Studies Showing Age Of Entry Into Prostitution

submitted by Susiesmum from (self.DownTheMemoryHole)

I saw this comment in the AMA thread with Meghan Murphy.

r/IAmA _meghanmurphy1y I am Meghan Murphy, journalist, feminist and founder of Feminist Current. Ask me anything. Journalist

hexchromosome wrote:

Age of Entry. Women can virtually always remember at what exact age, what moment of life, they were drawn into a life of prostitution. Among the most important facts established by research is the startlingly young age, at which girls are firstdeceived or forced into prostitution, or driven to it, by homelessness and desperation. This is usually in adolescence, often around the age of 14, 15, or 16.(1) Nothing more clearly refutes the “happy hooker” stereotype than this tragic fact of such a very early age of entering prostitution.

Reference for above: (1). Results differ from one sample to another, and reported statistics are not always comparable. Nonetheless, the basic finding – of a very early age of entry into prostitution – is generally consistent. Nadon et.al.(1998) reported that 89% of the prostituted women they studied had begun before the age of 16. Silbert & Pines (1980, 1982) reported that of 200 women being prostituted in San Francisco, 68% had begun at age 16 or younger. Some of these girls had been 9, 10, 11, or 12 years old. Three studies each reached the same conclusion: an average entry-age of 14: Boyer et al. (1993); Weisberg (1984); Gray (1973). A U.S. government study put the average age of entering prostitution at 12-13 (Spangenberg (2001); http.www.justice.gov/criminal/ceos/prostitution.html)

Researchers in Seattle (James ,1980, n=136) and in Norway (Høigard & Finstad,1992) each calculated a mean age of entry of 15; James states that 36% of these girls had been 14, or younger. Bagley & Young (1987) found that 51% of prostituted Canadian women they studied had begun at age 15, or younger. A government study of 229 prostituted youth In Canada (1984) determined that they all had entered prostitution between the ages of 8 and 19. Most had been15 to 16, and many had begun at 13 or14.

Childhood Sexual Victimization. Another key fact uncovered by researchers is that 60% to 70% of the women being used in prostitution had previously been victims of sexual abuse or incest in childhood, while still living at home.(2) The magnitude of this relationship astonished those who first discovered it. Sexual abuse was often the direct cause of becoming a run-away, which in turn had led quickly to entrapment in prostitution.

References for above: (2). Many studies document a strong association between childhood sexual abuse and prostitution, usually beginning in adolescence (Abramovitch, 2005). Ninety percent of the prostituted teenagers studied by Newton-Ruddy & Handelsman (1986) had been sexually abused by care-givers, or neighbors. Some 70% of the prostituted women studied by Silbert and Pines (1982, 1983) said that childhood sexual abuse had played a direct role in their entry to being used in prostitution; 96% of them had been run-aways.

Bagley (1987) reported that 73% of the prostituted women studied had been sexually abused as children. Widom and Kuhns (1996) calculated that girls who are sexually abused are 28 times more likely to later be used in prostitution than are other girls. In a study of children being prostituted in California, most said they had been coerced into prostitution by pimps posing as boyfriends, by friends, classmates, and by men who were strangers to them (Carr, 2009). Girls being prostituted in New York City told researchers they feared and hated the johns, and 87% said they wanted to escape prostitution (Curtis et.al., 2008). Many additional studies verify the startling 60%-70% magnitude of early sexual abuse of women now being used in prostitution: Murphy, 1993; Belton, 1992; Simons & Whitbeck, 1991; Weisberg, 1984; Papery & Deisher, 1983; Farley et.al.,1998; James, 1980; James & Meyerding, 1977. Abuse by older male family members – usually fathers, stepfathers, and foster-fathers – is the most common.

Control by Pimps. Overall percentages are not available, but many careful studies in various locations have determined that 80% to 90% of the girls and women being used in prostitution are notindependent free agents, but are controlled by pimps. (3) Throughout the world, the pimp-sector is basically in daily functional control of prostitution.

References for above: (3). The Cambodian Women’s Crisis Centre found that 86% of women rescued from Phnom Penh brothels by police had been tricked or sold into prostitution, and did not know they were going to be prostituted, when they left home (Brown, 2000, 66, 89).

The European Union provides data on the extent of pimp-control in a number of European countries (Details in Scelles Foundation, 2012). In Spain, more than 90% of women in prostitution were found to be victims of trafficking by pimps (p.268). In Poland, 90% of prostitution along roads was said to be controlled by organized criminal groups (p.233). In Bulgaria, RiskMonitor estimates that more than 95% of those in prostitution have pimps linked to organized crime (64).

In Germany, a policy analyst estimated that 80%-95% of women in prostitution there have pimps (Barry,1979, p.130).

Percent who Want to Escape From Prostitution. In interviews conducted with 785 prostituted women, in nine different countries, 89% said that they would like to escape prostitution immediately (Farley et.al., 2003).

Reference: Farley, M, et al. (2003) Prostitution and trafficking in nine countries. In Farley, M. (Ed.) Prostitution, Trafficking, and Traumatic Stress. The Haworth Press Inc.

