ROBESON TO TRY REHAB FOR PROSTITUTES

County Officials Hope The Program Will Help Curb STDs And Aid Women

The prostitutes who walk the rural roads of Robeson County, past trailer
parks and meat processing plants, usually work cheap. They're looking for
one hit of crack cocaine, or enough money to buy a meal.

County officials hope that a new $90,000 program can save at least a few of
those women from a life of desperation and disease. They plan not to arrest
them, but to give them jobs.

The county health department plans to pluck two prostitutes off the street,
put them through drug rehab, send them to community college and then hire
one of them as an outreach coordinator who will try to coax other sex
workers into the same program.

The county expects to find a job for the other in a community-based
organization.

"Some of these women have children that they want to get back," said Bill
Smith, county health director. "There's still some spark in them. Those are
the ones we're looking for."

Robeson County officials estimate that about 120 women sell sex in the
economically depressed county about 80 miles south of Raleigh. The vast
majority are drug addicts.

Because the county has no large cities -- Lumberton is the largest, with
21,000 people -- prostitutes have taken to walking roads near places where
men gather: construction sites, industrial buildings, neighborhoods, Smith
said.

The thriving sex trade has driven Robeson's syphilis rate to among the
nation's highest. In 2003, the county's rate was 26 cases per 100,000
people, compared with a statewide rate of five cases per 100,000 people.
But in a county where unemployment is twice the state average and nearly a
quarter of the people live in poverty, officials have few alternatives to
offer women who sell sex out of desperation.

The women get arrested and go right back to the streets, Smith said. They
get treated for syphilis and are quickly reinfected.

"We got to thinking, why would they quit?" Smith said. "They're not going
to quit and take a $5-an-hour job somewhere."

The county applied for a grant from the state Department of Health and
Human Services in hopes of funding jobs for more than a dozen reformed
prostitutes. Instead, they got enough money to hire one for three years.
But Smith said he hopes that, once their outreach coordinator has started,
his department can find jobs for other reformed prostitutes at local
nonprofit agencies.

State officials say that, even on such a small scale, the program is a
groundbreaking approach to battling prostitution in North Carolina. In
other parts of the country, though, the strategy has curbed the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases, said John Peebles with the state HIV/STD
Prevention and Care Branch.

"Maybe they'll leave the profession totally, but if not, maybe they'll just
do what they do a little more safely," Peebles said.

Peebles said that if the program successfully reduces syphilis and HIV
rates in Robeson County, the state might be able to find money to expand it.

But Robeson has a long road ahead before that happens.

Local law enforcement officers are still helping to find the two candidates
for rehabilitation. And once the women are selected, it will probably take
them as long as six months to kick their drug habits, Smith said. He said
the coordinator probably won't begin work until spring.

"It's a slow process," Smith said. "But they'll never turn the corner under
the system we have now."