Saskatchewan anxious to curb child prostitution

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The Saskatchewan government is trying to rescue girls - some as young as eight years old - from the streets.

Armed with posters, $250,000 in funding and a commitment to wiping out the growing business of child prostitution, the Saskatchewan departments of Justice and Social Services are letting the people closest to the problem find the answers.

"We are working with the community," said Saskatchewan Social Services spokesperson Virginia Wilkinson. "The philosophy is that the community knows best what is needed."

Since May of this year, the government began striking out at the people involved in the street-level abuse of children.

"Children involved in the sex trade are victims of child abuse," said Social Services Minister Lorne Calvers. "The people who purchase their services are child abusers. This is an extremely serious issue that we as a society must not tolerate."

Working groups in Prince Albert, Saskatoon, and Regina are meeting to discuss the best ways to eliminate the problems on their streets. Although the government says there is no one race or group that makes up the majority of children on the streets, Rick Kotowich, the chairman of the community group set up in Regina, said he feels the majority of victims are First Nation children.

"The kids we are dealing with are Aboriginals," said Kotowich speaking for the Regina Action Committee for Children at Risk,

It is not known, however, exactly how many Aboriginal children there are on the streets.

"We know the kids exist. We know they are out there even though they exist in shadows of secrecy and shadows of shame. . . We'd like to think that 100 is an exaggeration."

Children involved in the sex trade are not all prostitutes either, he said. There are a number who are actually 'pimping' other children.

"The pimp could be another 16-year-old girl [who is] putting a 10-year-old onto the streets because she's attractive, vulnerable and scared of being beaten if she doesn't."

He said it is hard to track individual cases, since some children run away from home for a few weeks at a time and end up on the streets before returning home or winding up in youth detention centres.

Whatever the number, the north central area of Regina, known for the prevalence of child prostitutes, already has the ominous handle of "The Kiddy Stroll."

How many kids, why they end up on the streets and where they go afterwards are just some of the questions the group set up in Regina needs to address, he said.

"We need to have a better understanding of this problem."

To do that, the Regina working group hopes to reach out to families, as well as the children, about the dangers of street life. The Regina group is made up of several agency representatives who work with street level people in the area. There are Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal members in the group.

Although early in the development stages, Kotowich said one plan being discussed by the action group is to have a store-front centre set up in the downtown area. He said letting the kids know there is a place they can go to get help, rather than "scooping the kids from the streets," is a better alternative.

Once a child approaches the outreach centre with their problems, then a hands-on approach can begin, he said.

"We want to get to the kids and their family and say, 'Look, we understand the lifestyle you have chosen, but it is bad. Do you want to try and make a change?'" he said. "If they say, 'Get away from me,' we just have to let them go."

The whole idea is to let the kids decide for themselves. Strong-arm tactics could send the child back onto the streets for good.

Once they do accept help, Kotowich said the group has the capacity to refer them to any number of treatment programs or services.

Although there is little documented evidence, Lynn Mourot, a representative of the Prince Albert group working to end the child sex trade, said a good hunch about why kids end up on the streets is they are coming from toubled homes where they have been victims of verbal, physical or sexual abuse.

She said the posters created for the provincial campaign are examples of how the children should not be the focus.

"We tried to make them so they focused on the perpetrator instead of the victim. We don't want to re-victimize the victims."

The posters illustrate young, vulnerable girls on street corners being approached by men in vehicles. In the one poster, a clean cut man has rolled his car window down and is talking to the one young girl. In the back seat of the car is a baby seat.

Mourot said the posters show the public that anyone can be a predator of young girls.

The Prince Albert group is also in the process of making a game plan to deal with the growing concern of child prostitution.

Their program is expected to be operational by the end of October.

Mourot hopes to have outreach workers on the streets of Prince Albert before Christmas to help the children on a one-to-one basis. The children need to speak to people they trust, said Mourot.

"The police aren't going to be the ones these kids trust and the social workers won't gain their trust either. There's going to have to be people who get out on the streets and establish a rapport with the kids," she said.

Mourot said there are a large number of Aboriginal children who are victims on the street, but added that any child forced into this way of life is unacceptable.

"Any child who is on the street is one too many," she said.

She said the working group is hoping to make a difference on the streets one person at a time.

"If you stop one perpetrator from picking up one girl then it's a success. It's a small success, but still a success."

The Saskatchewan initiative is believed to be a good start to eventually get all children off the streets.

The government's initiative has five steps. Future plans include developing stricter law enforcement against anyone who exploits children, creating a tracking and monitoring system fr perpetrators, enhancing the services available to victims, and federal laws will also be examined to make sure they do not hinder the prosecution of pimps and anyone who has sex with children.The program will continue until the problem of child prostitution is eliminated totally.

The Saskatchewan initiative is a large step forward in the war against child prostitution. The province is but one of those fighting the battle. Child prostitution is an issue across Canada.

In January of this year, a report by the task force on children involved with prostitution was forwarded to Alberta's Minister of Social Services. The report calls for changes in the legal aspects of people accused of soliciting children, changes and improvements in education of children about the dangers of the streets, and the social support available for children to rely on if they do become victims. The report focuses on the need for the entire community to come together to help fight the problem.

The underlying theme of the report is that children involved in prostitution are victims and anyone involved in the solicitation of a child is committing child abuse and should be penalized accordingly.

One of the report's recommendations has already been acted on by the government. Changes were made early this summer to the Child Welfare Act. The new law recognizes that a child involved in solicitation is a victim of sexual abuse.

The new law gives the police and social service agencies a clear mandate and ability to "go onto the streets and pick up the kid," said Heather Forsyth, the author of the report and task force chair.

Forsyth, the Calgary-Fish Creek MLA, said the change in law is a major step in combating child prostitution.

She saw the response to the new law immediately in Calgary's prostitution area nicknamed "Popcorn Alley." In fact, every time a story is published in a paper, reported on the television or broadcast on the radio, it has an effect.

"Every time a story comes out, the sreets go dead," she said.

The task force report has been a major factor in the awareness of the often over-looked problem of child prostitution, she said.

The next step for the task force is to work on the implementation of the recommendations within the report.

To implement any or all of the recommendations in the report, the co-operation of the federal government is essential.

"A lot of the recommendations we made are to do with the feds," she said. "We need to get them on side."

The federal government has recently created a federal-provincial task force to gather information from across Canada on the child sex trade.

Forsyth hopes it won't be a duplication of work Alberta has already done. She said time is short and there is still a long way to go.

"I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, but the tunnel is very long."

In Edmonton, a city believed to be a national model for the work it has done to tackle the problem of children prostitution, it has been the community involvement which helped to shorten the length of the tunnel, said Maureen Reid, a street outreach worker with the Crossroads Outreach Program, a group dealing specifically with child prostitutes in Edmonton.

Reid said Edmonton's problem is on a much smaller scale than cities in Saskatchewan, but it is still a major concern.

She said the number of Aboriginal children on Edmonton streets is also small compared to Saskatchewan's situation. She estimates that 30 per cent of child prostitutes in Edmonton are of Native origin.

She said Saskatchewan is at the beginning of a process that Alberta has been working on for the last year.

The work done by the provincial task force, and the work still to be done, is a shining example of what can happen when the community rallies around a problem, she said.

"The task force has brought the community together to be part of the solution," she said.

Coming back from a recent conference in Ottawa on prostitution, Reid said Edmonton is recognized for