Teen suicide spurs war on child prostitution

By Mickey Goodman

ATLANTA (Reuters) - At the age of 15, Samantha Walker was lured into prostitution on the streets of Toledo, Ohio, then taken against her will to Atlanta.

What makes her story different from thousands of others is that she testified against one of the men who paid for sex with her, helping to send him to prison.

But just weeks after the trial she took an overdose of drugs she was taking for depression and died at the age of 18.

More than 300,000 children are being sexually exploited in the United States, according to a study by the University of Pennsylvania.

Many of them end up in Atlanta, which authorities say has become a hub for prostitution in part because its busy airport makes it a destination for men seeking sex.

Where in the past pimps advertised the girls who worked for them on the walls of men's rest rooms or on street corners, these days they use online bulletin boards like craigslist (www.craigslist.org/).

Customers set up liaisons after seeing girls on the sites, and then pay the girl or the pimp directly on the street, according to the Atlanta Police Vice Department.

Solomon Gort, a married man with two children, a white-collar job and a home in Atlanta's suburbs, offered Walker's pimp $50 for oral sex with her in June 2004.

He forced her to have intercourse at a highway rest stop, then took her against her will to a motel, from which she escaped and called the police. Gort was convicted of false imprisonment and soliciting sex with a minor and sentenced to six years in prison.

NO SPACE AT SHELTER

After the trial, Walker wanted to stay in Atlanta, but returned to Toledo partly because the only facility in the southeastern United States for former child prostitutes, Angela's House outside Atlanta, had no space.

Confronting a hometown where she first worked as a prostitute, she committed suicide.

"The courts don't have the resources for kids like Samantha," said Debra Espy, the deputy district attorney who worked with Walker. "It's a national disgrace."

Walker is just one of many who have been lured into prostitution by pimps who exploit the fears and low self esteem of young girls who often come from dysfunctional families.

Nykita Hurt, a middle-class professional with a gentle voice, is still in turmoil after her daughter, Brandi, ran away from home in 1998 at the age of 14 to become a prostitute in Atlanta.