UNDERAGE GIRLS TRADING SEX FOR DRUGS, SCHOOL BOARD WARNS

District's Drug Committee Asked To Help Protect Teens

ABBOTSFORD - Some female students in Abbotsford are trading sex for
drugs at parties and other social gatherings, the local school board
says.

And the board is warning parents across the country that the same
thing could be happening in their neighbourhoods.

"If it's happening here in Abbotsford, it is happening everywhere,"
board chair Joanne Field said Tuesday in a news release. "We intend to
work with parents, teachers and students to raise awareness about
these parties. I urge all parents to get involved and I hope other
school districts will follow our lead."

The activity was brought to light by school counsellors, especially
Frank Roffel, who works at Yale secondary and raised concerns about
the activity last month at a drug awareness forum in Abbotsford.

Roffel didn't respond to a request for an interview Tuesday, but
school trustee Uultsje DeJong said although Roffel was the first to
speak publicly about the issue, it's not specific to Yale secondary or
to Abbotsford.

"I would be shocked to think it was only Abbotsford," he said, noting
that a similar issue came to light in Prince Edward Island during the
trial of a young baseball star convicted of receiving oral sex from
underage girls. The decision was later overturned but his trial last
year included revelations of casual oral sex involving male high
school athletes and Grade 7 girls.

DeJong heads the district's drug committee, which has now been asked
by the school board to raise parental and community awareness about
the sex-for-drugs parties and plan a response to protect the teenagers
who are involved.

Although he doesn't yet know what that response will be, DeJong said
the school board feels a moral and ethical obligation to take whatever
action it can to help students make better choices. "Even though it's
not happening in our schools, it affects our students and it affects
their families, which also affects their learning.

"We need to get the community involved. We have to say, we all know we
have a drug problem. This is affecting our children in more ways than
we can imagine. As leaders in our community, we have a duty and an
obligation to sit down and look at this in a realistic way and come up
with some strategies."

A lot of parents are unaware of the problem and the teenagers don't
think it's a big deal, he said in an interview. "They don't see it as
prostituting themselves. They just see it as trading sex for drugs and
that really concerns us.