Article January 27, 2003 Issue

'HOME' is where the heart is

BY Marta Greenwood

THE UNITED NATIONS estimates that there are 150 million children living on the streets worldwide. Some are as young as three years old, going up to the age of eighteen. About 40 percent of these children are homeless—an unprecedented number in the history of civilization. The other 60 percent of these children work on the streets to support their families. They are unable to attend school and are considered to be living in "especially difficult circumstances." In addition, these children are frequently the victims of violence, sexual exploitation, neglect, addiction, and human rights violations victims (see www.pangaea.org/street_children/kids.htm).

Rachel Lloyd once was a child prostitute and a drug addict. She dropped out of school and began living a wild life, shoplifting, drinking, and taking drugs. At seventeen she was drawn into prostitution (for Rachel's story see "Ex-prostitute who saves the hookers of Harlem," by Marcus Warren, Telegraph Group Limited 2002. www.dailytelegraph.com/news/ma).

Rachel was living in Germany, and her salvation and turnaround came in the form of a church on a United States Air Force base and a military family who employed her as a nanny. Nowadays, Rachel is called the angel of Harlem. She spends her time helping child prostitutes in New York. It isn't easy helping these girls get off drugs, and leave predatory pimps. It is also a challenge to repair the damage wrought on these children through years of living in broken, fatherless families. According to Lloyd, the face of child prostitution belongs mostly to fourteen-and-fifteen-year-old black girls, victims of sexual assault and broken homes, some of them with children of their own.