Children of the Night
Children of the Night is a non-profit, tax-exempt organization founded in 1979 to fight prostitution involving children. It was founded by Dr. Lois Lee.
- "Our commitment to rescuing these children from the ravages of prostitution is
shared with a small but committed group of detectives, FBI agents, and prosecutors in Los Angeles, Hollywood, Santa Ana, Anaheim, San Diego, other areas of California, Las Vegas, Portland, Billings, Montana; Seattle, Washington; Miami, New York, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Phoenix, Hawaii and Washington D.C. — all stops on the child prostitution circuit"
The organisation, like others - makes (on the whole) exaggerated claims about the sufferings of under-age prostitutes, receives donations from the public and assists law enforcement. On the provisional side, CotN acts as a safe-house for the teenagers who they have "saved".
Confirmation of this writers suspicion as to how most teens end up at CotN is perhaps realised in this quote from their site:
- Many children voluntarily opt to stay for a year for optimum treatment; 13-yearolds may stay until they are 18. [Emphasis NewgonWiki]
It is highly unlikely that this charity's claims regarding prostitution have much grounding in reality. They do not tend to correspond with our own correspondent's street-level observations of what is a far more socially complex issue.