panache re-
by: Steve Visser
Cherry learned as a young girl that her body could function similarly to an ATM. She had no idea there would be more of a cost than payout.
Bita Honarvar, bhonarvar@ajc.com “Cherry,” 22, ran away from home — and into prostitution — at 13, but eventually left that life. Her family did not abandon her, which is an advantage many teen prostitutes don’t have.
“Cherry,” 22, revisits Dill Avenue and Metropolitan Parkway in Atlanta, where her last arrest took place when she was 17. That arrest, it turned out, helped change her life. Cherry said she once saw her pimp beat another girl and leave her for dead on the street.
She ran away from her DeKalb County home at 13, looking for excitement and love. She felt unappreciated and lonely at home. Her dad was away for weeks on construction jobs and her mom was too busy or tired to appreciate Cherry’s fondness for the violin. She made it all an excuse to rebel and look on the street for men — “manly men,” as she called them — who valued her.
She met a 20-something man at Five Points and moved in with him. “He seemed very nice,” said Cherry, now 22. “Later, he said, ‘I know a guy who is willing to pay for sex. Would you be interested?’ I said, ‘How much?’ I didn’t really want to do it, but I got gussied up and that’s how I started.”
This was her life for four years, earning up to $1,000 per night. She left the first guy, for whom she peddled sex on Metropolitan Parkway, after he allegedly beat another hooker to death for disloyalty. She found another pimp near Decatur and yet another in Capitol View. She loved some of these men, and thought they loved her. She respected them. She feared others. “We call them daddies,” she said. “I got addicted to the money.”
Federal law enforcement considers Atlanta a hub for child prostitution even after more than a decade of efforts to stamp it out. Advocates contend at least 400 minors prostitute themselves in Georgia, mostly in metro Atlanta, with many turning to this lifestyle at 14 or younger. Pimps circumvent legal tactics by making the girls too loyal or too afraid to testify. Officials debate whether these girls are victims of sexual exploitation or perpetrators.
“The big money is in kids; you can use them over and over again,” said Alesia Adams, Salvation Army territorial coordinator against human and sexual trafficking. “Who is easier to manipulate than a child?”
Savannah was 16 when she moved to Atlanta from Pittsburgh and started slipping out at night to party with two new friends at an English Avenue neighborhood bar. She met Alice, 15, at their high school. Alice introduced her to Bunny, 22. One night, after indulging in alcohol, marijuana and cocaine, they introduced her to a man, who invited her to join everyone on Metropolitan Parkway, with prostitution implied.
Bunny and Alice brought work clothes: skirts, tight shirts and heels. Savannah, in jeans and sneakers, pretended to stroll, telling the pimp that no customers stopped. She did that a second time.
At a motel, she told Bunny and Alice that the idea of selling her body made her uncomfortable. She soon learned the price of resistance. The pimp entered the room and wanted to know what the problem was. She replied she didn’t feel safe.
“He said, ‘Well maybe I’ll try you and you’ll feel safe,’” said Savannah, 24. “That is when he pushed me on the bed and raped me.”
Camari Burroughs, currently serving 20 years for pimping a girl who was 16 and nicknamed “Baby,” ran his escort service over the Internet from his home in Lithia Springs. Two of his prostitutes met Baby when they were in Fulton County jail together and encouraged her to leave her pimp for Burroughs’ operation, according to court records.
Patrina, at 16, met a pimp at Underground Atlanta who took her and a group of women to Miami, and she made a few thousand dollars stripping at parties the man hosted in motels. Soon she was part of a group of prostitutes living and working in a house near Lovejoy High School, court records showed.
Federal authorities prosecuted four men in Atlanta for their involvement in sex trafficking that involved Mexican women and girls brought to the city, handing out sentences ranging from two to 16 years in prison.
Atlanta has strip clubs that allow full nudity and massage parlors and spas that are fronts for prostitution, and seem to operate with impunity. Backpage adult service postings display hundreds of call-girl listings on any given day — a number dwarfing that in most cities.
Pimps view these girls as their personal property. Tiffany was 14 and a runaway when she met Kenton Travaris Ballard, 30. Ballard charmed her initially, but later severely beat her after taking Tiffany to live with his sister in west Atlanta. Tiffany was sold on the street from August 2005 to September 2006, and told by Ballard she could leave him if she made $1,000 per night, Amanda McClure, Ballard’s sister, told investigators. When that didn’t happen, Tiffany tried to escape and Ballard found her hiding in an apartment, pistol-whipped her and put her back into service.
Cherry said she watched her first pimp beat a girl so badly she wasn’t moving when they left her on the street within sight of the Salvation Army on Metropolitan Parkway. The pimp told her that he killed the girl because she had run off and worked as an independent.
“She was a renegade and she made that fateful mistake of coming back,” Cherry said during an interview at her parents’ house in Riverdale. “I remember him beating her like she was a football, kicking her repeatedly in the face. Did I try and help her? No. I wanted to spare myself a beating.”
Most street girls don’t have that family support. Cherry told of a girl, 12, who invited Cherry to work for her pimp years ago. The girl lived in Grady Homes with her mother, who suffered from depression.
“I saw her recently at Five Points,” Cherry said. “She had just turned 20. She is homeless, sleeping in the park.”
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