Desperation Drives Youths Onto Streets : Trapped in Revolving Door, Runaways Resort to Sex, Crime

The young girl who called herself Starlet was trying hard to look enticing to the parade of men who passed her on the street.

A slinky, white dress accented the slight curves of her slender figure and a showy string of imitation pearls dangled from her neck.

Any pretense of youthful innocence was shattered by the tattoo on her arm. In garish letters it said SEX.

There was nothing unusual about her to police. They say there are too many like her on the streets and there is little they can do about them.

Starlet is a 16-year-old runaway who was working on the streets of downtown San Diego as a prostitute. The name is a creation of her teen-age imagination.

She is one of 200 to 500 runaways authorities estimate are on the streets of San Diego at any given time, many living by prostitution or petty crime.

Police say the downtown area, Balboa Park, Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach are places where runaways often congregate. Horton Plaza and Balboa Park are spots where runaway boys, who will participate in homosexual prostitution, gather.

It took a shouting match between Starlet and a downtown bus station employee to land her in a police station. Police say they often overlook runaways until they commit a crime or are brought to their attention by incidents like the one involving Starlet.

Starlet was taken to the police station after showing police a fake identification card. After several phone calls, police learned she was a runaway from Chicago, where she is a ward of the state of Illinois. She would remain in police custody until arrangements were made for her return to Chicago.

Chronic Runaways

Between 1.2 million to 1.5 million youths disappear from home each year in the United States, and statistics show the numbers are steadily increasing. In San Diego last year, police were notified of 3,600 runaway cases involving youths from both inside and outside of the country.

San Diego officials say the problem is not with ordinary runaways, who are likely to return home, but with chronic runaways who have no intention of returning home. It is these youths who often turn to prostitution, drug dealing and petty crime as a way to survive.

A U.S. Department of Justice study found that youths who leave home for more than a month usually turned to prostitution, with most averaging three years on the streets.

Starlet is one of them. By her own admission, she made several hundred dollars as a prostitute in the two weeks she was in San Diego before she was arrested.

“You have a population of kids that are desperate and needy and very vulnerable and exploitable,” said Bruce Wexler, program director of the East County Gate House, a social service organization that assists chronic runaways.

“When they’re out on the streets and when you combine those ingredients, you have kids that are more susceptible to things such as drug activity and prostitution,” he said.

At present, only eight social service agencies handle the hundreds of runaways that come to San Diego in a year’s time. They have a total of only 48 beds available for runaways, which means, if the estimates of authorities are correct, that at least 150 chronic runaways are without a place to sleep each night in San Diego.

The agencies are: OZ San Diego, 3304 Idlewild Way; OZ Carlsbad, 1212 Oak Ave.; San Diego Youth Involvement Project, 626 South 28th St.; the YMCA’s Juvenile Crisis Program, 2859 El Cajon Blvd.; Hartson House, 5120 70th St.; The Bridge, 3151 Redwood St., and The Bridge Storefront, 345 16th St.

“We’re suffering from a (lack) of resources,” said Juvenile Court Judge Napoleon Jones, who has taken an active role in dealing with the problem of runaways.

“We just don’t have the bed space in San Diego to deal with these kids,” Jones said. “Anyone that deals in the area of juvenile justice knows that we have a problem, and it’s growing in dimension.”

Social workers point out that only one runaway shelter, The Bridge Storefront, deals exclusively with cases of chronic runaways. However, dwindling funds have caused the shelter to operate only during the evening, forcing the runaways who frequent the shelter to move out onto the streets during the daytime.

Officials of San Diego Youth and Community Services, the shelter’s parent organization, say the Storefront has been funded only until the end of March.

San Diego Police Sgt. Greg Drilling, whose job includes work with juveniles, said that chronic runaways are not a priority for patrol officers. He said a 1976 state law, designed to keep homeless juveniles who have not broken the law from being thrown into jail with hardened criminals, restricts police in dealing with runaways and hampers efforts to help them.

According to the law, officers can detain a runaway for only six hours, while attempting to contact parents or arrange for shelter, but they may not put the youth in jail.

Revolving Door

Police said that, before the state law went into effect, runaways could be detained long enough to determine what type of help was needed. Now, Drilling says, it is commonplace for a runaway to walk out of voluntary holding facilities.

Police say a revolving door has been created in which runaways are back on the streets almost as fast as they are brought in.

Where does that leave the chronic runaway?

“You hustle and do whatever you can do to survive,” said Jim Evans, director of the YMCA’s Juvenile Crisis Program, which deals with about 500 runaways a year.

“A 15-year-old kid is simply not going to make it on his own, at least not in a legitimate way,” said Lt. Bill Campbell, who operates the juvenile missing persons unit of the San Diego Police Department.

Campbell said only an estimated 5% of chronic runaways hold legitimate jobs. They rest often fall prey to the criminal elements in the city. Police said that pimps and “chicken hawks” often lure the runaways by offering them money, clothing and a place to stay in exchange for prostitution and for committing minor crimes, such as breaking into and stealing from parked cars.

For example, last year police discovered a loosely organized prostitution ring specializing in 13- to 16-year-old runaway girls. About 15 of the girls were taken to Orange County, where they engaged in prostitution.

San Diego Police Investigator Pete Solomonsen said that two of the ring’s leaders were arrested and pleaded guilty to charges of pimping and pandering.

Police say the arrests failed to break up the ring and they are investigating three other men who are suspected of enticing teen-age runaways into prostitution.

“I think it’s more than kids on the streets selling their bodies for cash; there are kids who are selling their bodies for a place to stay,” Evans said.

Although estimates differ, social service officials and police believe at least 50% to 75% of chronic runaways have been victims of sexual, physical and/or emotional abuse at home.

Donna Rankin, volunteer projects coordinator with San Diego Youth and Community Services, offers a sad commentary on many chronic runaway youths: “They feel they have a better chance (of surviving) on the street than in the homes they are coming from.”