Nashville, Tennessee police have arrested 45-year-old Teresa West and her two adult children on charges of trafficking for sexual servitude. The police said they were prostituting a 16-year-old girl they recruited from a local high school.
The police suspect more minors may have been recruited by the Wests.
Sharlene Azam, author of Oral Sex is the New Goodnight Kiss, said underage prostitution in white, middle-class neighborhoods is more common than many want to believe.
“I am finding that middle-class girls from functional families in good neighborhoods are being drawn into prostitution by all kinds of people,” she said. “There are recruiters in schools, other teenage girls, who might be telling your daughter, ‘You’re already having sex, why don’t you get paid for it’?”
Source: CitizenLink Daily, August, 21, 2009