INNOCENCE FOR SALE

SCORES of Winnipeg children are sold or traded for money, food, shelter or,
increasingly, crack cocaine. They're readied for the streets as young as
eight, elementary school students put to work by pimps, dealers and,
sometimes, parents. The majority are aboriginal.

Winnipeg Free Press columnist Lindor Reynolds has interviewed sexually
exploited children, their parents and those who fight desperately to save
them from the streets. The names of all children, teens and parents have
been changed. This is the first in a four-part series.

Two girls -- 11 or 12 from the look of baby fat that clings to their soft
faces and exposed bellies -- are pacing Sutherland Avenue, a dark and
lonely stretch in Winnipeg's core. It's twilight, and no one comes to this
abandoned strip without a good reason. Tonight, these children are the reason.

In their jeans and midriff-skimming T-shirts, they make no effort to look
like anything other than elementary school students. That's their appeal,
their undeveloped bodies and still-shining eyes a draw for men who offer
cash for sex.

A red pickup truck pulls up beside the girls and the middle-age driver
looks through his open window. One girl runs over, speaks briefly and steps
back, rejected. There are other little girls on the streets of Winnipeg.

The pair resume their positions, shoving each other the way girls do when
they're teasing.

It's impossible to know exactly how many Winnipeg children are sexually
exploited and used for prostitution. The youngest ones -- eight to 11 years
old -- are often kept indoors and sold for drugs, food or cash. The older
children, still at an age when they should be in junior high, might be put
to work on the streets or at private parties. Older teens dot the streets
where men circle and hire girls, accepting as little as five dollars for
oral sex.

Estimates vary, but between 70 and 90 per cent of sexually exploited
Winnipeg children are aboriginal

Grinding poverty, racism and the infiltration of inner city neighbourhoods
by gangs and johns mean aboriginal children are at tremendous risk.

Cherry Kingsley, co-author of Sacred Lives, a 2000 national report on the
sexual exploitation of aboriginal children and youth, says Winnipeg has
unique problems.

"It's more intense for kids in Winnipeg," says Kingsley. "In Vancouver,
it's concentrated in the downtown east side. You don't have people growing
up in the downtown east side. In Winnipeg, the kids in the sex trade grow
up in the area. As they walk home from school, go out and play, they're
surrounded by it. Johns are cruising them on the sidewalk."

Kingsley says racism plays a role in making aboriginal children vulnerable.

"I think some people think it's easier to buy a native child. They (the
johns) don't have the same conscience about it."

Those johns could be any man slowly driving down the street.

"The ones who are searching for kids, they're deviants," says Winnipeg
police vice officer Det-Sgt. Jay Paquette.

"They're pedophiles and they're out there. There are some girls 16, 17, who
pass as kids because that's what guys want."

Dilly Knol, executive director of the inner city's Andrews St. Family
Centre, says the johns are usually outsiders. Many children in her area,
most of whom are native, are abused at home by fathers, neighbours or other
relatives. Knol says the men who want to exchange sex for favours come from
outside the community.

"You can tell by their cars that they're not from around here," says Knol.
"The dirty old men come and they offer the little kids candy or sniff if
they'll do stuff to them."

Finding the children and getting them off the streets is like trying to
corral smoke. The average age of entry into street prostitution is 14.
Paquette says 20 children under the age of 18 were charged with
prostitution-related offences last year. Of those, 30 or 40 per cent were
under 14. But those numbers represent a fraction of the children forced
into prostitution.

"Those are just the ones we charged. There were a great many more we didn't
charge," says Paquette. "How do I help them? I arrest them or I send them
home. The ones charged already had some sort of experience with the
criminal system. We're not arresting them to get them into the system. We
want to get them some sort of help."

Paquette says drugs and gangs -- native, Asian and Mediterranean -- control
the sexual exploitation of children on the streets.

"I see a real trend toward drug dealers hooking girls on crack and then
turning them out," says Paquette. "The crack houses are popping up faster
than anything I've seen. We can always tell when the new crack houses have
opened up because that's where the girls are on the street."

In fact, complaints from residents and business owners in the Ellice/Furby
area recently led to the formation of a police community response team. A
May vice division investigation found that crack houses in the area were
leading to drug-addicted prostitutes on the streets. A six-week
investigation by the community team led to 24 drug-related arrests and 31
arrests for communicating for the purpose of prostitution.

But Paquette freely admits the police are ill-equipped to deal with the
pimps and gangs who run prostitution in the city. In the last four years,
the prostitution unit has been cut to five officers from 12.

"We're under huge fiscal restraints. It's hard to work with the resources
we do and target the large pimping operations. They have more money. It's
no secret that the pimps run girls. Do the Hells Angels run girls? Of
course they do."

Paquette says most Winnipeggers don't really care about prostitution, not
even when it involves children.

"They don't see it. They don't think it affects them," he says. His own
passion comes from his personal experience.

"I have two young boys. I spent a lot of time in the child abuse unit
before my kids were born. I've seen the exploitation of kids. When I was an
officer I thought this was about sex. It's not about sex, it's about money."

Paquette is furious that some people look at sex trade workers and think
they're willing participants.

"They're victims. All the women out there are victims. They see this as
their only option. I think most people in this city have this view of the
girl just standing on the street corner, they think 'oh, she just wants to
have sex.' They're standing out there because they're desperate.

"It could happen to anybody who makes one wrong choice. The people in the
suburbs need to understand their kids are vulnerable, too."