One Year Later, Girl's Death Unsolved
Jan. 11 -- Since 16-year-old Christal Jones was found dead in a brothel in the Bronx a year ago, authorities say they have broken up two prostitution rings that lured troubled teen girls from Vermont, and revamped the ways the state deals with troubled kids.
But the girl's killer still hasn't been found.
Since Jan. 3 of last year when Jones was apparently drugged and suffocated, officials in Vermont, a state that has long prided itself on taking a progressive approach to environmental and social issues, has taken a hard look at its social services because the teenager was supposed to be in the care of the Social and Rehabilitation Services, a division of the Agency of Human Services.
And it turned out that Jones was not the only girl who had been lured away to New York by people allegedly looking for prostitutes. While some of the girls involved were already in the child welfare system, others had no apparent history of problems.
"It raised a whole host of issues because a lot of these kids were not known to the state," SRS commissioner William Young said. "It really was a loss of innocence."
State officials had not been unaware that there were prostitution rings bringing Vermont girls to New York City to be prostitutes, or that Jones was one of the girls who had fallen victim to one of the operations, according to an independent investigation of the matter that was commissioned by the SRS.
The report, released in April, did not fault the SRS or state or local police who knew of the rings, and Young said there was no reason to believe that anything could have been done to prevent Jones' death.
But it did spur the state to develop a plan that officials hope will prevent similar tragedies in the future. Among the provisions of the plan are increased security at residential care homes for teenagers, providing follow-up supervision for youths who have gone through substance abuse treatment, and improving communication among child welfare workers, law enforcement officers and corrections officials.
