Jul 26
“Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel”
Opens Friday, July 30th, 2010
Nuart Theatre, Los Angeles
followed by Q & A with
Hugh Hefner and Producer Brigitte Berman
Openings Also At:
Angelika Theatre, New York
E Street Theatre, Washington, DC
Portrays the Unlikely Champion of
Children of the Night’s beginnings
Jun 26
Residential programs for child prostitutes which are not licensed by the State’s Department of Social Services violates laws designed to protect children living in out-of-home-care. State Department of Social Services has the legal authority to enter homes providing 24 hour care without a community care license and to remove minor children from those unlicensed homes.
Very few of the proposed programs advertising their services to rescue and restore children victimized by prostitution qualify for a license by the State Department of Social Services. Many lack credentialed staff, few if any submit fingerprints of their staff/volunteers to the Department of Justice for criminal record checks and clearance for the Child Abuse Central Index to check for previous allegations of child abuse.
One program offering residential services to young women escaping prostitution locked down the home at night while one staff person held the only key to the exit so the young women couldn’t escape at night–even if there was a fire!
Some of the help being proposed to help our American children who are prostituting may be worse than or equal to the dominance and exploitation of a pimp.
The State Department of Social Services has guidelines for providing 24 hour care and supervision of children requiring staff-child ratios, nutrition, sleeping areas with windows, mandatory education, fire alarms, emergency intervention plans, runaway plans, etc.
Some of these new programs are so smug that they fail to inform a parent or guardian of the children with whom they offer services because they presume the parent is bad if a child is discovered prostituting.
Buyer’s Beware – Parents and children are vulnerable to these unlicensed programs because few parents are aware of how to contact the Department of Social Services to investigate a program or to file a complaint.
With all of the federal dollars and all of the law enforcement efforts to rescue American children from prostitution and prosecute their pimps, there is NOT ONE AGENCY or government effort to educate parents and children on methods to evaluate the quality of residential care provided to prostituted children in America.
Many of these so-called intervention programs for American child prostitutes fail to recognize that all children, even prostituted children, are entitled to appropriate care and supervision, an education, medical, dental, and psychological services–services equal to those provided to crippled children, blind children and developmentally disabled children.
I am committing the next five years to assisting the Department of Children’s Services and Child Protective Services in developing programs to address the needs of our American children who have not only been forced to prostitute but are being readied to prostitute in years to come.
In the meantime, I ask my colleagues to help me understand what about American culture creates such sexual hysteria that all child protection laws and regulations are disregarded when it comes to the rescue and restoration of children who have been victimized by prostitution? What makes some American people think that sexually exploited children are entitled to a lesser social service?
What fantasies are dancing in the heads of these do-gooders?
Mar 2
In recent months, state and federal lawmakers are putting forth bills for federal funding to address the needs of desperate American children who are forced to prostitute right here in America.
The devil is in the details and a close look at their meager budgetary allocations are dedicated mostly to police officer salaries, patrol officers, detectives, investigators, prosecutor salaries, trial expenses, investigation expenses-wire taps and training for law enforcement and social service providers. Token funding is appropriated for clothing and daily needs out of the naïve belief that this will keep children who are prostituting from returning to the pimp who has paid more attention to them than any responsible adult caregiver or school. Legislator’s ill conceived bill even proposes job training for children who have never even completed middle school. The result is nothing more than “pretty jails”.
www.childrenofthenight.org/SenatorWyndensPressRelease.pdf
Stop letting law enforcement raise money on the backs of American child prostitutes through the criminal justice system; holding our children in jails, against their will, until they testify against a pimp/trafficker and then releasing these defenseless children into the dysfunctional family or social service system that failed these children in the first place.
And be alert to legislation advocating the increase of penalties for pimps/traffickers because these laws force our children to spend more time in jail while the pimps/traffickers are prosecuted. Pimping and trafficking laws are strong enough and most prosecutors experience little difficulty prosecuting the dangerous pimps with existing pimping/trafficking statutes in addition to kidnapping, torture, rape and other violent crimes.
America’s children victimized by prostitution require intense residential services where they are given an opportunity to be a child-sometimes for the first time in their lives. They need to attend school in a safe environment, to have their medical and psychological needs met and to have access to safe living arrangements when they enter adulthood.
Dec 1
 A teenage resident in her room at the Children of the Night shelter in Los Angeles. An expert says intensive, long-term residential treatment gives child prostitution victims their “best fighting chance.” (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / November 25, 2009) |
At least one, a 15-year-old Sacramento girl held on an unrelated charge, remains in a juvenile detention center, according to a Los Angeles Times check of the children’s situations. Others have been sent home or into foster care.
The victims need intensive residential treatment, experts say, and only three such programs exist in the country.
Richard Estes, a social policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on child sexual exploitation, said the “best fighting chance” for victims is “24/7 residential care for a long period of time.”
“This is not a quick-fix situation,” he said. “It really is a rebuilding and remolding of personality and character.”
Many victims are abused long before they are lured into the sex trade, Estes said. Their symptoms often include guilt, anxiety and inappropriate sexual behavior.
“Most of the girls that have run away and are on the streets have run away because of sexual abuse,” he said.
