The Nation: Youth for Sale on the Streets

Increasingly, runaway kids are snared into prostitution

In San Francisco last week, a convicted child molester was arrested on a charge of running a child prostitution ring that may have involved 30 boys. Police Sergeant George Huegle, who made the arrest, said that the kids were brought to customers in various parts of the city and were "exhibited like livestock, naked." On both the North and South sides of Chicago, separate rings of girl prostitutes, many of them only twelve years old, are at work. Some of the pre-teens earn $200 nightly. In Los...