RHY and Sex Trade

When I started in the runaway and homeless youth field – and when many RHY services were first developed – youth involved in the sex trade was a huge concern. Of course, back then the issue wasn’t “youth involved in the sex trade” – the issue was juvenile prostitution. In fact, many services were developed specifically in response to this issue. Early regional and national conferences were organized around issues related to prostitution. Here in Portland, the original service system for street youth was called Project LUCK, and it was a community-wide response to homeless young people prostituting themselves on the streets.

And that’s the way it was back then. The issue was visible and in a community’s face. Young people were standing on street corners getting into cars and turning tricks in such an obvious way that you would have to have been blind not to see it (though, admittedly, many communities managed that feat). That was in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s; before cell phones, the internet, and a host of other changes. Today, youth involved in the sex trade looks very different than it used to, and even the language has changed. We don’t hear much about juvenile prostitution anymore – but it’s a mistake to believe that young people aren’t using sex as barter. The issue has not gone away, it’s simply wearing a new look.

IMHO (just testing your netlingo abilities – IMHO means In My Humble Opinion), RHY services have not kept up with these changes. The number of services around the nation that specifically address youth involved in the sex trade can be counted on your fingers, and the vast majority of RHY services appear to me to be unprepared in dealing with this segment of the population. Because we don’t see visible populations getting in and out of cars with anywhere near the regularity that we used to, we fall into an out of sight, out of mind response that leaves our programs unable to adequately respond. Many programs I’ve worked with are of the belief that they simply aren’t seeing young people in the sex trade, which to me means one of two things – either they aren’t offering services in a way that is appropriate or accessible; or they are seeing these youth, but they are not seeing this issue. Neither one of these options should be acceptable to us.