Grants to help agencies fight child prostitution
Seattle Times staff reporter
Law-enforcement agencies in King and Snohomish counties have received nearly three-quarters of a million dollars in federal grant money to help fight teen prostitution and the sexual exploitation of children.
The Seattle Police Department announced this week it had received $292,000 from the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to fund an effort to identify prostituted youth victims and help them get to safety.
Last month, Snohomish County was awarded a $449,908 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice to build a law-enforcement team dedicated to combating child-sex trafficking.
Seattle police said that last year more than 80 prostituted children were identified and recovered through investigations.
The prostitution of teens and children has become an increasingly scrutinized social issue, with organizations like Seattle's Bridge Program recently opening one of the nation's few homes for former teen prostitutes.
Lawmakers in some states, including Washington, have responded by passing stricter laws and penalties against prosecuted pimps and johns. A new law in Washington makes promoting the commercial sexual abuse of a minor a Class A felony punishable by a prison sentence of seven to 10 years, up from roughly two.
The same legislation also increases penalties for men who pay for sex with underage prostitutes, increasing the maximum 90-day jail terms for first-time offenders to roughly two-year prison sentences, and thousands of dollars in new court fines.
In Seattle, the money will be used to fund training, equipment and one full-time civilian position for a two-year project called Operational Strategies to Protect and Rescue Exploited Children (OSPREY).
According to a Seattle police news release, the grant will be used to:
• Identify victims through a coordinated effort by law-enforcement and probation officers and child-service providers.
• Help victims find safety and give them the support they need to assist in the investigation and prosecution of their exploiters and pimps.
• Connect victims with long-term care services, such as shelter, education and counseling.
• Educate police and other professionals about how to work together to provide victims with a "continuum of care."
In Snohomish County, the money will be used to create a law-enforcement team with a dedicated detective, prosecutor, support staff and expert witnesses to go after the people who target and exploit children, according to the Prosecutor's Office.
The money awarded to Snohomish County was among the $9.3 million delivered to communities nationwide through the Department of Justice's Child Sexual Predator Program.
The Child Sexual Predator Program money is granted to state and local law-enforcement agencies to develop initiatives to locate, arrest and prosecute child sexual predators and to enforce state sex-offender-registration laws.
"Sex trafficking of children, kids forced into lives of prostitution and drugs, happens in Washington, as it does everywhere in the country," said Snohomish County Prosecutor Mark Roe in a news release. "This Department of Justice grant gives Snohomish County a way to fight it; a way to hunt down and hold accountable those who hurt kids and profit financially from their sexual abuse."
Christine Clarridge: 206-464-8983 or cclarridge@seattletimes.com
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