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cooperbh · 03-25-2011, 10:19 PM

(03-25-2011 09:50 PM)takeitdown Wrote: I think there's a good chance the girl was a prostitute who saw dollar signs. I don't trust media reporting of hardly anything.

However, I think you have a naive view of the sex trade. Lots of these kids didn't have a lot of choices to make. Many were abused sexually and beaten by a father or stepfather, with a mother who wouldn't defend them and had to get out, at 13, or 14, or 15. There aren't a lot of right choices if your parents are horrible people and hang you out to dry.

Once there, we've all seen how much more it costs to live than it seems. And again, there are few choices. Many, in that situation, will take to hooking, as it's the only means of money, and they'll try to pretend it's what they want, out of a need to feel control or power over some part of their lives.

A lot of people out there doing that have been sexually abused, and it does a horrible number. Be around a few of these people and you'll see how it crushes a part of them for life, and really alters their world view.

Now imagine, you've tried to strike out for yourself, get away from your parents, and you turned one trick, or got in with a guy who you thought was your boyfriend, but then starts getting you to sleep with his "friend" for money (often how these things start out)...what do you do? You're emotionally a mess, you don't have a place to live if you leave him, you can't go back home to your abusive dad, you're out of good choices.

I'm all for personal responsibility, but I grew up poor and saw people whose choices were to quit school at 14 to support their family because their mother was injured, or ignore their mother and two younger sisters and "go get theirs" by getting an education. I respect the man who stops at 14 and supports his family by working 15 hours a day. But that man is doomed to poverty because he lacks an education, and his back will probably be shot in 10 years.

This girl may well have just seen dollar signs afterward...and honestly, that was my first thought as well. It's just that I don't like everything being attributed to bad choices. As much as America is a land of freedom and all of that, some poor kids simply are left with choices, but none of them good. I've known these people and feel for the ones I don't know. When I first started being around middle class people, and seeing how hard it was for them to mess up, and how hard it was for people I grew up with to get out....I started to understand how people think we all have all these choices. They had them. It doesn't mean everyone did. I know it's hard to imagine a world where your dad was never around, your mom made minimum wage, and if the car broke down she lost her job and everyone went hungry...and that's if the mom was a good woman and stood behind her responsibilities...but a lot of people live that way. They're generally the ones who end up at these places.

You said it much better than I did.

Unfortunately, you'll probably be labled a "bleeding heart lib" for it - which is not an insult, BTW. It simply implies that your ability to reason is totally overwhelmed by an uncontrollable emotional hypersensitivity. It's a political party, I believe.

Anyway, +1.