TEENS' COUNSELORS URGE FORMATION OF TASK FORCE

Counselors who work with teenage prostitutes are calling for the creation of a multiagency task force to find ways to halt child prostitution -- a growing problem that many people don't know exists in Guilford County.

One of those counselors, Olivia Rowe, also wants crisis intervention centers built in downtown Greensboro and High Point where troubled teenagers could get help any hour of the day or night.

"Our children need a place nearby they can go to, without any questions asked, when they're scared or hungry, or need a change of clothes and a shower and a place to sleep," Rowe says.

John Spruill, counselor with the nonprofit agency Youth Focus, says the task force would explore ways to rescue teenagers ensnared in prostitution and prevent others from becoming prostitutes. Another priority would be to find ways to catch and curb "the adult men who prey on these girls," he says.

Every agency that might come into contact with the teenagers should be represented on the task force, especially the Greensboro and High Point police departments, Spruill says.

Greensboro Police Chief Robert White says he "absolutely would like my department to sit down at that table."

White says he wants to learn why the department's arrest records do not reflect what counselors and public health workers say is a sizable number of teenage prostitutes in Greensboro.

High Point Police Chief Louis Quijas says his department "would be happy to participate." Quijas says High Point police could bring ideas to the table gleaned from a recent High Point program aimed at rehabilitating prostitutes.

The program, funded by the Governor's Crime Commission, was called Saving Cinderella. The police department operated the program in collaboration with a non-profit, religious-based organization called His Laboring Few.

Saving Cinderella was aimed primarily at adult prostitutes, "but they were all teenagers at one time," Quijas says. The program stressed rehabilitation through a long-term multifaceted approach that included health and dental services, drug and alcohol treatment, education, job training and financial counseling. Quijas says he and his officers were excited about the program. "I thought it showed a lot of promise," he says.

It was funded only once, however. The program ended in June when the government decided not to renew its funding after determining that the arrangement might be violating the constitutional principle of separation of church and state.

Rowe, director and founder of REACH, a group home for troubled teenage girls, says a task force might be successful if "we could hear from the girls themselves. They need to be on it, too," Rowe says. "Otherwise, all we're going to have is a lot of meaningless talk."

Caroline Moseley, health education director for the Guilford County Department of Public Health, says it's "absolutely critical to have the girls there."

"When you want to do something about drugs, you talk to addicts. If you're doing something about AIDS, you talk to people who have AIDS," Moseley says. "And if you want to do something about teenage prostitution, you have to talk to teenage prostitutes. They know what the problems are. They know why they're doing what they're doing."

Anita, a 15-year-old who lives at Rowe's group home, wishes someone her age, or close to it, had warned her before she became a prostitute. "You don't listen when you hear it from an adult," she says. "That's what you expect them to say. It means a lot more coming from one of your peers."

Anita, which is not her real name, says she would like to serve on a task force to combat teenage prostitution. "I think I could help a lot," she says.

Rowe says what is needed more than anything else -- other than the eradication of social ills that encourage teenage prostitution -- is the establishment of 24-hour-a-day crisis intervention centers near downtown Greensboro and High Point.

Shandra, another former teenage prostitute at REACH, echoes that sentiment. Shandra, 15, remembers all too well walking the streets, hungry, with night coming on and having no money and no place to sleep. "You just hoped the dude you were getting into a car with was all right, and would get you something to eat and a place for the night."

The Youth Focus shelter is open to teens who need it, but it's on Huffine Mill Road near the county line, "miles from downtown," Rowe said.

"We're killing these children, these throwaway children -- by boxing them in and basically pretending they don't exist."