NZ Herald News By Josh Gale
Girls as young as 12 are selling themselves for sex in downtown Auckland. Life South Police are worried by a spike in underage prostitution in Auckland's CBD, with girls as young as 12 selling themselves for sex.
Senior Constable Mark Riddell of the Auckland central police Youth Action Team said in the last six weeks, a police operation code-named City Door had identified at least 13 girls aged under 16 who were "active prostitutes".
Many of them work from City Road, which runs between Queen Street and Symonds Street. Senior Constable Riddell calls the street a "young red light area".
In the last two weeks, Senior Constable Riddell and his team have taken five underage girls off the streets and put them in to the custody of Child, Youth and Family. But Riddell said many of these girls escape CYF and go straight back on the street.
"Kids will run away on the same night we pick them up," he said. "On some occasions, they've got back to the city before we've got back out on the road."
One of the girls, who started working as a prostitute when she was 12 and had never been to high school, said she had been picked up by a car full of men and raped only days earlier.
Police placed the girl in the care of CYF, but Senior Constable Riddell said she ran away soon after.
He said CYF has only about 100 beds in secure custody across New Zealand. These are prioritised for those at risk of suicide, so the girls he dealt with often missed out.
Debbie Baker, the manager of Streetreach, a group supporting street sex workers, said she knew of at least 12 girls between 11 and 15 "out there selling themselves for sex" in the central city.
"Young meat earns a lot of money," said Ms Baker. "Underage prostitution has always been a problem, but there is an increase. We're seeing more and more young girls out there."
Ms Baker said she knew of a 12-year-old West Auckland girl who was recruited by a gang outside her school to sell cannabis.
After spending the drug money, the girl was forced into prostitution to pay her debt to the gang and she shared the extra earnings from her work with her family.
"Her parents knew exactly what she was doing."
Ms Baker said she believed the police were under-resourced and CYF was unable to deal with the problem.