Lois Lee, founder of a 24-bed Los Angeles shelter called Children of the Night, sees the problems firsthand.
“When America’s child prostitutes are identified by the FBI or police, they are incarcerated for whatever reason possible, whether it be an unrelated crime or ‘material witness hold,’ ” she said.
“Then they are dumped back in the dysfunctional home, ill-equipped group home or foster care, and [often] disappear back into the underground of prostitution with no voice.”
Ian McCaleb, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said the government “uses a victim-centered approach that provides victims with the services they need in order to recover and to fully participate in the criminal justice process.”
But some of the local law enforcement officials who worked with the FBI on the October bust echoed Lee’s comments. Child victims are often sent home or to foster families after moving through juvenile court, the officials said.
For instance, six children ages 10 to 17 rescued in Toledo, Ohio, were processed through the local children services bureau before ending up in a nonresidential counseling program, Toledo Police Det. Peter Schwartz said.
Experts underscore that sex-trafficking victims struggle to find the care they need once they escape from an industry that may involve at least 100,000 children in the U.S.
Donna M. Hughes, a women’s studies professor at the University of Rhode Island who has researched U.S. sex trafficking, argues that domestic victims are shortchanged by the attention authorities and advocacy groups give to the illegal importation of foreign prostitutes.
“We need more treatment programs,” Hughes said. “There are a number of different programs that have existed for years, but they need more support.”
Lisa Goldblatt Grace, who consulted on a 2007 study for the Health and Human Services Department, said child victims “lack a safe, stable place to live, and that’s part of what made them vulnerable to begin with.”
Grace is program director of the My Life My Choice Project, a nonprofit focused on reaching out to adolescent girls most vulnerable to commercial sexual exploitation.
The Health and Human Services Department study found only four residential treatment centers in the United States for child prostitutes, with a total of 45 beds.
Interviews with officials at the centers show that beds remain scarce, and that one of the four — Standing Against Global Exploitation Safe House in San Francisco — no longer offers overnight accommodations. It does, however, provide nonresidential care for victims and helps place them with foster families.
Mollie Ring, the house’s trafficking project manager, said the beds were eliminated because of a money crunch.
The remaining residential programs are:
* L.A.’s Children of the Night, which offers psychological treatment, academic assistance, and personal bedrooms and bathrooms, with 24 beds.
* New York-based Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, founded in 1999 by a former child prostitute, with 12 beds.
* Angela’s House, a nonprofit in Georgia run by the Center to End Adolescent Sexual Exploitation, which is expanding from six beds to eight. The house no longer has a waiting list, program manager Melba Robinson said, but funding remains a “huge issue.”
That adds up to 44 beds — one less than two years ago.
It’s not nearly enough, said Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He estimated that U.S. child victims numbered between 100,000 and 300,000.
“You can’t just take them home,” Allen said. “The challenge is there are not enough resources” to help them.
Keith Haight, a former Los Angeles police detective who retired in 2008, spent 22 years on the vice squad. He said despite the push in the last few years to help victims, rather than prosecute them as prostitutes, how to do it remained elusive.
“A lot of places don’t want to take responsibility for girls that are known to be sexually active,” he said.
joseph.markman@ latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
Link to original article CLICK HERE: http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-child-prostitution8-2009dec08,0,6190449,full.story
Sep 15
Children of the Night invites you to a very special one time event:
Celebrating the Successful Lives of Children
Rescued from Prostitution
by America’s Law Enforcement
You are invited to witness the magic that occurs when law enforcement gets involved and intervenes in the lives of American children who have been victimized by prostitution.
Master of Ceremonies Anthony LaPaglia
“Without a Trace”
Special Guest: Gia Carides
Hosted By: The Children Who Live in the COTN
Presenting the Lives & Stories of America’s Children Rescued by Heroic Members of Law Enforcement
Nancy rescued by Det. Keith Haight, Retired LAPD, 1996
Jesse rescued by Joe Haggerty, Retired Metro Police Dept. 1997
Annikki rescued by Det. Andrew Schmidt, Retired Minn PD 1998
Erin rescued by Det. Scott Kavon LVMPD, 2000
Julia rescued by Det. Aaron Stanton LVMPD, 2004
Noreen, a mother, helped by Det. McCarthy LVMPD, 2004
Krystal rescued by Det. Monica McPartland LAPD, 2006
Jaynice rescued by Det. Fieselman (Woody) LVMPD, 2006
Chrissy rescued by Special Agent Adrienne Mitchell FBI, 2007
Registration: $500.00
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner included
Guests are responsible for their own
Travel and Lodging arrangements.
Recommended Hotels:
Beverly Garland Hotel & Sportsman’s Lodge
FOR EVENT INFORMATION CONTACT:
Dr Lois Lee
LLee@childrenofthenight.org
Candace Ali
Cali@childrenofthenight.org
Complimentary 30th
Anniversary Program
Celebrating Law Enforcement
Aug 8
“Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel”
Produced and Directed By Academy Award Winner
Brigitte Berman
World Premiere
Toronto International Film Festival
As a Special Presentation
September 12, 2009
Portrays the unlikely Champion of
Children of the Night’s beginnings
Jul 20
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