Tell me why you were arrested in the first place? Send us your e-mail to drshow@wamu.org Feel free to join us on Facebook or send us a tweet. A former teen sex worker from Britain tells the story of her escape from what many girls call “the life.” She describes how she founded a program in New York to help children as young as age 11 survive sexual exploitation. That's really lovely. MS. DIANE REHMThanks for joining us. And that they can come back at any time and we never close that door. Does it make sense to arrest a fifteen year old girl while her forty year old buyer goes free? So I ended up kind of, I was modeling and going up to London by myself and that kind of led into like nude modeling and like calendars and that kind of stuff. Rachel Lloyd is the founder and executive director of GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services. . WHITEMy experience with the criminal court systems and just the system in general hasn't been really much of an experience. Her mother had had substance abuse, mental health issues and so her and her sisters had been removed from the home. And the sex industry is inherently violent and oppressive. I mean, our services are, you know, Sheila talked about growing up in the program. Despite the book’s heavy nature, there is also quite a bit of humor present. There are bills that are being considered that would help our state combat sex trafficking. Then when I found other little girls on the street I took them to the places where they needed to be, either at home or at an institution for families and abused children. The media and the public sympathized. REHMRachel Lloyd and her new book is titled, "Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale". The author acknowledges but does not directly address males in similar circumstances, but any at-risk child is covered under the new law. I'm Diane Rehm. Her own life story is a source of inspiration and hope. And our lives are about choices. Pimping involves gang raping a girl in order to wear her down. She is as eloquent, passionate, and moving in person as she is in the pages here. Your friends and family know it is no good for you, but you’re too besotted to see straight. I mean we have to be proactive in it because it isn't the type of issue where young people are self-identifying and kind of, oftentimes they don't really have the freedom to walk into an agency. It's titled, "Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale." She's the founder of GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services in Harlem. “Oh afflicted city, lashed by storms and not comforted, I will build you with stones of turquoise, your foundations with sapphires. So I tried to help out the young ones when I was homeless. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. She says that there are “just a few minor variations on the same theme – vulnerable meets predatory; abused child meets billion-dollar sex industry” (p. 72). As an adolescent, Lloyd purchased a one-way ticket to Germany where she was essentially trapped and without money when she realized that she wanted to go home. For me, one of the most striking aspects of the book is that Lloyd’s depiction of police stands in sharp contrast to Somebody’s Daughter, which is another sex trafficking book published this year. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. We'll open the phones but first I want to take a call from Sheila White. [It] offers valuable insights into understanding the complex emotional and economic factors that contribute to the exploitation of children and youth. Rachel Lloyd’s astonishing stories of life on the street have an accumulative power that left me reeling. I -- by, you know, receiving services, having a case manager I was able to work through most of the trauma that I've been through. I'm dirty and shameful. Your mother -- in this world that we live in here in this country is we have choices in our lives. Do you primarily buy books in a country other than the US? submitting your email address, you understand that you will receive email This is a key consideration for the exploiter (pimp) because there will be no Amber alert for these girls as they are being sold as sex slaves. So, I mean, I think -- and, like I said earlier, I mean, the demand is there for sex. SARAHYeah, I just wanted to say I was, like, trapped in another situation. My daughter had been raped by her boyfriend while she was having psychotic breakdowns at two different times. In 1998 at age 23, Lloyd founded GEMS (Girls Educational and Mentoring Services), a New York City-based nonprofit organization to help commercially sexually exploited young women and girls. REQUESTS, privacy After reading that title I had a feeling this book was going to be about girls being prostituted at a young age and after reading prologue I sadly realized I was right in my prediction. LLOYDI mean, he was -- I mean, he took my money. If I could figure out what had happened to them, perhaps I had a better chance of explaining it all to myself.”, “Most women have been in a relationship that they know is no good for them. Marketing Research and Market Segmentation, The Role of Females in Frankenstein by Mary Shelly, Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI): Syphilis. LLOYDI began to go to a church that was off of a military base, an American military base and ended up making a decision to give my life to God, and was taken in kind of by some of the women in the church who gave me a job and somewhere to live. Hunt Alternatives is launching a major national initiative to address this, but I think that all of us in the field are working to correct the perception that this is an issue of choice and working to humanize victims. Documentary about four urban teenage girls, and their opinions about religion, music and sex. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. . Arriving in the United States, she set out to break the system that had abused her, ultimately altering laws and helping to protect victims from criminal prosecution.What I'm Telling My Friends This consciousness-shifting book shreds stereotypes and perceptions of prostitution. GEMS is one of only a few organizations in the country that provides these services. After following local news coverage all summer, I never heard Patterson’s name mentioned again after I moved to California that same summer. What about in other states around the country? If adult sex work were decriminalized and medicalized as it is in some states where there's weekly testing and requiring condoms for commercial sex acts and healthcare workers could ask them if they wanted alternatives, if they wanted treatment and if it were monetized -- in other words, taxed -- would that not, number one, free up a lot of law enforcement to -- to address itself to the underage sex trafficking. But as a young person, right, I mean, what kind of choice is it really, right. Rachel Lloyd changed her life in order to help change the lives of thousands of others—read her incredibly powerful story, and your life will be changed too.”. Before leaving Germany in order to accept a job in the United States, she says: “I don’t want to leave the comfort of Victory Christian Fellowship, the place where I’ve experienced the kind of peace and overwhelming love that I’ve never felt anywhere else and where I’ve begun to believe that perhaps God really does love me. And we're only able to keep the girls for up to three months, at most. Both Girls Like Us and Somebody’s Daughter offer similar illustrations of how rare it is for law enforcement to treat sex trafficking victims with dignity and respect. WHITEWell, when I first came to GEMS I was 16 and I kind of -- I basically grew up in the program. I mean I hear his frustration right now but, you know, most states, at this point, in the country have trafficking legislation. The brown or black skin that many of the girls possess also means that they are unlikely to be depicted in the national media because they are not the white all-American cheerleader whose story would captivate our society. “Sing me a pretty love song as I start to cry, “..you may not be able to choose your family or origin but you can choose your family of creation.”, “Every new encounter provides a new mirror for me to view my own experiences through, and there is a level of selfishness during this period as I hunger to understand more about the girls' lives in order to understand mine.