Street Stories - A Ringside Seat To Over 4 Decades Of Taking Jesus To The Streets Of The World

street kids there end up selling their bodies for money. Bobby has seen 12-and 14-year-old girls in makeup and high heels walking the beat. That’s what they do seven days a week, often12 hours a day, no holiday pay. The pimp, the nice man who got them into this, demands all the money and often beats them up if they don’t make their quota. I wondered, why do they stay in it then? If they make so much money (in Hollywood, perhaps $50. an hour for men and $500. a night for women), why don’t they keep it and leave? Bobby explained that the pimps give them something to belong to. “ They see it, as strange as it is, as a kind of love relationship. ” The guy beats her up, but at least he cares enough about her to knock her around. And maybe in their parent situation, all they got was, ‘I don’t want to hear it. Go to your room and play your records.’” And so, the girls and guys come to hate themselves for what they do. They are trapped financially, emotionally, through drug addiction, or even through threats of beatings to themselves or their children, and they can’t see any way out of it. They, along with the insatiable customer, the customer’s alienated family, the prostitutes ignored children, and the many who are robbed or murdered by these criminals lured by the money, all become victims of this “victimless crime.” In the United States, where 1.5 million children are used in prostitution or pornography every year, the few ministries that include outreach to prostitutes are only made more aware of how great the need and how inadequate the help.

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