Somebody's Daughter - Prologue

I've recently come across a book called Somebody's Daughter by Julian Sher and I'm going to post the notes I take here, chapter by chapter. These are the notes from the Prologue.


The book doesn't softball you for the prologue. It starts out with the story of a girl who'd once aspired to be in ministry "selling her body since she was 14 on some of the toughest tracks in the country" who asks her traveling companion, "Do you know how many times I got raped? ...how many guns I got put to my temples? ...times I got beaten - with hangers, brooms, whips, and belts?"

Las Vegas is called out as being a mecca and a haven for sex; especially illegal sex with minors. The 2009 National Report on Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking places the city at the top of the offenders list, estimating 400 girls being trafficked per year. They reiterate the rule, "Wherever women are for sale, the commercial sexual exploitation of young girls is never far away." Sgt. Det. Gil Shannon, who had been LVPD for 20 years at the time of publishing, is quoted as saying, "This is the mecca for child prostitution. They all come here." He points out an opinion that I believe can be extended to all cities, "His squad's statistics point not so much to success as to the depth of the problem." At least 60% of children picked up for prostitution charges in LV are not from Vegas.

One point that seems insane to me is that there's no help for those who need it. The prologue mentions a former madam who realized in jail that, although there was help for women who wanted to break addictions to drug or alcohol, there was no help for a woman who wanted to leave the life of prostitution. I've seen this in my own work as well. One story is that of a woman who worked with a young woman who was turned down from multiple shelters and homes because she didn't fit the criteria. She injected herself with drugs, then returned to the advocate, announcing that now she was a candidate for the home, but they'd better hurry because she didn't know how long the drug would stay in her system. 

The prologue also addresses an attitude problem on the side of those who are supposed to be safe havens or, at the least, impartial practitioners of law. In jail, prostitutes fall even lower than pedophiles on the chain of disrespect. Outside, it is even worse. One Dallas police sergeant, Byron Fassett, admits, "I was no different than most cops... I thought, a whore is a whore is a whore." Later, "I figured if she didn't want to be in this, she would get out of this."

Even when cops are advocates, the pimps have many ways around this. One girl's pimp "traded off" to another pimp, which is, "a frequent tactic pimps use to get rid of troublesome girls." The policeman that had found her and intended to prosecute her pimp lost both the case and the girl. The system continually fails a lot of girls, due to lack of concern, idea that this is a "victimless crime," lack of budget for a proper solution, corruption, and more. Fasset states, "It ate me up. The more we looked, the more we saw."

The Department of Justice states that CSEC is, "a problem of epidemic proportion." yet the epidemic "has largely gone overlooked and untreated." The most common figure places children who are being exploited at 300,000. The figure was taken from a University of Pennsylvania paper. I've linked to the summary HERE. Estes, the lead researcher, states that, "[CSEC] is the most hidden form of child abuse in the U.S. and North America today... It is the nation's least recognized epidemic." The book submits that human trafficking, "has become a cause célèbre among many dedicated...groups... But in most cases they focus on the international trade." More alarming is the statement that, "The U.S. government admirably offers special programs and funding for foreign victims of trafficking but none for domestic victims." The estimated figure is that 15,000 women are trafficked into the USA each year, but that the number of American girls trafficked on American streets is 10 to 20 times greater.

Another staggering statistic comes straight from the mouth of multiple pimps. "20-40% of the victims recruited into prostitution are juveniles." Based on statistics we have, this indicates that the number of sexually trafficked youth could be as high as 800,000.