A nationwide crackdown on child prostitution netted three girls, two of them 16- years-old and one 17, in the Denver metro area last week, the FBI said Monday.
In 26 other cities, another 45 teen prostitutes, some as young as 13, were arrested in the three-day FBI initiative called Operation Cross Country III.
Of 571 suspected pimps and customers arrested nationwide, two were in Denver, according to the FBI.
In two previous Operation Cross Country crackdowns, metro Denver police departments came up empty-handed, said Kathy Wright, a special agent with the FBI office in Denver.
“I don’t know that the number of arrests indicates it is or isn’t a big problem in Denver,” Wright said of child prostitution. “But even if we pick up just one person who is exploiting a child, then that’s a problem we want to solve.”
Authorities are not releasing names of the adults as they continue to investigate the cases and potential prostitution rings.
One of the adults from the Denver area is being investigated as a pimp. Wright would not elaborate on the other adult’s role or how local police went about their investigations. Denver, Aurora and Lakewood police participated in the crackdown.
Federal agencies don’t typically coordinate work on misdemeanor crimes such as prostitution, but Operation Cross Country is aimed at rescuing children from prostitution and marshaling local efforts to combat it, according to the FBI.
“The involvement of children in anything exploitative is bad for our society,” Wright said. “In this case, you’re exploiting someone who already is vulnerable.”
The relatively thin number of arrests last week, however, doesn’t begin to reflect the depth of the problem, said Amanda Finger, coordinator of the Colorado chapter of the Polaris Project, a grassroots group that helps the victims of human trafficking.
For hundreds of thousands of children living on the streets and other neglected “throwaway” kids, pimps are a daily fact of life, she said.
“One in three youths will be approached by a pimp within their first 48 hours of living on the street,” Finger said. “That’s a pretty alarming statistic.”
Local police departments should treat teen prostitutes as victims, not criminals, and their pimps as human traffickers, no different than slave traders, she said.
“If the law says children can’t consent (to sex) until they’re 18, then they cannot choose to participate in a commercial sex enterprise,” Finger said Monday night. “They are under pimp-control; they are not choosing to commit a crime.”
She said there are no reliable statistics on how many children are arrested on prostitution charges or are suspected by social service agencies of being exploited.
Joey Bunch: 303-954-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com
