Katie Ruppe's Blog

Sold into Prostitution at the age of 12

katieruppe — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:21:24 +0000

Once again, the personal stories about child prostitution help bring the reader into the story and make them care.

Dalyn, who was sold into prostitution at the young age of 12, is now living life free of prostitution. Now being a 17 year-old young lady, she talks about the traumatic experiences she faced.

The BBC covered this story in March of 2007. United States news organizations, such as ABC, NBC and Fox, did not cover her story at all.

We know that child prostitution occurs in the U.S., but is more frequent in other countries. Why don’t the news organizations tell the views what is going on across the world? We hear about the war every single day, but we don’t hear much about human rights issues, such as child prostitution.

52 Rescued, Over 690 Arrested.

katieruppe — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:37:27 +0000

In the U.S. media, we see that child prostitution rings are continuing to be busting. Last week, more than 52 children were rescued from child prostitution, and more than 690 were arrested. What we don’t see is what happens to these children. Do they get put in homes or orphanages? Are they checked for HIV and AIDS? No one really knows, because the media doesn’t tell us.
Every once in a while, we will see feature stories about a child prostitute survivor. It will tell us when he/she was turned to prostitution and what she is now doing with his/her life.
The media just leaves the audiences hanging on what happened with the arrests of this prostitution ring. It doesn’t tell us where they were all found or how the rings were broken. This recent story lets the audience know that child prostitution is around, but how many more are there? Are they trying to be broken up as well?

Lucila, the Thirteen-year-old Prostitute

katieruppe — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:36:04 +0000

Emotional and personal stories help readers to connect more the subject they are reading about. Child prostitution is an emotional subject that does not receive a huge amount of media attention.

The story of a thirteen-year-old prostitute, Lucila, is heart breaking. What makes this story so emotional is that it gives a step-by-step description of what happened to the child prostitute, Lucila.The emotion of the story starts when Lucila asks her pimp, if being a “moneymaking hoe” is a good thing, when her pimp told her yes, she believed him. The other emotional part to the story is the picture that accompanies the story. Photojournalism plays a big role in portraying a human rights issue. In the recent photo of Lucila shows the sadness and burden she still carries years later. Journalstic stories like the one of

Lucila is heartbreaking. Viewing articles like this one, makes the reader care and want to read more. In this story, I feel there could be a little more background about child prostitution given. Statistics are very interesting for the reader, so I feel like that could help the story be a little more appealing.

In Our Own Backyard

katieruppe — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 00:25:41 +0000

On the controversy of child porn and prostitution, a lot of people think that it could never in their hometowns. A Motel 6 manager, from Aurora Colorado, was arrested on charges of keeping a place of child prostitution, pandering, keeping a place of prostitution and promoting sexual immorality. http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/20915810/detail.html

According to TheDenverChannel.com, police arrested, hotel manager, Alexandros Katsaunis after several months of investigation. The children that were being pimped out were practically being brainwashed into saying and performing sexual acts. “When we deal with children that are posting their services on these Internet Web sites, we deal with them as being the victim,” said an undercover detective with the Aurora Police Department.

When we think about child prostitution, we do not believe it could happen to our friends and family, but the truth is, is that it happens all around us. The question is, is there anything else we can do to help prevent it?

Some think that the media do not do a great job of covering acts such as child prostitution. I believe that it is the task of finding the prostitution rings is difficult for the investigators to find.

Let’s Stop Child Porn

katieruppe — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:17:52 +0000

There are so many days when we take our lives for granted. As children, most of us were fortunate to live our dreams, and grow up to be what we always wanted to be. What Americans do not realize, is that child pornography is rapidly increasing. According to a recent article in the New York Times, More than 4 million Web sites illustrate images of children being sexually oppressed. New York Time’s Article

The industry of child pornography is a disturbing market. We see the effects and abuse of child porn in television shows, such as Law and Order. What we do not constantly see is the exploitation of child pornography in the news. According to New York Times, there are Over 750,000 people are using child porn sites, and the child pornography industry is worth anywhere from 3 billion to 20 billion dollars. Why these websites are not found immediately and shut down baffles me.

It is sad to me that we know where the abusers of child porn are, and that there are more than three fourths of a million pedophiles out there, freely running the streets. My advice for investigative reporters is to help find these websites and make the readers more aware of this abuse.