Forty-eight child prostitutes, some as young as 13, were taken into custody and 571 adults–including 50 pimps–arrested in a nationwide sting called Operation Cross Country III.  The sweep which took place in 29 cities was part of the FBI’s "Innocence Lost" initiative, which set up task forces of police, federal agents and prosecutors to target child prostitution.

Seattle-Tacoma, Chicago, Denver and Phoenix were among the cities targeted. Some adults were charged with prostitution, others as clients, and still others as pimps, with some charges including the domestic trafficking of children for sex. 

FBI Special Agent Tarna Derby-McCurtain of the bureau’s Tacoma office explained that teens  lured into prostitution from Washington State wind up on the "West Coast track," traveling on a sex circuit that ranges from Vancouver, B.C. to Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

In Phoenix, 50 arrests were made, and police in a separate investigation arrested two 16 year-old girls who recruited and managed other teen girls as young as 14 as part of a prostitution ring which operated out of an apartment the "managers" rented. Their recruits came from five area campuses.  Patrol officers gave detectives information on child prostitutes working the area of 27th Avenue and Van Buren Street and Phoenix Police Vice Unit investigators began the five month investigation.

Carol Lease, executive director of the Empowerment Program, a nonprofit in east Denver that works with women and girls in trouble, including teen prostitutes, explained that the teen sex workers rarely have high school diplomas, are addicted to drugs and think they’re stuck in the life, the only job that would pay more than minimum wage, if they could find a straight job. Many were the victims of sexual abuse before becoming prostitutes.

Meantime,  as in many states, the money Colorado has available to pay for what the teens need–a combination of mental health treatment, addiction recovery and counseling–is drying up. Lease said:

We’re just pathetic how we deal with mental health and substance abuse…Until our legislature has a change of heart, which means until the citizens of this state have a change of heart, that’s not going to change.

Currently the funds that do come in for the Colorado teens’ care are from the federal government and non-profit foundations.

The children arrested in the cross-country sting, many of them runaways, were put into safe housing with relatives or Child Protective Services, and could go into social services system or face time in juvenile prison.