Hub Teen Was Trapped in Life of Prostitution
By Dave Wedge
Originally published in the Boston Herald, May 13, 2002
When Jenni was just 13 years old, she turned her first trick—at the insistence of her hooker stepmother and a drug-pushing john.
"We were doing coke and she (had sex with) him and he looked at me and said, 'If you want more, I want to (have sex with) you,' " Jenni (not her real name) said of her initiation into the sordid world of teen prostitution. "I said no, but she said, 'Just do it.' So I did it.''
The decision set the sandy brown-haired Hub teen on a terrifying path to self-destruction.
She had a miscarriage at age 13. By 15, she was working for a Lynn pimp, selling her young body to middle-age johns at a seedy "massage'' parlor that was actually a front for a full-service brothel.
By 18, she was hooked on heroin and the prescription drug OxyContin, in a downward spiral and desperately trying to score any way she could.
"There's a lot of guys out there that prey on girls like us,'' she explained. "They claim they'll take care of you and that's exactly what we're looking for.''
The daughter of a pimp and a drug addict, Jenni is just one example of the Bay State's surging teen prostitution problem.
While raw statistics are hard to determine, Department of Social Services officials say it's clear the number of teen girls being lured into the flesh trade is reaching epidemic proportions.
Social workers report that the number of troubled young girls is rising and that many are runaways who get involved in crime or land in the clutches of adults eagerly looking to sexually exploit them, DSS commissioner Harry Spence said.
"The number of female runaways is increasing, and what we're seeing is that these young women are frequently the targets of exploitation,'' Spence explained. "There's a whole customer base for underage women. These folks who run teen prostitution cater to johns who know specifically what they're getting.''
In December, Belmont police busted a complex hooker service that employed girls as young as 13. The ring was smashed when police found a scantily clad 15-year-old girl in a cab on her way to meet a client in a Hub hotel.
The girl turned over a ledger containing the names of dozens of johns and the prices they paid for various sex acts. Alleged pimps Jonathan Ace of New Jersey and former college football star Keith Scher of Vermont are awaiting trial in the case.
In 1999, Lowell pimp Troy Footman was convicted of transporting underage prostitutes from all over the Bay State to work truck stops in Delaware and New Jersey.
And in Vermont, 16-year-old Christal Jones became the poster girl for the teen prostitution problem when she was found smothered to death in a Bronx brothel in January.
Authorities said she was one of dozens of girls being shuttled from Burlington, Vt., group homes to the Big Apple as part of an interstate teen hooker ring.
All three cases, coupled with information provided to DSS from young prostitutes, show local rings often have ties to organized national operations.
"There appears to be some interstate coordination,'' Spence said. "These young women travel a lot.''
And the local problem seems to mirror what's going on nationally.
In Dallas, a recent study found as many as 2,000 young girls slip into prostitution each year—most of them runaways. A Dallas ring busted last year was found to be shuttling underage girls as far away as New York, Las Vegas and Seattle.
In Lansing, Mich., a group of pimps had dozens of girls as young as 13 seeing up to 30 johns a night. Many of the girls had become pregnant or contracted venereal diseases.
In Greensboro, N.C., underage teens were recruited to strip and turn tricks at private parties at local motels for servicemen from a nearby military base.
And last week in New York, 35-year-old Everton Duncan, a counselor at a Bronx juvenile detention center, pleaded guilty to running a teen hooker ring sending underage girls to have sex at bachelor parties.
According to the California-based outreach organization, Children of the Night, there has been a national increase in teen prostitution in recent years and more rings operating in the suburbs.
The surge, the group contends, is the result of the glorification of the so-called "pimp culture'' in movies, music and video games.
Many young prostitutes start out as strippers working for private escort services or are recruited by friends who are paid "finder's fees'' as much as $500 by their pimps.
Most are runaways from foster homes or troubled girls from broken homes who are seeking excitement and wind up being shuttled to deep-pocketed big city clients. Often their pay is low or, in many cases, they are paid not in cash, but in drugs, liquor, clothes, jewelry or trips.
The common threads among them all are youth, low self-esteem and vulnerability.
"They're induced to do this. They're very young, vulnerable women who are incredibly needy,'' Spence said.
For Jenni, her introduction into the dangerous sex-for-cash underworld came at home. Her parents split up when she was an infant and because of her mother's drug problem, she grew up with her father, watching him force her stepmother to work Boston's streets.
When her biological mother died of cancer when she was just 8, Jenni followed in her stepmother's footsteps and became easy prey for adults looking to exploit her.
"My mother was my savior. I used to dream she'd get off drugs, get better and save me. When she died, that hope just crashed,'' Jenni said.
She was raped by her grandfather and beaten and spit upon by her father, whom she described as a "control freak.''
After years of abuse, she finally revealed the beatings to friends at a high school just north of Boston, who told school officials.
But when her dad was called into the school, he denied the abuse and later took out his anger on his daughter.
She was eventually placed in a foster home but quickly fell in with a Boston pimp who sent her to work at the Lynn brothel.
"They took me to Lynn and sold me to a family of pimps,'' she remembers.
She was just 15 and was paid $70 of a $170 fee that johns paid to have sex with her. Asked if the johns knew she was underage, she said, "That was part of the allure. They wanted the girls to look young.''
She said she was propositioned everywhere she went, even while hanging out at the mall with friends, and recalls having clients that were businessmen, police officers, politicians and college students. She had a cell phone paid for by her pimp and was always on call.
"I was disgusted. I hated myself,'' she recalled. "The more I did it, the more drugs I needed. It was a vicious cycle. In a sick way, the drugs saved my life because if I didn't have them, I would have killed myself.''
She stopped selling her body when she was 17 but her reckless lifestyle continued in the underground rave scene until she dropped to just 80 pounds and nearly overdosed several times. After stints in various rehabs, she finally got clean while at Emerson House on Cape Cod.
"I knew I was killing myself slowly. That place saved my life,'' she said.
The rapes and prostitution have scarred the teen for life and made a normal sexual relationship impossible, she said.
"I'm still afraid of the dark,'' she explained, chain-smoking cigarettes. "It's like when I have sex, I detach myself. I'm no longer there. It's not even my body.''
Now 19, she lives out of state with an old high school friend who's a college student. Moving away from Boston has helped her put her past behind her, she said.
"I'd see a corner and think to myself, 'I did a john over there.' It got to be too much. I said, 'maybe I just need to get out of Boston,' '' she said.
These days, instead of living in fear of pimps and selling her body for dope, she spends her days hanging out with her new group of friends and looking toward a brighter future. She works a part-time job, is applying to colleges and hopes to become a social worker.
"I thank God that I got through it. I don't know how I did it,'' she said. "When I see little girls that are my age when I was doing it, I cry. I want to help them and save them before they go through it.''
