In her revealing, body hugging dress printed with red hot flames, four-inch stilettos, flawless make-up and hair pressed flat, Anna Mei, who just graduated highschool, is ready for her first night on the street.

As she walks down the bustling streets of Century Blvd in Los Angeles with her head held high, she is warned that the people she should fear the most are other pimps who may try to recruit her with aggressive force, undercover “decoys” and thieves.

Anxiety overtakes her, but making money is all she can think of. “It’ll just be 10-15 minutes and then I’ll earn $100.00,” she calculates. When twenty minutes has passed, a four-door grey Sedan approaches her. When it’s done, she feels that the transaction went smoother than she had predicted.

That first night she stayed out all through the night and earned $2,000.

It’s been three years and she is still in the business of prostitution, despite the life-risking aspect of it.

“Of course it’s going to be dangerous, I know that and everyone else does. It’s like that with every job – you have to worry about getting robbed every day,” says Mei, now 21. “Life is dangerous and we can’t help that. I gotta do what I gotta do to make money, but I don’t plan on doing this forever.”

Anna Mei’s hometown is in Oakland, but her “job” requires her to travel with other women and their pimps across the United States to cities like DC and other busy, urban areas where an abundance of customers are available. She says in Oakland, the police is very persistent with catching prostitutes, hence her reluctance to prostitute in the streets of Oakland.

Her boyfriend since she was sixteen introduced her to prostitution and now it’s her lifestyle.

“It’s hard out here. I can’t depend on my parents. I’ve been hustling since I was 14 or 15,” she says, referring to other illegal activities she has been involved in. “This is what I’m good at.”

There has been a rise of young girls, between the ages of 11-14, who are hustling just like Mei in the Bay Area.

During 2001-2002, the Oakland Police Department identified 218 minors actively prostituted by pimps, according to a 2002 Sexually Exploited Minors report by Alameda County. Latest records also show that 211 arrests were made in 2004 and over 300 in 2005, all of who were minors charged with or allegedly soliciting themselves.

Oakland has been acknowledged as a major hub for commercial sexual exploitation, according to Sexually Abused and Commercially Exploited Youth (SACEY) and Safe Place Alternative (SPA), a joint advocacy and case management program for sexually exploited teenagers.

Early adolescence is when most women enter prostitution, according to Melissa Farley, a clinical and research psychologist.
Raising awareness by teaching girls about empowerment and the value of their lives are the best ways to help them, says Elizabeth Sy, advocate against sexual exploitation and co-founder of Banteay Srei, a program dedicated to provide the tools and support necessary for Southeast Asian women and girls to evade and prevent from getting into prostitution.

SACEY/SPA and another program called MISSSEY (Motivating, Inspiring, Supporting and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth) try to tackle the growing problem of commercially exploited minors on the streets throughout Alameda County and Oakland. They specifially help teenagers who are referred to them by the juvenile justice system. The girls have often been arrested for solicitation and these programs help them find other alternatives, such as job search and positive life change and recovery.

SPA also encourages these young women to be creative and demonstrate their talents by providing activities such as arts and crafts, writing in journals and just providing a safe, reliable place to relax, learn and grow.

Nola Brantley, coordinator of SACEY/SPA says that most of the stories share similarities.

“Most of them come from dysfunctional homes, parents aren’t around or are doing drugs, low-income and they are the ones at high risk because they are vulnerable,” says Brantley of the teenage girls she works with.

Banteay Srei, translates to “Citadel of Women” in Cambodian, was created by a group of women who work with sexually exploited teens and sex workers because of the growing concern of teenagers who were being recruited into prostitution.

Bantay Srei began working with sexually exploited minors, but the program has changed focus and work more to prevent girls, who are at a high-risk to become sexual exploitated, so that they won’t go down that road.

Banteay Srei is launching five new programs for 2007, all of which serve different interests in order to give the young women a variety of skills they want to acquire or are curious about.

