Advocacy Groups Demand RCMP Drop Pimping Charge
against 14 Year Old Girl

November 19, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Justice for Girls, an advocacy organization that works with teenage girls who are sexually abused through prostitution, and Exploited Voices now Educating, a group of former sex industry women who view the demand for paid sex as violence against women and prostitution as the product of the systemic oppression of women and children, aredemanding that the RCMP drop pimping charges against a 14 year old Chilliwack girl.

Justice for Girls advocate Annabel Webb states that: “By charging this young woman as a pimp, the police are violating a well established consensus in Canada and internationally that teen girls in prostitution are victims of child sexual abuse and therefore should not be treated as criminals.”

Advocates point to the culpability of the adult men who are responsible for the commercial sexual abuse of girls and call for the investigation to focus on the adult men who are inevitably behind the exploitation of the entire group of teen girls. 

According to Trisha Baptie, spokeswoman for Exploited Voices now Educating, "We need to undo the blame on this young girl.  She should not be the focus of the criminal justice system.”

Both groups agree that adult men are always behind the commercial sexual abuse of girls and that the men who are responsible for this violence should be prosecuted.

Trisha Baptie states:  “We need to push for the criminal prosecution of the pimps who encouraged and profited off her exploitation and the pimp's enticement of the other girls through this victim.  We also need to go after the men who paid to sexually abuse these children, and Craigslist who must shoulder the responsibility for the failure of ‘safeguards’ that allowed a minor child to be posted for sale on their site.”

According to Webb, it is common knowledge that teen girls who are exploited in prostitution sometimes wind up recruiting other girls and that, in many cases, girls will not expose the abusive adult men who control the sex industry out of fear for their lives: “Part of the abuse of prostitution is that girls are turned against each other in the service of male sexual violence and exploitation.  We know that when teen girls are recruiting other girls, there is always a backdrop of other sexual abuse, male violence and coercion,” says Webb.

-30-