A regional division of the Not For Sale Campaign

By Mark Hoerrner

At 3:30 in the morning, Tanya is standing on Fulton Industrial Boulevard waiting for her manager to pick her up. Shes 15 years old and has no business being out in the winter chill but she has to go to work. Within an hour, shell become the victim of commercial rape, bought through an internet ad placed by her pimp on multiple web sites. At this point in her life, shes become accustomed to this nightly routine. After all, shes been doing it since she was 13.

Tanya is one of more than 400 teenage victims of commercial sexual exploitation who are bought and sold monthly on the streets of Atlanta, indeed, throughout all of the cities in Georgia. She is the face of human trafficking. Shes not old enough to rent a car. She cant legally rent a hotel room. She doesnt act on her own but at the demands of her pimp. And despite the efforts of multiple organizations such as the Juvenile Justice Fund and the Emory University Barton Child Policy Clinic as well as shelters like Wellspring Living, most of these children have little hope for a change in their situation under current law.

Police agencies in the City of Atlanta and in most of the five major metro counties have received training in avoiding arresting juvenile victims of prostitution on charges of solicitation but choose instead to arrest on less criminal offenses such as truancy, loitering and similar minor misdemeanor crimes. Unfortunately, these acts of compassion by dedicated officers obscure the truth that victims of prostitution do not need jail time but rather counseling, care and restoration.

Two hotly-debated bills before the Georgia Legislature are HB 582 and SB 304, both calling for changes to our criminal code that would exempt child victims from prosecution. According to the United Nations, the European Union and the key federal law on modern-day slavery the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, any child under the age of 18 used for the purposes of commercial sex is not only a victim of human trafficking but a victim of an extreme form of the crime. Why, then, are groups in Georgia fighting so hard to continue placing these children in jail rather than in Georgias system of care?

Perhaps these groups see this as the beginning of a slippery slope toward the legalization of prostitution. That never has and never will be the goal of this legislation or of any of the groups supporting change for our children. Prostitution, where it has been legalized on a full-scale basis, has repeatedly failed because it creates new markets for human trafficking. In our state, StreetGrace, representing a large number of churches, and Georgia Rescue and Restore, a coalition of anti-human trafficking organizations, support not only the toughening of our laws to root out and prosecute the true criminals the pimps and exploiters but also the addition of creative methods to protect Georgias children.

In a training with more than 40 law enforcement officers, federal agents, and other investigators last fall, I was taught how social autopsies can track the evolution of the criminalization of a child and where a justice system designed to handle adult offenders breaks down when utilized to prosecute children. Most of the juvenile victims were assaulted or abused as early as 8 or 9 years old, and this single act failed to be treated. According to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children training session, pimps make it a point to seek out and prey on these vulnerable children.

On our current course, Atlanta alone will see more than 600 children prostituted on its streets by 2013. If we do not act now, thousands of Georgias children will be shunted through an uncompromising judicial process that serves only to trap these children in an unending cycle of rape, sexual assault and violent crime.

NOTE: Mark Hoerrner is chair of Georgia Rescue & Restore, an anti-trafficking coalition comprised of more than 80 organizations.

January 31, 2010

Exploited children are VICTIMS

not CRIMINALs

GEORGIA