In a Shift, Anti-Prostitution Effort Targets Pimps and Johns

A 14-year-old girl, the narrator said, had been locked in a room and was forced to have sex with 30 men a day.

"Oh, my God," a detective said, rapping the table with his wedding band.

A prosecutor from the Washington U.S. attorney's office noted that this was the program's first year in the District. "We need your help, you're the ones on the streets," said Sharon Marcus-Kurn, coordinator of the District's Human Trafficking Task Force. "This is a national effort."

In cities around the country, U.S. attorney's offices, the FBI, local prosecutors and nongovernmental organizations are developing similar task forces. The new legislation would assist them because, in addition to funding shelters for ex-prostitutes and sponsoring a statistical survey of prostitution, it would authorize $25 million a year to law enforcement to reduce demand. Techniques would include using female decoys, posting pictures of johns on the Internet and establishing "john schools" to reeducate sex clients.

Hughes said that 90 percent of prostitution arrests are of women: "There's been a conspiracy of silence of men not wanting to hold other men accountable."

That pattern is changing, if slowly, law enforcement officials said. In New York City, said Tony Communiello, from the Queens district attorney's office, they have instituted the "Losing Proposition," where undercover policewomen try to seize the john's car. In St. Louis, said Len Tracy, chief investigator at the St. Charles County prosecutor's office, they are applying drug-trafficking techniques to pimps, charging them with financial crimes. In Las Vegas, said Victor Vigna, a sergeant on the metropolitan police force, they administer HIV tests for arrested johns and show them photos of genitals covered with disease-related lesions.

And yet, despite these efforts, the pimp in the '05 black DeVille idling his engine after midnight, greeted the news with a shake of his braids and a snort. "They can't stop it," said Steve, who would not give his last name. He sat at the corner of 15th and L streets NW, watching a girl in a miniskirt flitting in the cold. The shadow of the steering wheel cut across his face. "People can be bought. It's gone back to cave days."

Steve dismissed the measure as a political stunt, noting that lawmakers have been clients, too. He said that "some women like being exploited" and suggested that abolishing prostitution would trigger a rise in rapes and killings: "You got a lot of sick-minded people out here."

But at least one massage-parlor manager is worried. Kay slouched into a white satin couch at one of eight massage parlors within a 10-block radius of the White House. A girl in a white bikini slipped across the red lights, into a massage room that has a clock with a second hand. Kay used to be a massage therapist, too, she said, but at 55 she's too old.

The legislation, Kay said, "makes me a headache." The parlor will lose clients and she'll lose her job. A frown gathered at the edge of her lips, but then she smoothed her long red hair and smiled. "I'll have to find a nice man, and settle down."