Our Ugliest Crime: Holly exposes child-sex trafficking

Sexual Exploitation Hits Close To Home

Child sexual exploitation isn’t limited to places like Cambodia or Calcutta. David Schisgall’s documentary Very Young Girls looks at American teenagers and pre-teens lured into prostitution. Following the girls living at counselor Rachel Lloyd’s restoration home in New York, the film shows how pimps target vulnerable 12- and 13-year-olds, often imprisoning them and subjecting them to repeated rapes. In one shocking scene filmed by two pimps who thought their actions might make a good reality series, we get a glimpse into their recruitment process. Once seduced, denigrated and controlled, the girls have a difficult time breaking free from the lifestyle, but people like Lloyd do their best to help.

The film began as Schisgall was filming a pilot for MTV about young people in conflict zones, and sex trafficking seemed to be one of the biggest issues they were facing. “We found that this kind of trafficking was going on in our [own] city, not very far away from where our offices were. The difference was that if you’re seduced and coerced and brought to New York City for the purposes of sexual exploitation from the Ukraine and you’re caught, you know you’ll get legal services and housing and help to get home. But if the same thing happens to you and you’re [an American] brought from Bridgeport, Conn., and you’re caught, you’re going to jail.”

“Also, if you’re a 40-year-old man and [you’re caught having] sex with a 14-year-old girl, it’s one of the worst crimes you can commit in [this] country, and the girl is going to get treatment. But if you do that, and you pay the girl $80 or $100 and you get caught, chances are you’re going to go home, but that girl is going to go into the correctional system.”