Written by Naomi F Landecker
With the efforts of churches in Arizona,Street Light Ministrieswill be opening safe houses this summer to provide a place of healing and restoration for abducted child prostitutes.
The average age of entry into prostitution in the U.S. is 13 years old. Each child is forced to serve between 100 to 1,500 clients per year.
As many as 2.8 million children live on the streets, a third of whom are lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. The FBI estimates that more than 100,000 children and young women are trafficked in America today, ranging from age 9 to 19.
Street Light, headed by Larrie Fraley, was founded to help the child victims of this growing problem.
Fraley said there are more than 50 child prostitutes already identified in Phoenix alone. While the current procedure for police is to send the prostitutes to jail, Fraley said Street Light will provide the judicial system with an alternate option: to place the children in safe houses in order to recover and be able to reenter society.
“Acting together, churches have the resources to end one of the darkest social and moral issues in our society,” Fraley said. “It is time for our churches to lead the fight against this plague.”
To help fight the problem, Fraley said Street Light will be doubling the number of “safe house” beds that are in the United States today and provide aftercare, which Fraley saidstrives to be holistic. Each child is assigned a Primary Caseworker who coordinates medical and psychological care, academic assessments and other social services as needed.
