Anti-Prostitution Group Gets Grant

The organization Children of the Night has received a $25,000 grant to enable the nonprofit group to help prevent more young runaways from engaging in prostitution or pornography.

The California Endowment grant will pay for an outreach worker to interact with runaways on the streets between midnight and 4 a.m. as part of the group’s HIV prevention program.

Each year in California, the organization distributes more than 1,000 packets containing condoms and a laminated card with information about its help hotline and services.

“We’re trying to keep [the runaways] safe until we can help get them off the streets,” said Lois Lee, who established the Van Nuys-based organization in 1979.

“These kids are dominated by vicious pimps that beat them into submission,” Lee said.

“There’s no way for them to get away, so we give them condoms until we can help them get away. Then we only have to deal with the psychological problems and not a terminal disease.”

The grant will also allow the organization to redesign the packets so that it isn’t obvious they came from a group that helps juvenile prostitutes.

In the past, police have confiscated the condoms as evidence, so kids are sometimes reluctant to carry them, Lee said.

“We want to develop something that looks like they picked it up at school. In the long run, we will be able to give out more,” Lee said.

Started by Blue Cross of California in 1996, the California Endowment provides grants to nonprofit organizations working to improve the health and well-being of Californians.