CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa -- Parents and social workers are crying for police to halt teenage prostitution in their city, but officials say they have been thwarted by a thin legal line between sexual promiscuity and prostitution. The prostitution, which school officials and social workers attribute to several dozen teenage girls in this Midwest grain-processing city, is not of the street-walking, 'Pretty Baby' variety uncovered in New York or Los Angeles.
Police say it involves a few sexually active teenage girls who have taken their promiscuity one step further, accepting money from teenage youths for the sexual favors. Social workers say there is a ring led by a flashy adult from St. Louis, who employs a younger man to cruise the east end of Cedar Rapids in a sharp Cadillac with personalized license plates. Teenage boys actually 'recruit' the girls from all of the city's high school and even junior highs, the social workers say.
The Cadillac then takes the girls to meet young men and boys during school hours or the early evening. Ralph Myers, chief of the city's juvenile bureau.
We know something is up. But Myers and other police officials say that in the world of juvenile prostitution, stories of money changing hands are hard to track down and even harder to prove in court. Social workers at youth homes and officials at two high schools and one junior high say they cannot ignore the consistent stories told by as many as two dozen girls. They demanded anonymity because of privacy laws that prevent them from disclosing individuals involved.
Myers wonders if anything can be done. He acknowledges growing promiscuity among teenaged girls in Cedar Rapids. Iowa law allows and year-old girls to have sex with anyone up to six years older. If money changes hands between legally consenting sex partners, Myers said, the police will seldom find out. Myers said he even contacted a woman he knows -- but cannot prove - is an adult prostitute, whom he picked up as a juvenile several years ago. She saw no threat of competition from the young girls.
