The Mercury News reports:
In the past 10 months alone, at least 170 children between 11 and 17 were referred to a local counseling agency because they’d been peddled on the streets for sex . . .
Firm numbers are hard to come by since agencies have only just started to try to quantify the problem. In one of the most comprehensive counts to date, the Oakland Police Department identified 293 teens younger than 18 being prostituted by at least 155 pimps over the 18-month period that ended in May 2003.
Statistics show most of the young girls — and sometimes boys — who are caught in this life are fleeing physical or sexual abuse at home or have fallen between the cracks of the foster care system . . .
