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The Fledgling Fund
VERY YOUNG GIRLS - FILM
Very
Young Girls is a documentary film that chronicles the journey of young women
through the underground world of sexual exploitation in New York City.
A
14-year-old girl is lured from her home, beaten, raped, held captive, and sold
for sex in New York City. The police find her -- and arrest her.
A man who has sex with an underage girl should be prosecuted as a criminal
rapist. But there is a loophole: if the child accepts money in exchange
for sex, the rapist is now a "john" and rarely is subjected to
greater punishment than a fine. For the very same act, the girl is often
prosecuted as a prostitute and sent into detention. The average age of
entry into prostitution today in the Untied States is 13 years old.
The United States government likes to say it leads the world in combating
sexual trafficking, and grades other countries on their compliance. If a
woman has been brought from the Ukraine to Manhattan and coerced to have sex
for money, the US government provides her services under the 2002 Sex
Trafficking legislation. She is a victim. But if she is a
African-American girl brought to Manhattan from the Bronx, she's a criminal and
she's going to jail.
Our double standard arises partly from myths about prostitution, promoted in
the movies, song, and reality TV - girls are empowered sex workers, strung-out
crack whores, greedy "hos," or hookers with hearts of
gold. Very Young Girls shows clearly, that with the average age of entry
into prostitution in the United States at thirteen, that sexual exploitation is
simply a commercial form of child sexual abuse, the effect of which can
continue into adulthood and beyond.
The film follows the girls in real time, using verité and intimate interviews
with the girls both when they are still working and when in recovery,
The film also uses footage shot by pimps themselves that illustrate
exactly how it all starts. Very Young Girls tells the story of
girls who spend their teenage years being recruited and brainwashed by
predatory pimps, bought and sold on the street, sent to jail, and then
recovering from the trauma of sexual exploitation.
Recovery occurs through Rachel Lloyd, who runs GEMS, the only survivor-led
organization in New York that offers services to sexually exploited girls.
Rachel rescued herself from sexual exploitation, and she and her staff are
relentless in their mission to help girls sent by the courts to GEMS after
being arrested, or found on the streets by GEMS staffers, to piece their lives
back together in group therapy. But sessions reopen wounds as girls
relive memories of the abusive homes they ran away from, pimps who convinced
them that they were "in love," the nightly rapes they endured to make
money so their pimp would give them attention instead of a beating; and the
fear that they will never be anything but a "ho" in anyone's eyes -
including their own.
A few girls will succeed, some will remain suspended on the edge of two worlds,
and others will be sucked back into the underground.
Very Young Girls will change the way law enforcement, the media, and
society as a whole look at sexual exploitation.