Sex for Hire: Real Stories of Prostitution in America
ABC News' Two-Year Examination of Women Working in the Commercial Sex Industry
Today, women advertise themselves in the online red-light district under various aliases.
"You could go to Craigslist, you could open your yellow pages, you could see pages and pages of ads, escort agencies and massage parlors," explained Rachel Lloyd, executive director of Girls' Educational Mentoring Services of New York City, a group that specializes in rescuing underage girls who enter the sex world.
Hiding in plain sight are hundreds of thousands of individuals both seeking and selling sex. "The nice thing about this site is the women in the pictures are all wearing suits," Jessi said. "And so when you first get to it, you can't really tell what kind of site it is. Most of my clientele that I've met are married, and they don't want a little girl in that little red mini dress and sky-high heels to walk up to them in a bar if that's where they're meeting."
Prostitution is a two-person event, but men and women are perceived and prosecuted very differently.
"The johns do have a stake in the society. There is some risk if you're a policeman or if you're a prosecutor that if you start arresting johns, that one of them will be your neighbor, your boss, whatever else," explained Kristof. "It's much simpler just to arrest the young women."
Referring to the Spitzer situation, Kristof said, "I'm just afraid that people are going to mistake that for typical prostitution in the U.S., and you know, that is a sliver of it, but for an awful lot of young women and girls -- and girls meaning, you know, teenage girls, young girls -- it is not a choice, it's a nightmare."
Happily Ever After at the Bunny Ranch?
But what happens when prostitution is legal? What about the women who work in the 30 legal brothels of Nevada?
All sorts of people, from businessmen to cowboys, even some women, visit the Moonlight Bunny Ranch in Carson City, Nev., for an opportunity to hire one of the women sex workers.
Christina, who ended up at the ranch after 37 foster homes and was trying to put herself through nursing school, said working at the legal brothel seemed like a dream come true.
"[Owner Dennis Hoff] told me that I could make a good living out here and that I'd be happy. I'd never go without a roof over my head. I'd never go hungry, I'd never go without money."
Another one of the prostitutes, a former nurse, said, "In here I can work four, five, six hours if I wanted to and make as much money in one day that I can in two weeks nursing."
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