Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley, Home for Little Wanderers President and CEO Joan Wallace-Benjamin, the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Service, and the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk Law School will screen a documentary on the commercial sexual exploitation of children this evening in advance of its airing on cable television later this year.
Very Young Girls, expected to air on Showtime in December, explores the underworld of child exploitation on the streets of New York, but Conley and a multitude of law enforcement and social service partners say the phenomenon exists across the United States – including here in Massachusetts, where the average age of recruitment or coercion into prostitution is just 13 years old.
“When we first launched a pilot program to take exploited youth off the streets and into safe environments, we received fewer then five referrals a year,” Conley said. “When we began to change our perceptions and share information across agencies, that number skyrocketed – not because more children were being exploited but because we were paying attention to a phenomenon that had been there all along.”
Four years ago, Conley proposed a program to change dramatically the way prostituted teens were viewed by the criminal justice system. Then known as the Teen Prostitution Prevention Program, it would divert teenage girls arrested in prostitution cases away from prosecution and instead steer them toward social service providers. In 2006, the program brought together more than three dozen widely disparate local, state, federal, and private agencies – police, teachers, doctors, social workers, probation officers, and others including the Home for Little Wanderers – in a pact to treat these exploited youth as victims, not defendants.
“In Boston, we are very lucky to have had great support and response to this devastating issue of commercial exploitation,” said Joan Wallace-Benjamin, president and CEO of the Home for Little Wanderers, who will be in attendance this evening. “Diverse groups have come together – law enforcement, child advocacy and social services – to raise awareness that these young people are victims.”
Today, the program is known as the Support to End Exploitation Now (SEEN) coalition. For the second year in a row, it was recently named as one of the Top 50 Innovative Government Programs nationwide by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Its success – and its close partnership with Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which is profiled in Very Young Girls – was instrumental in bringing the film to Boston.
“The number and nature of agencies involved in the SEEN coalition is unprecedented,” Conley said, “and they’ve all got a single goal – to take these young victims off the streets and out of the life.”
In addition to Conley and Benjamin, tonight’s attendees are expected to include ranking members of the Boston, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop, Transit, and State police; representatives of the Governor’s Council on Sexual and Domestic Violence and the Department of Health and Human Services; Department of Children and Families Commissioner Angelo McLain; Massachusetts’ first Child Advocate, Gail Garinger; survivors of child exploitation, and others.
A reception and speaking program will begin at 5:00 in the Great Hall and Function room at 120 Tremont St. in downtown Boston. The film begins at 6:00 and a question-and-answer period will follow with film director David Schisgall and Rachel Lloyd, an exploitation survivor and now the director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services.
Very Young Girls, expected to air on Showtime in December, explores the underworld of child exploitation on the streets of New York, but Conley and a multitude of law enforcement and social service partners say the phenomenon exists across the United States – including here in Massachusetts, where the average age of recruitment or coercion into prostitution is just 13 years old.
“When we first launched a pilot program to take exploited youth off the streets and into safe environments, we received fewer then five referrals a year,” Conley said. “When we began to change our perceptions and share information across agencies, that number skyrocketed – not because more children were being exploited but because we were paying attention to a phenomenon that had been there all along.”
Four years ago, Conley proposed a program to change dramatically the way prostituted teens were viewed by the criminal justice system. Then known as the Teen Prostitution Prevention Program, it would divert teenage girls arrested in prostitution cases away from prosecution and instead steer them toward social service providers. In 2006, the program brought together more than three dozen widely disparate local, state, federal, and private agencies – police, teachers, doctors, social workers, probation officers, and others including the Home for Little Wanderers – in a pact to treat these exploited youth as victims, not defendants.
“In Boston, we are very lucky to have had great support and response to this devastating issue of commercial exploitation,” said Joan Wallace-Benjamin, president and CEO of the Home for Little Wanderers, who will be in attendance this evening. “Diverse groups have come together – law enforcement, child advocacy and social services – to raise awareness that these young people are victims.”
Today, the program is known as the Support to End Exploitation Now (SEEN) coalition. For the second year in a row, it was recently named as one of the Top 50 Innovative Government Programs nationwide by the Ash Institute for Democratic Governance and Innovation. Its success – and its close partnership with Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which is profiled in Very Young Girls – was instrumental in bringing the film to Boston.
“The number and nature of agencies involved in the SEEN coalition is unprecedented,” Conley said, “and they’ve all got a single goal – to take these young victims off the streets and out of the life.”
In addition to Conley and Benjamin, tonight’s attendees are expected to include ranking members of the Boston, Chelsea, Revere, Winthrop, Transit, and State police; representatives of the Governor’s Council on Sexual and Domestic Violence and the Department of Health and Human Services; Department of Children and Families Commissioner Angelo McLain; Massachusetts’ first Child Advocate, Gail Garinger; survivors of child exploitation, and others.
A reception and speaking program will begin at 5:00 in the Great Hall and Function room at 120 Tremont St. in downtown Boston. The film begins at 6:00 and a question-and-answer period will follow with film director David Schisgall and Rachel Lloyd, an exploitation survivor and now the director of Girls Educational and Mentoring Services.
