By Eric Ruthford 
By one estimate, 250 children are involved in prostitution in Seattle and King County at any given time, incapable of consent, forced to perform sex acts, controlled by pimps and effectively homeless. For years, it's been a hidden problem, one that police and social-services workers knew about but felt powerless to try helping because of the myriad paradoxes that come with someone who is under 18 but been involved in prostitution. At their age, they cannot consent to sex, but they can be charged with a crime for it, if they are released, they are likely to be taken by their pimps and returned to prostitution, and it is often difficult to establish who their guardians are -- and often their legal guardians are the people they are fleeing.
Now that's changing. A campaign is getting started in Seattle to make the problem of youth involvement in prostitution less hidden and less impossible to deal with. Both city human services workers and the non-profit Youthcare are working to get children off of the track and out of pimps' control, and they have opened a safe house called The Bridge in an undisclosed location where they can offer both mental health and chemical dependency counseling on-site, and help them get through high school.
They also want to change public perception in a major way. They liken the public's understanding of youth prostitution now to how people viewed domestic violence in 1980 -- unaware of how prevalent it is, and unaware of how much damage it does. They're going to need the public's help, too. There's six beds in The Bridge, far too few to protect all those who need them.
Police say that this kind of sex slavery is on the increase in the area for two reasons over the past few years: Gangs have gotten involved in prostituting children -- whose average age of entry into "the life" is 13 -- and the Internet makes it much easier for customers to find advertisements for sexual services.
Recently, non-profit workers who help exploited children and law-enforcement officials met for a planning forum at City Hall. The PostGlobe covered that event, and that story is available here.
