The O’ahu-based group Sisters Offering Support (SOS) came to Kaua’i last week with a shocking warning for parents of teenage girls. “The demand in Hawai’i for child sex is huge,” Lorraine Faithful, executive director of SOS, told parents and students
The O’ahu-based group Sisters Offering Support (SOS) came to Kaua’i last week with a shocking warning for parents of teenage girls.
“The demand in Hawai’i for child sex is huge,” Lorraine Faithful, executive director of SOS, told parents and students last Thursday at Kapa’a High School. The talk opened the eyes of about 15 parents and a few teenage girls. SOS also held a presentation for about 300 girls at Waimea Canyon and High Schools last Friday.
Faithful described “commercial sexual exploitation (CSE),” a bureaucratic term that politely describes the use of a minor to provide sexual services in exchange for something of value.
Factors that support a CSE industry in Hawai’i include a large transient male population – many of whom are in the military – the arrival of millions of tourists from around the world, and a cultural acceptance and tolerance for the sex industry. The Honolulu Police Department estimates about 10,000 cases of this type have been reported in O’ahu.
Boys and girls from any community and any family situation, even on Kaua’i, are at risk for being recruited, Faithful said. The only way to end CSE is to educate kids on how to stay away from being sexually exploited, and being aware of actions that might lead them into sexual explotation. The average “age of entry” to Hawai’i’s sex industry is 12, according to the SOS speaker.
“In a small community, it’s behind closed doors and we don’t see it,” said Sue Yoshimoto, the Parent Community Networking Coordinator at Kapa’a High School. Yoshimoto said the purpose of the presentation was to empower and educate parents about what is happening to kids in Hawai’i.
Several girls from Kaua’i were recently arrested for working in the sex industry in Honolulu, said a female undercover police officer from HPD’s vice unit who was at the meeting. The girls were apparently recruited on Kaua’i and given airfare to O’ahu, where they were eventually caught. She said HPD refers arrested women and children involved in prostitution to SOS , but wasn’t able to say how long the girls had been on O’ahu, whether they went to SOS or if they were returned to Kaua’i.
The officer said that exploiters and pimps use a system of desensitization and brainwashing to gain control of underage students they lure into their world. Faithful said that SOS clients who share their experiences with advocates and counselors usually have a similar tale to tell, proving that pimps have perfected their tactics.
It’s hard to debunk the myths and mystique of the sex industry when kids are misinformed about what prostitution really involves, Faithful said. Pimps can be male or female; many have legitimate day jobs, and in some cases pimps are youth who recruit classmates for their own pimp, according to Faithful.
Pimps, also called “recruiters” or “managers,” use many tactics to get kids into the industry, including physical force, kidnapping and coercion, but many are lured in through befriending and seduction. SOS says most kids exploited in this way are age 11-14, haven’t had many life experiences and haven’t developed a sense of self esteem or self-worth. Pimps also look for those who are easily impressed with material things. “That’s their ‘in,'” Faithful said.
The most common way is seduction. It’s usually between a girl and a slightly older man, who showers her with compliments and gifts. The girl thinks she’s in love, and the illusion of a loving and trusting relationship can last for months before the she’s brainwashed and desensitized into selling her body, according to Faithful.
“It’s not about sex – it’s about power, having control over someone,” she said. Many times, it doesn’t happen quickly. Girls usually start out behind closed doors in topless or nude dance clubs, then are moved to sexual “massage” parlors, eventually graduating to being hired through escort services and walking the streets.
On O’ahu, organized crime units hand out fliers for an “all night party,” where there’s drugs and alcohol and partying all night, the SOS speaker said. The brainwashing begins when exploiters threaten to show a video to the girl’s family of the victim in compromising situations, she said, and the victim, broken down by the abuse, is coerced into selling their body.
A woman named Kay spoke at the meeting and painted a disturbing portait of the sex industry in Hawai’i. She turned her life around with the help of SOS, and now does computer work, is a peer educator for SOS and works as a chef in her church. But she was 16 with a small child when she was lured into dancing topless in Honolulu. She said she thought she would get independence and a lot of money out of it.
“…40-year-old men, 60-year-old men were telling me how sexy I was. I didn’t even know what sexy was… They didn’t care about me.”
Kay said for the first three days she was allowed to keep a large amount of money, and she bought new clothes and jewelry, video game systems and toys for her son. After a week, however, she was raped repeatedly, ended up being controlled by a pimp and prostituting herself on the street for three years.
“When a man pays you for sex, that means he can do anything he wants to you,” Kay said. Many of her clients were businessmen, lawyers, doctors; fathers and husbands. She experienced physical abuse and torture: she was electrocuted, she was cut with knives, beat up and repeatedly raped. She said a man threatened to kill her “to do the world a favor,” and she ended up jumping out of his car onto the highway.
“When a man takes you to a secluded road nobody’s going to hear you scream,” she said.
Kay’s message was clear: no amount of money is worth torture and abuse.
About 2,400 clients have sought help from SOS since 1996. 83 percent of clients finish the program, and 57 percent of those don’t go back to prostitution. Sisters Offering Support educates the community to raise awareness, gives peer-based presentations and ofers information and resources to exploited kids on the streets. They have a 24-hour telephone crisis line.
“We think, ‘This is Kaua’i…I think some people just don’t want to believe this is happening,'” Cindy Shimonishi, a parent, said.
For more information, contact your school’s Parent-Community networking Coordinator. Contact SOS at www.soshawaii.org or call (808) 941-5554 or write to P.O. Box 75642, Honolulu HI 96836. E-mail at info@soshawaii.org.
Staff Writer Kendyce Manguchei can be reached at kmanguchei@pulitzer.net or 245-3681 (ext. 252).
