Phil and I are in the pre-production stage on a documentary about street girls. Many of you have seen or at least know about the film "
Glue Boys", and the question that is always asked after a screening is "what about the girls?" The reality is that the girls don't survive on the streets, and are most often taken into people's homes not out of charity, but as slaves for sexual and/or domestic purposes, or trafficked with a similar fate. As you can imagine, the findings from our research is heart breaking, and we both often feel oppressed and overwhelmed with this project. But it has to be done and we were charged with doing it.
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| photo credit Alex Miller |
My time in Thailand earlier this year was spent researching and networking with organizations to tell the stories there. What I found is that there are no girls (or boys) living on the streets in the major cities of Thailand. Instead, they are all kept in brothels, working nights as commercial sex workers, and the younger their age, the more money they make for their 'owners'. I encountered many people from the United States and Europe who were on vacation, otherwise known as a sex tour. A dear friend spent August in Thailand working on defending and empowering women to get out of the slave-driven sex industry there; read about her work at
Defend&Empower.
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| photo credit Steve Rutenbar |
In researching about street girls in the USA, we found that there are at minimum 100,000 kids in this country that work the streets and sleep on them. We use to live in San Diego, where there are 1,200 street kids. In Seattle, where we currently live, there are 1,300. The numbers are the same in Dallas, Portland, New Orleans, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Fransisco, Denver, Cleavland, Boston, Phoenix, and Kansas City. So for those 14 cities previously mentioned, that totals a minimum of 14,000 homeless children under the age of 18 living and sleeping on the streets of this country. Truthfully, there are more than that. Those are just the children that have been registered by some organization, usually who attend a drop-in center.. there is no way of knowing for sure unless we census the streets.
How does that make you feel?
It makes me sick to my stomach and my heart hurt. I first learned about street kids in 2007, and I've been researching and trying to be an advocate for them ever since. Not until last year did I become aware of the fact that there are street kids in the USA; I guess I assumed the government or social services would intervene before that happened. My mom-in-law gave us a copy of the book "Renting Lacy", written by former congresswoman Linda Smith. It highlights the prostitution ring in Las Vegas, specifically that the working girls advertised as 'barely legal' are truly as young as 11, on average 13 years old. This book is less than 200 pages and I read it on a flight from Dallas to Seattle, but the information packed in there is something that everyone should read.
Shared Hope International is who published the book; go there to learn how you can receive a copy of "Renting Lacy". Or email me. I'll be sending some of you copies anyway.
Keeping hope.
*to learn about the statistics of street kids in a US city near you and how to help, visit
Stand Up for Street Kids.
