and some very honest assessments of what youth workers lack:

(Responses from interviews with social services providers)
• Prostitution is on the down low.
• Youth do not bring it up and we only learn through gossip.
• Prostitution gets talked about last. I have a client that strips but does not admit to
prostitution.
• We do not talk about it; there is a lot of shame.
• We see the signs of survival sex, sex for protection, or a new boyfriend every
week.
• I had two clients involved in prostitution, but it was a caseworker from another
agency that told me.

Reading through this list and the report I’m reminded that when social service workers admittedly know very little, this does need to be taken into consideration when thinking through the report. Gossip and signs of things are not reliable assessment measures. Perhaps the young women is just stripping. And as far as shame goes, I’m thinking a lot of adults think the shame is from youth but it can also be decidedly from adults.

Despite this, the report still found a great deal of detail:

Estimates of Youth Involvement
1. A planning estimate for the number of youth, ages 18 and under, involved in prostitution is 250 annually. This estimate stems from a review of 1,528 case files from six agencies, which included Spruce Street Secure Crisis Residential Center and Juvenile Detention Case Management, and identified 238 prostitution-involved youth in 2007.
2. A prevalence estimate of youth involved in prostitution in the Seattle area is 300-500.
3. Law enforcement reports likely underreport youth involvement in prostitution.
4. Prostitution-involved youth are often arrested for other charges and prostitution histories may not be known.
5. There were only 50 juvenile arrests for prostitution statewide in 2006.
6. There were 82 juveniles arrested and referred to King County Juvenile Court for prostitution (Offering & Agreeing) and prostitution loitering in 2007, a significant increase from the past year.
7. Young women of color are overrepresented in samples of prostitution-involved youth.
8. Youth with prostitution convictions reoffend and are seen repeatedly in the court system; 31 youth with prostitution convictions from 2004-2006 had an average of seven additional court referrals.

Service providers reported increased numbers of youth ages 13 and 14 involved in prostitution, and an increase in gang-affiliated prostitution, prostitution-related violence like pimp kidnappings, and youth being taken across state lines along the Pacific circuit. Of course the report identified a serious lack of services for youth as well.

Overall a fairly good assessment of Seattle social service workers know or understand to be true about youth involvement in prostitution. My one major disappointment is that they did not ask or include youth perspectives in the report at all: not a focus group, not a survey, not one youth voice. Interviewing adults who’ve been in the sex trade as youth in the past isn’t good enough. Right now this report needs to be reviewed by youth in Seattle to see if it makes sense with their experiences.