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Introduction
Despite some important research on CSEC, for a number of reasons, the sexual victimisation of youth via prostitution has been understudied. As was the case with intra-familial child sexual abuse 30 years ago, sexual violence via prostitution may have escaped attention in large part because of the secrecy of the behaviours, the youth and vulnerability of the victims and the use of a variety of tactics by the perpetrators (including violence, fear, force, and 'grooming'). Further contributing to the neglect of this crime is the fact that often the children who are prostituted are 'thrownaways', or are poor, minority, runaway or drug-involved and garner little sustained public concern or attention because they are not empowered constituencies (Estes and Weiner, 2001).
Conflicting images are evoked by the words 'prostitution' and 'commercial sexual exploitation of children'. When referring to adults, some suggest that 'prostitution' could be reframed as 'sex work' (Agustin, 2008), although research suggests that even when prostitution is legalised it involves harm, violence and coercion that go beyond the average 'job' (Raymond, 1998; Farley, 2004a, b; Sullivan, 2005). While the debate about adult prostitution and its legalisation as 'sex work' is not the focus of this article, the findings presented here about prostituted1 teens may have some implications for understanding adult prostitution. In this article the focus is on minors, that is youth under 18 years of age (although the exact age that designates adulthood may vary by jurisdiction and nation.)
Minors involved in the sex trade or trafficking, whether internationally or domestically, are often viewed as victims and not offenders.2 Our social (and even legal) responses to prostituted children and youth, however, often belie this assertion. Indeed, in many states in the US, for example, teens who are found to have traded sex for money and who have attained a certain age (for example 17 in Massachusetts) can be and often are arrested and charged in criminal courts. Recent research suggests that US law enforcement personnel are inconsistent in their treatment of prostituted juveniles (Finkelhor and Ormrod, 2004; Halter, 2007). This inconsistency may reflect the conflict between law enforcement driven criminalisation of prostituted youth and other statutes and regulations that define sexual contact by...