Ontario and Pomona's Prostitution Problem

Children selling themselves for sex is big business in the Inland Empire.

They do it by the hundreds. Out of fear, and to please, protect and enrich their pimps. These pimps recruit the already vulnerable girls into their stables and then transfer them from place to place in Southern California, and across the nation as far as the Atlantic Coast.

What this ugly and frightening underground industry does to the children and society was the thrust of a report called "Lost Innocence," presented Friday at the Juvenile Law Institute Delinquency Law Program at UC Riverside Extension.

Four people who spend their days fighting childhood prostitution gave the report: San Bernardino County Deputy District Attorney Tamara Ross and three Ontario police officers, Sgt. John Duffield, Detective Rob Wightman and Officer Dave Newland.

The hottest place for all prostitutes, young and old, in the Inland Empire, the officers agreed, is along Holt Boulevard in Ontario west from Euclid Avenue to Montclair and Pomona, a distance of roughly two miles or more.

Another way to find them, they told their audience of lawyers, judges, probation officers and social workers, is on craigslist.com or half a dozen other Internet sites, including one for pimps, where they can network, exchange information on methods, girls and

police activities to figure out how to avoid arrest.
The officers told of one child prostitute calling herself Star who was advertised on craigslist and made a date to meet a john in Knight's Inn on Holt Boulevard in Ontario.

What brings these children to Ontario? The international airport and the presence of giant truck stops in the area where prostitution is rampant, they said.

Note to johns: It is a crime for an adult to have sex with a minor, even if it is solicited. That's the law. You will be guilty of several felonies.

Ross said the District Attorney's Office has filed 91 prostitution cases in Juvenile Court since January 2005, but in one year Ontario police made more than 500 arrests with 300 of them 18 or younger and most of the 18-year-olds had been prostitutes for at least two years.

Ontario police have been treating the child prostitutes as victims rather than criminals, but that, too, has its problems. They can't legally hold young victims. They must be released to their families and most of them run away again to rejoin the pimps. It's a vicious circle.

They have begun to concentrate on the pimps but they admit that pimps are hard to pin down and get the evidence to put them away. Hassling them seems to help.

"Pimps don't like to be messed with," Duffield said.

It encourages them to find other places to ply their sleazy trade.

"We have failed these children," the officers told the audience.

Northern California is doing a much better job. They decried that "the Inland Empire doesn't have rehabilitation or safe houses for sexually exploited minors."

The only suitable place for sexually exploited children in Southern California is Children of the Night in Los Angeles. Ontario police refer children there, but the kids must volunteer for the program, and Children of the Night only has 24 beds.

In what could be any parent's nightmare, the officers told of one case in which a San Diego 14-year-old was recruited when the pimp threatened to go in her house and kill her 4-year-old brother if she turned him in or refused to prostitute herself.

She only worked Saturdays and Sundays so she could stay in school and her parents would not find out. She would tell them she was spending the weekend with a girlfriend and the pimp would pick her up. She was from an upper middle class family. Her mother was a nurse and her father owned a construction company. She was arrested in Ontario and her parents were shocked to learn what had been going on.

The officers said that 75 percent or more of the children lured into prostitution have been sexually or physically abused in the past.

"They are looking for structure and the pimps give it to them," the officers said.

Pimp tactics are:

Seduction - He takes her out to dinner and shopping, and is attentive.

Isolation - He turns her against the world.

Coercion - She needs money and he shows her how to get it.

Violence - He is immediate and brutal if she refuses.

Once a girl is hooked, she can't get out. The officers likened it to domestic violence, when the abused spouse keeps going back because he or she sees no way out.

Some of these 14-, 15- and 16-year-old girls they try to interview in juvenile hall are hard as concrete, they said.

But each of the officers said he loves the job and feels it's a place where he can make a difference.



Found this in the Sun, I remember how craccin Holt has always been as far as prostitution but I aint know they had little girls out on them strips like that. Nor did I know how big of a strip it actually is. Niggaz is comin from Diego to serve pussy in the E? But on a side note Holt is a crazy street, I remember when they raided the little liqour store by McDonalds on Holt in Pomona. That spot had everthing from hoes to dope running thru it. It was a lot like that incident that happened with Scores. Problem with those operations is you fuccin with craccheads and methheads, how the hell do you trust a cracchead not to run they lips?

Other spots in IE that have it, Baseline in San Bernardino always been the ho stroll, all around downtown, 5th & G, H street near Downtown. Mt vernon had it for a while, the city had injunctions placed on the prostitutes.

Yea Baseline has always been a craccin spot. I've seen sum ugly ass bitches strollin over that way lol. Foothill in Rialto used to have lil activity on it. Not too sure how that's goin now and days.

NYTE RYDA wrote:Other spots in IE that have it, Baseline in San Bernardino always been the ho stroll, all around downtown, 5th & G, H street near Downtown. Mt vernon had it for a while, the city had injunctions placed on the prostitutes.

Yeah, there's a lot on Baseline and even Highland at times when it get's dark...even during the day, but I see a GRIP walking that little block round 5th and G...right in front of all those grimy ass motels (I guess in and out easy access?). That rapper Penuckle recorded some hoe's right there on 5th and G approaching some car and threw it on one of his music video's. Oh yeah, North Mt. Vernon across the street from that small ass indoor swapmeet is another spot.

Highland avenue was the strong hold ho stroll back in the day,even more so than Baseline, Baseline was always mix of baseheads and prostitutes. Yeah onn the Westside, Mt vernon north of Baseline.

Paid_In_Full wrote:That rapper Penuckle recorded.

You mean niners?