Daily | American Girls for Sale | Vatican AIDS Conference

Daily | American Girls for Sale | Vatican AIDS Conference AOC Front Page

Vanity Fair’s writer Amy Fine Collins digs deep into sex trafficking in America. An estimated 300,000 young American girls are entering the commercial sex industry and their ages are dropping drastically.

“The average starting age for prostitution is now 13,” says Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services (gems), a Harlem-based organization that rescues young women from “the life.” Says Judge Cofield, who formerly presided over Hartford’s Prostitution Protocol, a court-ordered rehabilitation program, “I call them the Little Barbies.”

Criminals have learned, often in prison, that it’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell defenseless teen girls — preferably white, very thin with big breasts — than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed only once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day. She is the annuity gift that keeps on giving.