Suicides, and Femicides: In one study, 65% of all prostituted women had been beaten and physically abused by johns (Silbert & Pines,1981). Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in survivors is massive and pervasive; an entire book is devoted to documenting this (Farley,2003). Murders are commonplace. In one year here in New York City, two hundred women being used in prostitution were reported murdered (Rosen, 1981). Such kinds of murders of women can be termed femicides (Russell & Harmes, 2001; Russell & Radford, 1992) . Seventy-five percent of the “call girls” in one study had attempted suicide at least once. Public hospitals have stated that about 15% of all suicide victims are women apparently being used in prostitution (Erbe,1984 ,p. 618-19).

Reference: Erbe, N. (1984). Prostitution: Victims of men’s exploitation and abuse. Law and Inequality, 2, 609.

Boys in Prostitution. Boys are also widely available in prostitution, but less is known, and caution is advisable in generalizing across categories. Homeless boys have been reported to suffer lower levels of sexual trauma than do homeless girls (Gwadz, 2007; Tyler et.al., 2001). Some evidence suggests that boys involved in prostitution may be less often controlled by a pimp than are minor girls or women. For both boys and girls used in prostitution, the buyers are alway adult males, so the situations are not identical. There is a small but growing literature on the use of boys in prostitution.(4)

Reference: Numerous, see article for full description: (4).(Bimbi, 2007, Kaye, 2003, Flowers, 2001, Van Der Poe 1992, Boyer, 1989, Coleman, 1989, Earls & David,1989).

Pornography. Another surprising finding was how deeply intertwined use in prostitution was with making pornography.(5) These two branches of the sex industry overlap indistinguishably, in many ways. Often the same men are involved, using many of the same women. Video pornography is made of girls being used in prostitution, to “prove” their consent, and for blackmail, using a threat of send the films to her parents and relatives (Schwartz et.al., 2007).

References and info: In one study 38% of women being used in prostitution said they had been used in child pornography before the age of sixteen, 10% of them before the age of thirteen (Silbert & Pines,1982). Pornography in addition harms many other women and men, indirectly, through eroticizing woman-abuse and making it “seem sexy” (Russell, 1991,1993; Brannon, 1991; Layden, 2010; Einseidel, 1991; Brannon & Frank, 1990; Brannon et al., 1996)

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A couple of caveats. For one, illegal street prostitution is of course going to be of a different character than legalized prostitution. For two, the fault lies in how little anybody seems to give a shit about child abuse and how horrible systems currently are for resolving it. Parents often go without punishment for the abuse, and the children are tossed around often abusive or neglectful foster parents. Many of them, or at least how it used to be, do so for profit and keep chucking around unsurprisingly unruly children they can't easily control.

Of more bizarre note is the silly hamfisted shoving of pornography into the problem. For which is only vaguely cited as "Schwartz et al 2007" for justification, likely from this document where the bulk of it seems to have been plagiarized. Except the paper in question doesn't support the comment, but rather is "Pimp subjugation of women and mind control". Unfortunately I could not actually locate the contents of the article, and google only returns some 6 or so results. Its singular use to verify that entire paragraph raises an eyebrow.

The dismissing note about boys in prostitution is also egregious. The problem remains that almost nobody has ever cared to study the subject because nobody cares about boys and men. What few do exist do so in effort to further dismiss them, and in fact the entire 2008 document much of this comment cannibalizes from doesn't mention boys at all. Most worryingly about this dismissal is the cited studies do not support it.

"Gender differences were found in the types, but not prevalence or magnitude, of childhood maltreatment and traumatic events experienced." - Gwadz et al; which further concludes "Further investigation of the impact of trauma on homeless males is needed."

Meanwhile Tyler, the study "The Effects of a High-Risk Environment on the Sexual Victimization of Homeless and Runaway Youth", does not actually compare like-for-like and with a tiny population of 311 homeless and runaways of course finds girls victimized more. It does not compare, for example, prostitutes for prostitutes. If prostitution were more a common choice of women, for example, of course you'd find lower victimization among men. But even more than that, it cites the bogus college rape statistic among many other bogus "studies" grossly inflating rape statistics. A rigorous trustworthy source it is not.

Back to the main bulk of the comment however, most worrying is the shell-game going on mixing studies about unwilling prostitution versus willing, or child abuse related prostitution. Using singular studies of single locations, such as SF in the 1980s, does not imply anything about modern populations nor concerns. In fact it cites old studies that don't match modern numbers, then new studies talking about something entirely different to bolster its claims. This entire comment is immensely deceitful in the manner in which it haphazardly presents research. In fact, it cites studies of small samples with some of the biggest estimates in the entire field. Even though the majority of them find far lower numbers, such as this one finding only 32% prevalence of sex abuse.

Does this imply the older findings are somehow false? No, but times and places can vary considerably. But there are also misreporting in the comment. Example, Widom and Kuhns (1996) found both neglect OR sexual abuse had a 2.54 and 2.58 odds ratio, not "28 times more likely". In fact those with the highest rates of prostitution were physically abused in the results section.

The bizarre misreporting of the actual studies I reviewed, as well as the discord compared with modern figures, makes me think the author of the comment is parroting from yet another unknown or set of unknown sources without having read the original documents. In doing so, creating exaggerated fictions when the real problem is bad enough as it is.

I'll conclude in quoting Widom and Kuhns. "The outcomes that other researchers have found and attributed to early childhood victimization experiences (particularly sexual abuse) may not be specifically associated with childhood victimization or sexual abuse in particular". Does that really sound like it supports OP's point?