In The News

‘Thousands’ of teens said caught up in web of truck stop prostitution

Some truckers claim prostitution is only a matter of working girls trying to make a living and therefore, victimless. But according to statistics — and law enforcement — they’re either fooling themselves, misinformed, or both. An ABC TV Prime Time Crime special this summer asserted that “thou-sands of teens are forced into truck stop sex,” with an FBI spokesman adding that truck stops are uniquely suited to prostitution because at night the parking lots are isolated and out of the view of the public and police.

One former career driver from Sa-line County, Arkansas, told The Trucker that the back parking lanes are known as “party row.”

“Anywhere there are big trucks delivering goods you’ll find prostitutes, both male and female; it’s a fact of life,” he said.

Authorities estimate a prostitute can make as much as $1,000 a night going from truck to truck and an FBI spokesman told ABC that pimps “network” across the country, letting each other know where “the money is good.” The prostitutes, accompanied by their paid handlers, are ferried to the money-making destinations aboard airplanes and in 18-wheelers, as was the case with two 14-year-old cousins who were kid-napped in Ohio and transported via big rig to a truck stop in Michigan, where they were forced to have sex with drivers.

One FBI “sting” on a prostitution ring in December of 2005 charged 31 individuals in four U.S. FBI districts and involving several truck stops. “These children are victimized twice,” asserts FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker, “first by the handler who exploits them and secondly by the individual who solicits them.”

The Oklahoma City division of the FBI did a large-scale investigation of child prostitution focused on interstate prostitution at truck stops and on call services. The sting netted 48 pimps, 24 of whom were exploited juveniles.

Sometimes, parents, themselves, are involved.

Driver Anthony Cleveland told The Trucker he saw a mother put out her 14-year-old daughter to turn tricks at an Alabama truck stop; he knew it was the girl’s mother because the woman’s identity was revealed when she was later arrested and charged.

A social worker who studied the prostitution problem in Seattle observes that “The sex industry, above all, sells fantasy, regardless of who gets hurt.”

In many cases it is the young who are put in harm’s way: during Congressional testimony in 2005 the FBI reported the average age of a child first used in prostitution is 11 to 14, with some as young as 9, and that they include both female and male victims from all ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds. The agency notes that these sex predators prey on children who have low self-esteem and who are vulnerable.

One unfortunate by-product of truck stop prostitution is that women drivers “are often mistaken for a prostitute, just because they are a woman who is walking through the parking lot,” said Women In Trucking President Ellen Voie. “It doesn’t seem to matter if they are young or old, thin or heavy, pretty or not; women drivers often endure the unwanted attention of men who make inaccurate assumptions about their presence in a predominantly male-occupied place of business, the parking lot of a truck stop.”

Voie said many women drivers have resorted to “feminizing” their trucks to keep hookers from waking them up in the middle of the night asking for a “date.”

Truck stop owners interested in discouraging prostitution have found that having chaplains on the property has been a deterrent.

“If a driver wants to do something else after awhile he just doesn’t come here anymore,” said the owner of a truck stop in the Northeast where Transport for Christ chaplains have been a fixture since the early ’90s.

Joe Hunter, founder of Truckstop Ministries International out of Jackson, Ga., said when their chaplains go into a travel plaza they let it be known that “we’re here to minister to them [prostitutes]; we’re not here to run them off.” Hunter’s wife, Jan, said the ministry has had some success helping prostitutes get out of the lifestyle but that it’s difficult.

“The main obstacle has been the pimps not wanting to part with their meal ticket,” she said, adding that it’s also “the mindset of the women, themselves. They don’t see a way out. The pimps are belligerent and domineering and convince the women they can’t leave.”

Statistics show that these prostitutes often have been brutalized or sexually molested by a father or other male family member. Many are involved in drugs, authorities say.

“They often think they don’t deserve a better lifestyle, that they’re not worth it,” Jan Hunter said. “Or, they don’t think they can make as good a living doing anything else.” 

For two other stories on the subject click here and here.

Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of articles about truck stop prostitution in hopes not to glorify the seediness or to cast blame, but hopefully to educate those who think it’s a victimless crime. In our research into this age-old problem we found it’s anything but victimless and rooted firmly in the criminal underworld.

Dorothy Cox of The Trucker staff can be reached to comment at [email protected].