When police came upon a 13-year-old girl selling sex in North Hollywood, they promptly handcuffed her, arrested her and hauled her off to detention. As is the case in many states, juvenile prostitution carries a sentence of up to two years in California, according to The Washington Post.
While the fallout for this case might seem to have followed a perfectly apt protocol, the girl never should have seen the inside of a cell, just as much as a victim of rape never would.
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The overarching goal of the “No Such Thing” campaign is to shift public perceptions by changing the way these children are presented in the media. Instead of referring to them as “child prostitutes,” they should be described as a “child sex trafficking victim” or a “commercially sexually abused” child, among other accepted terms.
“‘Child prostitute’ suggests consent or agency, when, in this case, there really is none,” Saada Saar and Cindy McCain, trafficking advocate, wrote in a HuffPost blog. “Moreover, the term ‘child prostitute’ has the effect of dismissing the victimization and abuse that has been committed against the child, and makes it somehow different or more tolerable from other forms of rape or sexual abuse of minors.”
