Hollywood Boulevard and Las Palmas (Night): Sandy, 16, has just arrived in town with a backpack on her shoulders. She has just run away from home, but won't say where home is. Her mother is divorced, drinks too much, sleeps around, and, according to Sandy, "never talks to me unless she's mad at me or is ordering me around." So she ran away two nights ago and thumbed a ride to Hollywood. She has been propositioned three times already, she says, but has refused — so far. She's confident she can get a job. But right now she has no money, and she hasn't eaten in almost a day. She wolfs down a hamburger voraciously.
A couple of "more experienced" kids who eavesdrop on the conversation smile and snicker at her naiveté. They know better.
Hollywood Boulevard and Whitley (Night): Dressed in skintight shorts and a halter top, a girl, 16 at most, strolls along the street, keeping an eye on the passing cars. The reporter approaches and starts to ask questions. She looks at him with hardened eyes and tight lips.”I don't have time for questions," she says. The reporter persists. She points across the street to a black man in flashy clothes and white fedora who is watching them.”He's my pimp. If I don't hustle, I'm in trouble. And so will you be if all you want to do is ask questions." She stalks away. The reporter watches her hustle. Within five minutes, a white station wagon pulls up to the curb where she is loitering. The man is middle-aged and dressed in a suit. They exchange a few words. She climbs inside and the car speeds away.
Selma Avenue (Hollywood): Jim, 16, is not a runaway. He commutes by bus on weekends from Glendale, a city a short distance northeast of Los Angeles, where he lives with his parents. Right now his eyes are somewhat glazed, his speech disjointed. He is stoned on Quaalude, a hypnotic drug.
"Do your folks know what you're doing — hustling here in Hollywood?"
"Naw. They don't care — they just think I've gone out to see a movie or somethin'."
"What about your drug habit?"
"They don't know. Too dumb about drugs, I guess. I've been stoned like I am now right in front of them and they never said nothin'."
Jim has been hustling for "about six months."
"Why? What made you do it?"
Sometimes you get a sensational reason such as child beating or neglect. Or maybe incest, the modern family's most secret sin. Studies indicate that many chickens and chicken hawks were sexually abused as children by parents or relatives. Or maybe you'll hear about families ripped apart by divorce, or alcoholic parents. More often, the reasons are the more traditional ones of "lack of communication" or "we don't get along." Occasionally, delinquent youths have no apparent reason for their behavior. By all conventional standards, they have perfectly decent families. Which happens to be the case with Jim.
"I dunno," he replies.
The reporter throws out all of the aforementioned reasons. Jim shakes his head.”My folks are all right. I got nothing against them." He pauses a moment, and then adds, "I'm here because there's a lot of money to be made. I'm here to get a piece of the action."
The reporter leaves Jim to his "action." Time is money for him. And time is short. By the time a male prostitute is 23, 24, 25, he is too old to sell himself for sex; the cars will no longer stop. He will only be left to offer, literally, free sex, and eventually he may end up paying some other youth for sex. The story will have gone full circle. The victim will become the villain.
Washington, D.C. (House of Representatives). Sgt. Lloyd Martin testifies before a House subcommittee: "A child who has been sexually abused will frequently turn to prostitution, pornography, narcotics or other criminal activity, or will be encouraged to engage in this activity by an abusing adult after having outlived his novelty as a sexual partner."
New York, New York. Dr. Densen-Gerber, still on the warpath: "At this stage of life, between eight and twelve, the child is getting work gratification. This is when the child learns how to study, learns how to feel good about himself. If you interfere with that and tell him the way to feel good about himself is through sex . . . these kids [will] learn that's the way to cope.
"And that's why we have the high incidence of over 40 percent of prostitutes who were sexualized as children and why our male patients [in the Odyssey drug rehabilitation program] are homosexually sodomized."
Dr. Densen-Gerber, Sgt. Lloyd Martin and others who have been dealing with the sexual exploitation of young people have screamed long enough and loud enough to arouse public outrage and action all the way from local communities to the halls of Congress. Police in cities across the country have cracked down on the peddling of child pornography.
At last count, three states have adopted new statutes to punish adult traffickers in such smut. And legislatures in at least 23 other states are debating similar tough proposals. Bills have been introduced into Congress. The FBI and the U.S. Postal Service have initiated investigations.
As a result of all the publicity and uproar, kiddie porn started disappearing from the shelves of adult bookstores around the country in March and April. But, in many cases, customers could still obtain it under the counter. When probing reporters wrote headline stories about that, vendors refused to sell it to anyone they didn't know.
But the smut is still there, still available, and still selling. Officer Doug Elder of the Los Angeles Police Department points out that what stores have on their racks for public view and what they can procure for their steady customers can be quite different.
"If they know you're not the heat [police] or the press, they can get you all the chicken films, books, slides or magazines you want," he says.”This is a big business. A magazine half the thickness of Playboy will sell for anywhere from $7.50 to $15 a copy, and a 50-foot super 8mm film runs anywhere from $50 on up." It costs about $1.50 to $2 to produce the magazine, $4 to $5 to make one film.
The fact of the matter is, pornography doesn't abide by any law of man or God. The only law it consistently obeys is the law of supply and demand.
The demand for kiddie porn by hundreds of thousands of sexual deviates is strong — very strong. No law can suppress it.
And the supply of young people who can be seduced into meeting the demand is inexhaustible. At least one million children run away from home every year in the United States. Perhaps two million. Nobody knows the exact numbers. They come to the big cities like New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles with no skills, no job prospects, and little or no money. There is only one way for them to survive: "Drop their pants or pull up their dress," as Sgt. Martin puts it.
Dr. Densen-Gerber estimates that at least 300,000 boys between the ages of eight and sixteen become involved in the production of pornographic books, films and magazines, and prostitution. She speculates that another 300,000 girls in the same age category may be involved.
What can be done about the sexploitation of young people? In the next issue of The Plain Truth, we'll take a look at the complex social and psychological issues involved and proposals for dealing with the problem.