Shattering the stereotype of the high-heeled, lipstick-stained and burned-out prostitute roaming Boston’s streets, local groups said the reality of adolescent girls being forced into sex acts often flies under the radar of the city’s consciousness.
While many young women are charged with prostitution in the Boston, police officials said they have begun to realize youths are targeted and coerced into the lifestyle against their will, said Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel Conley.
“We began to look at teenage women not as criminals or defendants, but as victims,” Conley said yesterday at a press conference addressing the growing problem. “There was something wrong with the way we were managing the system.”
Chris Klaehn, director of account strategy at graphic design company Corey McPherson Nash, and Lisa Goldblatt-Grace, a Boston University alumna and Program Director for the My Life My Choice campaign, said they decided to pool their resources and launch the MLMC in T Stations around Boston to help prevent the sexual exploitation of young girls.
“This campaign aims to reach these girls, and let them know that there are people who can help,” Goldblatt-Grace said in a press release handed out at the conference. “They are not alone.”
The campaign began in 2002 at The Home for Little Wanderers on Huntington Avenue. The public service announcement project marking its latest phase, said the group’s chief executive officer Joan Wallace-Benjamin.
“The backbone of this campaign was a group of women who gave up their time to diligently reach out and capture the voice of girls who are rarely heard,” Goldblatt-Grace said.
The campaign will feature posters designed by young women that depict the silhouette of a crumpled woman surrounded by sketched diary entries describing various scenarios including, “Sunday 3:00 a.m. – trade sex for a place to sleep.”
Posters will be placed at various T stations around the city because they are usually prime locations for pimps to target young females, said MBTA Police Chief Paul McMillan, who added the MBTA is providing he advertising space.
“MBTA is committed to do all it can to inform the public about this so-called victimless crime,” McMillan said. “It’s a myth that these girls choose this way of life and it needs to be exposed as just that, a myth.”
Conley said he hoped the campaign will inspire more nonprofits to join the cause. Local law enforcement officials in attendance at the meeting, held at the Home’s facility, said they have thrown their support behind the program after trying to attack the problem of prostitution in different ways in recent years.
Project organizers and supporters said they were optimistic the program will spread public awareness about the often overlooked problem of victimized young women.
“When we heard that Corey McPherson Nash and the T were getting involved, we were thrilled because the problem is actually reaching these girls,” said Home spokeswoman Lisa Rowan-Gillis.
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