One program, SAUCE (Southeast Asian Unity through Cultural Exploration) meets once a month and each time they have guest cooks that teach the girls how to make various Asian dishes. The girls will also be involved in harvesting their own fruits and vegetables.

The girls met for the first time on October 18, 2007 and learned how to cook Loc Lak, a traditional Cambodian dish consisting of steak and vegetables and garlic noodles. They all showed enthusiasm while cooking, but became less talkative while eating at the dinner table.

“They just need time adjust to the new environment and get comfortable with everyone”, says Sy to another mentor.

Sy says Banteay Srei is very different and unique from other programs, such as SACEY/SPA who gets their referrals directly from law enforcement, because Banteay Srei is community based and works specifically with Southeast Asians within the Oakland area who have been referred by community leaders that have a close rapport with Southeast Asian families.

“Most of the families that we’ve worked with have a traumatic history, especially the Cambodian families who immigrated here to escape the Khmer Rouge and are still suffering from post-trauma,” says Sy.

“We have a direct correlation with them and can communicate with them. They are mostly low-income families and there is a language barrier between the parents and children. These communities, I think, are a lot more vulnerable to being targeted and their children are being recruited.”

Anna Mei’s parents are from Thailand and she is part of the third-generation group in America. She says that she has a close relationship with her parents, but they disagree on many levels, such as her work. Her parents have limited knowledge of the English language.

Sy explains that because Southeast Asian families have only been here for one or two generations in comparison with other minority populations, such as African Americans who have been here for hundreds of years, Asian families are not interacting with the legal system and aren’t getting caught or arrested as much for prostitution. Because of the lack of interaction with police, their referrals are not from the criminal justice system, like a lot of programs for the youth. A lot of youth from the program have had friends that are prostitutes or have been prostitutes.

Davvy Soun, 19, who has been with Banteay Srei for over three years, recalls being hesitant about joining the program because of the stigma of being misperceived as a prostitute. She had friends who were in the business and knew that Banteay Srei was developed to help sexually exploited minors, but once she joined, she says it was a lot of fun. Her mentor at the time was Sy, who she says was very helpful and supportive; she helped her stay out of trouble because even though she wasn’t sexually exploited she was hanging with the wrong crowd.

“I think the main reason why some teenage girls are doing it is because they think that that is the only option that they have, but they do have other choices,” says Soun. “I know a friend who is doing sex work and her pimp is threatening to kill her family and I understand why she is afraid to get out of the business, but the girls have a choice and they can get out of it.”

Brantley, who has a long history of working with sexually exploited minors says that most of these young women work under a pimp and are almost always sexually/physically abused by their pimps, who the girls often see as their boyfriends.

Joseph M. Carver, a clinical psychologist, says that emotional bonding with an abuser is actually a strategy of survival for victims of abuse and intimidation and is known as the Stockholm Syndrome. This can also occur in family, romantic, and interpersonal relationships.

Anna Mei has bad days when her pimp gets slightly aggressive with her and she wants to leave, but she says she isn’t being forced to prostitute herself, but that it’s her personal job choice.

Dr. Le, a San Francisco State professor and health educator, who did a research study on sex workers and also provided healthcare for adult sex workers working in brothels in San Francisco says that: “My philosophy for sex work is that it’s just work, but when I see minors doing it, then it’s totally different. I feel that it’s not a viable option.”

“I’ve been on lockdown,” Mei says in hesitation about her not being able to contact her family or friends for a few days. She declines to elaborate on that.

From her first night of working as a prostitute three years ago, until today, it is almost the same thing day after day.

She sits in her hotel room and awaits in-calls from customers. It’s a slow night, so she has to go on the tracks, which is just down the street. Routine. She touches up her make-up, put on her provocative outfit, mists some perfume, slides her feet into her high heel shoes and walks down the streets that are full of activity. Men in cars drive pass and honk their horns. As police cars drive pass, she turns the other way in order to avoid confrontation. A car pulls up, inquires the price. “Back to business,” she thinks.