Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them - Hardcover

Sher, Julian

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1569765650 ISBN 13: 9781569765654

Publisher: Chicago Review Press, 2011

Synopsis

They are America’s forgotten children, the hundreds of thousands of child prostitutes who walk the Las Vegas Strip, the casinos of Atlantic City, the truck stops on interstates, and the street corners of our cities. Many people wrongly believe sex trafficking involves young women from foreign lands. In reality, the majority of teens caught in the sex trade are American girls--runaways and throwaways who become victims of ruthless pimps.

            In Somebody's Daughter: The Hidden Story of America's Prostituted Children and the Battle to Save Them, meet the girls who are fighting for their dignity, the cops who are trying to rescue them, and the community activists battling to protect the nation's most forsaken children. Author Julian Sher takes you behind the scenes to expose one of America’s most underreported crimes: A girl from New Jersey gets arrested in Las Vegas and, at great risk to her own life, helps the FBI take down a million-dollar pimping empire. An abused teenager in Texas has the courage to take the stand in a grueling trial that sends her pimp away for 75 years. Survivors of the sex trade in New York, Phoenix, and Minneapolis set up shelters and rescue centers that offer young girls a chance to break free from the streets. “The sex trade is the new drug trade,” says one FBI special agent, and Somebody's Daughter is a call to action, shining a light on America’s dirty little secret.

About this title

About the Author

Julian Sher is an award-winning investigative journalist, TV writer and director, and the author of six books. The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and the BBC have featured his reporting on child abuse. 

Reviews

"The sex trade is the new drug trade," writes Sher (Caught in the Web), who draws attention to the 300,000 American minors trafficked and prostituted each year in his thorough, deeply affecting study. Scaffolding his arguments on the narratives of two such children--Maria, a former prostitute "turned out" at the age of 13, and Felicia, who became involved with her pimp at 14--Sher follows how young people, frequently runaways, find themselves in the clutches of predatory adults. He introduces the reader to the networks of rescue organizations that offer succor and the law enforcement agencies that too frequently victimize the children further, prosecuting prostitutes rather than their pimps or johns. He also studies how representations of pimping in pop culture (from Grand Theft Auto IV to rapper Ice-T's film Pimpin') normalize--even glamorize--exploitation. While the horror stories of the young girls "in the life" are vividly recounted, the author depicts them with sensitivity and respect; and his book strikes a rare balance between revealing trauma and hope, and between the stories of abused children and their advocates. (Jan.)
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Sher takes on the story of teen prostitution in the U.S. by primarily focusing on three cities, Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Dallas. His interview subjects include a small group of teens who explain how they came to prostitution and how they broke out of it. He also talks to police officers investigating vice crimes as well as lawyers, judges, and survivors of the sex trade now working to rescue other victims. Interspersed with these personal stories are discussions of statistics regarding gender, age, and recidivism. The situations are alternately sad or graphically violent, but always tragic. Sher clearly has a great deal of empathy for his interview subjects, and is at his most gripping when writing about their decisions to stand up against former pimps. He also writes in detail about the glamorized pimp image and how it has flooded pop culture (Ice T’s career is particularly ironic). --Colleen Mondor

Edition details

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1569765650
• ISBN 13: 9781569765654
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352