413047-Underground-Commercial-Sex-Economy

majority of prostitutes. That does not mean that males are not out there. So if I talk about
it later and say girls or women, that is because that is what we deal with. With the girls,
the majority of them have some kind of background with being sexually abused or
sexually assaulted in their childhood. A lot of them have been in the system whether it is
because of foster issues, child neglect or child abuse. And again, these are not 100 percent
across the board but that is what we see.
You see a lot of them that are frequent runaways. The runaway thing is huge actually.
There are truancy issues, being associated with gangs. Those are a lot of the same
backgrounds, you can look at it across any state, city, and see that the kids are going to
have those common factors. Of course there are other issues too, most of these girls,
young women you have contact with have pretty low self-esteem. A lot of people
summarize it saying that they are missing the father figure … it’s not so much the father
figure, but they are missing the love, attention, affection that they are not getting, it
doesn’t have to be from their father, it could be from the mother, whatever, they are not
getting their needs met and so these pimps understand that they can meet those needs.
(Denver Law Enforcement Official)
Recruitment tactics used by pimps often include promises of a better lifestyle. One law enforcement
official described how pimps groom women and girls through promises of living in a big home and
affording a fancy lifestyle. One investigator described how pimps post online ads of women as a grooming
mechanism by presenting it as a photo shoot:
Respondent: That is one of the big recruiting tools. You get a young girl, generally a
juvenile or right around 18, introduce her to the lifestyle and one of the first things they
do are the big photo shoots for the postings. But the goal …
Interviewer: So they actually do that in a big studio and everything
Respondent: It is a big, formal thing. It is generally them in a hotel. They will take them
out and spend a lot of money on clothes, lingerie, makeup and things like that and the
girls are usually wowed by the money that they spend. And then they do these photo
shoots and the girls feel good about themselves and then they say, “Here is the business.”
(Denver Law Enforcement Official)
On average, independent pimps in Denver traffic about five to six women and/or minors at any one time.
While this number sometimes ranges, law enforcement hypothesized that pimps tend to average this
number for control purposes. Similar to other cities, the women and girls exploited by Denver pimps are
expected to meet a certain “quota” per day. In Denver, this is about three to four customers or about
$1,000 per day. Reflecting on the daily quota and the brutality of pimps, one law enforcement official
remarked:
Most girls will tell us they have an $1,000 day quota. Seven days a week, 365 days a year.
If they’re on their period, stick a sponge in ya, keep going. (Denver Law Enforcement
Official)
Pimps may also groom certain women to assist in recruiting and facilitating the exploitation of other
women and girls (known colloquially as “bottoms”):
The bottom is going to be a primary recruiter, she’s going to keep the girls in line, but on
the other hand she’s going to take the worst beatings too … because that shows the
control the pimp has, because he can control his number one girl, the other girls are going
to stay in check. But the bottom has the same role, the same amount of money [daily
quota] if not more sometimes. (Denver Law Enforcement Official)
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